Winery Lenz Winery, 38355 Route 25, Peconic, 631-734-6010, lenzwine.com
Winemaker Tom Spotteck
Wine 2023 Estate Chardonnay, 13.1% abv, 504 cases made
Grapes 100% chardonnay
Price $27
Fave Food Pairing Striped bass with beurre blanc over risotto
You often hear about a wine that inspires a meal. But for Lenz winemaker Tom Spotteck, it was his wife Amira Lisle’s way with freshly caught striped bass that inspired him to make a wine.
“It’s been an evolving project, years in the making!” says Spotteck. In truth, it’s been a bit of an epic sensory journey to create just the right wine to celebrate Lisle’s dish.
Lisle and Spotteck met in college in Washington State when she, a pre-med student, took on the task of tutoring the wine-science major in organic chemistry. He passed — and as it turned out, the chemistry between them ran well beyond core curriculum pre-reqs. Spotteck convinced Lisle to move back home with him to New York, where his family lived on Shelter Island, and the two began to make a life on the East End.
“My cousins and I spent a lot of time fishing the beaches and ferry slips around Shelter Island. Amira, a pretty fantastic cook as is, was always looking for new recipes for all the fish we would catch,” Spotteck says.
But it was her way with striped bass that became the legendary house favorite among friends and family.
“It quickly became her signature dish that everyone looked forward to — and somehow when she was cooking it they would appear out of thin air and stay for dinner!” Spotteck laughs. “We never complained. We always enjoyed the guests! We all know how slow life can be in the winter and early spring.”
As Lisle finetuned her specialty with lemon, butter, capers and a rich pillow of risotto, upon which she nestles the panko-crusted, sauce-drizzled filet, Spotteck found himself wanting to create an homage to his wife’s dynamite dish.
“I wanted to match the richness of the lemon butter sauce, so I barrel-fermented chardonnay using a lager-style yeast, fermented in newer-ish French oak barrels,” he says. A long, cool fermentation teased out rich, ripe stone-fruit characteristics bolstered by minerally, snappy green-apple undertones, but with an irresistible creamy texture that, when paired with the buttery, lemony sauce and rich risotto, heightened the whole sensory experience. About 40% of the blend comes from the barrel-fermented version of the chardonnay; for the rest, Spotteck used a stainless steel-fermented version of the grape, adding an aspect of bright, acid-driven zippiness apropos for seafood.
Lisle still makes the dish, but the winemaker says these days there’s just one tweak she’s added to the recipe: “She uses a bit of the wine for the sauce now, too!”
