White Sangria is Delicious and Should Be Consumed By All

It’s 90-plus degrees here in the flyover, and my air conditioner broke. As I tried in vain to sleep in the warm pea-soup that passes for air here, I cursed both the heat and the humidity (By the way, whoever came up with “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” should be punched in the throat.) my thoughts turned naturally to White Sangria.

Normally, I’m not a huge fan of sangria. The red stuff tends to be too heavy, too syrupy and too cloying to actually be enjoyable when a chilled wine punch makes sense. White Sangria makes sense to me- it’s lighter, crisper and dangerously refreshing.

Delicious, Delicious White Sangria

2 Bottles White Wine

The juice of 2  Ruby Red Grapefruit (16 oz.)

2 Peaches, pitted and sliced

6 oz Clément Créole Shrubb Liqueur

5 oz Lemon Juice

8 dashes Regan’s No. 6 Orange Bitters

Preparation: Mix all liquids, toss in the peaches and refrigerate for 24-48 hours, or until the mix takes on a subtle peach flavor.

Serve: In an old fashioned glass filled with ice. Garnish with two peach slices.

This recipe is relatively light in alcohol by design. This way, you can sit outside and drink a lot and not be too far in your cups. Also, I know that Clément Shrubb isn’t something everyone has laying around the house.  It’s worth seeking it out and shelling out the thirty bucks, especially if you plan on making this recipe a a few times- it’s got a light, clean orange flavor that doesn’t weigh the drink down. Otherwise, substitute Triple Sec.

Pi-NO-t Grigio

I was going through some old email, and ran across this article that a friend forwarded to me back in December.

As I said at the time, sometimes chemical analysis is the only way one can distinguish Pinot Grigio from water.

Flyover Coast

I read this article and, as often happens when I read articles concerning wine regulation , I cringed and chuckled simultaneously.

American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) were established by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) in the early eighties as the (significantly more rudimentary) American equivalent of the Appellation Contrôlée system in France.

There are several reasons why the government would want to regulate claims on the geographic origin of a bottle of wine. But, at least theoretically, they all come down to the fact that there’s something about a specific region (climate, soil composition, magic)  that makes a wine special.

The Upper Mississippi Valley AVA? It’s 18,560,000 acres. It covers four states.  There’s no way that “Upper Mississippi Valley” is going to have any useful or substantive meaning for the wine consumer, except that’s juice from the flyover.

It’s no secret that AVAs have been created for purely commercial reasons.  The Sonoma Coast appellation was basically a gift to Sonoma-Cutrer and Gallo from the BATF. In the words of Jancis Robinson:

This AVA stand out as a purely artificial construction. Its sponsors (including Sonoma-Cutrer) drew boundaries to include widely scattered vineyards so they could continue to describe their wines as Estate Bottled after tightened federal regulations began requiring that both winery and vineyard to be within the same AVA to qualify”

-Jancis Robinson The Oxford Companion to Wine

It’s also no secret that the wine business is a business. There’s money to be made, and I understand that. But I feel like that AVA system, though not as rigorous as its European counterparts, is important and useful. And gigantic AVAs that cover four states weaken the overall usefulness of the system, to the point of being gigantic jokes. That’s why I laughed.

I shuddered because I knew that it would probably be approved.

Whine Service

The story of how I drank my first classified Bordeaux is a pretty good one.

After work one night, my Chef at the time and I decided to go out for a bite to eat and a drink or two. We headed to my favorite post-work spot- a steakhouse that looks like a set piece from “The Streets of San Francisco”.  Seriously. The place looks like it hasn’t changed decor since 1968- mainly because it hasn’t. There’s something about tiny booths and wonderfully tacky light fixures that just melts the worries of the day away.

It had been a long shift, so out of a mixture of exhaustion and respect, I let Chef pick out the bottle of wine. He chose an ‘05 Château Something-or-another. Having faith that he had the whole thing under control, I went back to hitting on some woman who was clearly out of my league.

I briefly looked over to the server, who by this point was opening the wine, and observed her spinning the bottle as she cut the foil capsule.  (An aside to anybody who does wine service professionally: Don’t do this. Ever. You look like a moron, trust me. Either find someone to show you how to open a bottle with the label facing the customer, or don’t serve wine. )

At any rate, after she got done shaking and opening the wine, she poured Chef a sip, he took it and said “Wow, that’s sexy”.  I took my attention off of Ms. Not-That-Interested to taste the wine.  It was amazing. I’ll never forget the velvety chocolate and cassis with little hints of cedar.  I examined the bottle.  It was a Château in Bordeaux that I’d heard of.

Uh-oh. Not a good sign.

I looked at Chef, who by this time had noticed the ‘03 vintage. I went to the bar and looked at a wine list and next to “Château Lynch-Bages” was the $200 price tag.

Well, shit. No wonder the wine tasted so good.

We told our justifiably-mortified server about the mix-up, and the poor thing looked like she was going to cry. So who’s at fault? Let’s examine the facts of the situation:

• I know without a doubt (this wine was the first drink of the evening) that Chef explicitly 0rder by asking for the ” ‘05 Bordeaux”.  The Lynch-Bages was an ‘03.
• Chef and I admittedly did not pay attention to the label after the server’s brief introduction, without repeating the name or vintage,  of the bottle.
• The server spun the bottle as she opened it, so as to make reading the label impossible

So what happens next? Well, I know how I have handled this situation in my restaurant. The customer got the killer bottle at a great price, and the server got a good long talking to about how to properly order and present wine.

This incident teaches several important lessons. The most important? Never let Chef order a bottle of wine again.

Besides that, this little incident shows how all of the steps of proper wine service are important.  Also, how it’s crucial to make sure that your server knows exactly what you want. Point if you have to.  Because, even if we didn’t have to pay anything, no one wants to be that table.

The server did what she could for us without being able to get her manager on the phone- she comp’ed our appetizer and gave us her employee discount on the bottle. We settled for that, because we live in a small town with a smaller restaurant scene, and no one wants to look like the cheap assholes who can’t tell the difference between a Lynch-Bages and a Château Plonk.

Besides, the wine was sexy. And worth every penny.