11 Jul 2011
Rebula Without a Cause
Right or wrong, but when one usually starts to get serious about wine, he/she enters in with certain prejudices. For me, I could only drink what I ‘knew’ and at that time - that meant wine from Australia (owing to my time spent there as a student) and California (because well, WEST COAST UNTIL I DIE). France and Italy were “Old World” and scary/snobby/out of reach, and wow - FORGET about Germany, Spain, etc. Obviously that has changed, but admittedly - while I’ve embraced the old world, I haven’t really ventured far outside of France, Italy (just recently) and Germany/Austria. Enter, Slovenia. Basic geography tells me that it’s not far from Italy and thus potentially shares similar terroir/climate - but it’s easy to let borders get into the way of one’s wine exploration (sadly), and admittedly all I know of Slovenia of late is Sasha Vujacic.
2008 - Kabaj Rebula. Imported by Blue Danube Wine Company, who I have become a huge fan of - this is a wine from Slovenia that sees an extended amount of time with skin contact and has some pretty cool nuances and flavors that you’d expect from a wine of this ‘type’ of profile (see Orange, slightly oxidative). The homie Whitney Adams gave me a bit of a head’s up that the wine is a bit brawny so I expected more of a sherry note (which I’m not opposed to). Upon opening and drinking throughout dinner, it wasn’t as sherry-forward as I anticipated, but it had some good complexity, spice, nut flavors, along with a clean finish that had me coming back for more. A great wine that I opened on a Thursday evening, and by Sunday - still had some good snap to it. So yeah, forget about arbitrary borders and drink wine from err’where - that’s the short lesson here. This wine is available at domaine LA.
I did a quick dish of pappardelle, italian sausage from McCall’s, kale, grape tomatoes, folding in goat cheese before serving - and it went well with the Rebula. Big ups to the other home David Duman over at the Satellite Show for the inspiration.
