David Kapp
These look more like Thiebaud, but the stuff I saw at that gallery this weekend reminded me of urban Impressionist paintings. Very nice.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Sunday, January 28, 2007
unwanted essentials
I’m not a blush person - too much high school Goth in my past - and I really fought this stuff for a long time, but I finally broke down and bought it during my Christmas shopping (one for you, two for me) and now it’s part of my daily routine. It adds a little nice color to cheeks, of course, and also can work as a light shadow and it smells of roses. One more thing to squeeze into my travel bag!
Friday, January 26, 2007
must be a Vitamin C craving
or I’m just getting some really good oranges of late. Anyhow, I’m eating them like they’re going out of style and they taste FANTASTIC. In their honor, I offer you a selection of random and beautiful shots from Flickr:
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
movie rec
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
staple of life
in case you’re missed the rousing chorus about the no-knead bread, I tried it over the weekend:
I’d add more salt and I think next time I’m making a rosemary-olive loaf, but regardless, it was pretty tasty.
The Secret of Great Bread: Let Time Do the Work
Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
PATIENCE REWARDED Jim Lahey’s bread needs little yeast and no kneading. The dough is poured into a hot pot before baking.
Mark Bittmann
INNOVATIONS in bread baking are rare. In fact, the 6,000-year-old process hasn’t changed much since Pasteur made the commercial production of standardized yeast possible in 1859. The introduction of the gas stove, the electric mixer and the food processor made the process easier, faster and more reliable.
Photographs by Ruby Washington/The New York Times; above, Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
From top: 1. When dough is bubbly, it is ready to be worked. 2. Fold dough once or twice; do not knead. 3. Shape it into a ball and let it rise. 4. Wheat bran flies as Jim Lahey lifts dough and drops it into a hot pot. 5. After baking, the crusty result.
I’m not counting sliced bread as a positive step, but Jim Lahey’s method may be the greatest thing since.
This story began in late September when Mr. Lahey sent an e-mail message inviting me to attend a session of a class he was giving at Sullivan Street Bakery, which he owns, at 533 West 47th Street in Manhattan. His wording was irresistible: “I’ll be teaching a truly minimalist breadmaking technique that allows people to make excellent bread at home with very little effort. The method is surprisingly simple — I think a 4-year-old could master it — and the results are fantastic.”
I set up a time to visit Mr. Lahey, and we baked together, and the only bad news is that you cannot put your 4-year-old to work producing bread for you. The method is complicated enough that you would need a very ambitious 8-year-old. But the results are indeed fantastic.
Mr. Lahey’s method is striking on several levels. It requires no kneading. (Repeat: none.) It uses no special ingredients, equipment or techniques. It takes very little effort.
It accomplishes all of this by combining a number of unusual though not unheard of features. Most notable is that you’ll need about 24 hours to create a loaf; time does almost all the work. Mr. Lahey’s dough uses very little yeast, a quarter teaspoon (you almost never see a recipe with less than a teaspoon), and he compensates for this tiny amount by fermenting the dough very slowly. He mixes a very wet dough, about 42 percent water, which is at the extreme high end of the range that professional bakers use to create crisp crust and large, well-structured crumb, both of which are evident in this loaf.
The dough is so sticky that you couldn’t knead it if you wanted to. It is mixed in less than a minute, then sits in a covered bowl, undisturbed, for about 18 hours. It is then turned out onto a board for 15 minutes, quickly shaped (I mean in 30 seconds), and allowed to rise again, for a couple of hours. Then it’s baked. That’s it.
I asked Harold McGee, who is an amateur breadmaker and best known as the author of “On Food and Cooking” (Scribner, 2004), what he thought of this method. His response: “It makes sense. The long, slow rise does over hours what intensive kneading does in minutes: it brings the gluten molecules into side-by-side alignment to maximize their opportunity to bind to each other and produce a strong, elastic network. The wetness of the dough is an important piece of this because the gluten molecules are more mobile in a high proportion of water, and so can move into alignment easier and faster than if the dough were stiff.”
That’s as technical an explanation as I care to have, enough to validate what I already knew: Mr. Lahey’s method is creative and smart.
