Tuesday, April 27, 2010

#68 - Seafood Sausage Lunch With Asprinio, Grüner & Musketeller


I've talked about the infinitely tasty Trader Joe's seafood sausage before.

They may become an endangered species soon so just go buy them. I'm begging.

And don't just microwave or boil them. Gussy them up. Make them delicious.

Just pick better wines than we did this time.

Food: Seafood sausage with sun-dried tomato-basil-shallot pesto with mâche and baguette

Grilled seafood sausage with a sun-dried tomato, basil, shallot, olive oil and white wine vinegar pesto. The seafood sausage is a frozen product that, if treated right, tastes entirely delicious. Do crap to it, people. It's a $4 package for four sausage links.

The entire meal was concocted in every way to accompany our first Asprinio. Seafood, even red pizza is considered good pairings with Aspirino. But there was problem...

Wine: 2005 Villa Carafa Asprinio di Aversa ($20 - Knightsbridge), 2006 Alois Gross Muskateller Steirische Klassik ($8 - WDC) & 2006 Stift Goettweig Grüner Veltliner Gottschelle ($15 - WDC)

The Asprinio was all done, finished, over. Dark yellow in the glass. Not unpleasant in that sense, but all sherry-like notes. We've had worse in the "dead-dead-dead" category. I knew before buying it that Asprinio should be drunk young but with their insane rarity and one available in the area, it seems worth trying. Asprinio is genetically identical to Greco yet the vines are latched onto huge poplar trees so they grow way up in the canopy, thereby getting the sea breezes that create their unique character. Wasn't technically good by itself but had a dead fruit, nuts and sherry quality that wasn't awful, really. Interesting to try but didn't in any sense reveal any true nature.

The Gross Musketateller was simple in the worst sense. Almost water in the glass with the faintest green hue. Notes from WS were "celery-like aromas following through on a palate that doesn't add up to much." Ding. Not good. Added up to nothing.

The Stift Goettweig is a bargain favorite of ours. Pretty, glimmering light yellow in the glass. By itself, more exotic fruit with a touch of creamsicle (wee bit less this time). Nice lively acidity, good balance and refreshing finish with some lees left over in the glass. Nice little wine that for the price gives a great representation of the grape while adding a little something unique with its great vitality. WDC is currently selling the Stift Geottweig Riesling for $8. I'm sure we'll be having it very soon.

But none of them were even close to good with the food.

Pairing: 75 No thanks

Great food with wine that was terrible with it. But let's be frank ("Who's Frank"). the Asprinio was dead, the Musketeller was awful by its very nature and the Grüner got lost in the sun-dried tomato-basil mix. No surprises, really. The meal was made on the assumption that the Asprinio would be somewhat more alive than it was. After that, we just grabbed the open bottle of Grüner in the refrigerator to get rid of it and tried the Muskateller before it become cooking wine (the result of buying bargain-shelf wine without knowing what we were getting into).

Not. Good. Food = pretty great. Wine = mixed bag. Pairing = ick.

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