Independence Day 2020

Posted on July 6, 2020 by thewineraconteur

I grew up in Southwest Detroit and the Fourth of July holds a very favorite feeling for everyone that I grew up with.  The area was a true melting pot of Detroit and everyone got along.  Independence Day was the perfect day for the area and it was also the only parade for the area.  In the old days J.L. Hudson sponsored the Thanksgiving Day Parade which competed with Macy’s in New York, but only Vernor Highway had the parade and after the parade we all ended up at Patton Park, that was named after “Blood and Guts” Patton, and at the end of the day, there were fireworks that was sponsored by many of the businesses in the actual trading area.  There was a pride in the district, even with all the changes, the area was vibrant.  For years I was in the different phases of the Boy Scouts of America and eventually  I became the Parade Marshall for all the assorted groups in the area and would count cadence for the entire stretch of the parade, and even took the heckling from my friends all along the parade route, as the parade was several miles.  Alas, this year there was no independence, our harridan governor tightened the noose around us all again, after a little breath of fresh air.  The peaceful protestors, the looters and the vandals did not make the disease margin increase, because none of those people were around long enough to be tested, but some young people in two different bars created an uproar and have caused her to take away our independence, except in small groups.  Of course, this is not the case, in the region where are governor has her summer home.  Nothing has changed in that region. 

Well it was an interesting day as we were going to have a family get-together at one of her sister’s homes, as she has a pool.  The day would start off with water aerobics and then would morph into a party and we would actually even celebrate all the birthdays for those that were cheated because of the last hundred days.  Even my Mother-in-Law was going to get out of the house to see her family and at 94, she may have missed Mother’s Day, except by a Zoom session, but she felt that enough was enough.  My Bride and I started off the day with Mimosas along with Poached Eggs, Bacon and Bagels.  We figured that would get us through the start of the day.  We then loaded up our car, and perhaps we should get a catering truck.  She had either made or prepped the majority of the menu for the day.  We were having Potato Salad, Caesar Salad, Fruit Salad, Corn on the Cob, Bratwursts, and Barbecued Pulled Pork.  There was also a Pasta Salad and Smoked Chicken from others. She also had packed up assorted cheeses, crackers and other munchies.  And there were Lemon Merengue and Key Lime Pies, and she brought a Sander’s Bumpy Cake with all of the honoree’s names on the cake.  There was also plenty of gifts being passed out during the day as well, it felt like days of old, if for no other reason but to tweak the nose of our harridan governor. 

