U of M vs. Iowa

Posted on November 25, 2016 by thewineraconteur

While I was attending my cousin’s son’s wedding, I received a message from my wayward friend The Caller. I never know when he is going to send me text messages, but it usually is interesting, non-the less. He and his wife were at someone’s home and they were going to have dinner and watch the University of Michigan play Iowa in a football game.

I am sure that they were enjoying cocktails and munchies while the dinner was being prepared. They were having a pot roast with root vegetables and a deep green salad was all that he relayed to me, and I realize that, that particular dish requires some cooking time, so they might have gotten a bit potted that afternoon and prompted the call. I know that he reads these articles, so he knows that I have to rib him a little bit, as he taunts me with his photographs of what he was enjoying that day.

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The first wine that he sent me was from a Kirkland Signature Medoc 2013, which is a blend of 70% Cabernet Sauvignon and 30% Merlot with his admonishment that I should not discount Costco. The Medoc in France is quite lofty and in the pecking order of Clarets, it is above basic Bordeaux and Bordeaux Superior appellation, but below the Haute Medoc and the individual communes. Costco is now the largest wine merchant in the United States, though because of certain state laws they cannot sell everywhere. They have gotten so big into wines that their Kirkland Signature is readily seen with a variety of different grapes and regions and I am sure that they are a bonus to the vineyards in several countries these days. While they are not premier wines, they are doing their best at several levels to keep people happy and at affordable prices, as I have mentioned several of the wines over the years. The second wine and I am sure it is what they had with dinner was The Inaugural R. Collection by Raymond Cabernet Sauvignon 2014 of the Raymond Vineyard & Cellar. This winery is now part of the Jean-Charles Boisset group of wineries. While Raymond Vineyard & Cellar have many estate wines, this wine carries the appellation of California, so the grapes can be harvested from across the state and is more affordable. The final label that he sent me and it is not surprising since he seems to have acquired a true taste for after dinner wines was Dow’s Vintage Porto 2000, which should have been cellared for at least another ten years, but I am sure that he wanted to taste it. Vintage Ports are not declared every year, and even the different Port houses cannot agree all the time when to declare a vintage. Dow’s in the last century only declared twenty-eight years to be a vintage year. The Douro region of Portugal where Porto (Port) is made, has some rather unique rulings of what constitutes the wine as there are eighty varietals that can be used and through the years, some of the vines have grown with some of the others, so there can be no exact listing, perhaps the winemaker only knows for sure. The most popular varietals for Port are Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Barroca, Tinta Roriz and Tinto Cao; and then these are a couple more that are prevalent such as Sousao, Tinta Amarela and Mourisco Tinto. A Vintage Port is aged for a couple of years and then it is bottled, and it is one of the longest-lived wines to be found and after years of aging it requires the fine art of decanting as there is plenty of sediment that amasses in the bottle. I would venture to say that The Caller and the others enjoyed a fine meal and some good wines, in spite of a very close game, that alas Michigan lost with a score of 14-13.

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An Extravagant Cameo

Posted on November 23, 2016 by thewineraconteur

We went to the cinema the other day. Let us suffice to say that there is a fan extraordinaire of the Harry Potter books and films in this house. I even went so far as to think about a magician’s wand from Ollivander’s that can control the television controls in the house. My only concern is that it may get damaged quite quickly because all of the kids would think that it was a toy and not a piece of electronics. We went to see the newest film, that from what I understand will be the first of four films. We went to the Cineplex that is becoming our favorite haunt, because every chair is like a Barco-lounger and I must confess that the major fan, did take a cat-nap, which is in her DNA when she reclines to watch television here in the house. I think that she works too hard. I guess all the movie critics have taken a vow not to mention who the new villain is, but he makes about a one minute appearance in this movie I guess, so that it can be said that he will appear in all four films.  I guess that I will not announce who the new villain is either, but it will eventually become old news.

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Adjacent to the Cineplex is a mall, so we went and had a quick dinner as we had some gift cards to the restaurant to use.  We had a quick dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.  My Bride went for her usual Thai Crunch Salad of veggies, cilantro and chicken with peanuts, wontons and rice sticks tossed in a peanut dressing. I decided to try something different so I went with a Carne Asada Pizza which was an individual size thin crusted pizza with marinated steak, Poblanos, Cilantro Pesto, yellow onions, Mozzarella and Monterey Jack cheese with a side of Salsa Verde.

