Author Archives: pleitner@mountsalemvineyards.com

Rediscovering France in the Kitchen

March 14, 2017

We invite you on a little journey of Rediscovering France through a series of culinary clinics and classes offered as winter rolls into spring, when our palates waver between heartwarming soul food and dishes that are lighter and brighter.

This journey will include pairings with our wines, all of which are grown by hand with more than a little French influence (especially Burgundy) in both the vineyard and winery, including Cabernet Franc, Viognier, Riesling, and Chardonnay, all echoing France while no doubt raised here.

Why France?

Arguably among the finest (some say the finest) cuisines in the world, the principles and techniques of French cooking underlie other great ones such as the Bolognese (Italian) and Viennese (Austrian). The influence of both home and professional kitchens of France is thus felt almost everywhere.

We hasten to add that this is very much a two-way street: French cuisine reflects the influence of the many Italians, Austrians, Poles and others who worked in professional kitchens there, especially in Paris, which for almost two hundred years was the center of the culinary world, much like was Silicon Valley is to technology today.

Yet as other cuisines rose in popularity, interest in French cooking waned to the point where many of us today don’t really know what French cuisine is. Perhaps highly complicated recipes finished with heavy cream sauces come to mind, but this is not the case.

Come visit us and explore, perhaps for the first time, the joy of home cooking in the tradition of France.

We offer a series of clinics (informal, 1 hour, Saturdays at 12:30 PM) and classes (hands-on, 3 hours, Sundays at 12 noon) right up until Easter. You can find them listed on our Events page.

Here’s a complete list:

Clinics, 12:30 PM Saturdays

Gougères, Mar 4
Bistro Prawns, Mar 11
Pommes de Terre aux Lardons (potato pie with bacon), Mar 18
Lentils & Carrots, Mar 25
Moules (steamed mussels), Apr 1
Rack of Lamb, Apr 8
Leg of Lamb, Apr 15

Classes, 12:00 PM, Sundays

Artisan Bread, Mar 5
Pot au Feu (Corned Beef, Cabbage & More from Celtic Brittany), Mar 12
Chicken Fricassee, Mar 19
Onion Tart, Mar 26
Provencal Lamb, Apr 2
Roast Chicken, Apr 9

Why Thai?

June 9, 2016

Guests are asking that a lot lately, often while nibbling on Thai morsels like:

* Sliced cucumber graced with a mélange of lemon grass, coriander leaf, sweet chili and minced kaffir lime leaf;

* Pork sausage, freshly made with Thai seasonings and grilled on our crush pad, sliced and served with nam pla (Thai fish sauce) and sweet chili; or

* Chicken noisettes braised in red curry, served on a pillow of jasmine rice.

Aren’t these tasty bits a departure from the Austrian/Italian/French thing we typically have going on here? Why Thai in a Hunterdon County winery?

The quick answer is that Thai pairs wonderfully with three of our early summer wines, namely Riesling, Traminette and Cabernet Franc Rosé: all stainless steel fermented and – except for the rosé – eschewing malo and neutral oak. This creates bright and brisk wines with a hint of fruit, and in some cases more residual sugar than our other wines. Thai food, with its spicy/sweet/sour and occasionally lush DNA, pairs beautifully with them.

Another factor is our Riesling, Traminette and Rosé typically debut in June, when the weather in New Jersey begins to feel like Thailand: hot and humid, punctuated by pop-up showers and occasionally monsoon-like rains, making it the perfect seasonal pairing.

The longer answer to “Why Thai?” is that good winemakers imbue their wines with the culmination of their life experiences: what they’ve drunk, eaten, seen and otherwise done. This is particularly true with artisans who make relatively small amounts and whose imprint is all over their wines. There is no doubt my travels in Asia and Europe influence my wines, especially because I make them to be food wines, i.e., wines that taste best with food and that make food taste best.

And thus in the case of Riesling, Traminette and Rosé, Thai cuisine is among the best pairings one can make.

