Wine & Spirits

Host Michael Ruhlman explores wine and spirits with chefs Brian Polcyn, Peter Kelly and David Lebovitz, and wine producer Dave Phinney.

Chef Brian Polcyn:

https://chefbrianpolcyn.com/

Chef Peter Kelly:

http://www.xaviars.com/pxk/

Chef David Lebovitz:

https://www.davidlebovitz.com/

Dave Phinney's wine "8 Years in the Desert":

https://www.orinswift.com/20188YearsintheDesert

Michael Ruhlman's new book "From Scratch":

https://www.amazon.com/Scratch-Meals-Recipes-Dozens-Techniques/dp/1419732773

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to From Scratch. My name is Michael Ruhlman. I've
spent the last twenty years in professional kitchens, writing about
and with the world's best chefs. From Scratches a podcast
about cooking. In each episode, we'll talk with one chef
and one non chef about the same theme. In this
episode more than one. The great thing about the cooking

(00:29):
life is that you never stop learning. In this show,
I want to go to the edges of what I
know and then go beyond together with you, with all chefs,
home cooks, and everyone who cares about food and cooking.
Today's theme is wine and spirits. Wine is a great
tool for cooks. It adds flavor, acidity, complexity. It's also

(00:50):
a culturally important partner to food and to a great meal.
Wine and spirits are likewise a pleasure to share with
friends and sometimes to cook with. Will be speaking with
a wine producer and three chefs on the subject making
a traditional wine reduction sauce and also one of the
most loved and by me maligned cocktails on the planet.

(01:16):
I've known Brian Poulson for more than twenty years. He's
a former chef owner of numerous award winning restaurants in
the Detroit area and teaches charcuterie at Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Michigan.
We've written three books together. We do hog butchery classes
around the country and generally like to have a good time.
I've invited him into my small Manhattan kitchen to cook

(01:38):
because it's a blast and he's so smart and articulate
about cooking. He'll be joining me for a number of episodes. Today,
we'll be making a classic chicken ju lier, a fancy
term for sauce liais simply means it's thickened with something
a liaison it's called in French, and it's flavored with
a white wine reduction using an inexpensive chardonnay. I asked

(02:01):
Brian for his thoughts. I'm cooking with wine, okay, So
for me, my my philosophy is that I don't cook
with anything I wouldn't drink. That doesn't mean I'm gonna drink.
I'm gonna cook for the Chateau la Tour, Okay, I'm
not gonna cook with that, but I'm not gonna generally
use u um, you know, really really cheap box wine
because there's a reason it's cheap. The flavor profile is

(02:23):
what you're looking for is the red wine, white wine, sherry,
madeira wine, brandy, kogniac. Whatever the alcohol the item is,
he has a flavor profile. So I mean lighter wines
with lighter foods, heavier wines with every food. So red
wine reduction for a beef and white wine reduction for
chicken and fish right removed red room with white remotely,

(02:44):
you know, the same same principle. Plus, so the way
I the way I cook with alcohol is I want
the essence, the flavor of it, but I don't want
to raw alcohol flavor. And there's you know, there's schools
of thoughts on everything, like where I teach us school crap,
you know, all the guys I teach with this masterchefs,
we'll have week long discussion. It's about when do you
add wine to risotto? Do you add it in the

(03:05):
beginning so it burns the alcohol or do you finish it?
Say want that raw alcohol? Me? I like it to
burn it off. But we've had heated discussions in the hallway.
Not no fisticuffs or anything, but it's been heated. Like, well, okay,
I've been traveled all the word and I've tasted it
both ways. Personally, I like to have things they alcohol
burnt off. So we're going to be making a very
basic sauce, simple to make it home and especially good

(03:28):
if you have your own or can buy good stock.
I got ours from Hudson and Charles on Hudson here
in New York City's West Village, which makes their own.
We're simply going to cook flavorful vegetables and aromatics, pour
wine over them, cook it down, add stock, and thicken it.
That's it delicious over sauteed or roasted chicken. It's so simple.

(03:49):
I'll put a description of the sauce and how to
make it on my site roman dot com. It's so simple,
that is, until Brian gets his fat hands on the pot.
First of all, we're making a we're making a ju
for a roast chicken. Do you you brought bacon again?
Do you ever travel anywhere? So this is just a

(04:11):
Juliet right you? Is the natural flavor whatever item as
a liais lightly thickened, so chicken Juliet. So we have
you have some bought chicken stock. I haven't tasted it,
but I can tell we need to fortify it in
order to add wine. To it. We just can't take
it the wine, raw and chicken brought together and bring
it to a boil. It's that's too pedestrian. So we

(04:32):
need to start with a bass. So I'm gonna use bacon.
You would use bailey fresh thyme, garlic, onion, and carrots.
I usually put seller, but you said you don't like
seller in And I want to kind of caramelize these
vegetables a little bit. I could use just a pinch
of butter to um to maybe help this bacon render

(04:54):
a little bit. And there you go, thank you, So
you can hear the sizzlings I want to get. I
want to get that vegetables to caramelize little bit. And
then I'm going to do what's called pin se add
a little tomato paste to it. I'm gonna put it
on that, let it cook a little bit, and um,
I'm gonna add a little tomato paste, and then let

(05:17):
that tomato paste kind of caramelize with the vegetables in
the base before I ad any liquid to it. Once
that occurs caramelization, of course, it's flavors. There's natural sugars
and the onions and natural sugars in the carrot, The
bacon has a sugar in the cure, but we don't
want to burn it. Get a little bit of black
on the edges or like a skid, it's called on
the pan. Not just a little bit of black when

(05:38):
you're when you're adding the tomato paste is good because
when you add the liquid, in this case white wine,
you're doing what's called the glazing, right, you know, lift
all the particles that are stuck to the bottom of
the pan. That becomes part of the base of the sauce.
Sauce make it is one of the more complicated parts
of the kitchen because you have to find balance in everything.
So again the principle applies. This is the chicken juliet,

(05:59):
so it should taste like chicken. But we're taking these
other ingredients to enhance the natural flavor of the chicken
without overpowering it. So we don't want to taste like wine.
We want the wine to be balanced. The wines acidic,
you know, in the elements of taste, salt, sugar, acid,
these are important parts. So you've got your veg caramelizing.
I want to turn the flame up just a little

(06:19):
bit to get a little a little softer. Of course,
the lid at this point is trapping the steam, which
is softening the vegetables, and that's what we want. In
order to get caramelizations. You have to extract the natural
sugars found in it, and you do that bike softening
them because vegetables are even more water than protein water,
so you get it soft, the sugar migrates out with

(06:41):
the liquid. The liquid then evaporates and the steam and
you're left with the essence of flavor. What the ingredient
is carrots and celery in this case, garlic, Bailey fresh
time peppercorns would be appropriate with this, and again and
sauce make it. It's all about balance. You know. You
use time and peppercorns, but you don't want to really
taste it immediately. But when you taste it, it does

(07:02):
its job. Everybody works together. The marriage of flavors is
what makes a great sauce. I should clarify here. Brian
means the vegetables, unlike protein, have even more water in them.
And sorry for you no carb but people out there.
But vegetables of course are composed of carbohydrates and water
and a lot of other tasty elements as well, which

(07:23):
the water pulls out. Here the cracks on going the
way getting some color. They're certainly color on the bacon
a little bit more, and then we'll put the tomato
paste in there. Okay. Now, Also with making wine sauces,
my personal philosophy is usually add the wine in three stages.

