Catching Up with The Caller at Dinner

Posted on November 24, 2021 by thewineraconteur

Attempting to get together with The Caller is harder than finding a smooth road in Michigan.  Since, the moment that he and his charming wife both retired, they may have to hire a full time Social Secretary.  We actually made our next dinner get-together and it is in May of next year, we were meeting them, at Ciao Amici’s in Brighton, which is about half way between both of our houses.  I was also acting as a courier or delivery person, as he really enjoyed a wine at our house the last time, and asked if I could get them a six pack of the wine, so knowing my brain, I carried the six pack into the restaurant and put it in our booth, so that we made sure that they took it home.  Also, during our conversation, I had to remind my Bride that she had some money from one of her girlfriends that asked her, if she would purchase a gift certificate to the restaurant.  All duties were completed and we were all able to have a nice leisurely dinner.

When we get together, meals are a long affair and thankfully we started early at the restaurant, because by the time we left, the restaurant was hopping.  We began by getting a couple of appetizers for the four of us to share. We had an order of Calamari that were flash-fried and served with a fire-roasted red pepper puree. We also had a platter of Mussels Arrabiatta that were sautéed with onions, Hungarian peppers and garlic in a spicy tomato basil sauce. This may be our new appetizer, as I am sure that if we had four platters of this dish, there would have still been demand for more, the sauce was just perfect.  We started off with a bottle of Franco Serra Gavi DOCG 2018. Franco Serra is produced by the Sperone family who has been making affordable wines for four generations.   In 1920 Antonio Sperone opened a wine shop in Torino selling local bulk wines to consumers, but his concern of selling a better product, compelled him to start his own winery in Puglia.  His business was destroyed during the bombings of World War II which caused his grandson to open a new facility near Milan where they produced vermouth, sparkling wines, spirits and wine.  In 1965, the family purchased seventy-five acres of prime vineyards in the Piedmont and built the current winery in the small town of Mombaruzzo near Monferrato. Gavi or Cortese di Gavi DOCG is the white wine jewel of the Piedmont.  It is one of the most important white wines in Italy and one of the most popular that it exports.  The DOCG status was awarded in 1998 and with that award are all the rules that must be followed and obeyed.  The Cortese grape is an indigenous grape from the Gavi region and has been recorded since the 1600’s. The wine had a soft floral nose with a touch of sweet fruit, it was a bone-dry wine with bright acidity with a tinge of cucumber and a nice medium finish of the mineral terroir.  It worked very well, even with the tomato sauces of both dishes.

After our salads, both of the wives had the Lamb Shank Lombardia on a bed of Parmesan risotto with a natural braising reduction.  The Caller had Chicken Gorgonzola with roasted red peppers, Gorgonzola cheese in a garlic sauce.  I had Scallops which were pan seared and served with a bacon and spinach risotto and finished with a Port wine reduction.  I might add that all of the dishes were excellent.  Our Brides were asking for a big red wine to pair with the Lamb Shanks and I wanted something more unique for them to try, and finding one that would work with the chicken, and I would make it work with my scallops.  We had a bottle of Bodegas Alto Moncayo Garnacha 2017.  Bodegas Alto Moncayo was founded in 2002 in Campo de Borja DO in the Aragon region of Northern Spain; and Campo de Borja DO was granted in 1980.  While it was recognized fairly recently the area was recognized for wines back in the times of the Roman Empire.  The winery is a partnership of the Andalucía winemaker Jorge Ordenez, the Australian winemaker Chris Ringland and Bodegas Borsao one of the largest and most influential producers in Campo de Borja.  This is a big Grenache (Garnacha) wine that shows off the forty- to seventy-year-old vines and Grenache is the flagship of the winery and it is the King of grapes for this region of Spain.  This wine was aged for twenty months in new barrels and it is a heady 16 proof. I think that I was the most smitten by this wine, but then I have found over the years that not everyone is a fan of Grenache, which is bit harder to appreciate compared to a Cabernet or a Merlot. The wine was offering both a nose and taste of dark fruit with a tinge of Chocolate and a great medium to long finish of terroir.  A great dinner until we get a chance to meet again.   