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As we were looking at the wine list, my Bride was going to skip the wine and just have water, but I found a wine that I thought would be interesting for her dish, that she had forgotten that she had tried before, and to be truthful so had I.  She had a glass of M. Chapoutier Belleruche Rosé 2015 from the Cotes du Rhone on the right bank. The wine was basically Grenache with some Cinsault and Syrah blended in. The grapes were pressed without maceration and had twenty days of cold fermentation and aged in vats for the winter and then bottled in the Spring. I liked the color and the flavor of the wine and I could have even had with it for my pizza, but I chose a more robust wine and I think it overpowered by dish. I went with Bodega Tamari Reserva Malbec 2014 from the Mendoza region of Argentina. The Mendoza region is the largest wine production area in Argentina and the French grape Malbec has become the king of the region. The wine was fine, but there really wasn’t enough steak and the dish was more delicate in flavor than I expected. All in all, it was a nice time out and I know that she has some new books and films to look forward to.

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Changes at my Club

Posted on November 21, 2016 by thewineraconteur

Almost every month I write about my dinner club and a wine that I find interesting to go with dinner. There are some months that I don’t mention the club, usually because the restaurant that the hosts pick have nothing in the way of wines, or as once a year, I do not even attend as a tacit protest to what I perceive to be a lack of quality overall. The club is close to one-hundred-thirty years in existence and the meetings were originally held at a member’s home, I don’t know anyone that can have a sit- down dinner for thirty plus men in their home. During the Great Depression, the club survived by changing and adapting to meeting at one of the hotels in downtown Detroit, which was centrally located for all the membership. Years later, they changed again to having the meetings at assorted restaurants and they recently just changed again to a cash bar and each member is responsible for his own drink tab, and the hosts now just pick up the dinners.

We met at one of our tried and true locations, that I have written about a few times, The Courthouse Grille in Plymouth, Michigan. Most of the venues that we go to allow us to have three entrée choices; beef, chicken and fish. At the Courthouse Grille they encourage us to have a larger choice and so we have seven choices and they are all equally popular. After our cocktail hour, we started our meeting and we all had a garden salad and then our entrée of choice. I like to order something on the menu that we do not make at home, so I had the Veal Marsala, veal is just an item that we have never tried making at home, so I always look forward to a dish of it with mushrooms and the Marsala wine sauce. As is customary for dessert, we always seem to have an ice cream sundae, in homage to our longest reigning secretary who kind of insisted on it for dessert.

Since we were picking up our drink tabs, I guess the rule of only ordering wine by the glass was moot and I looked at the wines by the bottle and a couple of us could share a bottle without any major cost overruns to our hosts. A bottle of Villa Erbice Monte Tombole Valpolicella Superiore 2008 called out to me. An Italian meal and an Italian wine seemed to go together perfectly. I have been a fan of the wines of the Veneto for ages and I always have been happy with most of the Valpolicella wines that I have had. Villa Erbice was established in 1870 and they have been making these delightful wines since then, so they know exactly how to blend the Corvina, Molinara and Rondinella grapes to get the taste that they want year after year. The wine is aged for eighteen months in French Oak and then is aged for another six months in the bottle before it is released. Yes, I was a very happy camper, but we shall see, after one year, if the members want to go back to having the hosts pick up the beverage tab as well.

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A Reception

Posted on November 19, 2016 by thewineraconteur

There I was at a reception at the Detroit Athletic Club surrounded by a sea of ladies in evening wear and the men in tuxedoes. We all looked like grooms, there were only a few that missed the invitation instructions of “Black Tie” which means tuxedoes, if it had stated “White Tie” that would have required Tails, and only an old clothier like me, would have picked up on that. The ladies were all in dresses, except for my Bride, who had found a Navy and Black Tuxedo for herself and it was fun, if I do say so myself. The Detroit Athletic Club was designed by the famous architect Albert Kahn in a style called Renaissance Revival architecture. Albert Kahn was the lead architect in the glory days of Detroit, not only designing the Detroit Athletic Club and other famed social structures, but the Fisher Building, Cadillac Place, but also industrial plants, a hospital, a synagogue, and an aquarium; and that doesn’t even cover it all. The Detroit Athletic Club was actually designed for the magnates of industry in Detroit as a safe haven during inclement weather as there are several floors of apartments that the members could use and hence stay downtown to be close to their business. While we were milling about in the two rooms designated for the cocktail hour, we heard chimes and we were directed to go up the central staircase to the Grand Ballroom for dinner.

