We will be on vacation for a month after next week's column, and we wanted to leave you with two words. Wherever you travel this summer, near or far, these are the words: Be bold. Try new things, even red green wine.
Red green wine? You bet, but we'll get back to that. Our point is that wherever you go -- whether it is Greece or Indiana -- there are new wines to try, often local varieties that you won't see anywhere else. There's no way to know if these wines will be delicious, but they're most likely going to be memorable and leave you with a lasting taste that you will always associate with your trip. Consider this:
We found ourselves in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., recently during our daughter Media's tour of college campuses. After our tour, we wandered around downtown for a bit and the kids decided we should eat at a little place called 43 Phila Bistro. When the wine list arrived, there was a special section called the $18 list with 29 choices -- excellent choices, from a very good Côtes-du-Rhône to a Priorat. The waiter explained that the restaurant modifies its wine list in the summer and sells the odds and ends for $18. What a great idea! Among the wines was a 2003 Lemberger from Fox Run Vineyards in Penn Yan, N.Y.
Lemberger is a grape that's grown a bit in Washington state (and more commonly in Germany, where it's called Limberger, and Austria, where it's Blaufränkisch), but we'd never seen one from New York. Since we were near some New York wineries (though not this one), it seemed like a good bet -- it's easy to be bold for $18, after all -- so we ordered it. We were glad we did. We often find Lemberger to be more interesting than tasty, with sometimes-challenging tastes of pepper, blackberries and sage. This one was lighter and easier to drink than we anticipated, with plenty of blackberry-like fruit and pepper, but also with good acidity that kept it from being the big bomb we expected.
It turns out this really was a good deal: The wine costs $17.99 at the winery's tasting room, where almost all of the 500-case production is sold. Dan Mitchell, the tasting-room manager, told us later that the winery has made Lemberger for several years because it grows well in the Finger Lakes region, more winter-hearty and higher-yielding than some better-known grapes. Yes, he said, the cheese-like name is a problem: "The name, for some reason, people can't get over it." But the winery still sells out of each vintage before the new one is released. "People who know it are absolutely passionate about it," he said.
Which brings us to red green wine.
From time to time, we have written about Vinho Verde, the delightful, low-alcohol, slightly spritzy white wine from Portugal that's great as a summertime quaffer. It's called "green wine" because it's picked young, the area it comes from is verdant or it might have a slight green tint -- or maybe all of the above. Every time we write about Vinho Verde, we also run across references to red Vinho Verde (or Vinho Verde Tinto, as it's usually called) in our trove of wine books.
The references generally are not kind. It's usually mentioned as a kind of low-end plonk that the masses really enjoy and that everyone else should avoid. The wine writer Joanna Simon once described it as "very much an acquired taste -- acquired on holiday and rapidly lost back home." Almost half of Vinho Verde is red, but little of it is exported.
We're willing to try anything, so we set about searching for Vinho Verde Tinto. We couldn't find it at any New York wine stores. When we called one Portuguese restaurant and asked if it had red Vinho Verde, there was a long pause. "Vinho Verde is white," the man on the phone finally said. We called a second restaurant, which told us that it used to offer red Vinho Verde, but stopped because almost everyone who ordered it sent it back.
Clearly, this was something we had to try. We were told the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, which has a sizable Portuguese population, would be a good place to look, so we dropped in. At the first wine shop we saw in the area, we asked, "Do you have any red Vinho Verde?" The merchant led us over to a big display and showed us five of them. We bought them all. This was easy to do because, together, they cost less than $30.
What we'd read was that red Vinho Verde -- which is made from grapes such as Vinhão, Brancelho and Pedral -- is so rough, astringent and acidic that it needs just the right food to pair with it. So we called Tarcísio Costa, who is co-owner with Miguel Jerónimo of Alfama restaurant in New York City, and asked if he would choose the meal if we showed up with our own wine. (We have spoken before, and he knows we are wine writers.)
Portuguese wine supporters, including Mr. Costa, who doubles as the restaurant's wine and spirits director, are not really keen on talking about red Vinho Verde. After all, Portugal is still struggling to get over its reputation as the home of Lancers and Mateus. The country's wine industry wants to let the world know that it produces world-class, very serious wines that have nothing in common with simple rosés or Vinho Verde, either red or white.
More than two years ago, we wrote that Portugal's increasingly available reds are terrific bargains. Portugal also is home to some outstanding high-end wines. Indeed, Alfama's wine list is a stunning overview of the best of Portugal and worth a special trip if you find yourself in Manhattan. Alfama did have red Vinho Verde on its wine list a few years ago but it got yanked, Mr. Costa said, because "it just did not resonate with consumers. We had literally three people, all Portuguese, who ordered it."
Still, Mr. Costa was a good sport about this. The first thing he did was take our wines and chill them. Then we opened them one by one with a series of dishes Mr. Costa said would pair well with them. The classic combination, he said, would be suckling pig, but he didn't have that on the menu that night, so instead we had other good pairings. John had the wines with bacalhau com chouriço, a traditional savory dish of slow-roasted salt cod with chouriço-sauteed potatoes, rich tastes and textures that the acidic wine sliced through well. The wine was quite tasty with Dottie's polvo grelhado, grilled octopus with cilantro coulis, and her sardinha assada na brasa, grilled Portuguese sardines. The rustic, fruity, dry wines were perfectly pitched to the salty, smoky dishes.
How were the wines, overall? Delightful, in their own way. They're simple, low-alcohol quaffers, like the whites, and also spritzy like the whites. But they are indeed acidic and astringent. They have some blackberries, some plums and some pepper, but they're clearly wines to gulp, not to discuss and analyze. Our favorite of the group was Danaide, from Adega de Monção. Even its back label was charming: "Should be drink chilly." The price was only $5.19. We thoroughly enjoyed this new taste.
Are we saying you should run out today and get a red Vinho Verde? No. Our point is that there are all sorts of "local" wines that are more available to you than you might think. You don't have to travel to Greece to sample unusual Greek wines; there are probably several good ones at a restaurant near you. Many cities have ethnic neighborhoods where wine stores and restaurants offer wines that you might not otherwise see. And, of course, wineries all over the U.S. make good, sometimes unusual wines that are only sold on site.
Trying these wines is not only fun and interesting but helps to build a road map of wine tastes that makes all wines more interesting, putting everything into a broader context. Whether it's Lemberger from New York or red green wine from Portugal, it's all part of the joy of discovery that wine offers.
You can contact us at wine@wsj.com.
