Food & Wine Pros

What makes a vino da meditazione?

Posted by Peter Pharos on January 7 2022 at 08:04

You may have a fixed idea of what constitutes a vino da meditazione but, as Peter Pharos argues, many wines are well suited to sipping thoughtfully on one's own.

Wine is for sharing: it’s the drink of conviviality and the table, food and company, the elixir of good times.

There is, however, another aspect to Dionysus’ gift. It calls for low light and solitude, quiet and reflection. If there is music, it is unobtrusive. If there is food, it is in modest quantity, there not to lead, but to support. Called vini da meditazione by the great Italian writer and connoisseur Luigi Veronelli, these wines were meant to be one-on-one affairs between the oenophile and his or her wine.

The qualities that make a “meditation” wine are not strictly defined, but typically it has to be complex and very well made. It is usually suitable for ageing and has gone at least some way towards maturity. Sometimes it is said, erroneously, that it also needs to be sweet and/or over-alcoholic. In reality, the most important quality of a vino da meditazione is to be intellectually stimulating. You wouldn’t want a boring partner in a one-to-one conversation, would you?

Six Vini da Meditazione

1. Champagne

I will understand if you think that I’m just trying to wind you up. After all, champagne looks like the complete inverse of a vino da meditazione. It is drunk at the beginning, not the end, of a meal. It’s the drink of weddings and graduations, sport victories and business deals, not of solitude, but of big groups toasting to life.

Even if one wanted to drink it alone, it doesn’t lend itself to a single pour, the fleeting nature of bubbles being notoriously tricky to preserve, above even the technological might of a Coravin.

In a way though, Champagne is a victim of its own marketing success. True, some of the non-vintage supermarket cuvées, or even some of the lower-end grandes marques, might be better suited to spraying on your fellow F1 drivers on the podium. But aim a bit further up and you are rewarded with powerful, elaborate wines with multiple layers of aromas and flavour. At the top end, as in the case of the Holy Trinity of Dom Perignon, Krug, and Cristal, you have wines of remarkable complexity, gripping intensity, and at times astounding creativity. For the oenophile, they provide an intellectual stimulation that demands full attention. You might be surrounded by people, but the affair becomes strictly one-on-one.

2. Oaked white Rioja

Like Bordeaux and Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Rioja is an area where the fame of the reds outshines some excellent, and occasionally outstanding, whites. Young or unoaked white Rioja is a food wine, needing some seafood or grilled vegetables to accompany. It is the oaked, aged takes that are of interest here though.

The traditionalists of López de Heredia produce what just might be the best value-for-money white in Europe in Tondonia Blanco Reserva. Released well over a decade after the vintage, including six years in oak, it can easily take a further decade or two in the bottle. Elegant, aromatic, and very dry, it is a wine that rewards thoughtfulness. It can accompany a carefully curated meal, but it is also happy with a small snack: some green olives, a plate of pimientos de padron, maybe a bit of manchego. And when you are ready, invest on the magnificent peculiarity that is the Gran Reserva: it is not the easiest of wines, but it is one of the most interesting. A few slivers of jamón ibérico and a couple of thin slices of good bread are enough to see you through a glass.

3. Côte-Rôtie

Autumn is prime time for the elite of the northern Rhône to grace your table. If you are lucky enough to have suitably long aged Cornas or, even better, Hermitage (and if you do, brother, can you spare a glass?), now is the time to open them; these dark and earthy marvels need gamey and ferrous flavours to be tamed. It is, however, the gentler, occasionally viognier-tempered, Syrah of the “roasted slope” that makes a meditation wine for me. Prices at the higher end can match Hermitage for silliness, but I am happy with something as relatively reasonable as Chapoutier’s Les Bécasses. You need to start early though: I am waiting at least two more years before I start diving into on my 2010s. Alternatively, look at the Wine Society, which conveniently stocks the 2006. Pour just one glass. Put a bit of pâté on grilled bread. Ponder.

4. Barolo

Pinot Noir, the great prima donna of the French vineyard, makes for a natural meditation wine when at its best. Or so I hear, as the stratospheric prices put the great crus far beyond my reach and there is only so much thinking one can do with a glass of a village-level Fixin.

