Chateau Julien Chardonnay 1997

Posted on June 20, 2020 by thewineraconteur

Some days everything just seems to be good.  I got home and felt good about getting my haircut, as selfish and petty that I am.  I grew up with the long hair, as I said and, in its day, it was normal.  I was a bit nauseous wearing a mask, but I can live with a minor inconvenience, actually, from some of the photos, I think our politicians should have been wearing them for years, as it has improved their appearance and since most of them should have belonged to the Daltons or the James gangs. I also like that I don’t think that I have to look up arcane bits of dialogue that made me happy while I was in lockdown.  I am feeling better for the first time in ages, though it may be some time, before I can see the rest of the family and it really hurt to think that I had to cancel the idea of throwing my oldest grandson a high school graduation party.  All the graduates of 2020 got the short end of the deal. 

I have been enjoying the fact that my Bride has been working from home, and I think that she is really enjoying it as well.  She has also been very keen on the subject of trying new recipes to try to keep us both, but especially me, from lamenting that we couldn’t go out for dinner either on a date or with friends.  She made a special treat for dinner, she made Chicken in Molé for dinner, including soft tortillas.  I think I was maybe fifteen or sixteen years of age the first time I ever had Molé Sauce, and it was back when “Mexican Town” in Detroit was like two blocks long of restaurants, bars and markets, now basically the entire Southwest portion of Detroit is referred to as “Mexican Town” or other similar sounding titles.  I guess before I get to far into this discussion,  for those that have never had Molé Sauce, one of the main ingredients at least of the recipes I have encountered, and I understand that there are several hundred varieties is the use of Mexican Dark Chocolate and no, the sauce is not sweet, actually it can be quite spicy; and it is not made from moles.  Years ago, I used to get it with Ribs, and the meat would literally fall off the bone after cooking all day in a big pot and it was wonderful, of course that is only a memory, especially since we don’t have Ribs at home, but we had, just like every restaurant for years has served it with chicken.  We had it with the sides, and she made a big enough pot that we could have left overs, and it is great that way too, as the sauce gets to permeate the chicken even more. 

I thought she was going to have Margaritas with the meal, but she wanted a white wine.  I have been finding all the stray white wines in the cellar, as I get ready to rearrange the wines again.  I found a lone relic from probably our first trip to Carmel-by-the-Sea.  We had a bottle of Chateau Julien Private Reserve Chardonnay Sur Lie Monterey County 1997 and I had a back up bottle just in case.  I do remember tasting this wine at the winery in Carmel, in fact I think it was the first winery we encountered as we were out tasting and buying wines.  The wine was exceptional at the tasting, but I remember being told that this wine would be phenomenal ten years from now, but I think I probably just humored him at the time, because I had not heard of anyone cellaring California whites back then, but thankfully I have been proven wrong a couple of times during this lockdown.  In the late Seventies, Bob and Patty Brower decided to fulfill their dream, they were from the East Coast, but had fallen in love with French wines and hospitality and in 1982, began building what became known as Chateau Julien Wine Estate and in 1985 they celebrated their first vintage from the 1982 fruit and they bottled a Chardonnay and a Merlot and they had sixteen acres on the estate.  In 2015, all the property was acquired by a local winemaker Gregory Ahn and renamed Folktale Winery and Vineyards.  I have no production notes on the making of this wine, and I used my Durand to open the wine and the cork was in perfect condition.  The color was a beautiful golden sun and the nose had still had some citrus and apple notes.  The taste was awesome with fruit and some honey from a twenty-three-year-old with the additional notes of vanilla and cloves and a nice lingering after taste that wanted me to pour another glass just to appreciate the complexity that was still apparent.  I think we were both amazed.  Just for fun I thought I would include an old photo of a youthful raconteur with long (groomed) hair when he was about twenty-three.    

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“How Do I Look?”

