Now and then a few Swedish wine bloggers get together and pop some good bottles from our own cellars. Most of us blogs in Swedish but some of us also blogs in English, check out the links at the end of the post. We make some good food, talk wine and try blind. It’s always a thrill to see what the others bring – one thing that’s certain is that its good! Blind tasting is difficult but a really good way to challenge your self and to learn how other think, to find those notes – a great way to learn from your own senses as well from others experiences. The last few times I haven’t bothered taking down notes at these king of tastings and instead let myself get lost in a land of tastes, scents and wine nerding.

So this is more a presentation of what we had to drink and eat last night – and few notes taken from memory.

Let’s start with the food – we did what we in Sweden call Pyttipanna which could be translated to small pieces in a pan, originally it was made from leftovers of past meals but now it is far more common to prepare pyttipanna from prime ingredients. In this case we used carrots, Jerusalem artichoke , pork – sliced into small pieces – fried it in a pan with a little olive oil and then put it the oven for 10-15 minutes so it gets a little crisp.

We also made some oven baked pork belly, mash potatoes and a red wine sauce – so good

We started in in style with a wine from Nahe, a riesling – Dönnhoff Hermannshöle Riesling 2007 Grosses Gewächs. Really nice, perfectly balanced – really love Dönnhoff!

Next a Hungarian red, Weninger Soproni Merlot Spern Steiner 2000, really nice – but I was way off on both grape and country, even though through hints we worked our way towards Austria – and this wine is grown just on the boarder between Hungary and Austria – slim, elegant and still young!

Next wine a red bourgogne – this was a pick I managed with out big problems; Hospices de Beaune 2000 Savigny les Beaune Cuvée Fouquerand. Fresh, great fruit, good balance!

Going white again – this wine got us into a bit of trouble, in retrospect this shouldn’t have been that difficult but once you hit the wrong track it’s difficult to switch; Bourgogne Chardonny 2008 Domaine Jean Grivot. Fresch, elegant, nice.

My contribution was a Portuguese thingy, I bought several bottle of this wine in 2008 or 09 and really liked them, a few of them ended up in the bottom of my cellar and I thought it would be fun to see how they developed. It have changed quite a bit, lots of red apples (I have nothing in my old notes of that), paint remover, spices – not what I thought but then again not bad; Quinta do Noval Douro doc 2004.

Time for some snacks, assorted cheeses, ham, olives etc.

More reds on the table Clos de L’Echo Chinon (1999 I think) – here I picked the region and grapes. Really nice wine.

Trilogia 2008 from Greece was yet on of these difficult wines to put in the right country, a well made wine but not really my style – interesting though!

Continuing with wines from counties you don’t taste that often, this time around it’s Slovenia: Edi Simcic 2004 Duet Lex. This is a really nice bordeaux blend; 80 % merlot, cabernet sauvignon och cabernet franc.

Another wine that should be easy to spot is a Barolo – or so you think – Rocche 2007 Barolo Renato Ratti caught us off guard and got us looking in all the wrong directions

To the sweet wines, and in this company one can expect the unexpected – an oldie – and for oldies you need special tools.

Vihno Generoso Cooperativa vitivinicola do Peso da Regua, ca 1930-1940, a sweet, not a port, not a madeira but somewhat in that region; lots of dried fruit, nuts, paintremover – complex and really nice Always a treat to taste wines like these.

Still what is a night wine only one sweet wine? Muscat de St-Jean de Minervois 2005 Domaine de Barroubio got to be the finisher of yesterday night, a nice, well balanced muscat wine.

Magnus Reuterdahl

Blogs

Red Scream & Riesling (Swedish)

Mad about Madeira (English)

Wine virtuosity (English)

Who cut the cheeze? (Swedish)

Puttes vinspalt (Mainly in Swedish though some English posts)

Magnus Reuterdahls vinblogg Aqua Vitae (Mainly in Swedish though some English posts)

Also a big thank you for lots of Italian goodies to Roberto Gatti from Gattimondo

There is much information to be found in the picture and the text. In the image one can see fields with something that I interpret as vines, though there is nothing in the text concerning the agriculture. In any case this got my heart and my imagination spinning – making me open a bottle of Riesling dreaming my self back to 16th century and to Riesling land.

Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) was born in Ingelheim, Germany but lived for the latter part of his life in Basel, Switzerland. The Cosmographia containing more than 500 woodcut pages and was published in 46 editions, in 4 languages. He died of the plague.

Koblenz is a city that dates back to a roman military outpost from ca 9 BC in Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, today it’s the northern outpost of the Mosel valley but with one foot in Rhine valley. Hopefully we’ll visit Koblenz as we go to Germany this summer.

Not having a Mosel or Rhine riesling avilable I instead tried a Pfalz riesling from the winery Reichsrat von Buhl; 2009 Paradiesgarten Deidesheim Riesling Grosses Gewächs. It’s a sample from the wine-company.se.

In the nose are fresh green apples, a little pear and exotic fruits mixed with some stone and minerals in the background. Lush!

The taste is classic dry riesling, elegant, fresch with a concentrated acidityand fresh fruits; lemon, sweet apples and pears and then som peach in the background. It also has a nice distinct minerallity with just a hint of spice in end. This great now and will probaly be as great with some yeras in the cellar, it mainly depends on how you want your Rieslings. Fresh elegant – lovely

Another nice hand coloured woodcut is this view of Appenzell by Johann Stumpf (1500-1578) from ca 1548-49 from Gemeiner loblicher Eydgnoschafft Stetten, Landen und Voelckeren Chronick wirdiger thaaten Beschreybung (in total 934 folio).

Appenzell is the capital of the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden in Switzerland. I haven’t visited Appenzell but know the name through the cheese Appenzeller, a hard cow’s-milk cheese produced in this region. This is one my favourite cheese, among many . This picture is about 500 years old but the history of the Appenzeller cheese is at least 200 years older, in other words Stumpf might also have had enjoyed a nice piece while making this. There are three types of the cheese; Classic – aged three to four months, Surchoix – aged four to six months and Extra – aged six months or longer.

Magnus Reuterdahl

Read the blog post here

Magnus Reuterdahl

]]> http://vinotintoinenglish.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/the-wine-junkie-guest-blogs-on-corkbin/feed/ 0 Reuterdahl http://vinotintoinenglish.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/an-odd-wine-guide/ http://vinotintoinenglish.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/an-odd-wine-guide/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:17:40 +0000 Magnus Reuterdahl http://vinotintoinenglish.wordpress.com/?p=203 ]]> Got info on an odd wine guide, The Drops of God by Tadashi Agi och Shu Okimoto – a manga comic wine guide. The two first parts are now available in English, I made sure to buy them emediently.

In short, the story is about two wine interested brothers embroiled in an inheritance dispute over who should take over his father’s estate, including a wine cellar with some of the rarest wines in the world. In order to inherit this,however, the brothers first must find the12 wines known as the 12 apostles and the ultimate wine known as the drops of God. Through their adventures you learn a lot about wines, wine history and various wine regions – a little different but a well-proven pedagogy; to learn through comics – I remember the Swedish comic magazine the Phantom, by Lee Falk, that I used to read during the 80′s. The adventures often took place within historic events and through this I actually picked up a lot on them and – as a kind of bonus – I learned by default!

I love the idea of mixing comics and wine – if the result is great is to be seen/read – so I’ll get back to you all about these as soon as I’ve hade the opportunity to read them more thoroughly!

Magnus Reuterdahl

Via the European Wine Bloggers Conference 2011 collection at Delicious.com you can access loads of great blog-posts on the event

Hope to meet you all in Turkey 2012

Magnus Reuterdahl

Cudos to Luiz!

Magnus Reuterdahl

The best way to learn is by doing it your self, ie I bought a cookbook on Turkish cuisine - Meze Maritime (2009) by Camilla Thulin & Uluc Telma – as far as I know it’s only available in Swedish. After a read through I choose a few recipes and went shopping. With Shakespeares word in mind I really should have invited a few guests

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

This is what we ended up doing, for appetizers we made a classical Turkish omelette Mememen and fried cauliflower with mint dip Karna Bahar kizartmasi. To this we drank some Turkish beer, Efes Pilsener. An ok beer but perhaps nothing that stands out but fun in this context as it is Turkish.

