A Hats Not a Hat ’til it’s Tilted

Posted on May 11, 2020 by thewineraconteur

“Nobody goes to jail unless they want to. Unless they make themselves get caught.”

It was Day 45 and we are making the most of the situation.  During the French Revolution when people were literally losing their heads, they actually changed the calendar.  I was watching a wine lover on Instagram and he was using corks and arranging them as hash marks like drawing on the wall to keep track of the days, but he grew tired or disappointed and gave up.  I have read all sides of the arguments, because I mean we do have more time on our hands.  My only complaint is that I have not read of politicians that have had to live in confinement, then I would feel better, because then they might have empathy, but they seem impervious to what they are doing, as long as they get their name spelled right in the news reports.  We are watching the standard calendar and hopefully counting the days, and hoping for time off for good behavior.  Another thing that I am surprised at, is that wine sales are going like gangbusters, and I can’t blame the independents and the wineries for ways to sell their products, rather then sit back and go bankrupt. 

My Bride has been quite the creative one, trying to not make the same dinners over and over.  Some are elaborate and some are more basic, and some are just old-fashioned comfort food.  We ate out quite a bit, and certain restaurants that we went to, had special dinners that we would like.  Now that we are home, she is trying to keep us out of a rut.  This particular evening, she made a feast, featuring sautéed center cut pork chops with caramelized onions and garlic.  She also made Rice Pilaf and Steamed Asparagus.  We both have fond memories of center cut pork chops, and I will probably order them more in a restaurant setting compared to her, but on occasion she still orders them.  Asparagus is also a childhood memory for both of us, as we can both recall being in Canada in the Spring and stopping on the side of the roads to go and pick wild asparagus to be boiled (back then) and slathered with butter and salt and pepper, though I still like a little butter on them. 

I went down to the cellar and went searching for a bottle that looked interesting, and not just a repeat if I could, but some times with a cellar, there are cases and six-packs that were bought to be stored for a while.  I was looking in the area where I keep the Merlot wines, as I have always been partial to them, since the very early days.  I brought up a bottle with a label that read Sinatra Merlot 2001.  I told my Bride, that I am not sure where this wine came from, as I didn’t remember buying it, and I don’t remember getting it as a gift, though I am leaning more towards the gift idea, also because people know that I enjoy a unique label and I have been a life long fan of Francis Albert Sinatra.  I probably know his repertoire of music better, compared to any musical quartet or singer that should be of my era.  I told my Bride, this may be a crap-shoot, but it has been down there long enough, so I uncorked it, and let it breath a while.  We were both amazed at this wine that we had anticipated to be a curiosity, and it was even great a couple days later when we repeated this meal.  A beautiful wine that still had a great nose of dark fruit, good color, a great mix of cherry and soft tannins, with a good lingering finish.  The wine also required decanting as there was considerable sediment, which also made the wine open up even more.  I had to look at the bottle for more information, because my curiosity was totally piqued.  The wine carried a sticker from American Cellars Wine Club, which I have never belonged to and I had to look them up.  It appears that they are still in business and are considered the flagship wine club of the brand Vinesse.  They have participated in a number of rewards and points clubs (Delta and American Airlines) and offer wines by a club purchase or by the bottle.  Then I read the back label for some interesting information.  The wine was produced by Cab Frank Winery of Buellton, California, and in some further investigation, it appears that they are no longer in business, and I found out that there was a 2000 vintage as well.  The Sinatra Merlot Santa Barbara County 2001 had a good read.  “Francis Albert Sinatra passed away on a cool evening in May of 1998.  Early, the next morning at a small winery in the Santa Ynez Valley, two young winemakers resolved to make a tribute to the singer who given them so much happiness over the years.  That harvest they collected the best grapes from their small family-controlled vineyards and produced a single barrel of wine.  At each stage of the winemaking process the cellar filled with the swinging sounds of vintage Sinatra albums.  There they finally crafted a wine of such tremendous quality and passion that they planned to it to themselves, until the Sinatra family learned of the project.  A tasting commenced and a union was formed.  Since that first barrel, this wine has been produced as an homage to the great artist.  A portion of the proceeds is donated to the Frank Sinatra Foundation, a non-profit charity established by Sinatra to benefit children.”  Some of the write up sounds pretentious, but nineteen years later, for the wine to be this wonderful, it was some excellent winemaking and not done by hacks.  I had to look it up, one barrel of wine produces twenty-five cases of wine or three-hundred bottles, so it was not a big production.  Now, if I can figure out, who gave us such a wonderful gift.   

