2010 Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc

This delightfully golden wine has fresh peach nectar on the nose which carries right through to the palate. Sweet at the first sip and then a citrusy kick all the way to the finish. A simple minerality frames bracing traces of lemon and lime which make it perfect with lightly seasoned seafood as well as lighter cheeses like Gouda and goat.

North Coast Pinot Grigio

This easy sipping varietal has hints of peachy nectar with a light even clean melon on the palate. You’ll also detect delicate aromas of almond, citrus blossom, and pear that follow through to a balanced palate with a long finish. These even flavors from sip to swallow make it excellent with salads lightly dressed in extra virgin olive oils along with fruity balsamic infusions.

Photos courtesy of Black Stallion Winery

Vintage Narragansett Beer Ad

If you’ve ever explored coastal New England, particularly a beach bar or bait & tackle shop, you have no doubt noticed Gansett on tap or an old timey white & red poster on the wall next to a walk-in cooler. Narragansett Lager’s roots run deep but often you’ll get checkered opinions about its taste and quality. This may have something to do with the fact that this beer was essentially on hiatus from 1981 to 2005.

It all started in 1888 and quickly grew into New England’s largest brewery. Narragansett Brewing Company took pride in using only the purest ingredients and highly skilled brewmasters. Prohibition temporarily set them back but at least they were granted special permission under the Volstead Act to bottle and sell beer for “medicinal purposes”. I imagine this was “near beer” or pretty darn close to it.

Fortunately, in Prohibition’s aftermath, local financier Rudolph Haffenreffer came to the rescue turning over the operation to his sons Rudolf, Jr. and Theodore. Rudolf, Jr., a savvy marketer, hired Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) to design the goofy Chief Gansett logo. Brands like Haffenreffer Lager Beer, Pickwick Ale and Pickwick Bock Beer were successfully marketed into the 1950s with the legendary “Hi Neighbor. Have a Gansett” line. Starting in 1944, Narragansett had a long standing marketing

Theodore Geisel's Narragansett Beer Labeling

partnership with the Boston Braves and later the Boston Red Sox.

By 1955, Gansett was the number one selling beer in New England. The company celebrated its 1 million barrel mark by rewarding each employee with a gold-plated bottle of lager. Operations continued chugging along into the 1970s with a stunning array of lagers like Hanley, Kreuger, Haffenreffer, Boh, Ballantine, Bohack, Munich and Falstaff. Ales included Croft, Pickwick, Bavarian, Boston Light, BB Stock and India Pale. Special brews like Kreuger Pilsner, Haffenreffer Malt Liquor, Dresden, Bavarian, Bock, and a Porter also made their appearance. By the mid-70s, things started going downhill due to intense competition from mainstream national breweries highly marketing inferior suds.

In 1981, the Narragansett Brewing Company closed its doors in Rhode Island effectively curtailing quality beer production. Operations continued in a Fort Wayne Indiana plant but among other factors, Fort Wayne’s water source was no match for Scituate Reservoir, considered the finest in the country.

It wasn’t until 2005 that lifelong Rhode Islander Mark Hellendrung, along with a group of New England investors, purchased back the rights to Narragansett Beer and brought back former Brewmaster Bill Anderson to recreate the high quality original. Today, authentic Narragansett Beer is back in bottles and on bar taps for you to taste and decide for yourself whether it’s still truly craft made.

Photos courtesy of Narragansett Brewing Company and carolynkellogg.tumblr.com

Here’s No Chewing Allowed‘s official advice for complete enjoyment: “Please take either a
 whole Truffle or just bite a piece of it and squeeze it gently between your tongue and 
upper palate. It will start to melt immediately. Move it around your mouth and 
feel the rich flavor comes alive.
Enjoy the creamy feel of smoothness…..Mmm.”

These truffles ship direct to you so start browsing and order some up! If you’re going to indulge in dessert, do it right…forget prepackaged cookies or candy bars out of a vending machine. Your soul will thank you!