Posted on June 18, 2020 by thewineraconteur

It is Day 91 and I celebrated by having a haircut, it may not be official, but who the hell cares.  My barber had to do the yeoman’s work and I just kind of felt good, especially if I was breaking the law, by a couple of days.  I have been feeling like the scene from Papillon when he is doing the second term and it was for five years in solitary confinement, when he sticks his head out the little window of his cell door to get his prisoner’s haircut and he asks a prisoner in the next cell “How do I look?”

Some may think that I am selfish or vain, because I wanted a haircut, but after over 91 days, I was looking rather shaggy.  I realize that in the real world there are animals that actually look shaggy and perhaps that is part of their charm.  I never looked this shaggy in the Seventies when long hair was chic for men, because there were stylists that kept the men from looking like ragamuffins.  I had no desire to do a home buzz-cut and look like I belonged in a federal penitentiary, even if I was in the lock down.  I know that our governor that tried to get her boat in the water, ahead of the citizens was getting her hair done, though she claimed that her daughter was doing it, just like she claimed that her husband was just making a joke about the boat.  It also came out that the mayor of Chicago was getting professional attention, but you couldn’t prove it by me, but both of these women are part of the elite and I guess the laws don’t pertain to them.  In fact, there was a movement in Michigan not to get a “whitmer” after she complained that the citizens were petty and upset that they couldn’t get haircuts, so, she told everyone to “Google” “how to cut your own hair” and that really went over in a big way with the unions for the beauticians and the barbers; of course almost all other union jobs were idle as well.

I called my Barber on his cell phone to book an appointment, as soon as he felt comfortable to reopen, since the Michigan Supreme Court found for the elderly barber who the state had taken his license from, because he was cutting hair in his shop, so that he could eat, and not lose what he had worked his entire life for and the lockdown for their services became moot.  Now, I know that it might sound crazy for me to have my Barber’s cell phone number, but I have been getting my haircuts by the same barber since I was fourteen.  When the original barbershop opened up in Downtown Detroit, the barbers were all trained in the Roffler “Sculptur Cut” at a secondary barber college founded in 1958, that stressed the cutting and designing using a razor to shape and correct hair in its natural form.  My Aunt originally gave me twenty dollars as a kid and told me to go get a haircut from this shop, as they had a clientele of men that had the old country curly-hair, and I have had that hair forever.  I remember even getting a Roffler cut, just before I had my high school graduation photos taken.  It was always a great experience going for a hair appointment, because normally in forty-five minutes I could get a haircut, a manicure and a couple of pairs of shoes shined, a little bit of luxury for the average working man.

I felt sorry for my Barber, because he like everyone else was out of work for about three months and then he had a myriad of new regulations and hoops to jump through, basically overnight.  Not to mention that he had to book longer intervals between clients, and everyone’s hair cut was going to be longer, because there was so much hair to cut, or because some tried a “whitmer” cut and then they expected him to do a miracle.  I expected an increase in the cost of the haircut and I figured that he needed a special tip as well for all the extra work.    

I also got him a bottle of what has become our go-to wine and I have to pick up another case as we are getting low again, go figure.  I am sure that both he and his wife will appreciate a bottle of Famille Sichel Bordeaux Blanc 2017 as much as we enjoy the wine.  Famille Sichel is a family owned negocient firm from 1883 in Bordeaux, as they were in the procurement process for their locations in Mainz, London and New York.  In 1938 they even bought Chateau Palmer, which at the time had fallen on bad times and have since brought it back to all of its glory.  The family does not believe in resting on their laurels as in 2001 they even built a completely new bottling and storage facility in the Bordeaux region.  This particular bottle of wine is a blend of the two leading white grapes of Bordeaux, namely Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc.  I don’t think that I would be amiss to opine that this wine was aged in Stainless Steel as there was plenty of fruit and very refreshing.  It starts off with a nose of citrus fruits and finishes with some terroir with a decent finish.  As usual, I took a long way around the block to get to the wine, but trust me, it is a pleasure to be back as part of society.

