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To Our Customers: Summer has come and gone. Fall is here--another change of seasons. This newsletter has unique wines and foodstuffs that I hope will make your mouth water. Rather than bore you with repetitious text, I have put in our website address to allow you to look up some products that will also be viewable. I hope you will find this format user friendly. Go to www.cortibros.biz Products in this newsletter are always available for purchase online. I hope that you will find them to your liking. Darrell Corti Melgarejo Composición Delicatessen is one of the best oils in Spain. In May, 2010, the 2009 harvest was awarded the prize for the best green sweet fruity oil made in Spain by the Ministry of Agriculture. To be awarded such a national award, the quality must be excellent and the quantity of oil available must be at least 20,000 liters or 40,000 bottles. The Melgarejo family produces a lot of oil in the province of Jaén, Andalucía, in southern Spain. Long bulk producers, they have begun to commercialize their best oils themselves, and the Composición Delicatessen is a wonderful blend of Andalucian Picual and Hojiblanca, with Catalán Arbequina, and Tuscan Frantoio, all grown on their groves in Jaén. The olives, from trees grown at elevations of 480 to 850 meters, were harvested in the first twenty days of November 2009, from both shaken trees and from trees harvested by “vareo” or beaten with poles. Extraction is by a two phase system which preserves the oil’s fruitiness. The oil is bottled only on demand, just before shipping. Our shipment was air freighted in to protect it from excessive heat. This superb oil is really what its name suggests: it is composed from different cultivars, whose oil is extracted by adjusting production techniques to preserve the individual quality of each. Then the different oils are blended. It is an oil with great flavor; green apple, leafy-ness, green almonds; balanced pungency and bitterness; a sweet entry in the mouth, medium bitterness, a bit more pungency--then again an almond-like finish, but with that balance and character of composition that shows different shades of flavor coming from the individual cultivars. You should experience Melgarejo Composición Delicatessen just to see what superb extra virgin olive oil is all about.
“Now what is Corti trying to make us do? Eat popcorn?” Well, frankly, yes! I happen to like popcorn very much. To me it is a satisfying snack and wonderful with drinks, but I am particular about the kind of popcorn. What I particularly like is white popcorn that pops in small, “crispy” pieces; not the large and more cottony textured popcorn. This is why I would like to tell you about the delicious popcorn produced in the Pacific Northwest called ERIN’S. Erin's All-Natural Original Popcorn is owned by a noted potato chip producer, Tim's Cascade. This popcorn is produced at the Tim’s plant in Algona, Washington. Popped from a white variety of Zea mays everta (popcorn to us) called 211W, it is grown on the Morrison family farm in Nebraska. It is a white cultivar, one of the more than 25 varieties planted in this country. In and of itself, popcorn seems to be such a simple thing. But it has a wonderful history. Although it is corn–maize to the rest of the world–of the four most common types of corn, only popcorn, pops! The other corns don’t. It is the drop of water stored inside the soft starch covered by the kernel’s hard shell which swells when popped. At 212 degrees the water turns to steam and at about 347 degrees, the pressure inside the kernel reaches 135 pound per square inch and bursts open the hull. The inside is “everted,” turned inside out, steam is released, and the soft starch, cooling immediately, forms the odd shape we know as popped corn. Known in the U.S. from early colonial days, popcorn has a very long history in MesoAmerica. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, one of the early missionary chroniclers in Mexico in the 1500s describes popcorn “called ‘momochitl’ a kind of corn which bursts when parched and discloses its contents and makes itself look like a very white flower...” In Spanish today, popcorn is called “palomita” little dove. One of the virtues of Erin's Popcorn is that you can indulge yourself at any moment you crave popcorn. All you have to do is open a bag, pour it into a bowl and go to town. Or: you can also eat it just out of the bag as I do. It saves time and fuss, and you do not get any “old maids,” the unpopped kernels that can remain in homemade popcorn. Erin's Popcorn is a delicious snack. It is satisfying and more-ish. It has one drawback: it can be addicting!
With the 2009 vintage, there ends a wine from the Napa Valley. Under our label, we have quietly sold, only twice noting it in our newsletter, a red wine produced from a small plot of vines grown on the Marchese Antinori’s vineyard at Atlas Peak, in the Napa Valley. This wine was previously labeled Corti Brothers Refosco Mondeuse. With the 2009 vintage the wine comes to an end. The vineyard has been pulled out. Mondeuse is a French variety from Savoie which had some history in the Napa Valley. Under the name Refosco, its most famous wine in the 19th century came from H.W. Crabb’s famed To Kalon vineyard in Oakville. It was known as “Crabb’s Black Burgundy.” It was the “hot” varietal in Napa Valley and other parts of California, and then it fell from fashion. The viticulturalists at UC Davis have always equated French Mondeuse with Italian Refosco, claiming that they were, in California, the same variety. Hence our previously dual named label. Now the people who control these things have objected, and so I have simply called this last harvest, Mondeuse. Many wine lovers will recall that at Beaulieu Vineyards in Napa Valley, mondeuse was part of Beaulieu’s famous “Burgundy” blend which had many fans. When Beaulieu pulled out its mondeuse, cuttings went to Monterey County and from there returned to Atlas Peak in the late 1980s. Planted on very poor soil, the vines produced very little, but they produced. All the previous vintages were vinified at Atlas Peak and bottled for us at Harbor Winery in West Sacramento. The last being 1997. Now we offer the final vintage, 2009. Corti Brothers Mondeuse 2009 was produced for us at Napa Cellars in Yountville. The 2009 vintage produced 3.34 tons of grapes, harvested on October 24, 2009, at 20.4 Brix with a pH of 3.50, total acidity of .51. The wine at bottling had 11.4% alcohol, 3.73pH and .59 total acidity. This bottling produced 138 cases. Corti Brothers Mondeuse 2009 is not great wine, or a wine for the ages. It is merely a joyful wine, bottled young, under Stelvin caps, and meant for drinking, but not hurriedly so. I had it bottled under Stelvin so that there would be no TCA problems. I will be interested in seeing how it develops with time. So should you. The wine has a good dark color, with a scented, slight rose-like perfume; a soft flavor typical of the variety, with some spiciness and pleasant tannin for palate interest. The wine has 11.4% alcohol, although the label says “table wine” a term that can be used if the wine is under 14% alcohol. I think you will enjoy it.
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Corti Brothers
Sacramento CA