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November 2021 Wine Club Selections

Posted on November 22, 2021 by thewineraconteur

Each month I always look forward to the choices from The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan.  A class act operation, where I and every other patron knows that he won’t have to wade through the wines offered at gas stations, drug stores, convenience stores or big box stores.  Every bottle of wine that is on the shelf or still in the case, has been personally vetted by the owner and his reputation rides on each bottle, even the ones used for the club selections.  Beyond the impeccable collection of wines, another added bonus, is that club members automatically get case discounts, even if they only stop in to pick up a bottle or two.  And when you go to pick up your Club Selections, allow yourself some extra time, so that you can taste a wine or two that they just received, it is hardly ever a duplicated pour. 

The first selection representing the Old World is Domaine Berthet-Rayne Cuvee Vieilles Vignes Cote du Rhone 2019.  Raoul Raymond when he was in his twenties, took over his family farm and uprooted parcels of cherry groves to plant vines.  In 1978 with the help of his son-in-law Christian they set up Domaine Berthet-Rayne.  Originally the Domaine Berthet-Rayne created a range of wine to be only sold in France, with property in the Cote du Rhone and Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Between 1995 and 2000, the estate first began exporting wines in Europe and then finally to the United State of America.  The Domaine has twenty-nine hectares in Chateauneuf-du-Pape on diluvium alpin soil and they are on the left side of Rhone between Orange and Avignon and share some of the famed terroirs of Coudoulet and Chapouin with their clay-chalk soils. The Cuvee Vieilles Vignes actually means Old Vines, with the average age being forty-years-of-age and some of the vines being seventy-years-of-age.  The wine is a blend of seventy-five percent Grenache, fifteen percent Cinsault and ten percent Syrah.  The wine is certified organic by EccoCert and the Domaine is cultivated and plowed in an environmentally friendly manner. It is described as being a dark ruby/purple wine, full bodied with notes of black cherry and cassis, with complex tannins for cellaring potential and a silky finish.

The second selection representing the New World is Kenwood Vineyards Pinot Noir Monterey County/Sonoma County 2018. Kenwood Vineyards was established in 1970 in Sonoma.  It was founded by the Lee family when they purchased the estate and winery of the Pagani Brothers that began in 1906 and were successful until Prohibition.  In 1999 the winery was bought by F. Korbel and Bros. and in 2014 Kenwood was bought by the international beverage concern of Pernod Ricard.  Kenwood Vineyards has twenty-two acres of estate vineyards and also sources fruit from dozens of other growers in Sonoma.  The winery has been known for years for some of their Single-Vineyard wines, as well as some of their other collections.  The first time that I ever had a wine from Kenwood Vineyards was their famed Jack London Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine is ninety-six percent Pinot Noir and three percent Zinfandel and is part of the winery’s Discovery Series.  The fruit is sixty-four percent Monterey County and thirty-six percent Sonoma County.  The wine is described as having notes of black cherry, smoky oak and dark cola, with strawberry and cherry on the palate along with layers of tobacco and smoked bacon with a finish evoking cinnamon pie-crust. 

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David and Goliath

Posted on November 20, 2021 by thewineraconteur

It had to happen here in Michigan and especially in the Detroit area.  It was originally going to happen on the west side of the state in 2020, but we know that a certain bug created havoc that year and we are still suffering the aftermath.  One of the national big box wine stores finally figured out how to maneuver around the Byzantine codes and rules of the wine laws in this state, and not only that, but they also figured out how to work around the rules that apply to the liquor laws as well as for beer.  While the media was deciding if two masks would suffice, the invasion began, and then all of a sudden, the media was ecstatic that there was a wine shop in our midst.  The only reason that they were excited was that Goliath had deep pockets and could afford full page ads in newspapers and local periodicals.  All of the (David) local wine shops that have eked out an existence and survived the draconian rules of the last year or so, who can’t pay for full page ads really did not exist.

