Provence Ros: Sunbaked Bliss on a Sunday Afternoon
By Jamie Gabrini
Mas de Gourgonnier Ros, 2004, Les Baux de Provence
Im never quite sure how my Sundays happen. At some point during the week, I usually get a fever for a flavor. Sometimes its a food, sometimes a wine, and it usually strikes on Monday. Im therefore left obsessing about it for the next five or six days; I work out flavor and texture combinations in my mind until I hit upon what I hope will work best. And last week, it was all about Middle Eastern flavors.
Blame it if you like on the week of gorgeous sunshine, which always seems to cause a longing to make things, no matter how impractical they are. The spark was pretty irrelevant by the time the weekend rolled around; Id already obsessed so long that I couldnt even trace the tangled thread of thought back to its starting point. Ironically (or not), the gorgeous weather had long since passed by the time Id worked out my food and wine combo of the week: homemade falafel and a provencal ros.
Maybe I ought to have kids soon; I seem to have far too much time on my hands if making falafel from ground-up chickpeas seems a reasonable endeavor. Regardless, thats just what transpired, folks. I bought a load of garbanzos and soaked the little suckers for two days, changing the water to make sure they didnt get all gacky. I put about a cups worth in my blender with chopped onions and pured it all to a coarse pulp. I added chopped parsley, chopped cilantro, a few cloves of garlic, and dashes of black pepper, mint, salt, cumin, red pepper, and nutmeg and blended it a wee more. I added some flour and baking powder in teaspoon drops until the mixture was no longer wet (but still very moist). Then it got all scraped out and put in a large bowl in the fridge overnight.
The chilling afforded me time to ponder the wine pairing. Id originally thought of skipping wine altogether (sacre bleu!!) and going with beer, but what kind of wine chick would I be if I couldn’t come up with a pairing? I roamed through Spanish wines in my head, considering older Riojas. But I wanted to stay with something more summery, and no white really seemed an intriguing option. Ros! It dawned on me that a dry ros would possess the best of both worlds: thered be enough body to stand up to the fried falafel, but be refreshing enough to send my brain further into the sunny clouds of my imagination. And, since I do like to keep things somewhat regional, a wine from the south of France seemed like a wise option to match the Middle Eastern-Mediterranean seasonings.
Mas de Gourgonniers 2004 Les Baux de Provence Ros proved to be the perfect pairing. A spicy blend of Grenache, Syrah, Mourvdre, Cinsault, and Cabernet Sauvignon, its rosy-ruby in color and has great strawberry-raspberry fruit on the nose without being jammy or sugary. Its got similar flavors on the palate; the fruit is ripe, but its not the least bit sweet and theres enough weight to allow it to hold up against food. The fruit character dissipates into a bite of dandelion greens, mint, olives, and the tiniest dash of pepper. The acidity would help cut through the oil used to fry the falafel.
When Sunday rolled around, I was rarin to go. My falafel-meal was chilled and I formed small balls that I flattened to form about 2 pucks. I used safflower oil to deep-fry since it withstands heat better and doesnt spatter or spit. As the oil heated, I made a simple tzitziki sauce with deseeded cucumber, dill, and yogurt. I warmed wheat pita in the oven as I fried up the falafel. When all those babies were browned, I served the falafel on the warm pita with radish sprouts, chopped red bell pepper, and the tzitziki sauce. It was a great combination. The Provencal ros perfectly pulled out strands of flavor first, the sweetness of the red pepper, then the sting of the radish sprouts. The many herbs Id used in the falafel were noticeable, too - the nutmeg and mint worked very well with the ros, the dill in the tzitziki extracted even more herbal notes within the glass.
Despite the rainy day, I played my favorite folky music and sang along as we sipped and nibbled. And of course, its only Monday, but Ive already got the next menu mentally queued. I cant seem to get through one project at a time. Blame it on the aforementioned sunshine, if you must.
Jamie, your post resonated with me because I’ve been to the winery. But the visit didn’t go, um, exactly as I’d planned. Here’s what I wrote about the experience in the Dayton Daily News in 2002: “Last year, my family and I took our first-ever trip abroad, to France and Italy. Knowing we would be staying for a few days in Provence, I arranged in advance through the wine’s southwest Ohio distributor to visit Gourgonnier. I’d been a big fan of their wines, having written previously about the ‘95 and ‘98 (red wines).
On the morning of the appointed day, I roused my family out of bed early and we set out in our rental car into the Provence hills. Now every other winery appointment I’d attempted to keep ended up turning into a scene from National Lampoon’s European Vacation , from my quintessentially American inability to put a Renault stick shift into reverse to my utter failure to find wineries tucked into the back roads or communicate with winemakers who spoke no English. But on this particular morning, everything was going swimmingly. The day was beautiful, we arrived on time, and I approached the tasting room brimming with anticipation.
Oops. No one there knew who I was, no one knew about an appointment, no one spoke the language I unfortunately was saddled with. It was as if I had been dropped out of a spaceship. Some folks eventually poured me a thimbleful of wine, patted me on the head and sent me on my way. What’s the French term for ‘Bum’s Rush?’
All this to the immense humor and delight of my two sons, then age 11 and 13, who seemed to take particular glee in watching Dad-who-thinks-he’s-some-big-shot get taken down a notch or three. ‘Wow, Dad, you’ve got a lot of pull here,’ I seem to recall one of them gloating as I sulked back to the car.
Well, the rest of the day was magical, hiking through the ruins of Les Baux and finding another winery in the neighborhood that I was familiar with and which was a bit more accommodating.
If I were the type to hold a grudge, I’d never drink the wine again, right? Wrong. The wine is just too good to stay mad at for long. And the newest vintage is among the best ever.
The 2000 Mas de Gourgonnier ($10.99) is a teeth-staining, deep purple blend of Rhone varietals such as grenache and syrah with a dollop of cabernet sauvignon thrown in for good measure. The wine is produced organically, with no chemical fertilizers, weed-killers or artificial insecticides. It has just a hint of the funky-musty aromas that sneak into these southern France and Italian wines, but that doesn’t take away from the deeply concentrated fruit. It’s among the very best wines in its price range, and its cost per bottle has not increased in at least three years (not many wines can make that claim).
And I hear the winery is well worth visiting. . . .”
Thanks for dredging up this fine memory, Jaimie!