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Big Wine with Giant Shrimp

The easy call for wine to go with shrimp is a brightly acidic white. Since there are so many of those, it's particularly easy to come up with something novel to delight your customers or friends. The bright light whites work especially well if the shrimp are presented near-naked without much saucing and with a slightly fatty coating. Think sauteed in butter, or grilled with olive oil and understated herbs.
But if the cook is more ambitious, these wines start to get watery pretty quickly. Let's say the dish is shrimp with pasta, and let's say that the pasta is dressed with a sauce made from onion and guajillo peppers and a touch of cream. Suppose you're complicating things a bit more by sprinkling the pasta with little cubes of crispy sweet potato. What's a sommelier to do?
One of the easy choices is a great big Condrieu laden with peach and apricot and lying thick in the mouth. Unfortunately, Condrieu is-for most of us-hideously expensive. Other Viognier-based wines have a pretty normal price/quality curve too. You might try an Orange Muscat, but I wish you luck finding one, especially a dry version. So what's left? Most of us would move to a red, but are there any whites that are big enough and cheap enough? How about the Argentine specialty Torrontes? (torr-on-TES)
This grape seems to be related to white Malvasia, but there's a big gap between Malvasia in the eastern Mediterranean and Torrontes which grows only in South America. Whatever the history, this is a chewy-bodied wine with a load of peach blossom and apricot aromas and refreshing citrus in the mouth. The best news is that two of the best examples to be found in the Delaware Valley are reasonably priced. Look for Alamos, which is bringing in a bottle at around $8 and Alta Vista Reserve at about $12.

Lynn Hoffman, author of The New Short Course in Wine

Vina Borgia Campo de Borja 2005 $5

No, that's not a typo. Five bucks. A bottle.

I'll take another sip while you recover from your shock. This is a more-than-drinkable wine at a laughably low price. It's the kind of wine that could lead to a lot more people enjoying wine on a regular basis and increasing the overall Pleasure Quotient (PQ) in these United States. Here, here.
What you've got is a ripe fruit bouquet, berries and cherries with a hot spicy accent. The wine is medium to full-bodied in the mouth with a lightly tannic finish that has a bitter, appetite provoking snap that leaves your mouth watering. 100% Grenache and a spirited 14% alcohol, this bottle has a shelf life of three or four days if well-kept.
Brought to us by Jorge Ordonez and Tempranillo, Inc., this is rockin' good wine at a great price. Buy all you can and enjoy over the next year or two. Serve cool-62-65 F.

Civilized Syrah: Liberty School 2004 $10

When winelovers talk about things other than wine, they sometimes use wine as a metaphor, as a way to take some ineffable experience and eff about it anyway. You can’t really blame them; when you’re smack up against how difficult the world can be to figure out, wine is both a good example and an excellent consolation. So when winos want to discuss the difference between power and finesse, between let’s say Ed Rendell and Mario Cuomo, they look for winey examples. On the power side, the first wines that come to mind are the ones made from the Syrah grape. These are wines that burst their way into your mouth with enormous flavors and leave your senses exhausted.

At their worst, they’re inky, over-ripe and overwhelming: Nicole Smith. At their best, they’re a voluptuous universe unto themselves: Sophia Loren. Some of the most famous Syrah-based wines are made in the northern Rhône Valley in France. The greatest of these are rare, expensive, special-occasion numbers like Hermitage and Côte Rotie. The northern Rhône also produces the more common but extremely variable Crozes-Hermitage.

More reliable Syrahs come from California and Australia. The Australians call the grape Shiraz. Down there Shiraz is the backbone of their greatest wines. In the New World, the winemakers’ struggle seems to involve getting some nuances of flavor into the thick, dark taste. You can find out more on p.77 of The New Short Course in Wine.

Given this background, it's surprising to come across a Syrah that was an attention-getter before dinner along with a bit of cheese and then a delightful accompaniment for a squid and lobster salad. The wine is from Liberty School, a California stalwart.
The bouquet included the predictable smoke and plums but also carried a wonderful floral note. The peppery flavors on the finish were backed up by a nice acidity and just the right touch of tannin.
Tasted at Bobby Flay's at the Borgata, Atlantic City, New Jersey.