Food Pairing: Layer Cake Malbec
One Hundred Percent Pure Love
Today’s pairing is for the last bottle of Layer Cake Malbec I have. There’s a little more around, but, after tasting it for the first time a year ago, the 100% Malbec from Mendoza is just hitting it’s stride. Let’s put it this way, just the smell alone of roasting chicken is a perfect pairing for what has evolved into a very robust glass of wine, Layer Cake Malbec. So my pairing is one of the land where the wine was borne. A simple roasted chicken with mirepoix top heavy in garlic and rosemary.
Ingredients:
3-5 pound Chicken Whole
4 Spanish Onions
4-6 Heads of Garlic
6-8 Carrots
1 Bunch Rosemary
Sea Salt
Cracked Black Pepper
Olive Oil, a little virgin, but not too pure or it will burn and can be over kill
Unsalted butter
~ Roasting Pan
~ Cutting boards X2 (NEVER PUT RAW CHICKEN ON A SURFACE YOU WILL USE FOR OTHER PREPARATIONS).
~ Mixing bowl, salad bowl or any bowl that has enough room for your cut mirepoix
Preheat your oven to 450F
Technique:
As your oven is heating, you should be able to clean, dress and season your bird. I always start by rinsing off the chicken in ice cold tap water and removing (in the sink the neck and giblets that are in the chicken). Allow to dry for a moment on some paper towels, but, you DO NOT WANT TO PUT YOUR CHICKEN ON YOUR CUTTING BOARD. I typically use one board for the raw chicken and then place in the sink immediately. There is no room for error on this.
To prepare your mirepoix:
~ cut your onions into four wedges
~ cut your carrots into nice size chunks (2 inches long). If the carrots are very big, you may want to cut them in half (length wise) first
~ cut the garlic heads in half
I don’t peel my mirepoix/aromatics; I like the rough side and use the roasted vegetables as a piece of dinner. I prefer to have the skins involved, but that’s up to you.
In bowl, place your cut mirepoix and coat with Olive Oil, season with salt and black pepper and put to the side.
Chicken:
~ Lay breast side up in a roasting pan. (Yes, you can truss your bird, but, I am at home and the chef isn’t watching, so it’s optional)
~ Season the entire bird (including the cavity) with salt and black pepper. Don’t forget the wings…you know you eat those first.
OPTION: In a professional kitchen, I would typically lift the skin covering the breast meat and put a mixture of chopped rosemary and garlic so the fat would carry that flavor throughout the flesh. Today, I am not that professional, so it’s up to you.
~ Once the chicken is seasoned, pour the bowl of mirepoix around the body of the chicken. I like to fill the cavity at this point with a little bit of everything including a few sprigs of my fresh rosemary.
~ Add as much rosemary as you prefer to the mixture; I tend to leave it right on the ’sprig’ as opposed to removing the leaves. It makes it easier to remove at the end and by that time, the rosemary will have done it’s job.
Drizzle olive oil over the entire bird; not too much, she should just shine once you rub it into the flesh.
Place in the oven.
It’s going to take close to an hour for the bird to cook. Typically, I start the oven at 450F to
Crispy skin is the real treat with a roasted chicken
With this type of Fall cuisine, I tend to add two sweet potatoes to the oven while roasting the chicken. You are going to need to have a starch with your meal and honestly, sweet potatoes and yams are nearly a perfect food.
They will do better at the lower temperature so if you chose to crisp your skin at 450 and then reduce the heat, add the potatoes when you turn down the oven. Otherwise the sugars will caramelize and burn in the sweet potatoes. But, once done, you really only have to cut the potato open and scoop onto the plate.
The chicken is done when the skin between the leg and body ‘cracks’ when you pull it or the internal temperature is 165F. It’s protocol to allow any meat to rest before carving, so I would advise allowing the chicken to cool a bit and the juices to disperse while preparing your plates.
Scoop a healthy portion of your yams/sweet potato into the middle of the plate.
Place your favorite roasted mirepoix around the plate as they have been roasted, seasoned and brought to perfection with the drippings from the chicken
Carve slices of chicken breast and place on top of the sweet potato
Serve!