(07:43):
So if for this, I hear that a lot, because
I want quicker evaporation, I want the flavor. So if
I add, like, I'm gonna use maybe a cup of
wine in this little bit of sub we're making, what
two cups of sauce. I'm gonna use a cup of wine,
but I'm gonna reduce that wine to maybe two tablespoons. Uh.
To do that, I'm gonna add, you know, a third
of a cuple it reduced down SEC is called in

(08:04):
the French kitchen dry. Then you add another third cup SEC,
another third cup SEC. This is really the key to
developing great flavor, the multiple reductions. Each time you reduced
to SEC or dry, the liquid is gone, but that
liquid has pulled out the sugars and flavor of the
vegetables and cooked off, leaving the sugars to brown on

(08:24):
the bottom of the pan. You then add more wine,
lifting those sugars off the pan, pulling more out of
the vegetables and reducing again, this is how you deepen
the flavors, flavor developments with what do we do as cooks.
We're always searching for waste to get flavor. And as
you know, good cooking is hard. If it was easy,

(08:45):
everybody would do it. So if you understand great cooking,
to me, great cooking is good cooking. You know, let's
say that's what it should be. But you know, if
you understand cooking, to me, if you understand the principle,
if you understand the method you're trying to do, it's
so easy. I mean, cooking is not a chore to be.
It's like you know, it's like breathing. I have to

(09:07):
do it, you know, it's impossible. Okay, look look at
the night. You're getting a little color and the bacon.
That's good. I want to let this go a little
bit further. So getting a little browning from the letter too, Yeah,
it's okay. That gives it a nuttiness, which I like.
So the ratio for this amount, you can see I
cut too many onions and carrots. But um, you don't

(09:27):
want to taste vegetably either, you know, Remember, what we're
doing is a chicken, Juliet. We're not making an onion Juliet.
We're not making carrot or tomato. It's a chicken. We're
using these other flavors to enhance our original idea. Same
with the wine. How important is the stock to use?
Can you use? Can you use box stock from the
grocery store? Yeah? I have to say yes, I mean

(09:50):
you can. But is it as good as if you
made your own stock? No? Uh, will you die if
you eat box stock stock? No, you won't die. But
I'll tell you what if you did a blind tasting
chicken stack that I make in a box stack taken
side by side, every single person in that blind taste
would be able to identify the one I made, just
because I mean, it just tastes better. You know. I

(10:10):
have found myself in kitchens and somebody asked me to
make a stock or something, and they all they have
is this box stuff. And you can't enhance it by
putting some onion and carrots simmering that to at least
give it a freshness. That's done. Otherwise, half box stock
has more flavor than Chateau Fossett. You know, Fossett is water.

(10:31):
So if your choice is water box stock, I would
go with the box stuck. One of the major differences
between real stock and boxed or canned broth from the
store is that more than lacking in fresh flavor, it
lacks gelatin, which gives a stock body. Reduced stock from
two cups to a quarter cup, and that stock will
be like a super bowl when it's cold from the gelatin.

(10:52):
Gelatin comes from the collagen in bones and cartilage. Box
stocks just don't have it. So if you do use
box stock, simmer some carrot and onion in it and
add a tablespoon of powdered gelatin or a sheet if
you use sheets. The collagen makes all the difference. It
makes a difference between friends as well. You know the
collagen collagen's flavor. Collagen comes from connective tissue. Yes it is.

(11:15):
It's not flavor, it's body. It's delicio. Yeah, well that's flavor. Yes,
no ju head cheese. This is all you know, Everything
has a purpose. Collagen does not have flavor. Oh my god,
we're gonna argue about this all right. So it's looking nice,
I guess looking really nice. It's got a nice light

(11:35):
golden color. Now it depends. If I was doing a
red wine sauce, I would take it further. They'll get
more caramelization. But there's gonna be a white wine. We
don't want it to compete too much. So I want
to put a couple of debts of tomato paste in there.
And this is called pin say tomato. Yeah, the tomato
paste is going to kind of you say a little
bit that too. Will it off flavor? Yes, so it's

(11:59):
coating the vet dobles. It's um happily. Look at the
color changed too. You turn the flame up a little bit. Letter.
This is the pense part. There's a short window between
pinsey brown and what's called burnt. Okay, can fix you
can't fix burn. But there's that just that moment I'm

(12:20):
starting to stick right here. You can just see that.
That's that's the skid. You know. It's like you know,
when I'm from Detroit. So taking your car or a
motorcycle and making skin, I mean, it's pretty pretty cool.
So cooking that's what we call it. So look at
the color of the vegetables. It's like very uh it's browned. Yeah,

(12:42):
it's a little fatty. We added that that that butter.
But I think I'm gonna take a look at it.
Look at it right there. That's gonna take a little
bit of this um the butter fat out because I
don't want the en sauce to look like the Exxon
Valds was there, you know, like an oil slick. And
then so there there's good color. Now take the wine.
I'm not gonna measure. I'm gonna do roughly a third.

(13:04):
You can hear that, So I'm gonna let that go down.
Think about it. What color is they have? Bro, that's
that white wine, that's Chardonnay that we put in there.
What color it's brown? Right? I mean there was pure
white wine. You know what white wine looks like. So
it it's got its color from the caramelization. So we're
going to reduce this and this is going to make

(13:25):
our chicken Juliet a brown. Also, because you said this
would be served where they roasted. So if I was
I probably wouldn't do this sauce with a poached chicken.
I would do a whitter sauce, but a roasted chicken
with the caramelized the rich flavor that we're developing right now,
but the one we haven't in me out of the stock.
Yet already looks good, right, so you can take that

(13:48):
all the way down. So about half inch of put
more than a third cup. So I'm gonna add less.
I'm gonna get a dry and add less and a
third cup because wanted to be too acid it. So
the flavor, the flavors that are going to stick here,
the flavors of that wine. Right, So if you think
about if you drink a glass of wine roughly seven
or eight ounces, you're gonna be tasting the whole thing.

(14:12):
You're gonna be tasting the whole thing with two tablespoons.
So that that's a chardon ay. It probably right now
has you can taste acid, right. I don't think it
has maloact of permentation because it's a screw cap top,
which doesn't mean it's a bad wine. By the way,
it does not mean it's bad because it doesn't have
a core. But it's not aged for years. I'm sure
it's young too inexpanded, which is fine. So even the

(14:38):
viscosity of the broth the brusket home, I would you
know you made a burmagnet, which for those of you
don't know what a bourmagne is that mixture of raw
flour and soft butter that's used as a thickening agent
because the flowers in the fat combined thickens the broth.
That's fine to do, but it makes a heavier sauce.

