Hard to read the label in this picture but the title of the post takes care of that. That delicious food you see is the chicken curry and pork fried rice from Saigon, a vietnamese restaurant 40 mins away. We found this gem years ago back when I lived in that area and it truly is a gem. Their chicken curry is out of this world: it’s not super spicy, it almost has a sweetness to it, simple with onions, potatoes, and chicken…and it’s under $10. We also enjoyed the Pho which is a vietnamese broth based soup with rice noodles, bean sprouts, basil, and meat. Both dishes are amazing and worth the drive. I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet…Saigon is BYOB…and no corkage/open bar fee! Moby and I have been in search of BYOB restaurants in MA  for a while now and sadly there aren’t too many. We’ve found two sushi places with $20 and $30 open bar fees to BYOB but that’s it so far. If you have any MA BYOB restaurant recommendations we’d love to hear from you.

The 2010 Silberberg was just as good as the food. Gewurztraminer goes extremely well with  Asian food as it cuts through spice and has a backdoor sweetness to it to match a lot of the sauces used. If you’re ever getting Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, or any other take out and are looking for a wine look no further….Gewurztraminer is your answer.

colonelgrape: 94. Very good Gewurztraminer paired perfectly. On the nose there’s spice, honey, mineral, and melon. Right away on the palate you get mild sweetness but that’s soon taken over by the spice and fruit flavor. This wine is very refreshing and light bodied. This producer uses stainless steel tanks to ferment so that explains the lack of oak/simpleness of the wine. At $20 this is an exceptional value.

MobyGrape: 94.  This is exactly what I expected this wine to taste like.  We opted for incredible Vietnamese food with this wine and it’s like they were made for each other.  The flavors of the food and wine worked so well together that I didn’t want to stop eating or drinking, but I had to, otherwise I would have exploded in the restaurant.  The deep sweetness up front, followed by the spiciness makes for one wild ride.

Here we have our first Gewurztraminer on the website. This is a white grape (even though its kind of red/pink looking on the vine) that is primarily grown in Alsace, France. It is grown elsewhere but the best examples almost always come from Alsace. It’s known for it’s spicy sweetness, floral, and fruit aromas. The grape itself is very finicky which probably has to do with it’s limited success outside of Alsace. It can be made into a wide array of wines from the very dry to the very sweet, it all depends on when the grape is harvested. It can also be effected by noble rot similar to the whites from Sauternes. Often times Gewurztraminer is paired with spicy, fatty, and oily meals…Asian cuisine is the most common pairing.

Another common way to serve Gewurztraminer is as an aperitif. We like to serve it both ways but in this case we had it with Moby’s home made porketta.

colonelgrape: 89. This was a very good bottle and an example of a dryer Gewurztraminer. It still had that sweetness and spice depth to it but there was no upfront sweetness…this is the kind I’d prefer to have with my meal whereas the sweeter versions go better as an aperitif. Porketta was the perfect meal to go with it because there was fat and spice and the wine cut it perfectly. We were rationing out the wine because it was going so fast. At only $20 this is a great buy…if you’ve never tried a Gewurz you need to try one ASAP…you haven’t had anything like it yet.

MobyGrape – 93.  The first time I tried this type of wine I had boogers blocking 93% of my nostrils’ capacity and had severely impaired senses of smell and taste, but I could swear I was tasting greatness.  I was super excited to try it again and this did not disappoint.  It wasn’t exactly what we had the first time but it reminds me very much of it.  There’s a deep kind of sweetness to it, it’s not sicky candy sweet, it’s more of a spicy sweet.  LIke when you’re wearing your fancy underwear under sweatpants.  You know there’s more going on under there than meets the eye, you’re just daring your husband to go ahead and try.  You feeling lucky, punk?  Might be granny panties, then again, might not…But I digress.  We had it the first time with gougere followed by assorted cheeses and crackers, but I feel like it could hold its own with lighter meat.