Leeuwin Estate Art Series: the best Chardonnay outside Burgundy?

Last week I wanted a really good Chardonnay. I rooted through my white Burgundies, bottles from  Sonoma County vintners I like, and one great one from Chile, but when my hand touched this, it was all over.

It seems like Americans never talk about Australian wine anymore, except with words like "crisis" or "drought." Looking at wine lists, it feels like the top end Aussie wines have dropped off most people's radar.

So here's a little reminder that Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay from Margaret River very well might be the single best Chardonnay outside of Burgundy. Other Chards have great years, but this wine is great every vintage. It's frequently in Wine Spectator's Top 100 Wines of the Year, but don't let that mislead you -- while often full-bodied and always full-flavored, it's a real wine-lover's wine.

It's not cheap, at $70 retail, but when you price that against single-vineyard wines from Montrachet, et al, it's not really that expensive either.

Specifically, the wine I had last night was this:

Leeuwin Estate Art Series Margaret River Chardonnay 2007 ($70)
Noble treatment in the cellar doesn't contain this wine's feral nature. It starts off wild, mushroomy if you like, but really it's funkier than that, and it rolls for a while, smoothing out as it goes, but never getting meek. It's more of an oatmeal, fermented buckwheat pancake, wheat toast, wild mushroom soup experience than fruit, but there is some golden apple in there too. It's a truly great wine that wins your attention sip after sip. I liked it best in a globe-shaped glass that let the aromas run free. Point score: 97

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Drink 100-year-old Champagne with Mario Batali

I don't often write about auctions, but Christie's has a lot next week that's worth a mention not only for the quality of the wine, but for the star power and weirdness.

Lot No. 128 offers the winner not only 6 bottles of Moet & Chandon Grand Vintage 1911 -- you also get dinner prepared and hosted by Mario Batali in the private wine cellar of his NY restaurant Del Posto. Gwyneth Paltrow is "currently scheduled" to attend the dinner as well. Maybe you get to decide whether you'd rather share the bubbly with her, or kick her to the curb. The estimated value of this drinks and dinner package is $30,000.

And here's the weird part: the dinner coincides with a spring gala being hosted by Salman Rushdie and Michael Stipe. I wish I had the right pun for that pairing, but I'll have to go with "and Michael Stipe thought people wanted to kill him for ending R.E.M."

The proceeds are for a charity called The Lunch Box Fund, which aims to give a daily meal to poor students in South African township high schools. That's also kinda weird, right? Drinking 100-year-old Champagne in a cellar, elbowing celebrities out of your way to get more bubbly, so that some kid can have a bowl of maize porridge.

But given the rampant skepticism about the provenance of old wines in auctions, this lot seems safer than most. It's pretty hard to counterfeit either old Champagne or Mario Batali.

You can access Christie's e-catalog for the auction here, but the software is really maddening. If you can afford to win this lot, you can afford to hire someone to get the catalog to work.

If you just want to bid in advance on this lot, here's a link. The auction commences Nov. 19. Good luck. And if you do win the bubbly, keep me in mind for, say, licking the cork.

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The best food on planet Earth

Shot at Ocean Pride, Baltimore, Maryland. Tip: Ask if they're heavy today.

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Photo quiz: What kind of wine is this?

I took this photo of fermenting wine recently when visiting a winery. But what kind of wine is it?

The first person to guess right in the comments wins an official Gray Report No Prize.*

* (no apologies to Stan Lee, the bastard killed Gwen Stacy)

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Yucatan lime soup: simple, comforting

Lime soup from Labná restaurant in Cancun

On a trip last week to Cancun I had plenty of great cochinita pibil -- pork marinated in bitter orange and slow-roasted -- but I expected that. The dish that made the biggest impression on me was simple, comforting and yet also stimulating: Lime soup.

It helps that the Yucatan peninsula grows great high-acidity limes that the locals squeeze on everything they eat. But I think you can make this soup at home fairly simply with local limes, although I might sub in some lemon to give it a little more acidity.

It's a really basic idea: lime juice and chicken broth, along with shredded chicken. Some places serve it with fried tortilla chips and queso fresco on top, but these aren't necessary. However, I did like the accoutrements at Labná restaurant: cilantro, diced onions, chopped jalapeños and chopped habaneros, which I admit I'm too wimpy for. I also added some fresh-ground black pepper.

Searching for a good recipe, I found this interesting one from the New York Times that greatly complicates the soup, adding cinnamon and cloves. It's intriguing enough to pass on, but I  liked the simplicity of Labná's version, so the NYT one might just be too much work.

So I prefer this recipe from Bon Appétit, which is really simple, to the point of using canned chicken broth. With prep and everything, you can probably make it in 30 minutes, unusual for soup. UPDATE: We made this last night and because American limes aren't as strong as Mexican -- and because I really like lime -- I would increase the amount of lime in this recipe by about 50%.

This is a great soup for Riesling lovers, who will relate to the fruitiness and acidity. However, if you want to know what I had to drink with it in Cancun, well, the answer is obvious:

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San Francisco's Top 7 Dim Sum Restaurants

During my gig as food editor at SF Weekly, I set out to review every dim sum restaurant in the city. I'm a big fan of dim sum so this was a labor of dumpling love.

When the job ended, I got an unexpected side benefit: I no longer have to worry about giving every lesser dim sum place a chance. I feared I wouldn't be able to return to my favorites for more than a year; now I can go back every weekend.

Here's where I'll be going back to.

Durian pastry

7. Lee Hou
I'll go back here purely for the dessert. The durian pastry ($2.50) is perhaps the best dim sum dessert I've ever had: pungent, fresh, flaky like it was made in France; a great use of this feral-tasting fruit.

Other Lee Hou advantages: It's very cheap and easy to get into. Chicken with sticky rice in lotus leaf ($3) is a highlight. Get the pork feet with preserved bean curd ($3.50) early; the rich, porky sauce makes a tempting dip for other items.


6. Yank Sing I don't go here very often because it costs about twice as much as the next-most expensive restaurant on this list. But I have to acknowledge its quality, as well as its ornate service, with some meats sliced at your table. I like the snow pea shrimp dumplings. If you have to ask what they cost, eat anywhere else on this list. Seriously.

Green tea balls

5. House of Banquet
A funny place with a giant cabbage god in the huge, empty downstairs room. Go upstairs and get the siu mai and the baked pork buns, and don't miss the green tea balls for dessert.

Why newspaper food writing is bad

Bruce Schoenfeld recently tweeted "Why is local food writing so much worse than local sports writing?" I promised him an answer, so here it is.

I'm one of the most qualified people in America to answer this question, as I've worked on the staff of major newspapers first in sports, then in food.

Note from my headline that my answer is simple. It's not that sportswriting is good: newspaper food writing is bad.

I can count on one hand the decent newspaper food sections in America, and I've written for two of them (San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times). The New York Times is good. After that? Anyone want to make a case for their local food section?

Here are the four main reasons local newspaper food writing is bad:

1) Gender

Most publishers are men. Until recently, food sections were the exclusive provinces of women. This has far-reaching impact on the way food sections are run and what resources they have. Most publishers and executive editors don't relate to the food section in the same way they do to business, sports and features, and gender is a major reason.

Note that the three good food sections I've listed all have male executive editors. Is Michael Bauer better at running the Chronicle food section because he's a man? No -- but he is very good at convincing higher-ups to give him resources. A woman could do that job, but male higher-ups simply relate differently to male department heads.