Pesto!

 

Tomb 

In the dark of confinement this past winter, some of our friends created a game (kind of) called Tomb, in which you must choose 5 things in certain categories to take with you into the afterlife. For instance, you have 5 beverages you can have for all of time - and you can only have those beverages - what do you choose? If you are like 4 out of 7 of us, one of these is a keg of Pacifico. 

Two of the categories were “herbs” and “noodle dishes.” I listed Trofie al pesto as a noodle dish in my top 5. My herbs were parsley, chive, mint, thyme and marjoram. The rules of the game became confusing when Em pointed out that one couldn’t have pesto without basil. My retort to her was that you can have pesto without basil. Em said she never had that. I said yes, you did have it, at my house last summer. 

That was a fib. I made pesto with lots of mint, thyme and just some basil. This blog post is my confession to Em. 

Massimo Bottura 

At that time I had just watched Massimo Bottura’s MasterClass. I’m kind of embarrassed to say that I shelled out $180 to watch instructional/inspirational videos ranging widely in quality. It was spring 2020, a difficult and uncertain time. I watched all the chef Thomas Keller videos, which were really well-made and full of helpful insights, but involved making a lot of rich French food that made me feel sick. 

When I got to Bottura I was delighted. He is the man behind Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, and the author of Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef. In the MasterClass videos, his Japanese sous chef Taka Kondo plays the straight man to his court jester, and it’s clear they just had a ball throwing a few of these classes together. There’s also lots of wisdom to be gleaned - from Bottura’s commitment to fighting food waste to his aphorisms like, “water is truth.” There is an episode on pesto, called, “an evolution of pesto,” called so because Bottura says, “we have always to be critic and not nostalgic” - not resting on the exact same way things have been done, when maybe those old ways are less practical, more wasteful, or simply don’t feel right in the moment. 

After he picks the herbs, he takes the bare stems and puts them into the boiling pasta water. When you watch classy chefs like Bottura or Keller you think about gesture, how they are placing things in things with such intention. 

He describes a scenario where you are making pesto, but you don’t have pine nuts, so you consider an alternative. Bottura settles on one of his favorite things - and one of his grandmother’s too - breadcrumbs - as a substitute. This is very useful since pine nuts are expensive and go bad quickly. 

Then, he says, maybe you don’t have so much basil. What do you use instead? I really appreciate this consideration, because I never seem to have enough basil. Even when we are growing it in the summer, mine often goes strong for a little but the leaves turn pale and fragile, and it often bolts if I don’t pay enough attention. By comparison, mint spreads and grows quickly. Thyme is heartier and easier to cultivate, or, if store-bought- stays fresh a little longer. Ideally for this type of recipe you are using herbs you just picked from your window box. 

The nostalgic pesto of my childhood 

I also admire how Bottura approaches garlic in pesto - an ingredient domineering in my early memories of the sauce. The pesto I had growing up was thick with chunks of muddy green, oxidized basil, bitter garlic and tons of parmesan. The oil and the paste separated easily. 

It was always delicious but a different creature altogether from Bottura’s creamy, bright green pesto. Fair warning: making pesto is both easy and a project. I definitely respect and understand buying it from a jar. It takes a little time calibrating your proportions of oil, water and herbs, and requires you to stop and mix up the blender contents repeatedly. Sometimes I find it pretty irritating, and a little messy. It requires a lot of herbs - I won’t mince words there. That can be expensive. But it also smells delicious in your kitchen and feels so much like summer. 

My friend Mac explained how every Italian household has its own pesto, its own preferred texture and palette of flavors. I love this idea. You can make your pesto as piecey or smooth as you like. It’s fun to play around with. 

The noodle

In the video, Massimo and Taka just use a nice dried fusilli. Trofie is a shape traditional to Liguria, the land of pesto. It is usually served with quarters of boiled potatoes. Both fusilli and trofie have ridges that trap pasta and sauce together. It’s special to make Trofie by hand. It’s a small shape that is time consuming to produce much of, perhaps the most time-consuming i have ever made. They are little delicate whispers of a noodle.

“Cooking is an act of love, and you do it for yourself” Bottura says. With that spirit to guide you, you can choose what pasta is best, dried or handmade. 