(15:00):
Another way to do this with just a simple dissolved
arrowroot of corn starch. Just a little dollop in there
gets the viscosity right, because you just want to be
able to nap a your protein. Napa means just that
the thickness of the sauce should just be the point
where it covers, like if you dip a spoon in there.
If you coat the spoon, you can take your finger
just run through it like that. There are a number

(15:21):
of ways to thicken a sauce reduction, but that can
make it gluey depending on the gelatine. There are now
new modernist thickeners, but we're sticking to traditional methods here.
Starch meaning corn starch or arrowroot, a pure gluten free
starch or flour. I like a flower thicken sauce. If
it's done right, you have to cook the flour so

(15:41):
that it doesn't taste heavy or the flour or gritty
on your tongue. It can be a rue or as
I like to do for small batches Bermonnier that's French
for needed butter. Basically, you simply need a table spoonful
flour into a table spoonful butter, and that's Burmagnier acorns
to arch. Slurry also works corn starch with water mixed

(16:03):
to the consistency of cream. That's the fastest way to
thicken a sauce. So this is getting kind of dry,
you see it. A little more wine. That's a halfy
sound in the kitchen right there. Even on Twelfth Street
and a little ford Burner apartment you know. Incidentally, one
bay of my garage at my house in Michigan. It's

(16:24):
bigger than your whole apartment where I parked my car. Yep. Now,
I gotta disagree with you on the Bermonde. I don't
think it makes a heavier sauce unless you use too
much of it. I like the the the the both
the thickening of flour and the enriching with the butter.
The slur. There's no fat, Yeah, there's no fat. And
we've got we've got a lot going on here. But

(16:46):
the one thing I will caution, I'm not against bermondy.
But people don't know how to use it. If you
don't cook it enough, you have a rough flower taste
to it. You have to cook it. You have to
cook it where it's corn starch, your airbood. Once he
comes to a boil, it's dune so burmina. You have
to watch it. Then you run the risk for a
novice cook it's sticken. Does it stick? Do they have
the right size with the right thickness pot. If you're
not using a thick bottom pot, you haven't run a

(17:07):
chance of scorching. Did all this work and he end
up burning it? It's not a good king hunky. We'll
see if you can handle burnin. Oh, I can handle it.
I can take on burnman a little bit. One more,
one more, Okay, So that was about the first one
was a lot in the last two were a little
bit less. When we turn the flame up a little bit. Now,
another thing about sauce making two is the right pot,

(17:30):
right pan for the right job. Now in this case,
you see that you have really nice looks, like an
all clad pan or something like that. Uh, you're burner
being gas, which is better than electric because you can
trolly heat. But you have to watch the flame, so
we call it tuning the stove. Right. If that flame
comes over the sides, comes around the pot like that,
the naturally evaporation their sugars. You can see I start

(17:50):
to get a little brown here. That will start to
turn burnch and you'll have a little black specks. So
you know, black is beautiful man power to the people.
But you don't want expects in your food. And that's burnt.
So you have to watch your stove. And there's a
short window between reduced properly and of course burnt. In
this case, you can't just you have you have to
watch this cook. The flames underneath the pan. It's not

(18:12):
reaching up the side, it's not coming out the sides
because that that steam is coming off the size also
carrying residual sugars and that's what runs. So that's beautiful color.
We've got the stock melting. Let me have a spooner
when it taste this stuff. Where did you get this from?
Some local? We got this from another great meat prover,

(18:34):
Hudson and Charles's pretty good. That make all the stock
that's good by itself right there. If you add salt
and a squeezing lemages. You can make chicken, little soup
out of that. Nice So this will make a very good,
very good stock. Smell the smells. First, you get the
alcohol coming right off when you first add it, and
then the smell gets deeper and richer and you smell
the acid. That's smell. It's very interesting. It's a turning

(18:58):
into a very you know, deep gravy colored sauce. Vegetables
are cooking. They've they've gotten quite small now because you're
cooking all the water out of them. So tasting that
broth I said you could make it. You add salt, pepper, lemon,
juice and noodles and you have a chicken. That's how
good this brought this. But we're taking that already good
foundation and what we call Fonda cuisine right the foundation

(19:20):
of cooking um and enhancing the flavor with this caramelization,
the pin see and the wine. We've got all the
components of making a really good sauce here. It's not
overly complicated. So right now you can see, you can
hear it. You can hear the bubbles. Look at that's
about right now. I'm gonna add the bra So we're
adding about what two cups or copings. So now we

(19:42):
go to a full boil. Now, since there's more liquid
in the pot, I'm not as concerned about the flame
coming over the sides because I want up boil, give
it a stirt and I use. I like wooden spoons
and sauce make I don't like metal against metal that much,
even though it's a stainless steel and all that stuff.
But me too, a flat edged wouldn't like that because
you can scare the bottom. Also, you gotta watch, you know,
you can't leave your your sticking the potto on because

(20:05):
you'll burn the edges. Like I noticed, many of yours
have nice burn parts on it. That's kind of funny,
but I like that as a sign as someone whose
cooks a lot, I like that. Um. Another thing about
sauce making two is most sauces have some sort of acid.
You finish it with lemon juice or vinegar, you know.
And if you make a wine sauce, of course you

(20:26):
have to use stand in the steel pants. You cannot
use aluminum pants. A thick bottom pan is important too,
because a thick bottom pan distributes the heat even and
you won't give hotspots. So that's another thing to remember,
um and what do we why why are we using
wine flavor? Everything we do is predicated on taste, so

(20:47):
you know the components of taste, salt, sweet, acid. This
is an opportunity to introduce acid to the liquid. And uh,
it's more complex than just squeezing or finishing with vinegar
or something like that. Like a lot of good sauces
that'll just finished with a little it have been here
because that nice assid You don't taste it so much.
You don't say, oh, that's apple cider, that's red wine
vinegar or balsamic. You know, you might taste balsamic more

(21:07):
than other vinegars because it's stronger. But it's there for balance.
Everything we do is about balance and development of flavor.
So it's gonna come up to a boil that we're
gonna strain it into another pan. Now, at the liquid stage,
the thickness of the pot doesn't matter because it's liquid.
But once we thicken this, we're gonna have to pay
attention to it after the boermonets added, so it doesn't
have an opportunity to stick on the bottom. And we

(21:29):
also watched the flame again. You know, we don't on
this after we strain and thicken it. We watched the
sides because that's where it'll start to stick. You see,
it's starting to come up here. We're gonna give it
a little taste just to see you eat salt, but
we're gonna finish that later. It's got a richness to it.
It's quite a cinic too. You want to put some
salt in pepper? Do we have pepper? Look at how

(21:53):
it bubbles my other se So do you like it
a rolling boil like that? Well for just a minute,
because I'm going to strain it into the pan for
any reduction here you could, you could take it, but
I'm gonna reduce it in there. So let's get the
other goodies out of it. We've got a second small
pan and a strainer to strain out all the solids,

(22:14):
the bacon and the vegetables, which have by now given
their flavor completely to the liquid. And we have nice
brown sauce. But it's still not finished. It's a little
liquid e So Brian's going to with skin the burmagne
and also evaluate for flavor and finished seasonings. Got a
nice color. Do you want to finish the sauce in

(22:36):
this pan? Well, I would like that. That makes me happy,
and let's do another taste and check if we need
to reduce. This is the time before you think and
if it needs reduction, and why would we reduce it

(22:59):
more right now because it didn't have any flavor. Where
it does have flavor because we started with good chicken stuck.
It's got a nice balance of acid and meatiness to it.
It's got quite a bit of wine flavor to it. Yeah,
but it's not offensive. It's not a harsh wine and
complain taste it now after the salt and pepper was
in there. That changes everything too, it does. I'm really

(23:25):
surprised by how cilic it is. I like that. It's
it's good with you know, think of sauteed mushrooms with
your roasted chicken and this juliet. That's uh, that's a
nice combination. Or so now a full rolling boil. The
bourmagne of course is uh roughly yeah, yeah, flour and butter.

