The previous articles in this series have been about wine, but before I was a wine snob I was a beer geek, that is a home brewer, beer aficionado and searcher after rare and exotic brews, the darker and stronger the better. Tapping into that past, I’d like to discuss that timely brew, bock beer.

Bock beer has its roots in the monastic brewing traditions of northern Europe. In the late middle ages, the breweries associated with various monastic establishments were about the only large scale brewing around. Some of the current breweries of Belgium and Bavaria can trace their lineage to these breweries. It was the practice of these breweries to brew a particularly potent beer to drink while fasting during Lent. This beer had a rich, malty character and was full of calories to sustain the monks. It became known as “liquid bread.”

Bock beer is produced by using more malt than would be used for an ordinary beer. This has several effects. The first is that it gives the beer a strong, malty, sweet taste, just the thing for a cold winter night. It also tends to produce a stronger beer. Bock beer has an alcohol content of 6-7% as compared to 5% for a typical beer. Doppelbock, or double strength bock has an alcohol of between 7-9% which is about as strong as beer can be used using normal methods and yeasts. Over the years a number of different styles of bock and doppelbocks have been developed.

The tradition of brewing strong beers for the Lenten season, roughly February and March depending on the date of Easter, has continued into the present. In Munich, it is known as “Stark Bier Zeit,” or “strong beer time,” and is accompanied with various ceremonies and celebrations. German brewers, when they came to Wisconsin, continued the tradition, and many of the old Wisconsin breweries would produce a bock beer in the late winter. This beer was typically a little maltier and stronger than the standard brew. A myth developed that this beer was made using all the leavings or stuff that had built up over the year in an effort to clean out the brewing vats. This myth is not true.

We are lucky in the Madison area, to have one of the best producers of bock beers in America if not the world, Capitol Brewery. In keeping with their original concept of being a village brewery in the Bavarian tradition, they have long brewed a number of seasonal beers, including a number of bocks. It is my opinion that Capitol and their brewmaster, Kirby Nelson, are at their best when they stick closest to these German roots.

The first bock that they produced was in the tradition of Wisconsin bocks such as those produced by Huber and Stevens Point. It was a decent beer, but not particularly noteworthy and has been long out of production.

The second attempt was much more adventuresome and more successful. This was their Dark Doppelbock, a rich, dark beer similar to the Munich beers of this style, Spaten’s Optimator and Paulaner’s Salavator. It was very good and won a number of awards. Unfortunately, it is not currently part of the brewery’s lineup.

Their next offering, which is still brewed in season, is the Blonde Doppelbock. This is a strong beer with a deep malty character but much lighter in color than the Dark Doppelbock. It does not have the bitter edge produced by the darker malts of its darker brother, and has something of the flavor of a Belgian abbey trippel or Spaten’s Premium Bock. Again, it has won numerous awards and is a very good beer.

It is with the third Doppelbock that Kirby Nelson showed his true creative genius, and that is the Autumnal Fire. Breaking out of the seasonal mode, this is a beer brewed in the fall with the character of an Oktoberfest but brewed to doppelbock strength. This beer is unique and has won legions of fans from the beginning as well as the usual collection of awards.

A number of Bavarian breweries produce bock beers for the spring. These are known as Maibocks, and are lighter in color and not as strong as their Lenten counterparts. Capitol has continued with this tradition with their own Maibock which is available through April or early May. It has a lovely golden color and rich taste.

To round out the selection of Capitol bocks, they have in the past produced a DoppelWeizen Bock or doppelbock wheat beer. Produced in the style of Bavarian weizen biers such as Franziskaner or Paulaner, it was a dark brew but with a refreshing citrusy character. Another example of Kirby Nelson’s creativity, it unfortunately hasn’t been available since the 2004 season.

All of these bocks have their allure, a seductive smoothness and a rich, malty flavor. They almost make winter worthwhile. But beware, beneath the surface lies potent fire, so drink carefully and in moderation, but do give these beers a try if you haven’t before.

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 Three Stand Out Madison Wine Lists

In the previous two installments, I’ve discussed wine lists in general terms. In this issue, I’ll get down to specifics about wine lists at three very different restaurants and why I like them.

The first restaurant is Rossario’s in Monona. This is a neighborhood restaurant which servers a variety of pasta dishes along with a few steaks and prime rib on Thursday and Saturday. It’s very much a no frills, blue collar sort of place that regulars have been frequenting for years. The pasta entrees are  around $10, with the steaks and prime rib running around $12-$17. The wine list is short with eight or nine reds and a slightly smaller number of whites. The prices for a bottle of wine run from about $14-$20, though Ross Parisi, the owner has recently added at least one wine over $25.

