I’ve been taking a summer vacation from the blog for a few weeks, and as I’m reemerging this week, I think it’s only appropriate to toast with a bottle of bubbly. 

Today we’re going way, way, way Down Under. We’re picking up our exploration of Australian wine, and we’re going about as far south in the country as you can go to Tasmania. Australia’s Island State is known for its Devils, gorgeous scenery, and incredibly clean air. It’s also a pretty ideal place to make sparkling wine – so let’s go ahead and pop a bottle!

Cheers!

An Intro to Tassie Wine

Map borrowed from WineFolly.com

Tassie wines are still somewhat undiscovered gems. They represent less than 1% of Australia’s wine production, but they’re known for their quality, and as a result, this is one Australian winemaking region where demand outpaces supply. 

Despite the production numbers being small, winemaking history goes back to the early days of Australia’s European settlement. Its first vineyards were planted in 1823 – which gives it a potential claim over the Hunter Valley, which is generally cited as Australia’s oldest region. The issue is that after its early start, winemaking on the island pretty much dried up for about a century starting in the second half of the 1800s and then reemerged in the 1950s, so it hasn’t been continuous. 

Tasmania is way down south – located between the southern parallels of  40° and 44° latitude, about 150 miles (240 km) off the coast of Victoria. As you can probably imagine, things get can get chilly around these parts, so the grapes they focus on as pretty different from much of the rest of mainland Australia. Rather than Shiraz, Grenache, and Cabernet Sauvignon which like the heat, we see grapes that like the cool maritime climate take center stage here. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay take the top spots for plantings, and those are followed by Sauv Blanc, Pinot Gris, and Riesling. (We saw this in the Yarra Valley* in Victoria, and now we’re even farther south.) 

Pinot Noir and Chardonnay also happen to be the grapes most traditionally used for traditional method sparkling wines, and much like Champagne, cooler climates tend to be perfect for making bubbly as the grapes retain lots of crisp acidity. Lo and behold, Tasmania has developed a reputation for making some of the country’s best sparkling wines. Moreover, Australia’s first sparkling wine was made in Tasmania in 1826.

Tasmania’s landscape is dominated by dolerite-capped mountains which give the island its complex geography with many varying terroirs and micro-climates. Most notably, the mountains on the western side create a rain shadow that blocks the majority of rain from hitting the island’s seven major growing areas: North West, Tamar Valley, Pipers River, East Coast, Coal River Valley, Derwent Valley, Huon Valley / d'Entrecasteaux Channel. 

Thanks to the shifting and colliding of continents, plus volcanoes, and the movements of bodies of water, Tasmania’s soils are incredibly diverse. If you have a few minutes to geek out, check out this video for a mind-bending look at their geology.

The Wine: Jansz Premium Cuvée Brut Tasmania 

Alcohol: 12%  | Price: $19.99 (Purchased at K&L) 

Jansz Tasmania has been solely focused on sparkling winemaking since 1986. Champagne house Louis Roederer saw similarities between the climate in the Pipers River region, where the original vineyards are located, and that of Champagne, and they decided to partner with the owners of Heemskerk Wines to create Tasmania’s first premium, traditional method sparkling wine house. The Hill-Smith family purchased the property in 1998 and they’ve established it as one of the most highly regarded family-owned sparkling wine houses in Australia. 

The winery’s name pays homage to Tasmania’s namesake, the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman who first sighted the island in 1642. When the vineyards were first established in 1975, they were named after Tasman’s ship, the Heemskerk. 

Image borrowed from Jansz's website.

The Pipers River region has a maritime climate but also gets a lot of sunshine hours, making it excellent for grape-growing. Cool winds from the Bass-Strait also helps to moderate temperatures in the vineyards from becoming too extreme both in the summer and winter, resulting in a long, cool, sunny growing season that allows the grapes to ripen slowly and develop their flavors.  The Janz vineyards here sit on a bed of free-draining red basalt soils, which also adds to the minerality of the wines. 

