Back to Chandler’s

Posted on September 29, 2021 by thewineraconteur

The chronology of September is a bit off, but we also squeezed in a trip up to the northern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.  When you talk to Michiganders, you get many different answers for where to go, as Traverse City, Charlevoix, Petoskey and Harbor Springs are often bandied as the proper place.  Ernest Hemmingway’s Nick Adams stories were set in Walloon Lake, and people from Indiana, Ohio and Chicago are all crazy about their favorite haunts as well; and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Connecticut crowds that we have met during our trips up north.  The area is beautiful, and slowly, but surely it has also become a “foodie” paradise.  The Spring and Summer are for the golfers, campers, and boaters, Autumn is a great time to observe the color change of the leaves, and yes there are some that like the cold Winters for skiing, snowmobiling and snowshoeing.  As I said, the area is also becoming a haven for food and wine, because my Bride and I don’t fit into the other categories.  We actually went up for business, and we stretched out the trip a bit, because a four-to-five-hour drive is plenty, without having to do it twice in two days. 

We were going to Petoskey, which is an historic town and once famed for all of the hotels that were congregated there.  They are also famed for the Petoskey stone, which people like to hunt for, on the water fronts and beaches, and it is the State Stone.  As soon as we knew the dates for Petoskey, we booked a dinner reservation at Chandler’s, as dinner reservations are now almost mandatory, because there are still all the people that wish to eat, but most of the restaurants have shorter hours and less staff working.  We did get into Chandler’s and we requested a table in the wine cellar.  Chandler’s is a restaurant that has been cobbled out of the basement and backside of Symons General Store, which is worth a visit on its own merits. We shared a plate, an appetizer of seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras and it came with Cinnamon Brioche, Strawberry Compote and Fresh Basil.  A unique combination and the basil and the strawberry was a great touch, the brioche was a bit strong of a flavor, but it all melded together.  We had a glass of Maison Sichel Sauternes 2017 from Famille Sichel to pair with the Foie Gras.   The Maison Sichel collection is from their negocient side of the business.  The wine is a blend of ninety-five percent Semillon and five percent Sauvignon Blanc from vines that are about fifty years of age.  The wine is aged for ten to twelve months and they recommend that eight to ten years of cellar time before drinking, and that did not happen here.  The wine is very balanced and was rather refreshing, which was excellent for pairing and it had a beautiful nose and color, what one would expect from a Sauternes. 

For our dinner entrée selections, my Bride had the Roasted Bay of Fundy Salmon with Refried Black Beans, Pineapple-Red Pepper Salsa and a Mango Lime Emulsion.  I went with the Maple Leaf Farms Duck Breast with Crispy Spätzle, Broccoli, Bacon, Mushrooms and a Sweet and Sour Pomegranate Glaze.   We had a bottle of Joseph Drouhin Chorey-Les-Beaune 2018, as I adore Pinot Noir with duck and my Bride prefers a softer Red with Salmon.  Joseph Drouhin was founded in 1880 in Beaune and over the years they have expanded to owning vineyards as well as a negocient and they produce wines from village-level cuvees to Grand Cru and Premier Cru wines with both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Chorey-Les- Beaune is about one-hundred-twenty-five hectares of predominately Pinot Noir vines, but the appellation also allows for some Chardonnay as well. The land is all at the base of the escarpment and hence there is no Premier Cru vineyards, though part of it, though it is very close to the slopes of Corton. Even though it has an appellation, most of the wine is offered under the Cote de Beaune-Villages appellation.  The grapes are hand harvested, and the maceration and fermentation take about three weeks with indigenous yeasts.  The wine is aged for about fifteen months, with ten percent new oak.  They clarify and evaluate each barrel, choosing some for the appellation and others for a broader appellation.  It was a very nice soft Burgundy wine, with a nose of blackberries, and the blackberries are there on the palate as well, with a nice medium count finish.  I am sure that with a few more years in the cellar, the wine would pick up some secondary layers, that aged Burgundy wines excel at. Our trip in Petoskey was looking very nice.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Birthday Dinners Keep Coming

Posted on September 27, 2021 by thewineraconteur

I agree that I have no shame and that I am like a little kid, but I guess if you get this many birthdays, it is alright, because so many are denied that privilege.  My Bride asked me, where I would like to dine on my birthday, which can be a rather dangerous question, but I kind of knew where I was being led to, and it was alright.  Our last birthday celebrations that we had, when the world was naïve and innocent was at The Earle, and they had a celebration gift that was not advertised, but they gave you basically a free dinner when you celebrated with at least one other person, drinks not included.  Well, since that time, there was a movement that basically ruined the restaurant industry, and many did not survive.  We have since learned that politicians could dine in, at a crowded table without the use of masks and they could live to continue making life miserable in the gulag. We were still going to support an independent restaurant with or without the wonderful incentive. 