We started the day with Mumm Napa Brut Prestige NV for our Mimosas.  Mumm Napa is located in Rutherford and is one of the leading sparkling wine producers in California.  The winery was created in the Seventies under the auspices of G.H. Mumm, one the leading Champagne houses in France.  All of the sparkling wines are produced using the Methode Traditionelle and using Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier and Pinot Gris.  The first vintage was in 1983 and labeled Domaine Mumm, the name was changed in 1990 to Mumm Napa.  This may have been a bit of over-kill for Mimosas, but I am now on a mission to go through the cellar and check on some of the bottles that may have been neglected or forgotten about, or even worse mis-placed.  This was a beautiful bottle of sparkling wine on its own and with a tincture of Orange Juice it still was able to shine through.  Later in the day, we opened up a bottle of Voga Pinot Grigio Delle Venezie DOC 2019 for a pleasant white wine to compete with the Sumer sun.  Voga Italia is a brand of Italian wines launched in 2006 and are instantly identifiable by their cylinder style bottles and resealable caps.  They produce white, red, sparkling and sweet wines and they also now make a vodka, and they only market instantly identifiable varieties as well, like Pinot Grigio, Moscato, Merlot, Prosecco and Cabernet Sauvignon.  The Venezie in the name, most people think is for Venice, the historic and romantic city of canals, island, bridges and gondolas, but it is actually for Tre Venezie, Triveneto or “Three Venices.”  These three are Venezia Euganea, Venezia Giulia and Venezia Tridentina and they were three Italian administrative regions which existed from 1866 to 1919 and now correspond to Veneto, Friuli-Venezie Gulia and Trentino-Alto Adige; Delle Venezie covers the entire area with the exception of Alto-Adige or Sudtirol. The DOC laws allow that the wine must be at least eighty-five percent Pinot Grigio and then there is a long list of local grapes that may be used to blend in.   This wine is produced using Stainless Steel and the maturing time is not long, so as to keep the freshness of the fruit.  We also opened up a bottle of Podere Ciona Semifonte 2017 and I have tried many of the wines made by this winery. I was reading the history of the winery on their website “Franca and Franco Gatteschi were looking for a place in the countryside to retire to, after many years of working in Italy and abroad, when they came across a small, beautiful, albeit run down property: 100 acres of land, mostly wooded with 10 acres set aside for cultivation, of which 2.5 acres already had vineyards; a house from the 18th Century, abandoned for more than 40 years; and, above all, a view without equal on the Chianti hills, with Siena in the distance.”  It really sounds idyllic and makes one ponder how this property was neglected and ignored for years.  “They purchased the estate at the beginning of 1990 and they immediately started the reconstruction work on the main house (it took nearly three years). They also set up a small but well- equipped wine cellar for making wine. In 1996 they permanently moved to live on the estate and the following year, the great 1997 vintage, saw the birth of the first “official” wine of Podere Ciona: A Chianti Classico DOCG Riserva.” The Podere Ciona Semifonte Gaiole in Chianti IGT 2017 and is termed a Tuscan Rosso wine.  Toscana IGT is the most famous of the IGT designations and it actually has three sub-regions already, and there are ten provinces that are allowed this designation.  Tuscany is the home of Italy’s most famous IGT category, but it was where this category forced the hands of wine classification for a new designation, because some of the wine makers felt constrained by the current rules, and originally had to use the lowly Vino de Tavola or Table Wine designation for their new wines.  Finally, in 1984, Sassicaia was granted its very own title of DOC Bolgheri Sassicaia and the floodgates were opened.  IGT is Italy’s version of the Common Market’s designation of IGP.  This particular wine is eighty-five percent Merlot and fifteen percent Alicante Bouschet, the same varietal that they add to their Chianti Classico.  This is a high-altitude Merlot planted on a mix of quartz and clay of vines that average about fifteen years of age.  The wine has been aged for twelve months in French Oak and then cellared for eight months in the bottle, before being released.  Of course, I have always been partial to Merlot and this wine was showing red fruits like plums and cherries and there was still a lot of spice as this was a young wine.  I think it was a hit, and I am not sure if I can get anymore, as there were only about five hundred cases produced. There were no organized fireworks for the evening, just random individuals, of course there could have been some real fireworks, if the governor’s husband never was able to get their boat in the water at the marina up North.

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Leftovers Plus Two Wines

Posted on July 4, 2020 by thewineraconteur

We are eating more leftovers in the last hundred days then I can ever recall.  It is the lockdown mentality, we make a bigger dinner, so that we can enjoy the meal, maybe once or twice more after the initial meal.  We are actually using up some of the food that has been stockpiling in two refrigerators and a chest freezer.   We even survived the great toilet paper shortage, because we just naturally buy in quantity, especially basics; we don’t buy bananas like we buy paper products.   Anyways, I think it is harder to cook for two, compared to a party, and though my Bride says no, she still cooks for a crowd and hence, I am maintaining my new figure.  I actually haven’t gained any weight, but I certainly have not lost any either.  Any ways, we are eating more leftovers and then if you toss into the equation a chance to go out, on a limited basis and now we have more leftovers, plus all the regular food that we already have. 