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With our response card, we also had an option for three choices for our dinner entrée; Beef, Fish or Vegetarian. We started off with the Monterey County Salad of Spinach, Bibb and Radicchio lettuces with Mandarin Oranges, Strawberries, Golden Raisins, Candied Glazed Pecans and a Poppy Seed Vinaigrette ladled out by the staff. This was followed by a sorbet to cleanse the palate and lead into the “Beef” and had a Filet Mignon also with the potatoes and asparagus. My Bride and I split our meals, so that we had a “Surf and Turf” dinner. This was followed by a slice of the wedding cake that we had seen during the Cocktail Hour, and then there was a Sweet Table set up in the adjacent room where the bar was also standing.

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The choice of French wines for dinner were by the same house of Les Vignobles Foncalieu, but under a different label. The offerings once again were Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Chardonnay. We both had La Petite Vigne Cabernet Sauvignon 2014 with the IGP Pays D’Oc, the same appellation that we had during the Cocktail Hour, so I will not go into the details again of this large area in the South of France. I would also be remiss if I did not mention the wine that was placed at each place setting for the toasts, I did not get a chance to photograph the label, but it was Domaine Chandon Blanc de Noirs NV from Napa Valley. This sparkling wine is made from Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier and there was a good pour to get everyone through all of the toasts before dinner. It was a memorable evening for us.

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A Recent Wedding

Posted on November 17, 2016 by thewineraconteur

My cousin’s son just got married and it was quite the event. His Best Man called him a “walking encyclopedia” and I think that probably is as good of a description as there could be. He attended the Honors College at the University of Michigan, did a private study in China to learn the language, graduated as an attorney from Harvard School of Law, then was hired by a firm in Manhattan and now resides on Long Island. That is quite a list of accomplishments for one so young and his new Bride also has a litany of similar accomplishments.

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The wedding was held at St. Hugo’s of the Hills, a very stately and celebrated church. The wedding was held at the original church which is now called the Chapel and it is one of those architectural gems that I enjoy, because it is old school in design. While it is not a grand cathedral, it is still configured so that the main room is in the shape of a cross and not one large room, that is the preferred modern concept for houses of worship. The pipe organ was magnificent and the singing abilities of both the Monsignor and the soloist were, as we used to say, worth the price of admission. The weather obliged and it was wonderful to see the church full of everyone in their finery, as the couple wanted a “Black Tie” wedding. After the wedding, there were formal pictures taken of both sides of the family and the photographer worked to get all of our side to fit into one picture.

MI DAC MB
After the wedding, everyone had to drive towards the reception, which was being held at the Detroit Athletic Club in Downtown Detroit. The DAC is a seven-story edifice that is now located in the center of all that is on the upswing of what is happening in the City of Detroit. The reception began in two rooms of the main floor for a cocktail hour. The first room was actually for everyone to mingle and meet, and the second room showcased the wedding cake and a fully stocked bar. The waiters were working overtime to make sure that everyone had their fill of all the assorted hot and cold appetizers and there were so many that I could not keep track, but the Jumbo Shrimp with Cocktail Sauce garnered the most raves. My Bride started out with a “Dirty Martini” while I took advantage of having one of my favorites a “Vermouth Cocktail.” We then switched over to wine and in the reception area they were serving three different wines from Les Vignobles Foncalieu, their Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. Les Vignobles Foncalieu Reserve Saint Marc Chardonnay 2014 is from the IGP Pays d’Oc which is roughly the entire southern part of France, known as Languedoc-Roussillon except for the areas that actually have an Appellation Controlee. The original terminology was Vin de Pays d’Oc, but to accommodate the European Union they know use IGP as the geographic protection, which really works out, because they can label the wines by the grape and is a great marketing tool in today’s approach to wine. The wine is not spectacular, but it delivers to me what a Chardonnay should taste like, especially compared to many wines that I have had that are Chardonnay in name only.

