My local wine club, the Fine Wine Source just released the wines for November, and I am making sure that I write about them in a timely matter. Having a wine shop in Livonia, I guess was a brave gesture, because the shop is in a small strip center, and the City of Livonia has no downtown, it is an example of a city that converted from a classic Michigan township of thirty-six square to a city, basically overnight, because they wanted a horse racing track, and the laws of Michigan require a race track to be in a city. The track is gone, but the city is still going strong, but because it was a township with farms, it never developed a downtown like other cities. I do believe it is the only major city in the state that still has a viable and working farm, it is a turkey farm that has been in business since 1948 and they will clean and dress four-thousand turkeys for this Thanksgiving. Of course, as always, I have wandered a bit, but I do enjoy visiting my local wine shop, and as they always say “Support your local businesses.”
There are always two wines each month, an Old World and a New World wine. The Old-World selection is Chateau Ducasse Graves Red Bordeaux 2016. Chateau Ducasse is an estate bottled red wine from Chateau Beauregard Ducasse in the village of Mazeres in Graves. Graves is the oldest and most historic commune in the Medoc, going back to the days of the Romans, the gravel (graves) soil was useless for the farmer, but ideal for the vineyard, as it made the vines struggle which causes the rich complex flavors that the world has come to appreciate from this area. Siblings Marie-Laure and Jacques Perromat are the sixth generation at Chateau Beauregard, whose family goes back to 1850. This twenty-seven-acre estate is predominately planted with Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc as they produce three labels of white wine from the grounds. They also produce two red wines; Chateau Ducasse and Chateau Beauregard-Ducasse. The wine is a blend of fifty percent Merlot, forty percent Cabernet Sauvignon and ten percent Cabernet Franc. The 2016 vintage has been described as a “classic Graves wine.” The wine is a medium to full bodied Red Bordeaux offering dark fruits and firm tannins. Easily a wine that will merit five years in the cellar.
The New World Wine is Cambria Estate Vineyard and Winery Pinot Noir Clone 4 Santa Maria Valley 2014. Barbara Banke along with her spouse Jess Jackson acquired the original Tepusquet vineyard in 1986, and then with their daughters Kate Jackson and Julia Jackson have kept the family business going, nurturing cool-climate varietals ever since. The estate cover fourteen-hundred-acres of undulating topography and an assortment of soil types. Four-hundred-eighty-three-acres are planted with different clones of Pinot Noir. Santa Maria Valley is located in the northernmost part of Santa Barbara County and it was the first Sub-AVA in the county and awarded the status in 1981. This wine is described as have a nose offering dark fruit, cocoa and spice, while delivering velvety tannins, juicy acids and a savory finish with terroir. It has been described also of offering flavors of ripe Cranberries and Rhubarb and is suggested as a perfect wine for Turkey, Salmon, Tuna or Swordfish.
I often think that is what the neighbors and the recyclers must think when they look at our orange recycling tub that we put out once a week. Actually, I have no problem with recycling and I know plenty of people that find it onerous. In the past I actually used to save the bottles and give them to people that were making their own wine, either the old-fashioned way, or the new way with concentrate-juice. Those sources have disappeared, so periodically I have to discard the bottles. In the old days, pre 2020, unless we had a party here, there were not that many bottles. This year with the lockdown mandate that extended forever, was found illegal and unconstitutional, and it has been reimposed now by a department of the state, I have actually had to drink wine at home, along with the rest of the population that now drinks at home. I very seldom drank at home, unless we had company, I preferred dining out and having wine at restaurants; that all went South, as many restaurants have closed or may still not make it, with the second round of lockdowns.
What it is forcing me to do, besides discovering what we have in wines and giving me a steady stream of articles, otherwise, this blog would have dried up, like the crocodile tears of many of our governors. I actually remove the labels from the bottles and save them for my wine scrap book, usually to the chagrin of my Bride. Most of the current wine bottles use an “Avery” type of printed label that removes quite easily. Rinse out the bottles, preheat an oven to 255º and bake the bottles for fifteen minutes, then carefully lift up an edge with a razor blade, while holding the bottle with an oven mitt. Once, the label has been worked off of the bottle, place the glue side down on wax paper, as I have found that the glue residue doesn’t adhere to it, but it will on aluminum foil or blotting paper. I then use square coasters as weights to keep the labels from curling up, and the next day, they are ready to be stored.
