Above: Andy Warhol at JG Melon. Campbell’s is the secret ingredient.
Snapped this pic late last night at JG Melon, the classic Upper East Side haunt, famous for its burgers and Bloody Marys. The bartender explained that the beef broth is used in Bull Shots and Bloody Bulls — variations on the Bloody Mary.
JG Melon
1291 Third Ave.
at 74th St.
New York, NY 10021
212-744-0585
Above: the upstairs bar at Accademia di [sic] Vino. “Talk to my agent before you take another one,” snapped the bartender after I snapped this pic. “Don’t quit your day job,” I thought to myself.
It is my steadfast conviction that food and wine professionals have a responsibility to divulge and disseminate correct information. Just as practitioners of medicine take the Hippocratic oath, practitioners of the culinary arts enter into a social contract with restaurant-goers, a Gastereic vow, if you will, whereby they swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth (to borrow from Brillat-Savarin’s tenth muse, Gasterea).*
And while none of us are perfect and we all make mistakes (myself included), egregious transgressions of this unspoken pact are committed freely on a nearly daily basis by insouciant restaurant owners, chefs, sommeliers, maîtres d’hotel, and waiters.
The Accademia di [sic] Vino in Manhattan seems to bill itself as a would-be “Italian Wine Academy” (at least that’s what I’ve read in The New York Times. I can’t seem to find the academy’s website). Evidently, they offer wine classes and seminars there and the space itself is dressed as a classroom: the walls of this beautiful restaurant are adorned with wine-related images and their Italian translations and there are chalkboards in the bar and the dining rooms with explanations of the Italian appellation laws etc.
There’s only one problem (two, actually): the name of the restaurant. In Italian you don’t write/say “accademia di vino.” You correctly write/say “accademia del vino.”
And it gets worse. Last night, when I sat down for a glass of wine with a colleague in the downstairs bar, I was handed a wine list that read: “vini a bicchiere.” I hate to be a stickler but… in Italian you correctly write/say “vini al bicchiere” (“wines by the glass”).**
It reminds me of a joke from the 1999 parodic mafia movie, Mickey Blue Eyes, where Hugh Grant’s character points out to his fiancée that her father’s restaurant is called “The La Trattoria,” or “The the trattoria.”
Although our hosts were exceedingly gracious (and the overwhelmingly gorgeous space was jam-packed with patrons), I’m sorry to report that the diced prosciutto on our grilled, “seasonal” pumpkin pizza was so hard I thought I was biting into stone.
The wines-by-the-glass list offered a wide range of price points and I had a glass of Inzolia by Valle dell’Acate and my friend a glass of Pinot Bianco by Hofstätter and the pours were generous, I must say.
The Accademia had been on my list of new places to try for a while. But when I got off the 6 train at Hunter College and walked down to 3rd Ave. and 64th St., I just couldn’t believe my eyes when my gaze fell upon the restaurant’s marquee: ACCADEMIA DI VINO.
Ask me “what’s in a name?” and I will tell you that a “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”***
But “Accademia di Vino”? Give me a break.
—
Notes:
* Brillat-Savarin’s “tenth muse,” Gasterea, first appeared in 1825 with the publication of his Physiologie du Goût, ou Méditations de Gastronomie Transcendante (The Physiology of Taste; Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy):
“Gasterea is the Tenth Muse; the delights of taste are her domain.
The whole world would be hers if she wishes to claim it; for the world is nothing without life, and all that lives takes nourishment.
Her chief delight is to linger on hillsides where the vine grows, or the fragrant orange-tree in groves where the truffle comes to perfection, and in regions abounding in game and fruit.
When she deigns to show herself, she appears in the guise of a young girl; round her waist is a flame-coloured girdle; her hair is black, her eyes sky-blue, and her figure full of grace; as beautiful as Venus, she is also extremely pretty.
She rarely shows herself to mortals.”
Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme, The Physiology of Taste, translated by Anne Drayton, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, Penguin, 1994 (1970), p. 287.
