Category Archives: de musica

Corn porn: the best kind of smut (huitlacoche)

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fonda san miguel

Above: The huitlacoche (corn smut tamales) at Fonda San Miguel are UNBELIEVABLY good. Pair that with 1998 Tondonia Rosado by López de Heredia (at a more than reasonable price) and you’ll see why I love living in Austin, Texas.

Tracie P and I love eating at the bar. We love talking to bartenders and sharing wines with our neighbors.

Lately, our guilty pleasure has been the bar at one of our favorite restaurants in the world: Fonda San Miguel in Austin. Especially because they’ve recently added López de Heredia to their wine list (at more-than reasonable prices, one of the weird anomalies of living in Texas where most wine is more expensive than elsewhere but certain otherwise-unknown-to-Texans wines are sold for less).

Believe me when I tell you that the huitlacoche corn smut tamales alone would be worth the trip to Austin.

fonda san miguel

Above: To our palate, López de Heredia wines are among the greatest food-friendly wines on the planet. They’re not for everyone (with their highly oxidative style and to-some off-putting nose). To us, they are near perfection in a glass. Paired above with the excellent tortilla soup at Fonda.

Thanks again, bartender James (below) and wine director Brad for keeping those wines in stock! WE LOVE IT!

fonda san miguel

In other news…

I had a really crummy day yesterday but my Facebook friends and family got me through it with a flood of thoughtful messages. I can’t say how much I appreciate it. THANKS SO MUCH TO EVERYONE FOR YOUR SUPPORT. IT MEANS THE WORLD TO ME.

Jason, you know what’s playing on my jukebox today as I type away? Yep, you got it: DOUG SAHM.

I really cannot begin to explain how addicted I’ve become to the music of Doug Sahm. At first listen, the music may seem a little rough around the edges but once you scratch through its surface, you’ll find some real Texas soul and groove (“where the Cosmic Cowgirls play”).

My band The Grapes will be performing his ode to Austin, “Groover’s Paradise,” next Wednesday in La Jolla.

Pairing Japanese with Italian, naturally, and June Rodil’s faboosh new list

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uchi austin

Above: We paired 2008 Santa Chiara by Paolo Bea Saturday night with our sashimi et alia at the new Uchiko in Austin (friends and family soft opening). Not to be down with the dogma, but few would argue with the street cred of this natural wine. (Are you following the 32 Days of Natural Wine?)

Tracie P and me paired some Italian with Japanese on Saturday night during the soft opening (ongoing) at Austin’s new Uchiko, offshoot of the wildly successful and popular Uchi. The 2008 Santa Chiara by Paolo Bea — with its saltiness, crunchiness, and acidic nervousness (to borrow a phrase minted by Scott) — was brilliant with the myriad flavors that flowed like a red tide over our tongues.

Do you need me to tell you that the food at Uchiko was great? Nah… everyone knows why the Austinite Uchi brand has enjoyed such favor in this city on a river. In fact, the Uchi (now) family of restaurants stands apart as one of the few truly world-class dining destinations in Central Texas (beyond the apotheosis of barbecue in the form of a small Texas town known as Lockhart).

uchiko

Above: Tracie P and me with the reigning “best sommelier in Texas” June Rodil (center).

What I am here to tell you is that the truly amazing June Rodil has put together a simply faboosh list there, with wines from the Jura, from the Loire, from Italy, and even some interesting Californians that might surprise the Cabernet-loving patron who thinks that Silver Oak goes with just about everything.

Chapeau bas and mazel tov and muchísimas gracias, June!

We had a fantastic time and awesome food and wine Saturday night, with great service (despite the kinks yet to be worked out in this newly christened kitchen).

But the best part of the evening was listening to 80s hits when we got home and Tracie P’s karaoke performance of Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know,” complete with television remote control microphone and air guitar solo…

06 Barbaresco: a final (?) clarification from Aldo Vacca, Produttori del Barbaresco

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Above: As my good friend and top sommelier David Rosoff will tell you, “I learned more about Barbaresco talking to Aldo Vacca for 10 minutes” than I have in my whole career.

