There are a number of wines people may notice popping up for encores on our wine pairing menus.

Not just types or styles of wine – some repetition there is inevitable – but particular bottles from favorite producers. Wines that have a generally strong affinity for our cuisine but that are also unique in some way and perhaps have a story we enjoy sharing with our guests. Things we are glad to have discovered and which we enjoy enough to revisit from time to time.

One such favorite that comes to mind is the Au Bon Climat “Hildegard.” I first encountered Jim Clendenen, the “mind behind” ABC, a dozen or so years ago. At that point I knew his wines pretty well, I had been selling and serving them for at least a decade, but he came in one night for dinner during my days as a sommelier at Le Français. I was impressed by his knowledge and passion, in particular regarding the wines of Burgundy. I started to pay more attention when I encountered him at tasting events, and came to better appreciate the talent and integrity of his own winemaking.

Click the above image for a sample of our Au Bon Climat 1999 “Hildegard” Tasting Notes

I remember in our early days of matching wines to Grant’s food at Trio, I stumbled across the Hildegard and paired it with a dish we were serving at the time. It is indeed a unique and delicious wine, but also something fun to talk about. The wine is named for the second wife of the French Emperor Charlemagne. Apparently the famous white wine vineyard in Corton owes its name to the Empress Hildegard’s preference for white wines: they didn’t stain the fair-haired Charlemagne’s beard. Jim’s story further speculates as to her general concern about red wine spillage around the palace, and how she used her influence to have white wine grapes planted in the previously red-wine only Corton vineyard. Whatever the true history may be, the significant point is that Chardonnay is in fact a relative newcomer to Burgundy; through medieval times the important varietal in the region was Fromenteau, an ancestor of Pinot Gris. As a tip of the hat to the likely earliest white wine plantings in Corton, Jim blends Pinot Gris with Pinot Blanc and Aligoté – two other varietals with long historical roots in Burgundy.

The next time I saw Jim, I let him know how much we’d enjoyed pouring the Hildegard, quizzed him for more information about that wine, and commented that the vintage we’d used seemed to be showing very well for the few years of extra bottle age it had. He agreed that the aging potential for the wine seemed excellent, and let me know that he was setting some aside for that reason. He invited me to contact him in case we’d like a supply of an older vintage.

Click the above image to view a sample of the Wild Turbot Recipe Notes

More recently at Alinea, I couldn’t resist revisiting the Hildegard on our pairings here, and the wild turbot featured in the initial Oenophilia subscription release was a wonderful dish with that wine. Again, the local distributor had a vintage that worked well for us. However, when we started putting together the selections for the wine club release, I gave Jim a call and we talked about back vintages he had available at the winery. He sent me some to sample, and we absolutely loved the way the 1999 was showing. He was kind enough to make some available to us, and we were very proud to have included it in the lineup. Here is a link to the notes included in that subscription package.

I think the Hildegard is a terrific wine; a wonderful project that we are happy to be able to showcase in this manner and hopefully help draw attention to. We are especially pleased to have secured some additional supply of that 1999 vintage to be able to offer as a featured winebar selection!

Au Bon Climat 1999 “Hildegard,”$44

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How we got to Kerner………

I’m often asked how I arrive at the selections that we serve as Alinea’s wine pairings, and the fact of the matter is that there are many paths to that end, several of which repeat themselves with regularity. This particular story is one about a wine lying in wait, so to speak, for just the right dish.

Click on the above image for a preview of the Kerner Subscription Tasting Note.