** del and al are articulated prepositions, di + il and a + il, respectively. The usage of articulated prepositions is always tough for students of Italian (I remember well from my days teaching Italian language at UCLA). In many cases, usage is idiomatic. In the instances cited above, however, the definite article is necessary because the terms vino and bicchiere refer to wine and stemware as general concepts.
*** Gertrude Stein, Sacred Emily, 1913.
Sunday evening, I finally made it to Momofuku Ssäm Bar in the East Village. I’d been inspired by two of my favorite bloggers. Winnie, a great food writer and friend, is an expert on all things pork in NYC and she has often remarked that Momofuku is one of her favorite places (I love the motto of her blog, ad astra per alia porci). The other is Lyle Fass, whom I really only know through the blogosphere and a few emails we’ve traded but whose wine knowledge I really admire and whose sometimes stinging straightforwardness and genuine humor I greatly appreciate.
I’d learned that Momofuku allows corkage (thanks to Lyle’s blog), and so Winnie and I made a plan to meet there, me with a bottle of 2003 Trebbiano d’Abruzzo by Edoardo Valentini in hand.
Above: spicy squid salad and Trebbiano d’Abruzzo… the wine held up well with the spiciness and intense flavors of the dishes we ordered.
Menu as follows (I asked Winnie to order):
steamed buns stuffed with pork belly
these were great, the buns warm and puffy, the hot pork fat melt-in-your-mouth gelatinous…
spicy squid salad
this was also very good, and, if I recall correctly, there was also some tasty baby octopus in this dish…
Mutsu and Macoun apple kimchi with crispy pork jowl and arugula
here we began to veer slightly into NYC too-precious foodland… the dish wasn’t exactly unforgettable and Winnie explained “kimchi” was a little bit of a misnomer since the apples weren’t really fermented…
báhn mì
from what I could glean, this is the classic Vietnamese sandwich and it was fantastic… highly recommended… it was billed as a “three terrine sandwich”… I’m not sure of all the ingredients but this is rightly one of the joint’s signature dishes…
chicken ballotine
underwhelming, flavorless, and hard to eat with chopsticks!
spicy honeycomb tripe with poached egg and frisée
I loved this dish and its harmony of flavors and textures — caramelized tripe, poached egg, and the crisp bitter frisée lettuce — came together gloriously…
Above: seems that tattoos are not required but encouraged for staff at Momofuku.
Our servers were polite and attentive and all sported impressive tattoos and piercings. The decor is modern downtown chic and the atmosphere is New York hip.
I’ve read on Lyle’s blog that he has opened old Nebbiolo there (even some 1950s Oddero). I’m not sure that I would go that route at Momofuku since the cuisine is so spicy and the stemware is cheap (the glasses arrived at our table warm, right out of the dishwasher).
If you’ve ever had Valentini’s Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, you know that this is no ordinary white wine. Its rich mouthfeel, its subtle tannin (yes, in a white wine), and its intense aroma and flavors sang out over the medley of ingredients that tap-danced their way to our table. Winnie said it was probably the best white wine she’d ever tasted and I believed her… it’s certainly one of the best I’ve ever had.
When we stepped out on to Second Ave., we were both surprised by how cold it is already (or suddenly) in NYC. Fall has finally arrived. Me? I’m California dreaming right now.
*****
I’d be safe and warm
if I were in L.A.
— The Mamas and the Papas
sento solo freddo
sento tanto freddo
fuori e dentro me
fuori e dentro me
ti sogno California
sogno California
e un giorno io verrò
— Mogol
Nous Non Plus has been back in town for the College Music Journal festival and the sexy sixsome played three shows (a showcase and a couple of parties). And we’ll be playing a Halloween show at Rubulad (undisclosed location in Brooklyn) on Friday.