Alright, I guess I have a built-in bias towards national big box operations, because I was in retail my entire life and for the most part, I worked for independent single store operations.  I even did my personal banking with small local banks, where, believe it or not, everyone knew my name and I was able to cut through a lot of red tape on a weekly basis. I even like the old-fashioned grocers that had butcher shops that could do special requests, fish mongers that would tout what the freshest selections were and produce that was not wheeled in by bulk.  Can I get excited like the media expects?  Absolutely not, I have never enjoyed being in sterile environments with wide aisles conducive for hi-los.  I do appreciate that they do some education for their employees.  This is not to say that I have not availed myself of this operation.  They are within walking distance from the casino-resort that we stay at every time we go to Las Vegas to see the children and grandchildren.

I like warm cuddly places, the store that I worked at for the majority of my career, until an eminent domain case closed us down was described by most of our customers as an old slipper and I think that is appropriate.  When you walk into a shop or a restaurant and you automatically feel comfortable and at ease, is a wonderful feeling. That is the feeling that I get, when I walk into my local wine shop, and I am sure that there are other shops as well.  The “David” shops of the world will survive the onslaught of these big box stores, because they offer customize service, they know what you enjoy and they can offer wines that you don’t mind trying.  They are not promoting a corporate designed wine that for some odd reason tastes the same vintage after vintage.  So, to be truthful, I really don’t care about the big guy, let me go in and have a tasting of some unique wines.  A winery that maybe only makes two barrels of wine, is of no interest to big box, but it is totally interesting to the wine lovers.    

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I Like Old Wines

Posted on November 18, 2021 by thewineraconteur

Years ago, when I was first teaching myself about wines, there was one lesson that I could not learn.  The lesson was, how to sate my curiosity about older wines.  When I think back about all the wines that I consumed, give or take a few older wines, I drank wines that should have been in the cellar for at least twenty if not thirty years.  Wines were made for cellaring, especially back then.  I splurged a few times over the years growing up and an older wine was unique.  Today, the majority of the wines, as far as I am concerned, are made for instant gratification and I guess I was part of the generation that actually pushed this trend into focus.  Today, wines are written about, stressing the fruit forward nature of the wine, the floral nose and spiciness, even the beautiful length of terroir that some wines convey.  Older wines have a maturity, that allows the flavors to mellow, as well as the tannins for a rich, sometimes indescribable flavor, especially for me, who disdains descriptors, but loves mellow wines. Two wines will help this narrative, that we just had in the last week or so with dinners at home. 

At one time, I was trying to be a blogger like the “cool kids” and write about all of the international and national wine days. The only problem was that the articles didn’t really sound like me, so I stopped writing about them.  Then a few years ago, after some prodding from others, I got an Instagram account and eventually I will get my blog and Instagram on the same page, but that will take at least two years more to achieve.  Though Instagram has a “story” page and I think that I will start posting for the “days” there.  The other day was International Merlot Day, so I suggested to my Bride that she make something for a red wine, before she pulled out a chicken or fish dish for dinner.  She ended up making a Pork Tenderloin in a Portuguese Braising Sauce and it was delicious.  Since, I have always been partial to Merlot, it was easy for me to find one in the cellar and I also selected by Durand cork screw, just in case.  I selected our oldest Merlot in the cellar and it was a bottle of Lockwood VSR (Very Special Reserve) Estate Grown and Bottled Merlot Monterey 1998 in one of those heavy glass bottles that some writers cry about, because it may cost a little more to ship, but denotes a quality wine from the winery. Any information that I may have had is long gone, as I received it, before I even thought about writing this blog.  This wine was produced in San Lucas and I have found a Lockwood Vineyards in Napa Valley, used the same logo and font, but listed nothing as lofty as this wine.  I am sure that it came from our club “A Taste of Monterey.”  With the aid of the Durand, the cork came out smoothly.  The wine had a deep ruby color with a bright ruby at the ring and no browning, and the ullage was still fine.  The wine still had a nose offering some dark fruit, but it had softened, and the fruit was just there in the taste like an old Merlot, but it had mellowed along with the tannins and the oaks, into a very velvety rich and mellow wine with a lingering finish that just kept reminding me of the wine.  There was even a nice good pour of wine left over that I enjoyed the next day and it did not disappoint. 

