Winter Whites

Fall weather and then winter, with cozy fireplaces, hot stoves, and wool sweaters make me think of braises, stews, and other hearty food. And usually that means red wine. Who could argue with a red Burgundy to pair with your braised beef in red wine and a crusty baguette?

I'm certainly not here to argue, and I love exactly that pairing. So why do I find myself so drawn to white wines these evenings, even as all the leaves have finally turned yellow and red on our block and we need to turn the heat on at night? Now we eat root vegetables and soups with lamb and beans and things like that, but I'm looking through our reds to find the right wine and I come back with a cold, crisp, and complex bottle of white wine. "Don't worry honey, I think it will pair just right."

Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't, but it's what I crave lately. And I don't think the explanation is as simple as I'm having trouble letting go of summer. Nope. I just like the way the brightness of the whites is working for me, even with traditionally red wine foods like steak.

Here are a couple of whites I've enjoyed lately with fall food:

2006 Nigl Gruner Veltliner Kremser Freiheit, (about $18, widely available). We opened this to have with seared scallops, to be honest, but the next night it was wonderful with porkchops and butternut squash. Not a full bodied wine by any means, but a well balanced wine, with floral and wet rocky smells and well defined citrus flavors, really good acidity. We loved this wine at our blind Gruner tasting earlier this year. Sounds crazy, but I would open this right now with a good burger, one made with grass-fed beef, maybe with some pickles and sweet potato fries...

NV Domaine de Montbourgeau Crémant de Jura, (about $18, Prospect Wine Shop, moderate availability). Opened as an apéritif but we just couldn't stop, and we enjoyed this with a simple hangar steak dinner, some broccoli rabe with garlic. This was a really interesting sparkling wine, full of character. Recommended to me by the always reliable Amy Louise Pommier at Prospect Wine Shop, it is 100% Chardonnay. A rich nose of yeast and lemon peel, very mineral. This wine was very focused, incisively mineral and citrus, lots of chalk, almost salty. Something deeper in the middle was missing (or else it would be Champagne, I guess), but the finish was quite nice. It turned out to be better with food than on its own. And this is blood-rich hangar steak we're talking about, not a veal cutlet. There's just something so nice about the piercing acidity of a wine like this against the rich meatiness of a steak. Go ahead, try a sparkling wine with your next steak, and then call me crazy if you dare. Just make sure it's not some insipid and sweet mass marketed sparkler.

And speaking of wines that go well with steak, I love Savennierès in the cool weather. There is something so wintery to me about a mature Savennierès - the rich roast nuts, the broad and slightly honeyed minerals, the quinine that lingers after I swallow. With a veal stew or pork roast with fennel and acorn squash, or something like that...YUM. Or, you could go with a young wine, which while less complex maybe, can still have the power to stand up to a skirt or hangar steak.

And I haven't even touched on white Burgundy, although I'm POSITIVE that my 2005 Dureuil-Janthial Rully La Martelle would be great with what I'm about to eat tonight - beef braised in vegetable stock with turnips and carrots, and just a few San Marzano tomatoes, a green salad, a baguette. Not to be, though. I still have a cold and I'm not drinking, so BrooklynLady picked the wine for tonight and she went with a 2001 Usseglio Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Hmmm, impossible to find a wine in our cellar that is more of an opposite to what I've just been talking about.

So what do you think - am I nuts? Can you get with this a little bit - this white wine and fall food thing? If so, what whites would you suggest pairing with cool weather food.