Advice on German wine tasting/dinner

"Regular Joe" skrev i melding news:030820041635597494% snipped-for-privacy@no.net...

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I'm stumped! Ian Hoare sure is the only one who can find wines to go here - I'm eagerly awaiting his response! Anders

Regular Joe wrote in news:030820041635597494% snipped-for-privacy@no.net:

These two are killers for whites and most reds water may be best.

You could get lucky here with most good Rieslings

Lots of ideas with French wine, maybe a blauburgunder?

Which mushrooms? If these are some light, simple mushrooms; you may wish to try a Müller-Thurgau.

The egg is troublesome. Also, while a French Pinot Noir would be classical match to Lamb, many (most?) German Blau- (or Spät-) burgunder are quite (too?) tart. Without the egg, I would have suggested trying a Dornfelder from Pfalz or Rheinhessen. With the egg, perhaps a Spätburgunder Weissherbst from Baden.

If the fruits are not too acidic, a sweet Riesling may be excellent. To keep within the budget, either small quantities of Auslese, BA or even TBA; or larger quantities of a sweetish Spätlese.

Zum Wohle!

Salut/Hi Anders Tørneskog,

le/on Tue, 03 Aug 2004 21:28:00 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

CRUEL man!! I was hoping to slip away quietly unnoticed.

Salut/Hi Regular Joe,

Since I've been put on the spot by Anders (just you wait young Tonersmachin, if ever you come here!). Here goes.

le/on Tue, 03 Aug 2004 16:35:59 -0400, tu disais/you said:-

I had hoped that as I'm not any kind od sdalt I'd be able to get out of this.

This is notoriously hard to match - and in fact notoriously variable as a dish Made with home grown tomatoes, harvested fully ripe under hot sun, the soup is one thing, made with sharp tomatoes, picked green in Israel or Holland and sent in chilled transport to supermarkets in the UK, it's completely different.

Assuming a decent soup made with properly vine ripened tomatoes, you can use a predominantly SB wine, which isn't too much of a caricature (I'm NOT looking to a typical Marlborough SB here). Perhaps a not too woody white Bordeaux, or even an unoaked chardonnay. I'm looking for a wine with a fairly mouthfilling flavour profile and decent but not searing acidity. It won't go well, but normally wine and soup are never a heavenly match, being liquid on liquid. For that reason the general consensus is to serve something quite strong in small glasses, such as sherry or madeira. I'm hesitant about this with a tomato soup, but you may find a bone dry manzanilla might go OK too.

Bad menu planning IMO. You shouldn't follow tomato with tomato.

However.... Again, I'd not be afraid of the same wine (switch away from the Manzanilla if you take that suggestion on board) as I suggested for the soup. Egg isn't an easy match at all. Slight preference for unoaked chard, but with a lot of reticence.

Cor... I dunno. A light red perhaps. So much depends upon what mushrooms (ordinary cultivated ones, shiitake, cepes (porcini)) and what kind of seasoning - western with maybe some stock and cream, or eastern (you did say asian) with soy sauce etc. I'm no great expert on what wines you have in no-where-land (you don't say and people writing here come from everywhere), though your use of unadorned dollars suggests the USA, but if you were in France, I might look to a wine like St Nicolas de Bourgeuil, maybe even a decent pink.

Good grief! I presume this is what I'd call a spring roll using lamb instead of chicken. pork or shellfish. I don't have a CLUE. Sherry again, perhaps, or madeira.

Sigh. Again, a real hard one. Hugh Johnson (with, I feel, an air of desperation) suggests a fine sweet sherry or a muscat. I am unconvinced. It might be ok. But again if your fruit is very sharp, with lots of oranges and so on the salad will be wildly different from one made with lots of very sweet aromatic fresh fruits, perhaps with something like mangoes and bananas. I might even throw caution to the winds and serve a decent alsace eau-de-vie de framboise.

I've no idea what this is. Obviously I know cherries. Perhaps a Rasteau VdN, that's a sweet red wine. You might like to consider a sweet madeira.

Sorry Chris, but you've really chosen just about as wine difficult a menu as it's possible to have. The only things lacking are loads of vinegar and chilles to make it entirely impossible.

I do not have any German wine suggestions that I am certain would work. Something like a Bickensohler Steinfelsen Rülander from the Kaiserstuhl area of Baden in a dry style might do. These tend to be very full wines that might hold up better to tomatoes and such than most German whites. Wines from this region can be very dfficult to locate in many areas, but they usually are not very expensive.

I might tend to use a selection of German beers for that meal. You have choices from very light to very heavy and from very dry to sweet.

Or you might serve a chilled spirit such as a Steinhager Schinkenhäger which is a sort of a gin with an attitude. It should stand up to tomatoes and even hot peppers, but be careful or you may have some unexpected overnight guests :-) .

My mailbox is always full to avoid spam. To contact me, erase snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net from my email address. Then add snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com . I do not check this box every day, so post if you need a quick response.

