Meet our Wine Zoo: Wild Boar Doe
You have to buy wine by the case and we don’t have much room to store those cases, which means we’re always going to have a short wine list. So rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and all the rest of the usual suspects we thought we’d make up our list out of the strangest and most unusual wines we could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.
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The newest wine on our list has been on there for a couple of months but we haven’t said much about it because at Dirt Candy we don’t like to wear our heart on our sleeve and, frankly, the Shinn Estate Wild Boar Doe reveals a fact about us that’s embarrassing: deep down, we are hippies. Dirt Candy is a restaurant that’s about food, first and foremost. Politics, health concerns and all that jazz come a distant second to our mission of making vegetables taste great by any means necessary. However, this restaurant is built out of green and sustainable materials and we use organic and local produce when we can, not for political reasons but because in a lot of cases they just taste better. However, the “local” and “organic” labels are so trendy these days that, to be honest, they’ve lost a lot of their meaning. I’ve seen some restaurants order one or two organic items and then write on their menu, “We use organic produce!” which to me is enormously deceptive and cynical, so I err on the side of shutting up about it.
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But the Shinn Estate Wild Boar Doe is the future of food in a bottle, and it gets you drunk, so it gives me a brief opportunity to be all gushy and virtuous. Shinn Estates, on the North Fork of Long Island, is owned by Barbara Shinn and David Page who used to own HOME restaurant in the West Village. (They were even in the New York Times “Vows” column when they got married.) They moved out to the North Fork and opened Shin Estate Vineyards, where they practice organic, sustainable farming techniques to produce their wine. Long Island wines are often looked down on by wine snobs but there are some really good wines coming out of this region and to tar them all with the “Bad News” brush would be a huge mistake.
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Shinn Estate talks a super-virtuous game, which makes me nervous. Just read these quotes from David Page in an interview with AppellationAmerica.com:
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“Firstly, it is important to understand that the farming which we are engaged in is by definition ‘traditional.’ My grandparents farmed organically and in a sustainable way, before these terms existed in our modern vocabulary. After more than 50 years of abusing our obligation to steward the land, many farmers have turned back to traditional farming.
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Secondly, the poor health of our nation’s population is a crime that needs correcting and we are trying to do whatever we can to keep pollutants out of our drinking water, air, food and wine. Sustainable, organic and bio-dynamic farming are necessary goals if we have any hope for a healthy society in the future.”
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I think he’s right, and I think the future of food will have a lot to do with more and more small, local farms springing up all over the place – not to get all Alice Waters, but there are a lot of trends pointing in this direction. However, David’s words wouldn’t mean a thing if he and Barbara didn’t also make good wine. The viticulture scene on Long Island is relatively new, but Shinn Estate is engaged in the process of making “terroir,” developing wines that reflect the environment in which their grapes are grown. This can often take years, but they’re working hard to do it sooner rather than later:
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“By working to create healthy and self-sustaining soil and vines, we can ultimately achieve what winemakers call ‘terroir,’ which I define as the ‘taste of place.’ Force-feeding vines with chemical nutrients and harmful pesticides is the extreme opposite of terroir, and cannot give anyone a true ‘taste of place.’ Once this ‘taste of place’ is created, our wines will take on a definable personality that will, in essence, only be found here on Oregon Road. Wine appellations around the world are created, based on this important principle.”
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I couldn’t agree more. Some of the best wines I’ve had are wines that couldn’t travel far. In France right now, vin naturel, organic wines that are too fragile to leave the country, are all the rage. Some of the most interesting wine I ever had was in California at a friend’s house where his family participates in a co-operative vineyard with a few other families making wine as a hobby. What they make is always unusual and distinctive. When you’re drinking it you get the feeling that you’re having something that’s completely married to the landscape of Monterey, where it’s made. While it’s true that sometimes vineyards in obscure parts of America can come across as a cheap way to attract tourists, like little amusement parks for the entitled, there are also lots and lots of American vineyards that make wine that’s a drinkable portrait of their part of the country. Like a landscape sketch that’ll get you tipsy.
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We serve the Shinn Estate Wild Boar Doe at Dirt Candy for two reasons. First, we want to support Shinn Estate. I’m a chef. I make food. It’s all I do. I don’t feel comfortable talking about Important Things, but the more small, local farmers we have, the better for all of us who want to eat good food. The other reason we serve Wild Boar Doe is that it tastes like summer in the country. Made with 40% merlot, 23% cabernet sauvignon, 17% malbec, 15% petit verdot and 5% cabernet franc, it’s a berry-intensive wine that’s super-juicy and hits you coming and going with a big, wet raspberry smack. Subtle, it’s not. But then again, summer isn’t subtle and nothing makes you feel quite so much like you’re drinking a shaft of sunlight hitting a patch of wild raspberries out in the woods as drinking this Wild Boar Doe. It’s virtue in a bottle, sure, but it also comes pretty close to tasting like the dirt, sunlight, vines and water of which it’s made. I count myself lucky that I’m able to live in a state that produces a wine that’s this footloose and carefree and that goes this well with whatever is on the table. A wine that, in short, tastes the way summer on Long Island is supposed to taste.
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