Recipe classical Turkish omelette, Mememen (for 2 persons).

• 4 large eggs
• 3 peeled and chopped tomatoes
• 1 finely chopped spring onion
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• ½ finely chopped green pepper
• 1 finely chopped green chili fruit
• salt & pepper

Heat the olive oil and fry the peppers, chili and onions, stir in the tomatoes. Reduce the heat and add the eggs while stirring, let the omelet come to a creamy consistency. If it feels a little wet, the tomatoes may release some liquid, insert it into the oven for a minute or two at 250 degrees – but keep an eye on it. Put on some salt & pepper and serve. Very taste, very nice – perfect for a little luxury breakfast, brunch or lunch.

For our second starter we fried cauliflower and made served it with a mint dip Karna Bahar kizartmasi (according to the recipe it is for 6 people – myself, I could eat it all myself).

• 1 cauliflower head, separated into florets
• 2 cups of sunflower oil

For the tempura

• 3 eggs
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Mint Dip

• 2 cups Turkish yoghurt
• 1 crushed garlic clove
• 1 bunch of fresh mint (I took about half a jar)

Start with mint dip; mix down the mint in the yoghurt, squeeze the garlic and stir around – let stand for 10-15 minutes so that the flavours settle in the dip – a tip is to make a bigger batch and save half for the minced lamb pizza.

Beat the eggs, add flour salt and pepper – whisk together until its smooth. Dip the cauliflower in batter and deep fry them in sunflower oil. Calculate that you will need to turn on the culiflower a few times and they take 3-4 minutes to fry on every side. Add them up on paper towels so they can drain and serve hot.

For our main courses, and we know we might just have exaggerate this just a tad in quantity, but it’s good so I don’t have any regrets

Tomato bulgur bulgur Domatezli pilavi (6 persons)
I sometimes find bulgur to be rather boring and tasteless, so is not the case if you spice it up. It is also a very pretty dish.

• 2 ½ cups bulgur, rinse and drain
• 5 cups hot water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 finely chopped onions
• 2 chopped garlic cloves
• 1-2 tablespoons chilli flakes (or finely chopped red chilli)
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• juice of 1 lemon
• salt and pepper
• Garnish with lemon slices and parsley.

Add the bulgur in a bowl, pour in the hot water in, put on a lid and let stand for about 30 minutes or until water is sucked up by bulgur. Fry the onions and garlic in olive oil until the onions are translucent. Add the chilli flakes, tomato paste, salt and pepper, mix the bulgur in and squeeze the lemon over the whole thing – stir. Decorate with lemon slices and parsley.

Minced lamb pizza Lahmacun

Pizza dough

• 25 grams of fresh yeast
• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 6-7 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon sunflower oil

Mix the yeast in the water and stir in the remaining ingredients. Work the dough until it becomes smooth. Leave it to rise in the bowl, put over a cloth, for about 45 minutes.

• 400g minced lamb
• 5 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 tablespoon dried mint
• 2 finely chopped onions
• 1 red chilli fruit
• 2 pressed garlic cloves (I usually mash them with a knife, then finely chop them)
• A pot of leaf parsley
• juice of half a lemon
• 1-2 tsp sumac

There is nothing wrong with this recipe, it should be neither cheese or tomato sauce in it!

Mix everything except the parsley, lemon juice and sumac into a paste, let stand in refrigerator and for about 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius, divide the dough into six pieces, roll them out, relatively thin – lube the plate. Brush a little olive oil on the pizza edges, then put the minced meat in a thin even layer over the pizza. Bake in the upper part of the oven, about 8 minutes, until edges are golden brown. When the pizza is ready, sprinkle a little sumac over pizza, squeeze a little lemon juice and sprinkled it with parsley – ready to serve. A tip is to have saved a little mint dip to have with the pizza to or a little tomato stew.

