The Corkdork - Wine and Food Musing

Southern Rhône Beauty: 2001 Santa Duc Gigondas

I'm making a special dinner tonight, and only because I feel like seriously cooking. I am dying to drink up some of the excellent stash of 2001 Southern Rhônes I got recently through Wine Gavel. I haven't made dinner yet, but the notes on the amazing 2001 Gigondas from Santa Duc couldn't wait.

This wine has an explosion of black fruits when it hits both your nose and your tongue. You can almost taste the struggle those vines went through to produce these grapes. There's a heady black cassis nose and dense blackberry on the palate. It has spicy overtones, like cardomon and sassafras.

The blend is usually very Grenache dominant, around 80% with Syrah 5%, Mourvèdre 10%, Cinsault 5% making up the rest. The soil is brutal clay and deep down is very rocky, so the fruit is deliciously concentrated, with the alcohol content still on the low side. See if you can find yourself a bottle and snatch it up. The 2001 is an especially great year, IMO, and if you can find the "hautes garrigues" version, all the better.

Through Wine Gavel, I paid about what a new bottle costs, but with the added benefit of almost 10 years of bottle age. Highly recommended.

Oh, the menu? Leek & Potato Soup, Fried Squash Blossoms stuffed with fresh mozzerella, Duck Breasts and white beans. Nice Acme bread. Some of my homemade Malvasia Bianca with the starters.

 

Great new spot in Temescal: SR24

Had a great meal at the new-ish SR24, "An American Eatery". It's a block closer to the freeway than Pizzaiolo and Dona Tomas, in the little shopping center that has the Walgreens and the Pawn shop.

Of course, the name SR24 (State Road 24) is tongue-in-cheek. Instead of the high-brow, well traveled addresses of RN74 (in Burgundy) and A16 in Southern Italy, Route 24 is right next door to the restaurant, a name tied with the over-all humility of the restaurant itself.

Interestingly, it only has a Facebook page, not a regular website. The wine list is full of unusual bits too, including  my starter wine, the unusual and delicious 2009 David Noyes Tocai Fiulano Pagani Vineyard-Sonoma Valley. You probably know Pagani grapes from Ridge's excellent zinfandels. I had no idea they grew Tocai! This is a bracing, crisp, thriling wine and I can't wait to get some more.

We wanted to try so many things, the waiter told us we were ordering too much food. I'm glad we did because the portions are larger than you would expect from the reasonable prices. I started with the BLT Toasts which are Acme bread toasts with  home-cured bacon (yum) and heirloom tomatoes, a little smear of good Avocado, chopped baby romaine and a little green goddess dresssing. We also had the local corn soup which was silky smooth and delicious. Again, the bowl was huge, so beware of how much you order!

On to the entrees...Our waiter (who I recognized from many years of eating at Blue Plate in SF) recommended the pot roast, which was excellent. Kobe beef in a smooth sauce with some perfectly cooked fingerlings and carrots. My lovely wife had a duck breast that was a tad less rosy than I usually like, but had a great butternut squash side scented with 5-spice powder and a sweet peach gastrique.

No room for dessert. Next time. And there will be a next time, I'm sure. This is a great spot. Go early and it's a bit quieter. It got pretty loud by the time we left. Oh. If you go during Happy Hour, be sure to get the password on Facebook. You get a second beer or glass of wine at a huge discount (sometimes a penny!).