W.B.W. #12: DRINK LOCAL. When you think of the world's great wine regions, images of south Louisiana do not flicker through your brain. Wine grapes seem to like places where the land slopes, the climate is dry and the temperatures are mild or even cool. I live at sea level, if that. At the height of summer, overnight lows drop into the mid-70s if you're lucky. The ground is wet, and if the air were any more humid you'd need a straw to inhale.
     The nearest winery is an hour north of here. Conditions up there in St. Tammany Parish (i.e., county) are more favorable, but it won't be mistaken for Sonoma anytime soon.
     This is a long way of saying that my expectations were low when I uncorked a bottle of the 2001 Pontchartrain Vineyards "Le Trolley" St. Tammany Parish Blanc du Bois. It costs $11 at the supermarket in my neighborhood, and it's made from a hybrid grape developed in Florida in 1968.
     The nose turned out to be simple and appealing -- honeyish and reminiscent of apple juice. So far, so good.
     But this wine makes a harsh first impression when you sip it. You get a powerful rush of something that doesn't taste at all like grapes. It's as though someone extracted all the juice from a fruit or a vegetable and then made wine from the leftovers.
     That distilled-roughage flavor quickly faded into the background. Nothing really took its place in the foreground. So while this Blanc du Bois looks like white wine, smells like white wine and feels like white wine on your tongue, the taste is blunted and affectless. Eventually, I did pick up some fresh grassy notes, like you'd find in a good New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
     The b.f. tried it, too, and took an immediate dislike. He said it was "like those green apple candy bars in liquid form."
     After I'd sat with it a while (over a rerun of "Lost"), and the memory of that first sip faded, I decided that the wine was basically pleasant. Its lack of overt fruitiness made it an inoffensive blank slate that would go OK with spicy foods. The label bills this (along with other Pontchartrain Vineyards products) as a "distinctive regional wine to complement the regional cuisines of Louisiana." I'm not sure about all that. But I'd made a pasta dish with turkey tasso, Vidalia onions, tomatoes and fresh basil, and the Blanc du Bois went with it quite well.
 :: posted by Dante at 9:15 AM
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B.Y.O.B. INFO AND ETIQUETTE. Somehow I missed wine diva Brenda Maitland's piece in May on the intricacies of bringing your own wine to restaurants. Brenda talks about some situations I've not yet encountered -- like when you try to bring a bottle that's on the restaurant's wine list. (Short version: It's not cool.)
 :: posted by Dante at 6:59 PM
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WINE BOOK. Some thoughts on A Very Good Year by Mike Weiss. The book is an expanded version of the San Francisco Chronicle's 39-part wine series. Yes, 39 parts.
 :: posted by Dante at 6:49 PM
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