But until this point, it’s not revolutionary. Mr. McGee said he had been kneading less and less as the years have gone by, relying on time to do the work for him. Charles Van Over, author of the authoritative book on food-processor dough making, “The Best Bread Ever” (Broadway, 1997), long ago taught me to make a very wet dough (the food processor is great at this) and let it rise slowly. And, as Mr. Lahey himself notes, “The Egyptians mixed their batches of dough with a hoe.”
What makes Mr. Lahey’s process revolutionary is the resulting combination of great crumb, lightness, incredible flavor — long fermentation gives you that — and an enviable, crackling crust, the feature of bread that most frequently separates the amateurs from the pros. My bread has often had thick, hard crusts, not at all bad, but not the kind that shatter when you bite into them. Producing those has been a bane of the amateur for years, because it requires getting moisture onto the bread as the crust develops.
To get that kind of a crust, professionals use steam-injected ovens. At home I have tried brushing the dough with water (a hassle and ineffective); spraying it (almost as ineffective and requiring frequent attention); throwing ice cubes on the floor of the oven (not good for the oven, and not far from ineffective); and filling a pot with stones and preheating it, then pouring boiling water over the stones to create a wet sauna (quite effective but dangerous, physically challenging and space-consuming). I was discouraged from using La Cloche, a covered stoneware dish, by my long-standing disinclination to crowd my kitchen with inessential items that accomplish only one chore. I was discouraged from buying a $5,000 steam-injected oven by its price.
It turns out there’s no need for any of this. Mr. Lahey solves the problem by putting the dough in a preheated covered pot — a common one, a heavy one, but nothing fancy. For one loaf he used an old Le Creuset enameled cast iron pot; for another, a heavy ceramic pot. (I have used cast iron with great success.) By starting this very wet dough in a hot, covered pot, Mr. Lahey lets the crust develop in a moist, enclosed environment. The pot is in effect the oven, and that oven has plenty of steam in it. Once uncovered, a half-hour later, the crust has time to harden and brown, still in the pot, and the bread is done. (Fear not. The dough does not stick to the pot any more than it would to a preheated bread stone.)
The entire process is incredibly simple, and, in the three weeks I’ve been using it, absolutely reliable. Though professional bakers work with consistent flour, water, yeast and temperatures, and measure by weight, we amateurs have mostly inconsistent ingredients and measure by volume, which can make things unpredictable. Mr. Lahey thinks imprecision isn’t much of a handicap and, indeed, his method seems to iron out the wrinkles: “I encourage a somewhat careless approach,” he says, “and figure this may even be a disappointment to those who expect something more difficult. The proof is in the loaf.”
The loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European-style boule that is produced more easily than by any other technique I’ve used, and will blow your mind. (It may yet change the industry. Mr. Lahey is experimenting with using it on a large scale, but although it requires far less electricity than conventional baking, it takes a lot of space and time.) It is best made with bread flour, but all-purpose flour works fine. (I’ve played with whole-wheat and rye flours, too; the results are fantastic.)
You or your 8-year-old may hit this perfectly on the first try, or you may not. Judgment is involved; with practice you’ll get it right every time.
The baking itself is virtually foolproof, so the most important aspect is patience. Long, slow fermentation is critical. Mr. Lahey puts the time at 12 to 18 hours, but I have had much greater success at the longer time. If you are in a hurry, more yeast (three-eighths of a teaspoon) or a warmer room temperature may move things along, but really, once you’re waiting 12 hours why not wait 18? Similarly, Mr. Lahey’s second rising can take as little as an hour, but two hours, or even a little longer, works better.
Although even my “failed” loaves were as good as those from most bakeries, to make the loaf really sensational requires a bit of a commitment. But with just a little patience, you will be rewarded with the best no-work bread you have ever made. And that’s no small thing.
No Kneading, but Some Fine-Tuning
By MARK BITTMAN
Published: December 6, 2006
LAST month I wrote about Jim Lahey, the owner of Sullivan Street Bakery on West 47th Street in Manhattan, and his clever way to produce a European-style boule at home. Mr. Lahey’s recipe calls for very little yeast, a wet dough, long rising times and baking in a closed, preheated pot. My results with Mr. Lahey’s method have been beyond satisfying.
Happily, so have those of most readers. In the last few weeks Jim Lahey’s recipe has been translated into German, baked in Togo, discussed on more than 200 blogs and written about in other newspapers. It has changed the lives (their words, not mine) of veteran and novice bakers. It has also generated enough questions to warrant further discussion here. The topics are more or less in the order of the quantity of inquiries.
