Asparagus, Meet Wine

If opening a restaurant just for three months a year seems crazy, consider a three-month-only restaurant that also serves only one food. In Alsace, from now until summer, small restaurants dedicated to asparagus alone, open their doors. Every single dish on the menu is comprised of the fat, juicy spears. Asparagus aficionados believe there to be only one perfect wine accompaniment to them: dry muscat. Indeed, after a long winter, the most sensational way to celebrate the arrival of spring is with a huge platter of asparagus drizzled with hollandaise sauce, and a cold bottle of a great Alsace muscat like Domaine Zind Humbrecht “Goldert” Muscat Grand Cru.

What does the word saignée mean in French?

A. Running

B. Bleeding

C. Blending

D. Staining

Saignée is the process of “bleeding” or drawing pink juice off red grapes soon after fermentation begins. This process–which is widely used to make rosé–also results in concentrating the remaining red wine, since the ratio of skins to juice in the tank is increased when some pink juice is drawn off.

“For a long time Sherry was a victim of changing tastes, with fortified wines, like sweet wines, having fallen out of style around the time Churchill was born. The category has come back in vogue lately, partly because of its affinity for complex foods, and also because anything grandmothers approve of inevitably ends up becoming hip again.”

—Adam Leith Gollner, Saveur, February 2018

Asparagus, Meet Wine

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