Tuesday, May 18th
Made a note to eat more breakfast this morning. After the pummelling I took yesterday at the hands of all that Nebbiolo, I had to muster all of the ballast I could in order to successfully do battle with an extra early start, and what turned out to be another 85 wines at the Ampelion at 10:00 AM.
The morning started with an excellent lecture on the characteristics of Nebbiolo by Dr. Anna Schneider at the Palazzo Mostre e Congressi in Alba. In the did-you-know category are the facts that the earliest mention of Nebbiolo in Barolo goes back to 1266, though there was no appellation of Barolo as such until the Priest of Barolo made it so in 1869. Nebbiolo is, of course, native to Piemonte with Valle d’Aosta claiming some 26 and Valtellina, in Lombardia some 900 of the roughly 6000 hectares planted. Sardegna’s 26 hectares, a legacy of the Savoys, alas, is not Nebbiolo at all, Schneider claims. It’s Dolcetto! Take that Sardegna.
Another interesting fact is that of the three major clones we know, Rose, Lampia and Michet, only the latter two are suitable for creating newer selections as Rose makes just that, pink, not red, Nebbiolo. But Michet, while an excellent clone, is ravaged by fan leaf virus that both lowers yields (yay!) but also brix (uh, oh). In the seventies and eighties, selections were chosen for their ability to produce high yields but, since 1980, quality has become the foremost criterion.
Tasting Two at the Ampelion.
Some words about the 2007 Barbareschi from Neive: most of the wines all fell within a fairly narrow bandwidth of flavors and ranged from super ripe, almost gooey, to only slightly less so. My favorites have a feminine spice to them. The biggest turn quite tannic, but I didn’t mark that down if they had enough freshness and verve to counter. Many didn’t. Here were my Neive favorites:
***
2007 Rivetti Massimo Barbaresco Froii-chocolate, cinnamon powder
2007 Angelo Negro et al Barbaresco Cascinotta- darker personality
2007 Montiribaldi Barbaresco Palazzina- classic in style- almost got the +
2007 Cascina Saria Barbaresco- new to me but very good
2007 Antichi Podere dei Gallina Barbaresco Vigneto L Ciaciaret- big boy!
2007 Sottimano Barbaresco Cotta- archetype of a success for this vintage
2007 Punset Barbaresco Basarin- some burned wood but excellent quality
2007 Antica Casa Vinicola Scarpa Barbaresco Tettineive- who is this?
2005 Dante Rivetti Barbaresco Riserva Bricco- gonna like these Riservae!
2005 Rivetti Massimo Barbaresco Riserva Serraboella- top notch.
2006 Barolo Vintage
Always nice to warm up with 40+ Barbareschi to prepare for the main event! The 2006 vintage in the Barolo zone was considered a more classically styled one with the volume controls one louder….a lot like 2004, some say. My take on it is that it is like 1998 but les consistent. I identified a consistent nose of raspberry (more pronounced in La Morra as I later found, and less obvious in the more structured wines of Monforte and Serralunga). The fruit is complicated to one degree or another by hints of hot ‘scorched’ earth, something ‘seedy’ like fennel seed- definitely in the brown herb category- and beefy, mouthfilling tannins. I wrote chocolate-mint for more than a few and those often, it seemed to me, had slightly (or not so slightly in more than one case) elevated alcohols. The best were nicely balanced, juicy and restrained. This first set of wines were all from Barolo and Novello. The controversy amongst the tasters surrounded the famed Cannubi vineyard, which more than one critic in the room called ‘ alcoholic and insipid.’ I wasn’t ready to go that far but there were several disappointments from that vaunted site.
As I go through these notes now, I see that I was not very generous with my ratings but I have to say that the vintage is really good- maybe not top to bottom- but very good indeed. 2006 definitely has a prime spot in the Barolo winning streak that now extends from 1995. Here we go:
***+
2006 Burlotto Barolo Vigneto Cannubi- super stylish and elegant
***
2006 Le Ginestre Barolo, Sottocastello, Novello – a benchmark setter
2006 Elvio Cogno Barolo Ravera- woody but otherwise complete
2006 Poderi Einaudi Barolo Coste Grimaldi- top notch
2006 Giacomo Grimaldi Barolo Le Coste- why am I not surprised! This always rocks.
2006 Luciano Sandrone Barolo Cannubi Boschis- quite controversial- the Le Vigne was a disappointment and this was better, although not a mind blower. Distinct animal character in both. Something’s up at this vaunted address.
2006 Gianni Gagliardo Barolo Cannubi- rustic but in a nice way
2006 Poderi Einaudi Barolo Nei Cannubi- nearly got the extra +
2006 Damilano Barolo Cannubi- dramatic, lavishly oaked, why not?
2006 Pira Chiara Boschis Barolo Cannubi- elegant and balanced
2006 Giuseppe Rinaldi Barolo Cannubi San Lorenzo-Ravera- as advertised
2006 Giuseppe Rinaldi Barolo Brunate-Le Coste- indeed, this is spectacular
2006 GD Vajra Barolo Bricco Viole- mineral, Burgundy-like
2006 Baroli Barolo Cerequio- under the radar producer
2004 Virna- Borgogno Barolo Riserva Preda Sarmassa
2004 Borgogno Giacomo Barolo Riserva- elegant, pretty even
2004 Borgogno Giacomo Barolo Riserva Liste- the classic Neb, light but spicy
A very well earned buffet lunch (what’s up with Salad Russe? Who was the knucklehead who first brought mayonnaise to Piemonte?) was had at the courtyard of Barolo castle. But the respite was short lived as the castle dungeon was loaded with evil-minded men and women just waiting to force more Nebbiolo down our throats.
Same format as yesterday with the accent on the 2000 vintage. So here’s what I say about that! The 2000s from blue chip producers like Borgogno, Mascarello, Rinaldi,Cogno and others reveal that, unlike the Barbareschi and Roero wines above, this is not a vintage that will be integrated and perfect ready anytime soon, if ever. Of all the 2000s tasted, it was only Giacomo Brezza’s lovely Sarmassa that showed any degree of the complex marzipan-balsamico I was expecting, and even that wine had a ton of palpable tannin. The wines however did show the hallmarks of each respective property’s personalities though; Mascarello’s elegance, Rinaldi’s punch, the mineral-iodine-spice of Borgogno but the best fruit is still submerged in a sea of tannin and whether or not something more interesting emerges with time, we’ll need to wait and see. The fate that befell the 2000 Roeros is not, however, encouraging. Most of those have passed their prime and are lean and tannic shells of their former selves. Of course, as I mentioned before, 2000 was ten years ago and most of the current winemakers in Roero were still in the early stages of their careers and this was during the prime of the ‘modern’ movement where overoaking and extracting Nebbiolo was the norm. Only a few in Roero handled the challenge of this so-called ‘perfect’ vintage with grace. One would think that the wines made by veteran winemakers working in Barolo’s most established, vaunted terroirs would fare better. I know they did, but to what extent, the jury is still definitely out. In the meantime, keep those ‘perfect’ 2000 Baroli in your cellar under lock and key!