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Some New York Wines

Posted on November 15, 2016 by thewineraconteur

I can’t believe that I have not really had any wines from New York state except the one time that I had some Great Western Extra Dry New York State Champagne. In terms of production New York is the third largest state in the production of wine and they started wine production in the Seventeenth Century. In fact, Cornell University of Ithaca, New York is famed for their Viticulture and Enology department and they are known for their creation of hybrid grapes like Chardonel, Traminette and Cayuga. Some friends of ours took a vacation and roamed around the Finger Lakes region of New York in pursuit of scenery, dining, shopping and wine. I mentioned that if they found any interesting wines to pick me up a couple of bottles.

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The first bottle that I will discuss is the Shaw Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 2008. If you are used to having wines from the West Coast or from the Continent, the idea of Cabernet Sauvignon from the colder climates like New York, seem strange, but since I am from Michigan and have had wines of this nature from here, Ohio and Ontario, Canada, I know that it can be done quite successfully. This particular Finger Lakes wine is aged in oak for four years before it is bottled and I am sure that when I open it, it will show the winemakers craft. As I did some research because I am blissfully unaware of wine making in the State of New York, I discovered that the major grapes used there are Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc, but one can also find Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and an Easter European grape Rkatsiteli, not to mention the American hybrids Niagara, Cayuga and Vidal.

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The other bottle that I will mention is Manitou 5 Grape Blend 2013 from Belhurst Estate Winery which pays homage to the five lakes of the region and the five tribes of the Iroquois Nation and of course five different grapes in this particular wine. This wine is a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot. The fruit was harvested in 2008 and spent three years in oak and two years in the bottle, but it carries a vintage date of 2013. With all of the reference to the Finger Lakes, this wine actually carries a New York appellation, so I just ponder about the rules, but it is beyond my knowledge. All I know is that I look forward to trying these wines in the future and then I can say that I have had wines from seven states out of the fifty, and I guess I have to up my game.

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Dinner at Home

Posted on November 13, 2016 by thewineraconteur

I am quite not sure, how there are two distinct cooking methods at my house, but I am always amazed. When I cook, there are multiple sets of dishes that are used just in the prepping of the food and it is an all-day affair. I work up a sweat to try to achieve a dinner, for the most part successfully, but like I say it is a day in the kitchen. My Bride on the other hand creates dishes that are wonderful and totally efficient.

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The other day, she decided that she was going to make us some lamb stew. I am very partial to stews, especially in the fall and winter months, but I am just amazed at the speed that she accomplishes her goal. I think I would still be dicing and cubing the meats and vegetables while her meal is already half-way done. The other thing that always surprises me, is that she does it all with one pot and just a carving board, which would never work out for me. I guess that I just keep chopping and putting everything in separate bowls to make sure that I like the mix and balance before I start. Maybe time just slows down for me when I get in the kitchen. One great thing about stew, is that there is never any concern about plating the dish for presentation, it is pure and simply comfort food.

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I went down into the cellar to look for something different to try with the stew. Lamb tends to be a showy meat when it is roasted or made into kebabs. I find that the taste becomes more delicate when it is in a stew, so I was looking for something a bit more mellow and not something that we would normally have at home. I went and looked at some of the splits or half-bottles that we have accumulated over the years and found a wine that I thought should be ready for drinking, and hopefully I didn’t keep it too long. I opened up a bottle of Alexander Valley Vineyards Wetzel Family Estate Merlot 1997 from the Alexander Valley in Sonoma County. I like a good Merlot and I enjoy how it works so well with red meats. Now I sometimes forget about the splits that we have and I sometimes worry that they age quicker, but the cork gave me a battle and it came out totally intact with no crumbling at all. Immediately I could smell the Merlot perfume and I looked at the bottle and notice that there was a decent patch of sediment near the neck of the bottle, because the bottle has been resting in the same location probably since we purchased it, as there was a time when we were buying a lot more splits, but they do not seem as easy to find anymore. I didn’t bother decanting the wine, but just poured it directly into the glasses and watched to see if I saw any sediment and towards the end of the third glass I saw a little bit, so I stopped. I was a little concerned, because the wine had a bit of brown in the color, but the taste was excellent, the tannins and the fruit both had softened and it was a pleasure to drink this wine and it was so mellow with the stew.