Above: Our track “Lawnmower Boy” was just used in a TV commercial in Slovenia. The spot is a lot of fun…
In other news, bassist and singer Jean-Luc Retard (aka Bjorn Turoque) and our track “Château,” a song about the Château Marmont in Los Angeles, were recently featured in The Los Angeles Times (click to read).
Last night we took time out to enjoy steak and wine chez Céline. Our friend Patrick Woodcock, a former member of the French band Air and the founder of Mellow, was in town. Patrick is always very generous with us when we play in Paris, giving us a hand with gear and transportation, etc. We always try to do something special together when he’s in NYC (and he loves steak and red wine).
Above: Jean-Luc was in charge of searing the shell steaks. Like Patrick, the band likes its steak rare (although Bonnie Day is vegetarian).
Since my living situation changed this summer and I no longer have anywhere to store my wine, there’s really nothing left to say or do but to drink the wine.
We opened two bottles of one of my favorites, 2001 Barbaresco by Produttori del Barbaresco. This wine has many years ahead of it but was drinking great nonetheless. As Patrick noted, this very traditionally made wine had a wonderful “chewy” mouthfeel and its tannins cut right through the nicely marbled fat of the shell steaks. As go I through the “cellar” (essentially a bunch of cardboard boxes), I’ve stumbled across a few surprises, like the 2002 Giusto dei Notri by Tua Rita above. I know that Patrick likes wines from Bordeaux and everyone enjoyed this opulent Bordeaux-style Cabernet and Merlot blend from Bolgheri (Tuscany).
With all this recent talk of oak vs. no oak, I thought it only right and fair to open this modern-style bottle and reflect on the dialectic from the other side of the table, so to speak. Of the many famous Bolgheri producers, Tua Rita and Grattamacco seem more reserved in their style. I’ve met Rita at Vinitaly… she’s a nice lady.
Above: Céline and Patrick on Céline’s terrace.
The tannin and the wood on the Tua Rita weren’t entirely “integrated,” but I liked the goudron, tar notes on the nose. However you feel about oak and/or international grape varieties grown in Italy, no one can deny that Tua Rita’s wines are very well made. It’s only a pity it couldn’t have laid there forgotten for another 5-10 years in the back of the closet where I used to store my wines. But then again, there seem to be no certainties in life these days and while some people might advise carpe diem, my thought is aperi amphoras vini.
Above: you wouldn’t think it but Céline is an excellent cook and made fantastic mashed potatoes, roast carrots, and wilted spinach.
In other news, the fires in California continue to burn out of control. My family is fine but the air quality is getting really bad. My brother Tad and his wife Diane have been housing some evacuees and it’s still not clear whether or not my friend Charlie lost his house. I found this map, updated regularly, of the fires and evacuation sites.
A few days ago, I was inspired to translate a few passages from Luigi Veronelli’s Catalogo dei vini d’Italia after I read a piece by Eric Asimov in The New York Times about misconceptions in the world of wine. His observation that “oaky is bad but oak is good” made me reflect on my immovable opposition to barrique (i.e., the aging of wine in small, new oak barrels). As Eric pointed out rightly in his post yesterday, the introduction of barrique in Italy was one element in the modernization of Italy’s wine industry and it needs to be viewed in the historical context of the evolution of Italian winemaking.
Eric also had kind — too generous, really — words about my blog. Check out his post to see what he said.
Toward the end of his post, he mentions one of his (and one of my) favorite traditionalist winemakers, Il Poggione, a producer of Rosso di Montalcino and Brunello di Montalcino in Sant’Angelo in Colle, in the province of Montalcino (they also make excellent olive oil).
Above: Sant’Angelo in Colle as seen from above (in colle means literally “on the hill”). Il Poggione and its vineyards lie at the highest point of the appellation in and around the town.
