Yesterday afternoon we enjoyed some rose's with friends on the deck, a nice comfy drink to celebrate a big task we'd just completed together. We started with 2018 Sokol Blosser estate pinot noir rose, which is quite good though some would find it a bit too tart. I don't, while realizing that the acidity on that one is above the norm, and there's definitely no RS.
I thought the company would leave after one glass, but they didn't quite, so I opened a 2017 Whispering Angel from last year. Then company left and Bob and I poured ourselves a second glass of this, and I realized that we better put some food in our tummies. So into the kitchen I went thinking I'd slice up a huge watermelon radish I'd just bought. When I do this, I get perfectly even slices from the Benrinner, then layer them on a plate with a mild spritz of white wine vinegar and salt. The radishes are SO good you almost forget they're health food--it's an easy way of getting more raw fiber into your diet and beat the heck out of the fatty cheeses and salamis typical of American pre-dinner snackfood.
But before I found the radish in my overcrowded fridge, I found a rutabaga I bought a few months ago. HMMMMMM. So I peeled, sliced and plated the rutabaga just like I do a big radish and served it. "WHAT", said Bob, "is THAT?"
It looked just like a radish in the way it had radial streaks out from center just like the watermelon and purple daikons I serve the same way, but it was instead very close to the pale warm golden-pink shade of the rose wine, and the slices varied in intensity of color as the actual rutabaga does depending on whether they came from the top or bottom of the vegetable.
So Bob tasted a slice and declared it "a wonderful new radish!" Then, "it IS a radish, isn't it?"
"No, it's a rutabaga."
"Can't be. I hate rutabegas," he declared. But of course he loved it. And the thing is, it was a SPLENDID match with the wine. Earthy and lightly sweet, it played straight into the wine's evolved, less fruity more everything else, flavor after a year of storage.
Pretty awesome discovery. And I'll be buying a lot more rutabegas.