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Jacobson’s

Posted on November 11, 2016 by thewineraconteur

As I was repacking one of the closets in the basement, there was a hat box and not mine from Jacobson’s. Jacobson’s if you weren’t aware of the chain was what one would call a “Carriage” store, meaning that they catered to a better clientele, not that they were that expensive, but they had a cachet that appealed to plenty of people. I was in the retail industry all of my life and there was an old adage “in three generations shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve.” What that meant was what the first two generations worked so hard to achieve, the third generation allowed it to fall away. I worked in a store that was in the middle of two Jacobson’s stores and they made for great competition.


Jacobson’s was a class act in their day and I remember getting those beautiful Rothschild coats for my favorite daughter when she was just a little girl. I didn’t need to shop there for men’s clothes, but I was probably there at least once a day and sometimes twice a day and that was to eat. They had a wonderful restaurant on the second floor and it was just perfect. It was always clean and the staff in the restaurant was just as attentive as the sales staff at the registers. I think that the restaurant was underwritten by the store to make the meals great bargains as a way to keep the customers in the store longer. There was always a fixed menu and a couple of specials for lunch and two specials for the two evenings that they stayed open late. It sure beat brown bagging lunch and when they had Braised Short Ribs as a special, I considered it a “Red Letter Day.”

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Some of the other Jacobson’s stores sold wine, but the one in Dearborn did not, and perhaps it was the politics of getting the license, which was an impossibility in the old days, as a liquor license carried a very hefty surcharge for anyone that wanted to secure it. For a short period of time, there was wine in the restaurant, they had about six different bottles to choose from; and the rumor was that the license was a resort license that was transferred from another part of the state, and like I say, it was only for a short time. One of the wines that I would enjoy during dinner in that short period was Chateau Roubaud. This particular wine from France carried the VDQS stamp, which stood for Wine Delimited of Superior Quality or a better “table wine” back in the day. The winery was established in 1900 in the southern most region of the Rhone and in 1950 they were one of a few wineries that were allowed to carry the Costieres du Gard on the label, which eventually changed to the Appellation Controlee of Costieres de Nimes. The winery grows Grenache, Syrah, Carignan, Cinsault, Mourvedre, Roussanne, Clairette and Ugni Blanc and today the wine must be at least sixty percent of a blend of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre. It was a most pleasant of wines and I have been partial to Rhone wines almost from the beginning of my wine appreciation days. Even after they lost the ability to sell wines in the restaurant I continued dining there until the end of their days. I guess that the current generation could not maintain the vision that they were given.

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Shamrocks

Posted on November 9, 2016 by thewineraconteur

I have never been to any of my high school reunions, only because my graduating class was huge, I mean like university size. I only basically knew my homeroom class from my curriculum, my school was immense as it was one entire city block in size and nine stories tall, and we were all from different parts of the city. I recently went to a high school reunion as a guest and this class was about thirteen hundred in size, but there were only about one hundred of the alumni that attended this reunion. I will not give the date of the class, but I went with my Bride and outside of the eight people at our table, I knew no one else and my Bride did not know that many more that were there. The funny thing is that one of her sisters also was attending her reunion for the same school, albeit a different year at another location, on that same night, so there were Shamrocks celebrating at another place as well.

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The reunion was held at De Carlo’s a catering hall within the general area of where she had grown up, though it was far enough away from where we now live, that we decided to get a hotel room for the evening. The reunion also had a disc-jockey who volunteered his services as he was also an alumnus of the class. The disc-jockey played the music of that year and even included a countdown of the top twenty songs of that year. Unfortunately, there was another party in the next room over and they played music their music so loud that the music in our room was almost drowned out, except when one was on the dance floor. There was a video of classmates that are no longer here and they had several drawings and the funny thing is that both my Bride and I had winning tickets. There was a dinner catered by the hall that evening and they had an open bar. The food was the standard array that catering halls live by and it was set up as a buffet in a side room to the main hall. There were several salads with assorted dressings, a couple of different vegetables and three entrée servings of chicken, pork chops and roast beef. After dinner, a sweet table was set up for dessert and coffee.