I liken dining and drinking at home to camping out, because I really like to go out for dinner. My Bride is an excellent cook, but she works and I like for her to be pampered as well. This year, we have been camping out quite a bit, you can say, and it is hard to keep all the empty bottles neat in the garage, until it is time to make another orange tub statement. I find around two dozen bottles is enough for a load, after all, I have to carry the tub to the curb. Thankfully the President lit the fire under some companies and it looks like we have two sets of successful vaccines created and then it will be just like getting an annual flu shot, and I still have to go and get my second pneumonia shot and I have to make my appointment for my shingles shot. Oh, the joys of attaining the ranks of being a Senior Citizen, after all, I think it was only yesterday that I was immortal.
We just recently ate at Casa Pernoi, the latest restaurant from the creative mind of Luciano Del Signore, and I have sung his praises for years. In fact, my Bride and I started going to the original Del Signore restaurant started by his father in Livonia, right after we got married. Fonte D’Amore was just a great old-fashioned Italian restaurant that could please everyone and it was always packed. We probably ate there at least once every other week, it was so affordable, delicious and we always tried to have our same waiter, not to mention I could go to the bar in the back and join the cigar smokers. My Bride used to joke that I could probably run for political office, because I was always working the room, there were so many customers of mine that had discovered the restaurant, just like we had. They also had to greatest “Garlic Soup” at least that is what I called it, it was an Eggplant and Garlic Puree, but since I am not partial to eggplant, I changed the name and everyone knew what I wanted. He went on to open Bacco, still one of the best in the Greater Detroit area. He went on the create a little chain of pizzerias, called Bigalora Cucina, after he was totally happy with the pizza dough that he created and totally different from all others, and from this chain he also created a couple of food trucks that had the exact same pizza oven installed on them, that are in all of his restaurants. The man never rests. He then came up with Pernoi, which eventually morphed into Casa Pernoi and well worth the trip to downtown Birmingham to enjoy his culinary artistry.
The four of us had an excellent dinner. The beginning of the meal centered around the bread basket that featured four different breads, made in house, and my Bride and I are not bread eaters, but we ended up asking for a second basket, the bread was that great. So, we ordered some plates that enhanced this appetizer portion of the meal with an order of European butter with Maidan salt, Roasted Garlic Puree with aged Balsamic, Calabrian Hot Chile Peppers and an order of Duck Rillette with Apple Butter and Ground Cherry, which my Bride said that it reminded her of Foix Gras, in that it was so rich and luxurious. Our Daughter-in-Law had Squash Ravioli with Brown Butter, Walnuts and Gorgonzola. Our Son had the Rigatoni Spicy Palomino with an addition of house-made Italian Sausage. My Bride had an order of Branzino with Green Olives, Artichoke, Cannellini Beans and Grape Leaves (and I knew that, as soon as I saw that on the menu). I went a little out of character and had the Michigan Venison Loin wrapped in Bacon, with Braised Red Cabbage and Pear Butter. We also had dessert, our Daughter-in- Law had “The King” which was Banana Bread, Salted Caramel, Dark Chocolate, Peanut Butter Banana Gelato and Brown Butter Popcorn. Our Son had the Cannoli Cake which was a Cinnamon Cake, Sweet Ricotta Cream, Orange Marmalade, Chocolate Crunch and Pistachio Streusel. My Bride ordered the Cookie Plate which had Pistachio Biscotti, Amaretti and Seasonal Jam Cookies. Just as we were getting ready to leave Luciano came into the dining room and that was reason for us to stay and catch up a little bit.
