Sommelier Speak

Team 5, Jaei Lee & Joselyn R.

Menu Item : Grilled Lamb “Steaks” Hache with Ratatouille.

Description : Chopped  grilled lamb steak topped with tomato sauce Serving with roasted oven fingerlings, ratatouille including green & yellow squash, tomatoes, eggplant, herbs and hint of sea salt.

Paring Wines : 

1. Ken wright Cellar Pinot Noir 2016
2. Decoy Cabernet Sauvignon 2016
3. La crema Pinot Noir 2016

Chosen Wine : Ken wright Cellar Pinot Noir 2016

I choose “Ken wright Cellar Pinot Noir 2016” to pair with “Grilled Lamb “Steaks” Hache with Ratatouille”because of the rich juiciness of grilled lamb, refreshingness of ratatouille, and sweet acid tomato sauce. Pinot Noir is known for its deep earthiness, with grapey aroma, but there isn’t much of fruitiness in flavor. So I thought it would be best to wine to balance with not only the steak, but ratatouille and tomato sauce.

Willamette valley AVA old volcanic and sedimentary wine region that is located in Oregon. It is known to have mild climate throughout entire year, with cool temperature. Because it is wet during winter, and warm during summer, most of the rainfall only occurs during winter. During the growing season, valley is warm during days and cool during nights, diurnal temperature grapes to develop their flavor and complexity while retaining their natural acidity. Also due to the sedimentary based soils, it is great condition for grapes to become superior quality of wine. It is just right viticulture for growing Pinot Noir.

Oregon wines are known for its excellent quality of wine. And its reputation comes from primarily Pinot Noir, and the following of Pinot Gris, Rieseling, chardonnay, and Gewurztraminer.Oregon does not allow generic labeling of wine, and wines labelled as varietal must be made from at least 90 percent of the named variety with only exception of Cabernet Sauvignon which allows the minimum of 75 percent. To get more detail about Pinot Noir, because Pinot noir skins have low tannin concentrations winemakers use the grape seeds and stems as supplementary sources of tannins. During the skin contact of red wine vinification, colour and tannins are extracted from the skins, grape seeds and stems and occur in the juice or wine. In the case of Pinot noir, traditionally skin contact methods focussed on the optimisation of such extractions