WEIGHT VS. VOLUME The original recipe contained volume measures, but for those who prefer to use weight, here are the measurements: 430 grams of flour, 345 grams of water, 1 gram of yeast and 8 grams of salt. With experience, many people will stop measuring altogether and add just enough water to make the dough almost too wet to handle.
SALT Many people, me included, felt Mr. Lahey’s bread was not salty enough. Yes, you can use more salt and it won’t significantly affect the rising time. I’ve settled at just under a tablespoon.
YEAST Instant yeast, called for in the recipe, is also called rapid-rise yeast. But you can use whatever yeast you like. Active dry yeast can be used without proofing (soaking it to make sure it’s active).
TIMING About 18 hours is the preferred initial rising time. Some readers have cut this to as little as eight hours and reported little difference. I have not had much luck with shorter times, but I have gone nearly 24 hours without a problem. Room temperature will affect the rising time, and so will the temperature of the water you add (I start with tepid). Like many other people, I’m eager to see what effect warmer weather will have. But to those who have moved the rising dough around the room trying to find the 70-degree sweet spot: please stop. Any normal room temperature is fine. Just wait until you see bubbles and well-developed gluten — the long strands that cling to the sides of the bowl when you tilt it — before proceeding.
THE SECOND RISE Mr. Lahey originally suggested one to two hours, but two to three is more like it, in my experience. (Ambient temperatures in the summer will probably knock this time down some.) Some readers almost entirely skipped this rise, shaping the dough after the first rise and letting it rest while the pot and oven preheat; this is worth trying, of course.
OTHER FLOURS Up to 30 percent whole-grain flour works consistently and well, and 50 percent whole-wheat is also excellent. At least one reader used 100 percent whole-wheat and reported “great crust but somewhat inferior crumb,” which sounds promising. I’ve kept rye, which is delicious but notoriously impossible to get to rise, to about 20 percent. There is room to experiment.
FLAVORINGS The best time to add caraway seeds, chopped olives, onions, cheese, walnuts, raisins or whatever other traditional bread flavorings you like is after you’ve mixed the dough. But it’s not the only time; you can fold in ingredients before the second rising.
OTHER SHAPES Baguettes in fish steamers, rolls in muffin tins or classic loaves in loaf pans: if you can imagine it, and stay roughly within the pattern, it will work.
COVERING BETWEEN RISES A Silpat mat under the dough is a clever idea (not mine). Plastic wrap can be used as a top layer in place of a second towel.
THE POT The size matters, but not much. I have settled on a smaller pot than Mr. Lahey has, about three or four quarts. This produces a higher loaf, which many people prefer — again, me included. I’m using cast iron. Readers have reported success with just about every available material. Note that the lid handles on Le Creuset pots can only withstand temperatures up to 400 degrees. So avoid using them, or remove the handle first.
BAKING You can increase the initial temperature to 500 degrees for more rapid browning, but be careful; I scorched a loaf containing whole-wheat flour by doing this. Yes, you can reduce the length of time the pot is covered to 20 minutes from 30, and then increase the time the loaf bakes uncovered. Most people have had a good experience baking for an additional 30 minutes once the pot is uncovered.
As these answers demonstrate, almost everything about Mr. Lahey’s bread is flexible, within limits. As we experiment, we will have failures. (Like the time I stopped adding flour because the phone rang, and didn’t realize it until 18 hours later. Even this, however, was reparable). This method is going to have people experimenting, and largely succeeding, until something better comes along. It may be quite a while.
Recipe: No-Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.
1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Eye Candy
I saw this girl last night in the most amazing pair of Christian Louboutin’s and was inspired to try to find them online. I didn’t suceed, but did find these pretties:
These are fantastic peep-toes - sleek and sexy with lovely detailing. I’d be hard pressed to choose between them!
These have a similar shape to the ones above, but are so much more party-ish.
