So, like, I woke up the other day with this large critical mass on my face and I'm not quite sure what to do about it.
I am getting a lot of advice about it, none, mind you, from medical professionals. Virtually all recommend immediate removal of said mass.....a mass massectomy. "Use a razor," said a friend, "and do it fast." Another acquaintance was even slightly more direct. "Get that thing off your face.....immediately!" was her sagacious, considered advice. The head of my umpiring association thought I was a street person when I saw him at a training last Sunday. (Hey, he gave me a buck.) But once he recognized me, he cautioned me that my mask wasn't going to fit anymore. And I might scare the kids. Other reactions have been less restrained.
My wife, though, is being quite diplomatic. But the fact that she hasn't come near me since this thing appeared on my face is, I am afraid, starting to influence my opinion about the mass' future. The fact that she tried to shoot me with a silver bullet has also served to reinforce the message, even through my thick skull.
(Good thing she missed)
To others, my critical mass is a great source of amusement. My staff at work is collecting names that our customers or suppliers call me. The Smith Brothers cough drop guys, ZZ Top, Santa Claus or Rasputin are sort of played and show little imagination. But as the mass has grown in dimension, more creative names have been bandied about: Trotsky and Frederick Douglas being my two current favorites. Frederick Douglas!? He was cool, even though I am afraid the similarities between us end at unruly facial hair. There was also 'Some Call Me Tim' from the Holy Grail movie, the dude in the Lord of the Rings and R. Crumb's Mr. Natural. Sweet!
The other day I walked into the Walnut Creek Yacht Club and my good friend Ellen yelled across the dining room "Dostoevsky is in the house!"
That shows good beard knowledge.
I've also been called Marx (Karl not Groucho), Solzhenitsin and Robert E. Lee.
And my sister sent me a beard limerick by Edward Lear involving bird nests.
Yeah, yeah. Cute. Like the time she bought me a pair of the largest, ugliest, most gaudy earrings she could find at Woolworth and sent me a single one in the mail to celebrate my getting my ear pierced.
She's subtle like that.
Slowly, because I am not as quick on the uptake as I used to be, I am getting the impression that maybe, just maybe, having a critical mass on my face doesn't look that good and my friends are just trying to break it to me gently. They say, subtlety,that my mass appears ill behaved and unruly; like my face has staged a rebellion and run off to hide in a cave in the mountains. (Yeah, I've gotten both Castro- the current non-smoking really, really old one- and Bin Laden references, so don't even try- and Mao couldn't even grow a beard)
I suppose I should be flattered that people are talking about it all. I mean no one usually mentions my appearance at all other to say I look tired, old and depressed. Now they go out of their way to tell me I look really tired, really old and really depressed.....and really very hairy. And that I should shave. Now.
And, most of all, they ask why, as in "Why did you let that thing take over your face like an alien starfish?"
No reason, really.
It just sort of moved in when I wasn't looking and has gradually insinuated itself into my life.
Having a critical mass on your face isn't much different than not, really. I sure don't waste a lot of time shaving in the morning, that's for sure. But that's certainly not the reason I tolerate it. It hasn't given me enough extra time to hit the rowing machine or walk the dogs. Nor, clearly, is vanity the motivation. I don't look 'better' with it. It doesn't hide a turkey neck, sagging jowls or scar from a knife fight. It's the same old face....only with a giant gray thing attached to it. I used to think my beard (back when it was black) made me look a little more intelligent. Now it just makes me look insane.
OK, maybe even tomorrow, it will be time to serve the eviction notice. Order must be restored and my critical mass, at least partially, removed.
Seems sort of bittersweet. Like a roommate you really, really hated but will miss once he's gone.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Puerto Vallarta II
It's sad to have to think about leaving. There's a leaden ball in the pit of my stomach when I think about returning to the grind of work, one that I think even surpasses the usual end of vacation blues: I know I am going to get my ass kicked. Why fight it?
Turns out that this place, Garza Blanca Preserve, is really slated to become condos and a very nice lady offered us this place for keeps, for a mere $1.1 million (fractional purchase available)! Wish Anne had brought the check book.
In fact, it looks like the entire Puerto Vallarta area, if not all of Mexico is on sale. Mexican architects are good! Really good. There are more than a few Japanese flourishes (like the full-autopilot toilets in the lobby!) to this place: the lines are clean, the materials good and little has been left out. And, it seems, every condo and villa from one end of town to the other, most of these ambitious projects having been started around the same time; when it appeared Mexico's tourist boom would be insatiable, are of similar quality.....giant balconies overlooking a now very clean ocean (saw whales and dolphins from our seats in the restaurant yesterday morning), comfy, sturdy, hammocks, great kitchens, local wood furnishings, and did I mention the views?
And prices, as we have been told or read at least twenty times, have never been lower! Now, Anne, why didn't you bring the checkbook again? I suppose lusting after a permanent place where you are vacationing is as natural as feeling the blues about leaving. If we had bought something everywhere we'd thought we'd like to live, we'd have a dozen houses! And we can't even afford the one we have.
Enough real estate envy.
There are a few more things worth reporting about the trip. They, inevitably, revolve around food, as it seems we spend most of our time careening from one meal to the next, I am happy to report that our lunch at the traditional restaurant at Vallarta's beautiful Botanical Gardens was one of the best meals we had. The views of the wide expanse of local flora from the second floor terrace that runs around the perimeter of the the giant visitor's center are impressive. The food is also deeplyflavored and very good and in the jungle humidity, ice cold cerveza has never tasted better. There is good (if good means regular as opposed to opulent) bus service that cost us all of $2 each so, along with the zoo, I'd sure make sure it was on your itinerary for Puerto Vallarta.
After the outstanding day at the gardens, our confidence in the buses was high enough to think it would be easy to navigate to Marina Vallarta, north of El Centro, from our spot seven and half kilometers south of town making a simple change.
That's not how it worked out.
In fact, if on every vacation, you have to sacrifice one segment to the Trip Gods for their amusement, this would be it. We were planning on visiting a (from now and forever more unnamed) restaurant co-owned by a fellow Bay Area restaurant person and recommended to us by a colleague. We had sent them an e-mail saying that we'd pop by for dinner at maybe 7:30 or so and we thought we'd leave an hour to wander aruound the marina area. We got the bus to El Centro without any difficulties but hopped on another bus indicated to us by some guy standing around near the bus stop, as he appeared to be in the know, even though nowhere on the windshield was chalked our intended destination. It was now dark and the jarring trip over El Centro's cobblestones was reassuring enough and we recognized the road that runs out towards the airport, so all was well. It was after we got to Wal-Mart (and yes, there's a Costco AND a Sam's Club, all located within a few blocks of each other) and the pack of gringos on the bus rolled off that the lights of the town turned into barely lit warrens of cobbled alleys, scary looking warehouses and row upon row of apartment blocks . We kept going and going and going, gradually relieving ourselves of all of the other passengers on the bus until it was only us. The driver looked back, raised his hands in a 'hey, I only drive this thing' gesture. We told him that we headed to the marina and he laughed right in our faces. He told us to sit and we sputtered our way around a few more corners, an impossible intersection where our single lane split a double lane of oncoming traffic like the middle prong of a fork (I thought I was seeing things) and found ourselves at the bus yard in who-knows-where. A guy there stuck us on another bus and, before you know it, (well, it was really a half hour later), we were delivered to the marina, and subsequently followed our bus adventure up with what was perhaps one of the worst meals ever!
We weren't even hungry. We had made the trip because we felt obliged to visit this Bay Area colleague only to find that he had wandered off an hour or so before we got there, (no one knew where). We ordered two glasses of Roederer Estate Brut that tasted like apple cider (storage, my friends, storage) and a perfectly reasonable arugula salad. Things, however, went downhill from there. I ordered a light sounding Farfalle Pasta with Pesto and Shrimp (OK, here's a tip, the shrimp here are wonderful. They have the texture and taste of lobster and we've been ordering them at every meal) with mushy pasta and bland pesto that was dilute with pasta cooking water. And the globs of chalky, as yet unincorporated pesto made the dish laughably bad. Anne had Spaghetti Vongole but the giant clams, several of which were unopened, had the consistency and appeal of snot and were completely inedible. Anne, wisely, stuck to Pellegrino water but I had a glass of Mexican Semillon-Chardonnay which managed to be both tasteless and bitter at the same time. Anne had a coffee, we skipped dessert and grabbed a cab home! We gave the cabbie $200 pesos for a $160 fare just because we were soooooo glad to have that evening end. The extra-ironic thing about this whole meal that we didn't want in the first place and took us two hours to get to, is that, other than the fabulous dinner we had here in our hotel that was worth every peso, our foray to the marina was the most expensive to date!
I know I am in the business and, and, as such, should always refrain criticizing other restaurants. Noted. But really.........
Yesterday the sun came out in earnest and we ducked in and out of shops in El Centro for a few hours, had a lovely lunch (keep the cold Cerveza coming, baby!) one the second floor terrace of a local dive and spent the early evening hours floating in the infinity pool (gotta get me an infinity pool!), the hot tub and the ocean. Dinner consisted of some more ice cold Cerveza and leftover Shrimp Quesadilla from the Botanical Garden lunch out on the terrace.