The wines are made in traditional method and they've put a little spin on the "Méthode Champenoise" and call their take "Méthode Tasmanoise":

Méthode Tasmanoise is the embodiment of every aspect of our unique place. It goes beyond terroir, beyond winemaking. Méthode Tasmanoise encapsulates our Tasmanian way of life and our respect for our environment, the natural wilderness, our clean air, fertile soils, pristine waters, the untamed oceans. It celebrates our unique crafts and the synergy between our wares and our surrounds. Most of all, Méthode Tasmanoise embraces the people that call our island state their home

The Hill-Smith family owns several wineries around Australia and they are all run sustainably. They lay out quite a few of the details of their practices here. The particular bottling we’re talking about today is certified sustainable and vegan friendly.

We opened the Jansz Premium Cuvée Brut Tasmania NV and were greeted with notes of lemon cream and apple blossom on the nose. On the palate, the wine was crisp and bright with a mixture of crunchy green and gold apples, lemon juice and curd, white peach, a hint of berry, a touch of toast and brown sugar, and lots of salinity.

For the price, this is a lovely bottle of bubbly.

Geeky Details

The Pairing: Lobster Tartines with Leeks and Mushrooms

In looking up what foods are commonly grown and produced in Tasmania, I discovered that it is one of the world’s leading suppliers of lobster and abalone. Pairing this bubbly with buttery lobster seemed like a perfect way to go! 

Lobster need not be fancy. In this case, I decided to serve it on grilled bread as a tartine, or open-faced sandwich, topped with sautéed leeks and mushrooms that I thought would bring out the wine’s more earthy notes and tease out hints of herbal flavors. In the end, the dish I came up with to pair with this wine is more about assembly rather than any elaborate cooking.

I ran into one tiny snag when I went to the grocery store – no lobster. No abalone either. I found my solution in the freezer section via Luke’s Lobster pre-packaged knuckle and claw meat. It proved quite tasty and very convenient. (I was addicted to Luke’s Lobster rolls when we lived in New York.) I simply thawed the meat and tossed it all in warm, melted butter and heated it gently, then sprinkled it with a bit of included seasoning. 

The only thing on this dish that required real preparation was the leeks and mushrooms, and that only requires only a few ingredients and little attention. Despite this, the combo becomes really saucy and flavorful. I use the same mix in many different ways including to top all kinds of proteins, mixed into a grain bowl, on a sandwich, or in an omelet or quiche. If you add more stock or water it becomes a fabulous base for a soup, and if you stir in a touch of cream when it comes off the heat, it's fabulously completely decadent. 

In this case, as I mentioned, I layered the leeks and mushrooms on slices of buttery grilled bread, along with arugula, and the buttery lobster meat. The pairing was just lovely and worked even better than I’d hoped. The wine would show different facets with each bite. With the buttery sweet lobster meat the plumper, riper fruits note would come out. The char on the bread at times brought out the wine’s toastiness. At other times, earthier and more minerally notes came out to play. Mostly, it was simply delicious and refreshing with the tartines. 

***** 

*****

The rest of the World Wine Travel blogging group (#WorldWineTravel) is exploring the wines from Tasmania, as well as other Aussie Sparklers and Stickies this month. Check out the rest of their posts:

• Lori is tasting “Tasmanian Sparkling and Egg Rolls” at Exploring the Wine Glass
• Camilla is showcasing “Tasmania + Hawaii: Celebrating with an Island Wine and Island Eats” at Culinary Adventures with Camilla 
• Jeff shares how we can “Discover Rutherglen Stickies” at Food Wine Click!
• Robin is pairing “Sparkling Wine from Jansz Tasmania and a Tassie-inspired seafood curry pie” at Crushed Grape Chronicles
• Kat has a “Surprise! South Australia Pét-Nat is on the Rise” at The Corkscrew Concierge
• Susannah is featuring “Tasmanian Chardonnay” at Avvinare
• Deanna is popping an “Australian Sparkling Wine from Deviation Road” at Wineivore
• Linda is having “Sparkling Aussie Shiraz as summer draws to a close” at My Full Wine Glass

Sometimes, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel in order to get a delightful pairing. 

I recently opened this bottle of Oakridge Henk Vineyard Chardonnay 2019 and tasted it in order to create a pairing, but quickly discovered that there was a good one already sitting in my fridge. I’d made an orzo salad for a dinner party a couple of days before and it occurred to me to have a bite while I was tasting the wine and quite liked the match – I particularly enjoyed the way the wine picked up the flavors of the Parmesan cheese. 