It was amazing, we always sat in the French Room, which I guess most people didn’t want, perhaps because it was a bit claustrophobic and totally cluttered with the dead remains of elegant wine bottles from days gone past; the room was being used by a private party.  We elected to have dinner in the long narrow corridor that is adjacent to their glass enclosed, temperature and humidity-controlled wine cellar.  Since 1983, The Earle has been recognized by Wine Spectator magazine for their selection of over twelve-hundred unique wines and they have been awarded the Best of Award of Excellence for thirty-five years in a row and still going.  The room was long that we were in.  My Bride and I split two opening dishes and that really works out well for us.  One was a simple plate of Roasted Garlic, with side condiments and Crostini.  The other was a salad, and it wasn’t a Caesar Salad, it was a Panzanella with Cucumber, onion, tomatoes and Tuscan-style bread, olive oil and vinegar, with basil, capers, and anchovies and it may be our new go-to salad.  My Bride had her usual Coquilles St. Jacques al crème de Xeres, or Sea Scallops sautéed with mushrooms and garlic, pan-sauced with Sherry and cream with rice.  I almost had a Duck entrée, but at the last minute I switched to Veal Scallopini lightly breaded and sautéed with garlic and mushrooms; deglazed with Marsala and finished with cream, served with orzo. 

I ordered a bottle of Maison Chanzy Bouzeron Clos de la Fortune Monopole 2017, and the Sommelier arrived with the bottle, because she was very curious to see who had ordered this wine, and I have to admit that it happened the same way the last time we ordered the wine, but it had been a vintage 2015.  Maison Chanzy used to be known as Domaine Chanzy and they own eight hectares spread across three Burgundy Cotes, with the majority of the plantings in the Cote Chalonnaise and with an historical presence in Bouzeron, and it is Bouzeron that they are most proud of, and willing to tell the world about it.  Bouzeron is a small village that now has its own appellation since 1998, but only for white wines made from the Aligoté grape, and for years it was listed under a sub-division title of Bourgogne-Aligoté.  Bouzeron is in the northern Saone-et-Loire region of the Cote Chalonnaise, in the valley and the Dheune River separates it from Santenay and it is very close to Rully and Chassagne-Montrachet.  Eighty percent of the juice is done on the lees in Stainless Steel and the balance in oak and it is bottled in the summer, to maintain the fruit and youthfulness of the Aligoté grape.  As you may have noticed Maison Chanzy owns the entire Clos de la Fortune and they are very proud of it, as part of their domain.  The wine offered nice herbal notes, and some great terroir (flinty from all of the limestone soil of the area) with a nice refreshing finish.  We did have a dessert and when the bill came, the restaurant gave us a gift certificate to be used on our next trip, and I know that we will.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Monterey Club September 2021

Posted on September 25, 2021 by thewineraconteur

It was a festive time for me, to receive all of these wine club selections in the week of my birthday.  Even though we pay for all of these clubs, it is just fun to open the packages to see what is there. The last carton was from “A Taste of Monterey,” a club that we joined on our first trip to Carmel-by-the-Sea.  Some people go to Pebble Beach, we went to the wine country.  We went with their Private Reserve Club, which is three bottles delivered four times a year.  At the shop in Monterey at Cannery Row, they have a tasting room, as well as a wine shop.  Each delivery they enclose a four-page booklet, usually spotlighting a winery, a discussion about a varietal, a discussion about a cheese and sometimes a recipe, as well as a write-up about the wines that were sent.

