Of Bubbles and Butterfat: Four Sparkling Wines To Enjoy with California Cheeses

October is American Cheese Month and we've been celebrating rather, uh... thoroughly. The number of artisanal cheese producers in the United States is exploding these days and Californian cheesemakers in particular have really been breaking out lately — often running neck-and-neck with Wisconsin producers at the American Cheese Society's annual competition.

To recognize their success, here are four perfect pairings of J sparkling wines and California cheeses. 

• Andante Nocture with J Vintage Brut. This delicious bloomy-rind cow's milk cheese from the renowned Andante Dairy in Petaluma is less than 3 weeks old when it comes to market. When it's young, it's buttery and spreadable with a subtle earthy character that develops into a rich mushroomy flavor as it ages. This cheese pairs beautifully with our Vintage Brut which has bright pear and citrus characters that play well against the Nocturne's earthy notes.


• Marin French Gold and J Brut Rosé. A cheese as rich and creamy as Marin French Gold is absolute heaven when enjoyed with a crisp sparkling wine with fresh fruit characters. With its vibrant notes of red berry, blood orange, and lemon peel, our J Brut Rosé is the perfect foil for the decadent butterfat and mild sharpness of this brie-style cheese.
  
  
• Point Reyes Toma and Late Disgorged Vintage Brut. Lucky for us that third generation dairy farmers the Giacomini family chose California to produce their Point Reyes Toma — a unique semi-hard cow's milk cheese with distinct grassy notes and tang. This cheese pairs perfectly with our Late Disgorged Vintage Brut because the wine's toasted almond, caramel, and baked bread characters contrast nicely with the pungent qualities of the Toma. 
  


• Bellwether Farms Crescenza and J Cuvée Brut. We first encountered the sweetish mild charms of Crescenza at Spoonbar here in Healdsburg, where the bright, vibrant acidity of our J Cuvée Brut played perfect counterpoint to its buttery, melt-in-your-mouth texture. Bellwether Farms here in Sonoma County is now doing a lovely rendition of this Italian favorite and we highly recommend it. We also like Bellwether's mild, buttery Carmody with the J Cuvée Brut — so much we put it on our cheese and charcuterie menu.

While we're on the subject of our cheese and charcuterie menu, we should mention it features two other great American cheeses in addition to the Carmody: a nutty goat's milk Cabecou from Laura Chenel and smoky Oregon Blue Vein from Rogue Creamery.  And have you heard about the condiments? Check 'em out here.

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October 26th is International Champagne Day!

Ok, this is our kind of holiday.  This Friday, October 26th is the 3rd Annual Champagne Day, and while the event is technically focused on wines from the Champagne region of France, we think it's a great excuse to celebrate bubbly in general. 

Basically, on Friday, October 26th, people from around the world will be sharing their bubbly photos, videos, and tasting notes with one another — like one big international party. 

If you've never participated in a real-time social media event before, this is a perfect opportunity to start. Just post your bubbly-related thoughts on any social media site and be sure to add the #ChampagneDay hashtag, so sparkling wine lovers from around the world can share in your fun! (Note — Twitter-style hashtags now work on Facebook, too.)

The timing of Champagne Day is perfect because the winter holidays are just around the corner — a great time to think about which sparkling wines you'd like to have on hand for dinner parties, family gatherings, and midnight toasts.

Might we suggest J Cuvée 20 Brut as a great place to start? This lively sparkling wine has flavors of lemon zest, Fuji apples, and Bartlett pears and at $28 a bottle, it's a great value. 

The exceptional 2003 Late Disgorged J Vintage Brut is another delicious choice and proof that patience has its rewards. This sparkling wine has warm aromas of toasted almond, caramel, and baked bread, followed by a sophisticated sequence of pear, citrus, and delicate cinnamon flavors. 

Check out our other sparkling wines and mark your calendars for some bubbly fun!

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Three Inspired Sparkling Wine and Cheese Pairings

Holiday party season is just around the corner, so what better time to think about festive sparkling wine and food pairings? Here are three inspired ideas to get your (cheese) wheels turning. 

• Tête de Moine and J Vintage Brut. A great conversation starter, Tête de Moine or "Monk's Head" is a semi-hard Swiss cheese with a deliciously nutty aroma and a highly unusual presentation. To fully develop Tête de Moine's flavors, your cheese monger carefully pares it with a special shaving device called a Girolle. The result is a thin, delicate rosette of cheese with curled edges — a bit like an oyster mushroom. In this form, Tête de Moine has a deliciously silky body that melts in your mouth. The name of this cheese from the Swiss monks of Bellelay who began making it in the year 1292. Tête de Moine is fantastic with a dry sparkling wine like our J Vintage Brut, which has bright pear and citrus characters.
  