Lamb skewers Şiş köfte with tomato stew Domat güveç.

Now of course these should be made on a skewer – something I was sure I had at home, so was not the case why I did them without skewers which also went fine.

Şiş köfte (for 4 persons)

• 500 grams of minced lamb
• 2 finely chopped onions
• 1 finely chopped green pepper
• 2 pressed garlic cloves, I mashed them and chopped them
• 1 teaspoon chilli flakes
• 1 teaspoon sumac
• A pot with leaf parsley
• 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
• salt & pepper

You simply mix together all ingredients except the olive oil and set it all in the fridge for 45 minutes to an hour. Then shape it to the elongated sausages, brush them with olive oil and fry about 4 minutes / side – I made them about 3 cm thick. Very nice – married with brilliant tomato stew but also with mint dip.

Domates güveç (4-6 servings)

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 finely chopped onion
• 2 finely chopped garlic cloves
• 1 red chilli fruit
• 1-2 tablespoons sugar
• a small piece of ginger (about 4 cm), roughly chopped
• 1 can of whole tomatoes, about 400 grams
• salt & pepper

Pour olive oil in a frying pan, heat up, add the onion, garlic, pepper and ginger, fry until the onion is translucent. Add the tomatoes and the liquid in the jar, stir gently so that the tomatoes will not break. Let simmer for about 45 minutes, add a little extra liquid if necessary. Mash the tomatoes, season with sugar, salt and pepper. Very nice, a bit hot and sweet – I imagine that this works great as an accompaniment to grilled meats in general, steaks, meatballs or sausages.

To this we had a Turkish wine; Egeo Syrah 2008 from the producer Kavaklidere in the region Aegean, in western Turkey.

The wine has a lot of sweetness and power. There is direct sweet acidity tone with lots of dark fruits and berries and a spicy finish – it tends to be a bit too big in the mouth and is what one could say one-dimensional, ie it does not happen that much. Furthermore, it is slightly unbalanced and sprawling. Overall, one could call this a masculine wine, a bit jammy, a little too spicy and at the same time silky and easy to drink – but, and this is a big but – to the Turkish food it is balanced up and actually works surprisingly well. You could say it like this, I was perhaps not in love with this particular wine, but I was not deterred from trying more wines from Turkey.

There will be more evenings with recipes from Turkey in the coming year, I am also looking for a really good Turkish restaurant in Stockholm to find inspiration for continuing culinary adventures – please advise in the comments:)

Magnus Reuterdahl

I really like these books as they let you live and breath another time, to see glimpses of a city long gone but still present. The streets are still there, lots of the building are still standing, there a pictures and paintings illustrating the time and though fiction it still is a bearer of historic knowledge. In second book one of the main characters works at the 1897Stockholmfair (Allmänna konst- och industriutställningen), aka the public art- and industrial fair, at Djurgården. On the picture below you can see the area of the fair.

At the far right corner you can spot the Djurgårds-bridge that still exist and just a little to the left a few inches up is the national museum that also remains. Interesting for this story is the area to the far left – a replica ofStockholmca 1500 AD. It was built in wood and plaster in a 1:2 scale, a close up picture can be seen on the wine menu below. With in the “old-city” was a recplica of the Rådhuskällaren, the Town hall celler, one of the places that served wine during the middle ages. And of course you could buy wine here at fair as well. Though it wasn’t cheap. This was what you could find:

Champagne: Louis Roederer; 11 kronor, V:ve Clicquot (semi dry); 10 kronor, Pommery & Greno sec; 11 kronor, Pol Roger Extra dry; 12 kronor, G. H. Mumm & Co Cabinet Crémant; 10 kronor, E. Mercier & Co Carte Blanche; 7,50 kronor and Grand vin Royal; 6 kronor.

Red Bordeaux-wines: Ch. Gruaud Larose 1893 Baron Sarget; 7,50 kronor, Ch. La Tour Grand vin 1892; 6 kronor, Beychevelle 1893; 5 kronor, St. Julien 1893; 4 kronor and St Christoly: 3 kronor.

