Monthly Archive for March, 2007

Would you bet your daughter's…?

March 28, 2007 filed in Wine.
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John_lithgow_2While helping a friend in his vineyard a few weeks back, he mentioned that he’d heard "the most hysterical piece about wine snobs on public radio!"  He said I HAD to hear it, and promised to send a link to the podcast.  Several days later, it arrived via email.  Several days after that it found its way onto my "to do" list, and there it sat until last night, when I finally got around to clicking on it.

And then I was lost, absorbed by the mellifluous tones of John Lithgow’s voice, as he interpreted the short story, "Tastes" by Roald Dahl.  I had actually read the story before, but didn’t remember it until the end, so much absorbing was Lithgow’s reading than the voice in my own head.  It’s about an aspiring wine snob learns a lesson from an accomplished one, as he almost loses his daughter’s… well, best to just listen yourself…Taste_book_cover_v2

Click Here for the "Selected Shorts" podcast of Roald Dahl’s "Tastes".

If you enjoy this podcast as much as I did, you may be inspired to throw a few shekels toward its sponsor at the online WNYC pledge site.

Add our feed to your Google Homepage!  It takes just 30 seconds when you click here!

Enjoy,
Dave Chambers, Wine Merchant
Dave@SidewaysWineClub.com
Toll Free 866-746-7293

Today’s Quote:

"A peak at the bottle is worth 50 years of tasting"
Attributed to Michael Broadbent, British Wine Critic and Auctioneer

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Iron Chef? Rusty Chef??

March 27, 2007 filed in Food and Drink and Wine.
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Iron Chef

This is a busy week.  I have my usual monthly tasks PLUS income taxes and a wine club shipment to get ready.  A wise and disciplined person would be concentrating on this task list.

But I can’t keep from thinking about Thursday afternoon, when our friends Kendy and David are helping Leslie and me stage our own Iron Chef cooking challenge.

Kendy and I are the chefs.  We have accepted the challenge of preparing dinner using the ingredients presented to us by the other two participants.  Oh, and we have to plan and execute the entire meal in 90 minutes, using every ingredient they provide.  While we cook, they drink wine, watch, kibitz and snicker.

David and Leslie are the shoppers.  They will gather all the ingredients for use in preparing the meal.  I know these two.  They are smart.  They are creative.  They are evil.  They will find the most obscure, bizarre ingredients available at the Farmer’s Market or Chinatown, or Fisherman’s Wharf or…

I an a decent chef.  Though I have not spent as many hours in cooking schools as in wine schools, neither am I a stranger to their rosters.  And Kendy’s cooking chops?  Well, Kendy’s Italian, and that pretty much says it all.  But this is a TIMED event, and we need to be able to quickly come up with a great recipe for whatever they provide – Opah, or Ugli fruit, or oxtails, or head cheese, or…

So instead of working on taxes, I’m boning up on obscure vegetables.  While I should be writing up wines, I’m researching the art of smoking meats over tea on an indoor stovetop.  While I should be replying to suppliers, I’m thinking about ways to use Lemon Grass.  And every few minutes I’m bugging every chef friend who will answer the phone.  At the moment, I’m looking for a good source on bizarre sea animals – anyone know how to prepare Sea Cucumber?

As for the wines – I’m prepared for whatever they throw at us!  In the cooler I have several bottles of sparkling and still whites and roses, from light to heavy.  And in the cellar I have set aside a plethora of reds representing a similar spectrum of weight and alcohol.  This is the part I’m least concerned with – if the food is edible, we’ll have a wine that compliments it.  And if the food is not edible, we’ll have a wine that masks it!

I’ll let you know how it all turns out on Thursday.  I can’t wait…

Cheers,
Dave Chambers, Wine Merchant

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Smellevision?

March 19, 2007 filed in Wine.
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Aramis I’ve written a lot about the connection between aroma and fine wine.  My comments on Aroma therapy notwithstanding, I’m a big believer in the idea that a great palate is impossible without a great sense of smell.  I wJovanas reminded of this recently while rehashing high school days with an old buddy.  We remembered a long-forgotten double date, and how we tried on six or seven colognes to make sure we were as attractive as possible.  We applied a bit from each, and finally left the house with the cocky confidence of youth and an aroma ring that preceded us by at least 50 yards.  I suppose it trailed us by an equal amount.  We thought we were pretty cool.

BrutAfter a nostril-searing event like that, one might doubt a nose could recover.  But the human sense of smell is powerful and primeval and evocative.  And impervious, apparently, to ersatz cologne cocktails.

My memory of that night was vivid and instant – forgotten for decades until recalled in a flash of re-lived youth.  Scents are like that – evoking visceral memories, an entire gestalt of experience that visual or aural stimuli simply can’t.  It’s all about how our brains are wired.

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Wine on St. Patty's Day?

March 14, 2007 filed in Current Affairs, Food and Drink and Wine.
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Guinness_iiReuters reported this morning that sales of Guinness, Ireland’s National drink for centuries, are beginning to slip.  Significantly.  According to its owner, the giant, global firm Diageo, sales of Guinness in Ireland are down 7% over a year ago.

Apparently, Ireland’s economic prosperity, new-found wealth, imigration trends and international perspective have led to a national palate more inclined to pull a cork than a pint.  Wine (and a handful of other quaffs) is on the rise.  And while "Irish" pubs are popular worldwide, with an average of one new one opening each day, the ones actually located in the Motherland are closing at the same daily rate.

I must admit, I view this with mixed emotions…

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Vine Pruning Competitions – One facet of increasing focus on quality!

March 12, 2007 filed in Wine.
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Last week I left the wine road untraveled, taking time off for family.  We were remote – away from radios, TVs, phones, and email.  Well, almost too remote for email.  But not too remote for the New York Times.  You’d be surprised where it can turn up these days.  And were you to read the March 5th edition of the National Report, Jesse McKinley’s article on the Sonoma County Pruning Championships might have caught your eye too.  As the photo depicts, it determines who can prune five vines in the least amount of time, but with penalties for poor quality cuts or for leaving withered clusters from last year.

05prune_600 And Sonoma is not alone in this sort of competition.  France hosted the E.U. version this week.  Though U.S. pruning competitions are more often found in just the larger AVA’s, there are dozens of them across our many growing areas.

These competitions provide much-deserved bragging rights for the talented fieldworkers who assure each vine enters the new season trimmed to perfection, thus affording a winemaker his or her first irreversible decision that will determine the quality of their next vintage…

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I Wiped Off Your Spit, Not Your Kiss

March 5, 2007 filed in Wine.
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Kiss I was at my computer this morning when my 4-year old daughter came in to say goodbye before heading to pre-school.  Anyone who has spent a year in the same house with a four-year-old knows a bit about instant humility.  On this particular morning it arrived when she instantly wiped off my goodbye kiss with the back of her sleeve.  Seeing my surprise she enthused "Don’t worry daddy, I just wiped off your spit, not your kiss!"

Now, lest you presume your wine merchant to be a sloberry sort, I assure you there was no saliva surplus in this daddy-daughter exchange.  Nonetheless, I was pleased by her reassurance that my sentiment survived its visible evidence.

Which reminded me of this week’s wine news.  One of the stories highlighted a Chilean wine named "(oops)" because it comes from grapes believed for a century to be Merlot and recently proven otherwise.  Which raises the wine-world equivalent of the classic Velveteen Rabbit question "What is real?"…

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