• Gougère and J Brut Rosé. Gougère are puffy little balls of savory cheese pastry —  delicious served right out of the oven with a chilled glass of our J Brut Rosé. We especially love these Laura Chenel Chevre Gougere because the slight tang of the gougère's goat cheese tastes so delicious with the Brut Rosé's vibrant fruit flavors and crisp bubbles. This is such a fun pairing and guests absolutely love it. Gougère are surprisingly easy to make, too. The dough freezes well, so just make some ahead, take out of the freezer in the morning, then pop a batch in the oven a half hour before guests start to arrive. Gruyere, Comté, and Emmentaler cheeses are great in gougère as well.
  
  
• Cheese and Charcuterie Platter with J Cuvée. One of the most festive food trends right now is the cheese and charcuterie platter, a great way to engage guests and show off local producers. The easiest way to pull a platter together is to include a diverse array of selections: one fresh cheese like a Burrata, a soft cheese like Brie, a semi-soft cheese like Friulano, a hard cheese like Parmigiano Reggiano, and a veined cheese like a Gorgonzola. Cured meats like salami and cooked items like pancetta will round out your platter. Treat the cheeseboard like a centerpiece and flank it with a few buckets of chilled J Cuvée. With aromas of crushed hazelnut and flavors of lemon zest, Fuji apples, and Bartlett pears, the Cuvée is a versatile sparkling wine that will pair beautifully with all your platter selections.

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Grape Harvest Tart

To celebrate the annual grape harvest, here's a recipe for a tart filled with homemade grape jam. When baked, the jam helps to bind the tart's top and bottom layers and its musky, sweet flavors work well with the buttery crust. For added festiveness, we cut a cluster of our favorite crop into the top layer. Try this with a glass of J Cuvee 20 Brut or any of J's other crisp sparkling wines. 

Grape Harvest Tart

Serves 8 to 10.

Ingredients

For the Jam
    •    1 1/2 pounds red grapes, stems removed
    •    4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
    •    Pinch of salt
    •    1 cup granulated sugar 

For the Dough

    •    2 cups flour, plus more for surface
    •    1/4 cup sugar
    •    1/2 teaspoon salt
    •    2 sticks cold butter, cut into cubes
    •    1/4 cup ice water
    •    1 egg, lightly beaten
    •    Sugar for sprinkling

    •    Fresh whipped cream for topping (optional)

Directions 

    •    To make the dough, put the flour, sugar, and salt into a food processor and pulse briefly to mix. Add the small cubes of butter and process until mixture is a coarse meal (about 15 seconds). With machine running, add the ice water gradually until the mixture begins to bind. Shape dough into two disks. Wrap each disc in plastic and refrigerate for one hour or up to 48 hours.

    •    To make the jam, combine grapes and lemon juice in a medium saucepan over high heat. Cook, stirring often, until grapes release their juices, about 7 minutes. Strain mixture through a fine sieve, which should yield 1 1/2 to 2 cups juice. Discard grape skins and return juice to saucepan. Cook over high heat and stir in the sugar along with pinch of salt. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium and simmer 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer jam to bowl, let cool -- stirring occasionally. The jam will be a thick liquid but will firm as it cools.

    •    On a lightly floured surface, roll out each disk of dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Transfer one round to a baking sheet, preferably lined with parchment, and fit the other round into a 9 inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Trim edges flush with tart pan. Freeze both until firm, about 15 minutes.

    •    Using a paring knife or mouth of a bottle, cut clusters of holes in dough on baking sheet to create a bunch of grapes and a stem at the top.

    •    Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Spread one cup grape jam over dough in the tart pan, making sure to keep it 1.5 inches clear from the edge so jam doesn't leak out of the edges when you place the other dough round on top. (You can keep any remaining jam in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.) Brush the top edge of dough with egg. Slide the remaining dough round on top and center the design. Press the edges to seal, trimming up any excess with a paring knife or kitchen shears. Brush the top layer with egg and sprinkle with sanding sugar. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.


    •    Place the tart in the oven and bake on the middle rack for 15 minutes. Take it out and gently tap the pan to remove any bubbles that have formed. Return the pan to the oven and bake until golden brown (it'll also be bubbling a bit), about 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer to a wire baking rack, and let cool for 15 to 20 minutes. Take the tart out of the pan and transfer to a platter. Serve with fresh whipped cream.

Enjoy!

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What We're Buying at the Farmer's Market This Week: Tomatoes

Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer, so this week we're scooping up all the tomatoes we can before they give way to persimmons and pomegranates.  

We love that tomatoes, like grapes, can actually prefer a hotter, longer growing season -- especially varieties like Momotaro, Fantastic, and Celebrity. There are some fascinating heirlooms that peak in late summer, too, including Marizol Purple, Kalman's Hungarian Pink, and Zapotec Ribbed or "pleated" — the ones with those wonderful pumpkin-like grooves down the side.

High temperatures meant most of us were still looking for ways to avoid the oven this week, but we couldn't resist Food and Wine's recipe for Honey Tomato Bruschetta with Ricotta, especially given you can slow roast the tomatoes up to two days ahead (and in the middle of the night if you want). To balance the creamy ricotta, we recommend trying it with one of our sparkling wines. 

