Keeping it simple: Foxglove Zin, Salami and Cheese

The wine under consideration here is a 2016 Zinfandel from Varner Wines in San Miguel, California. I paid $13 for it at Empire Wines, which is one of the better budget wine stores in the New York Capital District (Albany, Troy, Schenectady, and smaller surrounding towns). Doing a quick search for it online, it seems to be readily available just about everywhere, at pretty close to the same price.

3.8 on the MaxScale. Well-Bodied, fruity, low tannins, dry enough and complex enough to please serious wine drinkers, and sweet enough not to put off folks who don’t know or care about wine. Easily available in May 2020 for $13-$15 a bottle

Anyway, if you’re inclined to check this one out, you won’t be sorry, I don’t think. This is a very drinkable wine, heavy on the ripe red plum fruit, to the point of having what I thought was almost a prune sweetness – which is not to say it is a sweet wine or that it smacks of prunes, because it isn’t and it doesn’t. Not astringently dry, but not sweet in the way that some of the lower priced Zins are. Some hints of spice … a whiff of allspice, and maybe a little coffee. Low tannins, which contributes to the drinkability. The wine is bold enough that a higher tannin level would detract from the subtlety of the other fruits. It’s pretty strong, at 14.3% – although I have to say that Mary and I agreed that the high alcohol content did not go to our heads the way some other, weaker, wines do.

This would pair well, I think, with full-flavored but not fatty foods. I could see it with salmon, or roast pork (the other white meat without a fatty sauce), or what we had for dinner the previous evening: a kind of tart red Italian spaghetti sauce over leftover homemade savory polenta.

(Not to digress, but about that sauce for the polenta — we used a locally made sauce-in-a-jar from neighboring Vermont, called Boves, livened up with some almost caramelized onions and a spoonful of capers sauteed with a couple of crumbled locally made Italian sausages until there was a good glaze on the pan, then deglazed with probably 3/4 cup of cheap dry white wine (an Australian Pinot Grigio, the kind with a kangaroo on it). At the end, I rather carelessly threw some spices in … I couldn’t tell you which ones, now, although almost certainly Penzey’s roasted garlic powder and a light sprinkle of Mexican oregano … maybe a little tarragon, probably a little rosemary too because we have a big plant in the kitchen, and gave it another minute of stirring to extract the flavors. Anyway, it was delicious, and with the tomato and white wine and caper tartness, the smoothness and low acidity of the Foxglove Zin would have gone really well with it).

But out of sheer convenience and laziness/tiredness, we kept it simple last evening, with just some thin-sliced Portuguese bread rolls, a chunk of Brie cheese and some chalkidiki giant olives from Trader Joe’s, along with an Italian hard salami from the local grocery store, Hannafords. The salami itself is worth mentioning, since in my view it’s the best readily available relatively cheap salami around. Brand name is “Columbus,” from Columbus Craft Meats, a company out of Hayward, California. Carried by a lot of grocery stores, including TJ’s, but for my money, stay away from the pre-sliced versions and stick to the basic half-pound whole salamis in paper sheaths that say “Columbus” right on them. $7.50 for this chunk of meat, which for Mary and me is big enough for 3 antipasto plates for two. In my opinion, this company’s product is a lot better than other similarly packaged and usually more expensive brands from other supermarkets. There are of course much more interesting and exquisite salamis available from moms and pops and larger Coop endeavors, but at a much higher cost – and not right around the corner from us.

But back to the point. It was an adequate supper and accompaniment to the wine, although I do think something a little brighter – maybe a Mexican salsa or lemony fish dish, or maybe even an aged cheese rather than the soft and mild brie we were eating – would pair better with it.

All in all, a 3.5 star evening, with some points taken off due to the lateness of our start, and the weirdness of the weather (a heavy snow squall on May 9th? Really?) … not to mention the ongoing pall of the pandemic, this bizarre and horrible presidency and political era of governmental destruction, and the increasing number of people who just yesterday were not wearing – and clearly not required to wear – a face mask when we went to Hannafords Groceries before coming home. Between the germs and the weather and the Radical Reality-Denying Right, there’s too many extreme forces out there trying to kill us all. But the wine, olives, cheese, and salami were good …. So Saluti! Continue to enjoy life! Carpe Diem!