(23:47):
You soft butter and just massage enough flour into it
gets a nice like not quite dope, but a paste.
So we'll add you have to add the burmagna in
small chunks so it has a chance to dissolve. I'm
gonna whip it and whip, whip, whip, and I'm looking
for consistency at this point. Once it gets to be

(24:11):
started slightly thickened, we want to turn it down and
let the flour cook out of the bermagna. This is
adding fat to it, which is gonna rich and up.
It will offset some of that the city that we
tasted in the wine. See it's starting to get a
little thick right now. Yeah. Story also thickens faster, very fat.

(24:32):
Once it comes to a boil. That's is fast, you know,
it's it's not gonna get anywhere thicker than that tore.
So this is still liquid. Now, this is gonna go
for eight minutes, eleven minutes maybe or something like that.
We're gonna turn it down. So it's a little for
tot and as it reduces it intensive by his flavor,
but it gives that flower a chance to tighten it up.
And this is a very simple, simple sauce. This is

(24:54):
not over the kount. Anybody can make this sauce, anybody,
even you out there listener. And there's also something quite
therapeutic about cooking. You know, I love cooking. I mean
I spend most of my time writing. But so I'm

(25:15):
sitting at a desk a lot. And so when I
finished the day, I loved. I loved the chopping and
the cooking, the smells that you you know, they've even
shown that the smells of food cooking the house relax us.
I believe so helps. If you want to sell your
property to bake some bread, people says, buy that house.

(25:35):
So let's see the large bubbles evaporations occurring. I'm gonna
turn it down a little bit. I want to just
I'm not too worried about evaporation for flavor. I just
want that flower to do its job. And you know,
again as Juliet should be the coke. So we're gonna
look at the thickness. But right now, that's that's a
little bit thin for me, you know, but it's not

(25:58):
quite thick enough to nape. But yeah, I took the
rest of that a little bit there. So we rented
Michael just took the little bowl with the fermagner and
he put the hots sauce in it. To it's the
last bit, which is a sign of a good cook.
We don't waste anything, you know. I love the way
you scrape every single oh my god, every bag, every bowl,

(26:21):
every you squeegeet off your special everything. I wonder if
it's because I was trained you know that way you're
a peanut, or is because I owned my own restaurants
for sewing. I just looked at it as money. You know,
I can't I can't waste. I gotta make, I gotta
I gotta make barrel there. Now, let's they cook a

(26:43):
little bit in the lady to go. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah,
I've got some sweetest from the butter. You've got the
acidity from the wine. You've got a good chicken base,
you got the uh, the the sort of mommy from
the bacon. Yeah, the sweetness from the vest. It was
interesting you said that mommy part, because we could have

(27:04):
made it without the bacon and it would still come
out good. But that one little element, that one little
thing night out of ten people taste that wouldn't even
know bacon's in it. But now, no, boy, that tastes
pretty good. Right. So now this, now, this is what
we do in the kitchen. So now this is ready,
and then I like card service, we take per order
and the lays of pan. You know, roaster. You know,

(27:24):
I would take my roasted chicken, take the juice to
come out of the roust, add it back to this
and let that cook down, because you don't want to
waste anything that good. Jew you know, we love the juice.
What would the sauce be without the wine? Uh? Meaty um?
It would You would have to finish it with a
couple of drops of lemon juice or something to bring it,
you know, spark it up. It's something delicious you make.
I make Julie all the time without wine. But it's

(27:48):
definitely a complexity and have depth to this. It's because
of the wine. It makes a difference because of the wine.
And again, the right wine for the right dish. You
know this again, color wise, caramelization good for a roasted meat.
I would not serve this with a post item. You
know what would I would? I would would white white,
not colorized the vegetables and no tomato paste. White wine again,

(28:11):
but finished with cream and a white chicken stock. Would
be a much lighter sauce, maybe even a laison you know, egg, egg,
yolk and every cream. So this I think we're just
about the right. So I pulled off to the side
of the pants, so one side is bubbling, and then
you've got a convection sort of moving the starch granules
over the other side, which you can skim. That's it.
Look at it tastes. I mean, now you taste the

(28:32):
Now you have the viscosity from the collagen in the stock.
It's on the side of your tongue. That that's the
right texture because that will cope to the meat that
you eat. The juiceness comes out of the oven, the
juicy meats warm, the crispy skin, and then this juice
with the acid bounce. I mean, there's goodness in life.

(28:56):
So what we're left with here is a beautiful brown
sauce just right for roasted chicken, easy to do with
basic ingredients at home. It's got a thick nap, a consistency,
deep flavor, and acidity from the wine. When we come back,
we'll sit down with one chef and one wine producer

(29:16):
to talk more about wines and spirits. Because wines and

(29:40):
spirits can be such a casual pastime. I set up
a casual roundtable discussion with two guests that know a
lot about the subject. I met with wine producer Dave
Finney and chef Peter Kelly at Kelly's X two oh
on the Hudson. The restaurant overlooks a stunning view of
the Hudson River. The dining room features two seventy degree views,

(30:03):
which stretched to include Manhattan to the south, a huge
tree topped ridge to the west, the Palisades, and the
Tapanzee Bridge to the north. So beautiful here get you
can get lost in yonkers Um, the George Washington Bridge
in the distance, the sparkling Hudson, the Palisades. It's it's

(30:24):
it's an amazing, gorgeous this time of year. Yes, that
will be just a blaze. We got started by hearing
from Dave Finney. Dave came dressed in a windproof vest
and clean but well worn boots. He's straight out of
the Napa Valley. He also brought a dozen beautiful bottles
of wines and spirits. But we'll get to that. It's

(30:46):
allowed me to do is kind of get back to
the fun part of the wine business. I get to
be in vineyards. I get to you know what, what
is the fun part for me? It's vineyards. I'm this
is about his dressed up as you're gonna see me
I'm you look like a California wine guy. Oh well,
I'm much more comfortable in the byrds. That's to me
where I really add value. Um, and that's still I mean,

(31:09):
I have a huge, huge respect for all farming. Part
of Phinea's mystique because that he has famously been prevented
from making any zinfandel after getting stuck with an unusually
brutal non compete clause from a previous business venture. Then
you re emerged with a um eight years in the
desert wine, that's correct, And that was another's in. Yeah,

(31:31):
so um it was kind of like a fuck use
in to them. It was I like to say, it
was kind of the British way of saying tuck you.
Um uh. The sort of longer version of this story
is when we sold Prisoner in two thousand and eight,
I entered into an eight year noncompete on zinfandel, and
it was so punitive that I, like, I don't even

(31:53):
think I was allowed to say the words infandel, let
alone touch a grapevine or make wine from it. There
was no no one had a gun to my head.
I signed that, and whether or not it was the
right thing to do, it doesn't matter. And the way
I was raised, if you shake a man or a
woman's hand and you say you're gonna do something, then
you do it. And I felt that felt great for
about four minutes, because you know, I got my puffed