To backtrack a way, there was a point several years ago where I put out a call, as I often do, to a number of our wine vendors. Knowing a menu change was imminent, and having a general idea of what the Chefs were working on, I requested samples of red dessert wines for a proposed chocolate dessert. The wine ultimately selected in that instance was the Moscato Rosa from the Abbazia di Novacella in Italy’s Alto Adige. It was a happy discovery, a wine I had not had before, a wonderful pairing for that particular dessert, and in fact, a wine that would make a return appearance with a different dessert much later on. At the time, in the process of learning more about the winery, I tasted a number of their other wines. Among these, I very much enjoyed their Gewürztraminer, a vivid and delicious example of that varietal which we put to work in a pairing later on. Another wine that caught my attention was their Kerner, a more obscure varietal (a hybrid cross of Riesling and the red grape Schiava) that I had little experience with. I was struck by the lovely aromatics, the ripe fruit character, unique flavor profile, and the sense of richness deftly balanced by its elegant structure. It was clearly an “Alinea wine,” and I tasted it with a number of dishes over several seasons, but never found the right match.

Last spring, knowing of our interest in the wines, we were contacted by Novacella’s importer to arrange a visit from the winery’s sales director, Marco Scartezzini, during his stay in Chicago. He led our sommelier team through a tasting of their lineup, and filled us in on aspects of the winery’s history and operations. It is a terrific story; the winery is part of a working Augustinian abbey that dates back to the 12^th Century. The winemaking operations are led by one of Italy’s top enologists, Celestino Lucin, who has been an important figure in the recent surge in success and acclaim for the wines of this incredibly beautiful region in the foothills of the Tyrolian Alps. I enjoyed the tasting immensely, reminded again that the Kerner was still on the list of wines that I very much wanted to feature. Additionally, a very pleasant surprise that afternoon was the Lagrein from their vineyards near Bolzano, a wonderfully round, approachable rendition of a varietal that can tend to be very tannic and astringent in youth. I noted it as something else that should find its way onto a pairing in the future.

Click on the above image for a preview of the Pork Belly Subscription Chef’s Note.

Not very long thereafter, the Chef gave me a dish to try before adding it to the menu. It featured crab and a complement of Thai-inspired flavors. The more obvious choices didn’t really match up well, and I started pulling samples from the shelf of wines I collect for such occasions. The wine I selected at that point to serve with the dish was one I had only recently been introduced to, a unique blend of Chenin Blanc, Grenache Blanc, Viognier, and Roussanne, from a producer named Sequillo located in South Africa’s Western Cape region. It is a delicious wine and we enjoyed presenting it to our guests. But as sometimes happens when Chef Achatz introduces a new dish, things get changed and tweaked until he is satisfied. When the dish appeared on the menu it featured pork belly rather than crab, and as other elements subtly changed, I realized that the Sequillo was no longer matching up as well as I would have liked. I began a new round of tasting with the now-finished dish and realized we were in a range where Riesling would be a good pairing, but failed to find one that made for a really compelling match. In a sense, the dish came off as a great vehicle to show off a beautiful Riesling like the Dönnhoff Felsenberg Spätlese we’ve included in the Tour Subscription, but the overriding goal with our pairing selections is to find wines that more specifically flatter the food. Somehow the Kerner came to mind, and I called our distributor to have a sample dropped off, tasted the dish again the next day, and was very pleased to have found the right dish to finally allow us to feature the Kerner. We have been serving it for several months now, and it has been a very successful pairing. It is gratifying to be able to introduce our guests to something a bit unusual, and we especially enjoy the chance to pour such a lovely wine in an ideal context. That particular pairing is in fact included in the current Oenophilia subscription offering, and I’m happy to share a preview of the notes included in the subscription package. We are also happy to be able to offer for sale some of the wines mentioned above. Just follow the links. And look for the Sequillo White to return on a future pairing………….

Wines Mentioned Above:
Abbazia di Novacella 2007 Kerner
Abbazia di Novacella 2007 Lagrein
Abbazia di Novacella 2008 Gewürztraminer
Abbazia di Novacella 2007 Moscato Rosa “Praepositus”
Hermann Dönnhoff 2006 Riesling Schlossböckelheimer Felsenberg Spätlese
Sequillo Cellars 2007 Sequillo White

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Back after a busy Labor Day Weekend I spent a day playing catch-up with my usual checklist of chores and issues as well as simultaneously trying to think through the organization of the retail end of this website, work on wine selections, and begin to flesh out notes and introductions. And mostly, trying to get to the heart of what the concept of the wine cellar section should be. The idea I am trying to zero in on and define is that I would like to see us create something that could function virtually the way we would like a wine bar to function. A place where people could drop in and get a chance to see, sample, and learn about the kind of things we (this particular group of sommeliers) enjoy.

