serves 4 - 6

Heat the oven to 400F. Put the shallot slices in a small bowl filled with ice water. Using a mortar and pestle or the flat side of a chef’s knife, mash the garlic to a paste with a pinch of salt. Put the paste in a small bowl (or keep it in the mortar, if using) and whisk in the vinegar. Bruise two of the basil leaves with the back of a knife to release some of their flavor. Add the leaves to the garlic.

Put the bread cubes on a baking sheet and toss with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Bake until the cubes are crisp and light golden brown outside but still soft inside, about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Add the corn kernels and blanch for 1 minute. Drain and set aside.

Remove the two basil leaves from the garlic mixture and discard. Whisk the remaining 1/2 cup olive oil into the vinegar mixture. Drain the shallots. Put the corn kernels, shallots, and tomatoes in a large bowl. Season to taste with salt. Add the bread and toss with the vinaigrette. Taste again and season with salt and pepper. Let sit for at least 15 minutes but no longer than 30 minutes to let the bread absorb the juices. Taste again and, if needed, season with more salt, pepper, and vinegar. Just before serving, roughly chop the remaining basil and toss it with the salad.

Enjoy!

DALLAS:
City Cafe
Dali Wine Bar
Dallas Fine Wine & Spirits
Molto Fomaggio The Cheese Shop
Monticello Beer, Wine & Spirit
Perry & #39’s Liquor
Vino 100 Dallas

FORT WORTH:
Del Frisco’s Steakhouse
Grand Cru Wines & Gifts
Hilton (downtown Fort Worth)
Pop’s Safari Cigar and Fine Wines

KILGORE:
Tucker’s Liquor’s

PLANO:
S&K

SOUTHLAKE:
Farpointe Cellars

TYLER:
Bernard’s Mediterranean Restaurant
Villa Montez Restaurant

Don’t worry, we do plan on expanding to Houston and Austin in the very near future.

Cheers!
Chelsea

Reserve at (714) 637-3733
www.yvesbistro.com

Featured Sanglier Wines:
2009 Rosé du Tusque
2009 Rouge du Tusque
2008 Kick Ranch Viognier
2008 Russian River Pinot Noir
2007 Kick Ranch Syah

About Yves’ Restaurant:

“Yves’ Restaurant and Wine Bar is simply one of the best dining and wine bar experiences you will ever have. For years, it has been one of Orange County’s top (Zagat rated) dining and wine experiences. In 2008, Yves’ was completely redesigned and a new wine bar was built. Yves’ Restaurant and Wine Bar recently won MYFOXLA’s BEST Orange County Wine Bar.
Our Tapas (delicious bite sized creations) are more than just appetizers, they are delicious works of art.”

Yves Bistro is located at 5753-A East Santa Ana Canyon Road, Anaheim California.

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Enjoy!

Braised Beef Short Ribs. Pair with Sanglier 2007 Kick Ranch Syrah.

INGREDIENTS:

6 beef short ribs, 14 to 16 ounces each (ask for 3 bone center-cut)
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon thyme leaves, and 4 whole sprigs thyme
1 tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper
3 dozen small pearl onions
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup diced onion
1/3 cup diced carrot
1/3 cup diced celery
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 cups port
2 1/2 cups hearty red wine
6 cups beef or veal stock
4 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
Horseradish cream (recipe follows)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Season the short ribs with 1 tablespoon thyme and the cracked black pepper. Use your hands to coat the met well. Cover, and refrigerate overnight.
Take the short ribs out of the refrigerator an hour before cooking, to come to room temperature. After 30 minutes, season them generously on all sides with salt.

When you take the ribs out of the refrigerator, preheat the oven to 425º F.

Toss the pearl onions with 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon thyme, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and a pinch of pepper. Spread them on a baking sheet and roast them about 15 minutes, until tender. When they have cooled, slip off the skins with your fingers and set aside. Turn the oven down to 325ºF.

When it’s time to cook the short ribs, heat a large saute pan over hight heat for 3 minutes. Pour in 3 tablespoons olive oil, and wait a minute or two, until the pan is very hot and almost smoking. Place the short ribs in the pan, and sear until they are nicely browned on all three meaty sides. Depending on the size of your pan, you might have to sear the meat in batches. Do not crowd the meat or get lazy or rushed at this step; it will take at least 15 minutes. When the ribs are nicely browned, transfer them to a braising pan. They should lie flat, bones standing up, in one layer.

