What are the best types of wine to cook with? What would be considered a _good_cooking_wine_? If I'm drinking wine with dinner, would I use the same wine? This could be convenient if the recipe calls for only half a cup and I'm opening up a bottle in advance for decanting anyway.
But if I buy an $85 Bordeaux (wholesale), that would be something I'd want to _drink_ as opposed to cooking with. If I use a $5.99 Merlot (retail), will I be doing my dish justice, or would it _clash_ with the Bordeaux I'm drinking?
There are a lot of thought trains on this. I keep a few cases of less- expensive Zin around, primarily for cooking, and sipping, while we cook. These are very drinkable wines, just not what you'd serve for dinner with special guests. The range is usually US$8-12/btl. OTHO, if a recipe calls for a specific wine, I'll either do, as you mentioned, or find that varietal (how I used that in the now accepted form :-}) in the cellar, though usually a good, but less-expensive version. To distill: good, but not great wines, with exact type only as is called for.
You touched on the best general purpose advice, cook with the wine you will be drinking. But, of course, that doesn't make sense if the wine is very expensive or in short supply. Some time back the test kitchen people with Cooks Illustrated magazine tackled this question and came up with mixed answers. Their favorite all-purpose red wine for cooking was a basic Cote du Rhone. For tomato sauces Chianti came out slightly better but they stuck with CdR for people who don't plan on keeping different types of wines. The brands in their test were probably not important - what I remember was that each wine they preferred was fairly basic and typical of it's region.
"Vincent" in news:Ff7Xc.7388$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com...
It was, and may still be, a custom of US wine wholesalers to very cheaply sell mixed cases of bin ends, marginal looking bottles, etc. to restaurants for "good cooking wine."
A few restaurant chefs I know rail away (if you get them started) about use of cheap wines in cooking, pointing out that many people will notice the result in the food. Related to this, I was surprised to find (not having tried before), a couple of years ago in New Orleans when tasting a specialty of a chef there, that I immediately picked up Bourbon whiskey in his sauce for a meat dish; cheap Bourbon too, I guessed at the brand (from the wood) and was right. (That chef has gone on to do many good things there.)
On cooking with wine, those in or near the US might enjoy a book that advocated the idea for 30 years, Morrison Wood's _With a Jug of Wine._ (1949). It was fairly common (and is widely and cheaply available used) though not as popular as (for example) the Rombauers' _Joy of Cooking_ (with its weird history, the original JOC edition being based on canned foods; more on that, recently, on alt.cooking-chat). What's unusual about Wood is his advocacy of flavor, spices, garlic, wine, etc. in mid-century US, when many mainstream cookbooks seemed bent on eradicating savor and subtlety (in favor of canned soups and green food coloring and "Thousand Island" salad dressing [1], and who can blame other peoples for poking fun at a food culture that does such things?)
I recommended Wood (and the main sequel) on the wine newsgroup in 1992 to a request for books on cooking with wine:
formatting link
(for some reason, the rest of the thread is not archived at Google, but what happened, in good newsgroup tradition, is that the requester ignored this advice, preferring "The Frugal Gourmet," though I did get interested correspondence from others).
To Vincent's question, Wood recommended, for a stew, one bottle of good Burgundy for the pot and another for the table; if not real Burgundy then California Pinot. (That was in 1949.)
[1] "Thousand Island" is a mayonnaise sauce appearing in US cookbooks by
1948 (de Gouy for example, revised edition; Wood lists it also) and commonly used on lettuce salads. It consists in original recipes of a very bland "Russian" Dressing with additional mayonnaise, and with whipped cream added just in case the bland flavors were still too assertive. It is occasionally even used on Reuben Sandwiches, though not in my presence. If the ages of humankind can be listed as Stone, Bronze, Iron, etc., then the ages of the US can be further subdivided, in which case the last half of the 20th Century was the Age of Mayonnaise.
We've had this discussion here before. My personal opinion is it all comes down to balance. One does not want to use a wine that one wouldn't drink;yet I for one can't afford to use a $30+ bottle for cooking wine. I do try as much as possible to match the spirit of the recipe if not the letter.
If a recipe is for Coq au Chambertin, I can't see opening an $80+ bottle to cook with, even if I had one. What I would do is try to find a decent yet comparatively inexpensive village Gevrey, or a Bourgogne from a good Gevrey based producer like Bachelet. Then I might serve with the rest of the bottle, and maybe a bottle of Bachelet's Gevrey VV.
Similarly, for my birthday last year Betsy made beef in Barolo. I sacrificed 2 bottles of (comparatively) inexpensive Villadoria Barolo for cooking, and served some better ones. If I had not had the Villadoria, I probably would have used a non-Barolo nebbiolo (a Langhe or Ghemme) for the cooking.
As far as daily cooking wine, if there are leftovers we use that. Otherwise, I have a small rack that Betsy knows is "wines that are ok to open". Inexpensive wines that I like. Currently the reds are the Rex Goliath PN, Borsao, and Les Heretiques - kind of a spectrum of flavors depending on recipe. Whites are usually an unoaked Chardonnay (typically Macon) or for dishes needing something quite light the Melini Orvieto.
Dale, my wife and I both do a lot of cooking. Not quite as elaborate as yours but more country french.( I have not boycotted food and wine issues:-)
We use boxed wines mostly for cooking. We have several boxed in pantry that have spickets and remain air sealed via asceptic packaging. They are Cab Sauv, Mountain Burg, and 2 whites. Brand varies.