Dinner turned out to be an interesting affair. Meant to highlight the producers of Roero, it was held at the Castello Magliano Alfieri Ristorante Stefano Paganini alla Corte degli Alfieri……sounds like a mouthful and it was. And damned hard to find too. I have to mention, first of all, that I thought it wise to eschew the bus and drive out there with Aussie David directly from a brief rest at the hotel. Let’s the put it this way, the drive home, once I knew the way, was 35 minutes, the drive out, considerably longer! Our unplanned detour, however, took us through most of the best vineyards of Barbaresco and Neive at sunset, so who really cared that we were lost. It was simply too gorgeous to get too tense about it. Piano, piano! We finally turned up at the castello about an hour or so late, just in time, in fact to sit down to dinner having missed the tasting, Hurray for us! Less Nebbiolo to digest. Anyway, as bad as we felt for being late, two other parties turned up even later, one twenty five minutes after us and another a full hour. Having said earlier what a breeze it was to navigate in Italy, you should never believe what I say.
The meal was a curious affair with some interesting wines including Marco Porello Arneis magnums, my introduction to the Negro boys, Fratelli Angelo (two brothers), Lorenzo Negro and the unrelated Negros that make Pace (Pa-che). Of the three, Angelo (literally Negro Angelo e figli di Giovanni Negro) is making the best wines, well-done, sleek versions of Roero that bare searching for. The owner of Deltetto was also there so I had a chance to see Prima favorite Deltetto S. Michele Arneis against a passel of others. It fared beautifully. Amongst the others, my good friend Mario Roagna’s Cascina Val de Prete wines and the 2001 Monchiero Carbone Prunti Roero were the class of the evening. By the way, Stefano Paganini is reputed to be one of the best chefs in the area but I am not sure, based on this meal, that I would make this trip again. I know our good friend Chef Elide at Centro in nearby Prioca is the place to visit should your plans take you towards Canale in Roero. And, as we shall see tomorrow, Villa Teobaldi’s Ravioli Bianchi alone makes that a worthwhile stop.
Thanks to the straight shot home, in bed by midnight again, a survivor of Day Two.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Breakfast of Champions, Day I
Breakfast of Champions
Following are my notes from my recent week-long trip to Italy completed yesterday. It's only Day One. There are six more to go!
Piemonte, May 15-22
Sunday Evening, May 16th
At the risk of violating the copyright for Wheaties (or Kurt Vonnegut’s for that matter), I defy anyone to surpass wines made from the Nebbiolo grape as a preferred way to break fast. In fact, our small group consumed some 350 different versions over four days of tasting, all before lunch! The other 200 or so wines were consumed in formal afternoon tastings at various locations, featuring old vintages, and also at many ad hoc winery visits, extra-curricular lunches, and dinners that followed. Basically, a f**kload of Nebbiolo was consumed, much to the delight of the organizers of Nebbiolo Prima, our hosts for the week.
Nebbiolo Prima is a loose conglomeration of Nebbiolo producers from the Barolo, Barbaresco and Roero zones, loosely (in an Italian sort of way) under the auspices of Albeisa (now presided over by the amiable Enzo Brezza) and the Consorzio di Tutela Barolo, Barbaresco, Alba, Langhe e Roero- headed up by Pietro Ratti) The producers pitch in funds every year to organize a grand week of intensive tastings and ancillary events for invited buyers and journalists, highlighting current vintages from the region and trotting out some older ones in the hopes that we’ll go back to our home countries and spread the word. So here I am! Spreading the word!
I mean, how could I not? Nebbiolo? Prima? Two of my favorite things!
The event began in, and was centered around, the city of Alba, one of Piemonte’s real gems. An opening party was held Sunday evening in the commandeered Piazza Savone, in the center of the city, and featured a grand selection of local whites and sparkling wines, buffet tables groaning with antipasti and a selection of local DOP cheeses, live music and a deadening slide show offered up by the Albeise bottle people, one of the event’s major underwriters. I got to Malpensa rather late, having left London at 2:30, renting a really cool Fiat Punto (150 km/hour on the autostrada, no sweat!) and making my way west with only a very vague idea of where I was going. I arrived just as the party was breaking up (and, unfortunately just as the Albeisa bottle video was starting), had a glass of Favorita, some smoked meats, a few bites of cheese and decided to drag my sleepy ass off to my hotel.
Driving in Italy, by the way, is a lot of fun. I know it gets a bad rap and I wasn’t, mind you, trying to negotiate roundabouts in central Roma with thirty angry Vespas buzzing on my tail, but the roads are clearly marked, for the most part in really good shape, and I found my fellow drivers to be uniformly courteous and polite. The new Italy! With the exception of a few notable bottlenecks, the streets of Alba are wide and clean and the roads in the wine country lots of fun to drive on. Of course that doesn’t mean this wasn’t Italy! One line-painting crew seemed to haunt me wherever I went and consisted of about thirty orange-clad smoking guys watching one of their party run a painting machine that laid down thick white paint over the old, faded road lines. Of course this also meant blocking half the road at a time when they did the crosswalks, creating a sort of two-way slalom effect which, when involving lots of oncoming trucks, made for some true road excitement.
In hindsight, I should have brought my annoying tom-tom or found some other GPS device to use. Even though the roads were nicely marked, it’s easy to get lost like I did, going from the opening party to the hotel, theoretically only ten minutes’ drive from the square. Ten minutes it is if you don’t circumnavigate the entire city of Alba first. After stopping first at a gas station and then at a gelateria, I finally found myself on what, in the daylight, proved to be a really beautiful, very windy, road rising through the Diano d’Alba hills to Benevello, one of the highest spots in the Langhe and home to the four-star Albergo Villa d’Amelia. I awoke at dawn to a stunning view from both windows of my corner room. Dominating the north-facing window at daybreak (don’t ask….I sleep terribly on these trips) was Mon Viso, the snowy crag featured at the beginning of every Paramount Pictures movie, and the rest of the Alps. Quite a way to wake up! I took a long walk to the town (if you can call it that) of Benevello, some twenty minutes up the hill and one of the highest points in the area, to see its medieval castello (not much left other than a wall and an intriguing-looking trattoria) and Renaissance-era church. The views from there, however, are unparalleled.