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One Never Knows

Posted on May 9, 2020 by thewineraconteur

James Bond: “How about a cigarette?” Donald “Red” Grant: “Not a chance.” James Bond: “I’ll pay for it.” Donald “Red” Grant: “What with?” James Bond: “Fifty gold sovereigns.”

That little bit of dialogue always comes into my head, when I think of how the powers that be operate.  I had an uncle that served with the Merchant Marines in World War II, and when the Korean War began, he was drafted, because Merchant Marine service did not count as service to the country, it may have changed now.  So, there was my uncle going through boot camp with grunts that were probably ten years younger than himself, and even worse, he ended up at the front lines in Korea.  I remember how he used to always tell me about one part of his military experience, in that he might be on the front lines and receive his cold K-rations for weeks at a time, he always said that his cigarette rations and his beer rations were always available.  He was the first individual that I ever met that always complained that the government wanted their soldiers drunk and full of nicotine.  He said that soldiers that didn’t smoke, started smoking, because they felt that they were being cheated.  He survived the war, but he always had a disdain for the way he was treated, and he really couldn’t complain, because he was actually older than most of the command at the line.  I bring all of this up, because for some odd reason tobacco, alcohol and lottery tickets are essential, the stores may not have toilet paper or sanitizers, the state makes sure that they can still gouge the citizens for the big-ticket taxable items, because we certainly are not driving anywhere.

We are eating a lot of leftovers, but by design, which is a good thing.  We make enough food for a dinner, so that there will be enough for a second day or sometimes a third, or it may make an appearance at lunch or even breakfast.  Now it might be my imagination, but bananas seem to have the shortest life span that I have ever seen.  They must be spraying them with green dye, because it seems that the very next day, they are becoming ripe and then over ripe faster than two people can eat them.  My Bride has discovered a recipe that makes “banana pancakes” using baking soda and eggs and not flour, she said that they are very difficult at first to flip them, but once she got the hang of it, it is good, and we are not throwing away bananas every week.  Another good thing is that we are eating together a lot more, before confinement, we were both on the go, so the only time we actually ate together was at a restaurant, and hopefully everyone still remembers what restaurants are.  The only thing I know for a fact, is that the price of groceries have escalated, because I hear about it each time she returns and I hope that we are invested in grocery chains, as I did not want any investments in fast-food chains, and my broker looked at me like I was crazy, but I don’t care. 

All of this rambling is because, I had really hoped that there was no way that I wanted to contribute to high taxable items during confinement, because I figured that we have enough wine to last a long time, just like all of the food in the freezers.  And then it happened, my Bride was all excited when she called me on the way home from getting some groceries.  She told me that she had bought the wine that we had at the bar at the 1852 Grill Room in the Island House on Mackinac Island last year.  She didn’t remember the name of the wine per se, but she remembered the unique bottle that they used, and to be truthful, I was surprised that the Common Market would allow such a distinctive bottle as they are trying to homogenize the wine industry, or so it seems.  This particular winery uses a bottle that is more a cylinder, instead of the traditional wine bottle.  When we were at the bar waiting for our table, my Bride had a Negroni and I had requested a Moscato and was served a Voga Moscato IGP from the Pavia region of Italy and my Bride really liked the taste of it.  We were actually up on the island, because my Bride had a business meeting there and I tagged along.  While we were there, Ms. Yoga called the restaurant and bought us dessert, so I had a Hummer, a famed Summer Cocktail that was created in Detroit eons ago, and a fond memory of Ms. Yoga from another time.  I got to thinking about the wine some more, because she had bought four bottles of Voga Pinot Grigio Delle Venezie DOC 2019, and the funny thing is that they had this wine two years ago at an Italian restaurant, and I ended up going with a red wine that night.  This is just a very easy to drink wine that is unfussy and matured in Stainless Steel and during these days of lockdown we have availed ourselves of this wine with a myriad of different dishes and it has been good.  So even with all our wine, we still stayed current and added some money to the state coffers for a sin tax, as we used to call it.

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Another Aged Chardonnay

Posted on May 7, 2020 by thewineraconteur

Jefferson Smith: “I always get a great kick out that part of the Declaration of Independence.  You’re not gonna have a country where these kind of rules work, if you haven’t got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose.”

That speech was delivered by an actor that my Bride would knock me over to get to, if he ever walked into the room, but I knew that, going in with my eyes open, knowing that my odds were pretty good.  One of the things that is taking time to get used to, is that there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to get things done anymore.  I really thought that being retired would mean that I would be bored and have to find things to do, like counting how many lentils are in a bag.  It hasn’t worked out that way, and now with everything else slowed down, I have even less time and eventually I will get this figured out.