I decided to run with the match, but made some additions in order to both tie the wine and the food more closely together and to switch things up to and reinvigorate the leftovers. Roasted shrimp with bacon pieces made for an excellent leftover makeover that came together quickly and turned this side into a main dish. To grab every last bit of bacony flavor, I also quickly tossed a couple of large handfuls of greens in the rendered bacon fat and incorporated them into the salad as well.

Oakridge Henk Vineyard Chardonnay 2019

Established in 1978, Oakridge is located in Australia's Yarra Valley. I wish I could’ve found more on the history of the winery, but they farm sustainably making use of cover crops, compost teas,  and they have an insectarium, all of which help to minimize the use of synthetic inputs and improve the health and biodiversity of the vineyards. They have 10 hectares (about 25 acres) of vineyards and also source grapes from carefully selected sites.

The Henk Vineyard Chardonnay comes from a north-facing site comprised of the red volcanic soils in the town of Woori Yallock. The wine was made in a traditional style. Grapes were whole-bunch pressed directly into 500-liter French oak puncheons where it was naturally fermented and then spent 10 months maturing on the lees for texture. Find more information on the 2020 vintage of this wine here.

I found this to be a lively and classic Chardonnay at a reasonable price. (I purchased this bottle at K&L in SF for $25. ) Notes of lemon cream, baked apples, and stone greeted me on the nose. Similar notes returned on the palate, although the apples were leaner, crisper, and less baked,  with notes of green pears and light herbs joining in. The lees added creamy texture and body to the crisp fruit notes elevated by lots of acidity. 

As I mentioned up at the top, the wine loved the Parmesan cheese, and the combination of seafood and bacon each spoke to different aspects of the wine’s textures and flavors. I think it resonated particularly well with the bacon’s smoky notes. A white pepper note in the wine also came out when sipped alongside the food. Having a few extra lemon wedges on hand to squeeze on top of the food while eating is also not a bad idea. I added avocado to a third iteration of the salad using up the last bit of leftovers, and I also think this would’ve worked quite well with the wine. 

Yarra Valley

Map borrowed from WineFolly.com

The Yarra Valley is located about an hour northeast of Melbourne, making it a  convenient side trip if you’re ever visiting the city. It’s one of Australia’s oldest winemaking regions, with the first vineyards in the area having been planted in 1838. However, the wines go against the grain of the general image we might have of Australian wines. It’s generally cooler than most of Australia’s wine regions, so it’s better known for cool-climate-loving Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and increasingly Riesling. However, the region features a lot of variation in terms of altitude, site exposures, and soils, which makes it conducive to different grapes and styles, so you will also find Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon grown there as well, but they’re often made in leaner, elegant style.

Other Pairing Possibilities

After I initially tasted the wine, I enjoyed the last remnants in my glass with a turkey sandwich with a red chermoula spread and tomato soup and that was a solid match too. 

I also tend to love Chardonnays that are lightly oaked and/or have lees contact with roasted chicken, and I think this would certainly be a good candidate. Seafood topped with butter should also be delicious. 

Please note, that while the wines were provided as samples as part of this collaboration, no other compensation was received and all opinions are my own. This post also contains Amazon Affiliate links, from which I might earn a commission at no cost to you.

It’s rare that one gets the chance to really get to know a winery’s (or really any company’s) product line thoughtfully and over time. Last year, I had the unique opportunity to get to better know the wines of L’Ecole No. 41 through an ambassadorship program. Each month, I’d receive a wine, or sometimes, more, and would then join in a zoom call with the other participants and the team at L’Ecole to learn more about that month’s topic. I, along with the rest of the participants would then share a post about the wine(s) on social media. For my part, I shared my pairings on my @nibblinggypsy Instagram feed. Via this process, I not only got to taste a wide range of their offerings but also got to know a few members of their team and learned about their operations. 

I was already fairly familiar with L’Ecole going into this. I believe I first tried one of their wines years ago while taking my first sommelier course where they were presented as an example of Washington’s wines. I’ve also had the chance to try their wines over the years as part of #MerlotMe month, but this experience certainly widened my appreciation.

I became a bigger fan with each wine I tasted. I’m happy to say there wasn’t a bad wine in the whole year’s worth of wine. Of course, I had my favorites, but every single one was well-made, and they tended to be elegant and balanced with lots of freshness. They were also very fairly priced. Pretty much every time the price of a wine was shared, there’d be rumblings of amazement and approval throughout the group of participating wine bloggers and influencers. They make wines at a range of price points, but the wines always seemed to be a great value for whatever the price point was – usually they over-delivered. I got the sense that this was a point of pride. They want to make delicious wines at good prices.