Bernardus Winery Chardonnay, Soberanes Vineyard, Santa Lucia Highlands 2019 was the first bottled I pulled out of the carton. Bernardus Winery and Vineyards was founded by Ben Marinus Pon about twenty-seven years ago with the intention of creating premier wines in the Carmel Valley.  His intent was to produce single vineyard designated wines and a Bordeaux blended wine.  Soberanes Vineyard is a joint venture of two famed growers Gary Pisoni and Gary Franscioni in the Santa Lucia Highlands.  This wine is made in the “Burgundian tradition” and it is almost twelve months between harvest and bottling.  The wine is aged in French Oak, of which forty-three percent is new.  According to the write-up, this wine has a nose of baked apple and crème fraiche, exhibiting white fruit on the palate along with buttery oak notes and a full finish.

Kori Wines Syrah, San Saba Vineyard, Monterey 2018 was the second bottle that I unpacked.  This winery is a partnership that started in 2007 between grower Kirk Williams and his step-daughter Kori Violini. The initial launch was their Pinot Noir from the KW Ranch Vineyard.  In 2018, they opened up a tasting room in Carmel-by-the-Sea. The San Saba Vineyard is in a sheltered nook just below the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA, and hence the much larger Monterey AVA. The site is known for having little rain, cool and one of the longest growing seasons to produce concentrated and ripe fruit.  There are no production notes available, outside of suggesting an aging potential of six to eight years.  The tasting notes offer black fruit, plums and baking spice.

Mission Trail Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmel Valley 2018 was the third bottle in the carton.  Mission Trail Vineyards takes their name from the Mustard plants that can still be found, as the seeds were spread out by the Franciscan Friars around two-hundred-thirty years ago as they planted the original vineyards in the area.  Those original vineyards are long gone, but there are plenty of vineyards in Monterey, so those Friars recognized good land back then.  In Monterey County there are about forty different varieties of grapes being grown.  Ken and Robyn Rauh created Mission Trail Vineyards on the premise of featuring small lots of hand-crafted wines, from different locations throughout the county.  Their goal is to produce robust and fruit forward wines featuring Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, Marsanne, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Grenache, Syrah, Zinfandel and a Meritage.  There were no production notes available.  The wine is described as deep Garnet with a nose of blackberry, cassis and oak.  The palate will appreciate first flavors of plum and blackberry that layer into chocolate and cassis, with a finish of terroir and cedar. 

Posted in Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Black Star Club September 2021

Posted on September 23, 2021 by thewineraconteur

I am like a little kid with all of these wine club selections all arriving in time for my birthday.  Yes, I am spoiled.  Black Star Farms is rather unique in that it has vineyards and tasting room facilities on both peninsulas, so that they are kind of surrounding Traverse City which is kind of the focal point for all of the wineries in the area.  In 1998 Black Star Farms purchased Sport Valley Farm which was a one-hundred-twenty-acre equestrian facility, and the stylized black star was part of the architectural décor in the main house.  In their Twentieth year, they were honored to receive the 19’th Annual Canberra International Riesling Challenge (CIRC) -Best Wine of the 2018 Challenge and only the second time an American wine came out on top.  There were 567 Rieslings from six countries (Australian, New Zealand, USA, Germany, France and the Czech Republic).  The Black Star Farms Arcturos Dry Riesling 2017 scored 98 points, in addition to taking home Best Dry Riesling and Best American Riesling.  In fact, all six of the Riesling wines that Black Star Farms submitted took home medals, showing a consistency across vintages and styles.  The fruit is sourced from both of the proprietor’s vineyards and from local grower partners in both the Old Mission Peninsula and Leelanau Peninsula.  The winery has three series; the premium Arcturos, A Capella and the Leorie Vineyard labels for sparkling and fruit wines.  So, we do look forward to the club deliveries.

The first bottle that came out of the shipping carton is the Black Star Farms Arcturos Pinot Noir Michigan 2018.  According to the notes, the fruit for this wine came from five different vineyards and hence the Michigan AVA.  The wine was aged in French Oak, with around fifteen percent new.  The notes from the winery say that the wine is a balance of vibrant fruit and spicey complexity that comes from time the barrel.