And suddenly its go-home day. Poor Anne. She has the cold I came with and we didn't even get to buy a condo.
See you all back at the ranch.
Turns out that this place, Garza Blanca Preserve, is really slated to become condos and a very nice lady offered us this place for keeps, for a mere $1.1 million (fractional purchase available)! Wish Anne had brought the check book.
In fact, it looks like the entire Puerto Vallarta area, if not all of Mexico is on sale. Mexican architects are good! Really good. There are more than a few Japanese flourishes (like the full-autopilot toilets in the lobby!) to this place: the lines are clean, the materials good and little has been left out. And, it seems, every condo and villa from one end of town to the other, most of these ambitious projects having been started around the same time; when it appeared Mexico's tourist boom would be insatiable, are of similar quality.....giant balconies overlooking a now very clean ocean (saw whales and dolphins from our seats in the restaurant yesterday morning), comfy, sturdy, hammocks, great kitchens, local wood furnishings, and did I mention the views?
And prices, as we have been told or read at least twenty times, have never been lower! Now, Anne, why didn't you bring the checkbook again? I suppose lusting after a permanent place where you are vacationing is as natural as feeling the blues about leaving. If we had bought something everywhere we'd thought we'd like to live, we'd have a dozen houses! And we can't even afford the one we have.
Enough real estate envy.
There are a few more things worth reporting about the trip. They, inevitably, revolve around food, as it seems we spend most of our time careening from one meal to the next, I am happy to report that our lunch at the traditional restaurant at Vallarta's beautiful Botanical Gardens was one of the best meals we had. The views of the wide expanse of local flora from the second floor terrace that runs around the perimeter of the the giant visitor's center are impressive. The food is also deeplyflavored and very good and in the jungle humidity, ice cold cerveza has never tasted better. There is good (if good means regular as opposed to opulent) bus service that cost us all of $2 each so, along with the zoo, I'd sure make sure it was on your itinerary for Puerto Vallarta.
After the outstanding day at the gardens, our confidence in the buses was high enough to think it would be easy to navigate to Marina Vallarta, north of El Centro, from our spot seven and half kilometers south of town making a simple change.
That's not how it worked out.
In fact, if on every vacation, you have to sacrifice one segment to the Trip Gods for their amusement, this would be it. We were planning on visiting a (from now and forever more unnamed) restaurant co-owned by a fellow Bay Area restaurant person and recommended to us by a colleague. We had sent them an e-mail saying that we'd pop by for dinner at maybe 7:30 or so and we thought we'd leave an hour to wander aruound the marina area. We got the bus to El Centro without any difficulties but hopped on another bus indicated to us by some guy standing around near the bus stop, as he appeared to be in the know, even though nowhere on the windshield was chalked our intended destination. It was now dark and the jarring trip over El Centro's cobblestones was reassuring enough and we recognized the road that runs out towards the airport, so all was well. It was after we got to Wal-Mart (and yes, there's a Costco AND a Sam's Club, all located within a few blocks of each other) and the pack of gringos on the bus rolled off that the lights of the town turned into barely lit warrens of cobbled alleys, scary looking warehouses and row upon row of apartment blocks . We kept going and going and going, gradually relieving ourselves of all of the other passengers on the bus until it was only us. The driver looked back, raised his hands in a 'hey, I only drive this thing' gesture. We told him that we headed to the marina and he laughed right in our faces. He told us to sit and we sputtered our way around a few more corners, an impossible intersection where our single lane split a double lane of oncoming traffic like the middle prong of a fork (I thought I was seeing things) and found ourselves at the bus yard in who-knows-where. A guy there stuck us on another bus and, before you know it, (well, it was really a half hour later), we were delivered to the marina, and subsequently followed our bus adventure up with what was perhaps one of the worst meals ever!
We weren't even hungry. We had made the trip because we felt obliged to visit this Bay Area colleague only to find that he had wandered off an hour or so before we got there, (no one knew where). We ordered two glasses of Roederer Estate Brut that tasted like apple cider (storage, my friends, storage) and a perfectly reasonable arugula salad. Things, however, went downhill from there. I ordered a light sounding Farfalle Pasta with Pesto and Shrimp (OK, here's a tip, the shrimp here are wonderful. They have the texture and taste of lobster and we've been ordering them at every meal) with mushy pasta and bland pesto that was dilute with pasta cooking water. And the globs of chalky, as yet unincorporated pesto made the dish laughably bad. Anne had Spaghetti Vongole but the giant clams, several of which were unopened, had the consistency and appeal of snot and were completely inedible. Anne, wisely, stuck to Pellegrino water but I had a glass of Mexican Semillon-Chardonnay which managed to be both tasteless and bitter at the same time. Anne had a coffee, we skipped dessert and grabbed a cab home! We gave the cabbie $200 pesos for a $160 fare just because we were soooooo glad to have that evening end. The extra-ironic thing about this whole meal that we didn't want in the first place and took us two hours to get to, is that, other than the fabulous dinner we had here in our hotel that was worth every peso, our foray to the marina was the most expensive to date!
I know I am in the business and, and, as such, should always refrain criticizing other restaurants. Noted. But really.........
Yesterday the sun came out in earnest and we ducked in and out of shops in El Centro for a few hours, had a lovely lunch (keep the cold Cerveza coming, baby!) one the second floor terrace of a local dive and spent the early evening hours floating in the infinity pool (gotta get me an infinity pool!), the hot tub and the ocean. Dinner consisted of some more ice cold Cerveza and leftover Shrimp Quesadilla from the Botanical Garden lunch out on the terrace.
And suddenly its go-home day. Poor Anne. She has the cold I came with and we didn't even get to buy a condo.
See you all back at the ranch.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
A funny thing happened.......
The plans were all made. A nice early flight on Delta got Anne and me in to JFK in the mid-Wednesday afternoon. We'd found a great hotel on the Lower East Side. ....super cool looking, great rate (I love you hotels.com) Dinner plans Wednesday night at the Macao with good friends Ira and Susan. Sister Jody was coming in from the 'burbs Thursday for fun and games (the Tim Burton exhibit at MOMA?), drinks at 10 Bells, dinner at Lupa (I was even leaning on Bastianich wine importer Stefano to arrange a Mario-Joe hookup). Then it was Amtrak down to Philly to meet Anne's brother Mike and his family, as well as a hard fought-for rezzo at Mark Vetri's Osteria. Particularly excited about that one. Vetri's cookbook has become one of my very favorites and this was to be dinner at the shrine itself! After two nights in Philly, Anne was to go home and I was to fly to West Palm Beach to spend a few precious days with ailing dad and step-mom Leila.
Uh, none of that happened.
I was sitting at my desk late Tuesday morning and an email popped up from Delta letting me know that they had pre-emptively cancelled our flight because of the big snowstorm bearing down on the East Coast. I was rebooked on another flight that landed at JFK at 11:30 PM. Well, that sucked. Gone was the chance to settle in at the hotel before dinner, gone was dinner. I imagined slogging to the city after midnight in the snow and cold. Well, that's OK. We still had my sister, MOMA and Mario. That's when the next email from Delta arrived. All those on that flight that arrived JFK at 11:30 raise your hand. Surprise! It may snow so we're canceling that one too.
Now, I'm getting pissed.
Since when doesn't it snow in New York in February? And there they were fucking up our min-vacation before one flake even had fallen!
I called Delta and a very nice lady named Ruby and I spoke. No, she said, they weren't prepared to just refund the whole deal and no, I told Ruby, I was no longer interested in going since half my trip was already being sacrificed to the Snow Gods. In fact, though, in the back of my mind, I was hatching a very good win-win alternative.
Yes, I was willing to postpone the opportunity to slog through 18-degree Manhattan without boots with the bad cold I had if Delta could find somewhere a little bit warmer to put us instead.
An hour of wrangling with Ruby and here we are.
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Sorry Mario. Next time.
Anne was last here in 1975 and I've never been here. Terrific fun! Hotels.com again came through for us big time, finding us the Garza Blanca Preserve and Resort, about 8 kilometers south of town. Apparently that was once one of the area's swankiest places but had fallen on hard times a decade or so ago. New money and a very ambitious renovation plan has turned it into something special. Only opened again in late January, we scored a $450 room for $183 and were upgraded into a one-bedroom suite with an enormous balcony, a hammock we can't get out of and a view that goes on forever. Because the place is so new (we may be the first people to stay in this room) it gives off this vaguely eerie never-been-touched vibe, like the Bluth's model home in Arrested Development. But I'm uselessly carping.
It's an amazing property with maybe 40 rooms open and another 18 or 20 under (very loud) construction. The pool is magnificent; one of those infinity pools where, if you lay your chin on the surface of the water, it looks like you're in the middle of the ocean. It helps that, for the first two nights, we were the only people here! A few more souls appear to have checked in over the past day or so.