Photo courtesy of No Chewing Allowed

Fever Tree Ginger Beer

This here ginger beer is not just a bottle filled with sweeteners and ginger flavorings. Fever-Tree’s Ginger Beer took over a year to develop and perfect. It uses a proprietary blend of three gingers, and these can vary depending on the season. What you will taste is made from fresh green ginger from the Ivory Coast, which is hand picked and a hot Nigerian ginger (something no other producers use) and a third ginger whose special source the company declines to disclose.

You’ll notice a cloudiness due to the fresh grated ginger root which is steeped in hot water for 48 hours. The ginger juice is then drawn off and added to spring water and pure cane sugar.

Fever-Tree’s ginger beer has a distinct, bracing ginger kick with smooth earthy undertones and a spicy finish making it a perfect pairing with vodka or dark rum. Simple classic cocktails like The Moscow Mule (ginger beer and vodka) and Dark ‘n Stormy (ginger beer, dark rum and lime) take on a whole new dimension when made with Fever-Tree Ginger Beer.

But best of all, these small individual glass bottles are a perfectly refreshing drink all on their own shipped directly to you. Especially when packed with your lunch during winter….ginger is the best known home remedy defense against the common cold. And this is certainly one tasty way to ward off those nasty rhino viruses.

 Photo courtesy of Fever-Tree

North Fork Potato Chips

Believe it or not, it wasn’t too long ago that wineries on Long Island’s North Fork were few and far between. Instead, vast potato farms sprawled across the land planting roots in the fertile yet sandy soils enhanced by a marine-moderated climate. There are still a few potato farms left…one of them is the 40 acre Sidor Farm in Cutchogue. A multi-generational family operation dating back to 1910, their prized crops of Andover, Marcy and Norwiss potatoes are now the source of North Fork Potato Chips, a local favorite now stocked in food shops like Murray’s Cheese Shop. Luckily for you, no matter where you live, these tasty chips can be sent directly to your door.

What makes North Fork Potato Chips unique is that it truly is a field to bag production right on the same site. At the height of potato farming in the 1950s, there were about 70,000 acres being grown on Long Island. Now it’s down to about 3,000 acres. As with the rest of agriculture, potato farms across the globe are larger than ever making it so only the big boys are able to survive the tight profit margins. Potatoes from Canada and beyond continue to flood the market. The Sidor’s weathered this situation by moving away from selling bulk potatoes to raising them for chip making.

Potato Fields at Sidor Farm

North Fork Potato Chips’ thick-cut, hearty kettle-cooked morsels are the result of home experiments taste-testing chips of varying thicknesses cooked in different types of oil. They found the thicker cut cooked in sunflower oil consistently yielded a superior flavor.

The chip-making process from start to finish takes about 25 minutes in the Sidor family’s 2,000-square-foot chip-making facility. After the potatos are harvested and run through a de-stoning machine that washes the potatoes and removes stray stones and roots that get mixed in with the spuds, raw 40-pound batches of potatoes are washed, machine-peeled and dropped into the slicer, which cuts the potatoes at lightning speed into just the right thickness, and then swept into the kettle fryer, a large steel tub filled with four 50-gallon drums of sunflower oil heated to 305 degrees. Large spinning pinwheels sweep the chips back and forth for 15 minutes until they are golden and crispy and are then swept up onto another conveyor belt and deposited in a spinner, which, much like a clothes dryer, rapidly centrifuges off the excess liquid and air-dries the chips in preparation for hand salting. The chips are then dumped, spread out and eye-balled for quality and salted by hand from common household salt shakers. On a typical day, the Sidor crew will fry up about 3,500 bags of two- and six-ounce chips.

North Fork Potato Chips has several flavors to choose from but my favorite is their plain unadulterated version. But know knows, paired with Chapel Country Creamery’s grilled cheese sandwich recipe along with a crisp apple, perhaps their Rosemary Garlic would be heavenly as well!