The other wine that we had also with of all things, a Roasted Pork Tenderloin, was a bottle of Viansa Winery “Sempre Avanti” North Coast Red Wine 2000. We received this wine as a gift, and it was only rediscovered when we had all that free time to rearrange the wine racks last year, when we were all living under a lockdown.  Viansa Winery was founded in 1990 by Sam and Vicki Sebastiani and currently under the management of their sons Chris and Jon, and there is almost a hundred years of winemaking by the Sebastiani family in Sonoma, and now all of there wines carry Sonoma and not North Coast appellation.  “Sempre Avanti” translates to “Always Forward” and was coined by the grandfather Samuele Sebastiani in his early days.  Another wine with no history, but I don’t feel that I would be too far out on a limb to say that the wine was a blend containing some classic Italian grapes (e.g., Primitivo or Zinfandel).  Even with the Durand the cork broke and I had to strain and decant the wine using my coffee filter and funnel method.  The wine had a pretty ruby color with no browning, and a soft nose.  The fruit had blended in with the tannins for another velvety texture, but with a short finish with no terroir. I would never be able to tell you what grapes I tasted, but it was delicious with dinner and very smooth.  The old wines are just best to describe them as mellow.       

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Our Last Wine with Ms. Yoga

Posted on November 16, 2021 by thewineraconteur

While we were at The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan with Ms. Yoga, they were getting busier, and we were deciding on some wines to take home.  We did not get carried away, as we have a money pit project that I will eventually get to, when it is done.  Ms. Yoga decided that “John’s Store” was a great place to visit and she really liked the last wine that tasted.  So much so, that she insisted that we allow her to treat us to a wine for dinner at home, before she took off the next day.

We had a bottle of Domaine Berthet-Rayne Cuvee Tradition Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Rhone Valley 2019. Raoul Raymond when he was in his twenties, took over his family farm and uprooted parcels of cherry groves to plant vines.  In 1978 with the help of his son-in-law Christian they set up Domaine Berthet-Rayne.  Originally the Domaine Berthet-Rayne created a range of wine to be only sold in France, with property in the Cote du Rhone and Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Between 1995 and 2000, the estate first began exporting wines in Europe and then finally to the United State of America.  The Domaine has twenty-nine hectares in Chateauneuf-du-Pape on diluvium alpin soil and they are on the left side of Rhone between Orange and Avignon and share some of the famed terroirs of Coudoulet and Chapouin with their clay-chalk soils. The wine is a blend of sixty-five percent Grenache, twenty percent Mourvedre, five percent Syrah and ten percent Cinsault. The wine was a nice dark ruby/purple color with notes of black cherries and cassis.  The palate offered dark cherries, and silk tannins with a nice medium finish with terroir.  When we got home and opened a bottle of this wine, it was great before we had dinner and was excellent with our dinner as well.  Just a lovely wine.

