Cellar & Stove - French rack of lamb / 2Fly 2009 shiraz (Australia)

Today's post is another where I (help) make dinner and then serve a paired wine with it. Having abandoned the name "Dinner and a Movie," seeing as the past few of these so-called "Dinner and a Movie" segments have not actually included a movie, the segment is now called "Cellar & Stove." Also, I dare not tarnish the memory of that mid-nineties television gem Dinner and a Movie, starring chef Claude Mann and comedic duo Paul Gilmartin and Annabelle Gurwitch. Ah, TBS. 

Recently I was visiting my folks in Connecticut, and so naturally we had to make a fancy dinner. Tonight's dish, created with the expertise of Jayne Collins, my aunt (and mobile web dev extraordinaire!) is herb-crusted Frenched racks of lamb, served with roasted garlic mashed red potatoes and cauliflower roasted in a lemon mustard sauce. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? So we'll need an equally-amazing wine.

Since we're working with lots of tangy flavors here - mustard, garlic, and lemon - I'm looking for a wine that's ripe and full-bodied, to stand up to those citrus / mustard flavors, but also isn't exceptionally sharp or tannic, to not interfere with the appreciation of said flavors. And since I know that Australian syrah (or shiraz) is a medium- to full-bodied red, with some tangy capabilities, I chose a 2009 bottle of shiraz from 2Fly Vineyards from the cellar.

So now that we have our wine, it's time to make food. The first step was to brown the lamb racks. While that's happening, Jayne made an herb paste of parsley, garlic, rosemary, and thyme. 

Next step, once those are browned, is to anoint the lamb in the herb mixture.

And then we roasted the racks for 25 minutes total. While the lamb was roasting - the wine was breathing. Tonight's wine, as mentioned, is a 2009 Australian shiraz from 2Fly Vineyards, which was one of my first reviews ever! Let's dive in. 

It pours rather nicely, with no real aroma to speak of. It's garnet-colored in the glass with a nice color when candled. 

I like the flavors of dark fruit with no alcohol tastes present. The flavors were muted, especially on the finish where it was almost hard to get any flavor. According to my review from December 2012, the wine was "deep and plummy but not overly tart or dry." Well, not much has changed in terms of the latter two; today's wine isn't tart or dry at all. It has a pleasant texture. But back in '12, the flavors were "deep and plummy...peppery and ripe." I think certainly this wine has shown its age in that regard. I wouldn't call today's wine "deep" but it does retain some of those plum / dark fruit tastes.

What's great about drinking this wine now is that I can see how it's aged for over the past few years. Most wines I buy, I can only get one bottle - and so I think this may be the first time I have reviewed an identical vintage twice, with comparisons over the years. And in that vein, I think I wouldn't have waited so long to have it. I kinda miss that up-front fruitiness that the 2012 tasting held, and although the 2015 tasting was good, it didn't have that same peppery ripeness that I was hoping for. Still - it was a delicious pairing and I would love to investigate Aussie red wines in the future.

Montecristo - "Espada" aged toro grande

Yesterday, I caught up with friends Jon, Jill and Nathaniel at Shelley's Back Room tavern on F Street. Beforehand, Nathaniel and I stopped off at W. Curtis Draper Tobacconist right nearby to peruse the selection (which is rather extensive.) I saw a few I liked, looking to savor a nice large-format smoke over some single-malt at Shelley's. This cigar jumped out at me big-time! It's a special Montecristo I have never seen before, and the price was right ($15.50.)

Called the "Espada," my research has shown it's a collaboration cigar between Montecristo and famous tobacconist Nestor Plascencia. The cigar itself is all Nicaraguan, with aged longfillers from Jalapa, Condega, and Ometepe wrapped up in an aged 2010 Habano wrapper. It's billed as a medium-bodied smoke, but I'm wagering it's going to be stronger based on those blends.

Lit up nicely, and burned evenly throughout the smoke without having to relight it once. The flavors were actually milder than I expected, with the chief taste a woodsy sweetness with a hint of grass. The cigar smoked evenly with a dark grey ash, as mentioned, and turned sharp and acrid with a little less than 3 inches left. I'd buy this smoke again - it's a little expensive retail, but it was delicious and paired perfectly with my whiskey of choice, Balvenie 14-year Carribean Cask, as pictured above. 

Deschutes Brewing Co. - "Fresh Squeezed" India pale ale

I saw this recently on draft at D'Vines, and at the urging of my brother, I grabbed a 64oz fill-up. It's a 6.40 % ABV fresh hop IPA from Deschutes, perfect for this spate of warmer weather we've been having in our nation's capital.

The beer pours amber colored, with a very puffy white foam than clings to the glass. It's bright and clear when candled. There's also lots of bubbles in there.

It had a nice sharp citrus hops aroma, which I liked a lot. Initially, the taste is as I expected - hoppy with some citrus tastes, a little spice, and some fruitiness. But, the twist here is that the finish is very, very malty. It didn't have that hoppy burst I was expecting at the end, but instead sort of died away quietly with flavors of malt and spice.

Not bad. I'm glad I had it fresh on draft, and I like the flavors, which end up coming from - in large part - the amount of Mosaic and Citra hops they stuff into it. If we're talking fresh-hop citrus IPAs, I think Lonerider's "Hops You Rode In On" is more my speed, but I still found the "Fresh Squeezed" to be delicious.

Beer Flash: Founder's Breakfast Stout

Just a quick post about Founder's Breakfast Stout, which I got on draft at D'Vines. It's an 8.3% ABV double chocolate coffee oatmeal stout that is incidentally one of the only beers rated a pure 100/100 on BeerAdvocate. This means that both the user community and BeerAdvocate founders Jason and Todd Alstrom have rated it a perfect score.