Instead, I look a couple of hundred miles to the southwest, at pinot noir’s transalpine opposite number. In Barolo and environs, Nebbiolo starts too muscular and virile to imbibe solo: it needs to dance with steak in its youth and argue with truffle in its middle age. But some time around the 15-year mark, when the sharp edges have mellowed away and the nose has finally attained perfect poise, the intellectual side of The Foggy One finally comes out.

One of my star wines of last year was a Pio Cesare Barolo 2000. At 17 years of age, it had started showing hints of caramel on the nose, was gentle enough not to harm a bit of Toma di Balme, yet robust enough to take on a bit of Crudo di Cuneo.

5. Sherry

I would understand if you thought that the way I have been compiling this list makes vinous meditation sound like an extremely expensive sport, if not an outright vice. Lamentably, it is probably a bit both. If, however, you want to stay on a budget, you can hardly do better than sherry.

Wine people have been saying that it is due for a major comeback ever since I can remember, yet even in these more adventurous years, it remains an underperformer.

While this state of affairs is very unfair to the good people and excellent winemakers of Jerez, it does have the advantage of allowing the rest of us to buy wine that is complex, interesting, and different, at remarkably low prices. Marks and Spencer stocks a range of Lustau-made sherries, the more interesting of which, such as the oloroso and the palo cortado, would still be bargains at one-and-a-half times the price.

And if you do want to invest in a more extravagant sherry, wonders await. Tradición’s VORS 30 year old Oloroso is only the latest to blow me away, a multi-layered marvel that needs only a biscuit and a thin slice of Gruyère – or maybe a handful of hazelnuts.

6. Nectar

It’s not just sherry: fortified wines are natural vini da meditazione. Complexity and intensity come easy to them, while the high alcohol suggests sipping as opposed to quaffing. In many ways, vintage port is the quintessential meditation wine and one of the two I considered a bit too obvious to include here (the other being Amarone).

Sweet wines come close behind, and one could make a case for many, from Sauternes, to trockenbeerenauslese, to Passito di Pantelleria. Allow me a left-field suggestion though and a bit of a cheer for the home team. The island of Samos in Greece makes sweet wines from the local Muscat variant, which are beautifully honeyed and elegantly moreish, yet somehow still remain very under-priced.

Waitrose stocks the classic Anthemis, a great match for many traditional Greek and Middle Eastern desserts, for just above £10 for 500ml. It is, however, the odd bottling of decades-old Nectar, a naturally sweet wine of sun-dried, overripe grapes, that achieves the truly profound. In recent years, the local co-operative has released limited quantities of the 1975 and 1980 vintages, both outstanding vinous experiences that demand one’s complete and unwavering attention.

You don’t have to take my biased word for it; Jancis Robinson gave the 1980 a very rare 19/20, above venerable ports costing many times the price - and you don’t have to remember if you need to pass it left or right.

So what is your perfect vino da meditazione? Do you agree with Peter or have another favourite?

Peter Pharos likes drinking, talking and writing about the wines of Greece and Italy. He also writes a bimonthly column for timatkin.com. (That's not him in the picture by the way but a stock photo ©tverdohlib @fotolia.com!)

Tags: white rioja côte rôtie sherry barolo champagne dessert wine port drink:sweet & fortified wine
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What kind of food should you serve with fine wine?

Posted by Fiona Beckett on January 18 2017 at 11:53

Most of the time we’re pairing wine and food it’s the food that comes first but for people in the trade it’s more often about what food will flatter the wine. But how do you ensure a successful match?

I went to two top end wine dinners last week which took different approaches to the task. The first a tasting and dinner hosted simultaneously in Brussels, Hamburg and London by the Bureau Interprofessionel des Vins de Bourgogne showcased premier crus, especially Chablis, Meursault and Gevrey-Chambertin.

They decided on a four course menu with effectively two main courses - roast breast of chicken with pearl barley and vegetable risotto to showcase Maison Albert Bichot’s Domaine du Pavillon 2010 Meursault les Charmes and seared rump of lamb with borlotti bean, marrow and confit tomato cassoulet to go with a 2013 Gevrey-Chambertin Clos Prieur from Maison Louis Max.