Photos and story courtesy of North Fork Potato Chips

Chapel's Country Creamery Cheese Aging in the Cellar

OK, so now that the New Year festivities are over, the champagne & party leftovers are gone, and we are cast back into our work-a-day routines in the dead of winter. I don’t know about you but I need some motivation to get me from here to Valentine’s Day…something to brighten up my staid bag lunches injecting some tasty goodness into my semi-somnolent morning ritual of making a sandwich, hunting for a drink, and grabbing a piece of fruit. Starting right now into next week, I’ll be covering artisan foods that you can buy now to satiate your tastebuds’ wanderlust.

Chapel’s Country Creamery near Easton in Maryland’s Talbot County sells artisanal cheeses directly from their website that are carefully hand crafted from start to finish starting with fresh non-pasteurized raw milk. No synthetic hormones, antibotics, or chemical compounds ever. This milk is then shipped to an Amish artisanal cheese maker in Lancaster, PA. Only vegetable rennet and all natural ingredients are used. The Creamery’s 80 Jersey and Holstein cows graze on 45 acres of clover & rye grass and are rotated regularly among 32 different pastures ensuring they eat the freshest and most nutritious grasses yielding raw milk rich in cream. Cheeses like their Chapelle, Talbot Reserve and Bay Blue are aged at least 60 days in a climate controlled cave producing their distinct flavors and natural rinds.

Fast forward to a couple mornings from now when you stumble into the kitchen to pack a lunch. By now, I hope you have one or more of Chapel’s Country Creamery’s cheeses in your fridge.

Cheeses in the Making

Because owner/cheesemaker Holly Foster is sharing her favorite grilled cheese recipe for your enjoyment:

Grilled Cheese Sandwich  (serves one)

1/2 tablespoon softened unsalted butter

2 slices sandwich bread

2 ounces thinly sliced Chapel’s cave aged cheddar, Chapel Bay Blue, or Talbot Reserve cheese

A few thinly sliced red onions

Salt

2 tablespoons champagne grapes, chopped

Pre-heat a counter-top grill or skillet to medium heat.  Butter each slice of bread on one side.  On a plate, lay one slice of bread with the butter side down and place cheese slices on it, making sure the cheese does not hang over the edge of the bread.  Place the red onion slices evenly over the cheese and top with a sprinkle of salt and the grapes.  Place the other slice of bread on top.  Grill or fry on both sides until the cheese has just begun to melt and the bread is golden brown.

Photos courtesy of Chapel’s Country Creamery

Black Stallion has a modest portfolio of approachable high quality wines. In addition to their 2009 Muscat, I’ve tried their 2008 Rose with delightful results. Each of their varietals is handcrafted and carefully blended from small vineyard lots. Fermentation and aging are done separately in their cellar until just before bottling. Blending carefully achieves balance while showcasing layers of complex flavors. Since Black Stallion’s wines are produced in small lots, they are only sold through the winery Tasting Room and online.

So when I learned that Black Stallion was running a half price special on their 2009 Muscat, I leaped at the opportunity to purchase a bottle. I anticipated that this wine would be sweet and it is…but not so much that only the sugars pop through. It’s just as appropriate to sip with dessert as to linger with a glass between meals. As they indicate, I definitely tasted Asian pear with apricot and candied ginger notes. The grapes for this Muscat come from both a vineyard on Silverado Trail in Napa Valley just south of Black Stallion Winery and a vineyard in the Alexander Valley in Sonoma. This combination is officially known as North Coast. All of the grapes for this 2009 vintage were harvested at night retaining the fruit’s crisp character. Its bright fruitiness comes from a slow cool temperature fermentation in steel tanks.

Photo courtesy of Steve Mirsky

Pol Roger Champagne

Plenty of folks ring in the New Year with a bottle of top quality bubbly. But I’m willing to bet that not many of us continue celebrating with this libation throughout the year. I realize Champagne isn’t exactly a budget beverage but it would be a shame to not also include it at your next birthday, reunion, or Thanksgiving feast. Especially when it’s Pol Roger Brut Reserve averaging no more than $40 a bottle. Remarkably a favorite with Winston Churchill as well as a staple Champagne with the royal family over the years, this “white foil” vintage is a blend of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay.

