Dinner date: July 26, 2008
Menu: Brats with Sauerkraut, Grilled Onions, Mustard, and a Very Chewy Bread Roll
Wine: Domaines Schlumberger Riesling Alsace Grand Cru 2000
I recently read somewhere that wine is making a headway into the NASCAR audience. Why not? They now match beer to the food at The French Laundry, so why can’t we haute* wine lovers return the favor and offer the [admittedly stereotyped] NASCAR beer drinker wine?
Before I get too far into this discussion I should explain that NASCAR is not something I watch or attend. I’m aware of it, I see it on TV as I surf the channels every weekend, but it just doesn’t fit my persona. The highlights of it (and all car racing events) on the weekend 11 P.M. sports seems to be about two things: the crashes and the last 3 seconds of the race as the winner passes across the finish line. If you’re on board with that, great. This is not a post for me to bash your liking this sport because I have nothing to bash. It’s just not something I’m drawn to.
I have friends who are into auto racing and I understand how beer, in most instances, is the beverage of choice to these friends. During my brief television encounters with NASCAR, I also understand from all the beer advertising, and lack of wine advertising, that beer is the dominate beverage of choice with that audience.
If you work in a garage and smell that oil and rubber all day long I know that by the end of the day there’s nothing like downing a couple of beers, letting out a big belch, and patting the stomach while proclaiming, “Damn, that felt good!” Okay, that was another stereotype. Beer and NASCAR are emblematic to each other, ‘it’ just doesn’t feel right having one without the other. And besides, holding a glass of wine in the garage while shootin’ the bull doesn’t feel right either.
My girlfriend’s maternal cousin’s husband is big into NASCAR and just about anything with cars. And when we come over for a visit he offers us his favorite beverage—Coors Lite. It’s his persona.
The closest I got to getting into ‘it’ was changing the engine in my 1973 Dodge Dart from an inline 6 to a V8. This task was a disaster from conception to the inevitable resale. Renting the engine hoist to pull the engine out, purchasing a used engine from a junkyard, and then having to rent the hoist for numerous weekends as we had to make minor adjustments. A nightmare in frustration only to finally give up and have a professional finish it for me. I can still smell the oily rags, the metal wrenches and how I could smell that metal hours later simply by sniffing my well-washed fingers. I can still see my nicked and bloody knuckles caused by those wrenches and unrelenting bolts, the front of the car sinking about 8 inches as it absorbed the weight of the engine being put in, and the major oil stain left on my parent’s driveway.
Mostly I remember how the excitement of anticipation gave way to a relief of transaction as I finally gave up and sold my frustration to someone else at a significant discount.
Every time I drink a certain style of Riesling, it takes me back to those days and the frustration seems to melt away.
So that establishes my qualification to suggest that Riesling be The Official Wine of NASCAR.
What the Farmers Are Selling in the Market
I walked through the Market last Sunday, advertised as Summer Sundays, which is a sort of free-for-all for farmers who can bring their harvest into the Market as it doesn’t matter if they’re organic or not… just bring it in. I found the following items available for sale this week:
· Apricots
· Blueberries
· Onions
· Peaches
· Potatoes
· Squash blossoms
· Zucchini
Previously observed in quantities but now diminishing in offerings are pluots and cherries. I picked up a Walla Walla onion for tonight’s dinner. It’s a large (1 pound), round, sweet onion that caramelizes very well due to its sugar content. You might have seen other sweet onion varieties known as Maui from Hawaii, Vidalia from Georgia, or Texas from Texas.
Tonight’s Dinner
I spent the first 31 years of my life living outside Chicago. This is brat country. Anywhere within a couple hundred miles of Chicago is brat country, especially northward, and this includes Milwaukee. Milwaukee was settled by German immigrants who brought with them the cuisine and ingredients that they were accustomed to. This means a countless variety of sausages, sauerkraut, and onions.
First on the list is the brat, which is a big barbecue favorite back home. I use the word barbecue here as an event, A Saturday barbecue, not a method of cooking which is completely different from the high-heat grilling done in backyards. To my knowledge there are no manufacturers who make one bratwurst significantly better than its competition. Go with what’s available, but you’ll usually have two choices of brat—fresh or precooked. Fresh takes about three times longer to cook than reheating the precooked variety.
A brat is a pork and veal sausage that is seasoned with sweet spices such as allspice, ginger, and nutmeg. This is a Riesling-friendly food item.
Sauerkraut is significant to the brat sandwich because it complements the whole. Without sauerkraut a taste gap appears in the sides of your tongue, and a texture gap appears on the center of your tongue, like something is missing from both. Sauerkraut brings the fatty brat and tart kraut together to the taste buds. Rinse the sauerkraut in a strainer under running water to remove its brininess.