I think it's wine that is ok to drink but you would not enjoy this wine. You don't really get the complexiity when making sauce/gravy/reductions anyway.
As long as the wine is not vinegar we use.
Current brands of box ared Vella Chablis and Almedans for balance.
Hi, Dale Williams, and thank you for your reply...
A much simpler question then, for a basic beginner. When a recipe simply calls for "red wine" (as opposed to a specific wine such as the Coq au Chambertin you mentioned), is it better to choose a red wine that would go best with that particular recipe, or would it be better to choose a red wine that matches the one we'd be drinking? I suppose the answer would be "both", but let's say I have a bunch of $80+ Bordeaux wines, and I want to open up one of those bottles to drink with dinner. I also have a case of $20 Bordeaux (per bottle). I'm cooking a veal stew that calls for red wine in the recipe. I use the $20 Bordeaux, and open up a 1986 Pichon Lalande to drink with the stew. The stew comes out tasting too strong of wine, but I don't believe that was the intent (the wine I'm drinking tastes fantastic, nevertheless). I used only the amount of wine called for by the recipe. I am thinking Bordeaux was the wrong choice. Am I correct? If so, which type wine could I have used instead, and would there also have been a better match to drink?
"Vincent" wrote in news:m05Yc.8183$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com:
Baordeaux would seem to be a tad strong for veal at any rate and $20 a bottle bordeaux is mayhaps a tad expensive to through into the stew. Veal IMHO would go much better if at all with a light red like a Valpolicella.
No doubt the wine tastes fantastic, but do the flavors really blend? that is the secrect. with veal keep it light, it is so easy to overpower veal.
You've mentioned this book once before, and since then I have obtained a copy. In the book, Morrison Wood refers to the leading American winemakes, mentioning Inglenook as one of the top 15. Tomorrow, I will be making his "Chicken a la Chasseur" recipe, which calls for 1 cup of dry white wine. I'll be using 2000 Beaulieu Costal Chardonnay. I paid $10.99 for a 750ml bottle, and while at the store, noticed an Inglenook Chardonnay going for $4.99 for a 1.5 liter bottle. At that price, I wondered if they'd still be considered one of the leading winemakers today (as the book was written in
1949)? Are they good wines to cook with? Are they drinkable?
No, Inglenook in the era in which "With a Jug of Wine" (one of the dozen or so cookbooks to be found in my mother's kitchen during my youth BTW) was written was run by John Daniel, a legendary winemaker from the early post-Prohibition years in CA. The Cabernets made by Inglenook in that era were considered among the best produced in CA. Inglenook was sold to United Vintners in 1964, at which point the quality went down the tubes. The Inglenook estate is today home to Niebaum-Coppola winery (Gustave Niebaum founded Inglenook), and Daniel's daughter Robin Daniel Lail today runs Lail winery. Inglenook today is just the label name for generic Central Valley jug wines.
"Mark Lipton" in news: snipped-for-privacy@eudrup.ude...
Thanks Mark, that sounds like a good history, I did not know all of that.
The Inglenook Cabernets from 1950s and early 1960s that I was lucky enough to encounter from people's cellars by the 1980s were eye-opening, worldview-revising, to someone who had gotten to know the Inglenook brand in its later manifestations, mainly a jug white called Inglenook Navalle. In the 1970s Matt Kramer in Oregon wrote (to the extent of my memory) characterizing Inglenook Navalle as a "dating-bar `Chablis' that always smelled like cheap German wine and tasted like a Popsicle." (Outside US: the last is a frozen fruit-juice novelty.)
Those were not good days for California wine (mid 60's) or at least the perception of CA wine. Besdies Inglenook, there was Almaden (which I sort of like) and the great player on the scene, Italian Swiss colony withthe"The little old winemaker, ME!" ads. which were to set a standard for bad wine ads until Aldo "Chilla Cella" Cella competed with Riunite :Riunite on ice, thasss nice!" for worst Italian wines of the late 20th Century.
"jcoulter" in news:Xns95545840EC200225stellar@216.196.97.136...
Don't forget a couple of celebrity endorsements, though, that were high points if you spotted the delicate irony. I recall Orson Welles with brow furrowed in deadpan earnestness ("This may be the finest wine _you've_ ever tasted"), and Peter Ustinov ("_You_ will like it").
It may have been more the perception than the reality. In that era, you had in addition to Inglenook, BV, Martin Ray, Joe Swan and Joe Heitz pursuing the goal of making world class wines in CA. (Charley Wagner may also have begun Caymus then, too) But, the overall quality of wine made in CA was far lower than now, owing to the profusion of cheap jug wines that have only lately fallen out of favor. I have had few opportunities to taste wines made in that era, but I am always skeptical of viewing the past in a bad light. To paraphrase Newton*, "If we see farther today, it is only because we stand on the shoulders of those giants who came before us."
Mark Lipton
*translation: I can't be bothered to look up the precise quote.
I recall the Orson Wells line, for Paul Masson wines I think, being: "We will sell no wine before its time". To which a comedian replied: "As soon as they can get it into the bottle. . . it's time!"
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For some reason, Barbera (Italy-Piedmont) has been especially good for cooking and marinating red meats like lamb, in my experience. Other good wines are the reds from Puglia, Sicily, and Sardinia.
I do suggest staying in the same general style of wine for that being served.
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