I’m sure many of us want to feel that we’re supporting good, conscientious companies with the dollars we spend. This is another area in which L’Ecole wins points thanks to their commitment to sustainability, which we will look at more closely in a moment. 

In addition, their wines are fairly easy to find. Since I often focus on small wineries, I know that’s not always the case, but that shouldn’t be a problem with L’Ecole’s wines, at least within the US. They’re a medium-sized producer and they have good distribution. I can also often find their wines on Wine.com, and of course, you also find them via their website. 

Today, I thought I’d share my experience with L’Ecole No. 41 via a month-by-month look at the wines I tasted along with their pairings. 

A Brief  Intro to L’Ecole No. 41 

L’Ecole has been a pioneering winery in Washington State from the start. It was the third winery in Walla Walla and the 20th in the state. Their first vintage was released in 1983. It’s owned by Marty and Megan Clubb, and was founded by Megan’s parents, Jean and Baker Ferguson. The winery gets its name from the historic Frenchtown School building in which the winery is located. 

Here are a few more quick facts to introduce them:

• I mentioned that they’re a medium-sized operation – they make between 40 and 46k cases per year – and they like it that way. They find they’re in a sweet spot that allows them the control of a smaller winery but are also able to have good distribution and reach. 
• L'Ecole 41 has long made being earth-friendly a big priority and they are certified sustainable as well as Salmon-Safe. They've also recently revamped the part of their website that explains all of their sustainability practices, which you can find here. 
• Black Label vs. White Label: 
• Wines with the black label are their “heritage line” and they're their regional wines representing Columbia Valley.
• Wines with a white label are from their estate vineyards in Walla Walla. 

Now let’s get to the wines and pairings. Where possible, I’ve included extra tidbits and extra pairings recommended by their team members. I occasionally joined the calls from the road or other places where I wasn’t able to take notes, so the level of detail varies.

Cab and Steak for the Holidays X 2

Before the collaboration had officially begun, I was sent a couple of sample bottles as a sort of invitation to the program. We enjoyed one of those bottles, the Cabernet Sauvignon Walla Walla Valley 2017 ($41, current vintage), with Greg’s parents over the holidays in December of 2020.  Since the program didn't officially start until February, will count this as an early start.

We had a simple steak night with roasted cauliflower seasoned with harissa and smoked paprika. The steak was prepared sous vide then seared. The wine was fresh and bright, but also had lots of dark fruit notes. It made for an easy and delicious dinner.

Tasting Notes: Blackberry and black cherry on the nose, along with cocoa and a light sprinkling of herbs. There was a nice balance of fruit and structure on the palate (I generally found that to be the case with their wines), with bright acidity and tannin that were firm but not overpowering. Warm spice notes and white pepper joined the fruit on the palate, along with stony notes on the finish. 

Skip ahead to Valentine’s Day 2021. I went in a similar direction with their Cabernet Sauvignon Columbia Valley 2017 ($30, current vintage) and prepared a London Broil and topped it with a smoky mushroom sauce with hasselback potatoes on the side. I shared that recipe on NibblingGypsy.com here.  

I’m not going to lie, if you give me a big red, my tendency is to put it with meat of some kind. Very often it’s a steak as we’ll see several times here. 

Tasting Notes: There were enticing notes of black cherry, plums, chocolate, and spice on the nose. These all continued on the palate, but the chocolate was dark and mixed with espresso. It was an elegant wine with lots of brightness and smooth tannins. 

This wine is built for aging, and Marcus Rafanelli, their winemaker, recommended decanting this wine for 20 to 30 minutes in advance of drinking, and I would agree, although it was already starting to show nicely within a few minutes of opening.

Additional Pairings: Other pairing suggestions from the team included osso bucco, braised meats, pot roast, and lentils. 

March: Cabernet Franc - Merlot Walla Walla Valley 2018 with Sausage Mac and Cheese

I brought a bottle of their Estate Grown Cabernet Franc - Merlot Walla Walla 2018 ($39) with us on one of our trips to the Culinary Cabin in Tahoe. It was cold and snowy outside, so comfort food was needed and it's hard to imagine any food more comforting than mac and cheese! This was a baked, casserole-style version flavored with sausage and topped with crunchy bacon on top. 

