The grandkids and I have a (more or less) weekly email round. My own mundane contributions of late have announced such excitement as the return of the owls to the pine in front of our house and the baked polenta I made for dinner.
Seda’s last was a series of intricate doodles she’d done on class notes. Erowyn favors quotes — without comment — from whatever book he’s currently reading. This week’s: “Cages, yes. Pits. Pens. Under guard in a room. Never in a proper prison.”
Well, yes, we’ve all been feeling a bit like that. And our cages and guards occupy some middle space between figurative and literal. Adapting to current house arrest conditions takes some work. Oh sure, you can go out but never without your ball and chain. And heretofore friendly folk on the street avoid you like the plague. Because you might be carrying it.
So aside from a daily walk and a weekly in-and-out grocery shopping trip, my current life centers on home and what I can see and hear and feel and taste inside my improper prison. Already obsessed with food and wine, I’m even more so now that they anchor my day in such dramatic fashion.
A new dish, a change in the color of my vegetables, a wine delivery: big news! Hey, kids, guess what? We just had our first butternut squash of the season!
And I just opened our first bottle of this year’s M & C Lapierre Raisin Gaulois. Thanks to the Administration’s bizarre 25% tariff on French wines under 14.1% alcohol (why under? Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the tax on higher alcohol?), it’s a bit more expensive this year. But for a wine made with minimal intervention from organic/biodynamic grapes grown in some the world’s best wine areas (Morgon and Beaujolais), it’s still a bargain at $20. Amy from The Pip in Dixon will bring it to your door (or you can pick it up there).
I marveled at its deep dark fruit that nevertheless resulted in a light, easy-going wine. The importer, Kermit Lynch, asks drinkers to vote as descriptors among “frivolously brooding,” “seriously lighthearted” and “mercurially pragmatic.” I vote for the first, especially since the phrase describes my own state of mind and heart. Unlike me, though, the wine is, amid that brooding, joyful, lively and energetic as well, states of mind and heart I aspire to these days but seldom manage to reach. This bright, happy, spicy, cranberry-kissed, wine helps though.
We drank it with a thrown-together escarole lasagna and it made the simple dish seem like an early fall feast. Perhaps I’ll pair my next bottle with a wild mushroom lasagna, because I can so easily imagine the earthiness of both wine and fungus creating something joyful indeed. Sounds like an excellent break-out-of-prison meal to me.
In this season of longing-for-rain (except that rain will only keep us more entrenched in our cages), the temperatures play nasty games with us. One day it seems that fall has finally arrived, the next we’re back to summer heat (and winds and the fire threats that go with them). So keeping a balanced supply of light reds and bright whites is my current buying strategy.
I was delighted, then, to see a new white on the Co-op shelves from Lieu Dit, a partnership since 2011 between longtime friends Justin Willett and Eric Railsback, two Santa Barbara wine lovers. They specialize in Loire grapes, which they think are perfect for the diverse micro-climates of Santa Barbara with its soil of marine sediment and diatomaceous earth. And they like to make lean bright minerally wines. As Willit says, “Richer wines have been the notion of California for the last 20 years … It’s refreshing to make wines that have a little more restraint.”
The fruit for this 2019 Melon de Bourgogne comes from Bien Nacido in Santa Maria where there are some old plantings of melon, a grape that was mistakenly identified and planted as pinot blanc. Melon, by the way, is a grape best known for its use in making Muscadet, a Loire wine often celebrated for its oyster affinity. This California incarnation — wonderfully racy, fall-apple-y, and stony — would be perfect with oysters, too.
We had no oysters at hand, but it was an excellent companion to our penne tossed with Roman broccoli sauce. (I used baby broc from the farmers market, thoroughly cooked and then blended with garlic, lemon zest, capers, red pepper, sea salt and Romano cheese. Delicious.) And I bet it would be amazing with a fish-and-chips feast (oh, how I long for the fish-and-chips at Princess Seafood in Fort Bragg) or that baked polenta I mentioned topped with the last of the fresh tomatoes, thoroughly roasted with red onions and garlic.
Since this is the last “Wineaux” before Election Day, I urge you to vote, to encourage others to vote, and to furnish your pen-pit-cave-prison with a few really good bottles to distract yourself from the ensuing chaos. In a recent column I mentioned the wonderful work of Chef José Andrés and his World Central Kitchen project. The latest adventure of this crew is Chefs for the Polls, which will provide free and delicious meals to keep up the health and spirits of people in long voter lines (they’re already in Georgia).
You can support this effort by donating directly (wck.org) or by buying a few bottles (available at The Pip) of Liquid Geography Rosé, which gives a third of all profits to Andres’ work.
— Susana Leonardi is a Davis resident; reach her at [email protected] Comment on this column at www.davisenterprise.com.
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October 21, 2020 at 12:21AM
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