Trofie al Pesto 

A part of me wishes I could offer precise quantities, but pesto is more of an art than a science. I apologize in advance if this frustrates you - it has frustrated me too. Make sure you have lots of herbs on hand, at least 5 big handfuls full, after picking. 

For the Pesto: 

Makes about 1 cup 

Garlic bulb, halved 

“Garlic is very aggressive in taste,” Bottura says. He slices a bulb in half and gently rubs it once around the blender pitcher, that’s it. 

Herbs that don’t trample each other’s flavors, like Mint, Nasturtium, Thyme, Basil, maybe some oregano 

Extra Virgin Olive oil, about ½ cup 

Parmigiano Reggiano or another aged cheese, like a pecorino, or aged goat cheese, grated thinly (optional - can use more breadcrumbs instead) about ¼ cup

Breadcrumbs, about ½ c 

Salt to taste 

Swipe the garlic bulb cut side around the inside of your blender. Taka puts olive oil into the basin of the blender first. Then he adds your leafy herbs. Then add your cheese if using. Add more olive oil, but not so much as to saturate the herbs - you should still have big leafy pieces. Mix up, then add cool, good tasting water, slowly, incorporating as you go. You will probably have to stop and start the blender a few times to get all the pieces smooth. If you want a creamy texture, you will need more cold water and patience to run the blender for a longer time. Taste as you go, adding salt when needed. 

For the Pasta:  

To make the pasta dough, consult Em’s semolina + water dough blog post. 

To shape the trofie, roll your dough into long, thin (about ¼”) logs. Using a knife or a bench scraper, slice short segments of the dough on a sharp diagonal bias. Take the flat of the knife or bench scrape and apply pressure while rolling the piece along the edge. You will get a curly little flute shape. Toss prepared noodles with semolina in a baking sheet and keep a dampish towel over them, storing in a cool place while you work on the others. 

Boil noodles for about 45 seconds. They will float to the surface when they are ready. Keep some pasta water. Toss the noodles in the pesto sauce, being generous. Add a little extra virgin olive oil for some shine. Add a little pasta water for some creaminess. Serve right away. 

Keeping in mind Bottura’s freedom of exploration and experimentation, I would suggest a nontraditional pairing. The fresh, vibrant Le Puits from Les Vin Contes. It’s a chardonnay and sauvignon blanc blend that is crisp but delicate, and won’t overwhelm the flavors of the herbal green sauce. 

you can put some nasturium leaves if you have them! 

squid for 30

When I’m cooking for company I usually also like to try a recipe for the first time which is not typically advised for obvious reasons. I’m not totally sure I would recommend it myself. I think when I was younger my dad and his best friend Richard would use Friday night dinner as an opportunity to experiment with new recipes. Maybe this has rubbed off on me a bit and maybe that’s why when Cub and I decided to cook for 30 people I insisted upon trying this thing I had been staring at for a while. I had actually tried to prepare it earlier in the year, but the store where I did my shopping did not carry squid. C’est la vie.

This particular dish, a squid and potato stew, came from Margot Henderson’s cookbook You’re All Invited: Margot’s Recipes for Entertaining. She is one of chef/owners of Rochelle Canteen, a very fashionable restaurant in London that serves lunch every day and dinner some days. So I imagine she, especially at this stage in her career, has time to entertain for dinner. Her style is very straight forward in the way that I’ve been craving, referencing both her peers in cookery and experiences as a mom. It is important to add too that she is the wife of the chef Fergus Henderson, and as half of a different hospo couple I feel drawn to her, at least partially, for this reason. As the title makes clear the book is designed with a party in mind and the stew comes from a particularly useful section called “Feeding the masses”. Each recipe is modestly presented for four people while also scaling a few times up to 30 which is useful if only to spark your imagination and offer you confidence that not only is it possible it’s roughly the same experience.

The squid dish is inspired by our lady of squid Marcella Hazan’s recipe for Squid and Potatoes Genoa Style from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Henderson’s differs in a swap of marjoram for crushed red pepper and more garlic. I think Marcella Hazan might have balked about the amount of garlic in the dish, we kind of did. Garlic can be hard with wine, but we chose to split to difference by crushing each clove instead of finely chopping as suggested. This was also due to my refusal to finely chop 60 cloves of garlic for the dish, hosts have other things to think about. Another change we made that differed from both Hazan and Henderson is that we used two tins of tomatoes instead of one as written. Which was less stylistic and more due to my forgetting, but I think it worked well and I would do it again the next time I pursue this.

