Wine Sediments

By Jamie Gabrini
The Wine Chicks

As I was smuggling more bottles home from work the other night, I realized I was out of room. Granted, I dont exactly have adequate storage. I have a wine tower in my kitchen that holds 24 bottles. (And have no fear, chitlin - my kitchen is quite cool.) But, zut alors! 24 bottles? How did that happen? What happened to the days when Id be shocked to find nary a drop in the house?

I know - old age. No, really - the thought of knocking back a bottle with dinner no longer holds the slightest appeal. With maturity (read: utter lameness) has come a lower tolerance and a strong dislike of hangovers. Think about it: would you want a searing headache when you gotta go stock bottles all day?

Ive also come to appreciate wine with food more. This, ironically (or not), seems to make me more hesitant to open bottles. I fret more about whether the bottle under consideration will work with the meal. So I keep bringing home more wine and adding to the cache I brought up from NYC.

Illness came to the rescue. I felt awful last week for a number of reasons, and the malaise lingered for quite a while. I promised myself that when I finally began to feel human again, Id break in to those great bottles Id brought with me, with or without reason. And tonight, out came The Big Guns: I opened one of the weirdest, stinkiest wines Ive ever encountered.

Now, Ive got a pretty high tolerance for stinky wines. In fact, I like me a bottle of stank. I like my wines real sassy-like. I want em to talk nasty to me. But this? This gave stink a new name. It is the gloriously offensive 2002 Barone Antonio Etna Rosso.

Ok, ok, its not stinky as in something-is-profoundly-wrong-here. Instead, its just straight up weird. Grown in the highly volcanic soil of Etna Rosso, this Nerello Mascalese, when first opened, smells like a match thats just been blown out. The first time I tasted it, I opened the bottle and seriously thought someone lit a match nearby. The fruit comes later, but even then, its remarkably austere for a red, and even moreso for a Sicilian. On the palate, theres an initial taste of red cherry, but its immediately supported by ashy-timber and spicy red pepper. The finish is zesty smoke. That sulphuric-match quality ties it all together, never letting up. Its a cup of lava, baby.

Not sold, eh? Believe it or not, its delicious. I sold it to a few doubting Thomases back in da city, all of whom came back and shook me down for a few more bottles. Before I left, it was one of the few bottles that made the final cut in my Quest For The Perfect Case. Id been hanging on to it, trying to think of what in the world would work well with it. A meal made on a whim turned out to be the perfect partner: lentils and lovage.

As Ive mentioned, my neighbors herb gardens proliferate up here, and the darlings end up with far more herbs than they know what to do with. Much like the sorrel Id used up a few weeks ago, I was given loads o lovage. But what the shmeck can ya do with that?? I somehow got it in my head that I wanted lentils, so I combined the two. I sauteed an onion in butter until it softened up, and added lentils, chopped lovage, fresh time, orange zest, and chicken stock. I let it simmer a loooong time, until the lentils became tender before adding salt and pepper. I served it with an olive batard and the Barone Antonio. The lentils extracted the earthy quality, while the salty olives in the bread heightened the racy red pepper in the wine. I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked, and am already salivating at the thought of Day Two for both the wine and the dish.

I would add that Ill update this upon the second day of tasting, but I suspect that neither the wine nor the dish may live to see daybreak.