Sautéed onions; just about the easiest thing to prepare for a barbecue. Cut each end of the onion off, peel the skin away, and cut the onion in half from cut end to cut end. Position the onion on the cutting board with one of the cut ends facing you. Cut each half at an angle with your knife cutting at the line provided naturally by nature. You can sauté these in the kitchen or on the grill itself. If you choose the grill, you don’t need a side burner, just put the skillet on the grill. This will take a bit more time to cook as the grill will be farther away from the heat source than a side burner or kitchen stove. Just place the onions in a skillet over medium heat with about 1/4 cup of water. Heat until the water evaporates; stirring occasionally, and add a small amount of oil to the skillet. As the onions cook and get soft the skillet will develop a caramel coating from the sweet juice extracted from the onions. Move the onions to the side and add 1/4 cup of water to deglaze the skillet. When the water is reduced by half mix it in with the onions. Repeat until the onions are brown, they will still have a tender quality to them, they shouldn’t be limp and soggy.
I usually sauté onions the day before to free up time the day of the barbecue. Mix in a lot of fat, wrap it in foil and place it in the fridge. The next day just toss it onto the grill before adding the brats. The fat keeps it moist during the reheat.
Mustard is a personal preference between American-style yellow and French Dijon-style mustard, which can be either smooth or whole grain. Do not substitute powdered mustard mixed with water. This is an extremely hot mixture best suited as a dipping sauce for Asian-style pork sprinkled with sesame seeds. My personal Dijon mustard preference is Maille.
With brats and sausages you need a very chewy bread roll, I got a long French bread from Three Sisters Bakery located in the Market. A hot dog bun or soft roll won’t stand up to the bite you need to chew off a piece of brat or sausage.
Green salad. A green salad is one of the easiest things to make. Just ensure the ingredients are fresh and the textures between the greens and the dressing are balanced. Matching a salad dressing to greens is no different than matching a sauce to a main dish because a salad dressing is nothing but a sauce for salad greens. Match the weight of the dressing with the weight of the greens. Tonight I’m using a mixed greens salad (Mâche) with a vinaigrette made from 3 parts extra virgin olive oil, 1 part champagne vinegar, salt, pepper, and will flavor it with some dried herbs. Don’t use distilled vinegar as that has no household purpose except to kill weeds in the yard. Use it carefully because it also kills grass and flowers.
It should go with out saying that a green salad needs to taste good and whet the appetite with balanced acidity no matter how rich or thick the dressing is.
Brats, sausages, hot dogs, chicken parts, and hamburgers all use a direct heat method of grilling. The means that the food is directly over the heat source. If not using a gas or electric grill, you should spread the charcoal one layer deep in the charcoal grill. (This determines how much charcoal to use). Heap the charcoal in center of the grill. Ignite the charcoal or use an electric starter. Never use a flammable liquid to ignite the charcoal because the chemical is absorbed into the food as added flavor, and it’s not appealing at all. When coals have a light coating of gray ash (about 20 to 30 minutes) move them to one side so you have one hot side, one warm. This allows some control over the temperature. Put the wire rack in place to begin cooking.
When you cook a brat or sausage, don’t pierce it with a fork to turn it over. Use tongs because you want to keep the juices inside as it cooks, this keeps the meat moist. When you think it’s done, use a toothpick or the thin tine of a fork to pierce the meat as the doneness test is the same as a chicken thigh, the juices run clear. Along the same line, keep a spray bottle filled with water at your side to extinguish any flare-ups on the coals. Flare-ups are caused by the fat dripping from a crack in the casing. Besides burning what you’re cooking, flare-ups increase the size of the crack causing more fat to be released from the brat (or any protein). The end result is a burnt, overly dry brat.
Special Equipment Needed
My preference for igniting the charcoal is a chimney- or smokestack-charcoal starter, which is an aluminum cylinder with a wire basket near the bottom. They sell for about $12 at your local all-purpose, one-stop-shopping arena. After determining the amount of charcoal you need, fill the chimney starter with the charcoal, and place crumbled newspaper underneath the wire basket. Ignite the paper and in about 20 minutes the charcoal is ready to use.
The Wine
Tonight’s wine is a Riesling, a great summer wine and great wine for a barbecue. Jancis Robinson calls Riesling the “most underappreciated and the finest white grape in the world”. And Oz Clarke responds with “Yet the world doesn’t get the message.” And Willie Gluckstern says that “Riesling is the world’s most important wine grape, and it creates the absolute best wines for food.” I lean towards all of these sentiments.
Riesling, pronounced rees-ling as there is no ‘z’ in the pronunciation, is one of the few wine bargains left in the world. Perhaps it’s because too many sweet Riesling wines were accidentally purchased when a drier wine style was preferred, or maybe it’s because of those very long vineyard names on the bottle turn your head away towards a more recognizable wine name, like Chardonnay. Either way people just aren’t buying it so its price remains a bargain compared to any other wine, regardless of currency fluctuations.