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Two Pinots from Black Star Farms

Posted on June 16, 2020 by thewineraconteur

I am starting to feel positive that the state is opening up, because another sure sign of commerce in the state is a shipment from a wine club from Black Star Farms who have vineyards and tasting rooms on both sides of Traverse City.  I am sure that they are sweating it out to see, if the opening of the state is really true, as they were the area that was able to open up first, because the governor has a cottage near there.  By now, they would have been in full tourist mode and they would really be doing some exceptional business.  There are companies that deliver groups for tastings, as well as individuals that do tastings the old-fashioned way, by driving up by themselves, the first group, I would venture to say are not into tastings, as much as they are into a having a good time.  They are not letting people belly-up to the bar for a tasting, at the moment all tastings will be done in outside areas with a three-sample flight.  Some of the traditional events are on hold at the winery like the “Trail Events” at least until September.  The Wine Club BBQ is still tentatively scheduled for July 17th, but they are being cautious at this date and not taking reservations yet.  The Inn is open again, and so is the Café, but with a limited menu. 

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.

We received four bottles of wine of two and two.  The first two bottles were Black Star Farms Arcturos Pinot Blanc Michigan 2017.  Pinot Blanc has seemed to adapt well to the Northern Michigan climate and Black Star Farms has bottled several vintages of this wine to date.  They claim that this vintage has beautiful aromatics, lush fruit flavors and a well-balanced wine.  Fresh apple and lemon notes with a subtle creaminess highlight this crisp wine and it is listed as being part of their dry white collection.  This wine carries a Michigan AVA, because the winery has vineyards in both Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsulas.  The other two bottles were Black Star Farms “A Capella” Pinot Noir Leelanau Peninsula 2017.  The “A Capella” designation is not used every year and only for better vintages.  In the past, they used fruit from multiple sites, but this year the fruit was from their Leelanau Summit site, which is now full matured.  The winery claims that this wine will deliver all of the virtuous qualities that one looks for from more “regal” wine districts; such as ripe cherry and pomegranate fruit, hints of violet and barrel spices.  This wine has the aging potential of five to seven years for cellaring.  I wish the wine regions and the whole state more freedom in the days to come.   

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Dawn’s Dream Rosé

Posted on June 14, 2020 by thewineraconteur

The last bottle in the carton from our wine club “A Taste of Monterey” was a Rosé, which is not something we normally see, as we belong to their Reserve Wine Selections group.  More and more people that I know are going back to work, which is a great sign.  The medical profession is getting back in order, and retailers no longer have to “wink, wink” about having an appointment for a customer.  I am still waiting to watch how the restaurant industry fares around here, so of the Mom and Pop places, and some of the chains are destined to close, because of the lockdown, while others will struggle with mandated limits on what they can do.  There are still some businesses that are still shut down and I feel sorry for them. 

On the real positive side, our wine club “A Taste of Monterey” is celebrating their Twenty-fifth Anniversary and that is quite an accomplishment.  I am not even sure how many years we have belonged, but we found them on our first trip to Carmel-by-the-Sea; one day we made a side trip, because I wanted to eat at the famous Sardine Factory on Cannery Row.  Ken and Robyn Rauh created the perfect showroom to feature the wines of Monterey County AVA.  The structure was originally the home for Paul Masson Winery and it has been reworked and is one of the finest wine shops and tasting rooms we have ever been to.  We enjoyed the wine tasting and the knowledge of the staff, bought some wines and also got some leads of wineries to go visit for further tastings and it ended up a major shopping spree.  We have been enjoying the selections ever since.