Finally, these are pure Tim Burton; I don’t know that I’d ever get around to wearing them out, but would definitely put them out as artwork until I found the right occasion. On the other hand, the right occasion could be a Saturday morning coffee run - these would really liven up a basic jeans-and-black-sweater ensemble. 
fairytale glassware
There’s a scene in The Witching Hour where Rowan and Michael finally take possession of the creepy/beautiful Garden District house and are exploring. This, of course, ultimately leads to badness, but one of the parts I loved was when they discovered all of the table service in the butlers pantry - old linens and crystal and fragile china. I am awfully fond of the the breakables. 
In the small high-ceilinged pantry, they discovered shelves on top of shelves of gorgeous china: Minton, Lenox, Wedgwood, Royal Doulton – flowered patterns, Oriental patterns, patterns bordered in silver and gold, Old white ware and Oriental porcelain, antique Blue Willow and old Spode.
There were chests upon chests of sterling, heavy ornate pieces by the hundreds, nestled in felt, including very old sets with the English marks and the initial M in the European style engraved on the back.
Michael was the one who knew such things; his long love affair with Victoriana in all forms stood him well. He could identify the fish knives and the oyster forks and the jelly spoons and dozens of other tiny special items, of which there were countless number in a dozen different ornate patterns.
Sterling candlesticks they found, elaborate punch bowls and serving platters, bread plates and butter dishes and old water pitchers and coffee urns and teapots and carafes. Exquisite chasing. Magically, the darkest tarnish gave way to the hard rub of the finger, revealing the old luster of pure silver beneath.
Cut glass bowls of all sizes were pushed to the back of the cabinets, leaded crystal dishes and plates.
Only the tablecloths and the piles of old napkins were too far gone, the fine linen and lace having rotted in the inevitable damp, the letter M showing proudly still here and there beneath the dark stain of mildew.
Yet even a few of these had been carefully preserved in a dry cedar-lined drawer, wrapped in blue paper. Heavy old lace that had yellowed beautifully and tumbled among them were napkin rings of bone and silver and gold.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
The Mouse Takes Paris
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I think that I’m bemused …
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France’s arbiters of high art anoint Walt Disney’s ‘genius’
Europeans have flocked to an exhibit celebrating the animator, who drew heavily from European artists and settings.
By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science MonitorPARIS - It took the French to “discover” the genius of William Faulkner and Billie Holliday. And in a most unusual event at the most improbable of places, the world’s guardians of culture are rediscovering an American animator named Walt Disney. Moreover, Disney has made it to the Grand Palais, a museum of arts high and fine, as a 20th-century “genius” often dismissed as being, well, too Mickey Mouse.
It’s paradoxical enough that the French, perhaps the leading snoots on middle-class Americana, did a major reappraisal. But droves of Parisians have lined up for months to see “Once Upon a Time Walt Disney.”
Grand Palais: Disney exhibit was a hit with Parisians.
AUGROS PIERRE/NEWSCOM
The show illuminates two main points: That Disney deserves to be liberated from the corporate image spawned by Disney Inc. And it reveals how deeply Disney drew from European artists, fables, settings, and imagination.
Disney produced “an imaginary world somewhere between Europe and America,” says curator Bruno Girveau.
Some 14 of Disney’s 17 major films, including “Cinderella,” “Pinocchio,” “Snow White,” and “Fantasia” “originate in European libraries,” exhibit text suggests.
The mass appeal of Disney has “obscured the extraordinary origins of his artistic adventure,” says Mr. Givreau.
“I know Disney and the stories from Europe,” says Helen Phalempin, a Paris school teacher visiting the Grand Palais last week. “What I didn’t know was how much Snow White and Fantasia borrowed from earlier German and French films.”
Americans may be unaware that Disney – unable to enlist in World War I because he was only 16 – joined the Red Cross and was sent overseas, arriving after the armistice. He spent a year in France soaking up the culture. He and his wife, Lillian, returned in 1935, and brought back some 350 books of illustrations – romantic castles, royal ceremonies, woodland sprites, evil witches, anthropomorphized animals.
Indeed, the farmlands and forests of America, or the newly sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles, aren’t the main source of the Disney magic. Rather, working in Burbank with dozens of refugees and vagabond artists from Europe, many of them Jewish, the Disney bunch borrowed from masters like Honoré Daumier and Bruegel, imitated Gustav Dore’s illustrations of “Dante’s Inferno,” consulted landscapes by Philippe Rousseau for the “Jungle Book,” snatched ideas from 1920s films like F.W. Mernau’s “Faust” and Chaplin’s “Modern Times,” and revised “Pinocchio” from the Italian writer Carlo Collodi. They copy, embellish, and alter from every possible source – producing a highly cross-pollinated vision in “living color.”