I’ve tasted Il Poggione’s wines going back to the 1970s and one of the best bottles of wine I’ve ever had was a 1978 Rosso di Montalcino (yes, a Rosso) on a freezing night in January with winemaker Fabrizio Bindocci and his son Alessandro. I’ll never forget that dinner. We had taken the bottles from Il Poggione’s cellar and walked across the square to the Trattoria il Pozzo.** It was so cold that Fabrizio put the wines on the mantle of the fireplace to bring the wine to room temperature. We also drank an excellent 1985 Brunello Riserva that night with our bistecca alla fiorentina (the Tuscan porterhouse), always served al sangue (blood rare).
Il Poggione is one of the original three producers of Brunello and was already making wine when Biondi Santi created the appellation in the late nineteenth century.
To this day, winemaker Fabrizio refuses to barrique his Brunello, nor will he pull out his olive groves and replant with vines (he could make the winery’s owner more money if he were to do so). He believes in “promiscuous” farming (where olive groves, fallow fields, and vineyards all lie side-by-side) and allows game to forage on the estate. “That’s part of the terroir,” he once told me, “that’s part of what makes the wine Brunello di Montalcino.”
Like Biondi Santi (the originator of the appellation and undeniably its greatest producer), Il Poggione only uses grapes grown at 400 meters asl and above (note the panorama in the image above). As Franco Biondi Santi has pointed on numerous occasions (Eric did a great piece on this last year in The New York Times), the Brunelllo or Sangiovese Grosso grape (a clone of Sangiovese) needs the altitude and its cooler nights to achieve its aging potential (the grapes are cooled in the evening and thus ripen more slowly).
Thank goodness for winemakers like Fabrizio who continue to make traditional wines while other labels (some of them at the bottom of the hill) produce the barriqued, block-buster wines that the ratings-based publications seem to prefer. As Eric points out rightly, there is a place under the sun for both styles.
*αγορά or agora, in ancient Greece, an open space (usually the public market) that served as a meeting ground.
**IL POZZO
Trattoria
a Montalcino (SI)
fraz. Sant’Angelo in Colle – piazza del Pozzo, 2
Tel. 0577/844015
Having grown up and come of age in southern California, I have had the opportunity to experience some of the best “sushi” and Japanese cuisine in the country. During the 1990s when I was a graduate student at U.C.L.A. (and when the sushi craze was rippling through the U.S.A., with its epicenter in Los Angeles), I was fortunate enough to dine at the now legendary Katsu (first in Los Feliz and then in Beverly Hills), opened by Katsu Michite who now works in Studio City at my fav LA sushi place, Tama Sushi (no website, unfortunately, see info below).* Then came Hirozen (in an unassuming strip-mall, still fantastic, a must), R23 (downtown, disappointing the last two times I visited), and one of the most beautiful restaurants I’ve ever eaten in, Thousand Cranes, which is supposedly returning to its former glory (the traditional Japanese breakfast there is worth a visit if you’re staying downtown).
Down in San Diego, where I grew up, Zenbu can be a lot of fun. So crowded and popular (and expensive) these days, it has its ups and downs but I still love their “aggressive” dishes like live prawns and giant clams (and by live, I mean literally). I also like the colorful cocktail menu inspired by local surf spots and surf lore. The lounge is very hip there and one of my best friends, Irwin, performs electronica there on some nights. The restaurant’s owned by another of my high-school friends, Matt Rimel, a huntsman and fisherman, whose fishing crew provides nearly all of the fish, working with eco-friendly and dolphin-safe fishing techniques.
Above: I felt like I was a tourist in my own city when I asked our sushi chef Mano, at Sushi Ann, NYC, to pose for a picture (with a beer we bought him in gratitude).
I had always found NYC sushi disappointing, even though I’d been treated to some of the finer and pricier venues in town. But now I have seen a new dawn on my NYC sushi horizon at the wonderful and very reasonably priced Sushi Ann.
