Making the Case for Gulpable Spring Reds
Making the Case for Gulpable Spring Reds
Also: why everyone needs to calm down about the term "minerality." Plus, "Eating the Easter Bunny," a holiday food-writing classic.
April showers, indeed. Where I live, today is the first day of sun in what has been long, wet stretch. Which means we are definitely in the clutches of springtime. Over at The New Wine Review, I’ve got a new piece on red wines for spring that I hope you will read. (see above for information to claim your free subscription to NWR, btw).
Spring is a confusing season, particularly where I live in the northeastern U.S. In just the first few days of spring this year, our weather was sunny with highs over 60, followed by nights with lows that dropped below freezing. We’ve been stuck inside from flood-inducing torrential rains, and then came some gorgeous warm and clear days that demanded to get you out of the house.
When it comes to food-and-wine pairings, spring can be equally confusing. Classic spring vegetables—asparagus, artichokes, radishes, and radicchio—are famously difficult to match with any wine. For other signals of the season such as peas, fava beans, spring beets, dandelions, strawberries, and rhubarb, a go-to wine does not immediately leap to mind. Likewise, has anyone ever figured out the best wine to pair with the oh-so-trendy ramps that you find on hip menus at this time of year?
For those who celebrate (and who eat meat) there is the pairing conundrum of the classic Easter ham. We’ll certainly see food media trying to make spring lamb happen. Many of us look forward to this time of year for halibut season. Going a little further off the typical menu, and potentially offending more delicate sensibilities, I once made the case in an essay—called “Eating the Easter Bunny”—that rabbit is the apotheosis of a spring dish, “elemental and herbaceous, like early spring itself.”
Many wine people recommend a white like Austrian grüner veltliner for all of this fare. And, sure, that works just fine. But if we really think about spring food in its totality, there is a place for a certain kind of red that can pair with a time of year populated with pesto and lentils and pasta primavera. A red that makes you want to break the old “white wine with fish” rules for that halibut.
The spring red wine is—as with the rabbit—elemental and herbaceous. Something light bodied, but with some tannic structure. A red that’s fresh and juicy, perhaps with notes of berries, flowers, and fresh herbs, but also some earthiness and minerality. And not a lot of oak, if any. It’s a red that feels perfect on a sunny day, but also when it’s cool and windy. For me, spring reds—again, as with the rabbit—take you slightly off the beaten path. Perhaps something like grignolino from Piedmont, pale and light but with a backbone, or blaufränkisch from Burgenland without too much barrel aging, or a juicy, native Catalan variety like trepat… TO READ MORE
Among the spring reds I recommend are:
A bright, gulpable pinot noir from Alsace, 2022 Les Vins Pirouettes “Rouge Litron de Fabrice”
A light-bodied Catalan red, 2021 Celler 9+ Model Selecció 4T, made with the native sumoll grape, full of juicy fruit, earthiness, electric acidity, and cool minerality.
One of my absolute favorite reds, 2021 Christian Tschida Kapitel I, a blend of Zweigelt and Cabernet Franc from Austria’s Burgenland.
A half dozen more, including two more from Austria, two more from Catalonia, and two more from Italian native varieties. Click to read!
The Word ‘Minerality’ Is Divisive. Why Everyone Needs To Calm Down.
Why is the simple mention of minerality so divisive within the wine world? Why is it the source of so much eye rolling from a certain type of wine expert? Other than terroir, is there any term that carries with it as much baggage?
I recently published an essay on these questions in Wine Enthusiast—and I hope you will read the whole essay here.
Before we can answer that question, we must establish the kind of wine person who scoffs at the M word. Usually, this person also denies the existence of terroir. “Well, ackchyually,” says our Minerality Denier, “there is no clear scientific evidence connecting the soil directly with the flavors you taste. The vine is not literally picking up minerals from the soil and transferring them into the wine. You don’t ackchyually taste minerals in the wine.” Well, to borrow a phrase from my old Jersey neighborhood: No shit, Sherlock.
For most of us, talking about minerality has nothing to do with science. To wit, there are also not actual, literal “cherries” or “berries” or “white blossoms” or “leather” or “garrigue” or “crème brûlée” or “buttered popcorn”—or any of the dozens of terms on the tasting wheel—in actual, literal wine. Minerality is merely a general umbrella descriptor, much like “red fruit” or “black fruit” or “stone fruit” or “flabby” or “creamy” or “elegant.” Yet I never hear anyone complain about any of those less-than-precise terms—though we’d all do well to qualify them.
Wine is difficult to taste and describe. Presumably that is why wine professionals go through so many years of training, testing and certifications. Deductive tasting requires tasters to begin generally and move to the specific. Red fruit proceeds to cherry or raspberry. Black fruit forks between blackberry or black currant. “Spice” could be nutmeg, anise, black pepper or saffron. “Animal” might be leather or barnyard or cat pee. “Vegetal” might be grassy, green pepper or stemmy. Minerality is simply another category of descriptors—a picture map. A good taster always takes the description a step further.
Eating the Easter Bunny
Whether or not you celebrated Easter last Sunday—and whether or not you are an eater of meat at all—there’s something for everyone in my essay from The New Yorker, “Eating the Easter Bunny.” It was written a few years back, but its spring message still resonates:
Indeed, food activists often point out that rabbit farming has a number of advantages over other kinds of livestock. According to a frequently quoted figure from Slow Food USA, the quantity of food and water required to produce a single pound of cow meat can produce six pounds of rabbit meat. Rabbit is higher in protein and lower in cholesterol than beef or pork. A 2013 article in Modern Farmer, sensing a mainstream breakthrough, asked, “Are Rabbits the New Super Meat?” In this country, however, serving bunny on a plate tends to conjure up cartoon images of Peter Rabbit or cute little Thumper. An even bigger challenge is the pet factor. I can empathize somewhat with this problem—my family kept two bunnies, Ernie and Bert, very briefly when I was a child; we mistakenly believed they were both males, until, one day, Bert gave birth to a half-dozen babies—but it’s not going to stop me from serving rabbit for Easter.
Here in Italy there is rabbit baby food (with a cute bunny on the label) & you can find whole coniglio in almost every butcher case. I rarely cook it because I find it fiddly with lots of little bones, but I do eat it.
& thank you for giving me much to think about around the minerality word
“Eating the Easter bunny” Gosh! 🐰😆 How fun to read and learn. Just halfway through this newsletter and I’m inspired to pair some of these wines and flavours (if I can find them in the UK) with my bunny feasts of the season. I particularly have a dish of butter bean purée with roasted carrots doused in a spiced tahini paste, finished with baked bunny carrot tops. And it’s pouring here on the Sussex coast and across the UK I believe. Nice one Jason.