My Bride began the evening with a Negroni, which is becoming her favorite cocktail of choice these days. I started off with Bravium Chardonnay Russian River Valley 2018 by winemaker Derek Rohlffs using fruit from the Reis Vineyard. The wine is basically sold by their mailing list, a few boutique shops and select restaurants. The Russian River Valley is located in the center of Sonoma County and is known for its cool and long growing season. The fruit is hand harvested at night, and spent eleven months in a mix of French and Hungarian Oak, of which twenty-one percent was new. Very Old World in that the wine evoked apples, pineapple and vanilla, floral notes, good acidity and a flinty-terroir finish. We then went with Band of Vintners “Consortium” Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 2018. Four winemakers, one Master Sommelier, and two wine executives got together to create an affordable bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine is predominately Cabernet Sauvignon with some Merlot and Cabernet Franc blended in, and the fruit is from sustainably-farmed vineyards. The wine was aged for fifteen months in French Oak that delivered a wine with dark fruits and some pepper notes it was still a bit feisty as I think it was opened too early, but still a solid wine. While they were enjoying their desserts, I decided to have a liquid dessert, and a couple of cookies as well. I enjoyed a glass of Niepoort 10-Year-Old Tawny NV. Niepoort is a family-owned producer of Port and wines in the Douro Valley in Portugal, and it was founded by Dutch immigrants in 1842. Originally all the grapes were bought from grower vineyards, but in 1987 they bought some Quintas and now they have their own acreage and vineyards to build on. They were once known for their Colheita ports, but now the emphasis is on Vintage Port, including Tawny, LBV and White Port. Aged Tawny Port is the epitome of Tawny Port, made from the best wines of undeclared vintages, that have to be in the casks for at least six years. This wine is made from the following grapes varieties; Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinto Cao, Tinta Francisca, Tinta Amarela, Sousao and Tinta Roriz. The wine was served chilled and the aroma of orange and lemon zest, and flavors of caramel and honey with a nice long sweet finish is really better than a dessert to me, perhaps a good cigar, but I gave that up years ago, back in the days of Font D’Amore.
I lament that the wine industry has had to change the way business is conducted, though from the reports that I have seen, wine consumption is up since the lockdown began. So many businesses have been closed for periods of time, that a lot of the populace has learned to drink at home again, and hopefully they are still drinking responsibly. Wineries could do tastings outdoors, but with social distancing. Wine tasting is part of the experience of wine shopping, unless you are at a drug store or grocery store and that experience has been curtailed, but not extinguished. It has become more personalized and unfortunately not a group experience, which does take some of the fun away. Also, the shops need less help in the store, because there are less glasses to be washed and less areas to keep clean, and more people that are unemployed, but the consumption is up and understandably acknowledged.
I got a chance to try some wine that the shop got a tremendous deal on, in a three-liter bottle of Famille Perrin Cotes du Rhone Reserve 2017. While Famille Perrin, a wine maker and a negocient, is a relatively new company founded in 1997, the Perrin family has been making wine since the early 1900’s when Pierre Perrin inherited the Chateau de Beaucastel estate. They are now in the fifth generation of a family owned and managed business. Besides the original estate, they make wines with famous appellations, and regional wines from the Rhone Valley. Their portfolio also includes the La Vielle Ferme brand which started in the 1970’s and they also have Miraval. They produce Red, White and Rosé wines and surprisingly the majority of the wines that they produce center around the three famous varietals of the region; Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre, though there are nine more varietals that are sanctioned, but seldom seen. The Cotes du Rhone appellation was created in 1937 as a catch-all for all the wines not from the more prestigious regions of the Rhone Valley and it is now one of the largest selling districts in France. This was just a lovely wine, but I had to pass, just because of the size of the bottle, as our parties don’t seem to move that wine anymore.
I also had a tasting of Chateau Montlandrie Cotes de Bordeaux Castillon 2010, produced by Denis Durantou. I could barely find any information on this wine other than it was a Merlot and Cabernet Franc blend. Until 2009, the wines were sold as Cotes de Castillon and then the appellation became Cotes de Bordeaux Castillon. All of the wines of this appellation are red and they must be predominately Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon are allowed to be a supporting grapes and Malbec, Petit Verdot and Carmenere are also permitted. The appellation is a combination of Blaye, Cadillac, Castillon and Francs, as each of these entities were not strong enough on their own for name recognition. The amazing thing was that I also had a tasting of the 2015 and they were the same price and they both were excellent, and I really had trouble distinguishing one from the other. Which I found very interesting and just another joy of wine tasting.