The restaurant Blanca Blue will probably become one of the best in Puerto Vallarta. The food is creative and well prepared and the wine list, prepared by a young lady named Rosa who announced that she is on her way out to work on the supply side, is very interesting. Rosa recommended a Merlot-based blend she called 'salty' from a micro-producer called Gabriel from Adobe Guadalupe. It was more savory than salty but I definitely see where she was coming from. It was powerful but supple with elegant, nicely ripened flavors of raspberry, blueberry and tar lifted on the back end by a lot of tannin and a squeeze of lemony acidity. Unique. And, alas, maybe one of the last I'll be able to afford this trip.....$950 pesos (roughly $95 US), much of it, I suspect, in taxes. This is not a wine lover's paradise. Food highlights included buttery prawn pancakes, killer 'chips and dip' made with snapper 'chips' and a Tuna Au Poivre that rocked.
But we're in Mexico and you're not.
And eating very well.
The first night we discovered Guacamole at a beachfront dive in El Centro. Yeah, we've all had Guacamole, but prepared table side with the young woman server reading us the history of the treat from a cheat sheet she had created, it was a lot more fun! And really, really good: the flavors fresh and vivid. Anne promised to have at least an avocado a day during our stay and I see no reason to argue. It's all that good cholesterol, you see.
Last night we ate at the very highly recommended El Arrayan, a few blocks from the beach in El Centro. This was probably the best meal all trip for me. The concept here is to show authentic regional Mexian cooking and do it well. The fried crickets from Oaxaca aside, every dish sounded great, looked great and if the sampling of what we managed is any indication, tastes great too! I was reminded again about the 'salty' wine when we a Pacifico on ice with about a quarter cup of lime juice and a healthy dollop of salt too, including on the mug's rim. Interesting. Anyway, El Arrayan is very well priced, colorful, friendly and, obviously, very popular. The local expats have named it Best Mexican Food in Vallarta five years in a row.
By the way, if you're ever in Puerto Vallarta, visit the zoo. Normally I find them sad places with bunches of unhappy animals trapped in filthy, cramped cages.
And Puerto Vallarta's is a lot like that too.
But the animals are so cool, very sociable (if you like sociable zebras) and really accessible. For $50 pesos you can buy a bag of goodies (carrots, peanuts, 'nuggets' and corn) to feed to the avaricious zebras, hilarious warthogs, world's ugliest dog (Mexican hairless....not really that ugly....there are those (Frank) that say my Mikey is uglier), giraffe (creepy tongues, I am sorry), camel, various monkeys, goats and asses. I've never had so much fun at a zoo. The only animals you can't go right up and touch are those that would just as soon kill you as be pet by you.
OK. I am for that.
But that doesn't mean that the zoo's three baby tigers aren't there to play with you, just under careful supervision!
Today, if we can stir ourselves beyond the infinity pool and Alfredo's tender breakfast ministrations at Blanc Blue, we may try the Botanical Garden.
Stay tuned!
Coming Up......Part II
Uh, none of that happened.
I was sitting at my desk late Tuesday morning and an email popped up from Delta letting me know that they had pre-emptively cancelled our flight because of the big snowstorm bearing down on the East Coast. I was rebooked on another flight that landed at JFK at 11:30 PM. Well, that sucked. Gone was the chance to settle in at the hotel before dinner, gone was dinner. I imagined slogging to the city after midnight in the snow and cold. Well, that's OK. We still had my sister, MOMA and Mario. That's when the next email from Delta arrived. All those on that flight that arrived JFK at 11:30 raise your hand. Surprise! It may snow so we're canceling that one too.
Now, I'm getting pissed.
Since when doesn't it snow in New York in February? And there they were fucking up our min-vacation before one flake even had fallen!
I called Delta and a very nice lady named Ruby and I spoke. No, she said, they weren't prepared to just refund the whole deal and no, I told Ruby, I was no longer interested in going since half my trip was already being sacrificed to the Snow Gods. In fact, though, in the back of my mind, I was hatching a very good win-win alternative.
Yes, I was willing to postpone the opportunity to slog through 18-degree Manhattan without boots with the bad cold I had if Delta could find somewhere a little bit warmer to put us instead.
An hour of wrangling with Ruby and here we are.
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Sorry Mario. Next time.
Anne was last here in 1975 and I've never been here. Terrific fun! Hotels.com again came through for us big time, finding us the Garza Blanca Preserve and Resort, about 8 kilometers south of town. Apparently that was once one of the area's swankiest places but had fallen on hard times a decade or so ago. New money and a very ambitious renovation plan has turned it into something special. Only opened again in late January, we scored a $450 room for $183 and were upgraded into a one-bedroom suite with an enormous balcony, a hammock we can't get out of and a view that goes on forever. Because the place is so new (we may be the first people to stay in this room) it gives off this vaguely eerie never-been-touched vibe, like the Bluth's model home in Arrested Development. But I'm uselessly carping.
It's an amazing property with maybe 40 rooms open and another 18 or 20 under (very loud) construction. The pool is magnificent; one of those infinity pools where, if you lay your chin on the surface of the water, it looks like you're in the middle of the ocean. It helps that, for the first two nights, we were the only people here! A few more souls appear to have checked in over the past day or so.
The restaurant Blanca Blue will probably become one of the best in Puerto Vallarta. The food is creative and well prepared and the wine list, prepared by a young lady named Rosa who announced that she is on her way out to work on the supply side, is very interesting. Rosa recommended a Merlot-based blend she called 'salty' from a micro-producer called Gabriel from Adobe Guadalupe. It was more savory than salty but I definitely see where she was coming from. It was powerful but supple with elegant, nicely ripened flavors of raspberry, blueberry and tar lifted on the back end by a lot of tannin and a squeeze of lemony acidity. Unique. And, alas, maybe one of the last I'll be able to afford this trip.....$950 pesos (roughly $95 US), much of it, I suspect, in taxes. This is not a wine lover's paradise. Food highlights included buttery prawn pancakes, killer 'chips and dip' made with snapper 'chips' and a Tuna Au Poivre that rocked.
But we're in Mexico and you're not.
And eating very well.
The first night we discovered Guacamole at a beachfront dive in El Centro. Yeah, we've all had Guacamole, but prepared table side with the young woman server reading us the history of the treat from a cheat sheet she had created, it was a lot more fun! And really, really good: the flavors fresh and vivid. Anne promised to have at least an avocado a day during our stay and I see no reason to argue. It's all that good cholesterol, you see.
Last night we ate at the very highly recommended El Arrayan, a few blocks from the beach in El Centro. This was probably the best meal all trip for me. The concept here is to show authentic regional Mexian cooking and do it well. The fried crickets from Oaxaca aside, every dish sounded great, looked great and if the sampling of what we managed is any indication, tastes great too! I was reminded again about the 'salty' wine when we a Pacifico on ice with about a quarter cup of lime juice and a healthy dollop of salt too, including on the mug's rim. Interesting. Anyway, El Arrayan is very well priced, colorful, friendly and, obviously, very popular. The local expats have named it Best Mexican Food in Vallarta five years in a row.
By the way, if you're ever in Puerto Vallarta, visit the zoo. Normally I find them sad places with bunches of unhappy animals trapped in filthy, cramped cages.
And Puerto Vallarta's is a lot like that too.
But the animals are so cool, very sociable (if you like sociable zebras) and really accessible. For $50 pesos you can buy a bag of goodies (carrots, peanuts, 'nuggets' and corn) to feed to the avaricious zebras, hilarious warthogs, world's ugliest dog (Mexican hairless....not really that ugly....there are those (Frank) that say my Mikey is uglier), giraffe (creepy tongues, I am sorry), camel, various monkeys, goats and asses. I've never had so much fun at a zoo. The only animals you can't go right up and touch are those that would just as soon kill you as be pet by you.
OK. I am for that.
But that doesn't mean that the zoo's three baby tigers aren't there to play with you, just under careful supervision!
Today, if we can stir ourselves beyond the infinity pool and Alfredo's tender breakfast ministrations at Blanc Blue, we may try the Botanical Garden.
Stay tuned!
Coming Up......Part II
Friday, January 8, 2010
Limonata On Ice, Very Nice
I've learned a few things about blogging in my feeble attempts to get started. First of all, it takes a lot more discipline that I ever imagined to sit down and write when there is only a very fluid, self-imposed deadline! That deadline has become considerably more fluid as time has gone on. It's harder still when you spend most of the day writing at work. There is this intense ennui (deep sigh) I feel when I open my wife's laptop at home after a long day staring at my work computer. And, you know what, whenever I go to write I find myself delving into areas that I am ambivalent (to say the least) to put into this very public domain. But I'll get over it. It's a deal I made with myself and today's the day I get back on the horse I fell!
I've been on the wagon since New Years. No alcohol since the debauchery of New Years Eve. (My staff can attest- the recycle bin was very heavy after that party) And no, I didn't make some lame resolution to stop drinking. I am in the wine business. How long would that last! It just so happens, I am taking some strong antibiotics to eliminate some H Pylori bacteria from my stomach as stomach cancer runs in the family and this stuff seems to be a marker.
Being off alcohol for 10 days has taught me a few things I didn't know about myself. The first is that I am not an alcoholic. Whew. I wasn't sure. Let's put it this way.....that also runs in my family and I've always been very conscious to make sure my decades-long love affair with wine never crossed over into a need for alcohol. It's been a long time since I've taken any significant break from it. After eight days straight without, I think I'm OK. I do crave a glass of wine with dinner, particularly if its Western food, but I have successfully convinced myself it's more a social thing than a physical one. One just completes the other.