My Bride is an considered an “essential worker” and thankfully, she is working remote from the house.  She always had the capabilities to do that, but she really liked going in to the office.   There is even less we time, for us during the day, as she is working now from 8:00 to 4:30 and sometimes she even works the drive time.  Ever since she discovered that she could make Shrimp Piccata, she has been branching out with that sauce and cooking style to chicken as well.  When we first met, she barely ate red meat or drank red wine and I did convert her to being a heathen, but her first choice will always be fowl or fish.  She keeps experimenting with different ways to use the Piccata Sauce in the cooking of chicken, and I will not complain at all.  A nice chicken dinner with a side of potato or rice and a vegetable is enough to keep me happy, just as long as she avoids the few vegetables that I don’t think should be consumed by humans. 

I have been raiding the wine cellar and grabbing some wines to try.  Some wines come under the category of “that is too good of a wine just for us” or “let’s just have our house wine,” since we cannot have dinner with others, let’s have a little fun.  I found a lone bottle of Bernardus Chardonnay Soberanes Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands, Monterey County 2010.   Bernardus Winery and Vineyards was founded by Ben Marinus Pon about twenty-five 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.  Bernardus has three estate vineyards: Marinus planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec; Featherbow planted with Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon; and Ingrid’s Vineyard planted with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.  All fifty-four acres of estate vineyards are in the Carmel Valley AVA.  To compliment the estate vineyards Bernardus also has contracts with vineyards the Arroyo Seco, Santa Lucia Highlands and others in the Monterey County. I am sorry to say, that Mr. Pon passed away in September of 2019 and his vision will be continued by Robert van der Wallen the current owner, who also understand the passion that Mr. Pon had for his winery.  As a non-wine note, they have recently opened Bernardus Golf in Holland, and it will be the host for the Dutch KLM open.  I also feel safe to say now, some twenty years later, that it was at Marinus restaurant on the grounds that I had my famous tasting of Screaming Eagle.  Getting back to the subject at hand, I opened up this ten-year-old Chardonnay using my Durand and the cork came out intact.  I poured the wine and this lovely golden hued wine filled the glass, and by now, my Bride has stopped making faces about a dark Chardonnay, until she has tried it.  There is no longer any bias from either of us, that the wine is foxy or oxidized just by appearance.   The nose was very soft and gave traces of terroir, instead of fruit or oak.  The taste was excellent, a very subtle and heady Chardonnay where the fruit has softened to a drink that was unique and finished with a long suggestion of terroir.  It really has been fun to try these wines, but sad to know that I am running out of these beautiful well-crafted wines that changed into a different butterfly after being in a cocoon for so long.  Even Jefferson Smith might have stopped a classic filibuster to enjoy a truly wonderful glass of wine.

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A Roast and Peju

Posted on May 4, 2020 by thewineraconteur

Rod Serling: “Imagine if you will a world where Cinco de Mayo falls on Taco Tuesday only to be ruined by a virus named after a Mexican beer” and then the music.

That would have even been too bizarre of an episode even for The Twilight Zone.  It was Day 41 in Michigan and we had completed two cycles of the virus, if we had ever had it.  We were getting ready for a big session of Zoom with the families, as everyone has kind of settled into the routine of ennui.  There were several mini-vacations that had already been cancelled, thankfully there are no weddings on the horizons for anyone that we know, but we were going to go and throw a graduation party for our eldest grandson, and he won’t even enjoy the pomp and circumstance of the occasion. 

My Bride decided that she wanted to make a roast, and that would enable us to have several meals, afterwards, including maybe a couple of lunches and maybe a change of pace meat for some impromptu Eggs Benedict specials. A nice salad, Glazed Carrots, and Roasted Potatoes Parmesan finished off the meal.  She had also made Chocolate Puddings for dessert.  I had asked her, if she was going to use her Joule Sous Vide and she said that she preferred to do the roast the old-fashioned way.  We were going to have any early dinner, so that we could enjoy the craziness of a Zoom conference with maybe a dozen participants.