Layer Cake Wine: A lofty goal- Exquisite, affordable wine
By VIRGINIE BOONE
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Jayson Woodbridge in the vineyard with Commander Roo
FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Jayson Woodbridge is not a man who takes shortcuts. It’s what has made him very successful at producing a much-sought-after, super-high-end Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon under the whimsical name Hundred Acre, which sells easily for $250 and up a bottle.
“When you look at the genesis of something, you could make a hundred little shortcuts that would save you time or money or whatever,” he said. “All those little shortcuts turn into a mountain of shortcuts and will kill you. You’re never going to reach the absolute peak you could hit.”
At the high end of winemaking, he’s not alone in his zeal. But he’s one of a very few with this climb-Everest-or-die-trying mindset who are also making wines for $15.
“It’s got the perfect name, the image it conjures up is automatically attractive,” said Martin Reyes, wine buyer at St. Helena Wine Center. “It sounds delicious and sure lives up to it, always full and luscious wines, you get a lot of bang for the buck.”
His inspiration is personal. A few years ago, Woodbridge, who didn’t grow up with money, felt that with Hundred Acre he was betraying the memory of his humble Sicilian grandparents, who made wine at home as well as pizzas and cakes by hand. So he came up with another line of wines, Layer Cake, made as precisely as Hundred Acre but for a much more reasonable price.
“I realized my grandfather never could have afforded a bottle of Hundred Acre,” Woodbridge said. “It would have been out of his reach … that I had never made a wine that the everyday man could buy and enjoy with his family, that didn’t break the bank.”
He started tasting hundreds of wines in the $15-$20 range, finding himself ultimately unimpressed. The offerings were dominated by huge corporate wineries with large overheads and little imagination. With his lean, mean team and maniacal approach to pursuing perfection, Woodbridge figured he could do better.
So he began to search out fruit sources in some of his favorite wine regions of the world, places he felt he could get great fruit at reasonable prices. He would still rely on high-end winemaking techniques, employing the same people who make Hundred Acre to make each and every Layer Cake wine.
He then sat down and designed a simple black-and-white label to evoke the lovingly prepared cakes he recalled his grandmother making for him as a boy — the ultimate symbol in his mind of something handmade with love. He placed the details of his grandfather’s homespun, home-winemaking teachings on the back.
“My grandfather said to me the vines live in the ground and the ground has layers in it like grandma’s cake,” he explained. “It goes down into those layers and pulls the chocolate and mocha and blackberry jam and strawberries and all these flavors out of the ground, and he explained the taste and smell of it was layered, too.”
The core Layer Cake wines include a shiraz from South Australia, an old-vine primitivo from Puglia, Italy, and a malbec from Mendoza, with a Cotes du Rhone syrah added in 2007 along with a Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon. Woodbridge and his team of winemakers, including Helen Mawson and Hundred Acre consultant Philippe Melka, see the choices as a type of passport, a way for people to explore and taste from some of their favorite wine-growing areas.
“There’s never been one label made by the same team flying around the world and doing this,” Woodbridge added. “My personal mission is to make something really affordable and really stunning and show the wine world this is what can be done at this price point.”
He explains the key, in addition to low overhead, is that he takes a lower profit on the wines, taking that money to buy better fruit and induce the farmers with whom he works to let him pick when he wants to pick. He also thinks he’s better attuned to know what an American wine drinker will like in an Australian shiraz, Argentine malbec or Italian primitivo, a varietal genetically identical to what we know in California as zinfandel.
The project requires at minimum four harvests a year, a pace Woodbridge welcomes as a chance to absorb a constant flow of information. He likens it to having the chance to live four times the average life span. The wines are made, bottled and labeled in their country of origin and then shipped to the United States, where they land in specialty retail shops or high-end grocery stores. At this point, the demand far outweighs what Woodbridge and his team can supply.
Despite Layer Cake’s runaway success, as with Hundred Acre, if Woodbridge isn’t happy with the end results in any given year, he simply won’t make the wine. It happened in 2007 with the Australian shiraz; a 2008 vintage is out now. The quality, he says, just wasn’t up to his standards.
Woodbridge looks at it instead as a chance for people to try his other wines, the dark and brooding malbec grown at 4,500 feet elevation in the Andes mountains, or the inky, spicy old-vine primitivo from Puglia. Or even a Napa Valley cabernet, made in a fashion similar to the way Hundred Acre is made and aged in the same French oak barrels used to age the pricier wine.
