Wine

By Leigh Pomeroy

What's new and different in Mankato wine

It's always great to see a growth in options in the local wine scene.

For example, in December I found a bottle of Zlatan Plavac on a shelf at MGM Liquors in Mankato. Lest you wonder if this is a bottle from Mars, I assure you it's from much nearer: Croatia, to be exact. And in fact, it has a definite connection to a well-known California wine.

To translate: Zlatan is the producer and Plavac is the most widely planted red varietal in that country. To get a bearing, because geography is hugely important with wine, Croatia lies on the same latitude across the Adriatic Sea from the famed Veneto wine region in Italy, so they have a very similar climate.

So what is Plavac's relationship with California? Plavac is a cross between the varietals Dobricic and Crljenak Kaštelanski (also known as Tribidrag), the latter being the true ancestor of today's Zinfandel, also known as Primitivo in Italy.

Seeing a Plavac on a wine shelf is a good example of Mankato retailers stocking wine other than the normal (often boring) array of domestic Cabernet and Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc.

As I've indicated often in these columns, many of these wines are produced by the same half-dozen or so mega-conglomerates that strive to market a commercial product rather than offer a unique taste experience. "I now have a competitor down the street," says Greg Dembowski, owner and manager of the Mankato MGM, "but that's good because smaller distributors are finally incentivized to come down to Mankato and give us more choices."

That "competitor" is Carter and Neah Person's Cork and Key, where in December I sampled some unique wines from the Libation Project, a relatively new distributor concentrating on wines from smaller U.S. and European wineries. One of those producers, Wiley Wines, was offering four of their bottlings: the rare Italian varietal Ribolla Gialla, plus Riesling, Grenache and Syrah.

Wiley Wines, while made in California with California grapes, does have a Minnesota connection. The winemaker, Phineas Fittipaldi, splits his time between his Minneapolis home and the co-op winery where he makes his wines in Monterey County.

Meanwhile, our local wineries are not standing still. Morgan Creek Vineyards has re-offered Krambambuli, a sweet red Minnesota blend infused with raspberry and chocolate. Co-owner Paul Marti said the name Krambambuli originates from a German drinking song that goes on about health, eating, drinking, etc., for countless verses.

The label itself is quite striking, having been designed by local artist Rachel Klimpel to represent the winery's evolution of its biodynamic journey into farm identity and craft specialty.

Back to the Zlatan Plavac. Since I've had less than a handful of Croatian wines and certainly not this one, I had to try it. And knowing its connection to Zinfandel, I had to prepare the perfect meal.

First, I marinated a flank steak in a mixture of soy sauce, Worcestershire, Dijon mustard, horseradish, garlic and pepper. Then I diced some yellow potatoes, leaving the skin on, and sautéed them in Greek virgin olive oil with diced red onion, sundried tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms, garlic, salt and pepper.

When the potatoes were almost done, I added parsley, sage and basil from my indoor herb pots, cooked the combination for a few minutes more, then placed the mixture in a Corningware dish, covered it and put it on the stove warmer.

Since the potato mixture left a crust in the pan, I covered that with more olive oil, heated it to mediumhigh, then put in the steak. I cooked the steak for about 5 minutes (no more) on each side, watching for the juices to come to the surface, meaning it was medium rare, then pulled off the steak to let it sit for a couple of minutes.

I added the remainder of the marinade to the hot skillet until it bubbled. I sliced the steak thin against the grain, plated it along with the potatoes and poured a bit of the hot marinade over the meat.

I served this with a salad of organic greens, cashews and blue cheese with my Italian-style lemon vinaigrette, and voilà! I had a meal to go with the Plavac, which turned out to be a wonderful taste surprise, spicy and berry-like — like a good Zinfandel from Ridge, Stephen Ross or Seghesio, but at a fraction of the price.

Živjeli! ("Cheers!" in Croatian).