Monday, May 17th
At breakfast (the usual assortment of croissants, smoked meat, cheeses, granola, yogurt, juices and such that you find just about everywhere in Italy) I met the other buyers staying at the inn, including old friend John Downing, an LA retailer, Henry, the wine director at Del Posto in New York, Eric and Mao, he from Donatella in San Francisco and she a retailer in San Jose, Aussie wine importer David Lynch, Joanne Noto, a restaurant buyer from Grand Rapids Michigan, Brad, my doppelganger from Primo Vino (no, not Prima Vini) near Denver and an assortment of other retail and restaurant people numbering around 15. Then it was on the bus and off to Alba’s slick Ampelion, a wine and grape school and research center funded by the government, growers and producers of the area and, as it turned out, our private torture chamber. It was in the large open room at the center of the Ampelion where four Italian sommeliers, four young student assistants and a table laden with 86 open bottles of Nebbiolo awaited our arrival.
The tastings were fairly straightforward and the first day’s lineup started with the 2007 vintage of Roero and gradually segued to the 2007 vintage for the Barbareschi from the villages of Alba, Barbaresco and Treiso with, just for kicks, five 2005 Barbaresco Riservae. With little fanfare, while we sat there dumbfounded, gawking at the list, the Somms began their evil task, filling our five glasses with a seemingly endless succession of Nebbiolo while we swirled, gargled and spit ‘em back, scribbled notes and went on to the next. Every few flights the assistants would whisk away our overflowing spit buckets and replace them with empties. There was a napkin full of grissini, the local breadsticks I love so much, and an endless supply of Aqua Naturale, but nothing else separating us from the onslaught of Nebbiolo we were facing.
The wines were provided by the contributing producers, some 190 of them. Most all of the big names and many of the small ones were present, but I should point out that there were some wineries that declined to participate in the event and hence I did not taste them. Not seeing a particular name in my list of favorites does not imply that I did not like it; it may be that I simply didn’t taste it! But that list is small. On the first day, for instance, the only two names I can think of that weren’t present were Gaja and Rivetti.
Before the tasting, some interesting facts were noted about recent law changes, unique examples, I think, of Italian inmates running the asylum. The producers of the mainly Dolcetto wines in Diano d’Alba and Dogliani have decided, in their wisdom, to eliminate the word Dolcetto from their appellations. Dolcetto, they say, is a grape much maligned for its name, which many interpret to mean sweet. By eliminating it, they say, it will highlight their terroir rather than the grape name. Of course, what this means to me is that Diano and Dogliani will now take their place next to the other geographically-named appellations of the region: Barbaresco, Barolo and Roero, all three of which use Nebbiolo exclusively. What’s a consumer going to think about Diano or Dogliani? I think they are barking up the wrong tree on this one.
Alba has also jumped in to get its own DOC, which appears to be a catch-all term for anything made in the region that doesn’t qualify as one of the better appellations because a) they are using non-traditional grapes like Cabernet, or b) they want to declassify a wine or sell it at a non-DOCG sort of price but want it to have more cachet than, say, Nebbiolo della Langhe. Nothing like keeping it simple, folks.
And here’s the Only-In-Italy rule: Roero, which lobbied hard to get its own name so it would be perceived on a par with Barolo and Barbaresco, was successful in the endeavor only by including a 5% addition of Arneis to the DOCG blend to diversify itself from those two. That was the rule. However, in practice, not one winemaker I asked ever actually added Arneis to his Nebbiolo. I mean, why would they? So, this year, in their wisdom, they eliminated the requirement. Uh, ok.
I made notes for everything I tasted (I used up an entire pen!) and scored them with my usual *-**** star rating. I use (-) or (+) when I think I might have room one way or another and I usually save my **** for wines that completely blow me away, something that just doesn’t happen in a tasting of this sort. In the interest of space, I’ve decided only to mention here the wines I scored *** or higher, as these are solid recommendations that no one, I think, would be unhappy with. In the event something was particularly disappointing, I’ll mention that, too.
But first, some general comments about the first day’s tasting. I won’t write about the specifics of the 2007 vintage here, as there are plenty of other pundits out there who have written of them, and I’d just be copying. It was, by all accounts, though, a very good, if very ripe, one. I found it, in the Roero and Barbaresco, an interesting and confounding one. It certainly scored high for drinkability, as there were few wines that weren’t succulent and delicious; however, unlike Barolo, as I will get to later, as a group these wines lacked a certain Nebbiolo-ness. In other words, they were ripe to the point where the essential seductive characteristics of the Nebbiolo grape becomes masked by a level of concentrated fruit (and elevated alcohol) that leaves one wondering where they would have fit in had the tasting been blind and other grapes been included. Roero, in particular, had a rough go of it. I think the winemaking here is still rather immature and no consensus of style has emerged. If you used too much barrique in 2007, for example, you made a particularly generic sort of red, good to drink but not at all thrilling to the Nebbiolo purist. I am not meaning to tar the entire vintage (so to speak) with one brush, but one has to be a bit careful when purchasing these 2007s if one’s goal is long-term cellaring. There are, as you can see from the notes below, still plenty of nice wines from which to choose.
In tasting these wines I focused on three benchmarks I established for the vintage and put each wine on an imaginary line graph with marks for where it fit in….if a given wine surpassed the average on each count, it got its ***! It ain’t rocket science, but when tasting this many wines, it became very easy. I looked for the following:
-Fruit: sour (Morello) cherry that ran to darker, almost chocolate cherry fruit the riper it got. The best had a touch of austerity with something like fennel seed leaning towards pine resin in there.
-Tannins- on almost all, they spread out at the back of your mouth. The best had nice ripe tannins that seemed to flow naturally from the density of the texture. A leaner wine with a lot of crisp tannin doesn’t bode well in my mind, but there were a few of those.
-Freshness. In a vintage like 2007, fresh acidity could be an issue. My favorites may have been ripe, had a ton of fruit, generous oak and such, but also good freshness. It’s a point in this vintage.
