Brad Ballinger

Hmmmm. I haven't had this in a long time. Wasn't this supposed to be one of those sleepers? I think this was THE vintage for Meyney.

Sorry, Trish. I've been laid up in bed with a bad cold, and haven't been online for a couple of days. Most Rieslings you'll find will be moderately priced. Katie's recommendation of a halbtrocken or even a trocken is a good one, but you can do all right even with ones that have more sugar than those (just limit yourself to kabinetten or spatlesen). There are a lot of German wines from the 2003 vintage on shelves now. That was a very ripe vintage, and the wines will be lush, in general. If you find some 2002 around, I'd opt for those, particularly from the Pfalz. But you don't have to restrict yourself to Germany. There are some good Alsatian Rieslings that are moderately priced, and I would put Trimbach at the top of my recommendation list. Also Barmes-Buecher. And from Australia, Pike's is affordable and pretty decent. From California, I really like the Rieslings from Smith-Madrone. For Pinot Noir, if you are going to keep it domestic, I like Sanford for moderately priced, solid pinot noir. Also, Adelsheim out of Oregon.

Old Barolo, old Barbaresco, old Bandol -- provided they are drinking well and not so old as to be over the hill.

I grew up on something I haven't seen anywhere outside my family. It is supposedly a Slovenian recipe. I don't have the particulars, but it involved a lot of fresh bread cubes (crusts removed), 9 eggs (more or less depending on the size of the turkey), onions, parsley, salt, pepper, and a bit of chicken broth. Everything gets mixed together then stuffed into the cavity. When the turkey is done cooking, the stuffing comes out in something that resembles a loaf. You then slice it and serve it. I made this for a bunch of us who were stranded at Miami University (Ohio) far away from our homes one Thanksgiving. No one could believe the "sliced stuffing" concept, but it won rave reviews.

No one has mentioned that about 100 years ago, wines used to be higher in alcohol than the 13.5% that we seemed to see on every bottle about 15 years ago. It was not uncommon for some Burgundies to be 16% alcohol or more. I mention this not to advocate for high alcohol wines (I'm in the camp that would like to see the trend stopped or reversed). But I mention it to illustrate that alcohol in wine has little, if anything, to do with global warming.

Well, it appears as if you are well on your way to learning through experimentation. Depending on how the pork was prepared, and sauced (if at all), one of those hard to pronounce German riesling wines could make a decent match. Pinot Noir, overall, tends to pair well with duck. Venison is such a lean meat that many opt for something lower in acid than Pinot Noir and packed with fruit, such as a shiraz or zinfandel.

I agree with John, generally speaking. Many of the more acclaimed wines from the region tend to be from steeply terraced vineyards that aren't irrigated, which results in lower yields of more highly concentrated grapes. I think there is a difference between concentrated and extracted when it comes to wines.

Whatever wine you want to serve is the right wine. Generally, though, you want a wine with plenty of acidity -- the usual suspects end up being Riesling, Beaujolais, Pinot Noir, and Champage. Some people also like to serve Zinfandel since it is (or at one time was) "American." The thing with Thanksgiving dinner is that there are usually so many flavors and such going on, that it's good to have a variety of wines and let your guests pick for themselves.

You have a good brachetto there. I'm not a large fan of the Banfi product. Glad I'm wrong. As far as finding sprakling shriaz, I believe France 44 has one in stock. I was just at Henn-Lake, and didn't see any (but I wasn't looking either).

The United States and Australia apparently will be getting their way in being able to use names the the European Union feels should be trademarked globally (article here). A final ruling has not been issued yet, but it appears we'll just have to live with champagne, port, parmesan, feta, roquefort, basmati, and even darjeeling being more generic names than actual names. Interestingly, and almost hypocritically, there has been protectionism of U.S. based "trademarks" here. Remember when President Bush signed the law that only bottom-feeding fish could be legally called and sold as catfish. So this put the Vietnamese product (about 20% of fish called catfish were actually a Vietnamese fish raised in rice paddies at the time) on the outside looking in. Restaurants in Minnesota were selling walleye that was really a European fish called zander (also known as European walleye). There has been action to put a stop to that legally. Even intra-U.S. examples exist. Vidalia onions can only come from Vidalia, Georgia. Onions grown elsewhere from Vidalia seeds can't be sold as Vidalias. It seems we want to have our cake and eat it too. Edited to add: Then there was this little stink about the use of the word Napa on wine labels whose grapes weren't at least 75% Napa-grown. So Napa can make "Port" but a winery can't be called Napa Whatever unless the grapes are the right ones.