In the old days, one might have referred to Dawn’s Dream as a distaff winery or some might have called it a cottage industry, but today it is all good.  Dawn Galante is the wife of Jack Galante, and an officer for both companies, and to boot, she is from Michigan and fell in love with the Monterey region and who could fault her.  According to their blog Dawn’s Dream opened the doors in 2013 and the winery lives by her credo penned by Henry David Thoreau “Dreams are the touchstones of our character.”  Dawn’s Dream Pinot Noir Rosé Santa Lucia Highlands 2018 has been voted the “Best Rosé of Monterey County” for six years in a row, and without even trying it, I would venture to say that it is true, because some of the best Pinot Noir wines that I have had are from the Santa Lucie Highlands.  The wine features Clone 236 Pinot Noir grapes that are whole-cluster pressed to get a more delicate flavor, the wine is fermented and settled in Stainless Steel for a couple of months to maintain the freshness of the fruit and it was awarded 91 points in Wine Enthusiast.  The tasting notes say that this peachy-pink wine offers hints of tangerine, lemon zest and ripe apricot.  The taste offers ripe strawberry and watermelon with a crisp acidity that makes you desire another glass. I am sure that we shall soon have a verdict on this wine.

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Joullian Cabernet Sauvignon

Posted on June 12, 2020 by thewineraconteur

As I was unpacking our latest wine club shipment from “A Taste of Monterey,” I am noticing some changes.  I think that the extended lockdown is still officially on for a couple of more days, but people are going back to work, as I can see more traffic in my subdivision.  The market is still erratic and that is alright, it has been that way for the many years that I have watched it.  Years ago, I always determined how business would be, from the market, if it was up, people were more willing to spend and if it was down, they were a bit hesitant, even though deep down they knew it was only on paper, unless they sold it.  I called my barber to make an appointment, I am probably one of the few people that have their barber’s personal phone number, but that is another story for another time.  We are talking about booking some trips and some reservations; and the morning paper was back to being heavily political.

This is the fourth bottle of wine that we have received from Joullian Vineyards, Ltd.  over the years, we have had two different Chardonnay wines and a Syrah.  Joullian Vineyards was created by the Joullian and Sias families of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma with the goal of producing world class estate crafted wines and early on engage Ridge Watson for his expertise.   In 1982 they purchased six-hundred-fifty-five acres of hillside benchland at an elevation of 1400 feet in the heart of the Carmel Valley.  After contouring and terracing the land they planted Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon, as well as the first to plant Zinfandel in the valley.  Then they planted various clones of Chardonnay and the winery was completed in 1991. In 2015, Joullian Vineyards, Ltd. was acquired by the Hammler Wine Corporation and are committed to maintaining the brand.  In 2017, Ridge Watson retired after working at the vineyard for thirty-five years.

The Joullian Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Carmel Valley 2015 was the earliest ripening in two decades, brought on by a three-year drought.  The heat was so intense that they actually hand harvested the fruit twice with a ten-day interval to pick the sunny and shaded fruit and they claim the extra labor was required and appreciated.  The wine is a blend of eighty-four percent Cabernet Sauvignon, thirteen percent Merlot and three percent Cabernet Franc.  The wine was aged for nineteen months in French Oak, of which fifteen percent was new.  They made a little over thirteen-hundred cases with an additional seventeen cases of magnums and they claim that there is an aging potential of eight to ten years.  The tasting notes supplied promises an inky, dark garnet wine with a nose of blackberry, cassis, anise and cedar.  The taste follows those descriptors and has a nice finish of tannins, truffles, terroir and cedar.  The Wine Enthusiast awarded this wine with 89 points.  I think that this wine will do well with some additional cellaring.  

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Galante Petite Sirah

Posted on June 10, 2020 by thewineraconteur

The world is shifting again, I got a wine shipment from A Taste of Monterey and it is Day 84 of the lockdown.  I haven’t booked my appointment for a haircut, and even though they are still illegal, the Supreme Court of Michigan sided with a barber who just wanted to eat and save his business and home.  So, I guess the issue is rather moot, if one barber can work, I guess the others can as well, including the hairdressers.  Restaurants and bars can open with new regulations and are only allowed to do half of their business.  Of course, since our hypocrite governor was seen and photographed in the newspapers not practicing Social Distancing, will the restaurants and bars use that as ammunition to get their businesses back running as normal; or does the virus from China recognize that a governor is safe and immune from the disease.  The main thing is that potentially life is getting better and I can write about some new wine. 