I went down to the cellar, to get something different and not a wine that we acquired in the last couple of years.  I saw a bottle that made me smile, and I knew that my Bride would as well.  A bottle of wine from our one and only trip to Napa Valley that was the real impetus for me to build the wine cellar.  It was our introduction to the wines of Peju Province Winery.  The estate was founded in 1983 by Tony and Herta Peju, he originally came from Provence to California and had a very successful florist business.   Peju is located in Rutherford, near Mondavi, Beaulieu and Inglenook.  Peju has grown from the initial twenty-two acres in Rutherford, as they now own another twelve-acre vineyard in Calistoga and two vineyards in Pope Valley with an additional one-hundred-sixty acres.  They also source some fruit from Sonoma and Mendocino and they offer a complete range of wines from sparkling to dessert wines.  The family is also fortunate to have two daughters that are fully immersed into the business.  Feeling very nostalgic I opened up a bottle of Peju Province Estate Bottled Reserve Cabernet Franc Rutherford Napa Valley 1997, and the Rutherford AVA was only established in 1993, so it was not as well known as the much larger Napa Valley.  The wine had been aged in oak for eighteen months and promised a vermillion red wine with notes of chocolate, coffee, licorice and cherry.  I opened the wine about an hour early and it was heavenly.  An earthy nose that accompanied a perfectly balanced and totally drinkable wine where the tannins had matured and were graceful.  The eucalyptus notes that were initially mentioned by the winery had blended seamlessly into this totally elegant Cabernet Franc that belied its birth.  I must also mention that it was at Peju Province according to my notes, that my Bride fell in love with Cabernet Franc. 

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Tequila Shrimp and Russian Hill Chardonnay

Posted on May 4, 2020 by thewineraconteur

Fezzik: “Why do you wear a mask?  Were you burned by acid, or something like that?

Man, in Black: “Oh no, it’s just that they’re terribly comfortable.   I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.”

As the clock keeps ticking and the everyone is watching the casualty list, like out of the scene from “Gone with the Wind,” there is the potential glimmer of hope that the lockdown will ease up and perhaps the state won’t be totally bankrupt.  I know that I have done over two complete incubation terms in lockdown or quarantine, if you prefer and both my Bride and I are not showing any symptoms or secondary symptoms.  Though I do wonder, if the governor of the state has even done one day of lock up or, is she waiting to be a martyr that will never occur.  Personally, I think if the citizens have to do without income, the least our elected officials could do is match, what they are so willing to wish on the masses, and forget about their token percentage that they have given up.  It is now demanded that anyone that goes out into another building should wear a mask, though the one person that should, has not been seen by me or reported in any photo. 

On a saner situation, is how we are coping with all of the dictates, and yes, we are still going out for our daily walks, waiting for the weather to be totally agreeable.  My Bride has been wracking her brain trying to make dishes that sound more like what we would have in a restaurant, if we could go to a restaurant, and not have to bring something home, just to be reheated, it may as well be fresh, at least for the first night, as we have been alternating dishes and left overs, so that we are not in a rut.  Well, she found a recipe for Tequila Shrimp that sounded interesting and we even found some Tequila in one of the liquor cabinets.  While it was good the first night, she ignored the original recipe and doctored it up the second time with the leftovers and really zinged it up.  The original recipe must have been created for people that prefer food not spicy.   The second night it was awesome and she felt vindicated, though I ate it the first night stoically the second night was wonderful; because why complain?

As I have stated, I am in the midst of rearranging the wine cellar and moving the whites to another location and I found some white wines that I had forgotten about, and just in case, I knew that I had backup selections to choose from.   The bottle that I put in the refrigerator to chill was Russian Hill Chardonnay Gail Ann’s Vineyard Russian River Valley 2007.  Patrick Melley is a self-taught winemaker and co-founder of Russian Hill and Talawind Ranch wineries.  He went from the restaurant industry to making wine himself, back in 1989 he started making wine at home, and then in 1993 he co-founded Benicia Cellars Winery.  In 1997, he and his partners moved to the Russian River Valley and founded Russian Hill Estate Winery.  I couldn’t find any winemaking notes on this wine, but it was the tenth year that the winery was in existence.  I forgot to grab my Durand and used one of my other corkscrews and the cork crumbled, and I had to put a coffee filter into a funnel and pour the wine into a decanter.  The wine had a deep amber-gold color, looking more like an aged Sauternes, and my Bride was afraid that the wine had oxidized.  I was the guinea pig, the nose was soft, almost non-existent and the taste was subtle and soft and the fruit was gone, with a finish that evoked alcohol.  It actually was a beautiful drinking wine, not showy or pretentious in the least.  The next day when we enjoyed her doctored version of the Tequila Shrimp, we finish off the decanter of Chardonnay and the taste and finish was the same as the first day and I just wish that I had tried a bottle of it earlier when it was young, but those things happen.  The lesson of the day, is don’t presume a wine is over the hill, give it a chance. 