Ullage is not the secretary at Bialystock and Bloom. Ullage is the Anglicized version of the French word ouillage and it has a couple of meanings, both kind of similar in the big picture with wine. To put it in easy to understand layman’s terms, it is the amount of air space between the wine in the bottle and the cork that I am going to discuss, the other meaning is for the evaporation of wine in a barrel while it is aging, before bottling and normally the winery “tops” the barrels with additional wine to keep the barrels full, to prevent oxidation.
The reason that I am bringing this up, is because I was helping someone dispose of a wine collection that they can no longer appreciate and while we thought about it for a moment, there were far too many famous and expensive wines that while we would love to own them, it is not what we normally drink or even entertain with. We tend to avoid wines in the five-hundred-dollar range or better, because we are mere mortals. Be that as it may, I was helping them out, as a favor, not for any monetary interest. I made a complete inventory of the collection with the intention that they could find sell it outright and not have someone cherry-pick the key wines. I am well aware of “condition” for many different hobbies, like coins and stamps, or automobiles, the more pristine and original the better. Wine is no different, and while I knew of the term ullage, when I helped in the delivery of the wines, I had an instant education of the fine wine market and what pristine means in wine. While I was packing the wines up for delivery and making an inventory for the buyer, I was looking at what I thought was acceptable ullage levels, and for the most part I was right. There are slight degrees that I didn’t look for, that they would at Sotheby’s at auction. Several of the twenty to forty year old wines were showing a liquid level that was mid-shoulder on the bottles, and I say mid-shoulder because almost all of the wines were Clarets or Bordeaux bottles in the more traditional style of bottle compared to bottles from Burgundy that slope outward from the neck without shoulders; little nuances that most people aren’t even aware of. The missing liquid wine is from evaporation through the cork and even with that decorative capsule that covers the cork and bottle opening that has to be cut away when a bottle is opened. I also learned about looking at the capsule, which I never knew about, well almost never knew about and I will get into that in a bit. The capsules on pristine bottles are flat, as liquid and cork are partnered for twenty some odd years the top of the capsule can mushroom out from internal gasses building up from the addition of air and sometimes the gas is strong enough to actually start pushing the cork out of the bottle which causes even more of a flare-up on a normally flat capsule top. Or conversely the cork can get waterlogged and the cork shrinks in diameter and actually no longer acts as a stopper and the wine liquid actually eventually seeps out from the bottle while the capsule is still intact. That is why wine is stored on its side to keep the cork moist to prevent the exchange of air which caused evaporation. There are allowances within the trade for certain ages of wine, but when the level falls below the normal acceptance levels there is concern. I also know that somewhere in one of the nooks and crannies of my brain, I do remember reading once, how the old wine cellars would actually have people come and recork
I said that I didn’t know about the capsules, but since this is the year 2020, there have been lots of strange occurrences and learning episodes. Since, I am retired, I thought I would have more free time, but I am not sure, but I actually rearranged part of the wine cellar, and there is still more to do (patience is a virtue). I have also been recording here about the wines that have been liberated from the cellar, opened up and enjoyed for the most part. As I was moving some of the bottles to make room, my hand got very sticky grabbing the neck of one bottle, the plastic seal was still secure, but some of the wine had seeped out, and if you look at some older bottles you will see that the volume in the bottle looked low. I don’t remember the bottle at all, so I will presume that it was given as a gift and forgotten about, as alas these things do happen. The wine is Weingut Weinhaus Gebr. Endlich Rudesheimer Kosterlay Rotwein Kabinett 1990 from the Rheingau and though it isn’t stated, I will presume that it was made with Pinot Noir, which accounts for five percent of the grapes grown in Rudesheim in the Rheingau. From what I can gather from the label and doing internet searches, the wine was made for a small hotel that had “strangers’ room” availability. I took the bottle and placed it in one of the refrigerators to chill, and when I went to open the bottle, I removed the plastic seal, there was no cork at the neck of the bottle. The nose from the bottle was not what I would call enticing, but I did pour some of the wine into a glass and even the color was wrong, as it was dark with a brown cast, and most red wines as they age tend to lighten in color. I did not attempt a taste, as the wine continued to open up in the glass, it became even less enticing. When I poured the wine down the drain, I discovered that there was a cork sitting in the bottom of the bottle. And now for a different lesson about the capsule, also learned from this year. It happens that while I was a college student, one of my customers offered me the option of buying three bottles of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1973 