Margot Henderson suggests not to make the recipe in advance, so we tried to make as big of a dent in prep as we could. Peeling the garlic and potatoes in the afternoon before people arrived. It's nice to have the opportunity to cut so many potatoes, I kept thinking and rethinking about how I big I wanted a bite to be. They were not uniform, which eventually led to some murkiness in our broth but I valued variety of bite and texture more that day. That's maybe one of my favorite parts about parties, the little moments where you can let the anticipation build. We then finished it up that evening, when we were starting to feel hungry though it was a blazing hot day and I was regretting the choice of recipe. We left our guests outside for a bit as we endeavored to do the stew in the kitchen, meanwhile the sky opened up and offered a hard & brief rain. It was blessedly chilly after and everyone wanted the stew. With the rain returning I thought of this recipe again, light and warming. Perfect for a chilly summer evening, the kind where you can turn your stove on. And make more if you can, you never know who might end up at your house.

                                                                          pic by Mac Parsons

Rainbow Wines’ Squid and Potato Stew for 30, after Margot Henderson & Marcella Hazan updated due to circumstance & convenience*

10 lb cleaned squid

12 lb waxy potatoes

800 ml very good olive oil

50 cloves of garlic, smashed

7 tsp dried red chili flake

6 large handfuls chopped parsley

2 tins (28 oz.) whole tomatoes

1 liter water

Cut the squid into ½ inch pieces. Leave the tentacles whole unless they are very large. 

Peel the potatoes and cut into 2 -3 in chunks. 

Now prepare to cook the squid in batches of around 1 batch per 2 lbs of squid: 

Over medium heat, warm some of the olive oil in a wide heavy bottomed pan. Add some of the garlic, chili flakes and parsley and some salt**. Cook for a couple of minutes then turn up the heat and add the squid. Cook for 2 - 3 minutes, until it is sizzling away, add a little more salt, then add a good splash white wine and let it bubble for 1 - 2 minutes to reduce. 

Dump the squid mixture into a big pot, and repeat if working in batches. 

Place the potatoes and the water in this big pot as well. Break apart the tomatoes in your hands and add to the pot. Bring this mixture to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Keep the heat low, gently simmering away, with the lid on for about 40 minutes. Stir occasionally, until the potatoes are cooked through. Season to taste and serve hot to lukewarm even is good.

*Margot Henderson says you can’t make this in advance but Cub and I both enjoyed our leftovers a lot. The potato disintegrates making for a murkier color and texture, and softens the sharpness of the wine/tomato acidity.

**if you wanted to add some marjoram here I bet it would be good. I love marjoram.

pic by Mac Parsons

We drank Paski from Cantina Giardino with this and I recommend it whole heartedly. It was from a very large bottle which added to the sensation so I may also suggest a magnum of their Rosato, a fun surprise from the El Rancho warehouse. Definitely recommended to get the cold cold wine going with the hot stew.

We’re adding some new things to the shop this week from L’Octavin and getting a restock of La Clarine rosé too. DM @rainbow_wines or send us an email at rainbowwinechi@gmail.com if you have any questions or want to chat. 

a salad story

I had been craving peas. I keep frozen peas just about all the time to add to soup or pasta. But I was wanting fresh peas, I was wanting to lovingly shuck them and enjoy them for dinner. It’s June. Peas time. I’ve been wanting to also eat less meat lately. With vegetables that require more effort to prepare, my pathological mind somehow decides these earn their place on the dinner plate where meat is not present. I guess there’s some innate comparison to the incredible use of resources (not only labor) in raising, harvesting, butchering meat. I’d like to not think like that, but at least it means I like to lavish time on preparing vegetables (not to mention how much work and care goes into growing and harvesting them). 