I wanted to draw your attention to a comment made by winemaker Aldo Vacca, Produttori del Barbaresco, posted the other day here at Do Bianchi. He was commenting in response to Charles Scicolone, who had asked plaintively whether or not Produttori del Barbaresco typically executed different bottlings destined for its domestic and international markets (the thread appeared in a post on the winery’s decision not to bottle its single-vineyard wines for the 2006 vintage).

Here’s what Aldo had to say:

    Just a quick note: we at Produttori Barbaresco never bottle wines specifically for one market or another. We do not look for specific taste for specific market and all that, we just make the wine at the best of our knowledge in one very define style. If we do more than one bottling, we try to have a similar blend in all bottling.

    We do release our new vintage in the Fall in Italy and usually, because of the logistics of the market and because we like to give some more bottle aging when we can, the next January is most export market. So, it is usually the case that the first bottling is mainly sold in Italy while the second bottling (which is also larger in size) goes to export and Italy as well: it is just a matter of timing, not of deciding which market gets what.

    Normally this will not make any difference anyway because the two bottling would be very similar.

    The one thing that happened with the 2006 vintage was the late decision of not bottling the SV. If we had made the decision earlier, as we usually do, all bottlings would have been the same.

In a somewhat unrelated note, yesterday I poured the 2008 Langhe Nebbiolo by Produttori del Barbaresco in a tasting in Austin. Man, it’s light and bright and showing great right now, better than when it first came into the market. A tough vintage in Piedmont but great for entry-level wines like this, where some of the better fruit ended up in the front-line wines.

And in a totally unrelated note, in the light of Aldo’s love of Neil Young, we’re trying to get him out to San Diego on July 8 to sit in with The Grapes.

In other news…

I highly recommend my good friend Thor’s excellent post over at the 32 Days of Natural Wine on the natural wine scene in Paris. I really love his writing and I especially appreciated his hypercorrective neolgism oenopiphany. After all, there are men who know what the word epistemology means without having to look it up in a dictionary and there are others who have to go to Brooks Brothers to find out.

In other other news…

For the wine geeks out there and anyone else who wants to wrap her or his mind around what sulfur, sulfites, and SO2 have to do with wine, I highly recommend this post on the use of sulfur in wine by bonvivant Bruce Neyers, a man who needs no introduction to the oeno-initiated.

Buona lettura e buon weekend, ya’ll!

Debut of my new band THE GRAPES (and New England giant bluefin tuna)

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From the “man cannot live by wine alone” department…

Above: The Grapes, me on guitar and vox, Andrew Harvey drums, John Yelenosky guitar and vox, and Jon Erickson bass and vox. We’ll be playing our first gig in La Jolla on Thursday July 8.

We named our new country-rock band “The Grapes” after the legendary Liverpool pub where the Beatles used to hang out (Vinogirl can verify this).

We’ll be performing for the first time at one of my favorite sushi restaurants in the world, Zenbu in La Jolla on Thursday July 8.

Above: When I visited Zenbu the other night, owners Matt and Jackie Rimel (high school friends of mine) shared some lightly seared New England giant blue fin tuna belly with me. All of the fishes are fished individually by harpoon, Matt told me, so as not to harm dolphins. Matt is one of the most interesting dudes I know in the restaurant business and has hunted and fished and surfed all over the world. Zenbu is a unique sushi experience. Tracie P and me love it.

We’ll be bringing a little country music to the Pacific Coast with some tunes by Willie Nelson, Doug Sahm and the Tex Mex Trip, Gram Parsons (de rigueur), and some rockers like Tony Joe White’s Polk Salad Annie.

I hope you can join us. There might even be some interesting bottles of wine being opened that night!

In other news…

Did I mention that I’ve wanted to be a cowboy all my life? Found this photo while visiting mama Judy in La Jolla over the weekend (taken at Hebrew school in Chicago).