Pinocchio is a Mediterranean boy, living in a Bavarian Alpine village modeled after the German town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber that has Scandinavian-style chalets – a rendering by Disney artist Gustaf Tenggren of Sweden, raised in a chalet.
One arresting museum feature shows Disney clips next to clips from European films from the 1920s; some images seem directly lifted by Disney animators.
As Disney said, “it all began with a mouse.” Yet it probably began with a number of mice, distant cousins of Mickey that trace to 19th-century European illustrators.
Along with Beatrix Potter’s creatures, there are pre-Mickey mice by French artists Benjamin Ravier and Philippe Rousseau and a violin-playing mouse by German artist Heinrich Kley, whose art Disney collected and whose whimsical “skating elephants” were the inspiration for later “Fantasia” drawings. Those illustrations captured the imagination of Spanish surrealist Salvadore Dali, who collaborated with Disney after World War II (though only 18 seconds of film resulted.)
US outsiders found refuge in France
But, as Uncle Walt might have said in his Sunday evening Wonderful World of Disney prologues, “now let’s hold on a minute and step back.”
France has long been a US sounding board. In the 1950s and ’60s, Paris was looked to by American outsiders – minorities, jazz musicians, and artists – as a refuge. Faulkner was out of print before being discovered by French literati. Jerry Lewis’s offbeat humor was first appreciated here. In the aftermath of German occupation, American pop culture was the rage in Paris, viewed partly as a way to get rid of Nazi shadows.
This month, a tap-dancing musical honoring Josephine Baker’s 100th birthday just closed; the jazz singer was born in St. Louis but felt most at home in the Paris of the late 1920s. “Looking for Josephine” travels to Barcelona and then to New Orleans, La., and is the only tribute anywhere to her centenary.
Disney, “Uncle Walt” to millions of Mouseketeers by the late 1950s, came across as an ordinary guy who somehow got diverted from a career as a milkman in Kansas City, Mo. (Indeed, a teacher there once pronounced him “second dumbest” in the class.) But Disney was no slouch. He corresponded with Charlie Chaplin, socialized with Spencer Tracy, and knew Sergei Eisenstein, the Russian film director. They were all Disney fans.
The Grand Palais assesses Disney as a “modest artist.” But his genius lay elsewhere. He brought to life a new art form. He’s gauged less as a virtuoso cellist and more as conductor of an orchestra.
Under Disney’s creative hand, for example, backgrounds were as much a “character” in a film as Jiminy Cricket or Daffy Duck. Backgrounds had their own creative artistic directors: Trees with arms, or polka-dotted toadstools that jump and dance. The entire picture was alive. “Snow White” took 200 years of manhours to complete, and even that didn’t satisfy Disney, according to his biographer.
The section of the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” called “Night on Bald Mountain” was designed by Max Reinhardt, the European impresario known to Americans as the owner of the castle Leopoldskron in Salzburg, which played home to the von Trapp family in “The Sound of Music.”
Decency – but with sharp edges
It was in the 1950s that the irritation with the Disneyization of reality set in. Disney came to represent a world of happy endings, fuzzy creatures, and the harmonizing of animals, humans, and nature in a way that has little relation to the darker underside of a world smashed by Auschwitz. The sense that Americans looked at the world through a Disney vision of a “small world after all,” got laid at Disney’s door, especially overseas. Yet that ignores many of the sharper-edged realities in Disney’s own work. The shooting of Bambi’s mother, or the wicked witch in “Snow White,” are truly fearsome images. The dark forests whose branches reach out to ensnare princesses caused mothers all over the world “to pull their children out of the theaters,” as Pierre Lambert, a historian of animation in France, points out. (His mother pulled him out of a French showing at age 5.)
Yet Disney’s concept, forged on a farm in Missouri and in Kansas City, is finally one of the decency of ordinary people striving to surmount difficulties, much as he did. It is a vision, the French note, that has traveled all over the world – most recently to Asia in the form of a Hong Kong Disney.
While the Paris show closed Tuesday it will shortly travel to Montreal, opening at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on March 8, closing June 24.