(32:14):
up and here I am doing the right thing. I
also don't like being told what to do. In a sense,
I was being told what to do because I was told,
you know what I can't do. And so that started
what ended up becoming a little bit of a unhealthy obsession.
Dave would wake up with ideas for his next sin,
call his I P. Lawyer and tell him his new

(32:35):
brand names and shake his head after reading them aloud.
He was in a strange place, in fact, quite lost,
and didn't know where to go next. You can't will
yourself out of an existential jam, but you don't have
to be passive either. He started doing what I've been
doing my whole life. I write to figure things out,

(32:55):
and that's what he did. Dave began writing short stories,
and fact it was his first story, Eight Years in
the Desert, that pointed the way to his comeback, Wine,
which he named after the story. In fact, eight Years
in the Desert was kind of a my interpretation or
continuation of one of my favorite short stories by Hemingway

(33:15):
Hills Like White Elephants. To continue his creative fit, he
and a photographer took a trip. We ended up going
down to Joshua Tree shooting a bunch of you know,
iconic cacti. Because then it became okay, well it's it's
eight Years in the Desert, the first vintage. Let's do
an eight pack with this, you know, highly stylized box
and with a first edition of the book, and it

(33:38):
talked about obsessive, it became very obsessive and um so
that was the first vintage of eight Years in the Desert.
And what you heard there is something that Finny has
a particular genius for merchandizing and marketing his wines. There's
a lot of wine out there, and if you're not
cake Bread or Decoy or Jordan's, how do you get noticed?

(33:58):
He realized that the label can be just as important
as the wine. But you've also got to have the wine.
Zimfandel is my favorite grape. It's my favorite kind of wine.
Tell me about Zen. Why you got into Zin? What
is it about Zin that you love? How does it
distinguish itself. When I first came to the Nap Valle, uh,

(34:19):
two things. I was right out of college, so I
didn't have a lot of money, and I was drinking
a lot of infandel because it was less expensive. So
I was those were the days. Yeah, no, it was.
It was. I mean, looking back now, was amazing what
you could buy for less than you know, fifteen bucks.
And then also I had a buddy guy named Dave
Brown who has a zinfandel vineyard, and he agreed to

(34:40):
sell me two tons of infandel, and which was my
first harvest, was like this love fest and everything came in,
you know, logistically perfect. There was no fighting over tanks,
fruit got ripe. You know, it's it was one of
the seminal vintages in the Napa Valley, although it has
an age very well. So I was like, oh, this
is great. You know it's gonna be like every year.
Well was the opposit, cold, wet, rainy, and totally got

(35:03):
my ass handed to me and realized, no matter what
we did, once we got the fruit into the barn
as we call it, there's no silver bullet, there's no alchemy.
You know, you can you can very easily turn a
great vineyard or great grapes into good wine, but you
can't turn a good vineyard into grape wine. And that
started the sort of the ethos that we still, uh

(35:24):
you know, live by is that we try to do
of our wine making in the vineyard and select good spots,
get you know, good aspects, farm it correctly, kind of
bring it in the winery and don't screw it up.
And then also accepting that sometimes you have this beautiful
vineyard that's southwest facing rocky soils and it should be
amazing and it's good, and then there's this thing that,

(35:48):
as my friends in France would say, that's where you
should grow potatoes, and it's this nasty looking vineyard and
ends up making the wine of the century. So what
is it about this grape that is appealing to you?
You know, it's it's as I mentioned, it was the
first varietal that I made commercially. But it's I think
by definition, your first love has to kind of break

(36:09):
your heart, and I had my heartbroken by it Zinfandelda
at first year, and then it kind of makes you
want to keep coming back. It's funny because we're gonna
be talking about peanot no wire. But coming up in
the wine business, you always hear how hard it is
to make peanut peanuts, this, peanuts that, and it's like
this unicorn and I'm always I would tell my buddies
that are peanut makers. I was like, well, come on
over here, and fucking makes in because it ripens unevenly,

(36:32):
it gets rot. You know, it's like so temperamental, and
you can have in the same cluster, you know, four
degrees of bricks difference. You know, regularly it can have
high acid, high pH and high sugar all at the
same time. Like how do you deal with that? And
most of the mines, you know, in the past and
still our old mines, so they're like temperamental, you know,
in and of themselves. So it's it's a challenge every

(36:54):
year and it continues to be. And and that's I mean,
I think what draws you back, you know, just when
you're like I'm never gonna fucking makes in again, You're like,
get a good night's sleep and you can't wait to
get back and like try to not conquer it, but
to make it. So I asked Dave what he thinks
about when smelling a wine in a perfect world. It's
that balance of the right amount of oak with the
right amount of fruit, with the right amount of of

(37:17):
almost confected perfumeness that seems like it's artificial. If you're
getting all that, then if it's not artificial, then you've
done something right. And a lot of the time when
the riper you pick grapes, to me, it's always been nuts,
You're you're giving up the aromatics. So it's like, if
you want that full body, if you want that alcohol,
if you want like all those those good components, you're

(37:38):
probably going to give up a little bit of the
floral notes and the sort of beauty of the aromatics.
And so that's what we're constantly playing with is trying
to figure out. You know, we don't pick everything is
super right. We don't necessarily want high alcoholis. We just
want to achieve that balance. No one's offered me a
glass of wine. Where's going on? We tasted eight years

(38:00):
in the desert. First it was good. Then we tasted
a new peanut noir that Dave is making and hadn't
been released yet. You know, it's hard to describe. U
Elegance is one way to put it. Um and versatile
would be another. I mean, it's got nice fruit, it's
got nice balance, it's got um, it's not as alcoholic,

(38:20):
and as Peter said, it would go with a sturdy fish.
You would go with like a nice piece of palibit
or something like. Yeah, it's not you know, the the
the peano. It doesn't have the ripeness of that and
and the sort of over the top of the uh,
the infandel wine. But it tastes less ripe. And so

(38:42):
in some ways when you're drinking, when you're drinking just
a glass of wine, you wanna sit down and just
have a glass of wine. I would tend to go
to the zinn because it gives you everything you want.
But once you taste this peano, you're sort of looking
for food. I gotta have some food at this piece
to cheese something you. Peter Kelly opened his first restaurant

(39:04):
when he was twenty three years old in Garrison, New York.
He's since opened numerous restaurants and has been nominated for
a Best Chef Award three times in a row. He
appeared on Iron Chef Beating Chef Bobby Flay. Before there
was a show called Beat Bobby Flay, and he was
featured on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations the Hudson Valley episode.