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London Broil and Galante Cab

Posted on May 2, 2020 by thewineraconteur

“You wanted a place by the ocean. I had it opened. It was closed for the season. All these tables are for two people. Pick whatever one you want.” As we are all getting used to being locked in our homes, we now have masks to wear, and my Bride is still making and sending them to her friends.  In fact, the first sets she mailed, the out of state people got them in about a week, the locals, who she was told would get them in three days, didn’t get them for three weeks, and one package was still never delivered.  The joys of what is going on today and how we are coping.  I think that I am working my way out of the funk and depression, though everyone that I have talked to, discuss the mutual ennui of the masses, that doesn’t seem to be shared by the governors.  We are busy getting our communications using the phones, FaceTime and Zoom, just like everyone else.  We are like all of the parents and grandparents who are missing the pomp and circumstance of witnessing the Graduation Class of 2020.  We had originally planned on going to Vegas and throwing our eldest grandson a graduation party, by the time we get there, he may be in college, so we will have to have another plan for when we see him. 

My Bride has been cooking up a storm, as I am sure is a common occurrence in all the home kitchens these days.  As we have been going through the freezers and seeing what is what, because a lot of the food that we buy is for the big monthly parties and for other unique occasions at the house, and now, every evening is a unique occasion.   One of the cuts of meat I noticed had a London Broil designation from the butcher shop and she was going to make a roast from it, which would have been fine, but I suggested that she make it as a London Broil.  London Broil was all the rage in restaurants when I was a young man, and it is not an offer usually seen any more, since filets have taken center stage.  It quite simply is a thick top cut, that has been marinated for several hours, and then broiled.  We also both got a chance to use our new toys, her Joule Sous Vide and my Durand corkscrew.  The trick is to cut the meat diagonally across the grain.  It is a big flavorsome cut of meat, but not a delicate as a filet, and it is a bit chewier compared to the steaks being featured.  She spoiled me, by also having Bearnaise Sauce to accompany it, as you can tell we are suffering here.  We also had Sautéed Brussel Sprouts done with Bacon and Aged Balsamic Vinegar and Armenian Rice Pilaf.  I was in my glory, and then to follow up this feast, for dessert she had made Crème Brulee. 

I had been slowly liberating wines from the cellar, because we were way past using the opened bottles of wine.  I am trying to make some room and looking at some of the single bottles that are down there getting a comfortable layer of dust from being undisturbed, some maybe since, I built the cellar.  I found a gem, that I had never even posted about, though I have written about later wines that I have received through my wine club A Taste of Monterey.  I found a bottle of Galante Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Red Rose Hill Vineyard Carmel Valley 2003.  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.  Red Rose Hill Vineyard sits above a large swathe of crimson rose bushes, higher up on the side of the valley to take advantage of the daily swings of temperature and the long growing season.  This wine was pure Cabernet Sauvignon, and I didn’t want to take any chances, and I needed more practice using my Durand corkscrew.  The cork came out in one piece, and after a half-hour of breathing, the wine was perfuming the kitchen all by itself and competing with the dinner being made.  The wine still had a deep color, with just a trace of brownish-red at the rim.  The nose was earthy and the tannins had softened and were very mellow, the fruit had faded and there was a nice long finish that evoke the terroir, and brought me full circle to the earthiness of the nose.  It is kind of hard to describe an almost twenty-year old wine, if one has never had it before, because so many of the modern wines are big fruit bombs and they never get a chance to be cellared.  This was the perfect wine to have paired with an old-style entrée for dinner, and it just made the moment light years from the current lock down that we are all enduring. 

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Tilapia and Two from Franken

Posted on April 30, 2020 by thewineraconteur

“The best thing we can do is go on with our daily routine” is a quote from Nurse Ratched from the theatrical play and then the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  This is Day 40 as I write this, and to be truthful, I had hoped that it would have been over, as I am sure that everyone else feels the same way too.  We have created an artificial routine that has helped to keep our sanity and it has worked so far, as it has been good here.  We still split the household duties, which basically has been the same since we married.  We get up in the morning and do our morning routines, then my Bride has breakfast and goes to work, her office is at the moment the dining room table, so that she can spread every thing out and have a couple of monitors in operation at the same time, lunch, more work, then dinner and then she relaxes with a hobby or a some television.  Whereas after breakfast, I read the paper, do some computer time, lunch, do some writing and some projects, dinner and then after words, some Social Media; as a side we also either take our daily walk at lunch time or before dinner and we are actually enjoying some sun, for a while, we were actually walking in the wind, snow and or rain or a combination of all three. 