i made this drawing of peas while watching star trek, i love them 

 Nichols farm has some peas. They were deliciously sweet. It was also very hot last week so we decided to have salad for dinner. I started to build this dinner salad around the peas. I love how many other foods work so well with peas - how the peas sit on the surface, absorb fat and flavor, and add a vegetal crunch. I really love peas with pork - with bacon, ham or pork fat. It feels sort of 1950s. We happened to have some Casella’s prosciutto in the pantry. You can buy it in sealed packs that last a while and don’t require refrigeration, which is nice. With the prosciutto I was then thinking about egg, would it be eggy dressing, a poached egg on the bottom of the plate would impart silky egg yolk, and add some protein to the dish. I also love peas with potatoes, and I am there for potatoes in a salad any time. We eat a lot of delicious boiled potatoes in my house. We didn’t have any bread to make croutons, but even if we did, I wouldn’t have thought of it. Poached egg, mustardy piquant vinaigrette, greens, ham. A couple small boiled potatoes cut in quarters at the bottom of the dish (yukon golds from Nichols also) and peas. A bright white wine made this a really beautiful dinner. Le Pressoir de St Pierre from La Grapperie would be divine - it’s a kind of herbaceous Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley with golden acidity and mellow richness, enough to match all the layers of fat in the salad. This wine we have tested happily a few times to see how it is with salad, and can say it is delicious. 

 It was very tasty. The greens got wilted rather fast, however, with the heat of the egg plus the richness of the yolk with the vinaigrette too. I kind of enjoy wilty greens sometimes, just sometimes. They feel in process. They are easy to eat a lot of. But I thought, if I make this again, I will use a hearty green, like escarole, or better yet something that can absorb the dressing without melting like frisee. And I might crisp the prosciutto. And maybe croutons would be better than potatoes, or a nice addition for chew. 

Then I realized, this was just a salade Lyonnaise. Salade Lyonnaise is lardons, frisee, poached egg, croutons, vinaigrette. It is an important dish, a foundation of Lyonnaise cuisine, itself founded in the 16th century when Catherine of Medici brought her chefs to France and ordered them to cook with produce sourced around the country. It’s about layering fat and flavor. The realization didn’t upset but amused me. I wasn’t trying to make an original salad, but I did feel like it was sort of a crazy combination, until I realized, there are very few, maybe no crazy combinations left in this world. This breakfast for dinner / salad for dinner melange is just another delicious corruption of something old. 

 Contaminated salade Lyonnaise 

 Handful of peas, freshly shucked if you can, gently cooked in boiling water for 1 minute 

Couple slices of torn Prosciutto, or Lardons 

Boiled potatoes, cut in quarters 

 Poached egg 

 Hearty greens 

 for the vinaigrette: 

 1 tsp dijon mustard 

 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar 

 4 tablespoons olive oil 

 Sprinkle of salt 

 Mix the mustard and the vinegar, then slowly add the olive oil and finish with the salt. 

 Place your potatoes, your egg and a few pieces of prosciutto on the bottom of the plate. Toss the remaining ingredients in vinaigrette, then pile up on your plate. Enjoy, outside, if possible, with a glass of French white wine. 

a photo i found online someone took of their salad Lyonnaise from Le Bouchon in Las Vegas. 

 Lots of new wines in this weekend - stay tuned to the store, instagram and also - sign up for our email newsletter using the link on this blog for the deep dive on what’s going on every weekend. Hope you get to shuck some peas soon, if that sounds good to you.

flavors saved my life pt. 2

today I would like to share two things that are of interest to me from Mireille Johnston and M.C. Richards and that I think pair nicely.

I.
A couple months ago I was searching “richard olney” on YouTube, hoping to find something I had never seen. This something ended up being the series “A Cook’s Tour of France” hosted by Mireille Johnston and produced by the BBC. You can find the entirety of the series online uploaded by John Whiting, a food historian and kind of classic gourmand seeming guy. Each episode highlights the culinary traditions of a different region of France and is densely packed with segments in each half hour spot. An ex-professor, she’s able to weave history, politics, and emotion together with examples of cookery so tightly it’s easy to miss some of the nuance she presents.

I have a particular fondness for the first episode of the second season on the Loire Valley, the garden of France. It’s a nice watch for this time in the Midwest because the show features a lot of fruit and vegetable preparations and a great, succinct explanation of what dessert is. But for this edition of “flavors saved my life” it’s the elementary school taste class that really gets me.

It’s so fun to watch the class work to widen their experience, their expressions and shyness feel relatable. Then there is the idea that all five senses are important in our perception of taste as the class tastes five colors of fromage blanc. Cub and I have been talking about sight a lot lately especially as it concerns our tongue and brain’s perception of rosé. Does it really remind us of Italy or is it just dark? There is also the resonance of touch here, for us it would be the wine touching the earth, the winemaker’s hands, technology and aging vessels, your drinking vessel, your mouth, your stomach. So much touch! Lastly, the sweet sentiment: Here they are learning how to be attentive to a wide variety of fragrances, tastes, aroma, textures so that they can enjoy the pleasures of life fully and hopefully transmit a rich collective memory later.

