Another great wine from Italy's northern mountains

I'm partial to mountain wines.  There, I said it.  Tonight we pulled a wine produced from Fumin from the Valle d'Aoste.  It was again delightful, working very well with a pasta with cherry tomatoes, a fresh market Aleppo pepper, tons of garlic and plenty of olive oil.  This was again a fresh, acidic wine with ample minerality and great fruit. No one felt the need to put this in copious amounts of wood barrels, so it spoke about the grape and soils and the climate.  A wine with a lot of floral notes of lavender and violet, red and blue fruit, black pepper, a bit of allspice and other warm spices on the nose, and a similar palate.  There are hints of smoke, too - but none of the spice or smoke came from barrel.  There is so much great complexity gong on here - yet it doesn't demand you pay it immense attention - it's very quaffable to boot. This would do poorly in the average wine tasting - because it is subtle - but the complexity should not be overlooked.  Oh, and did I mention it's made by a cooperative - the Onze Communes?  So, it's also a relative value - ~$20.  What a fun wine.

Taste of summer, oh my...

 In recent days, I picked up a fresh duck at our Farmers Market - not frozen, just recently "taken for ice cream", as our wonderful poultry farmer calls it.  Now, a whole duck has so many options... but as it's been in the 90s here in Michigan, a roasted duck does not seem brilliant (and getting the legs done while keeping the breast tender - just not easy to do). So, what to do?  Break it down of course.  Fun with a sharp knife and a lovely duck.  So, I took off the breasts, cut off the legs, and kept the carcass and wings for stock.  Seared up the breasts, finished in the oven to a nice medium rare.  Saved the nearly cup of duck fat kicked off - because to do otherwise is simply a crime against humanity.  Roasted potatoes sometime soon? Seasonings, you ask?  Only salt and pepper, because this is GOOD, free range, fresh duck.  But, it's summer in Michigan - and our yard has a plethora of "volunteer" black raspberries planted by the birds.  They are at peak ripeness right now - so in some came, with a minced Serrano pepper and some minced green onion in a Vacqueyras wine reduction as a sauce with breasts.  Vegetables were simple - sautéed yellow oyster mushrooms with mixed green and yellow beans and a bit of onion - all with a basic mixed nut "pesto" made in the blender.  All of this paired nicely with an aged 2010 Chave St. Joseph Offerus - their negotiant juice that is affordable to us mere mortals.  Other than the wine and nuts and olive oil in the pesto - not one ingredient came from over an hour from home, and I have the privilege of knowing every farmer who produced these ingredients.  I am thankful for their hard work each and every day, and for the relationships built over years of marketing. They work far harder than they get credit for, and do not get the income they deserve.

Next up...  braising those duck legs.  I think a red currant sauce along with braising liquid will accompany.  Perhaps fava beans, some other local 'shrooms, in a red Camargue rice pilaf with it.  Stay tuned.

Another exceptional Italian

 Today took us to a red from the very northern reaches of Italy - the Alto Adige.  This is the 2017 Putzenhof Bozner Leiten - made from mostly schiava, with about 15% of pinot Nero and lagrein mixed in.  It's about $17-18, and it is better than most wines 3X the price.  I have a bias toward mountain wines - a remarkable mix of intense mineral and sometimes fairly ripe fruit mixed with bracing acidity.  This has all that - on steroids.   It uniquely traverses the happy, cheerful side with a really serious depth and complexity. Nose a great mix of strawberry, sour cherry, hints of cranberry and raspberry.  Quite mineral heavy, and tons of floral notes - rose, lavender, violets.  Palate has ample acidity lifting the fruit, which is underpinned by solid minerality. Finish very long indeed.  This is the kind of wine I really enjoy drinking. Plenty complex, plenty serious, yet it's not heavy and plodding.  It is exceptional at the table with steak (our dinner), but would be good with most beef or pork or duck or even chicken.  The acidity refreshes after the fat and proteins of the steak, the fruit complementing the deep umami of the steak and mushrooms and favas, playing off the slightly bittersweet asparagus.  

Pink can be serious

 Pink, or rose, wines can get a bad rap as a poolside quaffers worth very little attention or effort.  yet the best manage to cross those boundaries very well - still fun, but serious and worthy of contemplation.  Tonight's wine was one such example.  Castellaro's 2018 Rosa Caolina is dominated by the Corinto Nero grape, grown on volcanic soils on the tiny island of Lipari, which is between Sicily and the Italian mainland.  The wine has a slightly frizzante style - akin to Txakoli wines. It has a fascinating nose of wild berries and brambles, green apple, seawater and hot rocks, and a certain warm spice note of cinnamon or nutmeg.  The palate is similar, with intense acidity keeping it very fresh, even though it's nearly 3 (old by many people's standards for rose).  Good at the table, good as an aperitif, and it really straddles the fun and serious divide exceptionally well.