One of our favorite importers is Neal Rosenthal. He’s been in the wine business a long time and still manages to find interesting, classically made, beautiful wines. Unfortunately, many of them rarely make it to Michigan. So we’ll occasionally do some research on wines from his portfolio and make special orders for wines we find intriguing.

The latest such bottle is from Swiss producer Cave Caloz from a region in the Alps, near the northernmost end of the Rhone river, called Valais. The wine is made from a charming, difficult-to-grow, unheralded grape called Cornalin (also known as Rouge de Pays) that is almost exclusively grown in Valais.

Vineyards here are often 750 to 1100 meters in elevation – one might think too cool for making wine. But they generally face south giving them full exposure to the sun and to warm Mediterranean winds that come north from the sea. The rocky environment allows for good drainage which the winemaker maintains gives their wines both extra concentration of fruit and a decided mineral character. The specific vineyard from which this wine is made, “Les Bernunes,” is one of their highest elevation and sits in a microclimate that Caloz again maintains helps the grapes express great concentration of flavor and added tannic structure.

Graceful and fruity, this is a deeply colored, almost purple-tinted shade of red. Very lively, it’s just fun with ample floral and fruit notes. But it’s simultaneously serious wine with nice, refreshing mineral qualities and just a bit of a tannic edge to the finish. With a slight chill, it’s a perfect summer red.

Like most Americans, we haven’t had much exposure to sake in the past, so we were thrilled to have the opportunity to taste through a dozen or so sakes available in the local market so we could learn a bit more about it. Pretty much the only thing we enjoy more than learning about drinking is drinking while learning, and by the end, we were totally on board. So once we had done the tasting, we decided on two bottles for the list, both of which are now available.

Suigei “Drunken Whale” – $9 gl / $42 btl

Clean but surprisingly oily and savory, this remarkable value sake struck us immediately as perfect for drinking with food. In general, sake is widely considered a food-friendly beverage, which is something we look for across our beverage program. But the texture and weight of Drunken Whale in particular makes it ideal for pairing with richer dishes like the fried perch or the grilled trout with fennel, but the clean finish and lack of bitterness lets it accompany plenty of other items from our current menu.

Suigei, the brewery, labels this a Junmai, which typically carries a minimum seimaibuai (portion of the grain of rice remaining after polishing) of 70%. But they also label it tokubetsu, a term that denotes a remarkable quality beyond the legal designation. In this case, Drunken Whale is made from a single rice variety (Akitsuho) and also polished well beyond the requirements of junmai with only 55% of the original grain of rice remaining, discarding most of the fats and proteins that make up the outer shell of the rice. The result is a viscous, savory, flavorful drink that is simultaneously lean and dry. We prefer to serve it cold, but it would be worth experimenting with at different temperatures.

Dassai Otterfest 50 – $32 btl

The term “Otter Fest” is a reference to the name of the brewery itself: Dassai. Dassai means “otter festival,” a reference to an ancient name for the prefecture in which this sake is brewed, which was formerly home to a species of otter that would roam about the river beds and display the fish they caught, almost as at a market, bazaar, or festival, hence otter festival. Later, a regional poet took the name Dassai as he would spread his inspiration and reading material about his room much like an otter would its fish.

Dassai proclaims it took the name from not just the otters but from the poet because it wanted to pay homage to both the regional history and artistic nuance.

And from tasting the sake, it’s hard to disagree.

We’re proud to serve the Otter Fest 50, made entirely from Yamada Nishiki rice, widely prized by sake brewers for its prime brewing characteristics (e.g., water absorption). Before entering the brewing process, the rice is polished down to 50% of the rice remaining. This extra polishing is, of course, a more labor intensive process and involves wasting a great deal of potential product in order to achieve a higher quality result. Dassai also makes a “39” and “23,” numbers again referring to the percentage of rice remaining after polishing.

These sakes with such a high degree of polish, both literally and figuratively, are termed Daiginjo – a premium sake with more elegance and nuance. With no protein and fat left after polishing, only the starchy center remains. In this case, the result is honeydew, ginger, and peach on the nose and a less viscous, cleaner, more elegant mouthfeel when compared to the Drunken Whale. And it makes us crave some raw fish, a clean salad like our veggie carpaccio, or even some beef tartare.

– – – – –

We’re only starting to explore sake, so it’s hard to claim any expertise. We’ve learned a bit, and more than anything, we’ve learned that we love to drink sake. And we’re thrilled to share these two with our guests. Cheers!

Last week, we started switching up our red wine offerings in preparation for the nicer weather and lighter fare of spring. There will be more changes coming this month, and there are some interesting new reds already on the bottle list – but for now, the spotlight turns to two aromatically stunning reds that we recently started pouring by the glass.

2013 Messanges Rouge (Domaine de Pallus)

Chinon is arguably one of the better known regions of France’s Loire River valley, famous for its red wines made from cabernet franc. Many of the highly regarded, long-lasting wines from the region are produced from grapes on steep, stony slopes that lend themselves toward more structured, robust wines full of dark fruit, tannic structure, and even meaty complexity. This is not one of those wines. Instead, Messanges pours a bright and translucent shade of red, shows elegant floral notes on the nose, and demonstrates lighter red fruits on the palate. With herbal and spice notes, it’s certainly cab franc. But grown in sandy soils and aged without any oak, it’s one quaffable glass of grape juice. As with each of the wines we choose for our list, it’s selected for its versatility, able to accompany any number of our shared plates. Try it with the duck sausage. Or the rabbit ragu. Or the gnocchi. Or… you get the idea. Have fun with it.

