2004 Billi Billi Shiraz

I grabbed this on New Years eve to head to a low key party, and I wanted to bring something to sip and drink with some folks. I had some bottles of this stuff from Garagiste, and it seemed like a good opportunity to try it.

As it worked out, Jeff was already done with his drinking and nobody else was looking to get hammered, so I basically was the only one partaking. And as normally happens in these situations, I ended up finishing the bottle off myself (probably drank 3/4 of it). This is not a boast of some magical drinking prowess (most bottles I drink are equivalent to about a six pack, which is not much at all) but rather a setup for an interesting attribute of this wine - drinking the better part of a bottle of it will not yield you a hangover.

In terms of taste, it did have a slightly different (although not bad) flavor compared to other Shiraz that I normally drink. Definitely less ‘jammy’, which is great for some folks. Not sure how aging would affect this stuff, because the tannins were not over the top and it was not very sweet. At the price point I got it (about $15 or so) it is probably not heavily designed to be cellared anyway.

Overall, this is good table wine and not bad stuff to drink at a party. I like having a variety of stuff to drink now and then, and this stuff fits the bill well. 

Butterfly your meat

One of the best things about enjoying wine is finding fantastic food to enjoy with it. Living next door to Jeff & Ray really upped the ante for me in terms of eating and drinking. Sure, I always liked a good feed and a good drink, and I was starting to get into wine, but having two more guys into it as well to bounce ideas off of and have drunken discussions late into the night really made me try many new things. It also helps having a wife who is largely supportive of efforts to make awesome food and drink nice wine.

So recently for some reason I struck upon the idea of butterfly cutting a pork tenderloin into a flatter strip of meat and frying it like a steak. I live in Redmond, WA (basically a suburb of Seattle) and the weather here 75% of the time is depressing, rainy and overcast. Not condusive to grilling. So I have become very good at using a frying pan or oven to cook what I want.

The thing is that it is hard to char nicely in the oven for something like a pork tenderloin, and pan frying it is hard. But when you butterfly it open, you get yourself a nice, think, steak-shaped entity of mean that pan fries well. It also attracts more surface area for spices, which makes for more intense flavour.

So far I have tried this once with a pork tenderloin and twice with a top sirloin cap. Get a sharp knife (my new Shun Elite Santoku works great – thanks Kim!) and slice down the middle of the meat, stopping with the knife above the cutting board at the thickness you want the ’steak’ to be. With a thicker piece of meat you need to repeat on each side a few times until you get something thinner and wider than the original. Don’t worry about the peaks and troughs – this will work in your favour.

Put your rub on (I like the Tom Douglas rubs) with any other spices (like powdered garlic and onion) and rub it in. Now put in a stainless pan with some olive oil at medium heat, and cook until browned each side (normally about 5 minutes a side). Put in the oven at 500 to adjust for doneness.

I highly recommend making a pan sauce as well. After you take the meat out of the pan, add 1/2 a cup of red wine to the pan while it is still on the heat. The wine will help pull the stuff on the pan out and mix with it. Add some cream and simmer a little bit, and put into a bowl. Dipping the meat into this will be heaven. The 2004 Heartland Cab Sav made a great wine for a reduction sauce.

2004 Adelina Shiraz

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I will admit it, some wines scare me into keeping them for a while before drinking, based on appearance rather than price or reputation. We are all told from childhood to not judge a book by its cover, and yet we all do it until we die because it is human instinct to do so.

The Adelina Shiraz, whenever I pick it up, is always wrapped in exquisite paper around the bottle (nicer than the paper around a bottle of Grange, methinks). The bottle seal is real wax rather than metal or plastic (and bloody hard to get off when you want to open it, really). I would describe this as “packaging drama”. For a $30 bottle of wine, it is impressive. Here is the bottle in its glory:

I just ordered my third year of the stuff (I previously got the 2004 and the 2005, and just ordered some 2006). I decided that after ordering the third year of it, I should make sure that it is stuff that I like (if I really like it, I would start ordering more each year).

To test drive this bad boy I let it sit opened for about an hour while I finished off another bottle of wine and started on my steak. After some breathing time I poured some out and had a go. The smell of this stuff is not something that you notice very strongly. Some of the Australian wine that I drink has a very strong nose on it, but this stuff is more subtle than that.

The smell does not always give away the taste, but with this wine it did. This is not your typical limestone + jam bomb that South Australia puts out by the crateload, but rather a more subtle drop that has the trademark flavour. I will say that I tasted a bit of a tannic edge to this one (and I am not alone in this, I found out perusing the tubes later). The wine was also overwhelmed somewhat by the peppery flavour of the steak rub I used (thank you Tom Douglas). There is a definite dryness to the wine as well.

A lot of what I read about this wine says that it has 15 – 20 year aging potential. The tannins in there will certainly have a lot of time to break down. I have 3 more bottles of it to sit around for a few years to test that theory. I will say that I think that this wine is subtle, but the flavour is good. I poured another glass to drink without food after dinner, and I am quite enjoying it. The tannins in this wine, while obvious, balance nicely with the fruit rather than overwhelming it like the Walla Walla style does. Even though it is different to my favorite style, it is enjoyable and a change and therefore I like it.

Update

After a couple of nights of being open, and sitting in the wine fridge with a rubber stopper in the bottle, this wine has opened up really nicely. The tannic edge has wore off somewhat, and it definitely tastes sweeter. It was very pleasant to finish off – I could not stop at one glass.

If you have this wine, I recommend letting it sit for a few hours before drinking, rather than just an hour or so. Very similar to Wilson Gunn Shiraz in that regard.

Going to be in Napa next weekend

I would love any suggestions for places to visit and restaurants to eat at. I will be there on Sunday the 13th and on Monday morning as well. Leave a comment if you want to let me know about anywhere good. I will be staying in Yountville.

I love a good Cab, and I actually do want to see a nice big building with some vineyards. I am a tight bastard though, so please no $40 tastings for me.

On sediment

When I finished off my bottle of Director’s Cut Shiraz, I noticed that my glass had a huge amount of sediment at the bottom:

I know that some people hate this and think that it is icky, but I have come to love seeing this in a glass. I don’t think that I ever had a wine with huge sediment that I did not like, so normally seeing the chunks of grapey goodness at the bottom of the glass confirms a great bottle of red for me.

I have a picture of the aforementioned display of grape chunks, saved for the lucky readers of my blog (all 6 of you).

Yeah, I realize that this is one of the things that decanting is for. Personally, I enjoy drinking the wine slowly enough to let the sediment stick to the glass so that I don’t end up drinking any of it. Over the years I have gotten bloody good at this, hence my display of 4 chunks at 90 degrees to each other. Besides, I like to think that the chunks are leeching more goodness into the wine right to the end.

Why so much of the stuff? Because some wines are unfiltered. It seems logical to me that filtering the wine would remove bits of grape that could be imparting flavour to the wine as it sits in the fridge, testing my willpower over the years before I give in and open it. Hence I prefer unfiltered wines.