Never one to pass up an interesting opportunity, Woodbridge has just finished bottling a 2007 pinot noir sourced in part from Carneros’ stately Stanly Ranch that will go by the label name “Cherry Pie.” His grandmother made those, too.
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58% of shoppers say they are more likely to purchase from websites that include live chat.
This research effort was conducted in order to address the following questions about the efficacy of live chat. Many retailers believe that having live chat is a meaningful advantage in their market. In a recent study of companies using live chat, over 70% indicated that they believed the technology put them ahead of their competition. This study is interested in uncovering how effective live chat can be. Does it play a role in conversions? Can any link be drawn between its use and the lifetime value of those it engages? The report also includes data regarding best practices for those firms who already employ live chat.
More than 250 regular internet shoppers were surveyed in this effort using an opt-in, third party panel. While Bold Software, LLC funded the research, their name and all product/trademarked names under their control were never transparent to the participants. The goal of this effort was to investigate the overall benefits of live chat software – not to investigate one particular provider.
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The Hypocrisy of our Democracy: Pat Kuleto Fined
Digital Veraision, Leader
Let’s face it, Pat Kuleto makes wine. He also is one of the most formidable restaurateurs in the country. Why wouldn’t he be able to offer his wine brand in all of his restaurants? American society is built on the concept of entrepreneurialism, capitalism and greed. Why penalize the guy for being smart, thrifty or resourceful? I bet if Burger King had it’s own brand of wine; there’d be no trouble in allowing them to sell it in EVERY Burger King in the US.
Furthermore, why is the wine industry, (a declining 2B dollar a year business) being managed country wide by arcane laws that need a big revamp so everyone has a chance to participate, sell their wine or try and make a living? I’ve noticed lately that oil, Texas oil, Louisianna oil, Alaskan oil…US oil isn’t kept from being sold to anyone…yeah, you can’t drink it, but, proceeds from the sale affects so many deep pockets that they (they=the tired old men running your state that have too much to lose for their home) surely won’t legislate to make it difficult to purchase.
Just imagine, Arkansas government saying you could only buy Texas oil and anyone purchasing gas from refineries that have used anything but Texas oil….we are going to shut you down. That’s right, the two gas stations for fifty miles that bought a US made product are going to be shut down because EVERYONE didn’t ‘just offer’ Texas borne and bred gas. What if gas made from Louisiana oil was cheaper that week? Wouldn’t you as a business man in the United States of America want to make a few extra pennies? Of course you would.
In order to move forward, steps need to be taken to separate the laws that govern wine and spirits. Let’s start by dividing the two categories. Wine can and should stand alone from a legal stand point, unless you know some 17 year old kids that are out there ordering Lafite, Kuleto or any other wine for their next house party. That’s right I said it. When I was 17, I can remember those days sitting on the couch with my old man watching Sunday afternoon football and Lafite Rothschild used to have those great commercials with ’scantily clad’ busty chicks and the lonely guy that was only more masculine when drinking Lafite. I digress.
Kuleto is a good man; he makes a nice wine and has some outlets to sell it. What’s the harm in him trying to maximize profit or offering his family brand in his restaurants? It seems second nature, to me.
San Francisco, Calif. — Pat Kuleto, a well-known vintner and one of San Francisco’s most prominent restaurateurs, has been fined and restricted after running afoul of California’s confusing tied-house laws.
“Tied-house” laws regulate how alcoholic beverages are marketed and how manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers interact. The term originated in England to refer to a bar “tied” by ownership or contract to a specific beer or liquor manufacturer.
Pat Kuleto Prior to Prohibition this practice was allowed in the United States, but critics complained that it encouraged overconsumption of alcohol, as tied houses offered “free lunch” if you bought a drink to promote business.
To prevent this common ownership, tied-house laws were passed establishing the three-tier system, in which alcoholic beverages are sold by producers or importers to wholesalers, and by wholesalers to retailers. The laws were also designed to prevent a few alcohol-beverage suppliers from tying up bars and dominating the market (as has been true for beer in the United Kingdom).
Under these tied-house laws, the tiers are distinct: Wineries generally cannot own retailers (including restaurants), and neither can distributors (wholesalers), although within California, wineries may directly sell to both wholesalers and retailers as well as to consumers. That’s not true in most states.
