Spanish Table Seattle & Paris Grocery Newsletter
December 17, 2009
Sharon is SO BUSY stocking wine, beer, cava and French champagne that she asked me to write the newsletter today so here goes….
Christmas week is a time to enjoy great food and wine. We give diets a rest to enjoy rich seasonal foods and indulge our sweet tooth. Whether friends drop in, families come by, or you just snuggle up by the fire, there is time to pay attention to flavors. The deli cases at both The Spanish Table and Paris Grocery are brimming with specialty cheeses and cured meats. Our wine departments are overflowing with the best from Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Greece, France and even Morocco.
Short on time? Shop on line on our new and improved websites!
The Spanish Table wine website is now launched! We’ve got amazing wine values which are arranged by staff pick, by score, by price, and by country. This virtual wine store has everything that you’re looking for from Spain, Portugal, Madeira, or South America. Click The Spanish Table wine to visit the site.
For all food and cookware products, click on The Spanish Table to check out our original and now revamped, website. It’s much easier to navigate and has a plethora of additional items. Now you can shop at home for Spanish food and wine!
GIFTS GALORE FOR FOODIES:
Paella Kit: with paellera that serves eight plus ingredients already packed in a gift box.
Meanwhile, we have oodles of little jars of delicious spreads in both our stores here on Western Ave that can be used to stuff a stocking or fill a gift basket.
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pecial price on THE SPANISH TABLE cookbook: regularly $30.00 specially priced for the holidays at $24.00.
For those who love Greek food, we just received the How to Roast a Lamb cookbook ($35.00) by Michael Psilakis. Called the “Greek-American Mario Batali” by The New Yorker and best new chef by Food and Wine magazine, this is a must-have Greek cookbook.
Madeira gift boxes: A bottle in a wooden box with two Madeira glasses, $19.99.
By the way, did you catch the column on pairing a Sercial Madeira with charred skirt steak in the New York Times food section this week? Click the hyperlink to read the article, in case you missed it.
Undecided on what to give someone? We have good old fashioned gift certificates available in any amount of your choice.
Just arrived today is a huge assortment of dulces de Navidad: Handmade turrón from Pablo Garrigos. Turrón sin Azúcar if you have dietary restrictions. Pan de Cadiz. Chocolate turrón, mazapanes con chocolate and speaking of chocolate, La Casa pralines are here with filling of Catalan Creme, Pine Nuts & Raisins, Orange, Baked Apple, Tocinillo de Cielo & Lemon Sorbet.
Did I hear you ask what Sharon and I are drinking with Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners at our house?
On Christmas Eve Sharon loves our tradition of dining on fresh Dungeness Crab accompanied with steamed artichokes, crunchy baguette and lemon mayonnaise. That calls for either dry La Gitana Manzanilla Sherry ($15.99), cold and crisp Santiago Ruiz Albariño ($19.99) or bone-dry, Torre Oria Brut Nature Cava ($16.99).
Then on Christmas day I will insist on pouring vintage Riojas with a menu chosen to match the wines. We all have our priorities. I am thinking of starting with a plate of French cheeses from our annex, Paris Grocery. Then we’ll move onto a frisée salad tossed with a goat’s milk blue cheese (just arrived this week at Paris Grocery) and a whole goose, since finding a suckling pig to roast might be a challenge. The dessert will be pears poached in Moscatel from The Spanish Table cookbook.
The wines: We will be starting with a 2004 Deobriga Rioja ($21.99) and moving onto a 2001 Muga Prado Enea Gran Reserva Rioja ($57.00). These two vintages were rated excellent in Spain will bring tears of joy to the eyes of a lover of traditional wines. Then we’ll wrap it up with Samos Moscato wine from Greece ($17.99).
We have some of the greatest Rioja vintages ever right now, including, but not limited to:
Bordón Reserva 2004 $17.99
Muga Reserva 2005 $28.99
LAN 2001 Gran Reserva: $22.99
Beronia 2001 Gran Reserva $25.99
Viña Bosconia Reserva 2001 ($38.99) R. Lopez Heredia’s extended aging times actually qualify this as a Gran Reserva from any other winery. 93 points Stephen Tanzer
Our new shop features French cheeses and wine, and other foods with a French mood. It’s located 1/4 of a block south of Spanish Table at 1418 Western Avenue.
FRENCH CHAMPAGNES HAVE ARRIVED! Champagne Duval-Leroy Cuvee Paris NV ($35.00) One of the best values in Champagnes available right now, and it’s got a Leroy Neiman silk screen of a Paris street scene on the bottle. Pop this open over the holidays with your favorite Franco-phile!
GROWER CHAMPAGNES
The Champagne region in France is dominated by a handful of brand names.
These négoçiants and coopératives produce 80% of the total output in Champagne, yet they own only 12% of the vineyards. They bring to marked a mass produced commodity – a Champagne made in a “house style.” By contrast, “récoltant-manipulants” (or RMs) handcraft their limited quantities of Champage from individual villages and parcels where the inherent qualities of the vineyards imprint themselves into the wines. The following two RMs are outstanding, and represent great values in Champagne values as well.