Turn the heat down to medium, and add the onion, carrot, celery, thyme, sprigs, and bay leaves. Stir with a wooden spoon, scraping up all the crusty bits in the pan. Cook 6 to 8 minutes, until the vegetables just begin to carmelize. Add the balsamic vinegar, port, and red wine. Turn the heat up to high, and reduce the liquid by half.

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Pour the liquid over the short ribs, scraping any vegatables that have fallen on the ribs back into the liquid. The stock mixture should almost cover the ribs. Tuck the parsley sprigs in and around the meat. Cover tightly with plastic wrap (yes, it can go in the oven) and then aluminum foil. Braise in the oven for about 3 hours.
To check the meat for doneness, remove the plastic and foil, being careful of the escaping steam, and pierce a short rib with a paring knife. When the meat is done, it will yield easily to a knife. Tast a piece if you are not sure.

Let the ribs rest 10 minutes in their juices, and then transfer them to a baking sheet.
Turn the oven up to 400ºF.

Place the short ribs in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, to brown.

Strain the broth into a saucepan, pressing down on the vegetables with a ladle to extract all the juices. Skim the fat from the sauce and, if the broth seems thin, reduce it over medium-high heat to thicken slightly. Taste for seasoning.

Horseradish Cream

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 Crème fraîche
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
Kosher salt and freshly ground black peppper

Combine the Crème fraîche and horseradish in a small bowl. Season with 1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper. Taste for balance and seasoning.

We want to thank everyone who attended our winemaker dinners in Fort Worth and Tyler. A big thank you to Cef, Bernard and Mundo for turning out amazing dishes that were spot on pairings with the wines. They were all spectacular in their own right and we are looking forward to next year! Here is what the Tyler Morning Telegraph had to say… Again thank you for your continued loyalty to Sanglier Cellars!

The Alexander’s

BERNARD’S RESTAURANT

5 Course Food and Wine Pairing

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009, 6:30 p.m.

$95 per person (includes tax and gratuity)

RSVP: 903.534.0265
www.bernardsintyler.com

VILLA MONTEZ RESTAURANT

5 Course Food and Wine Pairing

Thursday, November 12th, 2009 6:30 p.m.

$95 per person (includes tax and gratuity)

RSVP: Mundo@villamontez.com
www.villamontez.com

We look forward to sharing our new wines with you! Wines being poured will include: 2008 Kick Ranch Viognier, 2008 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, 2007 Kemp Vineyard Syrah and 2007 Kick Ranch Syrah.

Both entertaining and informative, it is a great listen!

My last blog was on September 29. Sorry for the lapse in posting, but I am going to blame it on writer’s block and too much everyday work, not laziness.

Fact is, between September 30th and October 12th, we made thirty-eight picks totalling 175 tons of grapes (4,200 cases). If you do the math, that works out to an average harvest of 4.6 tons per pick. Those thirty-eight picks went to twenty-two different wineries. Now I am not trying to bore you with a lot of numbers, just trying to show you the artisanal approach to our work.

Yes, we have been in tough economic times, but did you know wine sales will grow slightly this year? That is the good news. The bad news is, sales have grown a lot for the giant corporations doing millions of cases while sales for the artisan, craftsman, small family owned wineries have been going south (for most). These family owned wineries are our staple business.

We do grow and harvest some grapes for the big guys such as Rosenblum (Diageo) and Ravenswood (Constellation) but they represent less than 5% of our business. The people we work with at these two giants of the industry are professional, enjoyable folks to work with, but they don’t represent “our normal client”.

Our client is personally involved in making the wine, hands on with the marketing and sales, working diligently in all phases of the business to insure their winery’s success. They are, for the most part, the modern day Jeffersonian farmer. Just for reference, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God”. That is a strong statement and I wouldn’t go that far, but my clients are really, really good people.

Maybe it is a dream, unsustainble in today’s world of globalized economies, markets, and cultures, but you have to love and respect the effort these small vineyard owners and winemakers put forth. So, for my part, I will continue to focuss our efforts toward insuring the success of the small entrepreneurial producer over the large corporation.

