Clar de Castanyer 2007

Yesterday I made little neck clam pizza from a recipe from the NYTimes about Franny's in Brooklyn. I just had the pizza a couple of weeks ago at Franny's and it was so good I had to stop myself from going back there every night since then. In fact I am still holding back and now have another reason: I can't make it nearly as well as they do. I will try again, but honestly it was like a different pie.

But we drank a wine that wasn't on the list there and probably won't be because it's Spanish. What a weird funky easy to love wine.

It was this wonderful white wine that I bought at Chambers St Wines (my favorite wine store. I am so lucky to live near by) under the recommendation of one of the guys there. Wonderful Clar de Castanyer, 2007. I don't know why I thought it would be good with the clams though, well, it is white wine afterall. I think I was lucky.

The color was a golden bright yellow. (The photo I took has the wine already taken out of the bottle. Sorry. But there are other pictures of it on Flicker that do the wine justice.)

I held it up to my nose: what the hell was that aroma so distinct and persistant without tiring you? It had a richness like something made with nutty butter but there wasn't any butter. It smelt like a spiced pear tart. Definitely this champagne-like aroma of fermentation and patisserie. And it had enough weight to it to match the briny seafull clams, cream and that little spark of hot pepper flakes. I guess that sounds like a weird combination pear tart and clams. But there it is.

Richard Olney

I love the writing of Richard Olney, especially when he writes of wine. This is one of my favorite passages. It is from "Ten Vineyard Lunches". Inside he presents menus from all the great wine regions of France. (Except Champagne—he does make a kind of excuse for this). This book is very interesting especially for pairing wines with food. And you can find it for very little used online.) This passage is from the Loire Valley lunch.

The Touraine red wines — Bourgueil and Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil on the right bank, Chinon across the river and, adjoining Chinon across the border in Anjou, Saumur-Champigny — are the friendliest of wines: jubilant, frank and open, mingling herbal, grassy scents and flavors with an intense wild berry fruit that some define as raspberry, others as blackcurrant or bramble, and that may simply be the fruit of Cabernet franc.

When drinking one of these wines, cool, on a hot day in the mottled shade of the grape arbor, I have only to close my eyes to recapture a child's summertime sensation of lying face-down in the grass and cutting out the whole world except for vegetal and earthy scents and the lonely plaint of mourning doves in the silent air.