I have going through the cellar and bringing up the white wines to put into the wine vault in the family room and then I will rearrange all the red wines that that are allover the basement and the stair case going to the basement.  As a precaution, I have been putting two white wines in the refrigerator at the same time, more as an insurance policy, just in case, and so far, we have only encountered one over-the-hill wine, out of perhaps 1500 bottles, so far, the odds have been good.  I also have to say that I am really appreciative that my Bride got me The Durand wine opener, as it has been a blessing for opening up all of these twenty-year-old wines.   I opened up a bottle of Robert Mondavi Winery Fume Blanc Napa Valley 2001, and the label actually fell off of the bottle in the refrigerator.  Some people will probably scratch their head and say that they have never heard of a grape varietal named Fume Blanc, this is all fine and good, now onto this mystery varietal Fume Blanc, that I had opened. Fume Blanc is a marketing name coined by Robert Mondavi for Sauvignon Blanc, which at the time was suffering an image problem, as most people were associating this varietal for a sweet white wine, which it can be when it is in the production of French Sauterne. It can also be a dryer white wine, when it is from Graves in Bordeaux or from the Loire Valley of France. It is from the Loire Valley that Robert Mondavi created this wine term of Fume Blanc playing on the reputation of Pouilly-Fume. The most remarkable thing is that several other wineries including Ferrari-Carano have jumped on the band-wagon and call their dry Sauvignon Blanc Fume Blanc. They also tend to make the wine more in the tradition of the Loire Valley by using both Stainless Steel and used French Oak barrels for the production of the wine, and I also have to say that Fume Blanc is not a trademark name, just one that has been used and accepted; and there are no actually regulations or requirements for this “proprietary” name.  I guess the name change has worked over the years, and because this wine is actually a Sauvignon Blanc it should be a pale straw wine that normally is described as green and flinty.  This was the second wine that had to be unceremoniously poured down the sink, as it was amber in color and had a foul nose and taste.  I cannot blame it on the wine, it was just in the cellar longer then it should have been. 

The second bottle which was a backup was a Maison Loui Latour Macon-Lugny “Les Genievres” 2000.  Maison Louis Latour is a major negocient of red and white wines, and mainly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the Burgundy region.  The firm was founded in 1797  and is still family owned and operated, and with roughly seventy-two acres of Grand Cru vineyards, they have the largest holdings of any producer in Burgundy, as well as holdings in other parts of the region, and they have also started developing other holding in the south of France as well.  Macon-Lugny wines fall under the Macon appellation within the much larger Burgundy region, and is one of the most recognized districts in the Maconnais.  The white wines are exclusively Chardonnay and the red and rosé wines use Pinot Noir and Gamay.  This twenty-year-old Chardonnay still had life in her, the color had definitely darkened, the nose was very soft, but there was still some stone fruit and spices, with a nice finish of some terroir.  It was a lovely wine to drink, and it made the leftovers, all that much more special.

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A Mixed Day

Posted on July 2, 2020 by thewineraconteur

It almost felt like a regular day, we were going out to see some family, then kind of a day trip and finally out for dinner.  My Bride was going to meet some of her family at one of her sister’s home and do water aerobics in their pool.  My Bride is going great guns with her new health regimen and now she is down to the size of when we met and got married.  I on the other hand have steadily shown signs of being happily married and then compound that with some medical side affects and let us say that I am more than a few pounds over the weight when we met, or even we married.  We had lunch at her sister’s house with all the others that attended and then we were off on potentially an adventure.  We were going to get new phone upgrades from our provider, but we could only go to two locations in the state and the closest one was almost two hours away, with no way to guarantee that when we got there, that there would be new phones available, so my Bride was in kind of a holding pattern on her mood.  Thankfully all was good and it went relatively smoothly and painlessly, in comparison to another couple that also made the trip from our home city and left empty handed for a couple of reasons and they were not happy.  I didn’t realize how far we were, because my Bride is the road warrior of the family or I would have suggested another restaurant to try, but all was good, because she really wanted to go to Rocky’s again. 