***+
2007 Cascina Morassino Barbaresco Ovello- Wow! Is this ever good!
2007 Ca’ du Rabaja Barbaresco Rabaja- juicy, well-filled, oaky, luscious
2005 Produttori del Barbaresco Riserva Rio Sordo- a complex, classical wine
***
2007 Az Ag Cornarea Roero Rosso- oaky and sweet
2007 Bel Colle Roero Rosso Monvije- powerful but balanced
2007 Negro Angelo e figli di Giovanni Negro Roero Rosso Prachioso- herbal, complex
2007 Fabrizio Battagliano Roero Rosso Sergentin- beautiful
2006 Monchiero Carbone Roero Riserva Printi- complete
2006 Matteo Corregio Roero Riserva Ampsej- balanced and complete
2006 Negro Angelo Roero Riserva Sudisfa
2007 Az ag Molino Barbaresco Teorema- sweet fruit
2007 Orlando Abrigo Barbaresco Valgrande- concentrated, woody
2007 Eredi Lodali Barbaresco La Casa in Collina- Cab-like, curranty
2007 Az Ag Pelissero Barbaresco Ausario- complete, gorgeous
2007 Pertinace Barbaresco Vigneto Nerve- woody, sweet, good drink
2007 Grasso Fratelli Barbaresco Vallegrande- easy to love
2007 Pertinace Barbaresco Marcaini- exuberant and fresh
2007 Sottimano Barbaresco Pajore- linear, complex
2007 Cantina del Pino Barbaresco- perfumed, exotic
2007 Produttori del Barbaresco- powerful, intense, complete
2007 La Spinona Barbaresco La Spinona- Bricco Faset- plumy, oaky
2007 Montiribaldi Barbaresco Sori Montiribaldi- soft but balanced
2007 Marchese di Gresy (Tenute Cisy Asinati) Barbaresco Martinenga- juicy, round
2007 Albino Rocca Barbaresco Vigneto Brich Ronchi- plenty of everything!
2007 Cortese Giuseppe Barbaresco Rabaja- sweet, balanced
2007 Bruno Rocca Barbaresco Rabaja- simply stellar
2005 Piazzo Armando Barbaresco Riserva Nervo Vigna Giaia- blockish, earth, tar
2005 Nada Giuseppe Barbaresco Riserva Casot- juicy and balanced
Do you want to see my disappointments, too? Of course you do. No one wants to see only the good stuff! Here are some names that didn’t perform well for me.
2007 Giovanni Almondo Roero Bric Valdiana (but their Arneis rules!)
2007 Albino Rocca Barbareco……two corked bottles and one that was impossibly lean
2007 Prunotto Barbaresco….earthy, stinky….no.
2007 Rattalino Barbaresco…..how could you like a wine called Rattalino!
2007 Bruno Rocca Barbaresco….first bottle corked, second was weird
2007 Michele Chiarlo Barbaresco Asili….primary, brutal!
2005 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco Riserva Pora ….was it corked?
Shoot…..four pages and still before lunch on Day One!
We took the bus to the Albergo dell’Agenzia at the University of Pollenzo for a much-needed buffet lunch and another tasting, this time with the producers themselves showing up to four wines each, including where possible, wines from vintage 2000, now 10 years old. This tasting was a walk-around with people filtering in and out of the room as the hours progressed.
Noted: the tasting was to highlight the 2000 vintage in Roero at ten years old. The results? Not so good. The wines, taken as a group, were far advanced with fading fruit and still very grippy tannins. Of course, ten years ago, many of the winemakers in this room were barely out of diapers and Roero still seems to me to be a decade behind its older neighbors in terms of track record and confident winemaking. They get a pass. The Barbareschi in the room were better but still not of the character that made me excited about having a cellar full of them. What was up with the Wine Spectator rating that vintage in Piemonte 100 points? Of course, the 2000 Baroli have yet to be tried, but there are some serious questions here.
I didn’t find any wines in the afternoon tasting I would mention here other than several duplicates of the 2007s that I liked from the earlier session. Ca’ de Rabaja is a real find in Barbaresco. I understand that they will be imported into California this summer, and I will be first in line. I also noted that the 1999 Malvira Roero Monbeltrame, the only 1999 in the room, was a lovely testament to what a good vintage that was. Compared with Malvira’s lean, green and bitterly tannic 2000, the 1999 was everything an eleven-year-old wine should be, complex with balsamic, bitter cherry and fading roses. It was the exception that seemed to prove the rule about 2000.
After lunch, three of us, including the aforementioned Henry and David visited the famed cellars of Giuseppe Rinaldi in Barolo. While Beppe was in town doing something or other, we were shown around by his lovely school teacher wife and their daughter Marta, the heir apparent to the Rinaldi winemaking throne. Marta, 25, is fresh out of enology school and ready to go! Her Christmas present to her white wine-loving mom was to make a Riesling-based sparkling wine, the results of which are sitting in a riddling rack in the downstairs cellar. Mom has pronounced the wine ‘pretty good.’ The Rinaldi own 6.5 hectares split (not all evenly) among the Le Coste vineyard right across the street from the winery, the Ravera cru, a spot in Cannubi-San Lorenzo (the very top of Cannubi) and 2 ha in the Barolo part of Brunate. They are split into two cuvees: the winery’s signature Brunate-Le Coste and the Cannubi San Lorenzo-Ravera. We tasted from a 2007 cask of the latter that was simply ravishing. I didn’t want to spit. A 2007 Le Coste was really, really pretty and a sample of the 2007 Brunate was as close to Grand Cru Burgundy as you’ll ever get from Nebbiolo. Marta also opened for us a 1998 Brunate-Le Coste at my request. 1998 has become one of my favorite vintages of late and I wanted to see how the always late-blooming, traditionally-made Rinaldi was doing at 12 since I don’t have any myself. Mom called it a ‘rude’ vintage in the sense that it had big, angry tannins and acidity when young. And you know what? It still does. Dense still, the nose has barely begun to show the classic cardamom and spice characters I associate with this property, and the tannins and acidity are still very palpable. If you have any, put it away! Really nice was a 2008 Nebbiolo that had been bottled in April. Sweet fruit, svelte tannins and a lovely Burgundian character. The 2006 Brunate-Le Coste was sweet with cardamom and cinnamon, while the 2006 Cannubi-Ravera was a powerhouse.
Also tasted from the barrel: 2009 Barbera and 2008 Brunate.
I’ll have more to say about Marta and the rise of the young woman winemaker in Piemonte later, but it’s interesting to note that there are no stylistic or winemaking changes planned at this iconic traditional winemaking property despite the arrival of this well-trained, obviously very bright winemaking force. We can all take solace in that! And for more on Marta, check her out on YouTube searching for Le Rinaldi in Campo.