The first bottle I pulled out of the carton was selected because it was a short and squat bottle as opposed to the classic European style bottles that one normally associates with wine.  It was a bottle of Galante Vineyards Petite Sirah Olive Hill Carmel Valley Estate Bottled 2017.  The Galante family has a long personal history in the Monterey County of California.  Jack Galante’s great grandfather, James Frank Devendorf, was the founder of Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1900, and later built the Pine Inn and the Highlands Inn (which we have enjoyed a couple of times).  In 1969, Jack’s parents purchased a seven-hundred-acre cattle ranch in what was then rustic Carmel Valley.  In 1983, the Galante family began growing premium wine grapes on the property, specializing in Cabernet Sauvignon.  In 1994, Jack Galante built a winery and used his grapes to produce his estate bottled wines.

While Galante Vineyards are known for their Cabernet Sauvignon, they also have limited estate grown Malbec, Petite Sirah, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier and a few more, as well as some blended wines.  This particular wine, the fruit is hand harvested from two different elevations in the same vineyard.  One section is at one-hundred feet in elevation and the other vines are at eighteen-hundred feet in elevation, and hence the fruit is growing in different soils and at different temperatures for the season.  They are suggesting an aging potential of six to eight years.  They describe the wine as having a nose evoking violets and roses, and flavors of bright cherry and sweet vanilla with a light tannic backbone. It sounds interesting and it is a varietal that is usually found blending with others.  I venture to say that this wine may have a short stay in the cellar, just because of its uniqueness. 

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Street Somm

Posted on June 8, 2020 by thewineraconteur

“Bread…that this house may never know hunger.

Salt…that life may always have flavor.

And wine…that joy and prosperity may reign forever.”

While everything is still waiting for the dust to settle and things start to loosen up in the gulag, I got a message on one of my Social Media sites asking about my wine cellar.  They were getting ready to buy a new home in Las Vegas and thought I could be of some assistance.  I gave them my phone number and, in a few minutes, I was deep in a wonderful conversation with some one that prior, I only had a typical Social Media association with. I guess that it was presumed that I live in Vegas, because I periodically write about it, but I have memories of there for years, plus two of our children and five of grandchildren live there.  We were discussing restaurants and locations and of course wine shops.  He was going to convert a spare bedroom into a wine cellar to hold about four thousand bottles and I said that it made perfect sense to me, because there are no basements in Las Vegas, the city is built in a dessert, so it would be cost prohibitive to try to dig a cellar there. 

He or his wife must have remembered that I have wrote that I had built my own cellar, in a vacant corner of my basement.  I constructed it, using two by four lumber, of course I am old school.  The two outside walls have no insulation and the inside walls and the ceiling and the joists of the main floor of the house are packed with insulation.  I then used basic plywood as paneling for the room, because I then applied all the wooden wine crates that I had saved over the years, I am a pack-rat, by taking the crates apart and then using them as the finished paneling.  When I finally ran out of wine crates, any other walls that were barren were “wallpapered” with all of the labels that I had removed from bottles, knowing deep in the back of my brain that I was going to do this project one day.  I then found a company that advertised in the back pages of the Wine Spectator magazine.  I contacted them, gave them the size specs of the finished room and they made and delivered to me a huge collection of pine framing that was precut and ready to be assembled like “Tinker-Toys” for an adult.  I also put a floor down, before the racks were assembled and for extra security, I also anchored some of the framework to the two by four construction. 

It was a labor of love, I guess, I only wish that I had taken photos along the way.  I told him how I had built the cellar to hold nine-hundred bottles, but by buying some other smaller racks, usually at charity events, I can now cram about fifteen-hundred bottles in there.  We also discussed about how pretty the wine cellars look that are built under staircases, but I told him that when I was a kid, just learning, I was always told not to ever build a cellar under stairs, because the vibrations could ruin fine wines.  I also said that because of how I built my cellar, I didn’t require any additional cooling system, as the cellar is always about fifty-five degrees.  He was going to have installed one those individual room heat-pumps for that room only and rely on the ambient house temperature of the other rooms to keep it at a steady temperature. Since it is wild temperature fluctuations that can cause problems for the wines. 

