Monthly Archives: July 2012

99 Bollinger Grande Année Rosé, one of the best wines we’ve had this year

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I really enjoyed Eric the Red’s article this week in The New York Times, “Weighing the Importance of Setting a Date (Champagne disgorgement dates provoke debate).”

It brought to mind a wine that Tracie P and I shared earlier this year, a baby gift from one of my best friends, and a wine that made me question the wisdom of Alfonso’s excellent post today on “The Ultimate Wine,” in other words, as Alfonso put it, That by which you can taste, but that which you can never taste.

The 1999 Bollinger Grande Année Rosé was simply one of the best wines we’ve ever shared together… pretty much as close to an “ultimate” wine as you can get…

BTW, if you’ve never heard the song that Céline and I wrote and recorded about Bollinger, here’s a link to listen. It’s from our album Ménagerie (Aeronaut 2009).

Perhaps only in Barbaresco have I encountered this wine’s ineffable, sublime balance of power and lightness (the “unbearable lightness,” I like to call it). But where Barbaresco tends toward earth and truffle, great Champagne like this bottling evokes salinity and the sea.

Of course, Tracie P and I shared with our sommelier (Mark Sayre, who generously allows us to bring special bottles into Trio at the Four Seasons and who expertly serves them to us). And he, too, was stunned by the elegance, focus, and precision of this nearly perfectly formed bottle.

I write nearly because as Alfonso rightly points out in his superb post today, the ultimate wine cannot and does not exist — even if for a brief fleeting instant, Tracie P and I, had a glimpse of it.

Thanks again, MAS, for the wine! And buon weekend, yall!

plum crazy

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Georgia P is plum crazy about plums…

Can you blame me for being proud? ;)

Tracie P has been chronicling Georgia P’s baby-led weaning here.

Crisis in Hermitage,12.5% Napa Cab, and 5 reds to chill (@EatingOurWords)

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From the department of “the vinous is political”…

One of my favorite wine bloggers, Jim of Jim’s Loire, let me use the awesome photo above today for my post over at the Houston Press.

His blog is my go-to when it comes to info on Loire Valley wines but today he’s trying to raise awareness of a crisis that’s emerging in the Rhône: “Hermitage threatened by pylon lunacy.”

I’ve reposted the link here in the hope that other bloggers will repost it as well. As he wrote me in an email this morning, “What an insane idea it is to build an 18 metre transmitter on Hermitage!”

In other news…

I loved this post by my favorite Napa blogger Vinogirl, who reports tasting notes for a 1979 Louis Martini Sonoma Cabernet Sauvignon and a great backgrounder on Martini the winemaker. Really cool stuff, Vinogirl!

12.5% alcohol! If only they’d make wines like that again in Napa!

In other other news…

Here’s my post on Top 5 Red Wines to Serve Chilled in Summer for the Houston Press.

Georgia P’s first pasta!

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Tracie P has been chronicling our “baby-led weaning” here and it’s been a lot of fun: twice a day, Georgia P sits in her high chair and we offer her different foods to eat. She loves yogurt (with blueberries), her mango phase is already over, avocados are still in, steak is king and chicken is fun, too, and she even likes baba ghanoush!

But you can imagine the anticipation — for two food lovers and Italophiles — on the evening and occasion of her first pasta (above).

Tracie P had picked organic wholewheat fusilli at Central Market (our local crunchy-feely gourmet store) and I made a summer pomodoro using tomatoes, onion, and garlic from our community-supported-agriculture farmer at Tecolote Farm (who delivers a basket of fresh produce each week).

I only lightly salted the sauce and the pasta cooking water (because salt is a concern) and of course, I overcooked the pasta (so it would be mushy enough) and I let it cool before we served it to her.

She seemed to like it and ate maybe three or four fusilli before she lost interest.

It wasn’t the first time she ate something that I had prepared (she DEVOURED thinly sliced steak I had grilled for her the other day). But, man, what an emotion to feed Georgia P pasta for the first time!

Thanks for letting me share…

A wine for fried okra, east-Texas style!

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My post today for the Houston Press…

Even in East Texas, where fried okra is to the culinary landscape what George the Gator is to Peggy’s on the Bayou, people simply can’t tell you what okra tastes like.

My wife Tracie P, an accomplished gastronome and native of Orange, Texas (where she grew up frying her okra in Nanna’s cast-iron skillet), is hard-pressed to describe the mallow’s sensorial virtues.

“It just takes like okra,” she’ll say. “It tastes slimy.”

And therein lies the rub: More often than not, when people describe the flavor of okra they actually refer to its texture (and in doing so, they employ a literary device known as synaesthesia, whereby we use one sense to describe another; but that’s another story for another day).