Bourgogne-wines: Romanée; 8 kronor, Volnay; 5 kronor, Beaune; 4 kronor and Chablis; 4 kronor.

Rhine wines: Marcobrunner Auslese 1886; 10 kronor, Hochheimer; 1893 4,50, Rüdersheimer; 1893 3,50, Königsbacher Riesling; 3 kronor och Sparkling Hock 7,50 kronor.

Ports, Sherry and Madeira costed 4 to 6 kronor a bottle.

Kronor is the Swedish currency, still used, and today 1 $ costs ca 6,50 and 7,20 (depending if your buying or selling) and 1€ costs ca 8,50 to 9,20 (depending if your buying or selling), according to the bank 2012-01-05.

Now this really doesn’t say much about what it costed then, does it? It’s difficult to get a good comparisment  between the currency then and today, and even more difficult to translate them into another currency – but I’ll try, but please remember I’m no mathematician and if you find flaws, please tell me and I’ll try to correct them J

However there are few points that pops; to start with the names – there are a lot of names on the list above I still recognize and hold in high regard. Some names are a bit difficult to interpret as they might be communal rather than a producer, for example the bourgeons and theRhinewines.  But I’ll make an assumption for the sake of argument that the Romanée is Romanée-Conti just because I want it to be and it makes it more fun to play with. The most expensive wines on the list are the Champanges and the most expensive of those are the Pol Roger, if the Romanée was a Conti that would have by far been the most expensive today.

To start with the entrance fee’s for the fair where rather high, so it wasn’t really all that public. In the beginning the fee’s were 10 kronor, after a while they were lowered to between 1,50 and 2 kronor. The entrance fee is in fact more pricy than most of the bottles on the wine list.

At aproxemtly the same time one kilo of meat costed 80 öre (0,8 kronor), one kilo worth of butter 2,20 kronor, one litre of milk 5 öre (0,05 kronor), 20 herrings 20 öre (0,2 kronor) – numbers are taken from Swedish Wikipedia.

Prices is one way of comparing costs – and you can get quite a lot of food for a bottle of wine in you compare the prices. Then again food prices and quality differs over time what was luxury then is not luxury today and I don’t know the quality on the goods mentioned above.

Another way to compeer costs is too look into what people earned at the time – how much did they have to work to be able to score on of the bottles above and then compeer it with how much a Swedish worker today would have to work to buy the same bottle at today’s prices.

Now a weeks work wasn’t really the same in 1897 and in 2012, today a normal work week in Sweden is 40 hours back then it was often over 70 hours. In1891 aworker at the Tretorn factories earned about 20 öre/hour (0,2 kronor) i.e.  ca 2-2,4o kronor a day gives an annual salary of ca 700-730 kronor/year  (I counted 70h/day 50 weeks a year – I don’t think they had any vacations – but if I understand correctly the hours could differ a bit over the years, and some days were off).

If we instead look at teachers the salary differs quite a bit, listings  in the Teachers paper 1897 shows annual salaries from 200-300 kronor – 1300 kronor/year. The difference depends on where in the country the school is, if it’s a man or woman, what social status the students have etc. etc. For the lower income jobs housing were often included. Most teachers seems to have had better wages than factory workers though – they also often only worked 8-9 months a year.

In conclusion neither factory workers nor teachers would probably afford a bottle of Champagneor Romanée at the time, if they didn’t have a sugar-daddy or by chance got invited to an up-town party or a tasting. Then again if we assume it was a Romanée-Conti I don’t see many workers or teachers who could afford that today either.

Let’s do a little math, if a worker in 1897 earning 20 öre/hour (I’m not sure if taxes are included in this or not. I assume not) would work to be able to buy a bottle of Romanée (8 kronor) he would need to work for 40 hours and 60 hours for a bottle of Pol Roger, ie % and 85% of a work week. According to an article from 2011 the average salary for an industrial worker in Sweden 2011 was 24300 kronor/month. If we divide this by 4 we get a weekly salary of 6075 kronor, 60% and 85% of this is 3645 and 5165 kronor. This is one way to get a comparison price.