For another creative take on bruschetta, check out this "BLT" Bruschetta from the Cooking Channel in which pancetta replaces bacon and arugula plays the part of lettuce. Or, you could make this Smoked Summer Tomato Basil Butter and spread it onto some freshly grilled bread and corn on the cob. 

Since we're on the topic of unusual bruschettas, we also wanted to sneak in a mention of Food Wishes' Strawberry Goat Cheese Bruschetta. This dish doesn't use tomatoes, but it does celebrate another late summer crop — strawberries — and the way the sweet berries play against the creamy, tangy goat cheese and smoky, crunchy grilled bread is absolutely heavenly, especially when paired with some J Cuvée 20 Brut. 

Mix and match these unusual bruschettas to send out summer in style.

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Locavore: Spoonbar

Spoonbar here in Healdsburg, California is a wonderfully big, modern restaurant with breezy, architectural style and gorgeous pops of color from turquoise Eames chairs and caramel-toned acacia tables. When the weather is warm (as it so often is here), the restaurant opens its cantina doors to the sidewalk and that’s when Spoonbar really shines, striking just the right balance between relaxed and luxe. It’s reluxed.

Louis Maldonado of Fifth Floor and Aziza recently came on board to revamp the menu, and the transformation is garnering a lot of positive attention. The Chronicle's Michael Bauer recently wrote, “Spoonbar has become one of my favorite destinations in Sonoma County.”

The new format features 22 dishes in five categories. One of our favorites is the handmade cannelloni of swiss chard and crescenza cheese topped with toybox squash. Crescenza is a sweetish, mild Italian cheese with buttery melt-in-your-mouth texture, so it plays beautifully against a vibrant sparkling wine like J Vineyards’ Cuvée 20. We also loved the Cuvée with Maldonado’s lightly cooked ocean trout with plum and avocado on flax seed crackers. 

Spoonbar, located in the h2hotel, 219 Healdsburg Ave. Healdsburg, CA 95448 Make reservations on Open Table or call (707) 433-7222

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J Winemaker, Melissa Stackhouse, Harvest News!

We are looking to begin our sparkling vintage sometime early this week. First grapes will be Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier from our Nicole’s estate vineyard in the Russian River Valley.  This fruit was recently sampled at 17 Brix, and the current heat wave will certainly move it to the desired 19 Brix in the next 5-6 days.

J Nicole's Vineyard

We are on deck for a beautiful vintage this year; having luxuriated in brilliant winter and spring conditions, as well as finally getting the summer temperatures that we’ve been robbed of the past couple years.

Fruit set was spectacular in 2012, giving us relatively large and compact clusters in all varieties. We continue to green drop fruit in our varietal vineyards, ensuring even ripening and balanced fruit load for each vine.

J Nicole's Vineyard Pinot Noir Clusters (April 2012)

Since Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, and Chardonnay grapes for our varietal programs won’t be ripe until the end of August, through September and October, our focus at this time is on sparkling wine production.   Therefore, with that said, we are expecting a “Sparkling” Harvest, one that represents the essence of J’s Russian River Valley terroir!

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Cheers,

J Vineyards & Winery

Harvest is Coming, Harvest is Coming!

It Takes a Wine Village to make every bottle of inspired J, especially during harvest.  We are so appreciative of our adoring J Fans that we want to share the hard-working J Harvest Team Members that bring your favorite bottles of J to your table for sharing with family and friends. 

J Team Member: Jose

Position at J: Production Maintenance Worker

Years working on the J Team: 9 Years

Favorite J Wine: J Vineyards Robert Thomas Pinot Noir

Jose’s inspiration comes from the J family and extends to his personal family.  Jose says, “the J family provides me great opportunities allowing me to share those wonderful opportunities with my family, I am blessed.”

Jose’s J team members really admire him as he is always very helpful beyond his job as a production maintenance worker, and he is a great guy to have on the team.  Jose says, “I may be very shy at times, but my team members know I have very high work ethics, and I love my job as a production maintenance worker and beyond whatever else needs to be taken care of year round for production and harvest.  I am always busy at my job and I am always learning something new each harvest, I think the winemaking process is very cool from the vineyards to the bottle and I am glad to be a part of it at J.”

Jose loves spending quality time with his wife and three children – “Me and my family love going to the river, it is a great outing for all of us to share a lot of fun and laughter together.”

Jose says, “a special memory I have from this year was when our Production Director and Production Manager organized and cooked a delicious BBQ for the entire production team after we successfully finished bottling the J California Pinot Gris, I felt much appreciated, again like a J family member.”

Jose is very significant to the J production team as he always goes out of his way to get the job done on a daily basis, and with a smile on his face.  Thanks Jose, J Vineyards & Winery is so fortunate to have you in the J family!

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Cheers,

J Vineyards & Winery