Be not afraid of pairing wines with this meal. Here’s a list of tricks and treats to pour with each course.
TUNA TOMATO TARTARE
Try Torbreck Barossa Valley Woodcutter’s Semillon ($15): Fleshy and almond-flavored, it will wrap itself around the rich tuna.
Or, take the opposite approach with Weingut Knoll Wachau Loibner Ried Loibenberg Smaragd Riesling ($50), which has dagger-like acidity to slice through the richness, as well as a rather spooky rendering of St. Urban, the patron saint of wine, on the baroque label.
BEET-CHIPOTLE SOUP
Edmunds St. John El Dorado County Bone-Jolly Gamay Noir ($17): Look for the label with the two skeletons playing musical instruments: It contains a lovely, juicy, blood-red wine that would do well against the sweetness of the beets and the spice.
Bonny Doon’s Le Cigare Volant ($36): Smoky, spicy and a deep, dried-blood red, this Rhône- style blend features a rather eerie flying cigar beaming its rays down to a vineyard, a reference to a law in Châteauneuf-du-Pape prohibiting the landing of UFOs.
BISON RIBEYE ROAST
Egri Bikavér: Any that you can find will do (and most run less than $15); the name means Bull’s Blood, and this Hungarian wine lives up to its name with its sanguine, rustic, get-in-there-with-your-hands-and-eat-buffalo sort of flavor.
Concha y Toro Casillero del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon ($11): The founder of Concha y Toro, Don Melchor, dubbed his wine cellar “the devil’s cellar” in an attempt to keep his workers from drinking the wines. Or, at least, that’s what they say: a dark, damp cellar is, after all, a perfect place for a spook to hide.
Aged in the devil’s cellar, this red has the rich fruit and firm structure to stand up to this hunk of meat. (Actually, the cellar was dubbed “the devil’s cellar” by Don Melchor, founder of Concha y Toro, who was trying to dissuade his workers from sampling his wines.)
Devil’s Lair Margaret River Cabernet ($20): The devil lurks everywhere in the wine world; in this case, in a cave near this Australian winery. Maybe it’s his mysterious ways, or maybe it’s just the bitingly cold winds that give this wine a lean, iron-fisted structure and midnight-black fruit flavors that will cut through thick slices of blood-rare bison.
CHOCOLATE DEVIL CAKE
Bonny Doon ($16): Watch out: Infused with raspberries, this dark dessert wine is so hedonistic that you, too, might get the look of the devilish circus monkey on the label.
Alternatively, pick a Port: Ruby Ports are as deep, dark and luscious as this cake. Fonseca, Graham’s and Ramos-Pinto are trustworthy names, and run only about $15 a bottle.
-Tara Q. Thomas