Sneaking Saignée de Sorbée into the best little honkytonk in Texas

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From the “it sure is good to be back in Texas” department…

ginny's little longhorn

Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon (Austin, Texas) was literally overflowing with bodies yesterday for Chicken Shit Bingo and Dale Watson.

ginny's dogs

Folks were there for the music, the bingo, and of course, the free chili dogs — “Ginny Dogs” as the song goes.

We like to sit out back, where folks gather round in lawn chairs and listen to the music through speakers Ginny’s got out there.

Alfonso and SO Kim were in town and so we snuck the most amazing bottle of Champagne into Ginny’s (given to us for our wedding by one of the nicest people I know in the wine business, Scott. Thanks again, man! You R O C K!): the Saignée de Sorbée by Vouette et Sorbée, “one of the most original wines in all of Champagne,” to borrow a phrase from one of the leading Champagne writers on our planet.

Jeremy Parzen

You’re not supposed to bring wines to Ginny’s but Ginny has a soft spot for Tracie P (it’s not hard to understand why!).

The Saignée de Sorbée may not be for everyone, but, man, it is simply so unbelievably good. So drinkable, so gorgeously fruity (think boysenberry), with alcohol, gentle tannin, and food-friendly acidity singing in four-part harmony like an old-fashioned love song. Please read Peter’s exquisite write-up of this wine. We had the 2006 (“R06”), disgorged in February 2009.

Back at the ranch, Tracie P whipped up some bucatini with tuna bottarga that Alfonso brought back from his recent, amazing trip to Sicily.

Life certainly could be worse… It sure is good to be back in Texas…

I’d make love to her in a New York minute…

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and take my Texas time doing it…

You get the idea ;-)

New York City was a lot of fun, but, man, it’s good to be back in Texas and reunited with that super-fine lady of mine…

Now playing chez Tracie and Jeremy P:

Ever since I’ve known ya you’ve belonged to someone else
So we’ve never talked about romance
But I think it’s time I told you the way I’ve always felt
And what I’d do if I got the chance

I’d make love to you in a New York minute
and take my Texas time doing it
I’d do you every way but wrong
I’d make love to you in a New York minute
and take my Texas time doing it
I’d prove to you that in my arms is where you belong

Don’t misunderstand me I wouldn’t steal you from your man
But if he’s ever fool enough to leave
Well you know how to reach me and you know where I am
And you know what I’d do if you were free

I’d make love to you in a New York minute
and take my Texas time doing it
I’d do you every way but wrong
I’d make love to you in a New York minute
and take my Texas time doing it
I’d prove to you that in my arms is where you belong

Texas Cajun Heritage Festival, Orange, Texas

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From the “if you could see through my eyes, if you could hear with my ears, if you could smell and taste with my nose and palate” department…

cajun fest

Uncle Tim (right) won the competition for best potato salad.

cajun fest

But Tim’s gumbo is always a winner in my book. Man, that stuff is TASTY!

cajun fest

Vincent is from San Diego like me, although he “ain’t been there in a ‘coon’s age,” he told me.

zydeco

These kids played like real pros. I guess it’s because it’s in their zydeco blood.

cajun fest

The dancing tent at the festival wasn’t exactly what you would call a “smoke-free” environment. The band was most definitely smokin’ too!

cajun fest

Word to the wise.

cajun fest

My Tracie P and I loved us some crawfish pistolettes.

pistolette

The pistolettes were stuffed with crawfish étouffée.

hoghide

Jaybo and his “Hoghide Cracklins” tossed in Cajun seasonings were awesome.

cracklins

Jaybo revealed his technique to us.

annette pernell

Annette is a “baker of all things delicious” and man, let me tell you, she ain’t lying.

annette pernell

Annette’s “Mississippi Mud Cake.”

singing cowboy

The evening ended with grilled steak dinner back at Rev. and Mrs. B’s house. Pepaw really seemed to enjoy my guitar pickin’.

Thanks for reading, ya’ll!

A new Paolo Bea is born!