2012 Kepos (Ampeleia)

Elisabetta Foradori is well known for her eponymous wine produced in northern Italy under rigid adherence to biodynamic farming practices – but she and two friends also own and operate Ampeleia, an outfit based out of Tuscany. Home to Chianti, Tuscany is practically synonymous with the grape sangiovese, but Ampeleia, located in the coastal sub-region of Maremma, is focused on a more diverse Mediterranean mix of grapes. Kepos, their mid-level offering, is a blend of Grenache, Mouvedre, Carignan, Marselan, and the red-fleshed Alicante Bouschet. The resulting wine, grown along the sea in some of the sandier soils of Tuscany, possesses a beautiful nose of flowers and berries and shows a complex mix of fruits – dark cherry, black raspberry, and every other damn fruit we could possibly relay in our moderately pompous wine tasting notes – on the palate. Finishing bright and lively, this is just fun wine that, despite its medium/full body, drinks great on the patio.

Photos in this post are courtesy of our delightful host Sarah Berger.

Poor sherry. For the latter half of the 20th century, this historically beloved fortified wine had been largely shoved aside, often relegated to the dustiest corner of the liquor cabinet behind an old bottle of Canadian whisky and stale vermouth of indeterminate age.

Thankfully, as is true with so many traditional forms food and drink that once seemed all but forgotten to popular culture, dry sherry increasingly has been finding a home at dinner tables once again.

And we couldn’t be happier about it.

So What?

If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to [sherry].

– Falstaff, Henry IV Pt 2       

Dry sherry is tremendously versatile and food friendly. It’s been called an acquired taste, but so are a lot of the world’s great pleasures. And this one really demands food to be at its best, so what better place to feature it than a restaurant?

For the foreseeable future, we’re going to be using sherry in a few different ways, offering our guests a several opportunities to get re-acquainted with this remarkably versatile drink. We’re serving some delicious options by the glass, naturally. But if you order our new rhubarb tart, you’ll see that it’s plated with an amontillado sherry whipped cream. And we’ll be using amontillado in a cocktail (recipe below) to highlight its distinctive flavors in a completely different fashion as well.

An Embarrassingly Oversimplified Introduction

Sherry is an Anglicization of the term Jerez, the name for a region at the southern tip of Spain where sherry wines are produced. While various inexpensive blended sherries became the most common in the US during the 20th century, there are a wide array of styles being produced by bodegas, ranging from light and crisp fino to syrupy dessert sherries.

Drier styles include fino, amontillado, and oloroso. Each is produced from the palomino grape, grown in soils so chalky that they’re practically white. The wines are fermented as any other but then graded by a winemaker who determines if the wine is more elegant and headed for a fino barrel or more robust and headed for a future as oloroso. For fino, the wine is fortified with a wine/brandy mix to raise the alcohol up to around 15% and left to develop a cap of active yeast called flor. As the wine ages, protected by the flor from oxygen, it acquires saline, savory qualities all while losing weight and viscosity as the flor eats up the nutrients in the wine. If the fino ages so long that the flor beings to die, oxygen enters the wine and turns the fino into amontillado. And finally, a wine that was never suitable for flor to begin with is fortified to a higher alcohol percentage and left to age, oxidizing to produce the less-dry oloroso.

PX and moscatel are grapes grown in less chalky soils, often harvested and dried on mats to concentrate the sugars before fermentation. Once fermented, some are fortified and others are not, but all are quite sweet and more suitable for a small apertif or dessert.

Also known for its use in some high end rums, the solera system of aging is perhaps most famous for its implementation in Jerez. When wine is removed from a barrel for bottling, the wine is replaced by wine from a younger barrel. That empty space is in turn filled from an even younger barrel. And so on. When a bottle is labelled with an age statement (e.g., 12 years), that number refers to the average age of the resulting wine in bottle.

We’re currently featuring an amontillado and an oloroso on the menu, though we have a second amontillado and a PX for those who really want to dive in and try several. As spring wears on, we’ll add a fino as well.

Additionally, we’re featuring a cocktail that puts amontillado’s nutty, savory flavors to the fore. If you enjoy it, consider making it at home using the recipe below.

Recipe: The First Humane Principle

• 1.5 oz amontillado sherry
• .75 oz Del Maguey vida mezcal
• .75 oz ginger syrup *
• .75 oz lemon juice
• Piment d’Espellette (or other chili flake/powder)

Shake the liquid ingredients with ice and double strain into a rocks glass filled with ice. Dust the top of the drink with the espellette pepper and serve with a smile. (* – There are plenty of good ways to make ginger syrup, including simply juicing ginger and combining with sugar to form a 1:1 ginger simple syrup.)

And remember: Whether you drink it with us or elsewhere, drink more sherry!

We love brunch. You love brunch. And on Easter Sunday, April 5th, we’re going to be serving an awful lot of brunch with expanded hours and reservations.

Date: Sunday, April 5
Hours: 10:00am – 4:00pm
Brunch only; no dinner service that evening

Reservations are available now. Call 313.438.5055 to inquire.

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