The second bottle was the Black Star Farms Arcturos Sur Lie Chardonnay Michigan 2020.  There is no explanation of where the fruit was harvested, and it could actually be from two of their own vineyards which are located in different AVA designations, but it is not stated.  This is a non-oaked style wine, which I presume to mean that it is Stainless Steel.  The winery notes call for floral notes, a medium-bodied wine with tastes of ripe citrus, apple and pear with a subtle mineral finish.

Posted in Wine | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

September 2021 Club Selections

Posted on September 21, 2021 by thewineraconteur

I may end up claiming the entire month for my birthday, as I am having so much fun and I had to stop at my local wine shop The Fine Wine Source in Livonia to get the selections.  I am sure that I tend at times to sound like a broken record, but it is a great place for me to spend some time tasting and talking about wines, not to mention buying some wine.  Of course, they are always looking for my better half, and who can blame them?  They survived the last year, when so many businesses were driven to ruin by the draconian mandates of our local satrap.  I and all of their patrons are pleased that they did.  The owner selects two wines each month for his club members, one Old-World and one New-World and by belonging to the club, one gets case pricing, each time one buys wines, whether by the bottle or by the case.

The Old-World selection was Chateau Toutigeac Rouge Bordeaux 2019.  After studying genealogical charts by Rene Mazeau, the Mazeau family has an uninterrupted history of being winemakers since the Fifteenth Century.  Charles Mallet, a wine merchant in Paris and Castillon la Bataille, purchased the estate in 1928.  His great, great grand-daughter, Oriane Mazeau, has continued the tradition as the fifth generation to make wines at Chateau Toutigeac.  The estate which is thirty-five hectares is located in Entre-Deux-Mers on silica clay, with vines from three to fifty years of age.   The wine is fifty percent Merlot, thirty-five percent Cabernet Franc and fifteen percent Cabernet Sauvignon.  The entire harvest is completed in one week and the initial fermentation is for fifteen to eighteen days in Stainless Steel, and then it is transferred to subterranean, glassed vats for twelve months.  According to the notes the wine is a deep red with a nose of red fruits (currants and plums), which continue on the palate with soft tannins and a finish of more soft fruits.

The New-World selection is Lone Birch Red Blend Yakima Valley 2018 in Washington State.  The family has been farming in the Yakima Valley for over four generations and has eight-hundred-thirty acres.  The landmark of the estate is the seventy-year-old Lone Birch that resides in the vineyard that was planted by the great-great-grandfather who was the initial steward of the land for the family.  They have continued the concept of being an environmental steward and they also maintain sustainable practices for the vineyards and the winery.  The wine is a blend of forty-five percent Merlot, thirty percent Syrah and twenty-five percent Cabernet Sauvignon.  The harvesting was finished by hand by block, and each block was cold soaked for forty-eight hours and then inoculated with yeast strains.  The wine was then aged for eleven months in French Oak, of which twenty percent was new and forty percent was neutral.  The wine is described as having a nose of dark currants, blackberry, cola and sweet plums with a palate offering some fruit forward notes along with sandalwood, espresso, malt-chocolate and smoked spices (from the mix of barrels), with balance acidity and a medium finish.  September just keeps making me happy, and I am so bad.       

Posted in Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

And a Duckhorn Migration 1996

Posted on September 19, 2021 by thewineraconteur

We were celebrating the August and September birthdays at one of the sister’s homes, as they have an inground swimming pool and the weekend might be the last hurrah for the season.  Since, my Bride is one of five daughters and each has a husband, plus children and now some grandchildren, you can see how if we celebrated each birthday individually, that is the entire social calendar for the year, so it is much easier and saner to bundle the honorees together; though the names on the cake can get pretty crowded at certain months. 