Meals are the saving grace these days, and in spite of the fact that some days she is trying to make me healthy with altered recipes from Weight Watchers, all is good.  With all of the food we have purchased prior to this newest bug, as a normal policy, I still have seen no real contraction of the shelfs in the refrigerators and freezers, and this way is good, because we haven’t had to fight the maddening crowds and witness the empty shelves as if we are in a Third World nation.  That is not to say that we have not bought some additional food, but have bought around what we have.  Some dishes are not what I would order at a restaurant, but some of the food is what she might have made for herself, if I was out and she was eating alone for the night.  We had Tilapia, and it is a catch-all name for a group of about a hundred different species of fresh water fish.  It is a white, flaky and bland fish that requires spices and creativity to give it some zest.  Tilapia is actually the fourth largest selling fish in America.  With a salad, potatoes and vegetables, one has quite the meal.  I have not attempted to step on a scale, because I normally only do, when I see my physician, but my Bride has achieved her desired goal and it holding and she is very happy. 

As I have stated a couple of times, our dinners are designed so that we can have at least a second dinner, if not a third or sometimes as a lunch.  It finally got to the point where we had used up all of the partially opened bottles of red wine and all of the white wine that there as a go-to, emergency wine, though I think that there are still a couple of bottles of sparkling still waiting to be grabbed.  One of my self-appointed projects is to rearrange the wine cellar and I have been finding some strays that I have liberated from my raids and we have been having some wines out of the ordinary.  Two wines that I knew we had, but I wasn’t quite sure where I had placed them were a couple of splits of German wines and I thought it would be perfect to try them on two different nights with the same dinner. These were also gifts brought from Germany by The Wine Raconteur, Jr.  The reason the bottles were off by themselves is that they were in the historic “bocksbeutal” bottles that look like a flask, a kind of short and squat bottle.  The first bottle is Weingut Geiger and Sohne Muller-Thurgau Kabinett Halbtrocken 2016. Weingut Geiger and Sohne was founded in 1850 and is the oldest winery in Thungersheim am Main. One of the unique differences about Franconian wines is that Riesling is not the leading grape of choice. As one can tell from the label the grape varietal is Muller-Thurgau, which is now the leading grape of the area. This wine has the Pradikat of Kabinett, which means that the proprietor feels that this wine is better than the basic wine, but it is not a late harvest pick like a Spatlese, and that this wine will have even more nuance and traits of what they feel is true for them. The wine is also “semi-dry” or “half-dry” as the label indicates “Halbtrocken.” I could not find any production notes on this wine, but this wine was delightful with just a touch of sweetness and some acidity that was very refreshing with the meal.  The second half-bottle is Burgerspital Wurzburg Silvaner Trocken 2015. Burgerspital is one of Germany’s oldest charitable foundations that owns a wine estate, and this wine comes from Wurzburg, probably the most known and important village of the area. This wine is made from the Silvaner grape, which used to be the leading varietal for Franconia. This wine is listed as “dry” from the notation “Trocken,” and some writers have likened the wines of Franconia to be more like a French white wine compared to the “classic” German white wines.  This wine suffered from being compared to the first wine as it was very understated and was not exciting, and in hind-sight I should have probably served this wine the first night.  We are trying to make the most of it. 

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Gamberi con Carciofi and Chardonnay

Posted on April 28, 2020 by thewineraconteur

“If any form of pleasure is exhibited, report to me and it will be prohibited! I’ll put my foot down, so shall it be… this is the land of the free! The last man nearly ruined this place he didn’t know what to do with it. If you think this country’s bad off now, just wait till I get through with it! The country’s taxes must be fixed, and I know what to do with it. If you think you’re paying too much now, just wait till I get through with it!” as spoken by Rufus T. Firefly.  Finding quotes from cinema, is much harder than finding a menu or a wine these days.  We are getting into a routine, as most people have getting used to the new normal. My Bride is working from 8:30 to 4:30 Monday to Friday and even dresses for work, in case of a Zoom or FaceTime session.  I am doing my blogging and other projects and trying to keep busy, as I do not want to become a growth on the sofa.  At 4:30 we venture out of the house, while the yellow ball is up in the sky and we do our two to three mile walk, in the subdivision, seeing the occasional car, cyclist or the odd couple walking like us; as we haven’t even ventured onto a secondary road, not that there is any traffic there either.  We enjoy our walk and our chat, and by that time of the day the menu has been selected and perhaps the wine as well.  After dinner, she catches up on some of her programs that she enjoys and I go and discover what is new on Social Media and then eventually it is time for bed, so we may repeat the process the next day. 

