Sausage and sweet wine

Toward the end of the year and when all the vegetables are gone, I clean up the vegetable garden. I make compost in the vegetable garden during winter to prepare for spring so the once lively garden is now a pile of dirt.

The garden looks empty but herbs are still there. I consulted with one of my favorite savory baking books, “All Day Baking” by Pippa and Michael James, and chose to make Pork, Sage and Onion Sausage Rolls.

All three herbs called for in this recipe, rosemary, sage and thyme, were in the garden. I must have been destined to bake this pie. I used shortcrust pastry instead of Puff pastry so it was quick and easy, but the pie was still so delicious.

We had this pie with Hans Lang Riesling Auslese Rheingau 2002

Auslese is a wine category in Germany. It indicates that the wine is made with very ripe grapes which have the high sugar content therefore the resulting wine is often sweet.

So, this wine was sweet but not too sweet. The sweetness was embraced with the minerality and fresh fruits, and together they created the depth of the flavor which was a good combination with the savory flavor of the sausage.

Some people say that they don’t like Riesling because it’s too sweet. Many of them had an unpleasant experience with the once popular cheap sweet Riesling.

Riesling is not always sweet (or cheap). Especially with the global trend for the drier wine you can easily find the dry Riesling wine from anywhere. To make it easier, the wines from Alsace carry the sweetness level guide on the label so that you can make sure that you are purchasing the dry wine.

And the well made sweet Riesling is far from the boring sweet alcoholic juice. The sweetness is perfectly balanced with the bright acidity, and with the rich flavors of fruits and herbs which are developed during the long growing season under the ideal condition for this variety, this sweet liquid becomes the wine with the depth and complexity, just like this bottle of Riesling.

I didn’t choose this wine to pair with this pie. The wine was happened to be open the day and I just tried them together without high expectations, and the outcome was surprisingly pleasing. I love when the food and wine pairing gives me the delicious surprise.

Finally fall baking

One of the things I feel lucky to live in the Bay Area is that the summer is relatively cool. However, with the global warming even the summer here is becoming hotter and makes me to hesitate to turn on the oven. Now it’s finally starting to cool down. It means, it’s time to bake.

The first pie to bake for the fall of 2025 is my favorite - Cornish pasties.

The pie dough was shortcrust pastry - as usual I substituted the half of the flour with the spelt flour. And the filling was almost vegetarian: onion, spinach, potato, Swiss cheese and shio-koji.

When it was done, I grabbed them and headed to the neighborhood wine bar where I could bring the outside food to find a glass of wine to pair with.

Finding good pairing was not as easy as I thought. I tried several glasses of white wine and found most of them made the pasties bitter. After a few attempts I finally found nice pairing.

Domaine Jérôme Gradassi  Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc 2019

Organic white wine from a small estate in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The variety is 100 % Clairette Rose.

Pleasant aromas of herb, jasmine, ripe citrus like lime. Fresh acidity is wrapped in the roundness of the texture.

This wine was fun to drink by itself, and brought out the umami flavor of the vegetables when I had it with the pasties.