Like most people who get caught up in the day-to-day grind of life (getting up, going to work, eating, sleeping, etc), keeping good track of our expenses can be an elusive job, probably because it’s just such a depressing one. Isn’t it better to travel through life dealing with stuff as it comes up? Viking oven broken after 5 years? No problem. $527 repair bill. Exploded boiler billowing black smoke up the chimney and into the house? No problem. $7000 repair bill. $2000 to clean up the flood that resulted from the boiler explosion? No problem. 138,000 miles on the old Subaru? No problem. Until it becomes one.
So a little while ago, my partner, who is an odd combination of Yankee frugal and Gallic devil-may-care, decided to sit down and see exactly what was going where. And it seemed that out of everything we spent on culinary needs, a lot of dough was going towards wine. Because we like wine. Who among us doesn’t? Opening up a nice bottle of wine at day’s end represents for us a cleaning of one’s own internal lenses: things become a little clearer and more sharply focused, and the necessary detachment that modern working life requires is repaired. What cook doesn’t like to prepare dinner at the end of a crazy, wholly uncivilized day, and then sit down to a respectable repast and share a decent bottle? We do, and odds are that you do, too.
But when we looked at the hard dollars and cents of it, one thing became clear: we could take a $10 pork shoulder and make eight great meals with it. Once we opened a $15 bottle of wine, however, it was gone by the time dinner was over. So we had a few choices to make:
Give up wine.
or
Buy cheap.
You can probably guess what road we took.
We’re blessed with a local wine purveyor who very seriously knows his stuff; he knows what we like and what we don’t, and we can comfortably say to him, “We really want the
Gevrey Chambertin, but at the cost of the
Pepperwood,” and he’ll direct us to something that will make us reasonably happy at a price we can usually tolerate. The problem, of course, is that we live in Connecticut, and Connecticut’s archaic laws surrounding the distribution of wine result in a lot of limitations. So, you pretty much find the same stuff, from the same winemakers and distributors, over and over again, and after a while it gets boring. What happens next? You wind up buying more expensive bottles not only for quality but for variety. And that’s what happened to us.
But a few weeks ago, one of our best oenophile friends with a tendency towards peppery, pricey
Bandols turned us on to a once-yearly $5-a bottle sale at the esteemed Westchester retailer,
Zachy’s. The selections are pretty limited and tend to go very quickly; by the time our shopping trip was over, we had lugged three cases of wine to the car, at the cost of $60 each.
I was on my way out of the shop when I spotted a bottle of
Kermit Lynch‘s 2007 Vin de Pays du Vaucluse, for $8.50. Now, I don’t purport to be a wine expert by any means, but I know enough to trust Kermit’s profound ability to partner with particularly great winemakers, and to unearth some remarkable finds that would definitely qualify as “old-world” style wines: lots of mineral complexity and rusticity. No jammy fruit bombs that whack you over the head like a cartoon anvil. No bizarre animals on the label or moronic monikers like Fire Hose Cuvee or Jumping Appaloosa Shiraz. And usually, alcohol content reasonable enough so that you can actually enjoy the wine without going face-first into your dinner date’s braised pork belly.
So, we brought home the Vin de Pays du Vaucluse. Took out the small, boned out leg of lamb that had been sitting in the fridge, massaged with ras al hanut, garlic, and a squeeze of lemon. We let the lamb come to room temperature, and the wine breathe. We sipped.
Exquisite. Minerals, leather, spice, lavender, rosemary, warmth, pepper, iron, and earth. The wine bloomed as we cooked. The lamb, grilled and served with a twist on Mark Bittman’s
tortillita, (shrimpless and lightly dusted with Aleppo pepper) was tender and succulent, and magnificent the next day, dribbled with a bit of spiced yogurt.
Every once in a while, I come upon a wine that changes my mindset, that kicks me in the rear and shows me just how easy it is to go down the cheap and bad path, where mediocrity in the name of quaffability is acceptable, and marketing kitsch is the order of the day. It’s much more difficult to find wines that are easy on the wallet, but also qualitatively exceptional, authentic, and profoundly rich in terroir. Kermit Lynch’s Vin de Pays du Vaucluse is not, in fact, quaffable; it’s thought-provoking and meditative in the way that only the greatest old world-style wines are. This is one of the best, at any price. But the fact that it can be found for anywhere between $8.50-$10 a bottle makes it all the more delicious.
Grilled Moroccan Lamb
There are some culinary marriages that are so perfect together that they seem virtually miraculous: lamb and
ras al hanut (a North African spice mixture that literally translates, according to
Clifford Wright, as “head of the shop”) is one such match, made even better when accompanied by this not-so-simple table wine. This dish works with any cut, but if you choose to grill the way I did, remember to do so over indirect heat; if you don’t, the fat content in the lamb will cause an eyebrow-incinerating conflagration.
1 small, boneless leg of lamb, butterflied (about 2-3 pounds)
2 Tablespoons Ras al Hanut
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 Tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
A squeeze of lemon (Meyer if you’re lucky enough to find it)
1. Rub the lamb all over with the ras al hanut and garlic. Place in heavy duty freezer bag, drizzle in the olive oil, zip the bag closed, and massage well. Marinate in the refrigerator from 2 hours to overnight.
2. Remove the lamb from its marinade and bring to room temperature while you heat your grill.
3. Assuming you have a gas grill, heat all burners on high (until the grill temperature reaches 500 degrees F), and then shut off half of them. Place the lamb over indirect heat, and grill for approximately 7 minutes on one side and 3 on the other, for meat that’s just pink. Remove to a platter, tent loosely with foil, and let rest for 10 minutes before slicing thinly, across the grain.
4. Serve at room temperature, with a squeeze of lemon and rounds of warm, grilled bread, lavash, or pita.
Serves 2-3, with leftovers
Damn straight about Kermit’s Vin de Pays du Vaucluse, which we just poured with grilled pork tenderloin with a fig/balsamic glaze, roasted onions, etc. What a great bottle of wine; if that’s “country wine,” that’s the country I want to live in.
This is Chateau-neuf-de Pape for the poor. Same general region, and a far better value. Immense color, intriguing aromas, and a complex lingering taste – altogether a fantastic wine for the price