The wine was fruity enough to handle the light spice from the sausages and had a lush silky texture that matched the creaminess of the cheesy pasta. Super yummy!

April: Syrah Estate Seven Hills Vineyard Walla Walla Valley 2018 with Carne Asada Stuffed Arepas 

Greg and I headed to the Santa Cruz Mountains for a hiking weekend getaway. Our original plan had been to camp, but then we found a cabin via AirBnB. Since camping had been the original intent, the cabin was pretty no-frills. It had a small kitchen, but I tried to make life easy on myself by buying things to cook that had done some of the work for me and didn’t require too many ingredients, like Trader Joe’s pre-seasoned carne asada. I also roasted some bell pepper and onion strips in olive oil, salt, and pepper. All of these goodies were used to stuff arepas, which only requires adding water and salt to the Harina PAN (cornmeal) to make the dough. You’d be surprised at how easy arepas are to make! One of Trader Joe’s pre-packaged salad kits completed the meal. 

This paired sooo well with the Syrah Esate Seven Hills Vineyard 2018 ($39, current vintage). The meat had a lot of citrus in the flavoring which matched perfectly with the wine's super bright acidity. At the same time, char on the meat and on the arepas sang with smoky notes in the wine. The combo was even better than I'd expected and I couldn't get enough of the two together. It was one of my favorite combos of the year! 

Tasting Notes: Raspberry, black cherry, white pepper, dried herbs, black tea, and roses on their stems all showed on the nose. The fruit was luscious on the palate, with a mix of red and black fruits, smoke, espresso, cedar, and tapenade made from a mixture of green and black olives. It improved with air, so decant if you can. 

Additional Pairings: Marcus recommended this wine with grilled meats and mushroom risotto made with beef stock. Other recs from their team included bean stew, goat, grilled oyster mushroom tacos, and lasagna.

Behind the scenes details: 2018 was a particularly good vintage with perfect timing throughout the growing season, so the grapes ripened evenly and got good hang time. The wine saw 20% stem inclusion to add structure and tannins, and 20% whole cluster. The average age of the vines is 25 years.

May: Chenin Blanc Old Vines Yakima Valley 2020 with Coconut Shrimp

We all get the urge for crispy fried things from time to time, right?! I got the urge for some coconut shrimp and brought some home from Whole Food’s freezer section. While the shrimp heated up, I roasted some zucchini and tossed it in a sweet and sour chili sauce. The whole dinner came together in about 30 minutes. 

I chose to pair these sweet and crispy shrimp with L’Ecole’s Chenin Blanc Old Vines Yakima Valley 2020 ($18, current vintage), a delightful wine with a mix of tart and ripe fruit notes. It made for a solid pairing with the shrimp, but I think a little rice would've made it even better by balancing out the sweetness in the sauce. As was, the sweetness of the sauce overpowered the wine a little bit. It’s ok though because we’ll see the Chenin again later in the year for another shot at pairing. 

Tasting Notes:  Aromas of green melon, white peach, honeysuckle, and tangerine skin on the nose. These all came back on the palate, along with ginger and green apple. This was bright with a rounded beeswax texture on the mid-palate.

For more on Yakima, see this post. 

June: Grenache Rosé Alder Ridge Vineyard, Horse Heaven Hills 2020 and Turkey Chili

Greg got a hankering to make some chili and I was all for it!  It was a turkey chili, but other than that, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what went into it as he tends to riff when he cooks, throwing in a little of this, and a little of that. 

We paired it with the Grenache Rosé Alder Ridge Vineyard 2020 ($21, current vintage). I really loved this rosé and it made for a yummy and refreshing pairing with the chili. It had enough fruit to balance out the heat while being refreshing and it perked up our palates in between bites of the lightly spiced bites of chili. It was also substantial enough to stand up to the bold flavors.

Tasting Notes: The wine showed a beautiful purity of fruit with lots of peaches, raspberries, and strawberries along with a few flower petals and a hint of orange zest on both the nose and palate.. It's super bright and tangy with a zesty finish.