My regional preference for Riesling is for Alsace, pronounced like Al’s ass, but the ‘a’ in ass is more of an ‘ah’, Al’s ahss. The Riesling wine style of this region is almost always bone dry, full bodied, crisp (meaning a higher acidity than most wines) and fruity; a great food wine. It goes well with shellfish, chicken, duck, ham, all types of charcuterie, curries, rich cheeses, and the spicy cuisines of Mexico and Thailand.
An added feature of Alsatian Riesling is that the word Riesling is on the bottle. You don’t have to wonder what’s in the bottle like you do with other regions in France where the wine is named after the place it comes from. This is something you don’t see in quality wines made elsewhere in France. The wines that bear the grape name outside of Alsace are mostly low-end end wines created by multi-national conglomerates who are marketing the wine to sell at high volume at a low price to the consumer.
German Riesling wine styles are a bit more difficult to identify, and are worthy of a mention here. There are many things to discuss about German Riesling, such as the which color bottle to buy, a green one that offers wonderful wines from Mosel and its tributaries the Saar and Ruwer, or a brown one from the Rhine river regions of Rheingau, Rheinhessen, and Pfalz. You may note some sarcasm here, but knowing which color bottle to buy is a serious task. The green Mosel/Saar/Ruwar bottle might offer the following based on the region from which it comes.
- Mosel; citrus and minerals
- Saar; steely acidic with long ageability
- Ruwar; delicate, subtle, and smooth
while with the brown Rhine bottle you can get these features from the following regions:
- Rheinhessen; wildflowers and smokey peach
- Rheingau; dry and ageable
- Rheinpfalz (pfalz); warmer climate; hence you’ll get tropical notes
On top of having to remember all this there are five levels of ripeness (sweetness) and in order from light-bodied (dry) to syrupy (sweet) they are:
- Kabinett
- Spätlese
- Auslese
- Beerenauslese
- Trockenbeerenauslese
These words are on the bottles of German Rieslings and tell you the style of wine in the bottle. I don’t speak or read German so when I first tried to remember the sequence I thought that the longer the word, the sweeter and heavier the wine. However, Auslese at the middle level is shorter than the top two Kabinett and Spätlese. So that didn’t work, but then I remembered the jingle. The Kraft Foods jingle. K-R-A-F-T. Every time I’m in the German Riesling section I sing that little jingle to myself only I use the first letter of each level, K-S-A-B-T. Fortunately, the K, A, and T are in the same position for the jingle and this list. And S is closer to R and B is closer to F so those fit nicely into place and this technique works like a charm for remembering dry versus sweet German Rieslings. Other words to note are trocken (dry) and halbtrocken (half-dry). These are also wines to seek out if you want a Riesling on the dry side.
No wonder people who purchased a German Riesling have pretty much had their expectations blown out of the wine glass. How can you know all this stuff if you’re not passionate about it?
Like any wine, the fruit flavors come from the soil and Riesling has four main flavor profiles: pome fruit, citrus fruit, stone fruit, and tropical fruit. The profile is almost always associated to the climate and number of hours of sun the grape is grown in. Riesling from Germany and Austria have pome and citrus fruit aromas apple, pear, lemon, lime, and grapefruit. From Alsace it has pome, citrus, and stone fruit aromas apple, pear, lemon, lime, grapefruit, peach, and apricot. In cooler areas of New Zealand, Australia and South Africa it focuses on kiwi fruit and stone fruits. In the warmer areas of California and Washington you’ll find tropical fruits pineapple, mango, and banana, but know that there’s nothing written on the label to indicate its sweetness level.
No matter where it’s grown Riesling has a minerality base to it. You will hardly ever find a Riesling with oaky influences because the fruit is too delicate, which makes it an excellent alternative to people who don’t like those big, oaky Chardonnay wines. A great benefit to this wine is that Rieslings are so much more food friendly than Chardonnay. And they are very ageable. Even without the oak, Riesling wines are capable of being some of the longest lived wines in the world and on par with Bordeaux and Burgundy in their best years. I think the main issue with people not laying down a Riesling in the cellar is the bottle is about three to four inches longer than a Bordeaux-style bottle, which is the bottle size used as a reference in most cellar racking kits and construction.
As a Riesling wine ages the color turns toward gold, and with Alsatian Rieslings the aroma exhibits petrol, kerosene, gasoline, black gold, Texas tea, whatever you want to call it.
For this reason I think Alsatian Riesling is the perfect NASCAR wine because an aged Riesling from this area has those telltale aromas of petrol, rubber tires, and newly fallen rain on cement (referred to as petrichor by wordsmith.org The pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell).
