First blogging steps. 2008 Alzipratu Calvi Cuvée Fiumeseccu and 2002 Catherine & Pierre Breton Chinon Les Picasses

Here goes with my first real blog post. It’s a new forum and medium for me, so be patient (if you’re even out there).

Monday night we decided to make pesto for dinner after being inundated with basil. We purchased over a half-bushel of basil from one of our CSAs and have been busy making basil puree as a base for winter pesto and other dishes. We also made basil ice cream. Yum. Anyway, with all of this basil on hand, pesto was an obvious choice for dinner. We added green beans and sautéed summer squash rounds to the pasta and it was good. What to serve with this? Well, we recently grabbed a couple of bottles of 2008 Alzipratu Calvi Cuvée Fiumeseccu on a trip to Montreal (C$20 at the SAQ, imported by Oenopole), and Corsica's not that far from Genoa...

The wine was delicious, great value, and a nice match with the pesto. It was crisp up front, floral on the nose, and nicely round at the back. There was a pronounced minerality, although maybe less than I expected based on the domaine’s soil (clay and granite). What really stood out to me was a finish that made me blurt out “lemon curd.” Lemon curd because there were strong lemon notes at the end but also a rounded creaminess, so to speak. The wine is 100% Vermentinu and the domain is chemical free. I’m looking forward to the other bottle.

The real wine story of the week, however, is the 2002 Catherine & Pierre Breton Chinon Les Picasses we opened last night and finished up tonight (imported by Dressner; purchased on a trip to New York in 2007). Inspired by a post at McDuff’s (not sure how to link; I’m new to this Googley stuff) about pairing a 2004 Picasses and lamb burgers, I decided to open one of our two bottles of 2002 Les Picasses. Wow. I loved this wine. Minerally, full but not heavy, nice black fruits, rustic in the best sense of the word, but still fresh. Sort of a ruby color, slightly faded. I love the Bretons’ wines. Sadly, they’re unavailable in Ontario. Even more sadly, the Bretons apparently lost their plot in Les Picasses in 2004.

The food pairings also went wonderfully. We had beef burgers the first night and pork leg steak with sage the second night. As McDuff wrote, Loire Cabernet Franc and burgers are a terrific pair. I had been planning to open a Baudry Domaine 2006 with the burgers, but was then inspired by his post on the 2004 Les Picasses. Why not grab the bottle I had been holding? After all, it’s Tuesday. As for the second night, pork and sage is one of the most perfect food combinations that exist and the wine went along quite nicely. Both nights, though, it was the Picasses that stole the show.

Now it's time to deal with a Zucchini onslaught.