(39:27):
I began by asking for Kelly's thoughts about pairing wine
with food. So there's two schools of thought on pairing
food and wine. One is that, um, you want to
choose a wine that is similar to the food you're so.
So say you order a fish with it with a
rich cream sauce. You're looking for rich wine. I say

(39:49):
a Chardonnay, a overoaked, hugely buttery Chardonnay. That's gonna match
that dish. I have to say, I love oaked, but
old fashioned kissler. There's a lot of good ones, you know,
lim marches, you know, overall off that very often, so

(40:12):
I'm I'm a fan also. But the other way to
look at it is with the same dish, you might say,
let me go for a savignon blanc that's got this
real tartnis there's no wood. It will cut through the
richness with the acidic balance of it and um. And
that's another way to look at food and wine pairing.
It's more what you like and how you like to

(40:35):
um and it. You know, what you have to do
is you have to drink a lot to find out
that's the problem. But there is the school to it,
and it says that progression. So in the menu, say
you would start, you wouldn't start with the lamb. You
start with the oyster, and then maybe you go to
a fish, and then maybe a rice or pasta dish,

(40:59):
and then a bird and then a red meat and
then what's richer than a red meat, a cheese, and
then something sweet and the wines would follow in that
sort of progression. So with that oyster, maybe we have
a savignon blanc, something very light, and or maybe a
glass of champagne with it might be fine. You go

(41:19):
to the fish course and now you're going to bring
in a chardonnay, and you moved to a pasta and
you maybe do a light sanjo Vassy style Italian and
then you're gonna go to a bird, and now is
a time to let's get a peanut, no wah, that
has some you know, some elegance and richness to it.

(41:39):
And then you're gonna finish with a big fat um
red with your red meat. So it could be this
zin or a bordeaux, or you know, there's many options
and then you wind up with cheese. Might be the
time to bring in a fortified wine like a port
or something over the top like an armorone mean that,

(42:00):
you know, because it's very hard once you've um up
the you know, up the game to go backwards. So
if you had the peanut wah, you don't want to
go to a savineon blanc next because your palette just
can't deal with it. So, you know, progression is what
I always suggest. You like to eat and drink, you know,

(42:23):
talk about it. It's like I want this man, I
want this man a cook for me because you know
how to talk about it. Well, you just have to
eat and drink a lot. I think so too. I
asked both Peter and Dave for their tips unbuying wine
at a retail shop. Go to a store. If you
want to shop for wine in particularly, This is the

(42:44):
same if you want to shop for chickens, or you
want to shop for asparagus, go to a good food store.
If you want a shop for good wine, you have
to go to a good store and you want to
speak to the people that are at the store. I
could tell you right now ten wines that you go
out and getting they're delicious, And then you go to

(43:05):
your store and none of them are there, and now
you don't know what to do. You have to choose
a store, like you choose your butcher shop or your
where you buy your bread. You have to choose the
store that you feel comfortable and you and tell them
what you like, tell them the flavor profile that you
really like. Tell them if it's a gift and you
want to spend twenty dollars because they're just okay, are

(43:27):
you going to spend a hundred because you like them?
You know? And yeah, I would be frank like, if
you don't want to spend fifty hours on the bottle
of wine, just tell them say don't don't be embarrassed
about saying, I gotta keep it under twenty, because they're
a good under twenty bottle of dollar bottles of wine.
I mean those those six dollars bottles of wine that
you're buying at the restaurant or twenty at the store.

(43:47):
So you go to the wrong restaurant. But also, and
I used to give this question actually from my mom
a lot, and she's like, oh what should I buy?
You know, I like, because she's not a big wine
duringker I was like, Mom, you know, good to us store.
Get someone and they introduce you to something you like,
and you really like it, and it's priced right by
case because it's not going to be there next week

(44:09):
and it's going to be twice the price next year.
Buy what you like, Drink what you like. Good advice,
and you get a discount when you buy a whole case,
and you're you're going to be buying these wines anyway.
They're nice to have on a end. That's great advice.
So now we have bourbon, we do the vodka. First,
we have a vodka. We had vodka. Chef Peter Kelly,

(44:30):
in addition to his restaurants, has a company called Slovenia Vodka.
Believe it or not. He co owns it with Bill
Murray and the famous dancer Mikhail Barishnikov. They're all neighbors
up in the Hudson Valley just north of where we
were seated. And this vodka project actually began with Chef
Kelly seeking out interesting wines. I met this guy and

(44:54):
he presented me with all these Slovenian wines that you know,
and I've never heard of any of them, and but
I'm chassing them, and I was like, I was blown
away by the quality of the wines and from a
country I had never even heard of. So I've got
to go there. So I went to Slovania and I
flew to Venice and drove two hours to Slovenia to
Lubyana and then the wine areas and discovered met with

(45:16):
a many winemakers, discovered these projects that they all had.
But what I really discovered was that there was no vodka.
This is Eastern European country that had no history of vodka.
And it's funny because Sylvania was where Tito lived and
so the wars never went through there. I mean it
was I mean, it's so beautiful. But anyway, Um, so

(45:38):
they had no vodka, and they had this buckwheat that
grew everywhere. It was in there, every dish they served,
it was just grew wild. I thought, you know, what
if I make vodka with this buckwheat. So I was
working on the project and I have a friend Bill Murray,
the actor, comedian vodka drinker, and we started drinking and um,

(46:03):
I said, what do you think I had all these samples,
I mean, of all these different blends I was doing
and he loved it sort of after we you know,
by the seventh when he loved and he said, let's
call up Misha, Mikhail Barishtakov, who was a neighbor also,
and we called up he happened to be home, and

(46:25):
I said, come on over because we need somebody to,
you know, to authenticate what we're doing. And so he did.
And so anyway, we started this project together and here
we are you and it's fun, you know what I mean.
It's nice, but no, absolutely not. And you know the
buckwheat that we use in this. You know, buckwheat has

(46:46):
a high sugar content, so we get a richness out
of this, almost a viscosity on the palette. If you
taste this next to anything. The only way to tell
how good it is is to taste it really next
to another vodka, and you start to see that. I
don't like to ad mouth anybody, but there's almost a
fennel finish on this. It's really good. It's really I'm
not I'm not a fan of My wife doesn't drink

(47:07):
very much other than good burgundy and an occasionals in yeah, um,
but um, you know, we keep a bottle in the freezer.
It doesn't need it. And what's great is the square
bottle so it won't roll around. I haven't I have
black bottles, so my wife doesn't know how much I've
been drinking. I like that. I like that. Um, this

(47:28):
is a really rich almost um aged that's like an
aged quality. Yeah, I mean what it has is I
I mean, I think and I was astonished by the
it's rich rich. There's a viscons most writers have always
done by like well, I think you know it's actually
we use a vertical still and it's got to be

(47:49):
cleaned all the time because buckwheat is so high and sugar.
But anyway, but it's all about the water. I mean,
the truth is it's really really about the water. Wow,
I'm I'm as a sort of vodka skeptically. Uh, you
know they kind of moved. The truth is that how
much wine can you drink? Alright? Well, this is this

(48:12):
is a vodka that I could actually make a martini. Well,
I am I hate vodka martiniz I hate that they
called vodka martinis. They should not be, but this is deserved. Well,
this is this is up there with um, this is
up there with the with the what's crazy you mentioned
that the sucros are the futures, whatever the sugar is,

(48:35):
because when I tasted it earlier with you, it has
that like almost perception of sweetness. Yeah, there's there's things
it's awesome. Yeah, and not coin or manufactured but natural sweetness. Um,
what else you like about it? Dave? You know, I
think vodka can get a bad rap as being like