Obviously, we can’t sell you a glass or tasting portion over the Internet, but we can show you what we like, what interests us, what we think is worth a try. And perhaps those who stumble across this will be enticed to order a bottle or a sampler-pack, and get some friends together and do some tasting.

Of course, all this cogitating makes a person thirsty, and it was an extremely welcome break when my 4 pm appointment showed up. Laurent d’Harcourt is the export director for the Champagne house Pol Roger. I have long been a fan of their wines, and at 4pm a glass of their white foil is very refreshing indeed. (As was the chance to chat with Monsieur d’Harcourt on a variety of topics). It had been a few years since I’d had a chance to taste through their full line-up, and I was intrigued to try their newest offering….called ‘Pure’. Like the ‘white foil’ it is also a non-vintage blend of a similar percentage of chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier but it is a brut nature, i.e. no dosage. It is quite pretty, very crisp and vivid, and something I will look forward to playing around with in our wine pairings. I also enjoyed the chance to sample the 1999 Brut Vintage and Blanc de Blancs, as well as the 2000 Rosé, they are all very good but I have to admit I couldn’t help my focus slipping to the 1998 Cuvée Winston Churchill poking out of his wine tote.

The Winston Churchill is always a favorite of mine and I had not yet had a chance to try the 1998. Amazing how a small pleasure can make your day. It is a delicious wine, with layers of smoke, mineral, floral, spice, and ripe orchard and tropical fruit notes intertwined with a really luscious texture. Though very tasty and satisfying on its own, it also made me want to go in search of something amazing to eat. It is no doubt a wine that will stand up to something bold and complex. And to circle back on what I started talking about, what I would want for our website is a broader opportunity (than we have in the restaurant) to turn people on to things as wonderful as this, and hopefully make them available in places where they are not as readily found. And, hopefully very soon, we will have the winebar up and running and at the end of a blog like this we can put a link for you to click on and have a bottle of Winston Churchill start on it’s way to your very doorstep.

Wines Mentioned Above
Pol Roger 1998 Cuvée “Sir Winston Churchill”

Joe Catterson, Alinea Wine Director

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As we get well into our 5^th year of operations at Alinea, this launch of the Alinea:Oenophilia website seems the right opportunity to offer a look over the shoulders of our wine team at some of what goes into our wine program, and more importantly, some of the benefits we reap as a result of our experiences at the restaurant.

Obviously, this will serve as the ideal forum to present some greater detail and background for the selections offered in the subscriptions offered elsewhere on this site. But also, we look forward to the chance to pass along some of what we learn along the way. Over the course of a season, our wine pairing format allows us to explore specific regions or varietals in often remarkable depth. The menus and wine pairings at Alinea are in a constant state of evolution; new discoveries are a constant source of pleasure and further inspiration.

One of the obvious rewards of our jobs is the chance to taste many great wines; sometimes with the added dimension of a visit from the winemaker! We look forward to the chance to share our impressions of some of our favorite products, as well as the amazing people behind them. I, for one, very much look forward to contributions to this forum from the members of our sommelier team, a very talented group with a wide range of interests and expertise.

In addition to our head sommelier, Craig Sindelar, current members of the team are Richard Richardson, Ben Aviram, and William Douillet. They all bring to Alinea a tremendous passion for wine and, most specifically, the key role it plays in a great dining experience. Wine is, after all, a pretty much infinitely fascinating subject. There is always something new to learn, taste, and experience. We hope you enjoy the chance to share some of our discoveries and perspectives.

Joe Catterson, Alinea Wine Director

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