With the party, being a pool party, the food selection was more casual, though the appetizers remained about the same.  There were fruits and vegetables, dips, and assorted cheeses and crackers.  There are times when I can literally make a meal just from the munchies and I am sure that holds true for some of the others at the party as well.  To start off the revelry, we brought Gazela Vinho Verde Rosé NV which is made by Sogrape Vinhos of Portugal, and it appears as if in the future this wine will also be labeled as “Aire.” Vinho Verde has developed its own coterie of followers and I think the group gets larger every year, as it is just an easy wine that is perfect for hot weather and with water nearby, either a pool, lake or ocean.  Portugal, it is often said, has had a rather foot-loose and fancy free about grape varieties in certain areas, as even the winemakers cannot state for sure what has been planted over the decades, if not centuries.  In the Vinho Verde region there are over fifteen thousand hectares planted and seventy percent is white.  Most of the Vinho Verde Tinto is for domestic consumption, but I guess they are exporting more, since the white has become so popular.  To give you an idea about the grape varieties that may be encountered just for the Tinto, the ones recommended are: Azal-Tinto, Borracal, Brancelho, Espadeiro, Padeiro-de-Basto, Pedral, Rabo-de-Ovelha and Vinhao.  Other permitted varieties are: Alicante-Bouschet, Docal, Espadeiro-Mole, Grand-Noir, Labrusco, Pical, Touriga-Nacional, Trincadeira-Preta and Verdelho-Tinto. The wines are made in Stainless Steel and the malolactic fermentation takes place in the bottle, which causes the natural petillance or effervescence of the wine.  This wine was frothy and plenty of big bubbles appearing in the glass after pouring.  The wine had a nose and a taste of watermelon and strawberries in a raspberry color.  Very easy and definitely quaffable, in fact my Bride said that she likes this wine even more than the white. 

The dinner segment was just a casual, as it was a barbecue of bratwursts and hamburgers, along with the classic sides that one would encounter at a cookout like this.  Later on, there was the sweet table and the obligatory birthday cake.  Since I was one of the honorees, I did bring a special bottle from our cellar, just to see how the wine was progressing as we have some more of the wine resting.  We had a bottle of Duckhorn Vineyards Decoy Migration Napa Valley Red Table Wine 1996, which we bought at the winery.  Years ago, we had the good fortune to have a private tour and tasting during harvest with one of the Duckhorn sons and at that time, the wine was a blending of different varieties and different contract and owner properties, back when Duckhorn Vineyards produced all of their wines in Napa Valley, now Duckhorn is one subsidiary and Migration is another subsidiary.  The original concept for Migration is that the wine could change from year to year.  This wine was produced from fruit harvested from seven different vineyards within the appellation.  The wine was fifty-one percent Cabernet Franc, twenty-six percent Merlot, thirteen percent Cabernet Sauvignon and ten percent Petit Verdot.  The wine was aged for eighteen months in a blend of sixty percent French Oak (ten percent new, sixty percent second and thirty neutral) and forty percent American Oak (all second use).  Silly me, I forgot to pack my Durand and of course the cork broke and I had to use a coffee filter and a funnel to decant.  This wine was just beginning to show its age, but the nose was vintage Right Bank, the nose and the tannins were soft, but it was still a chewy wine with a good long finish.  For a twenty-five-year-old, it behaved very nicely and a pleasure to drink.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Louis’ Chop House

Posted on September 17, 2021 by thewineraconteur

There were the four of us continuing a birthday celebration, that I tagged along on, as we know that I have no shame.  We were going to Louis, but not Louis in the Bronx.  We were going to an old-fashioned chop house or steak house, to me, they are both interchangeable.  Growing up for me, as a kid, this was the type of restaurant that I frequented the most, and hence the most comfortable of places to be.  Nothing frou-frou or “new age” or any other contemporary wording. 

We had a classic dinner for the four of us, since we just had a lobster roll about an hour before dinner, we had a lighter appetizer to share, and that was Crab Stuffed Mushrooms in a Lobster Cream Sauce.  You know, something light.  Since the restaurant was fifty years in the making and kept evolving from the original, but not a major evolves, just some elegant fine tuning and tweaks.  We had a bottle of Barone Fini Pinot Grigio Valdadige DOC 2020, a wine that is under the corporate umbrella of The Deutsch Family of Wine & Spirits.  The Bonmartini-Fini family began making wine in 1497 when the two noble families merged in a wedding up in Northern Italy.  It is still family owned.  This wine is their flagship showcasing the grapes of the Valdadige DOC.  The fruit is hand-harvested and I will go out on a limb, though not a long limb and presume that the wine was fermented and aged in Stainless Steel, though it is not revealed by the winery.  It was a great way to start the meal, as the wine had a nice floral nose of citrus and lemon, with a palate of melon and apples in a balanced acidity with a touch of mineral terroir at the finish.  It just made it easy to enjoy another sip of wine.