I've also learned that I really like San Pellegrino Limonata. I've never been a big soft drink guy but this is bright, refreshing and not at all sweet. Limonata on ice: very nice. Aranciata (San Pellgrino's orange flavor)...not so much. Is it going to replace Fiano di Avellino at my dinner table? Maybe.....sometimes. I hope more frequently.
Also confirmed in my mind was the notion that the schnoz is more important than the pie-hole when it comes to evaluating wine. I managed to fall hopelessly in love with the Pflender Pinot Noir from Sonoma Mountain in a 'smelling' (my colleagues tasted plenty, don't worry on that score) yesterday. Simply wonderful. It was a wine I could sniff all day! Once Brandon and Frank confirmed my suppositions about the mouthfeel and taste of the wine, the deal was struck! Coming soon to an e-mail near you! Smelling but not tasting is not a habit I wish to get into, mind you, but it has been an interesting experiment. Alas, smelling but not tasting is ultimately like kissing a girl through the mail: Ultimately unsatisfying.
Peer pressure has been tough! I am surrounded by wine drinkers all day and by night, well, Anne was with me every step of the way. That is until I made pork chops the other evening. The 2005 Chateau Le Pape Pessac I opened for her sure smelled good out of that Riedel glass. But I resisted. And,of course, what was guaranteed to happen, did happen. We bumped into customer/friend Mike Appleton and his family at Dopo in Oakland Thursday evening. After running an uncomfortable errand (not for this blog...I told you some stuff is best left unwritten) and getting into a silly fender bender on Piedmont Ave ten minutes earlier, Anne and I were a little tense. And when Mike sent over a healthy glassful of 1997 Rockford Cabernet, my first thought was how much a glass of that wonderful Aussie rarity might help soothe over the rough edges of a very surreal day. And Anne loved it. But for me: that familiar refrain: Limonata on ice, very nice!
I'm interested in what crawling back off the wagon is going to be like. Next Monday night I am going to a dinner in San Francisco with Bobby Kacher, the famed wine importer and also have a lunch with Joe Bastianich and Shelley at A-16 next week. I suppose there is no better way to 'break fast' as it were, with some of Bobby's incredible southern French beauties. And if I whine loud enough, maybe he'll pop a Dugat to go with one of Shelley's wonderful pizzas! And though I promise to use more than my nose after Monday, I am going to go back into this whole wine drinking thing with a bit of circumspection. My doctor would be happier if I lost 15 pounds and I'm anxious to see if ten days without wine has helped the cause.
In the meantime, tonight I am roasting a nice piece of salmon, procured from Berkeley Bowl, slathered in Meyer lemons from our tree and a bit of jalapeno-cilantro chutney. We're sauteing some wild mushrooms, making a mizuna salad and some brown rice. Sounds like a bottle of ........well, never mind.
Looks like Limonata on ice again.
Very nice.
I've been on the wagon since New Years. No alcohol since the debauchery of New Years Eve. (My staff can attest- the recycle bin was very heavy after that party) And no, I didn't make some lame resolution to stop drinking. I am in the wine business. How long would that last! It just so happens, I am taking some strong antibiotics to eliminate some H Pylori bacteria from my stomach as stomach cancer runs in the family and this stuff seems to be a marker.
Being off alcohol for 10 days has taught me a few things I didn't know about myself. The first is that I am not an alcoholic. Whew. I wasn't sure. Let's put it this way.....that also runs in my family and I've always been very conscious to make sure my decades-long love affair with wine never crossed over into a need for alcohol. It's been a long time since I've taken any significant break from it. After eight days straight without, I think I'm OK. I do crave a glass of wine with dinner, particularly if its Western food, but I have successfully convinced myself it's more a social thing than a physical one. One just completes the other.
I've also learned that I really like San Pellegrino Limonata. I've never been a big soft drink guy but this is bright, refreshing and not at all sweet. Limonata on ice: very nice. Aranciata (San Pellgrino's orange flavor)...not so much. Is it going to replace Fiano di Avellino at my dinner table? Maybe.....sometimes. I hope more frequently.
Also confirmed in my mind was the notion that the schnoz is more important than the pie-hole when it comes to evaluating wine. I managed to fall hopelessly in love with the Pflender Pinot Noir from Sonoma Mountain in a 'smelling' (my colleagues tasted plenty, don't worry on that score) yesterday. Simply wonderful. It was a wine I could sniff all day! Once Brandon and Frank confirmed my suppositions about the mouthfeel and taste of the wine, the deal was struck! Coming soon to an e-mail near you! Smelling but not tasting is not a habit I wish to get into, mind you, but it has been an interesting experiment. Alas, smelling but not tasting is ultimately like kissing a girl through the mail: Ultimately unsatisfying.
Peer pressure has been tough! I am surrounded by wine drinkers all day and by night, well, Anne was with me every step of the way. That is until I made pork chops the other evening. The 2005 Chateau Le Pape Pessac I opened for her sure smelled good out of that Riedel glass. But I resisted. And,of course, what was guaranteed to happen, did happen. We bumped into customer/friend Mike Appleton and his family at Dopo in Oakland Thursday evening. After running an uncomfortable errand (not for this blog...I told you some stuff is best left unwritten) and getting into a silly fender bender on Piedmont Ave ten minutes earlier, Anne and I were a little tense. And when Mike sent over a healthy glassful of 1997 Rockford Cabernet, my first thought was how much a glass of that wonderful Aussie rarity might help soothe over the rough edges of a very surreal day. And Anne loved it. But for me: that familiar refrain: Limonata on ice, very nice!
I'm interested in what crawling back off the wagon is going to be like. Next Monday night I am going to a dinner in San Francisco with Bobby Kacher, the famed wine importer and also have a lunch with Joe Bastianich and Shelley at A-16 next week. I suppose there is no better way to 'break fast' as it were, with some of Bobby's incredible southern French beauties. And if I whine loud enough, maybe he'll pop a Dugat to go with one of Shelley's wonderful pizzas! And though I promise to use more than my nose after Monday, I am going to go back into this whole wine drinking thing with a bit of circumspection. My doctor would be happier if I lost 15 pounds and I'm anxious to see if ten days without wine has helped the cause.
In the meantime, tonight I am roasting a nice piece of salmon, procured from Berkeley Bowl, slathered in Meyer lemons from our tree and a bit of jalapeno-cilantro chutney. We're sauteing some wild mushrooms, making a mizuna salad and some brown rice. Sounds like a bottle of ........well, never mind.
Looks like Limonata on ice again.
Very nice.
Friday, December 11, 2009
PRIMA’s TOP TEN WINES OF THE YEAR
A Top One Hundred? Are you kidding me?
Ok….let me start off by saying that ‘Wine of the Year’ lists are absurd and a sheer marketing ploy to sell newspapers and magazines. Having said that, with so many calls for one publication’s ‘Wine of the Year’ (a wine that has been sold out for over a year), it dawned on me that this is one shameless marketing ploy that might be fun for us to do too. I threw it out there to my staff….what wines have we sold this year that, for whatever reason, have really resonated with our customers? The debate was, predictably, very lively! In most cases, we still have the wine (unlike some other publications, we are loath to reward a wine posthumously, as it were) so have at ‘em!
And the biggest award we’d like to bestow is ‘Customer of the Year’ and that goes to all of you! Thanks for seeing us through a very ‘interesting’ 2009. Best Wishes for a invigorating, healthy and prosperous 2010!
10) 2007/2008 Maranet Pinot Noir, Russian River $32
DuMOL has been a rock star at PRIMA since its inception but a bear to keep in stock. Thank heavens for Maranet. Here is 80% of DuMOL’s panache for 50% of its price!
9) 2000 Livio Sassetti-Pertimali Brunello di Montalcino $75
This wine, from a so-so vintage, hit its stride this year and just has kept on going! Customers asking for mature Brunello but don’t want to pony up for the 1990 Pacenti or Altesino Montosoli, are rewarded with an outstanding drink! JD is going to be very sorry when this is gone…..by the way, the 2004, also $75, is a world-beater.
TIE: 8) 2007 Ciacci Rosso IGT-2007/2008 Avignonesi Rosso di Montepulciano
This was the year for Tuscan IGTs; sweet, overachieving Sangiovese-based wines that provide a lot of Tuscan sun for not a lot of money. It was toss up here. Both are around $12.50. Take that Chianti!
7) Parr Selection Pinot Noir, Seven Springs Vineyard, Oregon $60
No Pinot Noir this year has so captured our imagination more than this whole cluster fermented beauty with its captivating exotic bouquet made by good friend and famous sommelier Raj Parr.
6) 2007 Vincent Girardin Macon-Fuisse $17
Most wines have a life span of two or three orders and then we move on, but this deliciously aromatic, really luscious white Burgundy has become the most re-ordered white Burgundy in years. We religiously go through 3-4 cases a week in the restaurant and in the store and it remains stunningly under every else’s radar!