The name of the winery rang a bell with me, but the label was rather modern and not what I expect from a classic region as Chateauneuf-du-Pape.  A unique feature about the wines from the region is that the bottles all have the Papal keys designed on the glass, and since I was thinking about the wine, I actually tasted the 2011 and then we had the 2011 vintage with a dinner.  Back in 2014 the final bottle of a grand meal and this was part of my notes the last time we enjoyed Domaine Berthet-Rayne Chateauneuf du Pape 2011. The area is called this because it was the “New Castle of the Pope” in Avignon in the Fourteenth Century, and it is one of the oldest appellations in France. This famed wine from the Rhone Valley is made from Grenache, Mourvedre, Cinsault and Syrah varietals. This area is known as the driest area of the Rhone, and in extreme cases, the wineries must ask for special permission from the French Government to water the vines. As I have a natural fondness for Rhone wines, a Chateauneuf du Pape holds even a higher degree to me, as I always find it to offer more richness to the glass.

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Another Round of Tasting with Ms. Yoga

Posted on November 14, 2021 by thewineraconteur

Mame Dennis Burnside was at The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan and she was having fun.  Ms. Yoga has the personality that can be bigger than life, especially when she is having a good time.  She and my Bride have been friends, before I met my Bride.  I was definitely the third wheel that day in the wine shop, as I was taking photos and notes and those two were making the most of the trip. Though my Bride usually pours the balance of her tasting into my glass, unless she gets really excited about the wine. 

We had for our first red wine, Enrico Santini “Poggio Al Moro” Bolgheri 2016.   Enrico Santini grew up in the Bolgheri district of Tuscany, which is one of the newer wine district designations in Italy.  He is also considered a true “garagiste” there, with his small organic estate where he produced his first wine in 1999.  He actually transformed his house and garage into a winery to achieve his dreams and goals and he already received accolades and admiration for what he has accomplished in a short period of time. This wine is a blend of thirty percent Sangiovese, thirty percent Cabernet Sauvignon, thirty percent Merlot and ten percent Syrah.  The wines were all separately macerated in Stainless Steel and then spent three months in small French Oak barrels, with additional aging in the bottle prior to release.  I found the wine to have a dark cherry color with a good nose and a good finish.  It was quite fresh and different from other wines that I have had from the area and very easy to drink, with or without food.

We then had Baron de Montfort Chateau du Mignon Saint-Emilion Grand Cru 2016. The property is a family-owned estate and the Baron also owns three estates that he manages with his niece Anne de Foucauld, Countess Bertrand de Sercey; of which they have sixteen hectares in Saint-Emilion Grand Cru and fifty hectares in the Cotes de Castillon.  The wine is a blend of seventy percent Merlot, fifteen percent Cabernet Franc and fifteen percent Cabernet Sauvignon. The average age of the vines are thirty-five years of age, grown using organic techniques and the ground is limestone and clay.  They use machine harvesting and a mix of cement vats, Stainless Steel and oak barrels, of which twenty percent are new.  Black fruits dominate this wine, but with a silkier palate from being predominately Merlot and then a nice medium finish ending with terroir.    

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“Let’s Go to John’s Store”

Posted on November 12, 2021 by thewineraconteur

“Let’s go to John’s store” was the rallying cry, Ms. Yoga was calling out.  Now in the old days, that meant that they wanted to go to the store where I was the manager, so they could get some quality clothes to add to their wardrobe or to buy as gifts.  That day, Ms. Yoga wanted to do some wine tasting.  So, off we went to The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan and Ms. Yoga was quite animated, and she had been to the shop before.  This time I had introduced her to the owner of the shop, and she called the establishment “John’s Store” and without missing a beat, he looked at her and said that if I signed a blank check, he would fill in the amount and then it would be “John’s Store.”