Tonersmachin,

With apologies in advance, Ian -

I know it's bad form to laugh at someone else's misfortunes, but this guy really skewered you with that menu! Although you did your honest best with wine recommendations, I'm glad I'm not dining with that group. ;^D

I think that pitchers of dry Martinis before dinner would have been the ticket. By the time dinner was served, who would have _noticed_ the wine - or even if there _was_ any wine?

Tom S

To All Who Responded,

Sarcasm and snobbery asside, I'd like to thank those who made an effort to offer some constructive advice.

Perhpas I should have been more clear;

The point of this exercise is to serve 6 people a dinner of roughly 6 courses, the courses being paired with an exploration of various German wines. I would like to have 8-12 bottles of wine (roughly 2 per course), with the total wine budget around $250.

My previously suggested menu was intended to be a combination of traditional German dishes and some Asian oriented fair, as I often see Asian dishes paired with German wines.

So let me throw it back to the group from the other direction. What would be a good selection of German wines styles to give us a good overview (including a desrt wine) of Geman wines and what would you suggest for food to accompany it?

Thanx in advance to anyone who cares to offer some guidance.

Chris

Salut/Hi Regular Joe,

le/on Tue, 10 Aug 2004 18:17:13 -0400, tu disais/you said:-

It really isn't being snobbish to say that we find such and such a marriage to be disastrous. The meal you described (if my guesses of what it consisted of were correct) was about as difficult to match with wine as a meal could be. That's a fact.

Yes, if you wanted more constructive advice. You could also have come back earlier with an explanation of what exactly your lamb egg roll was to consist of. Since lamb is almost unknown in both chinese and german cooking, for example, some clarification would have been in order.

$25 a bottle on average, then. Assume one bottle only of a sweet wine (which will cost far more than the others) at say $50. That leaves $200 for 10 bottles. I have to leave it to others who live in the USA (I am right in assuming you're not from Australia (they also use dollars) I imagine) to know what class of wine can be found at these prices.

I've more often seen the combination of Alsace wines with Asian fare, however, with a little care, German wines will do.

You should get a much more helpful set of suggestions now!!

The (slight) problem with German wines is that German wine laws presume that the higher the original sugar of the must, the better the wine is going to be, (which is more or less true), with the corollary that the region, soil and grower are of little importance, (which, as eleswhere, is nonsense). With a legal structure which owes more to cloud cuckoo-land than reality, it's hardly surprising that German wine makers are struggling somewhat to maintain an identity. There has been a recent move to create a list of "1st growth" wines, which is a good move, though with almost unbelievable lunacy, they have managed to find 3 or 4 different names for the same thing, depending upon the area.

So, in principle, the better the German wine, the higher the original sugar content, and this will usually translate to a sweeter wine. And sweet wines (in general - though Mike Tomassi and I both know from experience that this isn't invariably true) match better with desserts than with fish, for example. Another difficulty with German wines and food matching, is that in general the characteristics of the better Germans wines, are not those that make them food friendly.

All this preamble to say that generalising about such wines is very difficult indeed. A Saar kabinett from a poor year and a moderate grower will match with one kind of food (sort of) while another Saar kabinett wine from a similarly rated vineyard in a good year and a good grower will be a world apart and match with something wildly different.

Remembering your requests to keep the suggestions general, rather than specific.

My shortlist of wines would be two from the Mosel Nahe Ruwer (as these tend to be more food friendly than wines from the Rhine), one from the Rheingau one from Rheinhessen (perhaps NOT a Riesling) one from either Baden or Wurttemburg and a Frankenwein.

To get the most difficult out of the way, I'd look for a Rheingau Auslese from one of the classic villages, in a good year and from a good grower. This is the wine I'd try to match with a dessert.

If you can get good ones when you serve this meal, I suggest a fresh peach fruit salad (white peaches would be best) with such a wine.

OK, so that's the dessert out of the way.

I'd not advise a soup, as they tend to be wine hostile.

So, we're looking at five remaining courses.

Starter Fish Meat entree Meat main course Cheese

In general, one would go from the light in flavour to the more complex, both in terms of menu planning and for the wines.

Let's see what order to put the wines into, assuming you go along with my suggestion.

To start with, something quite light, how about a fish mousse, or avocado with shrimps. A rather lemony Saar or Ruwer wine from a good grower might go very well.

If you like scallops, or lobster, then a spätlese mittel mosel woould have some balancing sweetness, and the appley flavours might well complement the fish. Otherwise, a fuller fish would be needed, grouper, or dolphin fish would go pretty well. A spâtlese trocken then.

With a meat entrée (chicken in a sauce or similar maybe even something stirfried) a Franken wine - maybe a sylvaner

Spatlese trocken or halbtrocken from Rheinhessen - Main dish Pork.

Wine from Kaiserstuhl with some power - cheeses

If you want to serve a red, then you could do so with the main dish, but beware not to overshadow the cheese wine.

All these suggestions imply a good year and a good grower.

Regular Joe wrote in news:100820041817139329% snipped-for-privacy@no.net:

Ian has done a marvelous job of detailing the problems with your quest. Let me be more succinct.

The best "German" wines that I know of for the food you propose would be Alsatian wines.