At her sister’s home, we had a nice barbecue lunch of grilled Bratwursts, Cheeseburgers and Hamburgers.  There were also plenty of sides, because people that attended the water aerobics brought sides like fruit salad, potato salad, Cole Slaw and Macaroni salad.  There was plenty of food and enough to eat to hold us over until dinner time.  When we got to Rocky’s, thankfully we had a reservation, because since they can only be operating at fifty percent, they were filling up quite well.  Rocky’s could probably run at full capacity, because it is a mature clientele and even at the bar, not a crowd of hard drinkers like at the two bars that were written up for not doing social distancing, perhaps if they had announced at those two locations that they were protesting there would have been no writeups.  At Rocky’s it was all done in proper style, walking in with a mask, until we were seated and you could have swung a two by four around and not hit the diners at the next closet table.  We both knew that we wanted the Black Bean Soup and we even ordered a quart of it to go, trust me, it is that good and worth the trip.  My Bride had the Potato encrusted Whitefish with a Lemon Sauce and fresh vegetables and I went with the Broiled Shrimps Casino with Basmati Rice and fresh vegetables. 

We also took a bottle of wine with us to her sister’s house, especially because after the water aerobicize my Bride deserved something cold and special.  I turns out that I had a second bottle of 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. The good news is that the cork in this bottle was solid and I poured a wine that also had a deep amber-gold color, looking more like an aged Sauternes. Whereas the first bottle that we had, the nose was light, this bottle still offered some fruit and spice and the taste was subtle with some flavor of terroir, but the finish still evoked alcohol.  It actually was a beautiful drinking wine, and more flavorful compared to the first bottle.  After all the running around and we were resting at Rocky’s I picked out a very easy drinking white for us to relax with.  We had a split of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough 2018.  Kim Crawford is probably the most recognized wine producer from New Zealand and its Sauvignon Blanc is the most popular wine from New Zealand sold in the United States of America.  Kim Crawford began in 1996 in Auckland and built a state-of-the-art facility in Marlborough in 2000.  In 2003 the brand was sold to the Canadian firm Vincor and the following year Vincor was acquired by Constellation Brands.  Kim Crawford was also one of the first in New Zealand to produce an unoaked Chardonnay.  Marlborough is the most important wine region in New Zealand and Sauvignon Blanc account for almost eighty percent of the production.  The wine is very fruity with a nose promising passion fruit, melons and some spice, with a taste of fresh fruit and acidity and a pleasant finish that kind of beckons another glassful.  All in all, it was a most enjoyable day with a couple of charming wines.

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Father’s Day 2020

Posted on June 30, 2020 by thewineraconteur

Historically, Father’s Day is normally a quiet affair and even more so this year.  Fathers appreciate being acknowledged and a dinner is nice.  Some men golf, and I haven’t golfed since my college days, I sometimes think that Ben Hogan was my instructor, but I guess I didn’t pay attention to his lessons.  Other men like to go out on a boat, my luck it would be the Titanic, especially this year.   We are really not into barbecues either, but some people really excel at it.  Since the state is just loosening up and we went out for dinner the night before, we were going to have a quiet dinner at home.  The good thing is getting phone calls from the children and that is enough reward.  We also had a Zoom session with some of the family and that was interesting, as always.  

My Bride likes to make a bit of a splash about a Sunday breakfast or should I say brunch.  She made Bavarian-style pancakes, those baked monsters, but these didn’t fluff up as much, but the flavor was still there, so all was excellent.  We also had bacon, she is always trying to make me eat healthier, but she lets me cheat a couple of times a week.  Actually, I am the one that should be on Weight Watchers, but I guess I am not into regimens, she also tells me that it all is about portion control and I guess I still think that I have the appetite of a teenager (at times).  I guess it is my way of thinking that I am still young.  Later that day, she made Salmon with her Bourbon Sauce along with Corn on the Cob and Snap Peas.  Followed by Chocolate Pudding.  The funny thing is, that I very seldom have dessert anymore, but the puddings, mousses and Crème Brulee desserts are all hitting the spot.  Thankfully, we don’t eat that big every day. 