5) 2008 Gagliardo ‘Fallegro’ Favorita $16.50
Through sheer force of will we established a market for this absolutely ravishing light, fresh Piemontese white made of the near extinct Favorita grape. Its very faint hint of bubble and minerally mentholly nose is refreshment in a glass and we have several customers so thoroughly hooked, they have a standing order for a case a week!
4) 1999 Delamotte Blanc de Blancs $84
Now when seven seasoned Champagne professionals who have gathered to taste each other’s products go crazy for one wine, you know it’s a stand out. Such was the case at our recent Champagne tasting where the back room talk was all about this amazing orange-peel inflected bubbly of incredible depth and character. We are jealously guarding 2 last magnums of the 1996. Delamotte is Salon’s sister property…..Salon should be ashamed of itself for selling a wine not half as good for four times the price!
3) 2006 Scarlett Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley $50
Not since Neal and Stewart have we had a Cabernet Sauvignon that so captured everyone’s imagination like Scarlett. It’s a beauty with lovely sweet fruit and very suave tannins. It was the hot of our Cabernet event earlier this fall and the restaurant plows through two cases a week like clockwork.
2) 2008 Evodia Garnacha, Calatayud, Spain $9
There were at least a dozen candidates from Spain (Alto Moncayo, Tres Picos and Volver for three) but none matched Evodia’s sheer fun-to-drinkness for freaking $9a bottle! People who forgot the name, asked for ‘the one with the electric blue label.’
1) 2006 Biscerno ‘Insoglio’ IGT Bolgheri $30
The choice for Numero Uno was actually unanimous….the ‘Boar’ wine is simply off the hook. We sell it by the case here in the wine store and in a seemingly endless parade of tastes, glasses and bottles in the restaurant. Tuscan wine lovers love it because it tastes so Tuscan but big Cab lovers appreciate its power and grace that evokes Sassicaia or Ornellaia in an approachable, easy going way. Just lovely.
Honorable Mention
No Room In Our Top Ten But Still Deserving
*2005 Chateau Malartic-Lagraviere, Pessac-Leognan $50
This wine is, to date, the best 2005 Bordeaux I’ve tasted for the money. Very impressive….everything I love about Bordeaux in one bottle.
*2007/2008 Rombauer Chardonnay $32
The official drink of the ‘Lower East Bay.’ We sell it in 750s, magnums, and halves. Now if they only made 187s.
*2007 Southern Rhone Reds
This is a case where there were too many great players on one team making it impossible to choose one as an MVP! This was the Yankees of 2009….a Murderer’s Row of awesome, aromatic wines with tons of personality!
A Top One Hundred? Are you kidding me?
Ok….let me start off by saying that ‘Wine of the Year’ lists are absurd and a sheer marketing ploy to sell newspapers and magazines. Having said that, with so many calls for one publication’s ‘Wine of the Year’ (a wine that has been sold out for over a year), it dawned on me that this is one shameless marketing ploy that might be fun for us to do too. I threw it out there to my staff….what wines have we sold this year that, for whatever reason, have really resonated with our customers? The debate was, predictably, very lively! In most cases, we still have the wine (unlike some other publications, we are loath to reward a wine posthumously, as it were) so have at ‘em!
And the biggest award we’d like to bestow is ‘Customer of the Year’ and that goes to all of you! Thanks for seeing us through a very ‘interesting’ 2009. Best Wishes for a invigorating, healthy and prosperous 2010!
10) 2007/2008 Maranet Pinot Noir, Russian River $32
DuMOL has been a rock star at PRIMA since its inception but a bear to keep in stock. Thank heavens for Maranet. Here is 80% of DuMOL’s panache for 50% of its price!
9) 2000 Livio Sassetti-Pertimali Brunello di Montalcino $75
This wine, from a so-so vintage, hit its stride this year and just has kept on going! Customers asking for mature Brunello but don’t want to pony up for the 1990 Pacenti or Altesino Montosoli, are rewarded with an outstanding drink! JD is going to be very sorry when this is gone…..by the way, the 2004, also $75, is a world-beater.
TIE: 8) 2007 Ciacci Rosso IGT-2007/2008 Avignonesi Rosso di Montepulciano
This was the year for Tuscan IGTs; sweet, overachieving Sangiovese-based wines that provide a lot of Tuscan sun for not a lot of money. It was toss up here. Both are around $12.50. Take that Chianti!
7) Parr Selection Pinot Noir, Seven Springs Vineyard, Oregon $60
No Pinot Noir this year has so captured our imagination more than this whole cluster fermented beauty with its captivating exotic bouquet made by good friend and famous sommelier Raj Parr.
6) 2007 Vincent Girardin Macon-Fuisse $17
Most wines have a life span of two or three orders and then we move on, but this deliciously aromatic, really luscious white Burgundy has become the most re-ordered white Burgundy in years. We religiously go through 3-4 cases a week in the restaurant and in the store and it remains stunningly under every else’s radar!
5) 2008 Gagliardo ‘Fallegro’ Favorita $16.50
Through sheer force of will we established a market for this absolutely ravishing light, fresh Piemontese white made of the near extinct Favorita grape. Its very faint hint of bubble and minerally mentholly nose is refreshment in a glass and we have several customers so thoroughly hooked, they have a standing order for a case a week!
4) 1999 Delamotte Blanc de Blancs $84
Now when seven seasoned Champagne professionals who have gathered to taste each other’s products go crazy for one wine, you know it’s a stand out. Such was the case at our recent Champagne tasting where the back room talk was all about this amazing orange-peel inflected bubbly of incredible depth and character. We are jealously guarding 2 last magnums of the 1996. Delamotte is Salon’s sister property…..Salon should be ashamed of itself for selling a wine not half as good for four times the price!
3) 2006 Scarlett Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley $50
Not since Neal and Stewart have we had a Cabernet Sauvignon that so captured everyone’s imagination like Scarlett. It’s a beauty with lovely sweet fruit and very suave tannins. It was the hot of our Cabernet event earlier this fall and the restaurant plows through two cases a week like clockwork.
2) 2008 Evodia Garnacha, Calatayud, Spain $9
There were at least a dozen candidates from Spain (Alto Moncayo, Tres Picos and Volver for three) but none matched Evodia’s sheer fun-to-drinkness for freaking $9a bottle! People who forgot the name, asked for ‘the one with the electric blue label.’
1) 2006 Biscerno ‘Insoglio’ IGT Bolgheri $30
The choice for Numero Uno was actually unanimous….the ‘Boar’ wine is simply off the hook. We sell it by the case here in the wine store and in a seemingly endless parade of tastes, glasses and bottles in the restaurant. Tuscan wine lovers love it because it tastes so Tuscan but big Cab lovers appreciate its power and grace that evokes Sassicaia or Ornellaia in an approachable, easy going way. Just lovely.
Honorable Mention
No Room In Our Top Ten But Still Deserving
*2005 Chateau Malartic-Lagraviere, Pessac-Leognan $50
This wine is, to date, the best 2005 Bordeaux I’ve tasted for the money. Very impressive….everything I love about Bordeaux in one bottle.
*2007/2008 Rombauer Chardonnay $32
The official drink of the ‘Lower East Bay.’ We sell it in 750s, magnums, and halves. Now if they only made 187s.
*2007 Southern Rhone Reds
This is a case where there were too many great players on one team making it impossible to choose one as an MVP! This was the Yankees of 2009….a Murderer’s Row of awesome, aromatic wines with tons of personality!
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Going Seasonal On Your A**
In my line of work, informing you about wine I hope you will buy, I write a lot of prose. Most of it is boilerplate stuff; somewhere between 100 and 350 words highlighting what I find exciting and relevant about a particular wine in the hopes you will relate. I don't find the writing hard and I am rarely forced to write about something I am not genuinely passionate about. Marginally harder is writing longer themes that require more general remarks by way of introduction. Conventionally these remarks are prefaced by some reference something to which the reader and the writer both can relate, in my experience, more than anything, the damned seasons. If I see one more wine write-up that begins 'There's finally a fall chill in the air and we are more and more reaching for heartier red wines,' or 'Spring is in the air so a young man's fancy turns to Rose,' I think I'll barf....or, at very least, hit that delete key hard. I mean, I like the seasons as much as the next guy (I actually miss having four real ones like in Japan and Back East) and relish their changes, but if you ever catch me writing about them like that, call me on it!
Importer Kermit Lynch is still my benchmark for wine writing. Talk about selling the 'sizzle' of wine: Kermit's simple, understated and prosaic prose always puts me right there next to him, eating freshly harvested mussels and swilling Cassis Blanc at a beachfront cafe in Marsailles or rummaging through dusty old magnums of Miguoa with the Peyrauds in their cellar in Bandol. It's never about an individual wine so much as it is about what it might be like experiencing that moment in wine. I think this sort of writing most closely taps into my own emotional relationship with the product. I love the romance of wine and when a wine actually fulfills the promise of that romance, I love the wine! Alas, Kermit isn't writing for his newsletter as much these days as the blossoming renaissance of his original career in music seems to be taking center stage and, though he has a stupendous, highly committed staff doing the buying, writing and selling, in this age of Facebook, Twitter and immediate gratification, even the KLWM newsletter seems to have lost its innocence.