While on my culinary pilgrimage to Thailand, I developed such a deep appreciation for the people and their culture that I’ve not only tried to master their cuisine but to make wine that complements it perfectly. I consider this a divine challenge. Ditto for the cuisines of Austria, Italy, France and a few other places, but those stories are for another day.

If you’ve never paired Thai with a crisp Riesling, I invite you to try it here or elsewhere. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And if you’re really ambitious, we have two more Thai master classes that you can take here this month:

• Sunday, June 12, mussels steamed in Thai seasonings followed by salmon filet roasted with a Chinese-influenced “black lacquer” coating of hoisin, soy and vinegar crust; and
• Sunday, June 19, rack of lamb in a stunningly awesome Thai marinade.

Join us for either or both, or simply visit the loft in the Wine Barn to see what the fuss is all about.
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Honoring the Day

May 26, 2016

The Best Way to Celebrate Memorial Day is:

A. Visit your favorite winery
B. Road trip to the Shore
C. Multiple cookouts/pool parties
D. Hang the hammock under a tree
E. All of the Above

All are correct, but let’s recall the real meaning of the day, uncomfortable as it may be:

• We honor those sons, brothers and fathers, and more recently the daughters, sisters and mothers, who went to war to serve our country and were killed in action doing so.

• We extend this honor to those who served and survived, but who are not unscathed. No one returns home whole from war, wounds visible or not.

• We also honor those still in uniform today, serving our nation at war, whom we hope will return home soon.

So, which is the real way to observe Memorial Day – with gleeful intemperance or somber remembrance?

It’s both. We need to remember, even though we’d really rather not. It is the national irony we endure annually on the last weekend of May.

Consider the small portrait in our farmhouse library of a dashing infantry officer, cigarette in hand, uniform decorated with campaign ribbons, a combat infantryman’s badge, and the shiny insignia of a captain. He was just 24 years old, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, with the hardened look of a man ten years older. This black-and-white portrait was displayed in his parents’ living room in an era when nearly every household sent someone to war.

Twenty-five years later, he spent Memorial Day weekend on a tennis court in leafy Short Hills, New Jersey, with contemporaries who too went to war but now did everything possible to forget it. No parades, no ceremonies. They focused on other things, like tennis, quenched by gin, tonic & lime.

My dad survived his war, but he was not unscathed. He didn’t survive middle age.

There is another portrait in our farmhouse but it’s hidden in a drawer. It is that of a 30-something U.S. Army major, a physician with a gentle smile, whose life ended instantly in a Middle East desert. He was killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) or a landmine, we still don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t matter. My wife misses her brother, Brian, intensely. She has never been the same, and can’t bear to see his portrait daily.

And so now it is we who avoid Memorial Day parades and ceremonies, well-intentioned they may be. They are just too heavy, sometimes evoking an impossibly large lump in the throat or inconsolable sobbing.

So enjoy the hammock, cookouts, the Shore or even your favorite winery. If it’s here with us, you may share a story of your own or keep it to yourself; we understand the need for both. But whatever you do, for just a moment, please consider the memory in Memorial Day.

– Peter Leitner

Frank N. Leitner (1922-1975)
275th Infantry Regiment
70th “Trailblazers” Division
U.S. Army
1946

What Makes Our Grüner Veltliner Special?

March 31, 2016

Two words: Terroir and Style.

But first, some background.

Grüner Veltliner is indigenous to Austria and is the most widely planted grapevine there, most grown on soil comprising slate, schist and other decomposing rock. The grapes are typically fermented at cool temperatures in stainless steel tanks, resulting in lean, laser-like wines with notes of grapefruit or white pepper, some bottled so young they fizz when opened. Most are like this, but not all (and that includes ours), which is where terroir and house-style come in.

By terroir we mean the unique combination of soil, climate, slope, aspect and farming methods in a specific vineyard that cause wines grown there to be different – perhaps even superior – than those made from the same grape grown elsewhere. You can read more about terroir here.