Margaine Brut Cuvee Traditionelle NV ($45.00) “The NV Brut Cuvee Traditionelle is an exceptional wine at this level. Notes of ash, chalk and crushed rocks dominate this taut, focused Champagne. Medium in body, the wine reveals tons of clarity not to mention significant pedigree. The NV Brut is mostly 2005 juice, with the addition of 40% reserve wines from vintages 2004, 2003, 1999, 1996 and 1994, 90% Chardonnay and 10% Pinot Noir. The relatively high amount of reserve wines undoubtedly contributes to this Champagne’s complexity…Arnaud Margaine’s wines..are Champagnes of extraordinary purity and sheer elegance. Margaine farms 6.5 hectares, 90% planted to Chardonnay, the rest Pinot Noir.”
90 points Robert Parker
L. Aubry NV Brut Champagne ($40.00) Twin brothers Pierre and Philippe Aubry handcraft their Champagnes from 60 individual parcels that comprise 16.5 hectares in the heart of Petit Montagne de Reims. Made of 50% Meunier, 25% Chardonnay and 25% Pinot Noir, it is vigorous, crackery, and concentrated. “There’s a nice graininess to the texture, making this lively and defining its bread dough, apple and grapefruit flavors. Turns crisp, but stays balanced, with a dry, mouthwatering finish.”
90 points Wine Spectator
Drop down, drop in, ignore the construction!
Sharon Baden and Steve Winston, Owners
The Spanish Table, 1426 Western Avenue, Seattle WA 98101 phone# 206.682.2827
Hours: Monday- Saturday, 10 AM – 6:30 PM Sunday 10 AM – 6 PM
Paris Grocery, 1418 Western Avenue, Seattle WA 98101 phone# 206.682.0679
Hours: Monday- Saturday, 10 AM – 6 PM Sunday 11 AM – 5 PM
August 21, 2001
Point Reyes is located about an hour north of our Mill Valley shop. It’s a forty mile long peninsula jutting into the Pacific ocean and is populated with dairy farms whose placid bovines roam bucolic pastures and provide the raw material for the famous Point Reyes cheese.
Jehan cleaned up the pan in front of our Berkeley store.
chefs who exhibit their culinary mettle on every corner of Donostia. A morning visit to the fish market is a primer on the 50-odd varieties of fish that will be served that day at local restaurants. Old town overflows with bars serving tapas (called pintxos here) featuring seafood, cured meats, local produce and lots of mayonnaise, either stacked on slices of bread or held together with a toothpick. Some of our most memorable and haute-cuisine pintxos were served at Aloña Berri and Bar Bergara across the bridge from Old Town. But Old Town has the density of pintxos bars with patrons spilling out onto the sidewalks and pedestrian streets. It takes no effort at all to sample an amazing array of pintxos here in just a few minutes. Traditionally, it’s self-serve and when it’s time to pay, let the waiter know what you ate. I just wish we had fast food like this in America!
The 
vintage. So unsurprisingly, the most impressionable part of our June visit were the cobweb filled subterranean cellars. Spiders are encouraged as they are natural predators of mites that attack the corks, a serious threat in a cellar storing wines from the early 1900’s. A legendary Rioja producer, the wines of Bodega R. Lopez de Heredia must be tasted to be believed. Eric Asimov’s 
Portuguese Ceramic Linguica Asadors Imagine a bar full of patrons, each clutch of friends tending a flaming terracotta pig, methodically flipping their chorizos and linguicas until they’re perfectly charred on all sides while they drink and gossip. It’s the ideal combination of friendship, food, and a dose of fire to keep everyone on their toes. Portuguese pig asadors: $15.00-$25.00 depending on style & size
The Elusive Pago de Carraovejas
Established by Segovian restauranteur and sommelier Jose Maria Ruiz, 
Visiting Granja Nuestra Senora de Remelluri in Rioja was like strolling the grounds of an immaculate Tuscan villa. Italian cypress trees and beds of lavender line the driveway; ancient fig and olive trees surround the vineyards. Roses and wisteria climb a profusion of trellises; only a nearby castle reminds you that you’re in Spain. A sense of serenity and peace pervade the grounds, a legacy perhaps from the monks of the Monastery of Tolono who made wine here in the 15th century. 
At the end of the 18th century, some of these vineyards were in the hands of Manuel Quintano, the cleric who introduced the wine-making methods of the Medoc to Spain to produce the first Spanish red wines aged in the cask. In the 1960’s, the Granja was purchased by its current owners, Jaime and Amaya Rodrogiuez Salis who dedicated themselves to bringing the vineyards back to their former glory, replanting with local varieties of Tempranillo, Mazuelo, Graciano and Viura grapes and building the current bodega on the ruins of the old monastic buildings. Jaime and Amaya’s rock star winemaker son, Telmo Rodriguez cut his oenological teeth here and now has his own projects in several regions of Spain.
The vineyards are located at the foot of the Tolono mountains, at an elevation of up to 800 meters. The soil is poor, and extreme temperature fluctuations between night and day from August to the end of October make maturation slow and produce grapes of superb quality. North winds lower the risk of pests resulting from humidity. Vineyards are tended sustainably but are not certified organic. Remelluri’s goal is to obtain healthy, ripe, concentrated, low-yield grapes. They do not irrigate. They select and graft their own plants. They do not use herbicides, systemic products or chemical fertilizers. Only organic compost and manure are used, with traditional methods such as copper, sulphur and chalk as preventive treatments. One of the vineyards was planted in 1875, before the arrival of phylloxera.
THE SINGLE ESTATE WINES OF REMELLURI