For our entrées we went with some classic dishes, my Bride did Surf & Turf, which was really nostalgic, as it seems to have disappeared from most menus or they have tried to update and modify a simple combination of a Filet Mignon and a Lobster Tail.  I also went with another classic nostalgic dish of Veal Oscar, medallions of sautéed veal topped with crab, asparagus and Sauce Bearnaise (and you know that I am on a diet).  I actually had to go through five choices from a rather large wine list to select the two wines that we had, and the red wine, they came out with was an up-sale, but that was fine, by that time. My complaint is that wine lists are computer printed lists, so there is not a need to have that many wines listed that they can’t supply, and they blamed it on what is going on in the world, though my wine shop doesn’t seem to have problems getting great wines, but I digress and I was a bit agitated and forgot to take a photo of the bottle, until I got home.  We had a bottle of Chateau Teyssier Saint-Emilion Grand Cru 2014 part of the JCP Maltus group.  It was a charming classic interpretation of a Saint-Emilion wine that is eighty-five percent Cabernet Sauvignon, and fifteen percent Cabernet Franc.  Aged in French Oak, of which a third is new, the wine was delicious with a nose of dark fruits, and it had soft tannins with great black cherry, smoke, spices and a nice medium finish of terroir.  What we called in the old days, a nice Saint-Emilion.

The other problem and it is rampant in our state, is that there are plenty of jobs, but no takers, so with a dearth of employees there was no tableside offerings of salads, steaks or desserts.  We all shared a classic Detroit dessert of a Hot Fudge Cream Puff and I had a taste, but I went with a glass of Dow’s 10-Year-Old Tawny Porto, a Port Wine from Oporto in Portugal and from one of the great Port makers there.  Instead of a cordial glass of Port, I was given a six ounce pour, and it took a little longer to nurse it. The wine must spend a minimum of six years in casks and it is blended with other wines and that is how they get the 10 Years on the label. The Port Wineries have casks of wines that are of many different years and they blend the different casks to maintain the taste that they are known for. The grapes that are used and there is no way of knowing the percentages of each, because of the process of making Port wines are: Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Barroca, Tinta Roriz, Tinto Cao and perhaps Souzao, Tinta Amarela and Mourisco Tinto.  It was just a beautiful glass of Port, as I think a Tawny is the easiest drinking and understandable for most people, and a great nightcap.   It was an excellent way to end the day with a fellow birthday honoree.

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Wine Day in New Baltimore

Posted on September 15, 2021 by thewineraconteur

As the days pass quicker, at least once a year, I know that I can celebrate my day and have a bit of selfish-indulgence.  Well actually, I think that I may be stretching the day longer and longer each year.  We were going to celebrate our Brother-in-Law’s birthday, and his birthday is at the end of August, it is lumped together with all of the September birthday honorees, see how I am stretching the celebration.  I know I have no shame, but it is a race against the Grim Reaper and I am not Dorian Gray.

The actual birthday honoree and his wife, one of my Bride’s sisters and us went into the town of New Baltimore.  The community was founded in 1796 by French explorers, which make sense, as Detroit was founded by the French as well, and had a strong French community for years.  It has a quaint old-fashioned downtown on the water front, with a beach and I guess it was good that we got there on the day that we did, because they were getting ready for an art fair on the beach and I am sure that the next day, parking would have been impossible. We were wandering around the downtown visiting different store fronts and we went in for a tasting at the Washington Street Wine House “A Petit Winery.”  The winery offers wine, gift baskets and accessories and they were celebrating eleven years in business.  Their wines are international in scope, as they buy wine concentrates and finish the wines in house.  There were no vintage dates, no AVA concerns and at the moment were offering thirty-eight different wines.  They allowed a few complimentary tastings and when I went to take a photo of the wine and the glass, the wine bottle was quickly removed and I was told that that I was doing something not allowed.  I was so put off by their behavior that I rather lost interest, though my Bride tried her full allotment of tastings, though I did wish to try their Amarone, as I had just bought some for the house, that I haven’t even got around to writing about.  The Amarone tasting like raisin wine to me, so I guess they achieved their goal.  My Bride found a bottle that she wanted to buy, their Washington Street Wine House “Cheap Date” Riesling-Gewurztraminer NV, so that I had a bottle to photograph.  This was a pleasant and easy drinking wine with some floral notes and taste offering some citrous and honey. 