The Odd Couple — that’s me (Felix) and Greg (Oscar) — dined there last night on the recommendation of friend and colleague, top NYC Italian restaurateur and wine maven, Nicola Marzovilla (who owns I Trulli and Centovini). We asked our chef to prepare whatever he liked — really, the way to go at the sushi bar — and we were delighted with each serving. The fish was fresh and he avoided the sushi stereotypes. One sashimi dish was tuna belly cubed (not sliced) and drowned in a miso reduction sauce (sinfully good). Mano, our chef, also liked to counterpose bitter and sweet, as he did in some rolls, which he served together, the one made with Japanese basil and pickled radish, the other with scallion.
Above: Mano offered me a leaf of Japanese basil, sweeter than the western variety.
Most of the fish seemed to be flown in from Japan (Japanese Red Snapper, Japanese Mackerel, etc.) and tasted fresh (didn’t have that freeze-dried taste that find in so many of the Lower East Side sushi joints). The restaurant was very clean (important for sushi restaurants, in my opinion) and the waitstaff polite and attentive.
Above: skewered octopus tentacles, raw but seared with a torch.
One of my favorite dishes was the seared octopus tentacles, dressed with just a little bit of lemon juice.
Greg drank a cold, unfiltered sake (which was a little too sweet for my taste, although our waiter said it’s very popular in Japan) and I stuck to beer. I’m sure we could have spent a lot more had we indulged in a bottle of fine sake — the list was alluring but it wasn’t the night for that. Our bill was very reasonable for an excellent experience in a high-end midtown neighborhood (51st between Park and Madison).
After ten years in this town (I got here in 1997), I finally found a great sushi restaurant. Who knows? After the recent crazy changes in my life, maybe I should stick around after all.**
—
*Tama Sushi
11920 Ventura Blvd
Studio City, CA 91604
(818) 760-4585
**So all you newsy people, spread the news around,
You c’n listen to m’ story, listen to m’ song.
You c’n step on my name, you c’n try ‘n’ get me beat,
When I leave New York, I’ll be standin’ on my feet.
And it’s hard times in the city,
Livin’ down in New York town.
— Bob Dylan
The rain has finally started to fall in NYC and the city has turned grey as it does every year around this time. My heart is heavy and my life unsettled but I am trying to pick up the pieces in the wake of this summer’s tsunami.*
Friends have been reaching out, lending support, sometimes with an email letting me know that they think of me, sometimes with an invitation to dinner and/or a bottle of wine, checking in and catching up.
Ben Shapiro — an old buddy, a great drummer, and radio producer, cinematographer, and journalist — wrote me the other day and we made a date to check out one of the many new downtown places.
I wasn’t inclined to like Gemma. I figured it would be another Da Silvano, Morandi, etc. rip-off, yet another Disneylandish, faux trattoria. And frankly, The New York Times food critic Frank Bruni wasn’t too off the mark when he wrote that Gemma is “a cheat sheet of a restaurant whose proprietors take fewer risks than a hurricane-insurance agent in Nebraska.”
Above, you’ve seen it before: faux trattoria chic. It’s like dining in Fantasyland… Europe via Anaheim.
So, when I arrived (shortly before Ben), and sat at the bar where I chatted briefly with NYC restaurateur Chris Cannon (my only pseudo-star siting), I decided to get right down to business.
“Do you have any white wine that doesn’t see new wood?” I asked the bartender. And I was pleasantly surprised when he said, “Yes, of course, I’ve got a beautiful stainless-steel Sauvignon.”
He proceeded to pour a fresh and delightful 2006 Sauvignon Blanc by Poggio Salvi (who makes both barriqued and traditional wines, btw). You don’t commonly find bartenders with such wine knowledge in places like this, let alone someone who can appreciate that there are those of us who don’t like oaked wine. (In his column this week, The New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov pointed out rightly that “Oaky may be bad, but oak is good.” I may have tempered that by saying “but oak can be good.” Nonetheless, I was glad to see such a widely read authority like Eric tackle such a sticky subject.)