The first course, which was paired with Nathalie and Gilles Fèvre’s 2010 Chablis Vaulorent was a a dish of very lightly cooked smoked fish with chive and lemon creme fraiche and ‘young leaves and shoots’

Picking out the flavours of the wines

Clearly the thinking had been to come up with pairings based on the flavours that could be found in or which complemented the wines. A trace of smokiness in the Chablis, for example, mirrored that in the fish, the cream offset it and the citrus picked up on the still fresh acidity of the wine. Chicken is invariably a safe bet with chardonnay so they were on solid ground with the Meursault, though the glazed shallot was an imaginative touch which particularly flattered the wine.

Interestingly a similar ingredient appeared in the other dinner, a very glamourous affair hosted in the Berry Bros & Rudd directors’ dining room. Here the caramelized note was provided by the glazed endive that was served in the first course with duck pastrami and crisp little gorgonzola fritters which picked up the rich golden character of the two 2004 burgundies they served, a La Sève du Clos Meursault from Arnaud Ente and a Le Montrachet Grand Cru from Domaine des Comtes Lafon. A particularly bold pairing that could only have come from road-testing the match with the wine or one very similar to it.

Should you save the best wine for the cheese?

Given they had both red burgundy and bordeaux to show off they went for the classic French solution of serving the burgundies - a 1999 Jacques-Frederic Mugnier Chambolle Musigny and a 1999 Gevrey-Chambertin Clos St Jacques from Domaine Armand Rousseau - with the main course (roast saddle of lamb with anchovy, parsley and mint) and the bordeaux with the cheese which I seem to recall, though things were slightly hazy by this stage, were a Rollright, a washed rind cheese made in the style of a Reblochon, a punchy Lincolnshire Poacher and a Shropshire Blue. Personally I found they didn’t really do the wines - a fragile 1945 (NO, that’s not a misprint - 1945!) Clos Fourtet St Emilion and an utterly glorious 1990 Chateau Margaux (for me the wine of the evening) many favours but what do you do? The sort of people who dine at Berry’s (mainly chaps of a certain age, I imagine) no doubt both expect cheese and to drink the best reds in the house with it. Personally I’d rather go with beef or lamb and if I had to serve cheese pick just one but again guests expect a proper cheeseboard, regardless of whether its contents detract from the wine or not. It’s a dilemma.

The burgundies did work beautifully with the lamb however.

Should you serve a sweet wine?

Desserts were also handled differently. Given that burgundy doesn’t produce sweet wine the BIVB didn’t serve anything with the refreshing lemon and honeycomb mousse they picked, which was accompanied by poached fruit, brown sugar meringue and almond brittle. It worked fine - you didn’t really need one - but an alternative might have been to serve a liqueur from the region from someone like Gabriel Boudier.

At Berry Brothers they decided to use the dessert course as a platform to show off a very special port - the Graham’s 90 Very Old Tawny Port that had been specially bottled to celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday that happened to be that day (what a treat!). They boldly paired it with a chocolate delice with passion fruit curd and ginger ice cream which worked surprisingly well - it was still extraordinarily vibrant - though the cheese - especially the Shropshire Blue - would have worked too.

Apart from the use of caramelisation, one of the other interesting things I noted was the use of bitter ingredients, particularly in the main course lamb dish at the burgundy dinner which included olives, capers and preserved lemon - all of which tend to heighten the fruit in older wines. Other dishes employed anchovy, cavolo nero and rosemary to similar effect. Care was taken though not to overwhelm any of the dishes with over-flavourful vegetables or intense jus which could have knocked the stuffing out of these spectacular vintages.

Ideally you would have a run-through before a dinner of this kind but with old, rare and possibly priceless wines that might well not be possible. The key thing I think is to make sure the chef and front of house team both try the wines being poured with the food so they can consign it to their palate memories for a future occasion.

(Incidentally a neat trick from Berry Bros. They marked both the menu and the glasses with coloured dots so you could remember, in your befuddled state, which glass was which!)

