Marglin on Taste

Maybe it’s the time of year, or maybe it’s a sign of my advancing age, but it seems that everyone I know has just gotten married or is planning to in the next few months. And some of these folks looked to me for advice on what to serve at their weddings. This year’s big wedding season is starting to wind down, but if you’ve set a date, I’ll tell you what I’ve told my friends: whether it’s a wedding, an anniversary bash, or any other big party, just try to keep it simple.Rule # 1: make it sparkle. You know you need to serve some sparkling wine, but you do not need to bust a move and buy the real stuff from the Champagne region of France, which will set you back at least $20 a bottle even with your volume discount. (And bear in mind, sometimes caterers or facilities will charge retail prices or higher, with little or no case discount for wines they furnish. You always do better buying your own if possible, even if there is a pour charge.) A tremendous number of great sparkling wines are made in the US, including Roederer Estate, Argyle, Mumm’s of Napa, Domaine Chandon, and Schramsberg. Any of these would work fine for toasting. Most people will not see the bottle, and few will care whether it’s “real” Champagne, so long as it sparkles and tastes good.

Rule #2: easy does it. When the toasts are over, you’ll need something to serve with the meal. Unless you are a gourmet or really wealthy (in which case you’re not likely to rely solely on my advice anyway), choose wines that are easy to drink. Ordinarily, I recommend interesting, unusual, complex wines, so you can learn and expand your palate. But at big parties, you want well-balanced wines that won’t rub folks the wrong way. Just as you want to play recognizable tunes that will get people up and dancing, so you want to serve wines that will get them down and drinking. For white wines, chardonnays will usually do the job; for reds, try cabernets, merlots, or maybe a shiraz or a red zinfandel. But nothing too aggressive or bold — your guests should be drinking, not thinking.

Rule #3: pair thee well. Think about what wines will go well with the food you’re planning to serve. It’s helpful to have the advice and confidence a wine merchant or other expert can provide, but it’s your party, so taste a bunch of choices and pick the combinations that are pleasing to you. If you’ve followed Rule #2, the wines you will be considering should be easy to pair with your main courses anyway.

Rule #4: don’t run out. How much wine should you purchase? At most weddings or big parties, the people of wine-drinking age will average two glasses apiece. Figure on six glasses to a bottle of still wine. The problem is, you don’t know whether your guests will prefer red or white, so I recommend having enough to serve each person two glasses of either (meaning you will have some left over, but that never hurt anyone, right?). If you have 100 drinkers, you’ll need about 34 bottles (or about three cases) of red wine, and the same amount of white. You will get closer to eight glasses to a bottle of sparkling wine, so do the math accordingly, figuring that most people will switch to still wines after the toasts. Repeat after me: too much is better than too little.

If you’re going to be attending one of these parties instead of throwing one, I’ve got a rule for you too: never tell the hosts you do not like the wine. If a bottle is corked or off, ask your server to get another one, pronto — and to tell the manager you had a bad bottle (where there is one, there are likely to be more). But other than that, just try both the white and the red, and determine which one you like better (and which one works better with the food). Look, this is a party, not a wine-appreciation dinner.

The following are some good safe wines, available in Massachusetts, that would work well at my wedding (now all I need is to find someone who wants to marry me).

1998 Hogue Chenin Blanc Columbia Valley Washington ($7.99). Light and refreshing, like a cold apple tart. Yes, it is chenin blanc and not chardonnay, but it is such a versatile wine, so poised, with an appealing sweetness. Worth a try — with grilled fish or chicken.

1997 Monterra Merlot Monterey ($9.99). Serious wine — mainly a fruit bomb, with cherries and berries. Works best with the red meats.

1998 Peachy Canyon Incredible Red Bin 109 Paso Robles ($10.99). Fruity and approachable, light yet full-bodied, this wine is completely plummy. Would go well with steak, chicken in a dark sauce, or salmon with some zest.

1998 Waterbrook Chardonnay Columbia Valley Washington ($10.99). Woo-hoo! This is stellar chard for the dollars. Minimal oak, fine with salmon or a nice grilled swordfish — even chicken Kiev. Lovely tropical-fruit notes.

1998 Saint-Veran Les Deux Moulins Maison Louis Latour ($10.99). Another chardonnay, crisp and apple-y. A touch green, but with clean, fresh, and unassuming flavor. Enough mineral qualities to stand up to big fish, or even red meat that is lightly sauced.

1998 J. Lohr Cabernet Sauvignon Paso Robles ($10.99). Deep, lush, dark ruby wine, with black currant and plenty of oak. Previously hard to find outside the winery or restaurants, this wine is a real score in stores. Try it with steak, prime rib, the big meats.

1999 Hess Select Chardonnay California ($11.99). Clean and mellow — unfolds nicely into apple and pear territory, without too much oak.

1998 Hedges Merlot-Cabernet Sauvignon Columbia Valley Washington ($12.99). Fifty-four percent Merlot — smoky and comfortable, with lots of black fruit. It’s mellow and full, with a very long finish.