Parenthetically, this is a topic with which we find ourselves struggling at PRIMA. How do we stay relevant and fresh in an era where simply having knowledge, passion and commitment are not enough? We've always prided ourselves in our ability to discover interesting and unique wines and articulate our passion for them with integrity and verve, but how do we make that stand out amid the endless background static and constant pulses of wine blurbage shot out by all sorts of newly minted, self-anointed experts that assaults the average consumer every day? If you think you have an answer, let me know!
And while I am on the subject of wine writing, let me take a minute to comment about writers using the clinical 100-point scale to evaluate wine. My basic premise is, and stop me if you've heard this before, that it is futile, if not downright misleading, to attempt to so irrevocably quantify the essentially unquantifiable. I am a sports guy, and as a practicing sports guy, I appreciate statistics. I could calculate batting averages at 8 years old and when sports pundits break down baseball and football games by using numbers to quantify the chances of, say, a guy getting a hit in a particular situation, I get that. And that approach, twenty years ago, made sense to me with wine as well. I felt that knowing a wine's alcohol, pH and TA helped me understand a wine better, but I realized at a certain point, that other than helping me anticipate what a wine might 'feel' like, it didn't help me understand how it actually tasted and if I would even like it or not. And a 'score' didn't mean squat.
It's important for me to remember that tasting wine is ephemeral; what's in the glass is only a snapshot of its existence at that moment and even if you could draw quantifiable data from it, that data would be valid only as long as the exact conditions under which that wine was tasted could be replicated. The factors that affect one's actual impressions of a bottle of wine are almost too many to mention, the most obvious being the wine's current physical state as well as the taster's own. Giving a wine a numerical score is like trying to create a career's worth of statistics based on one or two at-bats!
Case in point: The other morning I was packing a case of 2007 Cotes du Rhone purchased by a customer in Las Vegas. He had ordered the wine three months or so ago but we held the box here until things cooled off by him a bit. I wondered how that wine, long sold out and un-re-tasted here, would show differently than it did in earlier in the summer if I were to steal one from Ed's case (I resisted) and, in fact, how it was going to show for Ed once he opened it in Nevada, hundreds of miles away, in the desert, in his own personal environment. So, supposing I had scored that wine back in June, maybe an 88. Or was it 89? Is it still an 88 today? Has it graduated to 90 or even 91? And next year? And the year after? Can we take its temperature somehow without opening it? Uh oh.....the Cotes du Rhone is only 86 today. Better drink it all up! But in the wine world, those points matter. No one wants an 88, but give the same wine a 90 (a difference of 2 points, mind you) and watch it jump.
Critics that attach absolute scores to bottles of wine are creating artificial expectations. The recent issue of Robert Parker's very fine Wine Advocate is a case in point. An astounding number of 2007 Chateauneuf du Papes scored 100 points. Tough to improve on that score, ain't it?! And good for them. To a wine, they are at the top of the Southern Rhone quality pyramid. But what of the poor Clos des Papes, by all accounts an incredible wine? It mustered a mere 99+. What did it do wrong? Was the label scuffed? I mean what's a wine to do to get a perfect score around here? Forever it will have live down the fact that it somehow failed where those others didn't. By the way, Mr. Parker and his team do an incredible job with their remarkably well written and consistent tasting notes and I think if you want to get to 'know' a wine, it is far more valuable to read them than to skip to the end and use that number as gospel.
Perfection in wine, to me, has nothing to do with a score: it's drinking that right wine at the right time. Damn, I can't tell you how many times I've had a 'small' wine that showed 'big' because it was opened at the perfect conflux of time and space. That's where the transcendence occurs. And that's what the traditional wine merchant does for you! We say 'this, my friend, may be the perfect wine for you someday. It will take your evening from the merely ordinary to something elevated and sublime.' Go forth and enjoy.
And fuck the score.
Importer Kermit Lynch is still my benchmark for wine writing. Talk about selling the 'sizzle' of wine: Kermit's simple, understated and prosaic prose always puts me right there next to him, eating freshly harvested mussels and swilling Cassis Blanc at a beachfront cafe in Marsailles or rummaging through dusty old magnums of Miguoa with the Peyrauds in their cellar in Bandol. It's never about an individual wine so much as it is about what it might be like experiencing that moment in wine. I think this sort of writing most closely taps into my own emotional relationship with the product. I love the romance of wine and when a wine actually fulfills the promise of that romance, I love the wine! Alas, Kermit isn't writing for his newsletter as much these days as the blossoming renaissance of his original career in music seems to be taking center stage and, though he has a stupendous, highly committed staff doing the buying, writing and selling, in this age of Facebook, Twitter and immediate gratification, even the KLWM newsletter seems to have lost its innocence.
Parenthetically, this is a topic with which we find ourselves struggling at PRIMA. How do we stay relevant and fresh in an era where simply having knowledge, passion and commitment are not enough? We've always prided ourselves in our ability to discover interesting and unique wines and articulate our passion for them with integrity and verve, but how do we make that stand out amid the endless background static and constant pulses of wine blurbage shot out by all sorts of newly minted, self-anointed experts that assaults the average consumer every day? If you think you have an answer, let me know!
And while I am on the subject of wine writing, let me take a minute to comment about writers using the clinical 100-point scale to evaluate wine. My basic premise is, and stop me if you've heard this before, that it is futile, if not downright misleading, to attempt to so irrevocably quantify the essentially unquantifiable. I am a sports guy, and as a practicing sports guy, I appreciate statistics. I could calculate batting averages at 8 years old and when sports pundits break down baseball and football games by using numbers to quantify the chances of, say, a guy getting a hit in a particular situation, I get that. And that approach, twenty years ago, made sense to me with wine as well. I felt that knowing a wine's alcohol, pH and TA helped me understand a wine better, but I realized at a certain point, that other than helping me anticipate what a wine might 'feel' like, it didn't help me understand how it actually tasted and if I would even like it or not. And a 'score' didn't mean squat.
It's important for me to remember that tasting wine is ephemeral; what's in the glass is only a snapshot of its existence at that moment and even if you could draw quantifiable data from it, that data would be valid only as long as the exact conditions under which that wine was tasted could be replicated. The factors that affect one's actual impressions of a bottle of wine are almost too many to mention, the most obvious being the wine's current physical state as well as the taster's own. Giving a wine a numerical score is like trying to create a career's worth of statistics based on one or two at-bats!
Case in point: The other morning I was packing a case of 2007 Cotes du Rhone purchased by a customer in Las Vegas. He had ordered the wine three months or so ago but we held the box here until things cooled off by him a bit. I wondered how that wine, long sold out and un-re-tasted here, would show differently than it did in earlier in the summer if I were to steal one from Ed's case (I resisted) and, in fact, how it was going to show for Ed once he opened it in Nevada, hundreds of miles away, in the desert, in his own personal environment. So, supposing I had scored that wine back in June, maybe an 88. Or was it 89? Is it still an 88 today? Has it graduated to 90 or even 91? And next year? And the year after? Can we take its temperature somehow without opening it? Uh oh.....the Cotes du Rhone is only 86 today. Better drink it all up! But in the wine world, those points matter. No one wants an 88, but give the same wine a 90 (a difference of 2 points, mind you) and watch it jump.
Critics that attach absolute scores to bottles of wine are creating artificial expectations. The recent issue of Robert Parker's very fine Wine Advocate is a case in point. An astounding number of 2007 Chateauneuf du Papes scored 100 points. Tough to improve on that score, ain't it?! And good for them. To a wine, they are at the top of the Southern Rhone quality pyramid. But what of the poor Clos des Papes, by all accounts an incredible wine? It mustered a mere 99+. What did it do wrong? Was the label scuffed? I mean what's a wine to do to get a perfect score around here? Forever it will have live down the fact that it somehow failed where those others didn't. By the way, Mr. Parker and his team do an incredible job with their remarkably well written and consistent tasting notes and I think if you want to get to 'know' a wine, it is far more valuable to read them than to skip to the end and use that number as gospel.
Perfection in wine, to me, has nothing to do with a score: it's drinking that right wine at the right time. Damn, I can't tell you how many times I've had a 'small' wine that showed 'big' because it was opened at the perfect conflux of time and space. That's where the transcendence occurs. And that's what the traditional wine merchant does for you! We say 'this, my friend, may be the perfect wine for you someday. It will take your evening from the merely ordinary to something elevated and sublime.' Go forth and enjoy.
And fuck the score.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Salad Days
I was, quite innocently, leafing through the current Food & Wine magazine at the dinner table (usually a no-no in the Rittmaster household, but Anne was doing the sudoku, so sue me) and amongst the 'hey this would be fun to try' recipes (what was up with Bob Foley making wine in Red Hook, Brooklyn last month?) was a lot of wine stuff that both intrigued me (Lettie Teague exposing Gruner Veltliner for what it is....the Emperor's new Riesling) and ho-hummed me (what's up with pizza and Pinot Noir when there are at least a hundred Italian reds that simply scream for pizza). But I'll tell you what I saw that just flat out made my butt pucker.....the Mondavi ads. This poor winery has been raped and pillaged and left to flounder at the hands of some of wine's great Philistines and yet they have the nerve to quote Mr. Mondavi's great bon mots as if he were still still holding forth in the Vineyard Room before Jancis Robinson. Makes me really sad to see his cameo holding a glass of wine in those ads as if he were validating the plonk they are selling under his name these days. OK.....we know you've sold your soul, just quit rubbing my face in it.