II.
In her classic Centering, teacher, poet, and ceramicist M.C. Richards writes:

Appreciation requires a discipline of selflessness. I tell them the expression of personal taste is not our primary goal. The development of taste is: the ability to taste what is present. I try to exercise this sleeping or lethargic member by making it clear that I am not primarily concerned with what we like. I am concerned with our power to grasp, to comprehend, to penetrate, to embrace. There are different levels at work here as elsewhere. On the other hand, there is an attachment to liking and disliking that obstructs learning and deeper enjoyment. The right to opinion must be honored without exception, but not all opinions are equally honorable. Though everyone is free to be who he is, ignorance and cruelty are not freedoms.

The shop opens for the weekend tomorrow, we added some new things (mostly to serve COLD) last Friday from Cantina Giardino, Babass, Le Coste, Gilles Azzoni and we have some makgeolli too from Hana based in Brooklyn. DM @rainbow_wines or email rainbowwinechi@gmail.com if you have any questions. Thanks for keeping us busy, ciao!

Styrian Runner Beans for Summer

 As the covid confinement period continues to shift, I find myself thinking about where I’d most like to travel, if anything was safe and possible. 

This time of year, in early summer, I would most like to be in southern Austria, in Styria, or Steiermark, as it’s called in the German language. Styia is known as the green heart of Austria. In May and June, the landscape is extraordinarily verdant and lush. The wines pair especially well with vernal flavors, like fresh farmer’s cheese, spring peas, and even asparagus, a food that can be unfriendly towards wine. 

I got to travel there in early May 2019 with an importer we work with, Jenny Lefcourt from Jenny & Francois Selections. All the winemakers we met were warm, intelligent and kind people. A visit from an importer means winemakers usually go all out to make them feel welcome - in this case as it has been so far in my experience, this felt very sincere. Our first stop was to Franz and Christine Strohmeier, situated on the northern end of the Styria region. My first thought upon arriving was a sense of relief. I felt so comfortable there. A lot of their furniture is low to the ground, bigger and open - I don’t think I would have noticed if I didn’t sense something in them that felt intentional about this choice - to make their place feel relaxed and more continuous with the earth. Their home is built into a hillside, among their vineyards, with small vegetable gardens and their chicken coop placed around little shelves they’ve carved into the steep slopes. Their winery is built underneath their house. 

They believe strongly that vibrancy in the wine depends on biodiversity in the vineyards. Franz has had some difficulty with his own family, including his father who also made wine there before him, and his neighbors, who challenge his philosophy - one that prizes healthy, symbiotic relationships with the land and all organisms over productivity and profits. He seems only to respond with patience. I think maybe this slight conflict also strengthens his resolve, and pushes him to be more bold. For instance, they have a significant sized vineyard that is growing wild, reflecting a willingness to experiment in pursuit of working with nature. 

the wild vineyard

The Strohmeiers are vegetarians and served us a delicious risotto with white asparagus. My first taste of wine at their home was their rosé, from the grape variety called Blauer Wildbacher. Franz makes many dynamic wines - from much admired traditional method sparkling wines, to complex, macerated white wines and expressive reds that he waits to bottle not based on market demand but solely on when he thinks the wine is ready. I love the rosé because it shows his deft hand with maceration and retains the lightness of being that I think is imparted from their harmonious way of life. 

the rosé Karmin I got to taste in bottle was No 8, mostly 2017. We also tasted from barrel what would be the 9th edition. We have the 10th edition in our store now. 

We went south towards the Slovenian border the next day to Sepp and Maria Muster. Like the Strohmeiers, the Musters view their work as winemakers as keepers of the natural balance in their land and region. Their home is also situated around their vineyards, with their winery just across a small courtyard from their living space. They also love to cook and are invested in the cultural lineage of their area. They have a large traditional stove that works like an Aga, holding heat, giving the powerful presence of a warm hearth to their beautiful home. Their wine labels feature the work of their friend, the late artist Beppo Pliem. The paintings represent the natural interaction between earth and sky. For years prior I had been enamored of the Erde wines Sepp ages in anfora and puts in a clay bottle. Erde means soil in German, and this line of wines stands for the commitment to holistic farming and winemaking. 

sepp in the vines

anfora at muster

----

Memorial Day weekend coincides with my partner’s birthday, and we almost always have a bbq. 