If we further presume that the Romanée was in fact a Romanée-Conti it was quite pricy then though more so today. The 2006 vintage when sold at the Swedish monopoly Systembolaget in 2010 costed 24495 kronor, ie more than the average industrial workers monthly salary before taxes (ca 30 %), the same year it was priced at 62000 kronor at a restaurant in Stockholm. A industrial worker would in other words have to work almost three months to be able to buy the bottle at the restaurant (or in reality just under four months if we include taxes). The price of the Romanée has in other words gone through the roof during the last century.

If we instead look at the Pol Roger, the most expensive wine on the wine list in 1897. According to the same model it costs a lot less today, at Systembolaget a bottle of Pol Roger costs between 357 and 1059 kronor depending on the quality, at a restaurant that would probably be somewhere between 700-2000 kronor. This is a price most industrial workers would manage to earn in one or a few days work today ie less than 85% of a week.

Then again this comparison is more a game of numbers, the workers at the end of the 19^th century had a lot harder life than we do today and many a lot worse than them, and even though they hypothetically could buy a bottle of Romanée and most industrial works today can’t – most of us can by a bottle of champagne now and then and look back and see that many thing are a lot better today than yesterday…

I you find the Fogelström books they’re a great read

With wishes for a good 2012

Magnus Reuterdahl

Here New coat of paint from the great album The heart of Saturday night (1974):

 Let’s put a new coat of paint on this lonesome old town
Set ‘em up, we’ll be knockin’ em down.
You wear a dress, baby, and I’ll wear a tie.
We’ll laugh at that old bloodshot moon in that burgundy sky

All your scribbled lovedreams, are lost or thrown away,
Here amidst the shuffle of an overflowing day
Our love needs a transfusion so let’s shoot it full of wine
Fishin’ for a good time starts with throwin’in your line.

Magnus Reuterdahl

New Years Eve should be a feast filled with fantastic food and wines, celebrated with friends – and in a best case scenario with friends that also are wine nerds – so that we did. I feel obliged to share a few of the wines we had and at the same time wish for a great 2012.

This New Year we started off with the finale, a fantastic Champagne; a 1979 Diebold-Vallois à Cramant. This 32 years old or young Champagne was truly amazing. If you got on- two or more in your celler its high time to let the taste buds enjoy themselves. A great mix of mature and fresh notes, balanced, elegant and just lovely. There was perhaps not all that much bubbles left but still there was a nice and bright acidity and fresh flavors. Notes of yellow apples, hints of sherry, nuts, bread, butter toffee and a little dried fruit – the taste is long, broad, deep and complex – and the aroma just keept on going…

To the champagne we ate duck liver mousse on toast and lobster soap – both great matches –though bring forth different types of flavors in the Champagne. The lobster soup, a great one, with deep sweet flavors brought the forth the maturity of the champagne giving it an almost regal touch whilst the duck liver brought out the young and fresh notes that made you forget all about the 32 years of maturing.

All in all a great Champagne and a very pleasant wine experience – I thank and bow to the contributor

After this we got to a roasted duck filled with truffles – and what is better than Pinot Noir to a duck? Well perhaps a white Bourgogne – we had both!

We started with a wine I’ve come to love; Mountford estate Pinot Noir 2007. I’ve had this on more than a few occasions this last year, though its been 8-9 months since last and though it was great when it opened up – this time around it need lots of oxygen. Maybe it has gone into somewhat of a tunnel, it felt just a tad flat, but then again when it opened up it showed its color and shone; elegant, lush and well-balanced – a really good match.

We also opened a Corton-Charlemagne 2003 from Pierre André – I love this, these wines are so me – complexed white wines with tons of Je ne sais quoi – elegant, fresh, long, regal with a fruity freshness, minerals, flints and lime, yellow apples, tropical fruits, oak and almonds. A Really, really nice wine with a long delightful aftertaste.

We also had the Corton. Charlamagne to some assorted cheeses and oysters.

There were more but this is what I share – these wines was a great way to end 2011 and start 2012

Magnus Reuterdahl