The laws sometimes seem arbitrary and can be confusing and apparently contradictory at times. James M. Seff, who heads the winery law practice at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in San Francisco, says, “The laws have mostly outlived their usefulness and don’t take into account the way modern business operates.” that the tied house laws are confusing and make little sense in today’s context.
One impact of the tied-house laws, however, is to support distributors, who are important politically and discourage direct sales to restaurants and retailers.
Many winery owners and partners also have invested in restaurants and other retailers, including Don and Rhonda Carano, who own Vintners Inn in Santa Rosa, Leslie Rudd with Press (and Dean & LeLuca and Oakville Grocery), Tim Mondavi, Michael Mondavi (including his Folio Enoteca in Napa’s Oxbow Market), Chris Williams, Koerner Rombauer, Michael Moon, Garen and Shari Staglin, Bob Trinchero. Pat Kuleto says he knows of about 100 vintners who invest in restaurants, including some in his restaurants.
Kuleto started Kuleto Estate Winery in Napa Valley (he sold 70% to Foley Estates this year) and is a significant and managing partner in seven restaurants including new Epic Roadhouse and Waterbar in San Francisco, as well as Nick’s Cove on Tomales Bay, Farallon, Boulevard and Jardiniere in San Francisco as well as Martini House in St. Helena.
The part of the law that tripped up Kulteo is that a winery can sell his wine in only two restaurants in which he has an interest in California, and the winery cannot supply more than 15% of the alcoholic beverages served there. And, unless the winery sells less than 125,000 gallons of its own brands annually in California, they must supply wine to their own restaurants through a licensed wholesaler.
If a winery has interest in more than two restaurants, it must not to sell its own wine in the additional establishments.
(By contrast, microbreweries have no limits on the amount of their own beverage they can sell, and they can even sell wine and spirits without an expensive license.)
By law, Kuleto wasn’t supposed to sell his Kuleto Estate Winery wines in more than two of his eateries. This also applies to minority owners of wineries and, likewise, to vintners who are minority partners in restaurants.
Like many other alcohol-beverage laws, tied-house laws had not been enforced consistently by the ABC. The understaffed bureau also typically doesn’t pursue most infractions (other than serving minors, for example) unless there are complaints.
Kuleto was cited for selling his wines at more than two restaurants, and first he ws offered Draconian punishments: Closing Farallon, Boulevard and Nick’s Cove (and Kuleto Estate Winery) for three months (or not serving alcoholic beverages, which could amount to almost the same thing), plus a $300,000 fine. Kuleto says this could have put the restaurants out of business.
After extensive and expensive negotiating, he was fined about $80,000 and says he paid the fine personally (legal fees were also extensive).
The three restaurants were put on probation for 30 months, and fans now can only buy Kuleto’s wines at two of his restaurants, presently Waterbar and Epic Roadhouse. He intends to switch from Waterbar to Martini House, so that people in St. Helena, where his winery is located, can again enjoy his wines.
Pat says that many of the vintners have filed to the ABC to legalize their investments. In addition, Seff points out that more than 40 exceptions to the laws have been passed, some to benefit specific companies.
Kuleto believes that the law could easily be made reasonable and serve its real intent if it were just to require that no more than 15 percent of the wine in any restaurant come from someone with interest in a winery and that the restaurant buys through a distributor. “This would protect the distributor and accomplish its spirit.”
He says that he and other restaurants in this position all buy from distributors and don’t try to bypass them. “We’re not some giant chain trying to cut the distributors out,” he says.
Seff agrees: “All Pat wants is to be able to sell his wines in his restaurants, and also let other winery owners invest in his restaurants and sell their wines there.” He adds that the ABC is inflexible. “They say, ‘We’re here to enforce the laws. If you don’t like them, go to the legislature to change them,’ ignoring the political difficulty of making changes.”
Other wineries, restaurants and special event organizers report that the ABC is being increasingly aggressive in enforcing the laws, and also that they’re receiving increasing complaints from individuals trying to force enforcement of existing rules.
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- Food Pairing: Layer Cake Malbec
- Layer Cake Wine: A lofty goal- Exquisite, affordable wine
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- 58% of shoppers say they are more likely to purchase from websites that include live chat.
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- The Hypocrisy of our Democracy: Pat Kuleto Fined
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