I'm not familiar with that brand at all. Has this happened only once, or does it happen every time? When I've used rabbits or leverpulls, I have had the worm come right back out of the cork on very rare occasions. But I've never had to do anything remotely like twisting those devices to get a cork out.

The wine will fully meet the needs you've expressed here. I also did some digging for recommended food pairings just for fun. ItalianMade.com is a great food and wine web stie. All their food pairing recs are desserts (lots of panettone stuff). However, that doesn't mean the wine has to be limited to those foods. You can try it, and let us know how it worked. Plus, you'll be on your way to taking the Thanksgiving Challenge.

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing Betts picked up a Banfi Brachetto d'Acqui, which is the brachetto more often carried than not here in Minnesota. Betts, I'm going to pile on with the above comments. Brachetto is rarely a wine for rich, savory courses, and you will find it pretty light. If you are interested in a drier red sparkling wine, you can find some Sparkling Shiraz in town (PM me). But if you want a wine with bubbles to go with your Thanksgiving meal, I don't think it has a duty to be red. You can find several non-red sparkling wines that will have the stuffing (no pun intended) to stand up to turkey with the sides.

I believe if you go to wine-searcher.com and search for wine storage, a list of places nationwide will show up. I have the search results link on a different computer. I'll edit this post later to include it. Edited to add: Here's a link: click

It does? It stopped appearing on newstand shelves here. I would also guess subscriptions are down, but maybe not. The tasting notes were something to love or hate. One could argue they were more about the writer than the wine. But I admired them for what they were attempting to do.

Actually, as the market for wine -- any wine -- continues to grow I think we will find snobbery, reverse snobbery, ignorance, and inquisitiveness, and everything in between. Let's look at how other alcoholic beverges are marketed. Beer probably provides us with our best example. For the conglomerates like Anheuser Busch and whichever foreign company now owns Miller, many of the products in their portfolios are targeting a certain market -- a merket for whom the first duty of beer is to be cold, and the second duty is to be wet. Miller High Life may still call itself the "Champagne of Beers," but it's just a malted beverage. The imports go after a different market, and the microbrews a different market yet. I'm oversimplifying it, but you get the general idea. Wine, on the other hand, has all been pretty much mass marketed in one uniform manner. It usually involves a setting where people are dressed in trendy attire, there is usally a mix of men and women, there's some type of event that the wine makes complete, and most self-respecting beer drinkers wouldn't be caught dead at such a gathering. With the holiday season approaching, you'll see the same general type of advertising for many different labels of wine. That Virgin Vines is breaking the mold and identifying a different market shouldn't be that unexpected. Whether or not it will succeed remains to be seen. In the United States, Wine Brats and Wine X magazine had a run a few years back at sort of an anti-establishment, demystifying, less uppity, and more irreverent approach to wine. Both of those efforts eventually fizzled, but that might have had nothing to do with the absence of a market.

Many people also enjoy California Pinot Noir with grilled salmon. But I agree with Mary -- knowing the producer would help.

Great thread. As long as people are making requests, I'd like to see some fish dishes. Last year I was in Gorinchem, The Netherlands, for business and had a great whitefish meal and a sole dinner. There was also a great mushroom pastry -- the Dutch make great pastry overall, but the ones in this thread have been of the sweet variety. Their savory ones are terrific. Chufi, one question for you: During my visit last year, I found carpaccio to be a common menu item nearly every place I went. In the U.S. we really only see carpaccio in Italian restaurants. But it was all over the place in Gorinchem. Is that common, or more of a trend of the moment?

Well, who is really surprised that wine is more about marketing than what's in the bottle? I know, there are a number of exceptions, but it's true for many wines. Consider all these aspects of marketing: label design, bottle color, bottle shape, price (people still think there is a correlation between price and quality), placement, closure, there's probably more. The wines being marketed in this case are products of Virgin Atlantic - the record company, music retailer, airline company, and now beverage company I guess. There are two wines -- Chardonnay and Shiraz. The bottles are frosted and have some frilly painted design and the Virgin branded logo. Personally, I think the logo being featured so prominently would hurt sales, but I'm probably wrong. I'm sure the juice in the bottle is simple, one-dimensional, easy to drink, and equally easy to forget. But it's worked for Yellow Tail, which sells 5 million cases per year.

