Aaron Berdofe's Wine and Food Experience

Rating: 5/5

Halibut, pan-heated then baked with dill, cracked pepper and sea salt.  Sided with wasabi sour cream, a red pepper vinaigrette and dill and paprika spiked couscous.

Wine: Loimer Grüner Veltliner “Kamptal” 2006

Notes:

To get this out of the way up front, this pairing was amazingly fantastic! But on to other important issues, like what is that thing on the logo?

I’m completely vexed by this thing and couldn’t stop staring at it all the way through dinner.  An inquiry has been sent to the folks in Austria because this is a “need to know” item.  I’ll update the post as soon as I get a response.  Back to the pairing though: Grüner Veltliner, known as “GruV” over in Austria where it is top dog is one of the few wines I’ve found that work great with spicy asian foods (thai, sushi, etc.).  It’d probably work pretty well with some Indian food now that I think of it.  However, for this meal the fantastic acid in this wine cut through the spice of the wasabi sour cream (just mix wasabi paste into sour cream and stand back) and the spicy red pepper vinaigrette.  The body of the wine perfectly stands up to the dish. With flavors of green apples, lemon peel and some great minerality every bit of this dish was complimented.  I even got every element of the dish into my mouth with the wine at the same time to fully appreciate this. A big nod goes to this wine’s wonderful balance.  I need to go get another bottle or 6.

UPDATE: Straight from Birgit Loimer, that bad boy on the label is in fact a fertility god.  Hopefully, they don’t have troubles selling this wine to the people of Alabama like some wines do.