I had it at Shirlington in the fall, and saw it on the draft menu at D'Vines. I ended up getting the last of the keg!

It pours slowly, and ends up being nice and deep with strong alcohol flavors up front. Not too chocolaty or sweet but is very smooth, uncommonly so. I'm most impressed at the careful balancing of flavors here - it makes for a remarkably drinkable stout that would be great for the novice beer drinker. Very delicious!

Boston Brewing Co. - Sam Adams "Tetravis" quadruppel

I first came across this a few years ago when I was at Costco - they were selling a mixed 3-pack of these for $25. They're part of the Sam Adams' "Barrel Room Collection," a line of barrel-aged beers made in the Belgian monastic tradition of blending and aging. Never before having had them, I bought the 3-pack. Today's is called "Tetravis" and is a 10.2% ABV Belgian quad, In case you missed my explanation of what a "quad" (or, more accurately, quadruppel) is, look no further than this post from 2013.

According to their website, the brewery developed a special strain of yeast called "Kosmic Mother Funk," which is used in all of the Barrel Room Collection beers. The beers are then aged in Eastern European oak barrels that once was used to age Italian brandy.

Photo taken from the Barrel Room Collection website

Aging beer in barrels is nothing new, and in fact, most aged alcohol uses barrels. Whiskey, wine, beer, brandy, cordials and cognacs all use barrels of various woods for the aging process. And there's also a big market, especially for brewers, to buy second-hand barrels that have already had alcohol aged in them. The spirits formerly aging in them have imbued the barrels with certain properties which the brewers clearly want to exploit. So, in our case, the Barrel Room Collection brewers wanted to take advantage of the properties of that specific oak as well as the brandy.

So on to today's beer. I really like the shape of the bottle, which is topped with a muselet-and-champagne-cork top. Drinking this makes me feel like I ought to be in a castle somewhere. But be careful with the cork; it's under pressure and could injure you if you point it at your eyeballs or other mechanics of nature, so to speak.

The beer pours a nut-brown eye, with some white foam bubbling up and a light nose of yeast. Here's a GIF of the action:

I decided to let this one sit for a few minutes to open up. It's got a nice deep brown color, and candles to a really neat electric caramel color. It's fizzier than I expected.

Ater the first couple sips, and a few minutes warming up, it has powerful up-front yeast and wood flavors with sugary spice tastes. It develops into an interesting dark-roast malt flavor that wraps up with a nice finish of raisin and clove. The beer is sweet, thick and heady with a pleasant aftertaste.

It was cool to try something off-the-beaten-path, especially from a macrobrew like Sam Adams. They're so widely-distributed with dozens of varieties that it was cool to come across something a little more craft-y.

Stone Brewing Co. - "Old Guardian 2015 Off-Year Release" barleywine

It's that time of year, folks - Stone has released the latest iteration of their Old Guardian barleywine series. For those of you unfamiliar - barleywine is a kind of ale made with barley originally brewed in England a few hundred years ago. Despite the name, it's a strong ale, usually made with the strength of a wine (roughly 8 - 14 % ABV) Today's is 11% ABV.

I happen to love barleywine, and review it quite often on this blog: here, and here, also here,  aaand here. So when I saw this in the store, naturally I had to grab a couple - 5 to be exact. Stone releases two Old Guardians a year - the Classic Release, then an off-year release. They only had one Classic Release on sale, which I bought, but many Extra Hoppy odd-year releases, 4 of which I bought. These will cellar well and so I'll have samples for years to come, and will likely peak in a few years, around which time their ABV is roughly 16 - 17%. I have Old Guardian bottles in my cellar dating back to 2010.

Since we had a snowy day today (which saw me trudging, nonetheless, through a beautiful-yet-frigid US Capitol campus), I figured once I slogged home and finished shoveling, it was time for something strong. Enter the Old Guardian 2015 Extra Hoppy barleywine. Kept extra cold by submersion in the snow for a while.

Pours swiftly, with a nice reddish-brown color and a puffy tan head that clings to the sides to the glass.

Wow - what a strong and pungent aroma: clean, aged hops notes with and undercurrent of something I can't quite place. Interesting.

The taste is equally perplexing. It's got the usual malty caramel tastes of a barleywine, but is accompanied by the hoppy dryness of a strong IPA. It's an interesting mix, definitely off the beaten path, a serious blend of IPA-like bitterness and barleywine strength. I like it, and is a diversion from the typical OG barleywine offering. It drinks less like a barleywine and more like a very strong double IPA, which is kind of interesting. I did end up liking it, and I think it is a little more sessionable than its predecessors - something which I favor. I'm interested to see how this beer will turn out in 2016 and beyond - all the way to 2019.

Wine Flash: 2007 Tenuta Sant'Antonio cabernet sauvignon (Italy)

Tonight's wine is another relic from the cellar - it's a 2007 cabernet sauvignon from Italy's Tenuta Sant'Antonio vineyards, located in the Valipolicella winemaking region east of Lake Garda. We served it with homemade barbecue spare ribs (in the slow cooker) and some glazed carrots.

It had a faint aroma of alcohol with no other discernible flavors. It's a dark red in the glass. At first blush, there's a soft alcohol taste with some cassin tastes.  That flavors sort of drops off after a second or two, with a finish of dark fruit skin with an aftertaste of fruit juice (I mean, it was fruit juice one upon a time!) Definitely a nice wine. A little mellow for my tastes, definitely a product of spending 8 years in the cellar, but delicious nonetheless.