There are two things I like about this list. The first is that it is inexpensive. You can have two pasta entrees and a nice bottle of Italian Sangiovese for $35. This makes it affordable for a weekday night. The second thing that I like is that considerable thought and effort has gone into picking the wines. About half the list of reds are Italian with a mix of Chianti, Sangiovese (the grape used in Chianti) and Montepulcianos. The other half consists of an Australian Shiraz, a Zinfandel, a Merlot, and a Cabernet. Though the wines are all inexpensive, they are all a cut above what you will find on the lower shelves of your supermarket liquor department. As an aside, Ross is as thoughtful with his selection of beers, and offers a nice range of microbrews and imports.

The second restaurant is Louisianne’s Etc. in Middleton. This establishment pioneered Creole cuisine back when that was considered truly exotic in Madison. Louisianne’s Etc. serves up a number of reasonably priced traditionally dishes including Jambalya and catfish, as well as uniquely prepared beef, chicken and pork dishes, all with a New Orleans slant.

It has a fairly lengthy list with about 50 reds and 30 whites. The prices range from $25-$200.

What I like about this list is the fact it is diverse without losing it’s focus, which is to complement the food. A number of different varietals are featured, such as Petit Syrah, Syrah, Zinfandel, as well as some interest blends such as Grenache-Syrah, and Zinfandel-Cabernet. Most of the major wine growing regions are represented with both prominent and less well known producers. The common factor is that they all work well with the restaurant’s Creole cuisine. Whenever I dine at Louisianne’s I always have a hard time choosing a wine because there are so many tempting candidates. I have never been disappointed and have been introduced to a number of wines that have become personal favorites. It is obvious that someone with a great deal of experience and knowledge has put together this list. I should also note that the wines are all fairly priced.

The last restaurant I will mention is an old Madison institution, though technically it is in the town of Westport on the North side. Mariner’s Inn serves steaks and seafood, with an emphasis on simplicity and high quality. They manage to blend a casual atmosphere with a certain degree of formality that makes for a very relaxing dining experience. The entrees run from around $15-40. There are roughly 20 whites and 30 reds with an additional reserve list of 20 or so higher priced reds. Wine prices run from $25-$200 per bottle with the vast majority of the reds in the $35-$60 range.

This may be one of the most focused wine lists of this size that I have come across. The red side of the list is dominated by Napa and Sonoma Cabernet, Merlot, and Cabernet/Merlot blends. There is a smaller selection of West Coast Pinot Noir, as well as several Syrah and Zinfandels, but it is obvious that the latter are included as an after thought for customers who really, really want a Syrah or Zin. While decent wines, they are nothing special. The Cabernet and Merlot offerings, on the other hand are very good from producers such as Stag’s Leap and Duckhorn. Several of the regular wines are usually found on the reserve pages of other restaurants. Many of the reserve wines could be considered “trophy wines” with offerings such as Quintessa, Chateau St. Jean Cinq Cepages, Dominus, Freemark Abbey, and Penfold’s Grange to name a few. For a menu that consists of a variety of steaks with fairly simple preparation, this selection works quite well.

The most amazing thing about this list is the price. The von Rutenbergs appear to have chosen on an unusual pricing strategy – add a fixed amount of $10-15 to the retail price of the wine. The end result is that while the least expensive wines are priced at about what you will find at other restaurants, the more expensive wines become progressively better bargains as you move up the list. As an example, Duckhorn Merlot, which can be found at $75-$130 at other restaurants is priced at $55. I find myself seduced into spending more for wine at Mariner’s while still feeling that I’ve gotten a bargain.

Though these wine lists are as different as the restaurants are, there are some common attributes. The first is that selections were given a lot of thought. They are lists designed to go with the food served. They are also, within the context of the restaurants, quite affordable. Wine can only enhance the dining experience if the patrons order it. These three restaurants have priced most of their wines at a point where they are not extravagances but a complement to the meal. There are other restaurants in Madison that could take a hint.

Several caveats. I have mostly concentrated on the reds because that is what I usually order in a restaurant. However, I think that these three establishments have given as much thought to the white side of their list as the red. The second, is that I have dined regularly at these restaurants for a number of years and have come to know several of the owners on a personal level. I have tried not to let that cloud my judgement. Perhaps that fact that I have been a repeat customer for so long is the best recommendation for their food and their wine.