With over 160 years making Champagne under their belts, the Pol Roger family is one of only a few Grande Marque Champagne houses that remain family owned and operated. They own close to 50% of the vineyards that supply production needs and once blended, each bottle is hand riddled in the cellars deep below Epernay chateau. In the words of Jean-Paul Kauffman in his book Voyage en Champagne, “Pol Roger is a gentleman’s Champagne. This refinement reflects a whole lifestyle…a soul created by the union of a family’s spirit and the character of a vineyard.”

My tasting commenced with admiring this Champagne’s distinct pale gold with a very fine bead on the pour. Upon sipping, a distinct nutty sharp cheese blasts through the effervescence as it zings the palate. Limey peach with light melon undertones…dry, fruity, and complex on the finish. Great with desserts and light unspiced hors d’oeuvres.

Photo courtesy of Steve Mirsky. Coverage made possible by participating in a sponsored tasting

Pacific Coast Petite Sirah

Pacific Coast Vineyards, a family owned winery located in the heart of California’s Central Coast sources grapes from small custom vineyards in the region. Sunny slopes and maritime weather patterns uniquely impact each growing season’s results. Winemaker Todd Schaefer along with his wife Tammy hand selects all of the vineyards and grapes to create unique blends barrel aged in custom French and American oak barrels for 18 months or longer.

I tasted their Petite Sirah and immediately realized that I had a unique vintage on my hands. Not much is revealed on the bouquet. Spicy plum hit my palate like a Merlot but blossomed into a lighter, playful, more floral mouth feel. Notes ranging from spicy plum to dark chocolate gradually unfolded on the roof of my mouth. I got hints of dark chocolate on the finish with a pleasant decadent aftertaste. Regarding pairings, lighter less obtrusive dishes work best to showcase the flavors. Sipping straight out on the patio is best.

Photo courtesy of cellartracker

Camarena Reposado Tequila

It’s easy even for the relatively uninitiated to quickly discern truly good tequila. If it can be enjoyably sipped straight without wincing and reaching for a chaser, then you have the real deal on your hands. Even more rare is the tequila in this class that isn’t confined to being a bottle-a- year treat…meaning that it can be purchased for about $30 a bottle.

The Familia Camarena Tequila story begins with 100% agave azul grown at 8,000 feet in Jalisco Mexico’s Altos highlands. It is here that the rich red earth and long mild growing season produces a distinctly refined flavor. It can take as long as a decade for the agave to reach its optimal size and flavor. The Camarena family, now in its 6^th generation, has been cultivating blue agave for 150 years. Camarena not only practices sustainable farming but has also invented a system of recycling the vinazas (organic by-products) by using it to fertilize the crops.

When it comes to crafting the tequila, they don’t rush the process. Traditional methods are used from field to finish like hand pruning the agave and slow roasting with a lengthy fermentation to capture the most fragrant aromas and delicate flavors. As the blue agave begins to blossom, highly trained jimadores cut each plant’s flowering shoot by hand redirecting the plant’s energy toward the piña (central core of the agave). At harvest, the plant’s spiky leaves are removed by hand leaving a piña that typically weighs more than 100 pounds.

In the distillery, the piñas are slow roasted in traditional volcanic stone hornos for several days. Every batch is distilled twice in small alembic pots. The first distillation draws out the characteristic aromas and flavors. The second distillation refines its character.

Camarena Mistletoe Margarita

I tasted their Reposado which rests in American oak barrels for 60 days before bottling giving it a touch of soft spice to the agave’s natural sweetness. Beyond sipping neat, here is a recipe to get you started just in time for the Holidays:

Mistletoe Margarita

1 1/2 oz Camarena Tequila

1/4 oz New Amsterdam Gin

1 oz Lime Juice

1/2 oz Agave Nectar

8 Cranberries

Muddle cranberries in a mixing glass. Add tequila, lime juice, agave nectar, gin and ice. Shake and strain into a bucket glass with ice. Garnish with a skewer of cranberries.

Coverage made possible courtesy of a complimentary sampling