Grapes were first brought to Oregon in the 1800s, but its wine industry didn’t get started till 1959 — and it didn’t really get going until UC Davis grad David Lett of Eyrie Vineyards started planting pinot noir in 1966.The early winemakers thought Oregon was going to be a lot like Burgundy, given the similar latitudes and climates. Thus they focused on Burgundian grapes — pinot noirs and chardonnays. To some extent, this was a success. Oregon is always going to be known for its pinot noir. But things have not gone so well with chardonnay.

Some say that the winemakers haven’t been using the right clones, and that now that more clones from Burgundy are yielding fruit, the chards are going to get better. But most Oregon chards have yet to impress me. The same is true of Oregon sparkling wines, although I do like Argyle’s 1996 Brut and their incredible single-vineyard Knudsen-Erath Sparkler. The Brut is tony and totally together; the very high-end Knudsen is hard to find. Both point toward good sparklers in the future.

On the other hand, I am a huge lover of Oregon pinot gris, especially with food (fish, mostly), and always when the weather is hot. These un-oaked white beauties blow away almost all other US pinot gris (and many an import too).

The pinot gris grape traditionally is grown not in Burgundy, but in Alsace, the French wine region to the northeast. Alsace is known mainly for its sublime rieslings, but it also excels with pinot gris, pinot blanc, and gewürztraminer. And guess which grapes Oregon is starting to turn into liquid gold? If your answer was “all of the above,” then you’re in luck. Oregon winemakers have started making some amazing wines from these four grape varieties, and they’re selling many of them for less than $20 a bottle, and in some cases less than $10.

Pinot gris is really the classiest of this bunch. But I have also marveled at the gewürztraminer and pinot gris from Foris Vineyards, which is in the Rogue Valley, in the southwesternmost corner of Oregon. Their pinot gris wins awards, and their gewürztraminer tastes like fresh apple juice — I have been known to have it for breakfast. It’s not flashy, but vibrant and really well made.

Gewürztraminer and pinot blanc account for fewer than 200 acres apiece of harvested grapes in Oregon, compared to 3100 acres of pinot noir and almost 1250 acres of chardonnay. Pinot gris weighs in at about 1100 harvested acres. I daresay you are going to see these numbers rise. (Bear in mind that, at present, only about 7500 total acres of grapes are harvested in Oregon.)

Pinot gris and pinot blanc are both rather fruity in their Oregonian renditions, and most of the gewürztraminers and rieslings I’ve tried have lacked subtlety. But all four will go well with late-summer seafood, and they’re all good chilled.

They are, however, hard sells. No matter how much you tell people that these wines are great, the majority of white-wine drinkers, especially those whose tastes run toward New World whites, are still reaching for chardonnay and sauvignon blanc and Rhône varietals like viognier.

My sense is that this is going to change — and summer is a good time for change, when foods are bolder and spicier and people want to cut loose and try some new wines. Oregon whites have hit their stride with these four varietals, and I encourage you to try any that you can get your hands (and lips) on. These are a few I liked. All are between $10 and $20 a bottle, with most closer to $10.

Hinman Vineyards 1998 Riesling Willamette Valley. Quite apple-ish, with medium acid. Good with salads, carrot soups, or grilled seafood, and most excellent on hot summer evenings.

Willakenzie Estate 1999 Pinot Gris. Every year this favorite shows clean and complex flavors, with notes of pear, peach, and hazelnut. Great with grilled fish or barbecued pork.

Willakenzie Estate 1998 Pinot Blanc. Great winemakers tend to make great wines, whatever the grape. This sharp, tangy wine is more about crisp acid than fruit. It wants the grill taste, especially mesquite, but it can tame teriyaki sauce, too.

Foris 1998 Gewürztraminer Rogue Valley. Great gewürz, Batman! Alsatian in style, well-balanced, with Granny Smith apples and some lychee on the back. A mellow, approachable wine, great with hummus, fried rice, and other veggie delights.

Foris 1998 Pinot Gris Rogue Valley. Pear and a very full mouth, with handsome tropical fruit — even a banana note on top of that white peach — yet all very restrained. This wine is like buttah with rainbow trout in a hazelnut crust, or a seafood stew.

Chehalem 1998 Pinot Gris. Very light and fruity, with apples, pears, and even some pine nuts. Its finish is a tad closed, and it leans too much toward ginger ale, but with air it settles down nicely. Great with spicy tofu medleys, curries, or barbied shrimp.

Panther Creek 1997 Melon Stewart Vineyard Willamette Valley. A non-Alsatian alternative. Melon makes muscadet wines, and those tend to be somewhat dry and pétillant. In Oregon the wine comes out more lush and ripe, with pear, vanilla, and some allspice. This is great with fresh shellfish, fried clams, or mahi-mahi — anything with tang.

I got a lot of comments about a recent column on glassware, in which I paraphrased claims from a major glassmaker that the thin, delicate glass of handblown $100 stems helps separate sediment from liquid.

Science seems fairly certain that the thickness and “texture” of the glass have little to do with this phenomenon, so I am backing off these claims. I will say this: when I use delicate Riedel or Baccarat glasses with sediment-laden wines, I seem to get less sediment in my mouth, and leave more in my glass. Why this is, I cannot explain scientifically. The main point, which bears repeating, is that glass — any glass — is preferable to any other kind of vessel.