San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A crisp wine to pair with Asian cuisines
like Eckert in Chico and Grouse in Colorado that offer malted rice, millet, buckwheat, oats and more. These malts still have their challenges, however. “With barley, everything in nature magically lines up perfectly,” says Otherwise’s Gervais. When using other grains, a brewer has to tinker with recipes, enzyme cocktails and fermentation temperatures to come out with a beer that has body, texture and that frothy head of foam.
It’s also expensive. “Our grains cost about three times what barley costs,” Collier says. On top of that, the glutenfree grains don’t yield as much extract as barley does, so you have to use more of them to make the same amount of beer. Nevertheless, the prices so far are in line with a typical Bay Area craft beer: Buck Wild sells its beers for $10.99$12.99 per four pack, and Otherwise’s Calrose Crisp is $14.99 for a four pack.
The maturation of the glutenfree beer movement is part of a longerterm trend toward making alcohol look healthier — a trend that includes not only lowcalorie hard seltzers but also a whole cadre of “wellness beers.” Beer companies have rushed in recent years to market their products to athletes, sometimes adding ingredients like potassium or electrolytes, sometimes removing the alcohol altogether. That said, some research has suggested that following an entirely glutenfree diet is not advisable without a medical diagnosis, potentially leading to poor nutrition. (Bernstein, who is glutenintolerant and has followed the diet since 2006, stands by his glutenfree beers being gentler on the body. “You’ll feel better leaving our taproom than you would leaving a barleybased brewery,” he says.)
But for Gervais and cofounder Stellar Cassidy, neither of whom follows a glutenfree diet, part of the impetus for starting Otherwise was simply differentiation, not health.
“The craft beer scene has become very competitive,” says Gervais, formerly a classical music composer. “San Francisco doesn’t have any glutenfree breweries yet, so we thought that would be a good angle.”
If the goal of these beers is to pass unnoticed, mission accomplished. Otherwise has released only one prototype so far, a lager made from Calrose rice, and it’s sound: dry, crisp, with a lingering bitterness and a nutty, toastyrice flavor. Gervais and Cassidy are brewing the beers at the Speakeasy facility in Hunters Point, though they say they hope to eventually have their own, dedicated glutenfree brewhouse. New styles like chocolate stout, a kettle sour with guava and a hazy IPA are in the works.
Buck Wild, too, has turned out some beers that you might not identify as glutenfree if you didn’t know. High points include the Kolschstyle ale, which tastes like honey and bananas, and a pleasantly hoppy, bright West Coast IPA.
Theoretically, they will only get better. “Everything feels so new with the glutenfree beer industry right now,” says Collier.“A lot of the experimentation has been put on the shoulders of home brewers and scientists, and now it feels like there’s a lot of opensource information.”
For Cassidy, a veteran of the local beer scene, this is also just a natural step in the evolution of craft beer, which is always seeking something new and different.
“It’s just the nature of beer making — you think you’ve had it all and then the milkshake IPA comes out,” she says. “I’ve had a Niçoisesalad beer before. I think the fact that we’re brewing with these beautiful ancient grains will excite people.”
Welcome to Wine of the Week ,anew series in which Chronicle wine critic Esther Mobley recommends a delicious bottle that you should be drinking right now. Last week, she highlighted a radiant sparkling rosé. Check for a new installment every Wednesday.
Napa Valley wineries love to tout their wine’s ability to pair well with food. But unless your diet consists mostly of steak, Napa Valley’s signature wine, Cabernet Sauvignon, is not actually very versatile at the table.
For years, that tension has been bugging Mailynh Phan, the CEO of RD Winery in Napa. The conversation around wineandfood pairing has always been Europeancentric, she says, even if that’s not the way Bay
Area residents eat. For example, “you really can’t have Vietnamese food and drink Cab,” Phan says. Against a dish made with fish sauce or pickled vegetables, a hearty red wine’s tannins, oakbarrel influence and alcohol can turn bitter and astringent.
That’s why RD recently launched a new brand, Fifth Moon. “We wanted to make wines to pair with Vietnamese food and other Asian cuisines,” says Phan.
One of Fifth Moon’s best wines is its Gruner Veltliner, from grapes grown in Edna Valley near San Luis Obispo. This Austrian grape variety is a magic bullet for food, with crisp acidity and flavors that range from fruity to vegetal, and Fifth Moon’s 2019 Gruner is a gorgeous example of its type. It’s mouthwateringly bright and zippy, bursting with lime and hinting at green pea and mint leaf. Alongside a rich Madras curry, a sip of this Gruner would play the role of a cleansing squeeze of citrus; with a chileforward dish, it would counter the heat with its fruity tang.
There’s an interesting and unusual backstory to RD Winery, which started in 2011. Until recently, the winery was solely focused on exporting wines to Vietnam, where its owner Nguyen Van Dong lives. He built an opulent castle, modeled on Napa Valley’s Castello di Amorosa, as a tourist attraction in Mui Ne in southeast Vietnam. Visitors go to taste RD’s highend Napa Valley creations — especially, of course, Cabernet.
But since 2018, Phan has been trying to reorient the winery away from the export strategy and toward an American market, with foodfriendliness front and center. The Fifth Moon line of wines, which began in the 2019 vintage, are affordable, lightbodied and mostly white wines — very unlike a typical Napa Valley brand. They’re not meant to be trophy pieces, Phan says. They’re meant to be the type of bottle you could envision opening with takeout. In July, they started hosting outdoor tastings at RD’s winery in the industrial area of south Napa.
Across the board, the Fifth Moon wines are lithe and refreshing, including a floral Chenin Blanc and a peachy Malvasia. But I kept reaching back for sips of the Gruner. Its grassy earthiness reminds me of drinking a cup of herbal tea. Its subtle umami aroma reminds me of a light drizzle of sesame oil. The RD team recommends it with pho or Thai green curry, though I found myself craving a piquant, crunchy papaya salad. Drink it with whatever you want. Just maybe not with steak.
The wine is available at www.rd winery.com
Fifth Moon
Gruner Veltliner Edna Valley 2019 (13%, $25).