The simple pleasures
The cousins, Gus and I are driving down to L.A. this morning for five days of family fun, centered around a bar mitzvah. We didn’t want to make anything elaborate for dinner, so opted for burgers on the grill. I’d been given this bottle of Kendall-Jackson 2006 Napa Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon, from Mount Veeder,
as a welcome gift when I joined Jackson Family Wines in March, 2014, so it seemed appropriate to drink it on this occasion. With the salad, we had the Paco & Lola Albarino
I liked so much last year when I first encountered it.
I made the burgers, with store-bought organic, grass-fed beef.
I mixed in a little salt, pepper and garlic powder, plus a bit of Dijon mustard, then Keith grilled ‘em up nice and rare. For the buns, I like an English muffin, in this case sourdough. Some horseradish-infused mayo, backyard-grown romaine, thinly-sliced red onion, home-grown tomatoes and avocado, and of course some melted cheddar, and voila.
We had a nice Caesar salad
and the acidity on the Paco & Lola stood up well to the anchovies.
Meanwhile, the cork on the Cab had broken halfway while I was pulling it, and then the bottom half plunged into the bottle, so I had to resort to a coffee filter and a mason jar to strain it. (Necessity, the mom of invention.)
But the result—sort of an inadvertent double-decant—was glorious. At 8-1/2 years of age, this Mount Veeder Cab was everything you’d want a mountain Cab to be, and with years ahead of it. Melted tannins, gobs of Veeder blackberries, cherries and chocolate, fine acidity, a glorious, delicious wine.
I entitled this post “the simple pleasures” because in truth I think that most reports of wine-and-food pairing tend towards fine restaurants or expensive foods. But that’s not the way we drink and eat most of the time, is it? It’s not the way I do. You don’t need to be in a white-tablecloth restaurant paying a fortune to enjoy great wine and food. Our hamburgers would have been a treat anyway for a non-beef eater like me, but having such a nice wine uplifted the experience, making it a special treat on the evening before our trip.
Actually, we don’t have to be in L.A. until Thursday, so tomorrow, Wednesday, we’re spending the night in Pismo Beach. This is a place most people, I suspect, drive right by on the way to, or from, L.A. and San Francisco. I once spent a weekend down there, years ago, just to check it out, but I’m sure Pismo’s changed a lot since then. I’ll report on what I found tomorrow.
Great piece Steve. Glad the ’06 is showing so well. It was a fantastic vintage. Cheers!
Had to do the exact same “filtration” with the 2007 Wesmar Hellenthal – twice.
I was horrified the first time the cork disintegrated, fearing the wine was going to be seriously compromised.
Quite the opposite, the wine was sublime
Quick bit of advice. Do not use paper towels as a filter unless you know they contain no bleach