We started out with a couple of white wines and the first was Domaine Louis Michel & Fils Petit Chablis 2019.  Domaine Louis Michel & Fils is a Burgundian wine producer located in Chablis.  They produce three Chablis Grand Cru wines, eight Chablis Premier Cru wines, several village-level and Petit Chablis wines.  The Michel family has had the Domaine since 1850 and it is a twenty-five-hectare estate on slopes that were originally cultivated by Cistercian monks in the Eleventh Century. They produce about thirteen thousand bottles just in their Grand Crus alone. Back some forty years ago, they switched over completely from the fermentation and aging of their wines from wooden barrels to Stainless Steel.  Petit Chablis is an appellation created in 1944 for dry white wines made from Chardonnay in Chablis and surrounding communes. The major difference between Petit Chablis and Chablis is in the soil, and topographically the soils of Petit Chablis are on a higher plateau to Chablis.  The vineyards are on shallow limestone soil with full sun exposure. The wine was matured on the lees for around eight months and only using indigenous yeasts.  The wine offered citrus and floral notes, and was a rather fruit-forward wine with a nice terroir finish.  People that are used to popular priced California Chardonnay wines, might not even recognize this wine as a Chardonnay and it would be a great wine to pour for the ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) crowd.     

We then went with a Favia Winery “Carbone” Chardonnay Coombsville, Napa Valley 2018.  The Carbone family, one of the earliest Italian immigrants in Napa Valley purchased one-hundred-twenty-five acres in Coombsville and eventually formed the Antonio Carbone Wine Cellar and Italian Garden.  They were very successful right up to the time of the Prohibition, as they were averaging three to four carloads of wine each month.  In 1886 they built an Italianate stone cellar and residence which is still standing today and the residence is being prepared to be used again by the new owners, Annie Favia and Andy Erikson, who bought the property in 2003. Their Italianate stone cellar and residence, constructed in 1886, continues to stand today – prepared again to be a family home and winery. It is here that Annie Favia and Andy Erickson have chosen to set up shop.  The “Carbone” Chardonnay is made from thirty-two-year-old vines, that are organically farmed and hand harvested. The wine is produced by whole cluster pressing, and the juice is barrel fermented, with a small percentage of new French Oak and aged on the lees for ten months.  A pale colored wine with notes of citrus and almonds, with a rich mouthful of flavors including lemongrass, vanilla and other spices with a nice finish of terroir (slate). A very rich and understated California Chardonnay, that could also fool the ABC crowd.

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Dinner at Hyde Park

Posted on November 10, 2021 by thewineraconteur

With Ms. Yoga in attendance, my Bride and I celebrated our wedding anniversary.  It was rather convoluted as we were trying to figure out where to dine.  Ms. Yoga was also going to meet one of her brothers where ever we decided on.  My Bride was going for a very casual venue, and I was leaning towards something more elegant, I guess with the able assistance of Ms. Yoga, we went fancier. She made arrangements to meet her brother and was trying to figure out, how to get him to sit down and eat, Big Sisters sometimes take on the roll of Mother Hen.

We hadn’t been to Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse, since the lockdown began and now, we were there with them still not a full capacity, but they survived and that is great.  Unfortunately, it was very difficult for us to get carryout meals from most of the restaurants, because by the time that we would get home, we would have to reheat them like leftovers and that was not exciting, especially at top dollar. Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse is based out of Ohio, and it is a nice comfortable restaurant that fits in between the macho old-school Morton’s and the loud feminine Capital Grille (at least the one in Detroit is, which is in a shopping mall). My Bride and I both had a bowl of Lobster Bisque with Sherry Poached Lobster.  My Bride had a Salmon Filet with Sauteed Spinach, Roasted Garlic Whipped Potatoes and a Lemon Crystal Citrus Sauce, while I had Twin Filet Mignon Medallions, with Roasted Garlic Whipped Potatoes, Crispy Onion Straws and Bearnaise Sauce. Ms. Yoga had the kitchen create a version of Sirloin Tips in a Zip Sauce with a side of Sauteed Brussels Sprouts to make sure that her brother would actually sit down with us and have more than a cocktail.  To honor us for our anniversary, there was a card signed by the entire staff, which was a nice touch. 