Like every time this year, I started thinking about sides and salads that maintain or improve when sitting out at a table in the yard or in a tupperware at a picnic for hours, in the heat, probably, too. 

I knew I wanted to share this amazing wine we have in from Sepp and Maria Muster, Erde, at the bbq. It marries so well with spring flavors, but it also seems to have the power to slow time a bit. It elicits attention and study but it’s not so serious. Its presentation in a clay bottle is fairly commanding. I thought it would make for a nice moment during the day to stop and sip it for a second, to try to make the beautiful afternoon last a little longer. 

When I went to the Muster’s house and winery, they served a delicious bean salad, a staple of the Styrian table. The bean salad is a perfect dish for something that keeps its integrity over time. It really has just two key ingredients - the beans, which are very large, scarlet runner beans, and pumpkin seed oil, a delicacy identified with the region, called kernol. The oil is expensive because it takes about 5 pumpkins to produce a quarter of a cup. It has a low smoke point, and is not suitable as a cooking fat. 

I’m not usually a fan of ‘finishing oils’ - coming of age in the aughts as a little brat foodie I grew to hate truffle oil, walnut oil, etc. From what I can tell pumpkin seed oil had a celebrity chef moment when Austrian chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck put it on his pizzas - but it was somehow spared the overexposure of truffle oil. Maybe because it’s quite a bit more earthy. It is also a rich, dark green, almost black color, something maybe not all diners would go for. I love that about it. The richly colored runner beans coated in ‘the green gold’ of Styria look like gemstones in your dish. 

When I’ve made this, I find the pumpkin seed oil is beautiful, but I longed for some fruitiness from olive oil to balance its pungent nutiness. We have a fruity olive oil from Paterna that worked well - I added just a little. If you add olive oil make sure it’s not too green and sharp. 

Marinated Bean Salad inspired by how they make it in Styria but a little different

Scarlet Runner Beans

Pumpkin Seed Oil (you can find this online, that’s what I did. Buy in small quantity as it doesn’t keep long after opening) 

Olive Oil 

Salt 

Lemon or Wine Vinegar 

Big handful of chopped parsley 

A recent email from Steve Sando, the owner of Rancho Gordo, offered the best bean cooking instructions I can imagine: 

“My current, and so far fool-proof, technique is: bring the beans and water up to a full boil and keep it there for 15, maybe even 20 minutes. Not a gentle simmer but a rapid boil. This initial bullying makes it clear to the beans that you are in charge and there’s no turning back. Then reduce the heat as low as you can take it. If you’re in a hurry, a nice simmer is fine. If you’re cooking for pleasure, the gentlest of simmers is best. Low and slow and loaded with love.” 

His general advice is to soak if you have time, but if you don’t, it’s not a problem - it just means the cooking time might be a little longer. 

He doesn’t mention anything about aromatics, but since I had things in the fridge to make a bouquet garni, I did. I don’t know really how much flavor it adds, but in the spirit of ‘loaded with love’ the tied bundle of aromatics feels like a little present for the beans on their journey. 

The rest of this salad is pretty much just seasoning to taste. 

Before adding any oil or acidity, season your beans with salt. This will take some time, and, in my experience, a lot of salt. Add pumpkin seed oil, and taste, add more if necessary. Same with olive oil. Then add lemon juice or wine vinegar or both. Add your chopped parsley. The parsley is key because it absorbs any excess dressing and then wraps around each bean.

Let marinate for a few hours if you can before enjoying, or eat some right away then savor it over a few days, kept in the fridge. 

The Muster & Strohmeier wines mentioned here are available now in the store. We have many new wines in this week from Milan Nestarec just over in Czechia, as well as from Southwest France (Simon Busser) and the Loire Valley (Domaine Bobinet) and also from California (Sonoma Mountain Winery)! Lots to taste! Email us at rainbowwinechi@gmail.com or DM us @rainbow_wines anytime if you'd like us to make any selections for your or have questions - tasting notes will be coming soon. Have a wonderful week.