Jenny and Francois held their portfolio tasting the day after Return to Terroir. The location was downstairs at The Smith, a sub-basement private room that was teeming with enthusiasm for natural and small producer French wines. The first lot of tables were hosted by the winemakers themselves. Highlights were Catherine & Dominique Derain, whose sparkling Aligote has wicked sharp acidity, Binner’s wines were awesome, especially the 07 Riesling, which was pretty and balanced unlike the usual Alsatian monster white wines. Olivier Cousin’s Cab Francs offered pure fruit. I told him I often have a hard time with the green notes that can be heavy in Cab Franc. He then admitted to me that he usually doesn’t like the wines from this grape but…the rest I couldn’t quite understand because he spoke to me in very fast French! Note to self: follow up on that conversation.

J&F have just started importing a new Burgundy producer, Dom Montchovet, whose wines are spectacular. The Cremant was soft, fruity and very easy to drink, while the Haute Cotes de Beaune ’05 was a beautifully complex wine that showcased its terroir. I had a hard time with the wines of Dom Loup Blanc from Minervois when I first tasted them last year but I have grown to like them. They are not light wines but they express their origin and the heat of the region. The winemaker, a restauranteur who lives part of the year in Montreal, recently purchased old vines in Minervois to make wine. He loves Carignan and feels it doesn’t get its due. La Mere Grand was deep, dark and layered. I tasted a lot more that this but I left my tasting booklet in the loo before I left. Doh! Hence I’m merely working from memory – and these were some of the most memorable, as well as a funky Jura wine, I’ll get the name when I return.

Flying off to London and then Mauritius. I’ll be gone for 6 weeks and plan on blogging while on the road. Natural wines have hit London, will do some research and report back.

The week was buzzing with good wine in NYC. First of the tastings galore was Return to Terroir on Monday: a total scene. When I wasn’t chatting away to some wine industry cohort, I was sniffing and spitting some amazing wines. I showed early and knowing Rene Mosse was in attendance I immediately headed for his table. We spoke about his wines. I asked him about the oxidized quality that seems to be his signature but his own view is that his wines are not oxidized but merely naturally made. The wines were as beautiful as ever. His Anjou Blanc 07 possessed piecing grapefruit acidity and actually didn’t have the hints of oxidation I usually associate with his wines. He poured his first vintage of a particular Savennieres cuvee — a wine with such astute focus and mineral, while his Cab Franc was all mouth-watering tart strawberries. Mosse also poured Le Rouchefer, a Cab Sauvignon-Cab Franc blend made from 40 year old vines, whole berry cluster fermentation, the wine spends time in a mix of new and old barrels for a year. It was pure deliciousness.

Other highlights were Dom de Villaine (Burgundy from Bouzeron), Andre et Mireille Tissot (Jura), Coulee de Serrant (Nicolas Joly’s own wines from Savenniers in the Loire), Weingut Wittmann (brilliant German Rieslings, especially the dry wines), Movia, Montescondo, Cascina Degli Ulivi and Castagna. The latter, a bit of a cult wine from Victoria in Australia, has been causing buzz, even among old world palates and I can see why. The wines were thoroughly interesting and the winemaker takes a non-interventionist approach. All his wines had a distinct herbal quality, a little like a wine from Southern France.

A winemaker, a total sweetheart who I had met at the Jenny and Francois welcome dinner, (but not part of their portfolio) from Buzet was pouring – Domaine du Pech. His wines: Le Pech Abuse, a vin de table, is a play on words since this wine was refused appellation status because it is “atypical.” It’s a delicious Bordeaux blend (not usually my favorite of grapes) that spends three years in big used (100 years old!) oak vats. His Cabernet Sauvignon is probably one of the few Cabs that I could easily quaff. The wine stopped fermentation naturally at 15 grams, no SO2 added at all, no filtering/fining etc and it was pure fruit.

Some of Jenny producers were there too but more on them in the next post.

Last Friday night kicked off the Jenny and Francois natural wine week chez Alice Feiring. Author to be reckoned with, Alice kindly hosted a welcome party at her rambling tenement-building apartment (she has a bath tub in the kitchen too!) in Nolita. A wicked time was had by all. I believe we went through almost four cases of wine and an industrial sized pot of lentil soup. About eight winemakers from J&F’s portfolio were there, along with the dashing owners of Racine, the hottest natural wine bar in Paris (that I have yet to visit alas).

The winemakers. How I have fallen in love with them. They are all truly honest, simple people that work hard at what they love. I think of them as philosophical farmers holding firmly to their beliefs of what constitutes as good, natural wine. Half of them couldn’t speak English, none of them wore the yuppie clothing often donned by corporate winemakers, there wasn’t a PR person in sight and the vignerons knew how to rock a party.

Met some interesting industry folk too, including the owner of De Vino on the LES, the chef and owner of Farm on Adderly in Brooklyn (loved talking to this guy about his philosophy on food and really must check out his restaurant), more retailers from Slope Cellars and Westside Wines (with an inventory that sounds like its worth the trek to the upper west side) and the very sweet Brooklyn Guy, whose blog I so enjoy reading.

Over a recent email exchange of recipe swapping, a good friend offered me her tripe recipe in return for my curry recipe. Being the greedy soul that I am, I asked if she could come over and show me how to cook the tripe in person and she agreed.

Now I must confess that I have a great love for offal. I am, however, an armchair offal eater. I order it in restaurants or I eat it at other people’s houses. I’m not sure how to handle or prepare the parts and tend to feel a little intimidated at the idea of cooking, say, a lamb’s heart. So I was thrilled to get a first hand account on tripe.

The white, spongy honeycomb pattered flesh purchased at Essex Market was almost too beautiful to cook. It was shaped rather like a bishop’s hat and weighed just over 2lbs.

Susan started a simple tomato sauce first: celery, carrots, onion, garlic and two large cans of tomatoes, left to simmer to a rich thick sauce.

The tripe was simply boiled whole in the largest pot we could find and once the flesh started to give a little and yet remain crunchy, she removed it from the boiling pot, chopped the flesh up and incorporated it into the sauce where it continued to cook for about 20-30 minutes. The dish was served with chopped mint (a nice touch), grated pecorino and a little parmigiano.

Susan, our guest chef, grew up in Rome and she offered this in a recent note she sent me, “My mother used to make Trippa alla Romana when I was a kid, and I’m one of the very few “Romans” of my generation who still likes the stuff. The way you and I made it on Saturday is the standard Roman way of cooking tripe, the acidity in the tomatoes helps tenderize the tripe. Grated pecorino romano and chopped roman mint (along the lines of regular mint here, but thicker, stronger-flavored and mintier) make it especially Roman.”

After some research online, and in our out-of-print cookbooks, I also came across Trippa alla Trasteverina – tripe made in the area of Trastevere, the old Jewish quarters of Rome. Variety Meats in our Good Cook series of books offers up Trippa alla Toscana, very similar to the recipe of Rome. According to a website I came across, this tripe recipe (of essentially boiling tripe and adding to a tomato sauce) is a national dish all the way from Rome to Florence. And now NYC.