For dinner, the three of us shared a bottle of Alexander Valley Vineyards Merlot, Alexander Valley, Sonoma County Wetzel Family Estate 2018.  The winery was originally called the Wetzel Family Estate and was established in 1962, when the Wetzel’s purchased the original homestead of Cyrus Alexander and their first vintage was a Cabernet Sauvignon in 1968.  In 1993, an outbreak of phylloxera, had the estate refocus and they had to plant vines better suited for the region, so they went with Chardonnay, Merlot and Zinfandel.  In 2016, we had a bottle of their 1997 vintage and it was excellent. This wine spent fourteen months in a mix of French and American Oak.  A beautiful deep color, with a nose promising black fruit and spice, and a balanced wine even being so young with mellow tannins and black cherry, ending with a nice medium length finish.  It was an excellent wine and an excellent meal and we were all sated and happy.

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Having Some Wine in a Department Store

Posted on November 8, 2021 by thewineraconteur

Ms. Yoga was in town for a few days and like a Swirling Dervish, all things came to a halt, so that we could have some fun and a change of pace.  There will be a few stories and of course, some wine.  One of the days, we were going to meet some others at a restaurant and it was going to be a dry dinner, and there are dinners like that.  The restaurant that we were all going to end up meeting at has a stellar reputation for good quality food, and they do have a bar, but in deference, we refrained that evening for the other couple. The restaurant is also famed for not taking reservations and of course, we still are experiencing limited seating unless, we were dining with the governor.  We had a two hour wait to get a table, and being at a major shopping mall, that could be dangerous, especially when Ms. Yoga and my Bride get together. 

Fear not, they both were on a shopping moratorium and we went to one of the anchor stores at the mall.  This anchor store was a real powerhouse, until the state attempted to kill retail, and it was rather sad to see how sparse the racks were, for such a large store.  I grew up in retail, I guess you can say, as I did it from high school, then retail paid for college (I had to pay the difference of what my scholastic scholarship didn’t cover; of course, back then, it was expected that if you went to college, you paid for your college.  When I got out of college, there was a huge economic plunge and I figured that I had a job, and a diploma would be useless collecting unemployment checks, and back then, unemployment was odious to the working middle class that I was brought up in. All of this is to say that when I was in retail, there was an old adage “that you can’t sell from an empty wagon.” Anyways, I remember the glory days when department stores were like J. L. Hudson’s and were grandiose, alas, this was not the way it is now.  I mention this, because we went and got a table at this department store in their restaurant, and we were going to kill some time until the restaurant called us for a table.

We decided that the three of us were going to share a bottle of wine, before we had dinner.  We ended up having a bottle of Simi Winery Sonoma County Chardonnay 2019. Simi Winery is located in Sonoma County and it is one of the longest continuously running wineries in California.  It was founded in 1876 by the brothers Giuseppe and Pietro Simi and they started off being known for their Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay wines.  With their long existence they had some influence about wine not only in Sonoma, but in California.  Isabelle Simi (Giuseppe’s daughter) took over the winery in 1904 and was able to keep the winery intact during the first of the Federal governments attempts to create a Nanny State, when they tried to ruin the country with the Volstead Act or usually referred to as Prohibition.  While she had to sell some of the property, she was able to keep roughly five-hundred-thousand cases of Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel wines during Prohibition.  Simi Winery was also operational during all this time by producing wine for sacramental and “medicinal purposes,” and the Volstead Act all but ruined most of the wineries, breweries and distilleries in the country.  And by being allowed to maintain the wine in barrels, it gave Simi Winery a running start when smarter heads prevailed and decided that the government should not dictate social mores. In 1946, Isabelle founded the Sonoma Grape Growers Association, and she eventually sold Simi Winery in 1970, but continued an association with the new management. In 1981, Simi Winery was bought by Moet Hennessey and since then it is now owned by Constellation Brands.  The Simi Winery Sonoma County Chardonnay 2019 that we had was a blend of ninety-nine percent Chardonnay and one percent other.  I will venture to say that this wine was fermented in Stainless Steel for a short period of time.  The nose offered baked apples and some citrus, and on the palate, it was well balanced with a touch of tangerine and shortbread with a short finish.  It was an easy drinking wine for the three of us to enjoy, by itself while we had a lively conversation.