It was another day to enjoy the labors of the cellar.  I think it would be a sin to use Dom with orange juice, so we used Korbel California Champagne, which is produced in the time-honored way of “Methode Chanpenoise” and it is a blend of Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, French Colombard and Pinot Noir. A perfect way to start off the day and Korbel is one of those houses that have been grandfathered in using the term “California Champagne.”  We now make them in the steakhouse method that we discovered in Las Vegas, which is to fill the glass with Bubbles and a tincture of Orange Juice.  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 Monterey County 2000.   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.  Just another sublime winner, a twenty-year-old California Chardonnay that has a reason to be proud.  We are really going to have problems drinking the young wines again after all of this.

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Father’s Day Saturday

Posted on June 28, 2020 by thewineraconteur

We made arrangements to have a dinner and celebrate two fathers for Father’s Day weekend.  We invited our one son and his family to have dinner with us, as we slowly get used to the new protocols of going out for dinner.  For Mother’s Day we didn’t have such a luxury, because we were still under lockdown and I am still concerned that we could be penalized for the all of the peaceful protestors and their inciters that sent all the rules of social distancing out the window, but we shall see.  Any ways, I was thinking about Father’s Day and both my Bride and I, no longer have our Fathers with us.  I was thinking about my Father in the week or so, before the celebration and remembered some of his tales of his military career and I guess I am not the only raconteur and I did come by it honestly and genetically.   He was a Canadian citizen who like thousands of others volunteered to fight in the United States Army and that is a story in itself.  By the time he finished “Boot Camp” the war was over and my Father found himself as part of the First Occupation Forces in Japan.  One of his favorite stories was that he once found himself having a bit to eat and a couple of cold ones in tavern with a buddy.  He ended up totally enamored watching and listening to two Japanese men having a very colorful and rather animated conversation, and the more they talked, the more my Father was in awe and started laughing as he could no longer hide the fact that he was eavesdropping and they started to mention that they were watching some “dumb American” that was laughing at them and about their conversation.  My Father was not a translator, in fact he probably only started learned English after he had learned how to speak Armenian, the part that got him fascinated was that he was watching and listening to two Japanese men who were speaking almost fluent Armenian, so that no one in the tavern could follow their conversation.  My Father could no longer contain himself and had to speak to them in Armenian and they were in awe, as these two men had never met an Armenian, except for those in their circle and church and they had all started centuries back, during the days of Marco Polo and the Spice Routes.  Needless to say, a new conversation began that was also quite animated and I am sure that more beverages were consumed.  The two men, even invited my Father to one of the men’s home for an Armenian dinner that over the years had become Japanese.  My Father was also surprised when a third man asked if he knew an Armenian that ended up in Canada, that the third man had wanted to adopt, It turns out that it was a shirt-tailed relative of my Father’s who used to tell the same story and because it happened when he was so young, that everyone thought he was making it up, because instead of the Red Cross sending him to the Middle East or to France after the Armenian Genocide he ended up in Japan and crossed by train from Armenia through Siberia and China.  My Father also had many other tales about his time in Japan, but perhaps another time. 

All of this brings me to our dinner date at a restaurant.  I am starting to think that I am the only person in the world that does not eat Japanese or any Asian cuisine, except for traces of it, in Fusion restaurants.  Since my Bride got cheated for Mother’s Day, I thought she and the others would appreciate, if I passed on a steakhouse and selected a Japanese restaurant.  I knew of this restaurant when it was The White House and had gone there years ago with my dinner club, and the restaurant is a large antebellum house that was built by a man to give to his wife in 1929.  Shiro can be translated to mean either “white” or “castle” and I guess both words are apt. We went in with our masks on and they took us to a side room where the group of us could dine separately and that was very nice, and masks were off.  I couldn’t understand why they brought a little pencil, like you use for recording your golf score on a scorecard, but everyone else understood and they were ordering food left and right from the Sushi menu.  My Bride ordered some Sushi dishes like the others as an appetizer and she also ordered an entrée of Sea Bass, so I knew she was happy.  For an appetizer I ordered Lobster & Crabmeat Spring Rolls with a Tropical Pineapple Sauce and then as an entrée I ordered Scallops.  I decided to play it safe, and I am glad that I chose a winning restaurant for the crowd, especially my Bride was happy.

