Neyers Vineyards Bruce's Journal
A Perfect Birthday Dinner
By Bruce Neyers
Thursday 19th December, 2024
The 2020 ÂME Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon – An embarrassment of riches
I celebrated a birthday recently. As the date approached, Barbara began turning our conversations in the direction of what to cook for my birthday dinner. She could still get chanterelles at the local market, she said, so she might do my favorite pasta dish of orecchiette with wild mushrooms and pancetta. Then too, the weather was mild enough outdoors to grill, so she could fire up a Chateaubriand for Steak Fajitas. Of course she could bake one of those small Tennessee cured hams I love, and serve it with sides of chard and macaroni and cheese. I agreed with them all – I’m sort of easy — but I asked that the meal start with her Goat Cheese Salad. It’s a favorite, and goes so well with red wine. Moreover, we don’t have it often, so it’s an ideal gift. I began to think about the wines we’d serve. Years ago when I was getting my start in the wine business, a friend and I came across two magnificent old French red wines. We planned to drink them together by going to a favorite restaurant, Modesto’s in San Francisco. Our company did a lot of wine business with Modesto, and I learned many valuable food and wine lessons from him. One of the most important was to not hesitate serving a great wine with simple food. Not much of what Modesto served was simple, but when we told him of our plan, he proposed an evening of several pasta dishes with our storied old bottles. When Barbara agreed to prepare a goat cheese salad for my birthday, I thought immediately of the Neyers 2005 ÂME Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. Dave Abreu planted the ÂME Vineyard for us in 1997 and 1998 – it was a two-year project – and the first wine from those grapes that we bottled separately under the ÂME label was from the great 2005 vintage. Our daughter Lizzie proposed we try it alongside the 2020 ÂME Vineyard Cabernet. I recently came across a review of the 2020 ÂME:
Neyers 2020 ÂME Cabernet Sauvignon 92 POINTS from Wine Enthusiast
“Gorgeous, indulgent fruit and chocolate flavors infuse this big but velvety wine as it drips with blackberries, blueberries and black cherry syrup. It is full bodied, softly tannic and entirely mouth-filling.” — Jim Gordon
Sounds delicious, doesn’t it? The goat cheese salad was all I expected, and more. The idea of serving the two bottles of ÂME Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon side by side was great. The Pasta with chanterelles was yummy, by the way.
Goat Cheese Salad
Ingredients
-
- 1 8-ounce fresh goat cheese log
- 1 tablespoon minced shallot
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- ½ cup breadcrumbs
- ¼ cup red wine vinegar
- ¾ cups extra virgin olive oil
- 8 cups loosely packed lettuce leaves
- 8 croutons
- Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
Preparation
- Slice goat cheese into 1/2-inch thick discs.
- Drizzle each disc with olive oil, then coat both sides with breadcrumbs.
- Whisk together shallots, mustard and vinegar, then slowly whisk in the olive oil.
- Lightly brown goat cheese on both sides in olive oil. I prefer to sauté the cheese, but you can also broil it in an oven.
- Toss lettuce leaves with vinaigrette to lightly coat with dressing, then season with salt and pepper. Garnish with croutons, then top with warm goat cheese discs.
The ÂME Vineyard was planted on our Conn Valley Ranch property by Dave Abreu in 1997 and 1998. The parcel combines a fascinating mix of soils — gravel, loam and basalt — a dramatic south-facing slope, high elevation that lowers summer temperatures, and a natural drainage pattern that is ideal for Cabernet Sauvignon. The magnificent 2005 vintage was our first year to harvest these grapes.
We served the goat cheese salad as a first course that night, and decanted the 2020 ÂME to open it up a bit. I like to do this with all bottlings of Cabernet Sauvignon that we drink. I also chilled it a bit in the refrigerator, for about an hour prior to service. The goat cheese was domestic, and the croutons were from a sourdough baguette made by our local bakery.
Neyers Vineyards AME Cabernet Sauvignon
Barbara the cook in her whites c.1988. She’s explaining the preparation of one of my earliest goat cheese salads. I’m seated with my late mother, Elsie Cooper Neyers of the Hebron, MD Cooper family, soy bean farmers in Wicomico County, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It was my mother’s first goat cheese salad as well.