Ben arrived and we decided to let our bartender order for us: excellent Quattro Stagioni pizzas and a simply gorgeous bottle of 1999 Brunello di Montalcino by La Torre, a winemaker you don’t see very often in the U.S. (I remember it from my days in Bagno Vignoni where I first learned about Brunello nearly twenty years ago with my friends, the Marcucci brothers). Traditional in style, this wine had natural fruit on the nose and in the mouth, bright acidity and tannins that probably could have used a few more years in bottle. Case, our bartender, insisted on decanting the wine for us and the aeration helped it to open up.
Above: the Quattro Stagioni pizza at Gemma, I have to say, was among the most authentic Italian pizza I’ve had in NYC. The crust was light but crispy and firm, the topping savory but not overly salty.
Truth be told, the list at Gemma isn’t exactly overflowing with wines that I like (at the end of the night, one of the sommeliers poured us a barriqued Aglianico del Vulture that tasted like industrial coffee syrup). But there are some true gems at Gemma, like a 2006 Verdicchio dei Castelli di Iesi by Villa Bucci (one of my all-time favs).
But what made the night was a great bartender, who knew his stuff and who understood my palate from the moment I sat down. Maybe Frank should have eaten at the bar.
Above: Case Newcomb, a great bartender and this man’s best friend at Gemma. Pour me some Brunello and I’ll tell you some lies.
*This old earthquake’s gonna leave me in the poor house.
It seems like this whole town’s insane.
— Gram Parsons
New York is one of the great restaurant cities of the world. So many restaurants and wine bars open and close so quickly in this town, that it’s often hard to keep track. And while there is a lot of great food here, there’s plenty of bad to go around as well. I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands lately and no kitchen to cook in, so I’ve taken the opportunity to try some new — well, new for me — places.
Above: the only thing I liked about Quality Meats was a few interesting wines on the list, including this Caillou Blanc 2004 Château Talbot.
A few nights ago, Greg and I — we’re both steak lovers — dined at Quality Meats, a recent addition to the Smith & Wollensky mediocrity group. The decor was kinda cool: the restaurant is dressed as a old-school meat locker, with hooks on the ceiling etc.
Our gracious waiter — who later abandoned us when the restaurant got busy — recommended that we not order the rib steak for two (“it can be too fatty,” she said) and so we both ordered the sirloin, bone in, black and blue. Greg’s came so charred that he said it tasted like charcoal. Mine was medium rare and not charred at all on the outside. We also both ordered Caesar salads: the dressing was insipid (“no anchovy,” our waiter said) and the croutons store-bought.
While the wine list was laden with the classic, over-priced, over-oaked, and overblown “Napa Cabs,” there were a few interesting wines like Sinskey, Olga Raffault (we drank the 2002 Les Picasses at a really great price), and a wine I’d never had, Caillou Blanc 2004 Château Talbot, a white made from Sauvignon and Sémillon. You rarely see white Bordeaux in NYC and Greg and I immensely enjoyed this dry, structured wine.
Above: the chef at Centro Vinoteca needs some Italian lessons.
Another recent outing took me to the very new Centro Vinoteca in the Village to meet a good friend of a friend, Ariel, who has just joined the ranks of us wine professionals. I really wanted to like Centro Vinoteca: the list is all Italian and has some great stuff, including a Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico Superiore Vigna delle Oche 2002 San Lorenzo that was fantastic. I got there early (about 5:50 p.m.) and the place was empty and I sat at the bar. My waiter was knowledgeable and skilled and was happy to open a new bottle for me when I told him the wine he had poured — open from the night before — was dead. They serve wines by the quartino there and the prices are very reasonable for the quality (“wine by the quartino,” equivalent to roughly 2.5 glasses depending on how you pour, is a Batali-Bastianich affectation, but more on that below).