We then walked across the street to On The Bay, a boutique nautical fashion and home décor shop near the shore of Anchor Bay.  The shop had the feeling of a “Jimmy Buffet” album, with a full bar, beer and wine with offerings for Brunch, Lunch, Dinner or Dessert while having a day of shopping in New Baltimore.  We placed an order for their Lobster Roll, which we understand is the favorite of the locals.  It was Lobster meat served hot with drawn butter and their seasonings on “Hawaiian” rolls with a side of Pineapple Coleslaw; and we sat out on the patio behind the store, and outside of being a haven for bees that day, it was a fine appetizer for our dinner later on that evening.  We also had a bottle of Vino del Sol Gen5 Chardonnay Lodi 2018.  Vino del Sol was founded in 2004 and they refer to themselves as “The Argentine Wine Specialist” and offer wines from Argentina, California, Chile, Japan and New Zealand.  All of the wines that they represent are estate-grown, sustainably-farmed and family-owned.  For five generations the Lange family has lived and worked their land in Lodi, California and they are certified green by Lodi Rules Sustainable Wine-growing.  The wine is ninety-five percent Chardonnay, two and a half percent Viognier, two percent Sauvignon Blanc and a half-percent other.  The average age of the vines are fifteen years, they harvest at night, with gentle pressing, yeast inoculated, with two days of settling, fermented Sur-Lie for twenty days, and then aged an additional twelve months Sur-Lie, with twenty-five percent of the juice aged for six months in new French and American Oak barrels.  It was a nice Chardonnay with a good nose and some buttery-oakiness to the palate with a short to medium finish with a tinge of mineral terroir.   For a very reasonable price, this was a nice wine in the afternoon for us to share.  

Posted in Dining, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Twenty Years

Posted on September 13, 2021 by thewineraconteur

Twenty-one years ago, we were actually being tourists in “the city that never sleeps” according to Francis Albert.  No business trip, no frantic rushing around Midtown, we were just looking around.  In fact, we took the boat to Ellis Island, where most of the Armenians after the Genocide were routed to Canada, because there were quotas back then.  As I look at the photo my Bride took of me, almost a year to the day later, the background of the picture was totally changed forever.  A year later, I and everyone else was watching in total disbelief that terrorists used commercial jetliners and commandeered two planes and used them as weapons to destroy the Twin Towers.  A day that we claimed that we would never forget, guess what? We have a generation that wasn’t even born and they have a different attitude about what happened, in fact, plenty of people now, it seems have forgotten, or it is convenient to forget about it. 

There was a famous restaurant that I never had a chance to dine at, though my Bride did.  The employees of Windows on the World were actually getting the restaurant ready for lunch, just like all the employees that filled up that tower and its twin next door.  Some people did survive that fateful day, that were in the buildings, most were not that fortunate.  I remember how impressed I was to learn that the entire staff at Daniel, in the Upper Eastside cancelled all of their reservations, and then moved the staff down to “Ground Zero” to cook and to make sure that all of the emergency crews had a chance to eat.  I am also sure that other restaurants and individuals did the same, it is just that Daniel remains part of the story to this day for me.  The country pulled together on that tragic day, and the following sad days as everyone tried to put the facts together to make sense. 

I remember the following year after that tragic date, my Bride and I were all packed and ready to go to Carmel-by-the-Sea for a week of wining, dining and luckily even some dancing as well.  On September 11, we got a call that my daughter was in the hospital ready to give birth to her first child.  We got there with all of the commotion that surrounds the birth of a child.  It was almost midnight and her physician looked at me, and said I have no idea why the baby has not been born yet, as she is fully dilated.  I looked at my watch, and chuckled to myself, and told the doctor, this will all be remedied in about fifteen minutes and he looked at me puzzled, as if I had some strange super power that I was not sharing with him. I walked back into the room that my daughter was in and after a few minutes I informed her that it was past midnight and it was now the Twelfth of September, and that she could have the baby.  She looked at me, and asked me if I was sure, and I confirmed it, and in a few minutes, they were wheeling the mother-to-be off to the delivery room.  I continued to chuckle to myself, because I knew that my daughter did not want the child to be born on that infamous date, as she felt it would be bad luck.  After my grandson was born, and I made sure that all were healthy and with no complications, I kissed the two of them good bye for the moment and told her we would be back after our week away, and that we had to be at the airport that morning around 4:30.  I am happy to say that our eldest grandson is now in college.