as a future, with the astronomical price of nineteen dollars a bottle in 1970. I had to scrape up the money, which was a King’s ransom back then for a student, and who knew what would have foreseen what occurred in 1973 for the winery, and who knew that the label would feature part of Pablo Picasso’s Bacchanale from the Musée de Mouton and the wording “Premier Cru Classé en 1973. All of this leads up to the fact that I have been constantly in and out of the wine cellar this year with the reorganization and inventory of the cellar and I happened to notice a couple of drops of wine on the floor, under the first column of wines, which begins the French collection that I have. As I was checking the bottles, I noticed that one bottle had a cork that had actually pushed out and through the lead capsule covering. I immediately went into the kitchen and got some sealing plastic pushed the cork back into the bottle, recovered and added a very tight rubber band as an additional sealant. My Bride then asked whether we should have salmon or center-cut pork chops and I emphatically told her the pork, because we didn’t have any filets thawed. I attempted to open the bottle with my Durand, but the cork still came out in dark burgundy wet pieces, and the initial whiff of the bottle was rather foxy or gamey. I then used my tried and true coffee filter paper in a funnel to decant the wine, and the nose was opening up and it was a Mouton, a 1973 to be exact, because I had opened one up a couple of years earlier. The wine was still a deep claret in color and still a delightful blend of fruit and tannins thirty-seven years later. Just in case you are not a Mel Brooks fan, Bialystock and Bloom is the theatrical company featured in the film, musical and the film of the musical of The Producers and her name was Ulla.
When I was a kid we used to hear “Y because we love you” on black and white television, unless you were among the very fortunate to have a color television set at home. I just had a chance to taste, drink and take home a bottle of a wine that almost sounds like it is from another children’s television show, the first was The Magical World of Disney and the title of this article sounds like it should be from Sesame Street. I was with my Bride and we stopped by our wine shop for what I thought was a short visit and we ended up with a private tasting of a still rather unknown white wine that carries the Appellation Bordeaux Controlee, which would not be all that remarkable, except that this wine is Chateau d’Yquem “Y” Ygrec Bordeaux 2017 and not Chateau d’Yquem Sauternes that was famous and still has representation in the wine cellar of Thomas Jefferson.
Chateau d’Yquem is by far the most famous dessert wine in the world and has definitely made the Sauternes district of Bordeaux prime real estate. In the Classification of 1855 of the Medoc, it was the only estate to be rated as Premier Cru Supereiur and it still is, and while most say it will be great for a good fifty years, there are others that feel that it is the longest-lived wine and may be eternal. The Yquem estate was owned by the King of England in the Middle Ages and has been producing late-harvest wines since at least the late 1500’s. It is a two-hundred-ninety-acre vineyard situated on the highest hill in Sauternes. Possibly the ideal setting to produce sweet wine; a warm, dry topsoil of pebbles and course gravel over a subsoil of clay that retains water reserves which aids the development of “noble rot” and the property has about sixty miles of drains to prevent waterlogging. There is also normally about thirty acres of vineyard that is either fallow or with vines to young for the production of this noble wine. The vineyard is seventy-five percent Semillon and the balance is Sauvignon Blanc. There is a fine art to the winemaker’s craft and nothing is overlooked, including the almost continual hand harvesting of only the perfect grapes at each inspection to ensure that only fully botrytized fruit is selected or about one glass of wine per vine. There have been nine vintages that were never produced in the last century, because the wine did not meet the specifications required. The estate was under the Lur-Saluces family from 1785 to 1999 when it was sold to the luxury brand LVMH.
Y or Ygrec is a rather rare wine for the estate as they produce about ten-thousand bottles each year. It was originally made at the end of the harvest with the last bunches of grapes since 1959 and in 1966 the selection of the grapes changed and the wine is basically Sauvignon Blanc picked at the beginning of the harvest and a small amount of Semillon with Botrytis and in 2004 the brand was to be produced every vintage. They now have a state-of-the-art vat room just to make this wine and the aging on the lees take place in the barrels, one-third of which are new and the lees are regularly stirred for ten months. I thought I enjoyed White Bordeaux, but this was on a level, that I had never encountered before, it was so elegant with such finesse that I could barely contain myself, it was that awesome, almost ethereal in the finish. This is a white wine that is considered by many to cellar for twenty years. If I thought it was wonderful, the look on my Bride’s face and in her eyes was scary as I started computing how expensive this wine would be, if she decided that this was her go-to wine and even though it is shipped in its own fancy wooden six-pack enclosed by cardboard for shipping, I was afraid that I would have to quit my retirement. Oh, by the way, if you are curious the “Y” is pronounced “ee-grek” in French.
