We just received a UPS delivery of two shiny new copies of Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking: Uncork Your Creative Juices.
Hooray! After two years of intensive work it’s thrilling to see the fruits of this labor of love manifest in hardcover form.
We started our celebration with a bottle of Andre Clouet Brut Reserve Champagne. Ancestors of the Clouet family earned their fortune as printers for French royalty and then parlayed that investment to become purveyors of fine Champagne. On sale for $36, this predominantly pinot based bubbly was named #1 Champagne Under $50 by the Wall Street Journal. We agree!
We enjoyed it with some gently warmed Marcona Almonds sprinkled with Alaea Sea Salt.
Bruce Sanderson of Wine Spectator offers a poetic and perspicacious description of this sparkling star: “Whole-grain bread, malt and candied berry aromas and flavors highlight this intense yet creamy Champagne, which picks up a floral accent as it cruises to a long, mouthwatering finish.”
We are super busy getting ready for the book tour but we still wanted to enjoy a delicious dinner. So, we defrosted two servings of the amazingly delicious pre-cooked duck from Maple Leaf Farms. We enjoyed it with a side dish of our simple House Creamed Spinach and some freshly baked whole-grain bread. Our celebration red was the Paolo Scavino Bric Del Fiasc 2000.
We invested in a case of this wine pre-release and this was the first bottle we’ve enjoyed. It was worth the wait and it promises another decade or two of exquisite pleasure. The intense core of fruit was a perfect complement to our duck. (We discarded the packet of Orange Sauce that comes with it.) And, like all of the very greatest wines, the fruit was in harmonious balance with its structure. This yin and yang complementarity yielded a depth of seductive complexity that led us to wish we had opened a magnum. We poured the wine through The Vinturi twice about an hour prior to drinking.
In 2004, this wine ranked # 4 in Wine Spectator’s Top 100. James Suckling gives it 98 points and, if anything, that’s a conservative rating.
House Creamed Spinach Recipe
(Serves 2)
Spinach and cheese is one of our favorite combinations. We love Spanakopita but usually ignore the filo and dive straight into the heart. This recipe highlights the pure and perfect marriage of spinach and cheese. We use 2 packages of fresh microwaveable spinach. MW for 3 minutes each and then place in a saucepan on low heat. Cover the bottom of the pan in good Extra Virgin Olive Oil; we use Lucini.
Stir in a handful or two of shredded Pecorino Romano. Keep stirring gently until the cheese melts in with the Spinach and then serve in a bowl, with a squirt or two of fresh lemon. As you place fork-fulls of spinach on your plates some of the olive oil/cheesy spinach juice will remain in the bowl–dip in your bread and savor.