My Bride and I were the only wine drinkers, so it was rather easy to select a wine for us and we had the Kunde Family Winery Chardonnay Sonoma County 2018.  The Kunde Family began farming in the Sonoma Valley in 1904 when Louis Kunde emigrated from Germany and acquired the Wildwood Vineyards Ranch.  The Wildwood Vineyard had been planted in 1879 using imported cuttings from Chateaus Margaux and Lafite-Rothschild.   They survived Prohibition, only to close during the Second World War, because the sons were drafted.  After the war, the sons expanded on the property and bought the Kinneybrook Ranch and that is where the winery is today, and the family is now into the fourth and fifth generations of family as stewards of the property.  The Sonoma Valley with its red volcanic soils and ideal climate is perfect for Chardonnay.  Seventy percent of the wine was aged for nine months in French Oak, of which twenty percent was new, and thirty percent of the wine was aged in Stainless Steel.  After blending the wines, the wine delivered a nice crisp wine, with good acidity and a subtle oak finish.  It worked extremely well with both the Sea Bass and with the Scallops.  While everyone else was ordering desserts, I thought that I would treat myself and try a glass of Sake, and I had no idea what to order, so I allowed the waitress to make the selection for me.  She brought me a glass of Sakeone Corporation Momokawa Diamond Junmai Ginjo Craft Sake NV and it turns out it was from Oregon.  Sakeone Corporation is Momokawa’s American offshoot.  Established in 1992 as a premium Japanese sake importer and in 1997 went to the Willamette Valley and the rice grown in Sacramento Valley and began brewing Sake in Forest Grove, Oregon.  They are now the most successful Sake producer in America. The Sake is made with polished rice and no distilled alcohol added, pasteurized twice it was rather crisp and is served chilled.  My Bride was already discussing the possibility of return visits to Shiro.

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San Felice Campogiovanni

Posted on June 26, 2020 by thewineraconteur

It is a bit heady to start feeling good again, after three months of lockdown to be looking finally at my April wine club selections from the Fine Wine Source of Livonia.  I had mentioned that the wine shop was closed, because they were not deemed “essential” by those that like to pick and choose who will live and who will die.  We are slowly getting in dribs and drabs’ listings of businesses that could not survive the forced closure.  I guess our local media, thinks that if only a couple of businesses are listed at a time, that it won’t seem as terrible.  I have to tell you, that this wine shop is not your local neighborhood corner store.  There are no bulk wines, and none of the highly advertised brands that one sees in every grocery and convenience store; and yes there is a place for all of those wines and I drink them as well, but when one wants to find something unique or special, then one must search out places like the Fine Wine Source. 

At the moment, there is no wine tasting in the shop, which is one of the hallmarks of visiting the store.  There is usually two old wine barrels set up with an array of assorted wine bottles, the only difference is geography, one barrel features the Old World or shall we say Europe and the other barrel features the New World. Which would include North, Central and South America, Australasia and Africa.  When they have special tastings with the manufacturer and or the wine maker, it is extremely interesting and very crowded.  I guess this is one of the problems the government minions must figure out and they are still working on the wineries and their tastings and how to proceed.  When the creative minds of bureaucrats attempt to cure something, it is just more regulations and an attempt to stifle business.   Eventually and soon, I pray, there will be some one with brains that will help the wine industry. 

Agricola San Felice is a Tuscan wine producer with estates in Chianti Classico and Montalcino.  It is most famed for its Sangiovese wines and blends under the Campogiovanni and Il Grigio labels, as well as its Vigorello Cuvee, which some call the first commercial example of a “Super Tuscan.”  Sangiovese is the most planted varietal in Italy and thought to have originated in Tuscany and the name translates to “Blood of Jove,” which some would like to claim shows that it goes back to the Etruscan period, but historians can only date it to the 1700’s.  The terroir of Campogiovanni is sandy and mineral-rich which allows the vines to grow slowly and steadily, to create balanced wines. So the imported wine for the month of April was San Felice Campogiovanni Rosso di Montalcino 2013.  The rules for Montalcino wines, both Brunello and Rosso must be entirely Sangiovese.  Rosso di Montalcino was sanctioned as a way to generate money for the wineries as their Brunello wines age according to the rules, as the Rosso only needs to be aged in wood for six months and then an additional six months in the bottle before being released.  This wine is touted as offering a more unique and complex bouquet than normally found, as it features the classic cherry and blackberry notes, but also licorice, cola and balsam and a taste that offers ripe fruit including raspberry and blackberry.   Another wine that I can open for parties as they slowly start to emerge.

