Sunday, May 8, 2011

Vouvray and slow cooker coconut & green curry pork

This will be a short post, yet an important one in my book since I've just discovered the most delicious easy dinner thanks to thekitchn.com. All I wanted was an excuse to babble about Francois Pinon's Cuvee Tradition Vouvray from 2008, and bam, I fell in love with this recipe, which I am gonna make at least once a month from now on.
That was a mouth full.
I am not gonna go over the recipe since it is already very well laid out here. I confess  I didn't exactly follow the recipe. I couldn't find the very specific brand of green curry mentioned in the article and, because I have a preference for red curry, I used red curry. I also added about 1/4 cup of honey in the slow cooker, just before throwing back in the shredded slow-cooked pork. I served the curried pork with brown rice and sauteed baby bok choy.
The wine I chose, my beloved Vouvray, was matching the dish perfectly. It is such a beautiful wine, and when drunk in the perfect "context", its beauty is even greater.
Francois Pinon is a seventh generation winemaker in the Loire Valley region, who owns about 14 hectares of vines, most of them 30 to 50 years of age. He does not use any herbicides, pesticides or any chemical treatments on his vines, which are harvested completely manually. He uses only natural yeasts for the fermentation process. The latter takes place in old wooden casks or foudres. The wine is then aged in stainless steel casks. Mr. Pinon sparingly uses filtration and sulphur on his wines.
My particular wine of interest here is his CuvĂ©e Tradition, an interesting cross between a dry and off dry wine. When tasting it, I was leaning more towards dry but there is indeed some residual sugars. They call this type of wine "tendre" (meaning it is between dry and off dry). The acidity is high, the flavors deep and bright, giving this wine a wonderfully long length. Definitely a keeper for people with a good cellar.





My tasting notes:
The wine is a pale gold fading to a watery rim. Its nose is youthful with medium plus intensity of aromas - Dominant notes of honey, quince and minerals. Wet stones, chalk (really!), candied lemons and oranges, figs, ginger, thyme, white blossoms.
On the palate, it is strangely between dry and off dry, with high acidity, medium alcohol, high intensity of flavors and medium plus body. Flavors of honey, quince, pear, fig, candied lemon, wet stones, wet wool, blossoms, straw, dried herbs and ginger seem to dance on your tongue never-endingly. The high acidity, strong minerality and concentrated flavors are the perfect combination of factors to give this wine long length and ageability.
Give a hug to your wine store owner if he carries this wine.

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