Highlights of the Last Two Weeks:

We picked the Sanglier Cellars Syrah from Kemp Vineyard. This vineyard is visually stunning. When you drive up to the gate nothing stands out. As you drive through the gate you crest the ridgeline and see this sweeping panoramic view of a terraced vineyard falling gracefully down the hillside. The morning we picked, the vines were shrouded in fog. The vineyard seemed to be floating in the clouds.

With that said, the fruit turned out to be as ethereal as the scenery. Perfect clusters, slightly dimpled and bursting with blueberry and raspberry flavors. We picked at the peak of flavor, target sugars, and acidity. If this wine is anything less than stellar….we screwed it up in the winery.

Lowlight of the Last Two Weeks:

Pounding rain. Nearly 3″ on the 13th. We still have 100 tons of grapes on the vine. We will know in the next few days if some or all of these grapes will make to the winery. The risk of farming is at hand and it is pushing all the air out of the room.

On a Happier Note:

The weather has given us a break and we will have the time to celebrate a birthday……mine. Normally, harvest prevents a night out, but not this year.

Melissa is Cooking: Braised Pork Shoulder with Mustard and Capers (From a Pig in Provence, Georgeanne Brennan); Potato Gratin; Heirloom Tomato (last of the season), roasted pepper and mozzarella salad; and chocolate cake.

A few friends will come for dinner and we will share our newly released 2008 Sanglier Cellars Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. Then we will be off to see Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt.

The sun is coming out…….thank you God.

When I was a kid, I remember my Dad and Uncle biting into fresh, vine-ripe tomatoes at lunch time and discussing what they liked about one varietal over another. They were “truck farmers” and tomatoes were their money crop. At the time, I didn’t get it……

Now I spend my pre-harvest days walking vineyard blocks, tasting grapes and discussing what flavor profiles different clones can bring to a wine. For our Kick Ranch Syrah I have firmly settled on three clones, 470, Hermitage, and 877.

Clone 470….Screaming Blueberry: Every year when I walk our blocks of fruit, I love the bright blueberry flavor I taste in these grapes. The flavor seems to pop out when the brix level hits 25 degrees and the pH climbs above 3.50. But we normally wait a few days for the flavor to become more intense. This intensity of flavor is normally accompanied by some dimpling of the individual berries and a soft velvety feel of the cluster. This relationship has been so consistent over time that I now know some winemakers who use this observed condition to be a primary determining factor in their decision of when to pick.

Over the last few years, I have realized this added “hangtime” for the grapes in pursuit of more intense flavors also resulted in a loss of that bright blueberry component and the introduction of a dark, slightly jammy blackberry flavor. Oh…..and a higher alcohol for the wine.

Trust me, I love dark rich blackberry and I don’t care if the alcohol in the wine is elevated if the balance is on target but I really want to see that blueberry component I taste in the vineyard make it all the way through to the bottle. So, this year I picked earlier. Slightly lower sugar levels, slightly higher acid levels, and that bright blueberry flavor profile.

Hermitage Clone…..Smoky Bacon Fat

Another childhood memory, dipping my bacon in the blueberry syrup on my pancakes. Come on….you know it sounds great unless you are a vegan or vegetarian.

The Hermitage Clone is the bacon I can dip into my blueberry compote provided by Clone 470. Certainly Hermitage produces some delightfull fruit flavors, but that smoky, bacon fat is what I crave. This year, we picked and fermented the Hermitage Clone with Clone 470. Now, I am not trying to back up from the rich and lush flavors of our previous vintages, just hoping to bring out some of the uniqueness of these clones on this site.

Clone 877: The Backbone:

This clone is the most demanding on a vigneron’s patience. The flavor during our tasting in the vineyard is subdued and the grape follows it up with muted flavors in the winery. But when this clone finishes malolactic fermentation it wakes up and gives you rich dark fruit, integrated tannins, and depth. In other words, Clone 877 provides the structure or framework of the wine that allows the other clones to show off their beauty and (let’s just go ahead and say it) their sexiness and seductiveness.

Will I achieve these flavors in the 2009 Kick Ranch Syrah. Who knows? But I am having fun trying.

Kick Ranch Syrah grapes on the sorting table