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Magnolia Court Dorrian Pinot Noir

Posted on June 24, 2020 by thewineraconteur

It is slowly starting to feel like a civilized world again, at least in parts of the world.  Our wine shop, The Fine Wine Source of Livonia recently opened up again and I was finally able to pick up three months of wine club selections.  Some of you are probably saying to yourselves, what is he talking about, you were able to buy wine and liquor during the entire time of the lockdown, well that is a yes and a no.  Originally, grocery stores were considered essential and that makes sense, even to the chief elected harridan of the state.  The grocery stores also sold beer, wine and liquor, then they realized that there had a snag, as not every community has grocery stores for a myriad of reasons, so then party stores or convenience stores were able to stay open, because they carried “groceries” and sometimes that definition was quite broad, but the state did need to keep collecting whatever tax money they could.  It reminds me of the old days in Ontario, Canada when they had taverns and saloons and one would have to have food; sometimes that was just potato chips or pretzels.

The Fine Wine Source is just a wine shop, no beer and no liquor and no food.  They were not considered essential, except to those of us that had Wine Club Memberships and each month we paid for our wines, knowing that one day, we would be able to pick up our new wines.  I do have to give them credit as they were running promotions and would offer free delivery within a delineated circle of so many miles, give or take if you bought “X” amount of wine, and that is what made me start going through the cellar, finding some of the strays with the concept of rearranging the cellar.  Lady Luck was with us, as I only had to report on one bottle of wine that did not age gracefully.   It was a great incentive to drink what we had, just like, we were actually eating food that was in two refrigerators and a chest freezer, so we really did not get hit with the potential “meat shortages” and we even survived the toilet paper rush, because my Bride had bought all her paper products and a lot of cleaning and sanitizing supplies, just before our trip to Louisville, so we survived the ninety-three plus days of lockdown. 

The domestic wine from the wine club selection for April was Magnolia Court Dorrian Pinot Noir Central Coast 2016.  The Miller Family Wine Company’s California farming and ranching legacy starts in 1871, when William and Francis Broome moved from England to begin farming in southern Ventura County.  The farming legacy was passed down to William Broome’s granddaughter Elizabeth who married Robert Miller in 1942, and then it became the Miller Family.  In 1973 the family developed a vineyard in the Paso Robles highlands and named it French Camp in honor of the Basque shepherds that once populated the area. There is fourteen-hundred acres of French Camp which supplies the Miller Family with their highest quality fruit. The parent corporation is the Thornhill Company, named for William Broome’s son, and they now are into the fifth generation of family control.  They make four different branded labels and then they also make limited production runs of assorted wines for multiple businesses for their house wines and private labels.  The Magnolia Court Dorrian is a tribute to the generation of strong woman in the family.  There were no production notes for the wine, even though it is listed as a limited production wine.  The tasting notes for the wine suggest aromas of cola and ripe red cherries, with bright fruit and a nice lingering finish, and the wine is described as medium bodied with medium tannins.   I am sure that once we get back into the swing of things for parties, this will be a bottle for us to try as it should be very good with salmon or pork tenderloins.