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What Makes a Good Wine List?

Length does not automatically make a great wine list.

Depending on the restaurant, a wine list may be a simple sheet of paper or a bound, multi-page volume slightly smaller than War and Peace. There is nothing wrong with a short wine list. A list with a few wisely chosen wines is better than an encyclopedia of random selections of dubious quality. A short list may mean that the person responsible has tried to find wines that are both values and admirably suited to the food. Or they picked the first half dozen bottles their distributor tried to push on them. A lot will depend on the owner/manager/chef, but if they care enough to make good food, there’s a good chance they will have made at least some effort to put together a good wine list.

The wine selection should be appropriate for the food.

You shouldn’t expect the wine selections of a steakhouse and and Italian restaurant to be the same. The wine should compliment the food. Good restaurants will make an effort to select wines that work well with their dishes. It’s perfectly reasonable for an Italian restaurant to be weak on Australian Shiraz and concentrate on mostly Italian wine. This may mean that you have to skip the Pinot and have a Chianti when having a pizza, but if the restaurant is doing their job it’s probably for the best.

A wine list should be focused.

A wine list should be more than a random selection of whatever the distributor was pushing. Each wine on the list should be there for a reason. This may mean that there are many similar wines. This is actually a good sign because it means someone is paying attention. This doesn’t mean that diversity on the wine list is bad. One of my favorite lists includes Petit Syrah, Grenache-Syrah blends, Zinfadels, Cabernets, Cabernet-Zin blends, but they were all chosen because they worked well with the food. Of course another restaurant the specializes in steaks has another of my favorite lists that concentrates almost totally on Napa Cabernet and Merlot. One of my least favorite lists at a local steakhouse (which has since been changed) had a scatter shot selection of wines from all over the world, many of which seemed to have been picked more for their trendiness than for how well the went with the food.

The wine selection should be affordable.

Affordable is of course relative, but the price of the wines offered should be in line with the price of the food. If I were rich I might well choose to have a $100 bottle of Cabernet with and $8 hamburger. It might even be a good culinary match. But I’m not rich, and I’m guessing neither are you. I think a good rule of thumb should be that the average price of a bottle of wine should be about the price of two entrees. This doesn’t mean that every bottle of wine should be that price, but that should be the middle ground. I also think that it is unreasonable to expect the cheapest bottle to be much less than half that amount and offering a wine at much more than twice the price of dinner for two is just bragging on the part of the restaurant.

The wine prices should be reasonable.

The concensus is that pricing wines in a restaurant at about twice the retail price is fair. This allows the restaurant (who buy the wine at wholesale) to make a reasonable profit and cover the cost of storage, loss, breakage, carrying charges, glassware, etc. There are a lot of restaurants that keep pretty close to this or even beat it. Unfortunately, there are some restaurants that charge as much as 3 times or more the retail price. What can you do? Eat somewhere else. Or, if you really want to eat at one of these places, order the cheapest wine you consider drinkable, and save your wine bucks for establishments that have better prices.

How can you tell if the price is reasonable?

Very few of us can remember the prices of hundreds of different wines or carry one of those electronic wine guides along with them. What I’ve found is that remembering a few key wines that show up on a lot of lists around town usually is sufficient. If the price of these wines are acceptable, probably most of the wines on the list will be priced fairly. Wines that I’ve found useful for this purpose are Rosemont Shiraz and Ravenswood Zinfandel which are somewhere around $10 in a liquor store and Duckhorn Merlot which is about $40-45. The first two are mass produced wines and show up a lot at the low end of many wine lists because they are readily available and decent wines for the price. In a restaurant, a price of $20-25 would be fair. The Duckhorn can be found on the lists of many of the steak houses in the Madison area. The amazing thing is that I’ve found it priced anywhere from $55 to $130. A price of between $75 and $90 is probably reasonable. These wines work well for the restaurants I visit, but depending on where you eat you may need to pick different wines. Just find a few that are available at the restaurants you go to and that you can price at your local retail outlet. Note that these wineries also produce single vinyard wines that may be priced significantly more.

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So you’re in a restaurant and you decide that you’d like to have a bottle of wine. You ask the server for a WINE LIST.

Rule number One: Don’t show fear.

A wine list is nothing more than a list of wines the restaurant is offering to sell you, just like the menu. No matter how simple or pretentious, it is just paper and ink. The real trick is to realize it’s limitations and use it as a tool

Hopefully a wine lists with more than a few offerings will have some sort of organization to it. Typical ones are to either arrange the wines by the variety of grape or the country of origin. Sometimes there is a ranking on a larger scale with the lighter wines listed first followed by wines in ascending order of boldness or fullness. That can be helpful in selecting a wine to match the food choice.