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Raventós i Blanc Blanc de Blancs

Posted on November 6, 2021 by thewineraconteur

I have been making asides about changes at the chateau, but more about that when the time comes.  In case you are wondering, my Bride hasn’t come to her senses, so I am not being thrown out with the bath water.  Needless to say, that I have been living in Wonderland, or has everything had a price explosion in the last year?  I will get into all of this at some point, as everyone knows that I tend to ramble, especially when I am having a good time.  Suffice it to say at the moment, that we have been scurrying around to find some replacement cabinet hardware, and we finally found part of our search, and the store did not have some of the pieces, but they went online and found us what we were looking, and we thought that they were going to order from their warehouse, but they actually searched some third-party distributors and printed us off a sheet with all the information, for us to order when we got back home.  That was great service, so we decided that while we were out, we would stop and have dinner.  Eight hinges and two cabinet latches to replace our old set, ended up costing more than our dinner and a bottle of wine.

We decided to dine, not far from our first stop and ended up at Diamond Jim Brady’s Bistro Bar.  I am not sure if I can actually determine which of the “Jim Brady’s” is the original, without getting a Boston barrister involved.  I guess there must have been a breakdown among family ties, as my Bride and I can remember going to such establishments on opposite sides of the Detroit area, before we ever met.  We lucked out and got there before the dinner crowd got there and they offered us either dining indoors or outdoors, and while we opted for indoors, we could observe the outdoors which was basically an enclosed and heated patio, that they must have created to survive the draconian rules levied towards restaurants, but I am happy to say that they survived.  My Bride had a special of Pistachio encrusted Walleye with Shaved Brussels Sprouts with bacon and Balsamic and their “best in Michigan since 1954” Caesar Salad (you knew that she was going to go with that) and she said that it was one of the best salads excluding her own house-made dressing, which is high praise.  I was going to get a burger, which they are known for, but they had a Lobster BLT on the menu with house-made chips, and I had to try it.  It was not a Lobster Roll; it was a Lobster Salad tossed in a Lemon Mayonnaise dressing.  I thought I was going to need a box, the sandwich was that big, but it was delicious and it disappeared and my Bride even enjoyed the chips as well. 

They had a nice collection of wines on their carte, most were available by the glass, so I had to act quickly and I found a nice sparkling wine from Spain, and those are two “buzzwords” that attracted my Bride’s attention.  We ordered a bottle of Raventos i Blanc Blanc de Blancs Conca del Riu Anoia 2017.  The Raventos family has a wine making history going back since 1497, five centuries of working ninety hectares of vines and twenty-one generations of winemaking. In 1872, Josep Raventos Fatio went to Champagne and then made his first sparkling wine with secondary fermentation in the bottle, using only native estate grapes.  Josep Maria Raventos i Blanc, was the promoter and creator of the Cava DO, and in 1986, he produces the first estate Cava.  They are striving to have the region Conca del Riu Anoia, classified, it is a small geographical area centered around the River Anoia Basin, between the Catalan Pre-Coastal and Costal Ranges.  The wine is a blend of thirty-eight percent Xarel-lo, thirty percent Macabeo, twenty-six percent Parellada and six percent Monastrell.  The wine was made in the classic traditional method with the disgorgement (secondary fermentation in the bottle) done in October 2020.  A delightful bottle of wine, that just made it through the dinner, with its tiny bubbles in a pretty gold color.  I find sparkling wines harder to describe especially since I am not partial to descriptors, but this wine was fresh with a youthful excitement, for a lack of better words.  It was slightly sweet, as I am not partial to bone-dry sparkling wines and we both enjoyed it, and it would be very easy to order it again, it was that nice.    

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