But by the time Ariel arrived, about 20 minutes later, the place was packed, we lost our good waiter, and our new waiter simply didn’t know how to open a bottle of wine. Ariel wanted to try the Verdicchio and so our new waiter opened it by swirling the bottle around to rip the capsule off; she inserted the worm incorrectly and broke the cork as she pulled it out; and then — to my disbelief — she inserted the worm again, put the bottle between her knees (!!!), and ripped the cork out. After Ariel tasted the wine and opted instead for a Falanghina, the waiter poured the Falanghina into the Verdicchio glass. Oy…
Trying to move past this mishap, we did order a few things from the menu. The arancine (above) turned out not to be arancine but just simple fried rice balls dusted with some grated pecorino. Throughout Italy, arancini (masc.) are fried rice balls stuffed with meat, cheese, and/or peas. A classic Sicilian dish, the are called arancine (fem.) in Palermo and Western Sicily, arancini (masc.) in eastern Sicily and the rest of Italy.
We also ordered — partly because it seemed so preposterous — the mortadella pate [sic]. I guess the person who types up their menus doesn’t know how to use diacritics. This dish consisted of ground mortadella. I know that mortadella is “in” these days but why ruin it by destroying its texture?
My first waiter, whom I liked, mentioned that the chef at Centro Vinoteca had been Mario Batali’s sous chef on the Iron Chef TV show. Evidently she learned a lot from Molto “make-it-up-as-you-go-along-and-then-claim-it’s-authentic-Italian-food” Mario. The so-called quartino is another Batali-Bastianich affectation that you never see in Italy. It’s really too bad… I really wanted to like Centro Vinoteca. The wine list there is interesting but the service and the affectation just ruined it for me.
Above, an odd couple, styrofoam and crystal stemware: Produttori del Barbaresco 1996 Barbaresco Pora (Cru) paired with bbq ribs from Dinosaur (take-out from Harlem).
Life has always been full of surprises — some good, some not so good — and I am still coming to terms with the recent changes in my life. Frankly, it’s not been easy. Luckily and thankfully, I have been offered a place to stay through the end of the year by my good friend and bandmate Greg Wawro, who is not only the drummer in my band Nous Non Plus (codename = Prof. Harry Covert) but is also a distinguished professor of Political Science at Columbia University.
Greg is a true gourmand and cheese connoisseur. Over the years, on the road and in the apartment where I used to stay, we have enjoyed many a great meal together and many a great bottle of wine. On the occasion of my first night at his apartment, he ordered ribs from one of his favorite barbeque restaurants, not far from his place near Columbia University, Dinosaur BAR B QUE.
A few months ago, when I had to scramble to find a place to live, Greg generously let me store my wine library at his apartment. While Lambrusco would have been my wine of choice to pair with bbq ribs (which were pretty darn good, btw), the closest bottle at hand was a Barbaresco Pora 1996 Produttori del Barbaresco, one of my favorite crus (single-vineyard wines) from one of my all-time favorite producers. Bottlings from the legendary 1996 vintage in Langhe (Piedmont) will probably drink at their best in another 10-20 years but this bottle drank superbly nonetheless (however oddly paired). The fruit and acidity were vibrant, the tar and rose petal flavors rich, and a few more years in bottle would have softened the tannins, which were still very pronounced.
Of all the Produttori del Barbaresco Crus, Pora tends to be the “softest” and it “evolves” more quickly than the others (Asili is perhaps the most coveted and long-lived).
Here’s what Produttori’s winemaker Aldo Vacca has to say:
“PORA: The Dolce Vita Wine. The sandier soil gives to the Pora wine a smoother character, tannins are soft and the aromas always tend to evolve a little faster. This vineyard shows a more exotic character, sometime earthier, than others; it has a ‘lay back’ attitude and it makes me feel like I want to sip it resting in my comfortable armchair, eating pieces of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, watching an old Fellini movie.”
Although the tanginess of the sauce on the ribs wasn’t the ideal pairing, the wine drank beautifully and opened up nicely, the tannins mellowing by the time we poured the last glass.
Life has thrown me some truly “odd” curveballs over the last few months and so an “odd couple” of Barbaresco and BBQ didn’t seem so strange.
On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. (Unger’s unseen wife slams door. She reopens it and angrily hands Felix his saucepan) That request came from his wife…
Addendum: please look for another post of the “Lice of Wine Writing” coming early next week.