I didn’t grow up eating okra, but I’ve certainly had my share since moving to Texas nearly four years ago to be with Tracie P.

On my palate, it has a certain spiciness, more gentle but reminiscent of jalapeño and mint, and, of course, its unctuous texture is a unique experience in the gastronomic spectrum.

Okra’s in season right now and we’ve been receiving a heaping helping each week with our weekly CSA delivery. So, what wine to pair with okra (which is rigorously fried at our house)?

Click here to continue reading…

A Michelin guide for Houston? @TonyVallone @TerraUomoCielo

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Photo via Spread Some Awesome.

When I took Giovanni to eat at Tony’s last week, he turned to me mid-meal and asked discreetly, “how many stars does Tony have in the Michelin guide?”

When I explained to him that Michelin doesn’t have a guide for Houston (or Texas for that matter), he was genuinely surprised.

Today I posted my translation of his post on our lunch at Tony’s on Tony’s website (for the original in Italian click here).

In it, he makes his case for why Michelin should come to Texas and it’s a lot of fun to read his impressions of fine dining in the U.S.

Here’s the link.

Revisiting my research on Vinsanto (Greek) vs. Vin Santo (Italian)

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I’m taking a break from blogging for the next couple of days and so I thought I’d revisit my research on the etymologies of the enonyms Vinsanto (Greek) and Vin Santo (Italian) and their philological relationship (for anyone who missed it the first time around or for anyone who’s only recently started following here).

Here’s a link to the thread.

Happy reading, everyone! I hope you drink something great for the holiday and have a safe and fun Fourth of July!

a boysenberry jam frat party shit storm

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Above: I included the Copain Pinot Noir Tous Ensembles in my recommendations for the Houston Press today. The alcohol content — 12.9% (YES!) — is reported in lettering so small and faint that you’d think the winemaker was embarrassed by it.

I never thought in a million years that I’d find myself writing regularly about American wines.

But then again, I never imagined in a million years that I’d have an editor that would allow me to write things like “a boysenberry jam frat party shit storm” (thank you, Cathy! you rock!).

I didn’t write the line in reference to the Copain Pinot Noir (above). It was inspired by a sales rep that tried to hard sell a wine to Darrell Corti one day when I was visiting him in his store (Darrell is one of the people in the world I admire most and whose friendship I cherish most dearly).

When Darrell courteously asked the gentleman to leave the bottle for his weekly staff tasting, he responded saying, “you’ve got to taste this wine: it tastes like boysenberry jam!” After he left, Darrell showed me the label, pointing to the 16 percent alcohol. He just shook his head, as if to say they’ll never learn.

A few months later (I was in Sacramento on that occasion making a record at The Hangar), the earth-shaking story about Darrell prohibiting 14.5 percent Zinfandel broke in the blogosphere.

The editors at the Houston Press have been very supportive in my efforts to write about American wines with candor and honesty and in keeping with my steadfast belief that wines with high acidity, low alcohol, and wholesome (as opposed to chemically manipulated) flavors and aromas are the key to healthy and happy enjoyment of wine (and good pooping)… And while I can’t say that Tracie P and I serve the wines regularly in our home (where Italian prevails, pervades, and precludes, and French and Natural Californian appear more than occasionally), I can say that I only review wines that I’ve actually tasted and wines that I genuinely respect (and of course, I’m limited to wines that are available in the Houston market).

Click here for my “Top 5 All-American Red” recommendations today in the Houston Press.

Merle Haggard, “Back to Earth”

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Tracie P and I splurged on Friday night and treated ourselves to seventh row seats at the Merle Haggard show at the (bring your own booze ’cause they ain’t got none) River Bend Auditorium (and erstwhile church) in Austin.

We first saw him together in 2009 and the show brought back lots of memories of when I first moved to Austin and our hearts were brimming with dreams of building a financial future for ourselves and having a family (Friday was the first time we had a sitter!).

It was great to hear Merle play the hits and tell the stories again… But the song that moved me the most wasn’t one of his. It was Willie Nelson’s “Back to Earth.”

I found the clip below from a Ryman Auditorium (I don’t need to tell you where that is) performance from 2008.

It’s really a song about love lost… But it’s also about enduring, true love… It’s been nearly four years since I first came to Austin from California and I know that our song will never have a final verse… I wouldn’t trade these last four years of my life for anything in the world.

Songs our love created I still sing
Love we knew still makes the rafters ring
Tonight I’ll sing for everything I’m worth
For all the hearts that have settled back to earth

Our song will never have a final verse
Our hearts just finally settled back to earth