Well, in the interest of making own little waves here in Blogland, I've decided to dedicate these next couple of episodes to relating for posterity some of my modest history with the Mondavis. As I have already mentioned, my four years with the 'small, family-owned winery' as we ironically referred to ourselves, coincided with a particularly dynamic period in their long history and, by virtue of my unique position, managed to experience a rather larger cross-section of the winery's activities than many others might have done.
The Robert Mondavi Winery was sort of a breeding ground for winemakers. Just from the top of my head (I have never claimed this to be a research paper- just a blog!) and in no particular order I can name Mike Grgich, Zelma Long, Ric Forman, Helen Turley, Warren Winiarski and Sandi Belcher as some of the figures that at one time or another lugged hoses around the Oakville winery. In my own tenure I got to know Michael Weis, Karen Culler, Jim Moore, Steve Lagier, Charles Thomas, Pat Maheny and a host of others, virtually all of whom have gone on to bigger and better things. In fact, there are few wineries I have visited in the Napa (or even Sonoma) Valleys that have not avowed some debt of gratitude to the Mondavis. I was, in no way, a winemaker, but during my six months in Oakville I helped make plenty of it, including punching down plenty of Pinot Noir, racking (and nearly drowning in) Cabernet and stirring up a boatload of Chardonnay lees. (My only start-to-finish wine was a couple of barrels of Opus One second crop that Greg Imbach and I made in his garage that we called 'Raid Red' thanks to the rather draconian solution we employed to deal with the four inch deep trail of nasty ants that attacked our ferment. Let's put it this way...the wine sucked and we definitely couldn't call it 'organic.' ). But Mondavi in those days was like that. It was a big laboratory for experimentation and there was enough latitude for everyone to advance whatever crazy theory they had. We tested screw tops of longevity, made wine both filtered and unfiltered, whole cluster or no-cluster, harvested early, harvested late. Blending trials were conducted on a round white table in the lab where the winemakers would trot out lot after lot (there were something like 300 distinct lots of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon alone for example) poured from tiny jars into glasses and anyone that happened by and had the time and knew their way around J-North or Plot P could write their comments with dry-erase marker right on the table. Who knew? You may have just created that year's Cab Reserve blend!
But make no mistake about it.....if your name wasn't Tim Mondavi, you were never going to truly hold sway as Mondavi's winemaker. And that's what made it such a great place to build your resume. Unending funds with which to screw around and nothing to lose.....eventually you'd be scouted and made an exec somewhere else and your resume would be that much richer for your time making Fume in Oakville.
I was scouted in Japan to look after the winery's interests there (and later 21 other countries) thanks to my rather unique skill set that included experience as a teacher ('education' is what they called 'sales' at Mondavi in those days) , Japanese language and total wine geek-dom. The interview process took some six months and included no fewer than three business class flights from Tokyo to Oakville to meet all kinds of people ranging from PR to HR with a bit of National Sales and the winemaking team thrown in, eating four-hour lunches and downing Echezeaux alongside Mondavi Pinot.
It was on the first one of these junkets that I met Gary Ramona, the V-P who pioneered Mondavi's export markets and the man who quickly convinced me that I wanted to torpedo my real career and dedicate the rest of my life to the Mondavis. I mean, I met the Mondavis repeatedly during the interview process, got along well with Tim (and still do), sparred with Michael (and still do) and paid homage to Mister and Margrit ( I ALWAYS will), but it was Gary that brought out the Kool-Aid with the Chardonnay Reserve and made me drink it from Riedel crystal. Gary bled Mondavi Cabernet and would do anything for Mr. Mondavi and it was his sheer passion for all things Mondavi that really turned my head.
But Gary was, I need to say here, dealt with not long after I was hired, in a very shabby manner by the family thanks to some classic Mondavi infighting, when his personal life came tumbling down around him in a singularly bizarre set of circumstances that involved his estranged wife, a for-pay psychiatrist and a set of 'recovered memories'. I am not here to pass judgement on Gary; what the hell do I know? But we had an event at Auberge du Soleil with a bunch of Mondavi importers and I wound up drinking old Cabernet on the balcony of the Auberge private room late at night with Gary, who was being tortured by having to be 'on' for a bunch of European agents who wanted nothing more than to suck down Opus and Mondavi Reserve Cabernet while, at the same time, deal with the events unfolding before him while being handed a resounding FUCK YOU from .....well, one of the family members. He was kind enough to divulge, quite diplomatically, the depth of his disbelief at the circumstances in which he found himself, and it was with utter shock that Gary told me only weeks later that he was 'going on leave' never, of course, to return. (I caught up with Gary a few years after I joined PRIMA, maybe 1995? and he was involved with some Chilean wine venture but I haven't heard from him since).
Anyway, Gary was very much with Mondavi when I accepted their offer and moved my wife and infant daughter from (pre-earthquake) Kobe, Japan to Yountville. By the way, I am deliberately avoiding talking about the V-P Export that actually hired (and eventually fired) me because....well, just because I don't like the guy and in four years at Mondavi he was the only one to whom I never I could relate. What a shame he held such sway over me. But I don't need to write about him. I am sure he is being a phony-ass bastard in New Mexico or where ever it was he went when he was finally axed at Mondavi and I don't care. Besides, it is my blog and if he wants to write one about me, he can.
We moved to a sweet little house on Mount Street (still there- I drive by whenever I have a snoot-full of Rose and fried smelts at Bisto Jeanty) and set about my six months training. Considering my position was newly created and there was no training manual anyway, I was pretty much left to my own devices and created for myself a program that involved lots of winemaking, visiting lots of other wineries, giving tours and tastings to the public (my greatest joy) and entertaining anyone that visited the winery from Asia. I used the Mondavi expense account to drink all of Mustard's 1970 Mondavi Cabernet, lunch at (the now defunct) Piatti's and using the Vineyard Room (and its wine cabinet) to advance the family's aims in the Far East. And in doing so I found an immense community of others passionately involved with the Mondavi cause. The afore mentioned Greg Imbach and good friend William Craig made up the 'Education' section and they spent hours in our trailer behind the winery showing me how winemaking had changed over the past decade. They are still great friends twenty years later. Winemakers like Steve (Lagier-Meredith) Lagier, Jim Moore, Charles Thomas and Karen Culler spent literally hours with me both during and after work hours. Connie, Kurt, Bill, Ralph and Roger (now Opus' director of PR, poor sod) worked me on the tours while Opus' Stu Harrison gave me the keys and the code to the just-built winery so I could sample barrels, pick grapes and lead tours, although it also became my favorite private picnic spot on the weekends when no one was about. I made friends with others selling Mondavi like Greg (T-Vine) Brown, Gary (Coho) Lipp and many others, many of whom I run into now as they try and sell their current wine at PRIMA. And then there were the others around the Valley (Jan Shrem at Clos Pegase was sooooo impressed that I recognized the Hans Hoffman painting above his desk but thanked Mr. Mondavi for helping clear the opposition to his Michael Graves designed winery) that opened their doors to me strictly on the strength of the Mondavi name.
Those were some great times. My daughter spoke English for the first time to someone other than Anne and I at Yountville Elementary and Anne was as relaxed as I've ever seen her. I drove the Mondavi company yacht (some sort of Oldsmobile) and we ate meat loaf at the (now Bistro Jeanty) Yountville Bar and Grill when we weren't shopping at Ranch Market in Yountville or Nob Hill in Napa and cooking for ourselves. It seems like every one of our friends from Japan found a reason to visit Northern California that summer including Rika-chan, a student of ours from Kobe, who thought it would be convenient to get her driver's license while staying with us. I will go to my grave remembering hitting the cantilever on the Pope Street bridge in St. Helena at 60 miles an hour with Rika aiming the Mondavi-mobile and my shitting a pickle. She actually failed her road test four times before being given a mercy license and told NEVER to drive again in the States.
Lots of other stuff happened. I mapped phylloxera from a hot air balloon, flew in Michael Mondavis new plane to Woodbridge (one of several great trips to Woodbridge....David Lucas...you're the MAN!), met my good friends Donald and Heather (no longer together) Patz at the now defunct Trilogy restaurant where they proudly showed off their very first vintage of Patz and Hall Chardonnay, drank two versions of Joseph Swan Zin- one harvested before and one harvested after the rain with Jim Moore and Charles Thomas and generally immersed myself in the wine current that ran under the Napa Valley. Anne and I genuinely dreaded flying back to Tokyo to start our 'mission' there that November.
Do I miss it now? Well, sure. But those were different times. I like to think it was a lot more innocent in those days. Opus One cost $50 and was the most expensive wine in the Valley. Bill Harlan was still selling real estate and Screaming Eagle was still in the nest. But so what? Though I am older and a helluva lot more jaded, I still get a kick out of seeing Greg Brown when he comes by to deliver his wine or when I bump into Michael Mondavi, out there being, well, Michael Mondavi.