Monday, January 15, 2007
the buzz
it’s all about Spain right now - Spanish food, wine, cities. I found this blurb as a saved email from last summer and thought it sounded relevant. And delicious.
A primer on grapes and places
Emerging regions
Bierzo. Fruit from the signature Mencía vines from this region in northwest Tierra de Castilla go into reds that are terrific food wines, with more finesse than power.
Campo de Borja. An emerging area south of Rioja, where the old-vine Garnacha vineyards climb the slopes of Sierra del Moncayo.
Cariñena. South of Campo de Borja, Cariñena is the birthplace of a namesake grape variety, though Garnacha is the dominant grape.
Calatayud. East of Cariñena, Calatayud’s high-altitude, old-vine Garnacha is just starting to show up in wines for export.
Empordá-Costa Brava. This coastal zone of Catalunya has newly planted Tempranillo, Cabernet and Chardonnay vineyards. The signature wine is a rosado (rosé) made from Garnacha and Cariñena grapes.
Jumilla. A hot, high-altitude region southwest of Valencia known for bulk wine, Jumilla now is making modern wine with its old-vine Monastrell grapes.
La Mancha. South of Madrid, the flat, inland region is hot in the summer, freezing in the winter, and dry all the time. White Airéns and Tempranillos predominate.
Navarra. Near the French border, west of Catalunya, the region is known for Garnacha, much of which is made into rosados. Tempranillo production is rising.
Priorato. An area of Catalunya known for a wide elevation span (328 to 2,297 feet) and slate and quartzite soils; artisanal winemakers have planted Cabernet Sauvignon, but Garnacha and Cariñena still predominate.
Rías Baixas. This low-land, coastal region in Galicia, bordering Portugal, is known for its fresh, light Albariños.
Rueda. A Castilian region known for its white wines — Sauvignon Blanc, Verdejo and blends of the two — as well as Tempranillo.
Tierra de Castilla. The historic heartland of Castilian Spain includes the wine zones Ribera del Duero, Rueda, Toro and Bierzo.
Toro. Located within Tierra de Castilla, the region is known for its intense Tempranillos. Garnachas and Cabernets also are grown in the high-elevation vineyards.
Valencia. The region surrounding the Mediterranean town of Valencia encompasses the Alicante, Valencia and Utiel-Requena zones, which grow a wide variety of grapes.
Grape varieties
Albariño. A white wine grape native to Galicia known for producing wines with fresh peachy flavors, but it can also produce wines with the potential to gain complexity with age.
Garnacha. A grape widely grown throughout Spain’s northern regions, it adds spicy, cherry flavors to traditional Rioja red wines. Known in France as Grenache.
Macabeo. Also known as Viura, this white wine grape used in Spain’s sparkling cavas is the main white wine of Rioja and Navarra.
Mencía. A red wine grape that grows on hillside slopes and terraces in Bierzo, it’s often blended with Garnacha to make an early-drinking wine.
Tempranillo. The predominant red wine grape throughout Spain, it makes long-lasting, fragrant, fruity wines. It’s the backbone of traditional Riojas.
Verdejo. A white grape considered one of Spain’s best; it makes aromatic wines with character.
— Corie Brown
Sources: “The New Spain: A Complete Guide to Contemporary Spanish Wine” by John Radford, 2004; “The Wines of Spain” by Julian Jeffs, 1999
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THE Times tasting panel met recently for a blind tasting of Spanish wines widely available at Los Angeles area retailers for $13 and less. Joining me on the panel were Food editor Leslie Brenner, Food columnist Russ Parsons and Randy Kemner, owner of the Wine Country in Signal Hill. The good news is there were plenty of simple but pleasing wines in this value category, as well as some surprisingly delightful wines that cost as little as $4.
Our favorite white wine among the Albariños, Verdejos and regional blends was the 2003 Protocolo, which retails for about $6. The best of the reds, which included Garnachas, Tempranillos and blends, was the 2003 Las Rocas de San Alejandro, an old-vines Garnacha that sells for about $10.
Wines are listed in order of the panel’s preference.
— Corie Brown
Whites
2003 Protocolo. A blend from Dominio de Eguren in Tierra de Castilla, imported by Jorge Ordoñez. A well-balanced, earthy wine with intriguing aromas of lemon and olive oil, a bit of complexity and a melony finish. At Liquid Wine & Spirits in Chatsworth, (818) 709-5019, and Mission Wines in South Pasadena, (626) 403-9463, about $6.
