Oh, September! (2025 Edition)

Now begins my favorite season.

Crisp Cool Air, a Fire Pit, & a Pair of Sparkling Pinot Noirs.

Oh, September! Thanks (I guess) to climate change, September is the new August. With the shortening days and refreshingly cool breezes, come our calendar's ninth month we finally relegate the humid scorch of this past summer to memory. We eat more cheese, and we start braising and roasting meat again. While corn & tomato season lingers on in the residual, waning warmth, a fresh crop of apples is coming to market and the air at sunset is crisp like our local Riesling. We bring out the rugby shirts and even some wool sweaters, though it is still balmy enough some afternoons to swim... truly the best of all possible worlds imaginable.

But autumn is a season of dynamic change, a cascading progression from Labor Day to Foliage Season to Columbus Day to Thanksgiving and then finally to Christmas & New Year's Day. So let us embrace September's summer/autumn duality while we can, and then joyfully welcome the first morning frost, the first trick-or-treater, the first nibble of turkey, the first shovel-ful of snow, and then the first Christmas carol on the radio...

...in that order, ideally.

September Food & Wine

As the weather cools, many of us wine lovers shift our emphasis from whites toward reds. Pinot Noir is often our first step, but we propose a new twist this year-- TWO Pinot Noirs from a single FINGER LAKES winery, and they are both bubbly!

Red Tail Ridge Winery-- wines as crisp and precise as this photo.

Here at Danny's Table, we consider the RED TAIL RIDGE WINERY among our top-tier ("Grand Cru") wineries of the Finger Lakes region. (See Our Favorite Things.) LIMNAD is their spinoff bubbly label, an "alter-ego" product line crafted with the same precision wine-making equipment and techniques as its parent winery. However, Limnad wines are not available for purchase at the winery, but rather only in selected New York State retail stores and from the Limnad website (albeit for shipment only to NY State addresses.) That being said, we are happy to feature TWO Limnad bottlings-- their 2024 Sparkling Pinot Noir "Méthode Ancestrale," i.e., "Pet-Nat," which is short for Pétillant Naturel; and their 2020 Sparkling Rosé Extra Brut, which owes its bubbles to the "Traditional Method," the same process used to produce genuine French Champagne.

The deeply coral-hued 2024 Pet-Nat is pure, swill-able joy, its froth somewhat akin to the head on a Belgian lambic ale. Every sip bursts with textbook Pinot Noir fruitiness-- raspberry, cherry, and other such lusciousness-- and yet it is not at all sweet, keeping it food-friendly. Let's say you're hosting a Saturday tail-gater in preparation for your local upstate New York Division-III college football game. (Think HARTWICK or HOBART.) One could find no better match to the time of day, the brisk September air, and, say, an array of grilled artisanal game sausages from D’ARTAGNAN than this Pet-Nat Pinot Noir.

There's nothing like a walk across campus in the autumn... especially decades after you've graduated.

Alternatively, let's say you're hosting your first Saturday dinner party of the season, with everyone's appetites freshly sharpened by a day outdoors in the cool weather. You've got a sturdy red lined up to accompany your exquisitely-braised Wagyu Chuck Roast, but you want to start the evening with a perfect autumn hors d'oeuvre and the right wine. The Limnad 2020 Sparkling Rosé Extra Brut is an ideal start to such a dinner, saturated with a panoply of textbook Pinot Noir flavors delivered with its persistent, tingling texture from sip to swallow. This is the most well-made and delicious sparkler I've tasted in years, from any region on earth.

And at the risk of sounding either really old, crazy, or downright heretical, we would pair this wonderful bubbly with-- gasp!-- old-school French-style pâté. Stay with me here.

A selection of pâtés from Olympia Provisions. We also recommend exploring the offerings

from Hudson Valley Foie Gras, Dufour Gourmet, and Three Little Pigs.

Just as everything old often becomes new again, so too are foods once considered unhealthy suddenly healthy again. (Think cane sugar vs. artificial sweeteners, and REAL fat like butter, tallow, & lard vs. margarine and seed oils.) High-fat charcuterie-- especially pâté-- has been in the culinary doghouse for decades. We think it's high time to liberate it.

Very Old-School French Pâté from Dufour Gourmet.

The term "pâté" technically indicates an intricately-seasoned ground meat mixture carefully cooked in a pastry casing, as shown above; however, over time the term has expanded in meaning to include pastry-less versions (a.k.a. terrines) and spreadable mousses. Pro Tip: most pâtés feature liver as a key component; if you are utterly opposed to consuming liver, check out rillettes of duck, which is akin to pulled pork and nestles nicely on a slice of baguette. (Mail-order companies that sell pâté almost always offer duck rillettes.) If you are uninitiated yet liver-curious, we recommend purchasing some liverwurst in your local deli department and giving it a try. Chances are that if you like liverwurst, you'll love pâté.

And finally, a second pro-tip: making your own pâté from scratch can be done, but it is a huge challenge in a civilian kitchen and requires special equipment and expertise. We recommend instead purchasing it mail-order from the above-referenced sources. But you CAN add your own homemade touch by making the ONION JAM we wrote about a while back. It makes a perfect accompaniment.