During the conversation, we were discussing wines and the old days before a bottle of wine could be the price of a used car.   We were discussing wine tastings and events and even suggested that perhaps we could do a tasting the next time that I get to Vegas.  I told him that I am not a Sommelier and that I have no accreditations.  He joked and said he was the same way, and that his friends out in Vegas, and many of them are Sommeliers, have conferred upon him the title of Street Somm, and I like that, and I think I may use it.  As an aside to the accompanying photos, you can see that I have some empty spots as I moving white wines to a wine vault and I have cases of reds that need to be put away. 

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“Is it Safe?”

Posted on June 6, 2020 by thewineraconteur

“Oh, please don’t worry. I’m not going into that cavity. That nerve’s already dying. A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive. So, I’ll just drill into a healthy tooth until I reach the pulp. Unless, of course, you can tell me that it’s safe.”

That seems to be the Twenty-thousand-dollar question and there is nothing guaranteed.  It is Day 78 of the lockdown for me and I still feel like a caged animal.  First the whole state was shut down, because of a virus that originated in China.  Then there was an unfortunate and tragic death that has shaken the whole country.  This caused “peaceful protests” as well as ensuing riots, vandalism, injuries and more deaths and looting.  Now our governor has decided that it is safe to start opening up the whole state with restrictions and still no chance to enjoy a haircut.  My Bride and I are of mixed emotions about this next phase.  I am glad to start having my freedoms back, but we have not had any carry-out dinners, even from our favorite restaurants.  First, I feel that it is more like having leftovers, because, by the time we get home, the meals will have to be reheated.  Second, she is still concerned about the virus, if it hasn’t dissipated by now, and that has kept her from wanting carry-outs.  The other concern, is that our governor still has time to add more lockdown days as we get close to the day of potential liberation.

As it stands, we are still enjoying our time together, as she hasn’t shot me, for being me.  Since it appears that I have gained a pound after seventy-eight days, the quality and the quantity of food is still stellar.  She is still much more adept at making meals, quickly and efficiently, compared to me, as I still require all day to make a sandwich and soup and probably dirty a dozen dishes in the process.   She knows the way to make me happy and content as she did when she made Shrimp Piccata, the dish would also be great with Prawns, but I am happy that we still have Jumbo Shrimp, the greatest oxymoron of all time for food.  When you add in some starch and some vegetables, you have a complete dinner. 

Well almost a complete dinner, I had to find a bottle of wine, and that hasn’t been too difficult of a job here, though we may have to fill in some holes shortly.  Each week now, since we are home all day, when the Recycling Truck comes to our house, our house is always quite noisy, as there is probably a dozen empty bottles clanging together as they leave the orange bucket to enter the truck with all the other recyclables that have already been amassed.  Either the men think that we are having illegal parties constantly or our livers are shot, neither of which are true, I have just had the free time, to finally start removing the labels off of bottles from past articles for my scrap books.  I found a bottle of Clos LaChance Bronzy Inca Chardonnay Monterey County 2007.  In 1987, Bill and Brenda Murphy planted a few rows of Chardonnay in their backyard, both for landscaping and for dreams of being vintners.  A few years later, they had a product good enough to sell and by 1992 they had their first vintage and in the next fifteen years they would go from two-hundred cases a wine to eighty-thousand cases; from three-quarters of an acre to one-hundred-fifty acres and a multi-generational family business.  The hummingbird is their logo and part of them since the first vintage and the winery is in San Martin, California.  The fruit for the Bronzy Inca Chardonnay is sourced from Monterey County.  I could not find this particular wine on their website, but if their other wines are made as well as this win, they are golden.  For a thirteen-year-old Chardonnay the color was still soft golden shade with nose giving a trace of vanilla.  The wine was still crisp with a touch of honey and lemon and a nice medium length finish with a tinge of flint or limestone.  A very pretty wine, that was even excellent a couple of days later.  It is safe in the house. 