There are wine writers and then there are wine writers. Friday night found me at an undisclosed location dining with the lovely and immensely charming Leslie Sbrocco, whose entirely novel approach to wine writing and tasting has made her one of the most popular wine personalities in the U.S. today (not to mention the fact that she’s simply a lot of fun to be around).
Leslie launched her wine-writing career with a book written expressly for women, the aptly titled Wine for Women, and has written for countless newspapers, magazines, etc.
What I like about her approach to wine is that she avoids the canonical wine descriptors and encourages her readers and audience to draw from their own personal experiences to describe the wines that they are tasting.
The celebrated twentieth-century Italian poet Eugenio Montale once wrote famously — or at least this quote has been attributed to him — “i pronomi sono i pidocchi della poesia,” “pronouns are the lice of poetry.”
ERRATA CORRIGE: Montale did not write “pronouns are the lice of poetry.” (I realized my graduate-school-days memory was a little rusty so I did some snooping around until I found the correct attribution.) In fact, twentieth-century Italian novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda wrote: “Pronouns! They’re the lice of thought. When a thought has lice, it scratches, like everyone who has lice… and they get in the fingernails, then… you find pronouns, the personal pronouns.”*
To borrow [Gadda’s] phrase, affected tasting notes are the lice of wine writing and tasting.
Here’s a great example, drawn from the website of a restaurant in Boston:
“2003 (Oregon) Chardonnay, Willamette Valley, Clos du Soleil, Domaine Serene ~ rich aromas of mineral, lime, toast, fig; rich and round palate of peach, pear, star anise, clove, long creamy finish 67.00”
Of all the wine made in the U.S., I find the Willamette Valley’s style among the most palatable and had some great Pinot Gris when I traveled through there with Nous Non Plus. But, for crying out loud, is it really possible for a wine to taste like all of those things? And while there are many wine professionals out there whose noses are so well trained that they can indeed perceive different levels of flavor and aroma (sometimes called secondary and tertiary), is there really someone out there who can taste all of those descriptors? I don’t want to taste wine that tastes like that (if it really does). Of all the affected wine descriptors, I think my favorite is “star anise.” I mean, when is the last time that anyone put star anise in their mouth?
I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen people turned off when they hear some would-be wine expert/snob rattle off a series of descriptors that most people would never have had any contact with let alone relate to. The best way to describe wine is to draw from your own personal experience and memory. That’s what is so great about tasting wine, especially when you taste it in the company of others. That’s the eureka moment of wine tasting: when two people find that they share a common sensation and sensorial memory in the act of tasting wine. (I do like this glossary of wine tasting terms, which eschews the affected terminology that you find among the ostentatious and the barkers.)
This summer when I was invited to a tasting of nine Barolos in the home of Jay McInerny (we also drank a Chablis Butteaux 1992 Raveneau and Hermitage Blanc L’Orée 1991 Chapoutier from his cellar for dinner), he complained to me about how the editors of his wine column insist that he provide tasting notes. Wouldn’t the world be a better place, we mused, if instead of writing tasting notes, wine writers wrote poems about the wine they taste?
As we enjoyed a Chambave Rosso 2004 Le Muraglie Ezio Voyat (from the Valle d’Aosta, one of my favorite wines), I told Leslie how much I admired her for making that break from the conventions of wine tasting and wine tasting notes and how I felt that it resonated with her readers and audience. It’s people like Leslie who are helping to make wine approachable and accessible to a whole new group of people, who would otherwise be intimidated and turned off by wine.
“One of my favorite examples,” she told me, “is how I help people to understand what acidity [in wine] is. ‘Acidity is like a bra,’ I tell them. ‘It holds everything up.'”
*Gadda, Carlo Emilio, Acquainted with Grief (original title: La cognizione del dolore), translated from the Italian by William Weaver, Braziller, New York, 1969, p. 86.
Do Bianchi 