The Worst Liquor Store in Edgewater

It was with great trepidation that I entered the only liquor store South of my apartment off Broadway, to find a wine to drink with the prosciutto cotto, bacon and onion pizza I had just ordered from Apart Pizza, which recently opened in the neighborhood. All of the liqour and wine there is held hostage behind the counter, and I feared the worst. Such are the vagaries of wine marketing, that you never quite know what you're going to find, even at a liquor store with more malt liquor than wine. Imagine my surprise at finding a Renwood Zinfandel "Sierra Foothills" 2005 standing dusty on a top shelf. If there was ever a wine merchant with poor storage conditions, this would be it. The Korean proprietress, who was surprisingly jovial, assumed that I was looking for White Zinfandel. "No," I said. "I'd like a bottle of the Red Zinfandel."

When she pulled it down, she touched the tip of her finger to the top of her nose, laughed, and then addressed herself, "bad," she said, "very bad. Customer look for Red Zinfandel, and I tell them we don't have it, and here it is."

I certainly was equally surprised. I didn't expect a label I once recommended at Charlie Trotter's to be sitting on the top shelf of her store either. Sure, it's their basic bottling, but this is a wine you'd find at Kafka, whose environment is distinctly more wine friendly than where I was.

It's been an amiable companion to the pizza. The nose has a certain austerity, even as you can smell the fruit and alchohol, with black pepper and nutmeg at the forefront, but this light bodied wine doesn't just have jammy raspberry and blueberry fruit, but also a pleasing acidity that can match a tomato, and a tight bud of flavor that flowers in the mouth and throughout the finish, which posed a certain sweetness against the bacon and ham, and cut the saltiness of both.

There's a certain tyranny in the reification of food and wine pairings as a minor cult among food and wine cognoscenti. Larry Stone once remarked that every dish should favor either a white or a red, if the wine is well-chosen, and I think there are a number of wines that can complement any dish, the best choice being the wine you actually have on hand. I could've happily drunk Alsace Riesling with this pizza, Oregon Pinot Noir or Loire Cabernet Franc. I certainly could've drank more of the Zaca Mesa Roussanne, but I think I would drink that with anything, come to think of it. Maybe not a Pastel de Tres Leches, but if I had both on hand, I might let them fight it out.