With the longest thirty days in this year and still counting, people have had a chance to do some extra cleaning and straightening and it is probably still an ongoing endeavor, as so many people are still working from home. My Bride is still working as hard as ever from the home office, in fact she created a new command center and took over the half of the library and I am still attempting to adjust to retirement. As I have reported, my Bride has been experimenting with new recipes and I think that we have been enjoying the fruits of the cellar, especially after I had made an inventory of what is down on the main wall at least, and all the while maintaining my writing and all the extra duties that it entails.
One of the older wines that was totally forgotten about, and I checked to see if I had even mentioned it, on my original article and I had, but there was no mention of it on the print out from the winery. I found a bottle of Prager Winery and Port Works Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 1995, and it was purchased in 1999. Prager Winery and Port Works was founded in 1979 by Jim and Imogene Prager who thought and proved that world class ports could be produced in Napa Valley. His first releases were a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Chardonnay and his original Noble Companion Port and the total production was only one-hundred-twenty cases, and he is now up to four-thousand cases. With his wife and seven children and some in-laws, it is still a family affair and I can still recall all the fun we had tasting the wines all for the princely sum of five dollars, of course time have changed and it is now forty dollars for a tasting and you keep the glass. We had Jim Prager doing the pouring that day. I can find no production notes on this wine, but I know that we liked it, because we had basically bought a couple of cases of assorted Ports and this one bottle. For being a quarter of a century, this wine still had the color, nose and taste of a much younger wine and it probably had another ten years before it would have started showing its age; that is the joy and the sorrow of having a cellar and only one bottle of a particular wine.
The other oldie, but goodie that I found was a Tommasi Valpolicella Classico Superiore “Rafael Vineyard” 1993 and the funny thing is that later that evening one of the other bloggers that I enjoy had mentioned that he had opened a similar bottle only twenty years younger. Tommasi Viticoltori is one of the largest wine producers in the Veneto and they are known for their Amarone dell Valpolicella Classico wines. The winery was founded in 1902 and today there are multiple members of the fourth generation in the company. They are based in the Piedmont, in the heart of the Valpolicella Classico zone. Valpolicella means “the valley of many cellars” and some liken it to be the Italian Beaujolais, because of all the versions and how at one time it was pushed and expanded in its production. The wine is probably known in importance as falling after Chianti, Barolo and Brunello for name recognition, quality and quantity and was awarded a DOC in 1968. The grapes used for Valpolicella in its many versions are Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella and Molinara. The term Superiore may be attached to any of the wines of the Valpolicella region if the wine has final alcohol proof level of eleven percent or higher and if it has been aged for at least a year prior to commercial release. When we had this wine, it was feisty out of the bottle with a strong nose and then it opened up and blossomed in the glass during dinner. It was a pleasure drinking it and it was much better compared to plenty of the wines that we have encountered in restaurants today. Unfortunately, we didn’t finish the bottle with dinner and the next day, even though I had sealed it using a pump, the life was gone and thankfully there was not much left to lament. The good news is that we have been having some great fortune with some of the older and forgotten bottles in the cellar.
Every year for a series of months, I get to say that my Bride robbed the cradle and then for a series of months, I stay quiet. Do I like to tease? Of course, I do. If I don’t tease, I just put up with someone and I have been like that forever. Anyways, we were going to have dinner at one of her favorite restaurants and it is the same restaurant that we went to for my birthday, a little while ago. It seems that they have an unwritten rule that your dinner tab is half off on your birthday, and they were closed on my birthday and when we went there it was two days after and they said no, but we had a great dinner, so we survived. Before we left that evening, my Bride checked her calendar and discovered the same thing would occur and we were told that it would be honored the day before, under that situation, so we booked a reservation the day before her birthday.