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Another Zoom Sunday

Posted on June 4, 2020 by thewineraconteur

“I told myself it was beneath my dignity to arrest a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: One man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic. Five million people desperate for fuel will destroy a city.”

Sunday has become our day of rest, kind of like the simpler times when I was growing up.  There is no place to go, no one to visit.  The party has made sure of it.  We can still buy groceries, cigarettes and alcohol and even an abortion, because the state has deemed it essential.  My Bride calls one of her girlfriends and they are connected by cellphones and they both watch the same Mass on their own computers, because the churches are closed.  Her girlfriend is even such a good friend that she encourages my Bride to sing louder.  Once a month, my Bride would even go to a Senior complex and give Communion, because she is a Eucharistic Minister for the Roman Catholic Church and she hasn’t been able to do that either.  We make sure that we get our daily walk, we have a Brunch and then an early dinner, because then we have about a three hour Zoom session and sometimes the monitor looks like we are watching Hollywood Squares. 

We started off the day with some coffee and then it was up hill from there.  We had a breakfast of Lox, Bagels, Cream Cheese, Onions and Capers along with Poached Eggs.   Perhaps not breakfast at Brennan’s, but certainly not at the Big Boy.  I am spoiled and I am the first to admit it, my Mother always had an egg poacher at the house and we have one as well, because I am not a fan of fried eggs; the less egg white I see, the better and yes I do know that the white is the healthier part of the egg.   Her dinner menu was a new version of one of her favorite dishes.  We had Salmon. But this time we had it with Pesto Butter.   We had a medley of Roasted Baby Potatoes (Idaho, Redskin and Purple Majesty) and Steamed Asparagus (which is in season and hence one can never have enough).  She also made Chocolate Pudding with Whipped Cream for dessert.  She has had great success with her Weight Watchers program that she started before we went into lockdown mode and she has lost twenty-five pounds, while I have been having the same menu as she, just not measured out have gained one pound during the same period of time. 

It is almost a sin, if we don’t stop at Mawby Sparkling while we are up in the Traverse City area of Michigan.   You can find Mawby out near Suttons Bay and whether you know it as L. Mawby Vineyards or M. Lawrence, one thing is for sure you will have a fun time visiting the winery and tasting/drinking the wines.  I have probably written about Mawby the most of all the wineries in Michigan and part of that is because my Bride has fallen in love with their products.   In 1973 Larry Mawby founded Mawby Vineyards with a small parcel of land.  He had a passion to make wine and that passion led him to now only making sparkling wines from the Nineties on to date.  In 2009, he began a partnership with the Laing Family; but I have often heard with respect from the other wineries that Larry Mawby is considered the “Godfather” or the “Dean” on winemaking in the region.  In conversations over the years with winemakers they all hint at, but never describe the heart and largesse the man has, as well as his love for the local wine industry.  I opened up a bottle of Mawby Us NV was a classic blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, aged in Stainless Steel, then later blended with some reserve wine, aged and with an added dosage to maintain a certain finish and bottled.  I would recommend this wine to anyone that likes a nice traditional tasting sparkler with some fruit in the finish, but dry and crisp.  Actually, it may have been over-kill for Mimosas, but it was excellent and because I had forgot to put in some Mimosa grade bubbles in the refrigerator.  It was really delicious and quite heady, because we only add a tincture of Orange Juice for color, especially because we wanted to enjoy this wine.  As for the Salmon, I went down to the cellar to look for something different and that probably needed to see the light of day.  I found a bottle of Indigo Hills Pinot Noir Mendocino County 1996.  Indigo Hills was located in the North Coast (Sonoma, Mendocino, Napa, Lake and Marin Counties, but it appears that they either closed or were bought out without the name, as it seems that I could find any mention of them since 2003.  There was still a retail tag on the bottle for $19.00 and that was probably a decent price back then.  The wine was opened about an hour and it was delightful.  A soft nose promising some fruit, the tannins had softened, the finish was on the short side, but for its age, it held up, quite well and my Bride will be upset, that we cannot get more wine from this winery.