Our estate vineyard sits at 700 feet above sea level, straddling the border of maritime and continental climates, with a meaningful slope, southwest aspect and 3,000 growing degree days. Our soil is deep silt/clay/loam, well-drained and studded with glacial gravel. We dry farm, adding nothing to the 40+ inches of rain we get each year (we don’t even have irrigation lines). Yes, there may be other places like this, but none exactly like this.

So, where our Grüner grows has a big impact on why it’s so good, which makes the winemaker look brilliant even though this reflects one decision he made long ago. But to be fair, he does a few other things each year that are reflected in our house style.

By style we mean the steps taken with each vintage, from uncrushed grapes through the pour into your glass, resulting in a consistent and even recognizable wine. But it is really only influence, as winemakers don’t make the wine as much as guide Mother Nature, much like a midwife does (some winemakers vigorously disagree, and that shows up in one’s house style, too).

And so, if we combine Mount Salem’s terroir and style, our Grüner Veltliner can be reduced to this haiku:

Austrian grapes
Grown in Hunterdon
Vinified as if in Burgundy
In American oak

This results not in a schizophrenic wine, but rather an elegant and cosmopolitan one with nearly pitch-perfect sense of place. Indeed, if forced to choose only one grape to grow here, it would be Grüner. And that’s not an April Fool’s Joke, either.

I Hate Chardonnay

March 17, 2016

Those three words are heard so often in our winery I now expect 8 out of 10 first-time visitors to utter them (that’s 80%, for those of you who are statistically-minded).

Granted, the ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) movement has been alive and well for 30 years, and with good reason: oceans of cheap plonk have been foisted on us all in the race to sell America’s #1 white wine. I’ll also grant that wine is a personal experience and people are entitled to drink what they like.

But this doesn’t mean all chardonnay is cheap plonk or poorly made, or that people really know what they like. Many only know what they’re supposed to like, and some can’t tell one wine from another (trust me on that).

On the other hand, we have long-time customers with fine palates (including many Europeans, and even a few Burgundians) who think our chardonnay is a fine wine offered at an attractive price. They tell us they appreciate that it is locally-grown, handcrafted, and – as one critic called it – ambitious. We focus our efforts on pleasing these people, but are regularly challenged by the chardonnay haters. It is as if we are caught in the crossfire of two very different realities:

A) 80% of our new visitors swear they “hate chardonnay” and will render this unfiltered opinion without restraint. Most won’t even try our chardonnay, and many who do grimace in the process. This hurts to watch.

B) We sell all of our chardonnay, most by the case, at more than 2x the average price for chardonnay in the U.S. Many of those buyers come back for more; most are disappointed when a vintage sells out. Some get angry.

How can we reconcile this disparity? The only rational way we can: capture some data.

To do this we removed chardonnay from our daily tasting list (so new visitors didn’t know we made it) and instead offered an extra “mystery pour” for each guest’s visit.

We wrapped bottles of our 2014 chardonnay in brown paper bags, poured a splash in the visitors’ glasses, and asked them to tell us if the liked it, disliked it, or were neutral. The results surprised even us:

Like It 81%
Don’t Like It 6%
Neutral 12%
Total 99% (due to rounding)

So, let’s sum this up:

• If people know it’s chardonnay, then 80% say they hate it without even trying it.

• If people try it without knowing it’s chardonnay, 80% say they like it.

We conclude that there is a negative bias, an urban myth really, that chardonnay is so repulsive it’s not even worth trying. And that’s too bad, because there are chardonnays grown in New Jersey that rival the best of Burgundy, as the Judgment of Princeton revealed in 2012.

By the way, we don’t believe in gimmicks to boost wine sales, but we noted an uptick in purchases of chardonnay on the days we offered mystery pours. Maybe we should invest in more brown paper bags.

– Peter Leitner