July: Luminesce Semillon - Sauvignon Blanc Seven Hills Vineyard, Walla Walla Valley 2020 and Crab Cakes

Blend:  62% Semillon and 38% Sauvignon Blanc 

Here’s an excellent pairing for sunshiny days. Luminesce ($22) is L’Ecole 41’s take on a classic Bordeaux Blanc blend with Sémillon, which brings texture, and Sauv Blanc, which adds brightness. This combination of attributes made it a perfect match for crab cakes, with their mixture of creamy and crispy textures. I used this recipe from Delish magazine for this round, then served them with a sauce made with Kewpie Mayonnaise and wasabi sauce (not pictured), and a salad. The wine’s balance of texture, citrus, and hints of herbal notes was a PERFECT match with the crab cakes –  a lip-smacking pair! Another of my favorite matches of the year. 

Tasting Notes:  The showed notes of key lime pie, lemon, white flowers, and a touch of minerality on the nose. Grassy green herbs joined in on the palate, along with notes of blanched almonds. It was rounded on the mid-palate moving into a crisp finish.

August:  Syrah Columbia Valley 2018 and Tri-Tip

I’m always jealous of people’s grills in the summertime. We live in an apartment, so I have to improvise the best I can. In this case, I once again used my sous vide circulator to cook up some seasoned Trip Tip and then seared the meat to finish it. I then served it with a side of mixed zucchini, sautéed mushrooms, onions, and potatoes. 

You’ll notice that I almost always prepare small and medium cuts of meat sous vide. I think this is hands down the easiest way to cook steak cuts as it takes all of the guesswork out of the process. (Cuts that you want to be fall-apart tender are best prepared via other methods like braising.) Below you’ll find a simple non-recipe for this tri-tip preparation. 

This round of meatiness was paired with the  Syrah Columbia Valley 2018. It made a beautiful match, although I suspect that this wine will be even better in a few years.  

Tasting Notes: There were notes of blackberry, smoke, and hints of vanilla on the nose. Tart blackberries continued on the palate along with black cherries, plums, touches of black pepper, herbs, licorice, craggy stones, and espresso granules, with a few flower petals mixed in. 

Trip Tip Sous Vide Non-Recipe: 

I rubbed the meat with garlic powder, shiitake powder, and black pepper, doused it with soy sauce, and added garlic to the cooking bag. I cooked it at 129.5 °F for 2 hours, then removed it from the cooking bag, patted it dry, and seared it in a large pan. I sliced up the tri-tip and served it topped with the leftover cooking juices. 

September: Frenchtown Columbia Valley Red Blend 2019 with Pork Chile Verde and Pizza

Blend:  45% Merlot, 17% Syrah, 18% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Grenache, 10% Malbec, 6% Petit Verdot 

The Frenchtown Columbia Valley Red Blend ($22) is such a happy, friendly wine. It’s very easygoing and bound to match decently well with a ton of different things. I got this impression after tasting it and decided to test the theory with a pairing gamble. Back in San Diego once again, my mother-in-law made chile verde with pork one night. I would normally gravitate towards a full white wine to pair with all of the green notes and spices in this dish. I decided to experiment with the Frenchtown Red instead and was very pleasantly surprised with how well it worked. 

This is a medium-bodied red with smooth easy tannins, both attributes which helped it to work with a lighter meat like pork. It is also pretty plush, fruit-forward, and a bit juicy which helped it to pair with the hits of spice.

Later on, we had another bottle with a pepperoni pizza, which also made for a very happy pairing!

Tasting Notes: Thanks to all of those different grapes, there was a whole host of fruit notes in here, with a mix of red, black, and blue fruits that were ripe but bright. There were lots of red cherries on the nose, with red licorice, and a mix of white and black pepper Roasted red plums joined in on the palate, with hints of herbs, lavender, and spice mixed in. I already mentioned that it was medium-bodied with smooth tannins. I thought it offered a lot of bang for the buck.

Behind the scenes details: The Frenchtown Red is an entry-level red and is always a blend of grapes, but might be different each year – it's kind of a snapshot of a particular vintage. The 2019 was a blend of Bordeaux and Rhône grapes including Merlot, Cab, Malbec, Petit Verdot, Syrah, and Grenache. Frenchtown is the name of the district where L’Ecole’s historical schoolhouse is located. It used to be called the “Recess Red” and many people still ask for it by that name. 