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Gloppitta-Gloppitta

Posted on June 2, 2020 by thewineraconteur

“I cold-bloodedly then fed her into a tomb of goop from the gloppitta-gloppitta machine! I ask you to acquit me! Acquit me on the grounds of justifiable homicide.  And not for my sake…for yours.”

When I began writing my little articles or memories, who would realize that I would be so enveloped by the current situation that I didn’t realize that I had missed my Eighth Anniversary of writing.  To some it is a trifle, but to me, in my own mind it is quite monumental; the first year I wrote an article every day for publication, just to get used to writing again and then I allowed myself to get lazy and only publish every other day.  I call myself The Wine Raconteur, because raconteur is an old word that I fell in love with, when I was in grade school and was learning how to read, at first I kept mistaking it for racketeer, because Eliot Ness and The Untouchables was a major show on television back then.  Actually, a raconteur is a story teller, from the early days of Myron Cohen to Buddy Hackett and brought to the big screen in The Big Fish, men that tried to weave a yarn.  That is the conceit of my writing, if I can claim a conceit, is that I write how wine enhances the moment.  Some of my friends always complain that I bury the lead, an old journalism expression, because I never get to wine until the third paragraph or beyond.  I like to set the scene for the moment, so who expected that I would be in lockdown for seventy days, especially when we were told thirty days.  For thirty days I figured I could skate through, but the quotes and the scenes were getting grimmer and grimmer, not because my house and setting are terrible, on the contrary, I love my house and of course my Bride, but the story teller in me is getting pressed harder and harder to paint an idyllic setting under the tyranny of a moving deadline of confinement.

As I am thinking of the Roast Beef dinner that we had with Armenian Pilaf and steamed Asparagus, I kept drifting to the elaborate meals that Terry Thomas, the butler would serve to his employer Jack Lemon, who was a cartoonist in the style of Modesty Blaise, Mandrake the Magician, Steve Roper et al. The difference was that the entire story board was first photographed by Terry Thomas, while Jack Lemon’s character went about saving the world.  The public knew that everything witnessed in the strips were actually done prior by a raconteur who employed pen and ink.  This was the gist of the film “How to Murder Your Wife” and before you think that because my Bride and I have been cooped up under lockdown, all is great.  The film culminated with a classic court room scene that Jack Lemon commandeers.  I remember seeing that film in 1965 with my parents and I was in awe of Bash Brannigan and his penthouse and lifestyle. 

Now as we ease into the third paragraph, one of my duties is to find a wine that will compliment the dinner, as I look for forgotten or misplaced wines in the cellar.  Trust me, there are plenty of misplaced bottles, because I get lazy and don’t feel like shifting maybe thirty bottles to fit one bottle in properly and I tell myself that I will remember. Azienda Agricola Ciccio Zaccagnini is one of the leading producers in the Abruzzo region of Italy, with around seven-hundred-forty acres of vineyards. The bottles are always adorned with a small remnant from a vine and a great marketing image.  I found a bottle of Cantina Zaccagnini il vino “dal tracetto” Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2012, one of my favorite districts for good dependable easy drinking red wines from the Montepulciano grape.  The winery was established in 1978 and has steadily grown and they now produce over three million bottles of wine, and seventy percent of the production is now divided among forty-five countries.  The wine production for each vintage takes about two years to complete and this eight-year-old still maintained a deep ruby red color, the nose had softened and so did the tannins, but still a very flavorful layered wine of the old school. My partner in crime was very pleased with the wine, and so was I.  And before I bid you Ciao this evening, I will tell you that both in the artistic frames of the comic strip, and in the film, the cement mixer makes the noise of gloppitta-gloppitta and is an important “character” in the script.

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