Cabernet sauvignon bread
I have a sandstone and broekie-lace holiday house in the Eastern Free State. Peonies burst forth in the garden, wisteria climbs the walls and the Maluti mountains rise high and glorious on the horizon. Best of all, it has a deep, dark, deliciously cool cellar.
Photographs by Theana Calitz
Imagine my distress when I returned to paradise after a month’s absence to find that rats had taken up residence in the subterranean store. And that they had been drinking the wine therein! Their main modus operandi has been to gnaw away at as much of the cork as they can reach and then to push the remainder inside the bottle. Even more extraordinary is that they have also been laying siege to the screw caps – their tough little teeth have pierced the metal and in so doing caused unutterable amounts of damage, mess and expense.
I have put down the most potent collection of poisons known to man (or at least to the pest-control section of the Bethlehem Mica Hardware store) but nothing is removing the rodents. I am beginning to suspect that, far from inducing alcohol poisoning, the month-long booze binge is actually the secret to their success.
As always, the Internet has fed my paranoia to perfection. Through the wonders of the worldwide web I found the April 2001 issue of the scientific journal Lipids which contains a paper entitled “Non-alcoholic components in wine reduce low-density lipoprotein cholesterol in normocholesterolemic rats”. Apparently, the cardio-protective effects are such that I can look forward to a 30 to 50% increase in life expectancy in the rat-arsed felons.
They don't seem to be varietal specific in their cork-chewing habits which suggests to me that they have not read Bordeaux-based Dr JP Broustet’s paper in Heart which reports that the highest level of resveratrol – the compound which increases levels of ‘good’ cholesterol and slows production of ‘bad’ cholesterol – is to be found in Cabernet Sauvignon. Or perhaps they have seen his work and they are simply confused by subsequent Californian data placing Zinfandel at the top of the resveratrol tree. The absence of tooth marks on my Port collection indicates that they have taken account of Dr Ângelo Carneiro of the University of Porto whose recent article is tellingly titled “Red wine, but not Port wine, protects rat hippocampal dentate gyrus against ethanolinduced neuronal damage”.
But I may yet use their worldly wise ways against them. Wei-Jung Chen, in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, reports on the behavioural and biochemical effects of binge drinking and smoking in adult rats. I'm really not making this up – apparently he injected rats with a range of alcohol doses. He also gave them nicotine doses similar to those in the bodies of light, moderate and heavy smokers. Both the nicotine and the alcohol triggered feel-good brain chemical dopamine but indulging too much in either habit resulted in the rats building tolerance and resultant reduction in pleasure. Heavy users of one tended to agitate for increased intake of the other in order to help bring their dopamine response back up.
So, I am going to buy my rats a big box of cigarettes and hope that lung cancer gets them. They drink a lot, my rats, and I have high hopes for their smoking habits. In the meantime I am preferentially drinking/eating what remains of my resveratrol-rich wines as fast as possible. This Cabernet Sauvignon bread recipe is adapted from the one found in Peter Mayle's Confessions of a French Baker and goes jolly well with a glass of the good stuff and a chunk of cheddar.
CABERNET SAUVIGNON BREAD
500g white bread flour
10g salt
10g instant dry yeast
150g Cabernet Sauvignon
150g water
100g chopped walnuts
1. Sift the flour, yeast and salt into a bowl. Add the wine and water and mix the dry and wet ingredients until a soft dough is formed.
2. Knead for about five minutes then add walnuts and knead until smooth.
3. Place the dough in an oiled bowl and cover with a damp cloth until it is doubled in size (for about one hour).
4. Punch down then divide the dough into two equal-sized balls and leave to rise again. Knock back each ball and shape into loaves. Leave to rise until doubled in size.
5. Preheat oven to 220ºC. Bake for 30 minutes or until the bread is risen and sounds hollow when tapped underneath. Cool on a wire rack.
PERFECT PAIRING
Wine magazine recommends
KLEINE ZALZE VINEYARD SELECTION CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2009
NOTES: Cassis on the nose and palate. Fruit-driven, modern style.
OTHER OPTIONS:
Zevenwacht 2008; Overgaauw 2009.
