Biodynamic Duo
In a world lousy with wine dinners, Lilly’s and Gemelli Wine+Spirits go niche with a vegetarian meal featuring organic wines. OK, it’s a big niche. Organic wine sales are rising at three times the rate of wine sales overall. Still, in a world where wine dinners almost by definition build toward a Big Red Wine/Big Red Meat climax, the two deserve credit for trying something new.
The first course is feta cheese and parsley strudel, served with Paul Dolan Sauvignon Blanc. Dolan is a 4th generation winemaker and the former president of Brown-Foreman-owned Fetzer Vineyards. He left Fetzer – itself a pioneer of large-scale sustainable wine making – amicably a few years ago to open his own winery. This Sauvignon Blanc is one of the results.
The second course is fried eggplant caponata with cream sauce and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. The wine is Yalumba Viognier. Viognier, too long exclusively the grape of small and expensive French appellations, has really taken off in Australia. Yalumba, in the Barossa Valley, makes a vibrant, Technicolor expression of the grape.
Next comes a garlic and potato cake with mushroom Provençal (featuring mushrooms from Sheltowee Farm in Lexington), served with Kunde Chardonnay. I never know exactly what to say about Chardonnay. It’s Chardonnay, for heaven’s sake, the white wine 90% of Americans think of when they think of white wine. Kunde’s Sonoma interpretation is aged 60% in French oak and 40% in steel, and retains more character than generic, death-by-oak California Chardonnays. But still.
The next course is a black bean tostada with red pepper cheese, tomato, avocado, poblano pepper and basil verde sauce. I hear all that, I’m thinking margarita. Gemelli offers instead The Crossings Pinot Noir. This leads me to believe that the tostada isn’t as spicy in real life as it is in my imagination – though in my imagination I still eat two. The Crossings is a winery in Marlborough, New Zealand, a region that’s in the process of redefining Pinot Noir the same way it has already redefined Sauvignon Blanc. That is: big and fresh and subtle and refined all at the same time. This ought to be a really interesting match.
Finally, there’s dessert: dark chocolate cake with Bing cherry sauce. The wine is Carol Shelton Zinfandel. Shelton has been named California’s Winemaker of the Year four times. She dabbles in other grapes, but Zin is where her heart – and most of her winery’s production – lies.
The wine dinner will be held at Lilly’s June 23, starting at 7 PM. The price is $45.