The bar area was one of the busiest spots that evening and the bartender seemed to keep everyone happy. We were in an upstairs hall of the complex and it was quite warm and it seemed to get even warmer after people started dancing. On occasions like this I tend to order white wine, because it is chilled and if there is no complexity to the wine the chill tends to mask it and make it more palatable, and it works no matter what I decided to have from the buffet line. My Bride and I were having Vista Point Vineyards Chardonnay NV from California and I am sure that it must be a popular winery for catering halls as it is probably a good profit enhancer. The wine had a slightly off taste at first, that seemed to disappear while having dinner and after dinner I just got acclimated to the taste and it was chilled. We attended not for the culinary or wine aspects of the evening, so all was good. By the way I discovered that the number two and number one songs of that year were:” Maggie May” and “Jeremiah Was a Bull Frog,” but that evening Jeremiah forgot to bring his very fine wine.

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“What a Great Job We Have Lucky!”

Posted on November 7, 2016 by thewineraconteur

That was a recent tweet that myself and many other bloggers received a couple of days ago on Twitter. Writing about wines and dinners may sound glamorous, or it may sound like boasting, but you have to remember that some of the memories go back to the late Sixties and not since I began having fun recording the days gone by. This is more of a self-exploration, because that tweet made me ponder my writing, especially my conceit of being at a table with another person having a glass of wine and chatting about that moment that I am thinking about. What I am doing on Twitter is a total mystery to me still, but I think that I am getting the hang of it. After I liked the original post and then retweeted it, the subject of the post kind of haunted me. I write a wine blog, but I am not a professional in the wine industry in any sort of capacity, and believe me when I tell you that my blog is not a job. I have no designations, I am not a sommelier, or even thinking of becoming one, hell in my day they were called wine stewards, if they even had a title back then. I write not to dazzle or to say “look at me,” rather I write in hopes that someone that has an interest in wine, might take that next step and go out beyond their comfort zone, as God knows we all can get cocooned into certain areas.

Ch Pichon Lalande 1964
All of the wine that I have written about, is from the “School of Hard Knocks” as they would say from my old neighborhood. The majority of my “knowledge” was from self-studies and from having the chance to have purchased some great wines over the last four decades or so. That is not to say that I haven’t had some great mentors and I tend to be an avid reader for all of my avocations. I could not even have made a great wine snob, because I started when I was a real student and not just a student of wine. You will have to pardon me for the fact that I do not write about wines with all of the descriptive words that most people use today, as even my mentors back then, did not use such words. We used “this is a great wine” or “this is a nice table wine.” When I was first taught how to taste wine, there was never even any mention of “spitting.” Perhaps this was because my mentors all had survived the Great Depression and that probably seemed like a wasteful extravagance to them.

Ch Ducru-Beaucaillou 1970
I have never solicited wine or received wine for reviews. Of course, the way I write about wine, I may never have to worry about that. I grew up with wine in a very eclectic way and I have drunk wines that most people might not even admit to have tried, to wines that I am still amazed that I have had the good fortune to have tried as well. I always try to look at the bright side of wines, though there are some that really don’t appeal to me, but maybe growing up like I did, the thought of leaving a partially filled glass of wine is anathema to me. In fact, there was only one time during a tasting that I did not finish some of my tastings, because I think the special tasting-tour that we paid for at one winery, we ended up tasting every bottle of wine that they produced and I really only paid for the special tasting to try their top of the line, that we bought, and it was worth it. I think of myself as a rank-amateur, but I have had some spectacular wines over the years and then I have written about wines that could make some bloggers shudder. I have had the chance to enjoy two of the greatest vintages from the last century, but I have never had the stellar 1945. So, for every 1921 Richebourg there have been hundreds of wines that I have recalled that are from catering halls and the corner market. With the upward spiraling prices of wines, I can guarantee that some of the wines on my bucket list will probably never be fulfilled, because they are now too dear and I am preparing to eventually retire, but there is still plenty of wine that is cellared and still many restaurants to try. So, if this is my fun job, I would say that I am very lucky indeed.

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