No wine, no dining, just bear with me and allow me some indulgence to be solemn, even a raconteur has painful stories that have to be endured, as I give you little snapshots of almost the same date, in a three-year span.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Two From Canada

Posted on September 11, 2021 by thewineraconteur

It is amazing how lifestyles change in a matter of less than two years.  We definitely used to go out, much more often.  We now eat in, way more often, but the silver lining is that we are actually drinking some of the wines that we have forgotten about, or had gotten mislaid.  My father’s family ended up in Canada, after the genocide and they were in the Hamilton and St. Catherines area of Ontario, which is now wine country, fifty years ago, it wasn’t, but that is another story.  My Bride and I still like to go to that part of the world, and once the current “world leaders” figure out, how to open up the longest peaceful border in the world, we will go back again.  After all, give me a day or two and I will be speaking Canadian like a native. 

One of the mislaid bottles of wine was from the Niagara-on-the-Lake wine region, or as the locals like to say NOTL.  We visited and tasted and left with wine from Small Talk Vineyards.  The closest that we found to some of the small wineries of Michigan was Small Talk Vineyards. They are a fifty-year-old private estate and as soon as you pull up to their parking lot, you know that it is going to be fun. Splashy vibrant colors attack you immediately. There is a huge sign saying “Come In, Come In.” You just know that it is going to be a fun visit, because they are having fun. The tasting room is like a patio with more vibrant colors.  The wines are front and center, and in case you missed the bottle from what they are pouring from, there are huge posters on the walls duplicating not only the front label, but the back label as well, because the front is what you say, and the back, may be what you are thinking. The wines, were as much fun as the winery.  Small Talk Vineyards Burning Ambition Niagara-on-the-Lake VQA 2012 was a Riesling and Gewürztraminer blend that was aged in Stainless Steel.  They are a family-owned small batch winery, originally bought in 1954 as a fruit and poultry farm, and in 1985 they began planting a vineyard.  It now has seventy-eight acres and grows eleven varietals.  We had a nine-year-old white wine and we took a chance and chilled the wine to have with dinner, as we have had some great results with some older Riesling wines, as well as some older Gewürztraminer wines.  We were very happy, as the wine was still youthful with a great floral nose, fresh fruit and just the right number of spices.  When I just recently did a Google search, my original article on our visit was the sixth site mentioned, just a bit of bragging.  Of course, it was our last bottle, and it made me think of the sign that they had on our way back to the parking lot “Good riddance, we thought you’d never leave.”

Henry of Pelham Family Estate Baco Noir Ontario VQA 2019 was the first wine from Canada that I had from my local wine shop, and it is a winery that I knew of, but we had never visited while we were on either of our trips to Niagara-on-the-Lake region.  Three sons ages nine, fourteen and sixteen were the creators of the original vineyard that they planted shovel by shovel in 1984, while their parents were back in Toronto.  The first harvest was in 1988 and they didn’t even have barrels initially for the first harvest.  The wine was successful and they were one of the early wineries for the area.  This fruit is grown in the Short Hills Bench of the Niagara Peninsula.  Baco Noir is a Cold-Hardy hybrid that was developed for North America, especially in the North-eastern parts of the United State and Canada, but it is also found in Michigan and Ohio that I know of for sure. The grape is a blend of the French Folle Blanche and the local Grande Glabre.  It is a popular grape for Northern climes as the grape matures quickly on the vine, with high acidity and the winegrowers try to extend the growing season as long as possible to tame the acidity. These grapes are grown on the original vineyard site of Henry of Pelham, and was one of the earliest known planting of grapes for Canada in 1842. The wine went through full maceration and fermentation in Stainless Steel and then aged for six to eight months in American Oak, of which twenty-four percent was new.  The wine was a nice dark red with notes of currants and blueberries, some spice and a nice toasted oak finish.  So, I guess it is time for me to take off my chesterfield and go into the parlour and watch “Hockey Night in Canada” -eh?   

Posted in Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment