Wines from "Ekovinlådan" - part 1

I do, weirdly enough, have a sommelier degree. However, with 2 little kids there is no way I have the time to taste my way through as many wines as I'd need,in order to be anywhere near confident in my wine knowledge. I know what I like, and tend to stick to buying the same type of wines over and over again. This is safe, but it does get boring. Therefore I sometimes like to take advice blindly. If someone recommends something I go for it, even though I might have this little voice somewhere saying "Is this really a good idea?". Well, the worst that can happen is that I buy a crappy wine, in most cases I get to try something new and delicious that I wouldn't have known about if I hadn't tried.

In Sweden, there is this company called Ekolådan. They most commonly deliver ecological vegetables to your door. When I found out they had this crate of ecological wines you can order I decided to give it a try. Check it out here (links to a page in Swedish).

There is a new crate for every season, I went for the "spring" one. There are 6 wines in a crate, in the one I got there were one rosé, 2 white ones (one fresh and one full flavoured) and 3 reds (one fruity, one spicy one full bodied). Also, a note came with the wines with some background info and serving suggestions.

The first wine we tried was the spicy red one: "Le 20 Rouge", 2008, from Appellation Côtes du Roussillon Contrôlée. It's made from syrah, grenache och carignan and described as tasting a lots of herbs like thyme, bay leaf, rosemary and pepper. It's supposed to be great served with lighter meat dishes and roasted root veggies.

This is, what I call, a very French wine. All elements are well integrated and nothing really sticks out, which makes it hard to describe. It's the "archetype of red wine" type of wine. There is fruitiness, most notably blackberries and dark cherries. Also some salami, smoke and pepper from the Syrah. There is a green and herby element as well, but I don't get all those herbs described by the vendor. It's medium bodied, 12.8% alcohol. The acidity is pretty high. The tannin bite is at medium. It's not a wine to enjoy by itself, it needs some food to go with it in order to really shine.

Is it a good buy? Hm, I not sure. You can buy a bottle at Systembolaget for 125 SEK. I think that's quite much. This is the sort of wine that French farmers drink by the cup to quench their thirst after a log days work at the arbour. It is a proper, but after all, pretty rustic wine. I'd be happy to give something like 80 SEK for it, but then, I don't how much is fair to add to the price as the wine is biodynamically made.

I improvised a dish to serve with the wine, round steak stuffed with garlic and herbs. In Swedish, round steak is called "rumpstek", and the Swedish name of my dish (örtfylld rumpstek) in direct translation in to English is "Herb stuffed ass roast". My son thought this was the funniest thing he'd heard in a long time and went on laughing about it for half a day. Sometimes I envy him his sense of humour!

Herb and garlic stuffed round steak, served with roasted root vegetables and feta sauce.

1 round steak
half a garlic
1 dl olive oil
big pinches each of dried rosemary, thyme, basil or whatever dried herbs you've got on hand. Fresh ones probably work great as well!
salt
pepper

carrots
potatoes
beetroots

feta
thick yoghurt
olive oil

Some hours in advance:

Make the marinade and stuffing: Run garlic, olive oil, herbs, salt and pepper in a blender.

Cut a big slash right into the meat, like you're cutting a cake into 2 layers, but don't slice all the way.

Rub the garlic and herb marinade onto the meat. Make sure that a lot of the garlic and herbs go into the slash.

Tie up the meat with a piece of string.

Let meat rest and marinate in a cool place.

About one hour before eating: Heat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Cut the root veggies into bite sized pieces. Spread them on a baking pan. Drizzle with olive oil, leftover herbs, salt and pepper.

Put veggies into the oven.

After 30 minutes: Lower oven temperature to 150 degrees C.

Put a thermometer into the meat, put meat in oven.

Roast the meat until termometer shows 58 degrees C. This took me half an hour.

Meanwhile, watch the root veggies, if they start getting to black for your liking, remove them from oven.

While meat is roasting, make the sauce.

Mash feta and stir in some yoghurt. Taste with olive oil, salt and pepper.