I've had this wine a couple of times, including at Tarlant in Oeuilly. It is, indeed, quite a tart and lean wine. It's almost hard to believe that Tarlant's Brut Zero and its Cuvee Louis (malo and lots of oak aging) are from the same house. But each extreme has its place.

*YAWN* McDonald's can do what it wants to promote quality "raw ingredients" and safety, but fat is fat is fat. Quality, as disucssed in the article, has little to do with healthiness. "Yes, but the fat is of a superior quality."

In the link Melissa provided there is a recipe for pomegranate vinaigrette that calls for removing the kernels and placing them with everything else in a blender, then straining. I've made a pomegranate vinaigrette a number of time, reserving some kernels for the salad itself, and I've found it pretty easy just to juice the pomegranate as one would a lemon. You have to make sure you've pressed the entire thing, but it is simpler than pulling out the blender IMHO.

Although there is a six page thread on the topic of corkage fees archived in this forum, most of that discussion took place between a handful of members over two days in July, 2002. Additionally, some of the disucssion took some side trips into wine pricing as well. What follows below is more of an "article" on the basics of BYO and corkage that encompasses much of what has been discussed in the thread referenced above and others in this forum. We thought it might be beneficial to have one reference point. Wine 101 – Bringing Your Own and Corkage Fees As consumers increase both their love for and knowledge of wine, they can become increasingly disconcerted with the options presented to them on restaurant wine lists. Some are turned off by the high markups restaurants take on wine. Others are disappointed with the selection, or lack thereof. Others yet, who don’t have an issue over price or selection, may not like seeing all recent vintages on a wine list. They’d rather drink a more mature wine. Yet, very few consider the option that they might be able to bring their own wine, and bypass some of the disdain they feel welling up when perusing the wine list. But, as with many dining practices, there are some points of protocol and decorum one should exercise before showing up with a bottle (or more) at the door. Can I legally bring my own wine? Depending on the laws of the state, county, or city, it may not be legal for a consumer to bring his or her own wine (or any alcoholic beverage) to a restaurant. If you live or dine out in such an area, I’m afraid you’re stuck with the wine list as your only option – that’s if you decide to have wine with your meal at all. Will the restaurant allow me to bring my own wine? Some will; others won’t. Just because it may be legal for customers to bring their own wine doesn’t necessarily mean that restaurant must allow their customers to do so. The decision is up to the individual restaurant. There are a wide variety of reasons why a restaurant will or will not allow its customers to bring their own wine. If the restaurant has a good wine list (e.g., large selection, older and newer vintages, wide price range), it may not offer its customers BYO as an option. Personally, I won’t even ask about BYO if I’m going to a place with a good and fair wine list. Other restaurants will offer BYO no matter what their list looks like. And some may offer it to you depending on what you plan on bringing (more on what to bring below). Will the restaurant charge me a corkage fee if I bring my own wine? Again – some will; others won’t. In a very few places it is illegal to charge corkage fees (but that doesn't stop some restaurants from doing it anyway). From a purely transactional point of view for that particular dinner on that particular evening, the restaurant will not make as much money on the customer who brings his or her own wine instead of ordering from the list. (Of course, if the customer only orders water, less money is made, but let’s assume that the customer who brings a bottle would otherwise order from the list.) From a long-term goodwill point of view, the restaurant that allows customers to bring their own and doesn’t charge corkage may make enough money from the customer due to frequent repeat visits. It depends on the restaurant's philosophy. Restaurants will give a number of reasons why they charge a corkage fee – they still open and serve the wine, you are using their glassware which needs to be washed (and replaced if broken), maybe they are providing you with an ice bucket, and you are still having the experience of dining out among the ambience the restaurant provides you. Some restaurants will also set their corkage fees at a dollar amount that deters customers from simply being cheap – and I don’t fault them for it one bit. I don’t know if this is still the policy at the following restaurants or not, but Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago and French Laundry in Yountville at one time had a corkage fee of $50 per bottle of wine. They also have excellent wine lists and provide(d) top quality