We all knew there was a moment there where anything was possible. And as long as a kernel of that possibility exists, it's all good, man.
Well, in the interest of making own little waves here in Blogland, I've decided to dedicate these next couple of episodes to relating for posterity some of my modest history with the Mondavis. As I have already mentioned, my four years with the 'small, family-owned winery' as we ironically referred to ourselves, coincided with a particularly dynamic period in their long history and, by virtue of my unique position, managed to experience a rather larger cross-section of the winery's activities than many others might have done.
The Robert Mondavi Winery was sort of a breeding ground for winemakers. Just from the top of my head (I have never claimed this to be a research paper- just a blog!) and in no particular order I can name Mike Grgich, Zelma Long, Ric Forman, Helen Turley, Warren Winiarski and Sandi Belcher as some of the figures that at one time or another lugged hoses around the Oakville winery. In my own tenure I got to know Michael Weis, Karen Culler, Jim Moore, Steve Lagier, Charles Thomas, Pat Maheny and a host of others, virtually all of whom have gone on to bigger and better things. In fact, there are few wineries I have visited in the Napa (or even Sonoma) Valleys that have not avowed some debt of gratitude to the Mondavis. I was, in no way, a winemaker, but during my six months in Oakville I helped make plenty of it, including punching down plenty of Pinot Noir, racking (and nearly drowning in) Cabernet and stirring up a boatload of Chardonnay lees. (My only start-to-finish wine was a couple of barrels of Opus One second crop that Greg Imbach and I made in his garage that we called 'Raid Red' thanks to the rather draconian solution we employed to deal with the four inch deep trail of nasty ants that attacked our ferment. Let's put it this way...the wine sucked and we definitely couldn't call it 'organic.' ). But Mondavi in those days was like that. It was a big laboratory for experimentation and there was enough latitude for everyone to advance whatever crazy theory they had. We tested screw tops of longevity, made wine both filtered and unfiltered, whole cluster or no-cluster, harvested early, harvested late. Blending trials were conducted on a round white table in the lab where the winemakers would trot out lot after lot (there were something like 300 distinct lots of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon alone for example) poured from tiny jars into glasses and anyone that happened by and had the time and knew their way around J-North or Plot P could write their comments with dry-erase marker right on the table. Who knew? You may have just created that year's Cab Reserve blend!
But make no mistake about it.....if your name wasn't Tim Mondavi, you were never going to truly hold sway as Mondavi's winemaker. And that's what made it such a great place to build your resume. Unending funds with which to screw around and nothing to lose.....eventually you'd be scouted and made an exec somewhere else and your resume would be that much richer for your time making Fume in Oakville.
I was scouted in Japan to look after the winery's interests there (and later 21 other countries) thanks to my rather unique skill set that included experience as a teacher ('education' is what they called 'sales' at Mondavi in those days) , Japanese language and total wine geek-dom. The interview process took some six months and included no fewer than three business class flights from Tokyo to Oakville to meet all kinds of people ranging from PR to HR with a bit of National Sales and the winemaking team thrown in, eating four-hour lunches and downing Echezeaux alongside Mondavi Pinot.
It was on the first one of these junkets that I met Gary Ramona, the V-P who pioneered Mondavi's export markets and the man who quickly convinced me that I wanted to torpedo my real career and dedicate the rest of my life to the Mondavis. I mean, I met the Mondavis repeatedly during the interview process, got along well with Tim (and still do), sparred with Michael (and still do) and paid homage to Mister and Margrit ( I ALWAYS will), but it was Gary that brought out the Kool-Aid with the Chardonnay Reserve and made me drink it from Riedel crystal. Gary bled Mondavi Cabernet and would do anything for Mr. Mondavi and it was his sheer passion for all things Mondavi that really turned my head.
But Gary was, I need to say here, dealt with not long after I was hired, in a very shabby manner by the family thanks to some classic Mondavi infighting, when his personal life came tumbling down around him in a singularly bizarre set of circumstances that involved his estranged wife, a for-pay psychiatrist and a set of 'recovered memories'. I am not here to pass judgement on Gary; what the hell do I know? But we had an event at Auberge du Soleil with a bunch of Mondavi importers and I wound up drinking old Cabernet on the balcony of the Auberge private room late at night with Gary, who was being tortured by having to be 'on' for a bunch of European agents who wanted nothing more than to suck down Opus and Mondavi Reserve Cabernet while, at the same time, deal with the events unfolding before him while being handed a resounding FUCK YOU from .....well, one of the family members. He was kind enough to divulge, quite diplomatically, the depth of his disbelief at the circumstances in which he found himself, and it was with utter shock that Gary told me only weeks later that he was 'going on leave' never, of course, to return. (I caught up with Gary a few years after I joined PRIMA, maybe 1995? and he was involved with some Chilean wine venture but I haven't heard from him since).
Anyway, Gary was very much with Mondavi when I accepted their offer and moved my wife and infant daughter from (pre-earthquake) Kobe, Japan to Yountville. By the way, I am deliberately avoiding talking about the V-P Export that actually hired (and eventually fired) me because....well, just because I don't like the guy and in four years at Mondavi he was the only one to whom I never I could relate. What a shame he held such sway over me. But I don't need to write about him. I am sure he is being a phony-ass bastard in New Mexico or where ever it was he went when he was finally axed at Mondavi and I don't care. Besides, it is my blog and if he wants to write one about me, he can.
We moved to a sweet little house on Mount Street (still there- I drive by whenever I have a snoot-full of Rose and fried smelts at Bisto Jeanty) and set about my six months training. Considering my position was newly created and there was no training manual anyway, I was pretty much left to my own devices and created for myself a program that involved lots of winemaking, visiting lots of other wineries, giving tours and tastings to the public (my greatest joy) and entertaining anyone that visited the winery from Asia. I used the Mondavi expense account to drink all of Mustard's 1970 Mondavi Cabernet, lunch at (the now defunct) Piatti's and using the Vineyard Room (and its wine cabinet) to advance the family's aims in the Far East. And in doing so I found an immense community of others passionately involved with the Mondavi cause. The afore mentioned Greg Imbach and good friend William Craig made up the 'Education' section and they spent hours in our trailer behind the winery showing me how winemaking had changed over the past decade. They are still great friends twenty years later. Winemakers like Steve (Lagier-Meredith) Lagier, Jim Moore, Charles Thomas and Karen Culler spent literally hours with me both during and after work hours. Connie, Kurt, Bill, Ralph and Roger (now Opus' director of PR, poor sod) worked me on the tours while Opus' Stu Harrison gave me the keys and the code to the just-built winery so I could sample barrels, pick grapes and lead tours, although it also became my favorite private picnic spot on the weekends when no one was about. I made friends with others selling Mondavi like Greg (T-Vine) Brown, Gary (Coho) Lipp and many others, many of whom I run into now as they try and sell their current wine at PRIMA. And then there were the others around the Valley (Jan Shrem at Clos Pegase was sooooo impressed that I recognized the Hans Hoffman painting above his desk but thanked Mr. Mondavi for helping clear the opposition to his Michael Graves designed winery) that opened their doors to me strictly on the strength of the Mondavi name.
Those were some great times. My daughter spoke English for the first time to someone other than Anne and I at Yountville Elementary and Anne was as relaxed as I've ever seen her. I drove the Mondavi company yacht (some sort of Oldsmobile) and we ate meat loaf at the (now Bistro Jeanty) Yountville Bar and Grill when we weren't shopping at Ranch Market in Yountville or Nob Hill in Napa and cooking for ourselves. It seems like every one of our friends from Japan found a reason to visit Northern California that summer including Rika-chan, a student of ours from Kobe, who thought it would be convenient to get her driver's license while staying with us. I will go to my grave remembering hitting the cantilever on the Pope Street bridge in St. Helena at 60 miles an hour with Rika aiming the Mondavi-mobile and my shitting a pickle. She actually failed her road test four times before being given a mercy license and told NEVER to drive again in the States.
Lots of other stuff happened. I mapped phylloxera from a hot air balloon, flew in Michael Mondavis new plane to Woodbridge (one of several great trips to Woodbridge....David Lucas...you're the MAN!), met my good friends Donald and Heather (no longer together) Patz at the now defunct Trilogy restaurant where they proudly showed off their very first vintage of Patz and Hall Chardonnay, drank two versions of Joseph Swan Zin- one harvested before and one harvested after the rain with Jim Moore and Charles Thomas and generally immersed myself in the wine current that ran under the Napa Valley. Anne and I genuinely dreaded flying back to Tokyo to start our 'mission' there that November.
Do I miss it now? Well, sure. But those were different times. I like to think it was a lot more innocent in those days. Opus One cost $50 and was the most expensive wine in the Valley. Bill Harlan was still selling real estate and Screaming Eagle was still in the nest. But so what? Though I am older and a helluva lot more jaded, I still get a kick out of seeing Greg Brown when he comes by to deliver his wine or when I bump into Michael Mondavi, out there being, well, Michael Mondavi.
We all knew there was a moment there where anything was possible. And as long as a kernel of that possibility exists, it's all good, man.
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