October: Merlot Me Month

October is Merlot Me Month and L’Ecole No. 41 made two appearances last year, so I’ll just go ahead and direct you to this post for more on the Estate Merlot Walla Walla Valley 2018 and this post for more on the Merlot Columbia Valley 2018, but it was fun to see the different expressions of the grape side by side. The Columbia Valley showed more plush fruit notes, whereas the Walla Walla, which is grown in a vineyard sitting on basaltic rock, showed more dusty minerality, smoke, and structure. You can see a similar comparison between the 2014 bottlings in this post.

I also got to enjoy the Estate Merlot Walla Walla Valley 2018 with a burger and it was pretty great.

As I mentioned earlier, L’Ecole has made several Merlot Me appearances in the past. Check out these posts for more pairing ideas:

• Many Merlots Make Marvelous Mediterranean Meal
• 5 #MerlotMe Nights
  
• Experiments with Salmon and Merlot
  
• What's Good?: Pasta Alla Norma & Merlot
  

November:  Perigee Vintage Comparison with Shawarma Chicken and Flank Steak 

In November, we did a vintage comparison between the 2015 and 2018 ($56, current vintage) vintages of L’Ecole 41’s flagship Perigee Estate Seven Hills Vineyard, Walla Walla Valley, a Bordeaux blend of all estate-grown fruit from their Seven Hills Vineyard. Again, comparisons are always fun! In this case, looking at two different vintages as it gives you a chance to see how different conditions affect a wine and also gives you a glimpse of where a younger wine might go. 2018 was a cooler vintage and the wine showed more red fruits and brighter acidity. By contrast, 2015 was a warmer vintage and displayed deeper, darker fruit notes with more robust tannins. The two tasting notes are next to each other below for a more detailed comparison.

I paired the lighter, and brighter 2018 with a Shawarma-spiced chicken loosely based on this recipe from Olive Magazine along with butternut squash that I roasted alongside, as well as baba ghanoush and homemade pita bread. The wine paired particularly well with the smoky spices in the chicken and the weight of the wine and the food matched nicely. It wasn’t half bad with the herbed butternut squash as well. I put a lot of lemon in this batch of baba ghanoush, which probably kept it from matching as well as it might have normally, but I think it would go well with a more typical, smokier style of the dip.

The 2015 was in a good place and just opening up after 6 years, but still seemed like it has quite a few more years to go. I couldn’t help but myself but to return to steak with this one. This time it was flank steak topped with mushrooms and served with a side salad. I find mushrooms to generally be a good idea when pairing with wines with a bit of age on them.

2018 Tasting Notes: Predominantly red fruits showed on the nose – bright cherries and raspberries – along with dried herbs and a little menthol.

2015 Tasting Notes: Black cherry with brambly herbs, tobacco, black tea, esspresso showed on the nose, with notes of roses and lilacas coming out as the wine opened. It was rich but bright on the palate, with blackberries, blueberries, and black plum skin on the palate, along with mocha, cigar box, chocolate, licorice, and cassis. Lots of espresso. The wine showed grippy tannins and brawny structure. Decanting is definitely recommended 

Later on, I also got to participate in a tasting looking at the component varieties that go into Perigee, and I kind of wish some of those were sold bottled on their own as well!

December: Wine & Chocolates and Shrimp Stir Fry

In December, I had a chance to try one of the lovely gift sets they’d put together for the holiday season. I received the wine and chocolate gift set, which included bottles of the Old Vine Chenin and the Syrah Walla Walla Valley with chocolates from Petits Noirs, also made in Walla Walla, selected to match. 

I’m a little picky about pairing wine and chocolate together – I personally don’t think they go that well together because most chocolate is too sweet to go with most dry wines. IMHO, pairings work best when the chocolate is dark and not that sweet, and the wine is fruit-forward. I find white wines to be particularly tricky, but I was still interested to try the flavor blends with the Chenin Blanc. 

I can't find the specific notes I took on the pairings, but I did wrank my preferences on the accompanying card.

This also gave me a chance to try the Chenin Blanc in another savory pairing. This time I paired it with a shrimp stir-fry with lots of veggies. This time, the sauce was less sweet than the one I served with the coconut shrimp back in May, and it worked much better. 

I still haven’t tried the Syrah with its corresponding chocolates, but I expect those to work well and will update this when I do. 

That wraps up my excellent year of exploring L'Ecole's wines, although I still have a few bottles left to play with and will share those experiments in the future.