Last night Betsy combined two Judy Rodgers recipes, the roast chicken with bread salad, and a recipe for chicken salad with arugula, olives, and yellow pepper. The suggested wine for the latter was a 1999 Joguet young vines Chinon*, I brought up a bottle of the 2004 Bernard Baudry "Les Granges" Chinon. Served cool, straight from cellar. Bright acidity, black raspberry fruit, light tannins, a little barnyard. As it warms and gets air it fills out a bit, more black plum fruit, the merde notes light and in background, a little note of green pepper. I'm surprised when Betsy says she likes a lot, as she tends to hate green pepper (in wine or otherwise), but she does- this is just a hint, not an overpowering greenness. Nice welterweight, very food friendly, tasty. B+
*so, wine suggestions in cookbooks. On the one hand, you have the books that give a recipe and then say "merlot." Which encompasses a whole slew of styles, to the point of being pointless. Then you have the Zuni Cafe cookbook, where they list things like 1999 Charles Joquet Jeunes Vignes Chinon (I assume this is what sommelier suggests at restaurant). But how much help is that? A specific wine, produced in small quantities, rather hard to find on release. And now that cookbook is 5 years old, certainly won't find that vintage lying around. Most of us geeks can extrapolate what they mean from a specific example, but 99% of the cookbook readers I'm sure have no clue what a Chinon is.I'll give my "this is how it should be done" award to Ming Tsai's Blue Ginger cookbook. He gives specific descriptors of the type of wine he things works, and then a couple of examples: Sparkling Chenin from Loire Valley (Foreau or Huet Petillant Brut) Big rich oaky Merlot (Pride Mountain Merlot, Ch. Monbousquet) Spicy Cabernet Franc from Loire Valley (Charles Joquet Chinon or Breton Bourgeuil) etc (those are ones I just made up, don't have book with me, but you get idea). If someone knows nothing about wine, they can at least take the general descriptor into a decent wine shop and come up with something.