We were out in Ann Arbor again and going to The Earle and normally one has to give more travel time to get there, but the state is still in a quasi-lockdown and traffic was light, even in Ann Arbor. We got there with time to spare and we were going to go have a cocktail, but the main street was much different and we didn’t recognize most of the venues, so we just walked around, which meant that I had to have a mask on the make my Bride happy, even though we were outside. I was extremely glad to get to the restaurant to breath enclosed air. I am not sure how it happened, but for all the times we have been there, I guess I missed that they had Creamy Garlic Salad Dressing and I am really old school about salads, and as they say, “no great story started with I was having a salad.” My Bride decided that she wanted one as well, though she is healthier than I am, and has the dressing on the side and I want the entire salad tossed with the dressing. My Bride didn’t even bother looking at the menu as she wanted her traditional dinner there, which is Coquilles St. Jacques al crème de Xeres, or sea scallops sautéed with mushrooms and garlic, pan-sauced with Sherry and cream with rice. I wanted something different and since The Earle prides themselves on both French and Italian dishes, I went Italian. I had Veal Scallopini lightly breaded and sautéed with garlic and mushrooms, then deglazed with marsala and finished with cream, just something light, because I am watching my figure. We also shared a Chocolate Mousse in honor of the occasion.
I also studied the wine carte online, before we got there, because they have sixty pages to go through and when you have to do it on your iPhone it is a pain in the neck. Since the lockdown began most restaurants are making you download the menu and wine lists through the camera setting on your phone. One or two pages is easy, but not sixty. Since it was her day, I decided to surprise her with her favorite grape. We had a bottle of Couly-Dutheil “La Coulee Automnale” Chinon 2015 from the Loire Valley and it is Cabernet Franc. The winery was founded by Baptiste Duthiel and his son. The estate is three-hundred-twenty-one-acres of gravel, clay and chalk and is predominately planted with Cabernet Franc and some Chenin Blanc. This wine is aged until the following fall and is one of their more popular wines, it was very fresh and flavorful and had the terroir that reminds me that it is Cabernet Franc. We both survived another round of birthdays and we are back to our normal life again.
It was one of those perfect nights for Halloween, a Saturday with a nice temperature and no rain or snow. I remember as a kid my Mother sewing us costumes that would be able to fit over slickers or snow attire, and they usually were biblical in appearance, so that the church had costumes for the Christmas pageant, even if we weren’t performing in it. For the last twenty-five years we watched the attendees for the Trick or Treaters slowly dwindle down in numbers. My Bride always wanted to give out candy and she liked to talk to the children about their costumes, I guess Moms never get tired of Halloween. She also had to get good candy, so if there was any left overs, I wouldn’t complain about the caliber of the candy that she bought. This year our Son and his wife wanted to take both of us out for dinner for our birthdays and he wanted to do it on Halloween night as his children are all grown and the numbers of children in his area had dwindled as well. Also, who wanted to decide if the state or the community standards approved of children having fun this year and if there was going to fallout, because of it. It also worked out that our next-door neighbors were having their annual bonfire and Halloween night party on their driveway, they had a real neat portable bonfire contraption, and in case my Bride reads this, we don’t need one. Since, they were going to give candy out to any participants, we gave them our bags of candy that we had bought in anticipation that we would have be at home making the trick or treaters happy.
I had thought of a neat restaurant that was a little out of our way, but rather convenient for our hosts, a perfect combination of good food, good wine selection and reasonable pricing. It turns out that they were going to be closed on Halloween night. We had a discussion and then decided on Cucina Bigalora, an excellent more casual restaurant, but quality food, and a tight good wine list; it was also equidistance for all of us. If my Bride and I go out for dinner, we usually don’t have appetizers or desserts, we usually order dinner and take off, but this was a leisurely dinner, so we enjoyed. Everyone had appetizers and my Bride had Prosciutto e Grana, a platter of Prosciutto di Parma, Gran Padano, arugula and focaccia; while I ordered Fried Shishito Peppers with Sea Salt and there was enough that everybody could try the other dishes as well. My Bride ordered one of the house specialties, a personal size pizza called the Capricciosa which was the House-blend Mozzarella, Italian Ham, fresh mushrooms and artichokes. While I went with an order of Rigatoni Bolognese with grass-fed beef, Pancetta and Grana Padano (it wasn’t my sauce, but it was very tasty). For dessert my Bride had Sorbet with a lit candle and I went old-school with a Cannoli.