We were dropped back into Alba following the tasting only to be loaded on the bus for a barbecue out in the country featuring a score of Dolcetto winemakers and a load of meat. Dolcetto, the claim goes, is the perfect wine for barbecue, being fruit-driven with nice tannins and enough acidity to tame the fattiest beast. Still, much to the chagrin of the winemakers trying to create a constituency for the grape, for the money, even after (or maybe particularly after) drinking two dozen alongside grilled chicken, lamb, sausages and a magnificent hunk of Piemontese beef, I would rather drink Cotes du Rhone, Spanish Monastrell, Garnacha or Tinto de Toro-based reds, Aussie GSM or even American Zin at the backyard meat-a-thon. This is not to say there weren’t some fun wines amongst the two dozen, however, with favorites coming from Bruna Grimaldi, G D Vajra, Francesco Boschis and Punset.
Back on the bus and in bed by midnight. Total body count for the day? 133.
Following are my notes from my recent week-long trip to Italy completed yesterday. It's only Day One. There are six more to go!
Piemonte, May 15-22
Sunday Evening, May 16th
At the risk of violating the copyright for Wheaties (or Kurt Vonnegut’s for that matter), I defy anyone to surpass wines made from the Nebbiolo grape as a preferred way to break fast. In fact, our small group consumed some 350 different versions over four days of tasting, all before lunch! The other 200 or so wines were consumed in formal afternoon tastings at various locations, featuring old vintages, and also at many ad hoc winery visits, extra-curricular lunches, and dinners that followed. Basically, a f**kload of Nebbiolo was consumed, much to the delight of the organizers of Nebbiolo Prima, our hosts for the week.
Nebbiolo Prima is a loose conglomeration of Nebbiolo producers from the Barolo, Barbaresco and Roero zones, loosely (in an Italian sort of way) under the auspices of Albeisa (now presided over by the amiable Enzo Brezza) and the Consorzio di Tutela Barolo, Barbaresco, Alba, Langhe e Roero- headed up by Pietro Ratti) The producers pitch in funds every year to organize a grand week of intensive tastings and ancillary events for invited buyers and journalists, highlighting current vintages from the region and trotting out some older ones in the hopes that we’ll go back to our home countries and spread the word. So here I am! Spreading the word!
I mean, how could I not? Nebbiolo? Prima? Two of my favorite things!
The event began in, and was centered around, the city of Alba, one of Piemonte’s real gems. An opening party was held Sunday evening in the commandeered Piazza Savone, in the center of the city, and featured a grand selection of local whites and sparkling wines, buffet tables groaning with antipasti and a selection of local DOP cheeses, live music and a deadening slide show offered up by the Albeise bottle people, one of the event’s major underwriters. I got to Malpensa rather late, having left London at 2:30, renting a really cool Fiat Punto (150 km/hour on the autostrada, no sweat!) and making my way west with only a very vague idea of where I was going. I arrived just as the party was breaking up (and, unfortunately just as the Albeisa bottle video was starting), had a glass of Favorita, some smoked meats, a few bites of cheese and decided to drag my sleepy ass off to my hotel.
Driving in Italy, by the way, is a lot of fun. I know it gets a bad rap and I wasn’t, mind you, trying to negotiate roundabouts in central Roma with thirty angry Vespas buzzing on my tail, but the roads are clearly marked, for the most part in really good shape, and I found my fellow drivers to be uniformly courteous and polite. The new Italy! With the exception of a few notable bottlenecks, the streets of Alba are wide and clean and the roads in the wine country lots of fun to drive on. Of course that doesn’t mean this wasn’t Italy! One line-painting crew seemed to haunt me wherever I went and consisted of about thirty orange-clad smoking guys watching one of their party run a painting machine that laid down thick white paint over the old, faded road lines. Of course this also meant blocking half the road at a time when they did the crosswalks, creating a sort of two-way slalom effect which, when involving lots of oncoming trucks, made for some true road excitement.
In hindsight, I should have brought my annoying tom-tom or found some other GPS device to use. Even though the roads were nicely marked, it’s easy to get lost like I did, going from the opening party to the hotel, theoretically only ten minutes’ drive from the square. Ten minutes it is if you don’t circumnavigate the entire city of Alba first. After stopping first at a gas station and then at a gelateria, I finally found myself on what, in the daylight, proved to be a really beautiful, very windy, road rising through the Diano d’Alba hills to Benevello, one of the highest spots in the Langhe and home to the four-star Albergo Villa d’Amelia. I awoke at dawn to a stunning view from both windows of my corner room. Dominating the north-facing window at daybreak (don’t ask….I sleep terribly on these trips) was Mon Viso, the snowy crag featured at the beginning of every Paramount Pictures movie, and the rest of the Alps. Quite a way to wake up! I took a long walk to the town (if you can call it that) of Benevello, some twenty minutes up the hill and one of the highest points in the area, to see its medieval castello (not much left other than a wall and an intriguing-looking trattoria) and Renaissance-era church. The views from there, however, are unparalleled.
Monday, May 17th
At breakfast (the usual assortment of croissants, smoked meat, cheeses, granola, yogurt, juices and such that you find just about everywhere in Italy) I met the other buyers staying at the inn, including old friend John Downing, an LA retailer, Henry, the wine director at Del Posto in New York, Eric and Mao, he from Donatella in San Francisco and she a retailer in San Jose, Aussie wine importer David Lynch, Joanne Noto, a restaurant buyer from Grand Rapids Michigan, Brad, my doppelganger from Primo Vino (no, not Prima Vini) near Denver and an assortment of other retail and restaurant people numbering around 15. Then it was on the bus and off to Alba’s slick Ampelion, a wine and grape school and research center funded by the government, growers and producers of the area and, as it turned out, our private torture chamber. It was in the large open room at the center of the Ampelion where four Italian sommeliers, four young student assistants and a table laden with 86 open bottles of Nebbiolo awaited our arrival.
The tastings were fairly straightforward and the first day’s lineup started with the 2007 vintage of Roero and gradually segued to the 2007 vintage for the Barbareschi from the villages of Alba, Barbaresco and Treiso with, just for kicks, five 2005 Barbaresco Riservae. With little fanfare, while we sat there dumbfounded, gawking at the list, the Somms began their evil task, filling our five glasses with a seemingly endless succession of Nebbiolo while we swirled, gargled and spit ‘em back, scribbled notes and went on to the next. Every few flights the assistants would whisk away our overflowing spit buckets and replace them with empties. There was a napkin full of grissini, the local breadsticks I love so much, and an endless supply of Aqua Naturale, but nothing else separating us from the onslaught of Nebbiolo we were facing.
The wines were provided by the contributing producers, some 190 of them. Most all of the big names and many of the small ones were present, but I should point out that there were some wineries that declined to participate in the event and hence I did not taste them. Not seeing a particular name in my list of favorites does not imply that I did not like it; it may be that I simply didn’t taste it! But that list is small. On the first day, for instance, the only two names I can think of that weren’t present were Gaja and Rivetti.