I attended the dinners as a guest of the BIVB and Berry Bros & Rudd respectively.

Main image credit: Kerstin Riemer from Pixabay

What to eat with Cloudy Bay

Posted by Fiona Beckett on October 7 2014 at 08:09

For most people the New Zealand winery Cloudy Bay is synonymous with sauvignon blanc but their range now extends to sparkling, sweet and red wines, a message underlined by a dinner at Hix Mayfair (in Brown’s Hotel) the other day.

Hix’s style - like that of St John - is minimalist: carefully sourced ingredients cooked as simply as possible. In fact a couple of his suppliers were at the table including the ebullient Peter Hannan of the Meat Merchant whose whose fantastic guanciale I tried the other day.

Cloudy Bay’s wines, on the other hand are generous and full of personality - classically ‘new world’. How would the two get on?

The best matches ironically were not with sauvignon but with pinot of which they now have two - one from their home territory of Marlborough, the other from Central Otago.

The more delicate Marlborough one - a 2012 - was paired with a rib of Peter Hannan’s superb bacon with Bramley apple sauce and the more robust 2011 Te Wahi with two courses: a Glenarm Estate steak with Hampshire ‘pennybuns’ (ceps) with parsley and a washed rind cheese called Guernsey Goddess made by Alex James (of Blur fame) from Guernsey milk and washed in Somerset Cider Brandy. That was the biggest surprise because although the cheese wasn’t particularly ‘stinky’ it was very rich and creamy but was a fantastic match with the sweet-fruited pinot.

The better known sauvignon - now on the 2014 vintage - kicked off the dinner with a threesome of oysters (I like the way Hix avoids the word ‘trio’) - some natives, rocks with cucumber green chilli and shallots and some deep-fried rocks served with a rich bearnaise-y style mayo (at his Fish and Oyster House in Dorset he serves a ransom mayonnaise but as ransoms aren’t in season I’m guessing he used herbs). That was the best match of the three but the natives were somewhat overwhelmed by the wine and the oysters with rocks and chilli not quite as good a match as you’d expect. (I think it needed more Asian-style seasoning which isn’t really Hix)

The next course of Wye Valley asparagus (a second, late harvest) and purslane salad was spot on though. There’s more going on than just asparagus flavours in the Cloudy Bay Sauvignon but enough to link to the dish - an explosion of green herbal flavours that was just delicious.

The course I didn’t think quite worked was a steamed fillet of St Mary’s Bay turbot (below) with sea beet and rape-seed oil where the fish was ironically so fresh it threw the accompanying 2013 Cloudy Bay chardonnay out of kilter, emphasising its oak rather than its creaminess. I think an older vintage or a light butter sauce of some kind - or even melted butter (better than rapeseed oil with this wine) - would have made it work.

And the luscious 2007 Late Harvest riesling wasn’t done any huge flavours by the Peruvian Gold chocolate mousse. Given Hix uses British ingredients it would have been better with something apple-based.

So great food, great wine but only a limited number of great matches in my opinion. It’s a problem with wine dinners. Restaurants don’t have the time or staff resources to tweak or change their dishes to match the wines and its hard taking wines out of their natural register - in Cloudy Bay’s case, the big flavours of Asian-accented New Zealand food. That doesn’t mean of course you shouldn’t do it. A preliminary run-through tends to highlight any problems.

I attended the dinner as a guest of Cloudy Bay.

Image credit: Matt Boulton, CC BY-SA 2.0

Pairing Indian food with the biodynamic wines of Bonny Doon

Posted by Fiona Beckett on June 5 2010 at 10:49

I have to confess I found it pretty hard to concentrate on the finer nuances of the food and wine combinations at the recent Cinnamon Club dinner. But when the speaker is the discursive Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon and you're sitting next to him that's no great surprise. Before the meal had even started we were into Kierkegaard and a vigorous discussion of terroir in the bar below over our glasses of Vin Gris de Cigare (a typically unorthodox full-bodied rosé based on Grenache, Cinsault and Roussanne).