(48:55):
the most soulless there is because you can make it
from everything or anything, and and so when it's really
defined by its lack of flavor, so when it's really
good by definition, it's a neutrals here. Well, and that's
what I've been told about vodka that the more that
it tastes like nothing, the better it's considered, you know,
because it should just you know, but what I like

(49:15):
about this is it actually tastes like something and tastes
really good. It does you would be this would be
a good um neat with just minor embellishments or just
a twist a very small twist of lime live that's
it anything, keep it? Keep it called a twist of
lime is like you know you mentioned almost like an

(49:37):
aged characteristic. Yeah, like I did pick up on that, Peter,
do you cook with spirits at all I do, I mean, um,
would you cook with your vodka? If you go to
my website, any of the ka that com you find
all kinds of recipes my vodka because you know, I mean, um,

(49:58):
but we do on the on the website there's a
recipe for poached eggs, crab meat, um glaze and tomatoes
that are flamed with vodka. Um, tomatoes and vacca seem
to go Williams right, this goes great. Um and bourbon.
I love to cook with bourbon because and particularly um

(50:22):
with beef. Tell me how you do that. It's just
a reduction whatever stock you have in your house, whether
it's chicken or even if it's canned. You so tell
a little shallot, you add a good dollarp of bourbon
and bring it down with a little stock, and finish
it with a pad of butter and put it over
your steak. You can do that with like a decent

(50:43):
organic store bought stock. You can, I mean amatics. It's better.
It's better than not having sauce. Right, that's great. I
mean we you know lobster lobster stock as you do
glaze with Konjak's so um. It certainly makes sense, but
we don't think. I don't think to throw bourbon into

(51:04):
my sauces when I'm making a chicken sauce. It's funny.
The other night I had an open bottle of Basil
Hayden on the thing and I was doing a chicken
and some mushrooms with it. Whatever, I said, give me
the you know, and I just put it in there.
It was. It was awesome to be making like a
chicken shoe with mushrooms. You threw some bourbon, Suburban, and

(51:24):
we're gonna have to try that. You should. After the break,
we make our way to the inimitable David Lebowitz to
make some cocktails. Okay, this vodka was so unusual, I

(52:04):
had to tackle one of my great peeves in cocktail nomenclature,
the so called vodka martini. As everyone should know, martinis
are made with gin and a splash of vermouth. Period.
Other drinks change their name when the spirit changes. A
Manhattan becomes a rob roy when the spirit changes from
bourbon to Scotch. A Boulevardier is simply a NEGRONI made

(52:28):
with bourbon rather than jim. Why don't we have a
name for martini made with vodka. Well we do, but
no one seems to know it's called a kangaroo, or
they feel silly ordering it. But this vodka made me
rethink it all. Should I throw in the towel and
accept what can't be changed? And could anyone make a

(52:48):
decent vodka with vermouth cocktail? To answer both questions, we
made our way to my friend, the inimitable David Leboitz.
I'm here with my friend David Leboit, who is Connecticut born.
Became a pastry chef at Chaponnese on the West Coast,
but he's now really known for his writing about life

(53:10):
in France. He has several books about both memoirs and
cookbooks that explore life in France. And you live in
Paris now, um, and you've become an expert on their
way of eating drinking, and you have a new book
coming out called Drinking French. How did you get here?

(53:30):
I took the subway, the metro, I actually, um, I
started writing a blog about France when I moved there
before people knew what a blog was, and I had
already written a few books. Yeah, it must be said
that you were one of the first food bloggers ever yes,
I just celebrated my twentieth year congratulation. But I had
written a couple of cookbooks. But when I moved to France,

(53:53):
I found there was some I had gone to pastry
school in France, but I had found that there was
so much stuff that was really interesting UM, and a
lot of that stuff doesn't didn't at the time, didn't
get as you would say in French, had diffused. UM
didn't get discussed. You know, magazines might talk about like
top ten b stros to go to UM, and I thought,

(54:14):
oh my god, so funny. Every time you go to
a dinner party in France, you can't leave. You spend
two hours at the door saying goodbye UM. Or like
you know, people were shocked they cost likes or euros
if you lock yourself out of your apartment to get
a new key made you know, So all those things
were kind of funny to me. UM. Plus I was
discovering all these bakeries and pastry shops and chocolate shops

(54:37):
that nobody was um really writing about because magazines, uh,
you know, they came out once a quarter or once
a month, and they didn't really have the space or
they wanted to talk about the established places, the safe
places for people to go, like La Bakery, which are
both terrific, but there was also there was a sort

(54:59):
of a resurgence in France of young people opening bakeries
and pastry chefs, leaving their jobs at these esteemed hotels
and opening a little neighborhood bakery. And I loved writing
about them and sharing them. And I wanted to talk vodka,
my least favorite spirit. That's those are harsh words, um,
But I was just with a chef UM and Yonkers,

(55:23):
Peter Kelly, who has partnered with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Bill
Murray to create UM, a vodka that's made from buck
wheat grown in Slovenia, and I was really impressed by it.
And so I want to talk to you about the
vodka self. I wanted your evaluation as a as a
tasting expert as as you are indeed Um, to taste

(55:45):
the vodka, see what you think UM, and to talk
about what I think is the worst idea for a
cocktail ever, the vodka martini. It's also probably the most
popular popular junk in America. Either just lost half readers
or you're double your readers. Okay, well, what are your
thoughts on on the vodka martini. Um, I've actually never

(56:07):
had one. To me, vodka is a sort of a
tasteless alcohol. Um So, I don't understand the vodka martini
because you're basically drinking chilled, slightly deluded glass of alcohol
with some vermouth in it. And that's fine if you
like that. Um Once, you know, gin is vodka with

(56:29):
flavors in it. It's got botanicals, that's got juniper, um
bergamot or whatever. They use citrus, so there's more going
on in the glass. Um So, I always, you know,
I prefer jin martini. It's one of my favorite cocktails.
So that in the Manhattan my too too. Really, yeah,
I love Manhattan's. I used to drink more martinis. They

(56:50):
are sort of powerful and they go down very easily.
But also it's hard to get a good martini martini
more than any other cocktail. He used to be ice cold.
It can't be cold. It needs to be ice cold.
So there's a new trend now to pre bottle them,
pre batch them at bars and then they put them
in a bottle in the freezer, and I love that.