I have to admit that my Bride is taking all of this in stride, much better than I am.  She is trying to stretch her culinary skills, as long as she doesn’t get out of my comfort zone.  She knows that I am fussy and there are some cuisines that will go unnamed that I would rather miss a meal then eat.  Just call me a Limited Foodie.  Since she has been using the Weight Watchers regiment, she has had good result, though I still have trouble getting used to food being called protein.  We have been eating quite a bit more shrimp and that is fine with me, as long as it is real shrimp and not the plankton that some places try to pawn off as shrimp.  She decided to make Gamberi con Carciofi which we have often at restaurants, but not at home, and it is just the Italian way of saying Shrimp with Artichokes.   She has told me that plain shrimp has zero points as a protein according to Weight Watcher and then the count goes up depending how it is prepared, so I would have to presume that the old Beer-battered Deep-fried Shrimp of my youth would be off the charts and you would have to borrow points from the next day.  Her dinner was excellent along with the rice and vegetables.  And I knew that there was enough to have as leftovers for another night, so that we don’t get into having the same dinners over and over. 

I think that I grabbed the last white wine in the refrigerator, and I guess I will have to reload it with some more whites.  I opened up a bottle of Broadway Vineyards Chardonnay Carneros 2015.  Broadway Vineyards feel that they embody the essence of the Sonoma lifestyle.  In 2002 Jim and Marilyn Hybiske found property just two miles from the Historic Square in downtown Sonoma.  Six of their friends joined them to develop a small vineyard focusing on Chardonnay, Merlot and Syrah.  Work began on the vineyard in 2004 and the first harvest was in 2006.  The results each year got better and better and the wine started being appreciated by others than the original investors and they started to take off.  Since the estate is small, there is only a finite amount of wine that can be produced.  The winemaker for Broadway Vineyards is Philippe Langner who began his career at Chateau Clarke, a Rothschild property in Bordeaux, France.  The three different varietals were chosen very carefully to be planted on the estate from day one to take advantage of the soil and the cool nights and warm days and the area was perfect for the three cool-climate varietals.  The Broadway Vineyards Chardonnay 2015 was hand harvested at the beginning of September, 2015.  The wine was barrel aged for ten months, bottled in mid-June of 2016 and then spent nine months in the bottle before being released.  There were only one-hundred-sixty-two cases of this wine produced.   A soft floral nose and a real good Chardonnay with enough butter to give it a nice finish.  It will be a pleasure to finish the wine when we finish the leftovers, oh the joys of sheltering at home.

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Chili and Rioja

Posted on April 26, 2020 by thewineraconteur

 Major Clipton: “Are they both mad? Or am I going mad? Or is it the sun?  Another day in someone’s version of utopia and we are making the most of it.  I have been in a funk, but I think that I am working it out, the best that I can, as I talk to others and read other people that are in places much darker compared to me.  I saw a meme that asked “Remember when you wanted a longer weekend, well are you happy now?”  I guess everyone is kind of getting a taste of retirement, though my Bride, is really one of the lucky ones, as she is logging in everyday, contacting her people, her accounts and everyone else, as if she is still at the office.  We even wait until her work day is finished before we go out for our daily walk, though I have been doing more exercises in-house to off set the fact that I had just joined a spa, just as they all had to close, it was almost as if it was the proverbial New Year’s Resolution happened with out asking me. 

I donned my chef’s whites for another venture into the kitchen, in spite of the fact that my Bride claims that all of my dishes taste the same, they don’t really, but they all kind of start off on the same principals, because of back when I used to prepare a week’s worth of dinners on a Sunday afternoon.  I was going to make Chili, I guess with an Armenian twist to it.  Actually, it started off the same way as my Sauce Bolognese, but then makes a turn into Southwest Detroit for a different set of spices and heat.  The best part is that just about everything was found in the two pantries in the house, that we have been slowly raiding and I hate to say, that we can probably survive in our situation for some time to come, though I really miss going out to a restaurant.  I can’t describe what my Chili is, but I know that it isn’t the type of Chili one would get at a Coney Island in Detroit, and it is not the Chili that one would get at their local Mexican or Tex-Mex eatery either.  It has  onions, garlic, beans and a ton of South of the Border spices along with some other spices just to change it up a bit, including some ground Mustard, only because whenever I taste Chili, I always seem to envision that spice, and I know it is odd.   Also, I thought we needed an eclectic assortment of dinners while we are sheltering at home.

