party note

 What follows is an essay about pairing, written for our Paella Party that we threw last year in collaboration with Kat & Mike from Motorshucker, Mac, and Andres & Dain from Buen Viaje. We’re throwing another party tonight with the same crew, this time serving pozole. We (between Rainbow and Motorshucker) always write for our parties and it feels nice to be able to revisit the event and share it with you. There are things that are specific to that night and then things that guide us regularly. Like that pairings are real but more interesting when you think about what is being paired broadly. And how it’s still a little chilly but after months of that feeling we have a new way of thinking about it, fresh wines from aromatic grapes that mimic the flowers that have finally pushed their way up through the soil. And the magnolia tree in front of the house is lit up with blooms, we also want to be lit up with blooms and to pass it on.

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It was such a joy to write the wine list for this evening, what we’ve been calling the Puerto Paella Party. It was also such a joy to be a very small part of Mico’s creative process in formulating this dish, which feels generous in his life experience. As son, cook, wine professional. This wealth of experience makes for food with a lot of depth but also feels easy, not overwrought, I’m tempted to say it feels natural. I just did.

In picking the wine to complement something that feels so intimate, that Cub and I also feel close to, we had many considerations. Some feel familiar, like how does the taste of the food change (for the better we hope) when taken with a sip of wine. A traditional concept that we both cling to and throw in the garbage periodically, I’m not sure if this melodrama is for anyone else but the people who are often tasked to think about “pairing”. Through Rainbow though, we both have become more interested in a good pairing, and that probably has to do with the other ways we’ve come to think about it.

Tonight we’re in Cub’s backyard, I’m writing this on Friday (November 19th) but it’s been chilly and I’m sure it’s chilly now. The grills and the fire provide some warmth, so does the music from Mac and Buen Viaje and the intimacy of eating and drinking in a place that’s only public sometimes, but the wine provides another opportunity. For warmth we’ve embraced a lot of wine from places where grapes see the sun and the potential for alcohol can be higher. It’s exciting to crave the warm flush in the cheeks, we hope it helps soften the blow that can be this seasonal shift.

As we’ve joked, a lot of the wines we’ve chosen for tonight are 100% grenache, also called garnatxa (noir, blanc) or contain some amount of the grape. It was an accident, but we did feel, taking into considerations the ~*flavors*~ and the place of imbibing, and the depths these wines plumb with the heights that they reach (the natural wine high) spoke to the food and the evening. We actually would have changed it to include other grape varieties -maybe it is too monotonous? But before we could even question it for too long, Mico was like, “So stoked about all the grenache.” Or something like that. It’s also one of his favorite grapes. He shared some more happy coincidences, mostly about Bruno Duchêne’s wines (we have a lot of his wines because he is one of Cub’s perennial favorite producers). The white pet nat Duchêne makes is called Suzette, the first name of Mico’s mother. Duchêne also makes a red wine called La Luna, which happens to be Suzette’s last name. Her presence in the wine list, as in the dish, was the signal it was spiritually complete. A deep pairing.

All these wines are super different anyway. Grapes being only one consideration of many.

Grenache tonight: Potron Minet Pari Trouillas Blanc & Rouge, Bruno Duchêne Suzette, Celler de Escoda Sanahuja Nas del Gegant, Petit Domaine de Gimios Rosé, Le Temps des Cerises Un Pas de Cote, Bruno Duchêne La Luna Rouge, Matin Calme Bonica Marieta, Toni Sanchez Ortiz Saurí, Le Temps Retrouvé L’Harmonie, Jordi Llorens Blankaforti, Portes Obertes Petricor