Before the tasting, some interesting facts were noted about recent law changes, unique examples, I think, of Italian inmates running the asylum. The producers of the mainly Dolcetto wines in Diano d’Alba and Dogliani have decided, in their wisdom, to eliminate the word Dolcetto from their appellations. Dolcetto, they say, is a grape much maligned for its name, which many interpret to mean sweet. By eliminating it, they say, it will highlight their terroir rather than the grape name. Of course, what this means to me is that Diano and Dogliani will now take their place next to the other geographically-named appellations of the region: Barbaresco, Barolo and Roero, all three of which use Nebbiolo exclusively. What’s a consumer going to think about Diano or Dogliani? I think they are barking up the wrong tree on this one.
Alba has also jumped in to get its own DOC, which appears to be a catch-all term for anything made in the region that doesn’t qualify as one of the better appellations because a) they are using non-traditional grapes like Cabernet, or b) they want to declassify a wine or sell it at a non-DOCG sort of price but want it to have more cachet than, say, Nebbiolo della Langhe. Nothing like keeping it simple, folks.
And here’s the Only-In-Italy rule: Roero, which lobbied hard to get its own name so it would be perceived on a par with Barolo and Barbaresco, was successful in the endeavor only by including a 5% addition of Arneis to the DOCG blend to diversify itself from those two. That was the rule. However, in practice, not one winemaker I asked ever actually added Arneis to his Nebbiolo. I mean, why would they? So, this year, in their wisdom, they eliminated the requirement. Uh, ok.
I made notes for everything I tasted (I used up an entire pen!) and scored them with my usual *-**** star rating. I use (-) or (+) when I think I might have room one way or another and I usually save my **** for wines that completely blow me away, something that just doesn’t happen in a tasting of this sort. In the interest of space, I’ve decided only to mention here the wines I scored *** or higher, as these are solid recommendations that no one, I think, would be unhappy with. In the event something was particularly disappointing, I’ll mention that, too.
But first, some general comments about the first day’s tasting. I won’t write about the specifics of the 2007 vintage here, as there are plenty of other pundits out there who have written of them, and I’d just be copying. It was, by all accounts, though, a very good, if very ripe, one. I found it, in the Roero and Barbaresco, an interesting and confounding one. It certainly scored high for drinkability, as there were few wines that weren’t succulent and delicious; however, unlike Barolo, as I will get to later, as a group these wines lacked a certain Nebbiolo-ness. In other words, they were ripe to the point where the essential seductive characteristics of the Nebbiolo grape becomes masked by a level of concentrated fruit (and elevated alcohol) that leaves one wondering where they would have fit in had the tasting been blind and other grapes been included. Roero, in particular, had a rough go of it. I think the winemaking here is still rather immature and no consensus of style has emerged. If you used too much barrique in 2007, for example, you made a particularly generic sort of red, good to drink but not at all thrilling to the Nebbiolo purist. I am not meaning to tar the entire vintage (so to speak) with one brush, but one has to be a bit careful when purchasing these 2007s if one’s goal is long-term cellaring. There are, as you can see from the notes below, still plenty of nice wines from which to choose.
In tasting these wines I focused on three benchmarks I established for the vintage and put each wine on an imaginary line graph with marks for where it fit in….if a given wine surpassed the average on each count, it got its ***! It ain’t rocket science, but when tasting this many wines, it became very easy. I looked for the following:
-Fruit: sour (Morello) cherry that ran to darker, almost chocolate cherry fruit the riper it got. The best had a touch of austerity with something like fennel seed leaning towards pine resin in there.
-Tannins- on almost all, they spread out at the back of your mouth. The best had nice ripe tannins that seemed to flow naturally from the density of the texture. A leaner wine with a lot of crisp tannin doesn’t bode well in my mind, but there were a few of those.
-Freshness. In a vintage like 2007, fresh acidity could be an issue. My favorites may have been ripe, had a ton of fruit, generous oak and such, but also good freshness. It’s a point in this vintage.
***+
2007 Cascina Morassino Barbaresco Ovello- Wow! Is this ever good!
2007 Ca’ du Rabaja Barbaresco Rabaja- juicy, well-filled, oaky, luscious
2005 Produttori del Barbaresco Riserva Rio Sordo- a complex, classical wine
***
2007 Az Ag Cornarea Roero Rosso- oaky and sweet
2007 Bel Colle Roero Rosso Monvije- powerful but balanced
2007 Negro Angelo e figli di Giovanni Negro Roero Rosso Prachioso- herbal, complex
2007 Fabrizio Battagliano Roero Rosso Sergentin- beautiful
2006 Monchiero Carbone Roero Riserva Printi- complete
2006 Matteo Corregio Roero Riserva Ampsej- balanced and complete
2006 Negro Angelo Roero Riserva Sudisfa
2007 Az ag Molino Barbaresco Teorema- sweet fruit
2007 Orlando Abrigo Barbaresco Valgrande- concentrated, woody
2007 Eredi Lodali Barbaresco La Casa in Collina- Cab-like, curranty
2007 Az Ag Pelissero Barbaresco Ausario- complete, gorgeous
2007 Pertinace Barbaresco Vigneto Nerve- woody, sweet, good drink
2007 Grasso Fratelli Barbaresco Vallegrande- easy to love
2007 Pertinace Barbaresco Marcaini- exuberant and fresh
2007 Sottimano Barbaresco Pajore- linear, complex
2007 Cantina del Pino Barbaresco- perfumed, exotic
2007 Produttori del Barbaresco- powerful, intense, complete
2007 La Spinona Barbaresco La Spinona- Bricco Faset- plumy, oaky
2007 Montiribaldi Barbaresco Sori Montiribaldi- soft but balanced
2007 Marchese di Gresy (Tenute Cisy Asinati) Barbaresco Martinenga- juicy, round
2007 Albino Rocca Barbaresco Vigneto Brich Ronchi- plenty of everything!
2007 Cortese Giuseppe Barbaresco Rabaja- sweet, balanced
2007 Bruno Rocca Barbaresco Rabaja- simply stellar
2005 Piazzo Armando Barbaresco Riserva Nervo Vigna Giaia- blockish, earth, tar
2005 Nada Giuseppe Barbaresco Riserva Casot- juicy and balanced
Do you want to see my disappointments, too? Of course you do. No one wants to see only the good stuff! Here are some names that didn’t perform well for me.