2004 Con Class. A white wine blend from Rueda, imported by Eric Solomon’s European Cellars. Sauvignon Blanc-like, with bracing acid, peach nectar and herbal flavors and aromas of fresh hay. Simple and pleasant. At Mel & Rose Wine and Spirits in West Hollywood, (323) 655-5557, and Wine Country in Signal Hill, (562) 597-8303, about $9.
2004 Rocaberdi. A blend (80% Macabeo, 20% Xarel-lo) from Catalonia, via Beaune Imports. A touch of oak dampens the tart grapefruit and peach aromas in this fun and likable blend. Nicely structured with crisp, bracing acids. At Wine Country, about $8.
2004 Naia. Imported by Jorge Ordoñez, this bracing Verdejo from Rueda offers citrus aromas and flavors of freshly cut grass and sweet lime. At Mel & Rose Wine and Spirits and Mission Wines, about $11.
2004 Floresta. A blend (55% Macabeo, 45% Chardonnay) from Empordá-Costa Brava, imported by Beaune Imports. Peach and apricot aromas, with pleasant creamy apricot and tangerine flavors. At Liquid Wine and Spirits and the Wine Country, about $10.
2004 Burgáns Albariño. From Rías Baixas, imported by Eric Solomon. Floral aromas, with a touch of turpentine, this wine has an off-putting vanilla- extract taste and an unpleasant finish. At Mel & Rose Wine and Spirits and Wine Country, about $10.
2004 Vionta Albariño. With off-putting milk-chocolate aromas, this wine was badly oxidized. At Wine Hotel in L.A., (323) 937-9463, about $13.
Reds
2003 Las Rocas de San Alejandro Viñas Viejas Garnacha. From old vines in Calatayud, imported by Eric Solomon. This wine, with its eucalyptus and herbal aromas and notes of tobacco and leather, has some character and complexity. At Mission Wines, about $10.
2004 Tres Picos Borsao Garnacha. From Campo de Borja, imported by Jorge Ordoñez. Sweet, smoky nose with flavors of black cherry and spices, this wine would pair well with charcuterie. At the Duke of Bourbon in Canoga Park, (818) 341-1234; Liquid Wine & Spirits; and Wine House in West L.A., (310) 479-3731, about $12.
2004 Mano a Mano. From La Mancha, imported by Jorge Ordoñez. This juicy Tempranillo has ripe berry and cassis aromas, black cherry flavors and a pleasant finish with some length. At Joan’s on Third in Los Angeles, (323) 655-2285, and Mission Wines, about $9.
2004 Abrazo del Toro. A blend (80% Garnacha, 20% Tempranillo) from Cariñena. A young, drinkable wine with charming cherry aromas. At Trader Joe’s stores, about $4.
2004 Wrongo Dongo. A blend from Jumilla, imported by Jorge Ordoñez. This one-note green peppery wine has off-aromas. At Mission Wines and Duke of Bourbon, about $7.
2004 La Nunciatura Tempranillo. From La Tierra de Castilla. Odd chocolate and grape aromas mar the simple, undistinguished flavors that follow. At Trader Joe’s, about $4.
2004 Coto de Hayas Garnacha Centenaria. From Campo de Borja. Sweet grapey aromas with an off-putting chemical note, a heavy dose of oak on the palate. Available at Mel & Rose Wine and Spirits and Wine House, about $11.
2004 Tikalo Albaliza. A pleasant yet undistinguished blend (65% Tempranillo, 35% Garnacha) from Tierra de Castilla, imported by Eric Solomon. Purple grape aromas with a funky leather flavor. At Wine House and Mel & Rose Wine and Spirits, about $6.
2001 Estola Reserva. The panel disagreed on this blend from Bodegas Ayuso in La Mancha , with curious licorice and menthol aromas. One panelist found it to be like an acceptable fruity jug wine; another called it “watery and bad at the same time.” At Trader Joe’s, about $5.
2003 Veroleón. A blend (70% Garnacha, 30% Merlot) from Navarra. The bottle we opened was so badly oxidized it was undrinkable. At Trader Joe’s, about $5.
