MAGS, BAGS, MAC 'N' CHEESE / VINO BRUTALO (+some Italo)

Hotel de Goudfazant, 19 March 2018

or,

'The time we drank 35+ litres of wine on donation on a Monday.'

Needed something to wash down the mac+cheese.

Le Carton x Wink | Als Wie Ein Lamm

               
On Sunday 18 February 2018 Le Carton hosted a creative re-construction of the Last Supper with parts of the Matthew Passion, a short lecture, stories and Karev Yom singing plus lots of wine and yoghurt flat breads in collaboration with Restaurant Wink and Florence Gramende.

Each dish was based on an ingredient which, in their totality, make up the traditional Jewish Passover Sedar plate.

Cavalo Nero + bitter herbs + caramelised yoghurt dumplings with blood orange mayo

Rainbow chard + pickled stems + celery leaf sabyonne with poached egg yellow

Hibiscus polenta + smoked beets + red chicory with beet crème

Lamb and carrot pasty + lamb jus with prune crème

Sweet potato cake + spiced creme fraîche ice cream

Me

//

Next Le Carton pop up: MAGS, BAGS, MAC N' CHEEZE or, VINO BRUTALO (+ some Italo) @ Hotel de Goudfazant

19 March 2018

Previous: Georgian Wine Dinner

Le Carton | Georgian wine dinner (გამარჯობა)

     

In October we took 2.5 days to cook a table full of Georgian food for 25 people to soak up 3 trips worth of wine. That afternoon we got through 31 bottles* from 12 different producers** plus a litre of cha cha and at least two toasts and to think we thought, Oh it's Sunday, we'd better save everyone a cork.

Thanks to everyone we didn't know who came and said it felt like Georgia when you left. And to everyone we knew who still came and we still know and said let's do it again and 'I didn't have a single bad wine' and the girl who said she'd like us to throw a party in her living room (CALL ME) — thanks to y'all too.

Thanks also to the Georgians for your wines and your recipes, and especially to Ènek for checking we bought the right spices and wrote the right facts.

I took some pictures before it got dark. Unfortunately this was also before the food was out of the oven and anyone was there.

გაუმარჯოს!


*6 of them are in my Christmas guide for The Morning Claret.

** Ramaz Nikoladze (Imereti) — Mariam Iosebidze (Kartli) — Ének Peterson (Imereti) — Didimi (Imereti) — Georgian Vine Foundation (Kakheti) — Lagazi (Tusheti) — Vino Martville (Samagrello) — Pheasant's Tears (Kakheti) — Jeremy and Emily (Racha) — The Wine Thieves (Kakheti) — Zurab Topuridze (Guria) — Giorgi Makaridze (Imereti)

    

   

        

La Cosa, The Thing 2014

For me wine is for fun, for drinking, for talking, for dancing, for taste and sometimes for thinking. Like a good tomato I like it best unadorned, sans hoo-ha, flip-flap or hullabaloo (I eat the best tomatoes over the sink). So with tomatoes vaguely in mind, we started a pop up wine project. A place for ourselves and the undies-wrapped wines in our suitcases: a no frills, no chairs, no beer-affair with an up-turned bookshelf for a bar.

We call it Le Carton and next time we’ll be pouring wines from Georgia which is kind of killing me 'cus that's all the way in October and it's only August and I’m not allowed to drink any of the wines until then. But this isn’t about then. Actually I wanted to talk about our first pop up: that time we played bar on a street corner outside a club in the rain, that time being the first time I tried "La Cosa, The Thing". 

The Thing is a sweet wine made by Bodegas Maestro Tejero from high-grown (1.000m) Muscatel de Alejandría gapes (stems, seeds, skins and all) and it smells like raisins. Like plump to burst raisin-bread toasted to caramel, slightly burnt, both sides buttered-raisins and raisins fresh stuck in fried dough powder sugar down your shirt. Of butter-oozy hot cross buns and boozy English wedding cakes and way wine cellars smell like raisins and basically any raisin you can think of except awkward musili raisins 

(Turns out the maestro does effectively, if not in fact, make The Thing with raisins; relying on noble rot to shrivel some of the grapes ((commonly grown to make raisins)) and hanging the rest out to dry for two months.)

The next thing I’d say is that drinking The Thing in the rain will make you forget it’s raining. Take a sip and sit back for (rocket) l a u n c h, sour watermelon acidity shooting >>>shocks<<< through to the dark sides of your teeth, fruity sugar stardust ricocheting around where your dentist tells you to clean better and giving you a big acid s m ile.

Tasting notes: 

Looks like a chunk of fossilised amber with things in it (unfiltered, though no mosquitos). Smells like raisins and early-stage fermentation. Tastes intensely fruity — of kiwi, rhubarb stalks dipped in sugar, an apple picked in August, yellow grapefruit, salted limes, watermelon Jolly Rancher yes I know this isn’t a real fruit — spliced through with laser-like acidity that blasts your palate clean after each sip, taking you on to the next and next and next.

//

"La Cosa The Thing" 2014

Bodegas Maestro Tejero

Muscatel de Alejandría

Segovia, Ribera del Duero, Spain