(57:13):
I actually like shaking martinis now too. You do why
because they're really cold. When you shake it, it gets
the ice moving, you know, the ice it breaks up
and it chills the cocktail. And some people, you know,
the whole thing about old bruises, the general that's been
widely disproven. Um, and you know, stirring it is fine,

(57:34):
but it doesn't get it as cold. I just hate
that the ice flow on top. That's the best part.
Little bits of ice that melt in your mouth that
are icy cold. Yeah. They used to do them at
the Four Seasons in New York. You would go to
the pool room and sit and they have these glasses
and the little bits of ice on top there were
It was perfect. Wow. I would I would have you

(57:55):
look like you want one now? Well, of course I wouldn't.
After that the scripture, I think I read something that
two out of every three martini served now is a
vodka martini. That's so sad. Yeah, so sad. You look
like you're gonna cry. Well that kind of stop. Don't
make Michael Roman cry. If you want to be on

(58:15):
this podcast, I want you to taste this vodka, okay,
and then I would love it if you would make
me and join me in having your first vodka martini. Okay,
you have to make it here? Did you bring it
or do I have to make it? Well? You said
you have some vermouth, and I brought the Slovenia vodka
that we that was made um by the company with

(58:36):
Murray Barishnikov and Peter Kelly. Okay, well, so I have
Dolan vermouth from France. Tell me about the vermouth. It's
actually um. A lot of people forget that France was
and is a major producer of vermouth, but's a different
style of vermouth. It's driver vermouth that France is known
for or um you would you know, it's like a

(58:57):
white or clear vermouth, and Italy is more known for
its red vermouth, which are fruitier, more juicy, whereas the
French ones are dryer. They're meant for martinis, um, but
they're also meant to drink like Neiley Pratt is a
famous vermouth that was the original vermouth of France. Um.
And interestingly enough, I went down there and they had
like a thousand barrels outside and they age the vermouth

(59:23):
in barrels outside, say oxidize, and that mimics the wine
arriving by ships from Spain, which is not which is
not far, but they wanted that salty air to attack
sort of speak. So that's why Noiley Pratt has a
specific it's a little yellowish um and it has that
sort of salty flavor. Um, thank you, I didn't know that. Well,

(59:43):
what's interesting is Noilly Pratt makes a vermouth exclusively for
the United States, and it's the extra dry um and
because there you can't get that in Europe. And it's specifically.
It's because Americans like martinis. They want we want a
dry vermouth, we want a clear one. They reformulated their
vermouth maybe fifteen years ago, and they miscalculated the American

(01:00:05):
market and people started pouring because in Europe people drink
vermouth as a cock, as a drink on ice, and
so they had this They put forth this heavily botanical,
you know, sort of lightly colored vermouth, and people started, uh,
They're like, I want my vermartini. This is not right,
and so Nertally Pratt quickly came out with this this

(01:00:26):
extra dry for the American market and the only place
you can get it in Frances if you go to
the distillery. All right, well I'm gonna go now get
the vodka that we put in the freezer moments not
too long ago. Small glass so that David can taste,
and you're gonna taste too. I will absolutely taste, all right.

(01:00:48):
So you got a little tumbler that just straight, big
but not kind of like the doctor's office when they
about to give you a shot. And that smell of
the swab comes out. You know, her whole detenses that.
M it's good. It's very Uh. It's not like the
alcohol doesn't burn. It must be distilled several times. Um.

(01:01:12):
It's almost like the buckwheat gives it a little bit
of sweetness. And we should not. This is not a
paid placement. It is not a paid placement. It's excellent. Okay. Well,
the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna measure
the ingredients and put them in a mixing glass. All right,
I've got a nice speaker. There, got four ounces of

(01:01:33):
vodka because that makes the easier. So we're gonna have
one ounce of drivermouth. Vermouth de chamberry and vermouth should
always be kept in the refrigerator. Vermouth is a fortified wine.
It doesn't have a lot of alcohol, so um, keeping
it in refrigerator keeps the botanicals fresh, and they say

(01:01:56):
that vermouth should be used within three weeks. Unfortunately, in
a ck you can buy these half bottles if we
can't get them in France. But they're quite good. So
we're going to fill the cocktail glass with ice. I'm
very dip jealous David as an icemaker. I have one

(01:02:17):
in Paris. It's great. So I'm gonna add a dash
of this eucalyptus. Bidders or these ul I'm never sure
as a cop from a copy editing point of view,
because the bidders plural say these are or this is bitterers.
It's one of those sheeps writers awake at night. I'm
trying to stir this stir? Should I grab the Coop's
not hong stir for so it's really cold at least

(01:02:41):
thirty seconds. And I've actually seen some bartenders who are
mixing up with super alcoholic drink. We'll let it sit
for a bit with the ice, just to calm everything
down and get it really cold. All right? Where are

(01:03:01):
those glasses? When I was writing Drinking French, which has
a chapter on cocktails, I realized every bartender I spoke
but hates the martini glass um. There's like a symbol
of um the eighties or nineties, and this is kind
of old. So I think they got overused. I don't

(01:03:23):
I don't mind them, but they can slash a bit
too practically speaking. Okay, so's pouring. What's the name of
that silver thing with a spring on it that you're using?
The strain trainer? Just a strainer, cocktail strainer, cocktail trainer.
It's another kind called a hawthorn strainer, which has a handle. Yes,
actually gorgeous. And we're gonna put a little bit of

(01:03:43):
lemon zest on it. Okay, that's beautiful. Why um um,
why lemon? And not? What are your feeling feelings on
olive versus lemon. I'm the world's number one olive fan,
and I actually realized I like olives, but I don't
like them in my martine, so I decided to go
with I actually liked a little bit of lemon in

(01:04:05):
the drink. I do too. I think the letter ring
is refreshing, and I think Roy Blunt said I only
drank martinis with ols because you can't eat a twist. Well,
I put the olives on the side because I still
like the olives. Um, this is a beautiful Now this
is a Slovenia vodka with Dolan vermouth and eucalyptus bidders,
which is now called the Slovenitini, Slovenitini, the Barigin n

(01:04:32):
Barigin Nicotini, or the Maritini. For Bill Murray, I think
that's a nice cocktail. Yeah, I think it could be
interesting with a little bit of orange in it. Maybe
the orange bidders would take take it sort of would
enhance the botanic calls. I'm going to add a dash
more of this eucalyptus bitters hella bitters. Um. No, it's

(01:04:56):
quite good. Well, it's good because it's very cold. It
was properly made, I must say. But you know, why
make a cocktail if you're going to serve in like
a lukewarm glass. And I was actually out having cocktails
with friends and they brought half the people their cocktails,
and um. In America, everyone's polite. They wait to be polite.
You wait for everybody to get everything and then you start,

(01:05:18):
whereas in France you eat right away because it's that's
that's when the food is right. So everybody's saying they're watching,
you know, their cocktails get warm for two minutes. I'm
like drink. They're like, no, we're waiting for you. Like
drink your cocktail. Believe me. Stressing out here, David's written
to fabulous and hilarious memoirs about living in Paris and
the things that he just described, called The Sweet Life

(01:05:40):
in Paris and Lapart, both available now, and his new
book will be out in March. Of the remarkable David Levewitz,
thank you so much. Special thanks to chef Brian Poulson
for making a simple chicken Juliet. He'll be back next

(01:06:01):
week making hollandaise sauce with me. Be sure to catch that.
Thanks also to Chef Peter Kelly for his hospitality in
hosting our Wine and Spirit's discussion at his gorgeous restaurant
X two O in Yonkers. And thanks to both Peter
and Dave Finney for all the wine and spirits. Lastly,

(01:06:21):
my new book is out. It's called From Scratch, but
it's all about cooking and ten meals that can teach
us all we need to know in the kitchen. We'll
have a link to it in the show notes and
on my site. From Scratch. The podcast is produced by
Jonathan Dressler. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Our supervising

(01:06:43):
producer is Gabrielle Collins. All the music on from Scratches
by Ryan Scott off his album A Freak Grows in Brooklyn.
If you like this show, please rate it give it
some stars because that helps other people. I'd the show
from Scratch, the production of I Heart Radio. For more

(01:07:05):
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
It's Friday night, It's seven seven, Get back,