For those of you not willing to smell petrol out of your wine glass, cast that aside and focus on the flowery aromas. Rieslings are filled with those aromas and with the high acidity level it makes a combination that out performs any other white grape in terms of being food friendly.
Tonight’s wine is a Domaines Schlumberger Saering Grand Cru 2000. There are about fifty Grand Cru 
vineyards in Alsace in the classification established in 1983. These Grand Cru vineyards typically have the best location and soil, but it doesn’t logically follow that they automatically make the best wine from the region list. The grapes allowed to grow in these vineyards are Gewürztraminer, Muscat, Pinot Gris, and Riesling. To identify a Grand Cru wine from Alsace, look for “Appellation Alsace Grand Cru Contrôlée” on the front or back label.
Note: A high-quality Appellation Alsace Grand Cru Contrôlée wine can be purchased at about half the price of a so-so Californian Chardonnay, even with today’s Euro/Dollar imbalance. The quality-to-price ratio (QPR) is very high with Riesling wines.
If you like the smell of oil and rubber tires, give an Alsatian Riesling a try. A bottle can cost about the same as a 12-pack of ordinary beer whose primary ingredient comes from rice. It might feel out of place in a garage, so when you get home open up a five-year-old bottle and take a good whiff. It’s a nice way to end the day.
MEP
The bullet-point Mis en Place (pronounced MEEz ahn plahs) for this dinner is as follows.
Set up the equipment for the barbecue:
· tongs
· charcoal (or check the gas in the propane tank)
· skillet for onions
· spray bottle filled with water.
Set up the equipment on the counter:
· cutting board
· knife for onions
· serrated knife for rolls if they’re not sliced already
· strainer for rinsing sauerkraut
· small knife for mustard
Prepare for service
· plates ready for guests
· salad plates placed in refrigerator
· wine glasses cleaned and set at table
· eating utensils, napkins etc., at the table
Recipe
The following steps are listed in the order taken to prepare the meal as described above, not in the typical order of protein first or first course served is the first course listed.
Preparing salad greens
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using the usual awe and shock method. Prepare a basic vinaigrette, season and add flavorings.
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Preparing the onions
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Slice onions…
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and sauté to preferred doneness. |
Preparing the barbecue
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Ignite the coals…
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or turn on the propane. Let the barbecue come up to temperature before adding the onions (if reheating) or the brats.
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Cooking the brats
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Place the brats on the grill…
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and turn them over every few minutes. Watch for flare-ups. Cooking takes about 20 to 3o minutes for fresh brats, about 10 for precooked.
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Service
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Yell, “Come and Get it!”
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Everyone should know what to do. |
Analysis and Notes
We opened the wine at 6 P. M. and immediately poured it into our glasses.
It had a light gold color. The bottle lasted about an hour. While the tasting notes were few, they were bold with an in-your-face style. This wine was so intense that the next day I picked up a few more bottles of the 2005 that we’ll open in 10 years or so, and I’m going to continue to buy a few bottles of each vintage each year for that same purpose. What follows is a timeline of what and when each new component was detected.
6:00 rose petals B
6:10 lemon zest T B
6:20 cloves T At this point the spices in the brat came to an ideal symbiosis with the wine
6:30 oily rags T B
6:45 rubber tires B
6:50 petrichor B
7:00 kerosene B
T Taste
B Bouquet
All-in-all I’d say this was a really nice dinner.
Until next Saturday… boja, boja.
Photos by me and I’m (obviously) not a photographer.
Here are a few items of note about the ingredients. Unless otherwise specified:
· Salt is always Kosher
· Olive oil is always extra-virgin
· Eggs are always large
· Butter is always unsalted
· Pepper is always freshly ground
References
Andrea Immer, Everyday Dining with Wine, New York, Broadway Books, 2004
Andrea Immer, Great Tastes Made Simple, New York, Broadway Books, 2002
Andrea Immer, Great Wines Made Simple, New York, Broadway Books, 2000
Evan Goldstein, Perfect Pairings, Berkley, University of California Press, 2006
Jancis Robinson, How to Taste a Guide to Enjoying Wine, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2000
Jancis Robinson, Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course, New York, Abbeville Press Publishers, 1995
Mark Oldman, Oldman’s Guide to Outsmarting Wine, New York, Penguin Books, 2004
Oz Clark, Oz Clark’s Encyclopedia of Grapes, New York, Harcourt Inc., 2001
The Society of Wine Educators, Certified Specialist of Wine Study Guide, The Society of Wine Educators, 2nd Ed., 2003
Willie Gluckstern, The Wine Avenger, New York, Fireside, 1999
* FYI, haute rhymes with oat.
Web Sites
Andrea Robinson (formerly Immer)
Wine