The Cinnamon Club for those of you who are not aware of it, is based in Westminster and is one of London's top Indian restaurants - and a regular haunt of nearby MPs and lobbyists. (Or it was until the recent expenses scandal.) Its food, which is presided over by the genial Vivek Singh, is designed to be wine-friendly and they frequently hold wine dinners there.

Grahm, one of the most colourful figures on the international wine scene, probably needs no introduction but you may not be aware that his wines, which tend to be made from the same grape varieties as are grown in the Rhône, are now produced biodynamically. (For an account of how his approach to winemaking has changed check out this brilliant comic strip created for the Wine Spectator here) I've always liked his wines - he abhors over-extraction and excessively high levels of alcohol - and I was fascinated to see how they would shape up with spicy food.

Rather less well than I had hoped was the disappointing answer. Successes were the Vin Gris de Cigare which kicked off brilliantly with some mildly spicy nibbles of chicken tikka and pooris, a lovely Ca del Solo Albariño which perfectly hit the spot with an edible martini of Norwegian king crab with tamarind and green pea relish and a stellar pairing of the luscious late-harvest Le Vol Des Anges Roussanne with a mango fondant and chilled mango soup.

But I felt the intervening dishes, though skilfully spiced didn't show their accompanying wines to best advantage: Roast loin of rabbit with dried fruits in a mustard marinade took the edge off the opulent, waxy Cigare Blanc 2007 (a blend of two thirds Roussanne, one third Grenache Blanc) and the two reds, a gamey Syrah Le Pousseur 2005 and a rich, complex 2004 Cigare Volant were similarly diminished by their respective partners, a Tandoori breast of Anjou squab pigeon with peppercorn and cloves and a smoked loin of Welsh lamb with Chettinadu curry. In a more conventional Indian meal with several dishes on the table or with 'wetter' curries I suspect they would have been slaughtered.

I realise this is a personal view. I'm not a big fan of full-bodied reds with spicy food but the wines of the Rhône - or Grahm's particular take on them - seem particularly ill-suited to the task. You need more upfront fruit, a style he no longer embraces.

Incidentally Grahm read an extract from his new 'vinthology', as he calls it - a collection of his musings and writings called Been Doon So Long - involving a spoof encounter between Loulou Bize Leroy and Robert Parker. I've been meaning to read it and certainly will now. You can find out more about it here.

I attended the dinner as a guest of the Cinnamon Club.

A menu for Riesling

Posted by Fiona Beckett on May 20 2010 at 07:47

Earlier this week I was involved in judging a selection of South African rieslings at High Timber in London and afterwards we had a three course lunch that had been designed to match with them. This is what we ate and drank.

First the wines which were all tasted blind. There were just 16 of them, the purpose of the exercise being to assess where South Africa currently stands in comparison to its international competitors. Most were dry and a few sweet: pretty well all were appealing while, in the case of the drier wines, not yet having the complexity of more established Riesling producing countries and regions.

The winners were the crisp citrussy De Wetshof Rhine Riesling 2009 and Paul Cluver Noble Late Harvest Weisser Riesling 2009 though we also particularly liked the late harvest Rieslings from Jordan (the Mellifera 2008) and Klein Constantia.

The first course was described as Nepalese Chicken and was a dry tikka-like dish served with a mint raita. It paired really well with the crisp young De Wetshof Riesling and also with Paul Cluver’s Close Encounter, a light 8% Riesling that had totally perplexed us having 39g of sugar but still tasting bone dry.

The next course was Coconut Poached Monkfish with Thai-spiced broth and steamed Pak Choi, a toned-down version of a Thai green curry (more creamy and coconutty, less hot). That worked particularly well with a limey 2008 Thelema Riesling which had been one of my own favourites in the line-up, and with the Klein Constantia and Jordan dry Rieslings.

Finally there was a dessert of mango with vanilla rice pudding with caramelised pistachios which I’d recommend to anyone seeking to show off a sweet Riesling: warm (rather than hot) rice pudding with fresh (Alfonso, I would guess) mango purée. The nuts would have been better uncaramelised, I think, just there to add a bit of texture. That was a great pairing with the Paul Cluver Late Harvest Riesling and with the 2008 Jordan Mellifera (but not with the 2006 which had evolved more marmaladey, Tokajish notes)