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First Dinner After Lockdown

Posted on June 22, 2020 by thewineraconteur

We decided to go out for dinner after over ninety days of lockdown.  In my old school, pre-Common Core math that is like six periods of quarantine and as great of a cook as my Bride is, even she needs a night of someone else cooking.  Where we live, by the time we got a carryout from any of the restaurants that we enjoy, we would have to reheat the dinner and then it is like having leftovers, so we decided to stay home and cook.  It felt rather awkward walking up to the restaurant while we slipped on our masks.  As we were getting to the door there was a man with a big carryout bag and that was good to see, for those so inclined.  Usually when we walked in the bar area was packed, it was now every other seat or so, unless you were with your spouse(?) and the people that were bellied up to the bar, were not wearing their masks, because they were drinking and having some lively conversations.  I noticed that the bartenders, waiters, waitresses and other service people had masks on, but once you were at your assigned table you could remove your mask, because the disease knows that you are having dinner.  I also saw a photo op, that depending on who does them are despicable or brave and that is not for me to say, but I did see that the governor of Michigan desecrated one of my great “joints” Lafayette Coney Island in Downtown Detroit, pretending that she was a cook, I noticed that she had gloves on, but no snood on her coiffed hair and I thought that was a requirement by the Health Department and not a political fiat; but she does not have to abide by the laws, she only mandates.  I am sure that the media missed that Health Department protocol.  I really wish that she had done it next door at American Coney Island, because I don’t go there, because they serve salads along with Coney Islands. 

We went to one of our favorite haunts near our home that we have been going to almost from the time that they opened and that I have written about over the years.  We went to Rocky’s in Northville, that is off the beaten track and it looks like a structure that should be found in Northern Michigan with its rustic appearance.  Rocky is one of the surviving members of the great chefs in Detroit that studied under Milos at the old Golden Mushroom, and most of those chefs have died or retired, but Rocky’s still maintains the quality from Day One.  It did seem odd to be seated at tables that had no linens, but I guess that is a small price for dining out.  The menu was the same, but it was printed on paper, instead of a cardstock, which was no big deal.  We both knew that we wanted the Black Bean Soup and it had been so long, we had both forgotten to request that we didn’t want the dollop of Sour Cream, but we lived, I mixed it in and my Bride scraped it off the top of the soup.  To this day, I have never had a better bowl of soup compared to Rocky’s.  My Bride had the Great Lakes Broiled Whitefish with Rice Pilaf and Asparagus; she claims that she never sees Whitefish at the market, which is why she always seems to gravitate towards it as an entrée.  I also went with a dish that we don’t have at home, and I think it is just because it requires all day to make it, and that is a Half Slab of Baby Back Ribs and Four Jumbo Battered Dip Shrimp with Mashed Potatoes and Grilled Corn on the Cob.  It has been ages since I have had Shrimp prepared like that, I guess because my Bride has me eating healthier, though my figure belies that fact.   The food was so rich, and so delicious that we both had to ask for a doggie bag, because it had been so long since we have eaten food so rich, we couldn’t handle it all in one sitting.  I joked that I guess we have become Senior Citizens and we passed on dessert. 

As for the wine, we have been opening some great forgotten bottles of wine from the cellar, that I had to think about what we were going to order.  We had a bottle of Sonoma-Cutrer Russian River Ranches Chardonnay Sonoma County 2017. This a far and away better than what is normally offered in most restaurants for a basic Chardonnay, but it is not the House Chardonnay.  Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards was founded in 1973 by Brice Cutrer Jones and the main estate vineyard is two-hundred-fifty acres planted with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  They have several other vineyards in the Sonoma region and they produce five different Chardonnay and four different Pinot Noir wines, all in the Continental style.  This particular wine is a blend of maybe a dozen different vineyards.  The wine is pressed whole-cluster and the juice is free-run and stored in a tank for a few days, before being aged in either new French Oak and neutral French Oak sur-lie and Stainless Steel for the balance; and aged for eight months.  We are partial to this wine and this vintage offered aromas of pear and apple, with some balanced acidity and a nice finish mixing in some smooth buttery notes without being overpowering.  As we were half-way home, when we realized that we should have probably ordered a couple bowls of the Black Bean Soup to go for when we had the leftovers, oh well, we have to get used to dining out again. 

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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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