Well the birthday recipients had a slight thirst that evening. We had a bottle of Tiefenbrunner Pinot Grigio delle Dolomiti 2018, from the South Tyrol of Italy, and I had ordered it, because I know that my Bride likes this grape and you should have seen her, when she thought I had ordered a Pinot Noir for the dinner, but she calmed down quick enough. Christof and Sabine Tiefenbrunner represent the fifth generation running the Tiefenbrunner Castel Turmhof Wine Estate which was registered in 1848 and making it one of the oldest wine estates in the South Tyrol. The terrain for the vineyard is hillsides on chalky-gravelly soil. The wine is pure Pinot Grigio and it is fermented in Stainless Steel and then aged for four months in concrete vats on the lees until the time of bottling. A very refreshing wine with just a touch of terroir to make it fun. It was a very interesting and very different Halloween evening.
Let us ask Sherman to take us into “the wayback machine” to just maybe January or February when the world was unchanged. My Bride worked for a company, just like the majority of Americans did, and she would go to the office at least five days a week. Her company periodically would have “health” challenges for the employees with little incentives to sweeten the pot, so to speak. They were sponsoring a program by Weight Watchers and there were several different ranks of perks offered, depending on the success of the individual. Weight Watchers is not a diet company, though I guess they do sell food items, but the main thrust of the program is to make you reprogram your eating habits to become healthier. I guess depending on parameters for each individual, one is assigned daily points and you can eat almost anything you desire, but once you hit the total for the day, you have to stop eating, or just eat the fruits and vegetables that have zero points, if you start the day off with Bananas Foster and Mimosas. My Bride is very competitive, especially with these challenges from her company and over the years she has done quite well.
I didn’t think she was heavy, but once the gauntlet was laid down, she jumped on it with full support and she achieved better results than she had originally hoped for and she has maintained it. Since the challenge began, the world changed and people were stuck at home, and some people went on eating binges out of frustration and the gyms and spas were shut down. She persevered and changed some of her culinary techniques, learned new recipes, because we were home together all the time, though she continued to work, but now from home. Her clothes all had to be put away or given away, as she went down several sizes, and women’s sizing is still a mystery to me. Now you may be wondering what all this rambling is leading to, well as you may know, we happen to like wine in this household. Red wines and white wines and whether it is a three ounce pour or a five or six ounce pour have point values and if you want a glass of wine with dinner, you may have to forgo a dessert, to maintain the points. The 3K walks we do in the morning is also a leveraging device for the point counts. We took a commercial grade wine glass and made markings of three- and five-ounce pours, and periodically we would have to remark the glass, because repeated washings would start making the lines disappear. This is where the great idea comes into this narrative. Weight Watchers was selling these wine glasses that were much more elegant that had subtle ounce markings etched in the glass in a decorative motif, so that it didn’t look proletarian.
They arrived and were immediately pressed into service. The first dinner with the new glasses was Panko encrusted Salmon with sides of fresh asparagus and diced and roasted sweet potatoes, followed by Chocolate Pudding. For the wine we have been still experimenting and chilling some of the older white wines that have been forgotten about, or relegated to second place, because some other wine may have been the hot wine at the moment for us, and that is normal for almost any category of items, it is just human nature. I found several bottles of Conundrum California White Wine 2008 by Caymus which is their “Proprietary Blend.” The wine is bottled at the Caymus facility in Rutherford, but the wine is a California AVA, because the fruit is harvested from Napa, Monterey, Santa Barbara and Tulare Counties. The wine is a blend of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Muscat Canelli and Viognier, but the percentages and production are a secret. The color of this twelve-year-old was quite a deep gold, but it was delicious and in fact we almost finished the bottle during a Zoom session, it was that flavorful. My Bride has had very good success with the program and a completely new wardrobe as well; too bad that I have not, through osmosis, actually I have, but not to her extent.
The Wine Raconteur 