food, service, and atmosphere. The policy was set to prevent someone from bringing in wine just to avoid buying off the list. Yet, in some instances, if a customer had a rare and special bottle of wine, which wasn’t on the restaurant’s wine list, the corkage fee would be waived. Jean Georges in NYC charges $75. I don’t get upset about corkage fees. But I know several wine geek types for whom being charged corkage is the greatest affront they could experience. Usually, these are the same people who demand new glasses for every bottle, demand an ice bucket, tell the servers when to open certain wines, don’t offer any wine to the staff, and don’t tip as if they’ve ordered wine from the list., and feel the restaurant should be honored to accommodate them and their precious wine(s). I generally find that if I’m respectful, and handle bringing my own in the right manner, corkage fees will be lowered or not invoked altogether. But I never expect that I shouldn’t have to pay them. What wine should I bring? It might be easier to answer this question from the view of “What shouldn’t I bring?” Even if part of the reason you are bringing your own wine is to save a bit of money – and we all know that is certainly one factor – what you don’t want to do is be obvious about it. If you bring a bottle of Two Buck Chuck, for example, you might as well carry a sign with you that says “I’m being cheap, and I don’t care what anyone thinks about it.” Even if you actually like Two Buck Chuck, it would still be bad form to use it in a BYO situation. Similarly, if you bring a bottle of wine that the restaurant already features on its list, it could appear that you are bringing your own simply to avoid paying the restaurant’s markup. So you may have to do a bit of homework, and take a look at the restaurant’s wine list beforehand. Therefore, you should bring wines that don’t appear on the restaurant’s wine list, and aren’t bargain basement specials. Along these lines, I would also suggest not bringing wines for which there is a reasonable alternative on the wine list. For example, if the wine list contains several Chianti Classico wines from the most recent vintages that normally retail betweens $15-$25, it would still be tacky to bring the latest vintage of a different producer’s Chianti Classico that retails for $20. But it would be acceptable to bring an older vintage (and not just one year older) Chianti Classico or a recent vintage Chianti Classico not on the list that retails for a much higher price, or a Chianti Classico regardless of vintage or price that is extremely rare. Should I inform the restaurant that I’m bringing my own wine? Yes. Even better, you should call ahead to inquire about the restaurant’s BYO and corkage fee policies? You may be asked what you plan on bringing. If you don’t know, you can respond with, “I haven’t had a chance to determine that yet, but I can call back if you’d prefer.” Usually it’s a good plan to have an idea before calling: “It’s our anniversary. We were married in 1990, and I have a few Bordeaux from that vintage that I’ve been saving. Would I be able to bring one or two to your restaurant?” If you are told that the restaurant charges a corkage fee of $25 per bottle, let’s say, you simply respond, “Great. See you Saturday.” What is the best manner in which to carry in my wine? Unobtrusively and respectfully. If you are bringing in your wine at the time you show up for your reservation, it would be best to have it enclosed in a wrap of some sort – a cloth bag, wine carrier, etc. Unwrapped, or in the brown paper bag from the liquor store is tacky. If you are bringing wine that is best served at a chilled temperature, you can either bring it with you chilled and then politely ask your server to keep it chilled for you, or you can show up ahead of time, and ask the restaurant to have it chilled for your dinner reservation (they are earning that corkage fee already). If you have a red wine that you’d prefer to have decanted, you can show up ahead of time and ask that the wine be decanted X number of hours prior to your reservation. Or you can ask your server to decant the wine as you hand it to him or her. Or you can decant the wine at home. If you choose this latter option, I strongly recommend double-decanting it back into the bottle and re-corking it. A quick aside here – believe it or not, I’ve heard of (but never witnessed firsthand) people bringing in a bottle of wine that has a prestige label on the outside but has something like Mondavi Coastal on the inside. I don’t recommend doing this. Should I also order some wine from the restaurant’s list? That depends. How much wine did you bring, and how much can you drink and still be able to drive home? Generally it’s a good idea to also order some wine – even if it’s only a glass – from the restaurant’s list. Again, even if one of the reasons you are bringing your own wine is to save some money, you don’t want it to appear as if that is your only reason. You can order a glass or bottle for before dinner, as an alternative to have with your dinner, or perhaps with cheese or dessert. What if the wine I brought is flawed? If you bring your own wine frequently enough, this will happen. There’s really nothing you can do other than decide whether or not to dump the wine, or re-cork it and try to return it to the retailer for a refund. Then you need to decide if you want wine at all. Not ordering a bottle, by the way, will make it appears as if you only brought your own wine to be – well, you know what. Even if you bring your own wine, if the server opens it for you, he or she will go through the tasting ritual for you to evaluate the wine’s integrity. Some people bring “back up bottles” for such situations. If I bring a back up bottle, however, it is generally a duplicate. Should I offer to share my wine with the staff? Yes. You don’t have to, but it is courteous to do so. Your server may decline your offer, which is fine. Some wait staff aren’t allowed to accept such offers. You can also offer to send some back to the kitchen. There have been times when upon tasting the wine in the kitchen the chef has altered the preparation of my entrée. Does it happen all the time? Of course not. Would it matter if it never happened? No. But people are generally appreciative of an opportunity to sample a wine that may be new to them or that they might not otherwise get an opportunity to taste. Whether you offer the first glass or the last bit in the bottle is up to you. How does bringing my own wine affect how much I should tip? You should tip something. Yes, you may have shared some of your wine, but a sip is not a tip. Part of the answer depends on if you were charged a corkage fee, and how much you were charged. If corkage is not charged or is usually charged but has been waived, I tip at least 33% of the entire bill, sometime higher. I want to show my appreciation to the restaurant for allowing me to bring my own and for not charging me to do so. I don’t know if it is right or not, but generally the higher the corkage fee, the lower the tip on the wine and wine service portion of the bill. This will, of course, depend on the quality of the wine service and what the restaurant and its staff did to justify the corkage fee. Should I bring my own wine every time? For those restaurants I patronize that do not charge corkage fees or have waived corkage fees for me, I don’t always bring my own. I don’t want it to appear as if I’m taking advantage of their generosity. Do these protocols apply to restaurants that are BYO only? We don’t have any of these where I live, but for those of you who have restaurants that are BYO only – meaning that if you want to drink wine or beer with your dinner (generally, spirits aren’t allowed), you will have to bring it yourself. In such places I’ve seen all sorts of wine and all sorts of beer. Typically, it’s not Two Buck Chuck or Pabst Blue Ribbon, but there really are not rules. The restaurant has chosen to make its money on food and non-alcoholic beverage sales only. Do what you’d like. There are going to be some instances where you are going to have to figure it out as you go along. But the overall theme I’ve attempted to reinforce here is to be courteous, be respectful, and be appreciative. Remember, restaurants do not have to allow you to bring your own wine, and they can charge you whatever they want for affording you that privilege. Restaurants will stop the practice altogether or raise their corkage fees if too many customers take advantage of their generosity. And I use the word generosity because, remember, the restaurant is making less money (per transaction) on customers who bring their own when they would otherwise order from the wine list. And they have a business to run, after all.

My first post to this thread. No photos, but I'll try to remember that for the future. Last night on my way home, I stopped by the fish market. Our teenage daughter was out of town, and it gave my wife and I an opportunity to have some fish. The market had sashimi grade blue marlin at only $9.95/pound. I got a couple of steaks, about 1.5 inches thick. Marinated them for an hour in a thrown-together mixture of lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, salt, pepper, and thyme. Pan seared for 2-3 mintues per side over high heat, which developed a nice crust with a generous center section that was pink, but warm. Heated up the leftover marinade and added chopped parsley to pour over the fish when plated. Served with saffron rice and sauteed green beans. Opened a Cremant de Limoux (I love bubbles with fish).

Susan (snowangel) grabbed a bit of my thunder. The Honeycrisp (a cross between Macoun and Honeygold) apple was "created" in Minnesota. It is totally in vogue right now, and is priced at about twice as much as any other apple. I like them, but I still prefer Haralson apples for pastries, baking whole, and eating out of hand. Part of my affinity for them, I'm sure, hearkens back to my childhood and the Haralson apple tree in our back yard. Over this past weekend I just purchased a peck of Haralsons at an orchard and got busy making a pie and a crisp.