Pinot Gris, Riesling, Sylvaner and Gewurztraminer are the more recognizable. Their advantage is that they are finished in a dry style and go well with food. Those lamb egg rolls are still a problem for most of us, perhaps if you would send us some? or barring that share the basic reciepe.

Hi Ian and others who can help,

I must admit that I have never cooked or served a six course meal (but would like someone to do that for me). My question to you will probably show that I am a novice but here goes.

Could one plan the same menu using all the wines from another country say France or Australia or the USA ? I guess what I am asking is, is do many people plan such a full course meal using wines from just one location? And if so why would they do this? (as opposed to offering their guest the best from different countries)

Finally, I noticed that there are no greens (as in salad) in this particular menu. Is this because it is too difficult to match a salad effectively with a wine or is this just the cooks choice to omit this(what I think is a normal part of a meal).

Thanks

Larry Southern Ontario

To the OP: You lucky one - now you've got very good advice from a professional cook and able wine expert. Stick to it. Anders

"Ian Hoare" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Larry wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Most people here I think would serve the best match they could find for the food being offered. The OP in this thread wanted to limit things to one country. He picked a hard country with which to work. France, US, Italy, or Australia would have been easier.

Larry wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

of course some would include only French or only US wines but that is probably due to their thinking that those are the best wines for the cuisine ;-)

I'd agree, at least in US, just because the German wines available in US are for the most part white and off-dry. Good food wines to me, but leads to a rather one dimensional menu. Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Ian, I'd agree with almost everything you said, except for : "You could also have come back earlier with an explanation of what exactly your lamb egg roll was to consist of. Since lamb is almost unknown in both chinese and german cooking"

That depends on what region of China you're talking about. I think lamb (and mutton) are pretty common in northern (Peking, as well as Mongolian, which isn't technically Chinese, though the PRC would argue that) Chinese cooking. And some lamb is found in Hunan cooking too. I don't think of egg rolls as Northern, but not really sure what they are- Cantonese? In any case, I have never heard of lamb egg rolls.

"$25 a bottle on average, then. Assume one bottle only of a sweet wine (which will cost far more than the others) at say $50. That leaves $200 for 10 bottles. I have to leave it to others who live in the USA (I am right in assuming you're not from Australia (they also use dollars) I imagine) to know what class of wine can be found at these prices. "

If in US, some of us might be able to make specific suggestions if we knew where you were, and what's available there. There are enough good lighter wines for the early courses that are available for $10-15 to give some leeway with the later courses. "The (slight) problem with German wines is that German wine laws presume that the higher the original sugar of the must, the better the wine is going to be, (which is more or less true), with the corollary that the region, soil and grower are of little importance, (which, as eleswhere, is nonsense)."

Nonsense indeed. To me, in Germany (like Burgundy, and indeed most places) producer matters the most to me -more than pradikat, vintage, vineyard, etc. . I'd rather have a Kabinett (or Qba!) from Dönnhoff, JJ Prüm, etc than a Valckenberg BA.

"Wine from Kaiserstuhl" Kaiserstuhl? Is this Baden? New one to me (I'm at office, no references).

In general, I agree with Ian's suggestions (and that orginal menu was not exactly wine-friendly). Not being as familiar with the Baden wines, I'd probably try to work in a Nahe somewhere.Something like:

Starter - Mosel kab riesling from a good grower like Selbach-Oster, Christoffel, etc., or a Qba from a top producer (MSR or Nahe) Fish- MSR or Nahe riesling spaetlese Chicken- Pfalz or Rhine Spätlese Meat -if you're really trying for a view of German wines, this would be the place to try a red if you could find it. I'd probably not do a cheese course if menu predominately Asian. Dessert- I agree with Ian's suggestion. Though one budget alternative might be a Pfalz dessert wine from one of the Riesling crosses- Darting's Scheurbes, for instance, are quite good at a fraction of the price of a BA or TBA from the Rhine or Mosel areas. Even Huxelrebe can make interesting dessert wines. Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

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Yes, the hill of an ancient volcano in Baden (literally "Caesar's stool" or "Emperor's chair"). The soil and sun exposure makes for powerful wines it is said.

Pfalz is Rhineland, you know :-) You talk about Rheinpfalz and Rheingau, of course

There is actually a number of whites that go fairly well with meat, even game, but you'll probably have to have access to the full range available locally. (However - I prefer a full bodied tannic red from, say, southern France or Italy - there is a limit to my use of whites :-)

Or an Ortega, or even a Kerner. Anders

I'll stick with "Emperor's chair", with alternative definition of stool I prefer not to associate it with my wine. :)

Oops, my geography is bad I guess. When I say Rhine wines I'm usually thinking Rheinhessen or Rheingau (or Mittelrhein,but Jost is probably only producer we see here).

I wasn't saying that a white (as Ian suggested) couldn't work, just that IF one wanted to take a survey of German wine, you might want to try a Spatburgunder (sp?). :0

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

"Dale Williams" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m05.aol.com...

Sure - but now with the phonetical likeness you know what Kaiserstuhl means and you won't forget it easily either, with the image you've conjured up. :-) Am I right in that that interpretation is primarily an U.S. one? Anders