We are out of Margarita Mix, which is preferably my first choice for a beverage when I am having this type of dinner, so I had to rummage around, and I really didn’t have to rummage around much.  I know that it will always make my Bride’s day when she sees the brass chicken wire enclosure around the bottle.  I am talking about the legendary Herederos del Marques de Riscal Rioja Reserva and this wine was Vintage 2012, probably the one Rioja that I have had more of, than any other wine from Spain and it was even accessible back in the early ages when I first discovered wine.  This wine was founded in 1858 by a Spanish diplomat that had lived in Bordeaux and he brought back some concepts that were probably a bit heretical in the day.  The wine became so popular that the wire mesh was the way to insure the quality of the wine, and in fact part of the label was glued to the mesh, now the mesh is just a quaint tradition that is maintained, and I might add that this winery has a fantastic library of their wines going back to the very early days and the wines are still reported as glorious when opened.  The Marques de Riscal is the majority shareholder and winemaker of the company to this day.  This wine is a blend of Tempranillo, Graciano and Mazuelo.  The wine is aged for twelve months in barrels and then is aged an additional three years in the bottle, before it is released, because it is a Reserva.  I know that the wine has a big production, but over the years, I have never had a bad bottle, no matter the vintage, so it is a trusty old friend and one that I can tout to those interested in trying a bottle of wine, as I think it is a great starting point.

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Piqueras and Piccata

Posted on April 24, 2020 by thewineraconteur

“Von Luger: Are all American officers so ill-mannered? Hilts: Yeah, about 99% Von Luger: Then perhaps while you are with us you will have a chance to learn some.  Ten days isolation, Hilts. Hilts: CAPTAIN Hilts. Von Luger: Twenty days. Hilts: Right, Oh, uh, you’ll still be here when I get out? Von Luger: (visibly annoyed) Cooler!”

We are still here, gallows humor and all, making the most of the situation.  I am sure that most of the country, if not the world is into “Social Distancing” and isolation.  We are all trying to keep our wits about us.  Life goes on, a bit slower, perhaps, but it does.  You can talk to the family and trust that everyone is good and that is all that we can do, travel is not essential.  We are actually trying to keep to a schedule, my Bride is for sure, as she is one of the fortunate ones that can work remote, so from 8:30 to 4:30 she is manning the computer and phone, I mean she went so far as to have her desk phone at work transfer all the calls to her cellular phone, so that she doesn’t have to retrieve messages.  As for me, I have been practicing being retired, and perhaps I will go back to practicing when this is all over, but I am retired with no place to go and no one to see.  We check the morning newspaper for the latest changes if any and then we also will check the official rules listed by the State Police.  We will get out to see the daylight beyond our thirty-minute three-mile walk.  I am not laying down watching television, I gave that habit up almost forty years ago, just like smoking, salt and coffee, but I still enjoy wining and dining.  I also discovered that I am drinking more at home then in my entire life, only because unless we had company over, we normally did not drink at home, but we did drink out.

So far, between the two refrigerators and the one chest freezer, and the two pantries we are surviving quite comfortably.  As I have stated before, my Bride once had a bad stretch and she never wants to repeat those days again, so she has always bought groceries anticipating Armageddon.  It paid off in spades this time, as we have besides groceries, cleaning supplies of all types, alcohols and disinfectants, medical supplies and paper products.  We won’t have to rip pages out of first editions and hopefully the price of toilet paper will be normal, by the time we need to buy it again.  I am even thinking, but only thinking that perhaps I might even go through all of the spice containers and maybe consolidate what we have and see if the ones that we have are still worth saving; who knows I may even organize the DVDs.  Anyway, my Bride is trying some new dishes and it has been good.  She made Chicken Piccata, a dish that we usually have if we want something lighter when we go out for dinner.  She was very happy that it was much easier than she had imagined and she didn’t use as many capers as the recipe called for, so she was glad and as for me, I just enjoyed the dinner. 

I decided that I wanted a red wine for dinner, as we have had quite a bit of white wine, as that is what she still basically grabs as her go to wine.  Chicken with lemon, garlic and capers made me think a bit, as to whether I would attempt a red, but I figured why not, if it didn’t work, we have whites on reserve.  I am a realist.  So, I went to some of the more esoteric reds that we somehow accumulate and then I sneak them in, especially at parties, where wine tends to evaporate.  The wine I selected was Bodegas Piqueras Black Label 2015.  The winery is in their fourth generation and is found in Almansa, a newer DO (1966) located in the much larger Castilla La Mancha of Spain.  They have been growing wines there since the Sixteenth Century in an area that is known for their lack of rain, but the gravelly limestone soil seems to hold the necessary water for the season.  Almansa “prefers” red wines, but the DO does “authorize” some white varietals as well.  The most famed grape for Almansa is Monastrell, or Mourvedre as it is known in the rest of the world, and this particular bottle is half Monastrell and the other half is Syrah, another grape that does exceedingly well in Spain.  The wine is aged four to six months in a mix of French and American Oak barrels.  The wine had a natural spice to me, that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and I thought a kind of frizzante finish which I know shouldn’t be there, I really enjoyed it for a change of pace, my Bride, not as much, but she did say that a day later when we reopened it, that she felt that it was much better the next day.  Even wines like to get into fresh air. 

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