Sauced In New York Sometimes the food is in the sauce, sometimes we are
We all have our comfort zones and this applies to wines as well. I am very much at home quaffing a California Cabernet, Chardonnay or Zinfandel or even a New York Riesling, but less so drinking wines with unpronounceable names, employing unfamiliar grape varieties and having their origin in exotic and vaguely threatening countries. For the past several weeks I have adventurously left the zone and wish to report that the experience was not at all unpleasant and certainly illuminating. The Fort Orange Wine Society held a tasting this month featuring well-rated wines that were “under the radar”. We tasted wines from Macedonia, Greece and Turkey, among other locales, and I left the tasting impressed enough to purchase a case and a half. The wines I enjoyed the most were the 2011 Tikves Rkaciteli (trying saying that three times quickly), a white wine from Macedonia, that I thought would be a wonderful alternative to the usual suspects (Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc). This is a very pleasant wine with abundant fruit flavors and crisp acidity. It doesn’t hurt that it can be had for under $11 a bottle. By the way, Tikves is the region and Rkaciteli is the grape variety and is reputedly one of the oldest varietals on the face of the earth, dating back some 3,000 years, at which time it paired beautifully with grilled wooly mammoth. My other favorite was a Turkish red – the 2009 Kayra Okuzgozu. Once again, Kayra is the producer and Okuzgozu is the grape. This was a big and concentrated wine that spent 16 months in oak barrels and could probably use a few more years of bottle aging to allow the tannins to dissipate.
My next walk on the wild side took me to a Moroccan Restaurant in Schenectady called Tara Kitchen. If you have not been there, go immediately. While the seating is limited and the physical layout less than exemplary, the place exudes a warm family atmosphere and the food was simply delicious – perfectly prepared and deftly seasoned. (Take a look at Yelp and Trip Advisor and you will be blown away by the customer reviews). To wash down my memorable main course of lamb with honey, prunes and apricots, I ordered a bottle of a Moroccan wine – the Les Trois Domaines Guerrouane Rouge 2011. This was a Rhone style blend crafted at the foot of the Atlas Mountains and complimented my lamb dish to a T.
No More Room on the Stove at Tara Kitchen
I suppose the take away from this piece is to at least give these strange and foreign sounding wines a try when the opportunity presents itself. Or as Yogi Berra famously said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