2007 Giovanni Almondo Roero Bric Valdiana (but their Arneis rules!)
2007 Albino Rocca Barbareco……two corked bottles and one that was impossibly lean
2007 Prunotto Barbaresco….earthy, stinky….no.
2007 Rattalino Barbaresco…..how could you like a wine called Rattalino!
2007 Bruno Rocca Barbaresco….first bottle corked, second was weird
2007 Michele Chiarlo Barbaresco Asili….primary, brutal!
2005 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco Riserva Pora ….was it corked?
Shoot…..four pages and still before lunch on Day One!
We took the bus to the Albergo dell’Agenzia at the University of Pollenzo for a much-needed buffet lunch and another tasting, this time with the producers themselves showing up to four wines each, including where possible, wines from vintage 2000, now 10 years old. This tasting was a walk-around with people filtering in and out of the room as the hours progressed.
Noted: the tasting was to highlight the 2000 vintage in Roero at ten years old. The results? Not so good. The wines, taken as a group, were far advanced with fading fruit and still very grippy tannins. Of course, ten years ago, many of the winemakers in this room were barely out of diapers and Roero still seems to me to be a decade behind its older neighbors in terms of track record and confident winemaking. They get a pass. The Barbareschi in the room were better but still not of the character that made me excited about having a cellar full of them. What was up with the Wine Spectator rating that vintage in Piemonte 100 points? Of course, the 2000 Baroli have yet to be tried, but there are some serious questions here.
I didn’t find any wines in the afternoon tasting I would mention here other than several duplicates of the 2007s that I liked from the earlier session. Ca’ de Rabaja is a real find in Barbaresco. I understand that they will be imported into California this summer, and I will be first in line. I also noted that the 1999 Malvira Roero Monbeltrame, the only 1999 in the room, was a lovely testament to what a good vintage that was. Compared with Malvira’s lean, green and bitterly tannic 2000, the 1999 was everything an eleven-year-old wine should be, complex with balsamic, bitter cherry and fading roses. It was the exception that seemed to prove the rule about 2000.
After lunch, three of us, including the aforementioned Henry and David visited the famed cellars of Giuseppe Rinaldi in Barolo. While Beppe was in town doing something or other, we were shown around by his lovely school teacher wife and their daughter Marta, the heir apparent to the Rinaldi winemaking throne. Marta, 25, is fresh out of enology school and ready to go! Her Christmas present to her white wine-loving mom was to make a Riesling-based sparkling wine, the results of which are sitting in a riddling rack in the downstairs cellar. Mom has pronounced the wine ‘pretty good.’ The Rinaldi own 6.5 hectares split (not all evenly) among the Le Coste vineyard right across the street from the winery, the Ravera cru, a spot in Cannubi-San Lorenzo (the very top of Cannubi) and 2 ha in the Barolo part of Brunate. They are split into two cuvees: the winery’s signature Brunate-Le Coste and the Cannubi San Lorenzo-Ravera. We tasted from a 2007 cask of the latter that was simply ravishing. I didn’t want to spit. A 2007 Le Coste was really, really pretty and a sample of the 2007 Brunate was as close to Grand Cru Burgundy as you’ll ever get from Nebbiolo. Marta also opened for us a 1998 Brunate-Le Coste at my request. 1998 has become one of my favorite vintages of late and I wanted to see how the always late-blooming, traditionally-made Rinaldi was doing at 12 since I don’t have any myself. Mom called it a ‘rude’ vintage in the sense that it had big, angry tannins and acidity when young. And you know what? It still does. Dense still, the nose has barely begun to show the classic cardamom and spice characters I associate with this property, and the tannins and acidity are still very palpable. If you have any, put it away! Really nice was a 2008 Nebbiolo that had been bottled in April. Sweet fruit, svelte tannins and a lovely Burgundian character. The 2006 Brunate-Le Coste was sweet with cardamom and cinnamon, while the 2006 Cannubi-Ravera was a powerhouse.
Also tasted from the barrel: 2009 Barbera and 2008 Brunate.
I’ll have more to say about Marta and the rise of the young woman winemaker in Piemonte later, but it’s interesting to note that there are no stylistic or winemaking changes planned at this iconic traditional winemaking property despite the arrival of this well-trained, obviously very bright winemaking force. We can all take solace in that! And for more on Marta, check her out on YouTube searching for Le Rinaldi in Campo.
We were dropped back into Alba following the tasting only to be loaded on the bus for a barbecue out in the country featuring a score of Dolcetto winemakers and a load of meat. Dolcetto, the claim goes, is the perfect wine for barbecue, being fruit-driven with nice tannins and enough acidity to tame the fattiest beast. Still, much to the chagrin of the winemakers trying to create a constituency for the grape, for the money, even after (or maybe particularly after) drinking two dozen alongside grilled chicken, lamb, sausages and a magnificent hunk of Piemontese beef, I would rather drink Cotes du Rhone, Spanish Monastrell, Garnacha or Tinto de Toro-based reds, Aussie GSM or even American Zin at the backyard meat-a-thon. This is not to say there weren’t some fun wines amongst the two dozen, however, with favorites coming from Bruna Grimaldi, G D Vajra, Francesco Boschis and Punset.
Back on the bus and in bed by midnight. Total body count for the day? 133.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Boss Goes Shopping.......
......or 'Water, Water Everywhere, But........'
Dinner preparations were well under way when my wife and I had a hankering for a nice glass of something cold, crisp and white to help with the carrot dicing, shallot sweating and pork pounding. The trip to the cellar out in the garage, however, proved fruitless (so to speak). It wasn’t for lack of wine, mind you, that's for sure. We’ve got a cellar full of wine, even white wine. But I found nothing to drink! A decades-old bottle of Marcassin or Rochioli Chardonnay as an aperitivo seemed excessive, even for me. After a fair bit of scrounging, we made do with a bottle of Prosecco left over from some party or other: its label was all gunky from sitting in the ice water too long but it tasted just fine.
What's a wine merchant doing with no wine? Could I be fined or something? Should I be admitting this to the world in a blog? I resolved to do a little wine shopping when I got to work the next day.
Two cases, I figured, would be enough to tide us over for the next couple of weeks or so. With our eclectic cooking preferences, particular tastes and diminished personal economy (not good!) in mind, I dragged a couple of empty wine boxes out to the shop floor and really began to pick and choose. Of course this is a process I am more than familiar with. I do it with your money all the time. But it has been quite some time since I looked at the shelves with an eye towards actually procuring wine for myself. I knew I was in good hands. After all, I had purchased every single bottle in the wine store beforehand. I wasn't going to be a matter of not finding stuff I liked.