Wines can also be listed by price from the most inexpensive to the most expensive. At least one restaurant I know of has divided their list into three sections of cheap, medium, and expensive wines (they use more colorful terms, but that’s the idea). This is also useful. You can go through the list until you reach the point where you say “Whoa!” and then take a U-turn.

So what does the wine list tell you about the wine, and what is important? At a minimum, it should give the name of the producer, the variety of grape, the vintage, and the country or region of origin. There may also be a brief description full of words like “jammy currants” or “earthy aromas”. These are extremely subjective and mostly useless. There may also be a recommendation for the type of food it will go with. These may or may not be useful, and in any case will tend to be on the safe side. You can ignore that unless you haven’t a clue.

Of the other information, the producer, if you recognize the name can be helpful. If you’ve liked another of their wines, chances are good that you will like the wine on the list even if it is another variety. If you hated the wine, look elsewhere. This is particularly true of the smaller producers, each of which has a distintive style. This is less true of the industrial wineries, though they at least try to go for consistency.

The grape variety can be very useful, though wines using the same grapes can be made with a wide range of style. Unfortunately, many French, Italian, and Spanish wines don’t list the variety, but instead specify the district or region, which leaves you to guess about the variety. Fortunately, the rules for most districts limit the varieties that can be used in wines with that designation. If you liked a wine from Burgundy, you may well find another wine from Burgundy will appeal to you.

The country or region may also tell you something about the style of the wine. An Australian syrah (shiraz in Aussie speak) will taste differently than one from the Rhone valley in France, or one from Santa Barbara. Again, if you liked one Shiraz from down under, another Aussie may be just the thing. It’s also true to some extent that wines tend to go well with the food from that region. So if you’re having pasta you can pick something Italian. Of course, this has to be taken with a pinch of salt. A country like Italy has a wide variety of cuisines and a range of wines to match. If you’re trying to find a match for a country without a wine industry like say Sweden, you’re out of luck on this route.

The vintage is probably useless. First, unless it is a high end restaurant with an extensive cellar, you probably won’t have much choice. All that will be on the list is the most recent release. It’s true that some wines will improve with age, but restaurants can rarely afford to hold wine that long. Also, unless you really enjoy pouring over the vintage charts in The Wine Speculator most people don’t have a clue as to whether the 2003 or the 2004 was the better year. In the rare case where the restaurant may actually have several different years on the list, the relative prices will at least give you an idea of what other people thought.

So your ready to choose a wine. What do you do? Well you could ask. Depending on the restaurant and the server this may or may not be useful. I’ve gotten replies that range from “I never drink wine myself so I don’t have a clue” to an informed and enthusiatic recommendation that was right on the mark. In the same restaurant. I guess the choice of asking or not depends on whether you’re the type of person that asks directions.

If you choose to fend for yourself, there are some guidelines you can use.

Rule number Two: The cheapest wine is usually not the best value.

The cheapest wine is probably ok, but it is also probably boring. It was considered a safe choice by the person assembling the list, but not much effort was put into the selection. Wines a few rungs up are often much better values. Of course if the whole wine list is grossly overpriced, the cheapest wine may be a way to limit the damage.

Rule number Three: The most expensive wine is not the best wine.

On many wine lists the most expensive wines are “trophy” wines. They give the list class, but they don’t actually expect to sell any. And as a “trophy” wine the price has probably been jacked up quite a bit. It’s the wines in the middle of the list that were probably chosen because they were values, or tasted great, or are a good match for the food.

Rule number Four: Look beyond the typical.

The best wine values are often varieties beyond the basic Cabernet or Pinot Noir. Wine price is based on demand. By looking at lesser known varieties or regions you can often find really nice wines or real bargains or both. Try a Mourvedre or a Grenache or a Petit Syrah. Try something from Spain or Sicily.

Rule number Five: Don’t worry, just pick something.

The fact is it is unlikely that any wine on a decent wine list is really bad. Just pick one. Base your choice on the price, or a funny name, or anything. The worst that can happen is you get a bottle that doesn’t really have any appeal, but unless the particular bottle has gone bad it should at least be drinkable. If that happen, just don’t pick that wine again. On the other hand, you may find a wine that you fall in love with. Either way, it’s a learning experience. Enjoy.

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