The first half-case was, of course, Italian. Two bottles each of Fiano di Avellino from Campania and Arneis from Piemonte and a bottle each of Aspirinio d’Aversa (an oddball grape from Campania, great with Pizza Bianco) and a fascinating Biancolella from Ischia. Those will pair nicely with those salads that pass as dinner when the weather gets warm, the grilled fish of which I resolve to eat more and even a game hen, quail or chicken dish.
The remaining six holes in case one I filled with pairs of a Cotes du Rhone Blanc, an Apremont from the Savoie region of France and a nervy, perfect-for-clams Spanish white. An awesome case of white……under $160 and not one oak tree harmed.
In the second case I decided to up the ante a bit. I have a bunch of white Burgundy at home (I confess to having purchased about three cases of it this spring- a function of a bunch of deals that came my way all at once) but no New World Chardonnay that isn’t at least twelve years old. The old Mondavi Reserves, Paul Hobbs, Flowers and, believe it or not, Vichon have long since seen their best days. I popped in three pairs of guilty pleasures: Shafer Red Shoulder, Patz & Hall Alder and Hamilton-Russell from South Africa. The better to pair with those frozen Japanese scallops from Trader Joe's and that miso-glazed Chilean Sea Bass dish I want to master. (I know, I'm going to hell for buying sea bass) I grabbed two bottles of the Henri Bourgeois Mont Damnes Sancerre too. I am not really a huge fan of Sauvignon Blanc but I do love this one, and I love beets, goat cheese and all those fresh spring greens and herbs that marry so well with the grape so I know I’ll be glad I have it. I also tossed in two bottles of the Saint Peray Blanc from PRIMA's last Super Consorzio. So exotic! I’ll come up with something really off the wall to pair with it. The last two spaces I occupied with the Vieux Telegraph Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc. Yummy. Expensive but I know it'll take a pedestrian meal and make it great. That was a hell of a second case. More than I wanted to spend but Anne will never know.
Oh crap! I forgot sparkling wine…..looks like a third box is called for.
Anne won’t be angry when she sees all the bubbly I brought home for her. She claims that there are only two times you should drink sparkling wine: When times are good or when they are bad. Two bottles each of a Rose made from Prosecco and Cabernet Franc from the Veneto and a Rose Cremant de Bourgogne, two bottles of Bernard Ledru Champagne (in case of a real goddamn-it-I-need-Champagne-right-now emergency), two Ca del Bosco Franciacorta and the rest Prosecco.
A bubbly box to be proud of. And not too expensive.
These three boxes should get us through the spring in good shape, don’t you think?
And here's hoping you decide you let me do some shopping for you too!
Dinner preparations were well under way when my wife and I had a hankering for a nice glass of something cold, crisp and white to help with the carrot dicing, shallot sweating and pork pounding. The trip to the cellar out in the garage, however, proved fruitless (so to speak). It wasn’t for lack of wine, mind you, that's for sure. We’ve got a cellar full of wine, even white wine. But I found nothing to drink! A decades-old bottle of Marcassin or Rochioli Chardonnay as an aperitivo seemed excessive, even for me. After a fair bit of scrounging, we made do with a bottle of Prosecco left over from some party or other: its label was all gunky from sitting in the ice water too long but it tasted just fine.
What's a wine merchant doing with no wine? Could I be fined or something? Should I be admitting this to the world in a blog? I resolved to do a little wine shopping when I got to work the next day.
Two cases, I figured, would be enough to tide us over for the next couple of weeks or so. With our eclectic cooking preferences, particular tastes and diminished personal economy (not good!) in mind, I dragged a couple of empty wine boxes out to the shop floor and really began to pick and choose. Of course this is a process I am more than familiar with. I do it with your money all the time. But it has been quite some time since I looked at the shelves with an eye towards actually procuring wine for myself. I knew I was in good hands. After all, I had purchased every single bottle in the wine store beforehand. I wasn't going to be a matter of not finding stuff I liked.
The first half-case was, of course, Italian. Two bottles each of Fiano di Avellino from Campania and Arneis from Piemonte and a bottle each of Aspirinio d’Aversa (an oddball grape from Campania, great with Pizza Bianco) and a fascinating Biancolella from Ischia. Those will pair nicely with those salads that pass as dinner when the weather gets warm, the grilled fish of which I resolve to eat more and even a game hen, quail or chicken dish.
The remaining six holes in case one I filled with pairs of a Cotes du Rhone Blanc, an Apremont from the Savoie region of France and a nervy, perfect-for-clams Spanish white. An awesome case of white……under $160 and not one oak tree harmed.
In the second case I decided to up the ante a bit. I have a bunch of white Burgundy at home (I confess to having purchased about three cases of it this spring- a function of a bunch of deals that came my way all at once) but no New World Chardonnay that isn’t at least twelve years old. The old Mondavi Reserves, Paul Hobbs, Flowers and, believe it or not, Vichon have long since seen their best days. I popped in three pairs of guilty pleasures: Shafer Red Shoulder, Patz & Hall Alder and Hamilton-Russell from South Africa. The better to pair with those frozen Japanese scallops from Trader Joe's and that miso-glazed Chilean Sea Bass dish I want to master. (I know, I'm going to hell for buying sea bass) I grabbed two bottles of the Henri Bourgeois Mont Damnes Sancerre too. I am not really a huge fan of Sauvignon Blanc but I do love this one, and I love beets, goat cheese and all those fresh spring greens and herbs that marry so well with the grape so I know I’ll be glad I have it. I also tossed in two bottles of the Saint Peray Blanc from PRIMA's last Super Consorzio. So exotic! I’ll come up with something really off the wall to pair with it. The last two spaces I occupied with the Vieux Telegraph Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc. Yummy. Expensive but I know it'll take a pedestrian meal and make it great. That was a hell of a second case. More than I wanted to spend but Anne will never know.
Oh crap! I forgot sparkling wine…..looks like a third box is called for.
Anne won’t be angry when she sees all the bubbly I brought home for her. She claims that there are only two times you should drink sparkling wine: When times are good or when they are bad. Two bottles each of a Rose made from Prosecco and Cabernet Franc from the Veneto and a Rose Cremant de Bourgogne, two bottles of Bernard Ledru Champagne (in case of a real goddamn-it-I-need-Champagne-right-now emergency), two Ca del Bosco Franciacorta and the rest Prosecco.
A bubbly box to be proud of. And not too expensive.
These three boxes should get us through the spring in good shape, don’t you think?
And here's hoping you decide you let me do some shopping for you too!
Monday, March 1, 2010
My Critical Mass
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.
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, 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.
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