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and I mean that quite literally…

giampiero bea

At last night’s sold-out Paolo Bea dinner at Catalan in Houston (with more than 50 lucky souls in attendance), Giampiero Bea shared a photo of his six-month-old son Paolo using his mobile device. However natural the wines, when the winemaker is on the road, away from his newborn, technology sure is good for something, ain’t it? ;-)

Mazel tov to Giampiero and his family!

I’m also on the road today and so am posting in a hurry today but I had a fascinating conversation with Giampiero last night over dinner. You might be surprised by what he had to say about the role of technology in the production of natural wine. Stay tuned…

And this just in from the semiotics department…

A wine label is a text.

I was thrilled with the response to yesterday’s post on Italian winery designations. Thank you, everyone, for reading and sharing. I plan to expand the post, using the many queries and suggestions I received. Next week I’ll also try to do an initial post on vineyard designations and their meanings (bricco, surì, ronco, vigneto, vigna, et cetera), dialectal and otherwise.

And lastly, just had to share this…

Jeremy Parzen

Tracie P and I caught Jim Stringer’s set at Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon in Austin on Tuesday night. Man, that cat can sure play him some geetar.

Drinking American with my Rockport crispy softshell crab in Houston

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We drank two American wines between the four of us last night, when cousins Marty and Joanne, family friend Taylor and I shared a truly superb seafood dinner last night at one of Houston’s more glamorous dining destinations Mark’s (pricey, I gotta say, but worth every penny… thanks again, ya’ll for a great dinner, btw!).

The pièce de résistance was the crispy softshell crabs from Rockport, Texas (above), which wine director Saree Mulhern deftly and keenly paired with a wine I’d never tasted before, 2007 Retour Pinot Noir. I told Saree that I was hoping for a lighter-bodied Pinot Noir, not old world per se, but with good acidity and balanced use of wood. She delivered a beauty of a wine, I must say. The pairing with the fresh-tasting softshell, gently battered and fried (a Houstonian delicacy), was brilliant.

It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white: the 2008 Pinot Blanc by Robert Foley — “no barrel, no malo” as his site reports — was fresh and bright and wonderful with my “trio” of seafood appetizers (actually a tetralogy). I was blown away by the Louisiana crawfish tails, which the chef seemed to have treated as he would steamed langoustines — an aristocratic demise for these “mudbugs,” as they are called around these parts. Man, if I came across a live crawfish as big as that, I’d probably run for the hills!

You see? I’m trying to break my old habits and drink domestically… I can’t think of a better place than Saree’s list to do it.

In other news…

This is how I feel right now:

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody’s help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I’m not so self assured,
Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Help me if you can, I’m feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won’t you please, please help me?

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways,
My independence seems to vanish in the haze.
But every now and then I feel so insecure,
I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before.

Man, I’m looking forward to some downtime with that super fine lady of mine this weekend! I miss her so much after a week too hectic with work and other mishegas… On Monday, I might just ask her to call my job and tell my boss I won’t be in, to borrow one of Guy Stout’s favorite lyrics…

Together again, naturally

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breg

Above: Nothing to Breg about, to borrow Alfonso’s pun. Last night, he, Tracie P, and I shared a bowl of her slow-cooker cannellini beans and escarole in our home in Austin. Decanted and with a few hours of aeration, the 2000 Breg by Gravner bowled me over, in every sense of the word. Thanks, Alfonso!

Natural wine has been on my mind (again) lately. In part because of a recent appeal posted on the Slowine website (and brought to my attention by Italy’s top wine blogger, Mr. Franco Ziliani) calling for Italy’s “natural wine” fairs (namely, Vini Veri and VinNatur) to be incorporated into the annual Italian wine industry mega-fair Vinitaly. I stayed home this year and didn’t attend but when I posted event details for Vini Veri, a number of folks — including some high-profile industry types — weighed in on the side of consolidation.

slowcooker

Above: There’s just no other way to put this. Tracie P’s legumes were divine last night. Every bean was perfectly whole but then melted in the mouth. Did I mention that the beautiful lady behind the lens also has a natural gift for photography? She snapped the above.

Natural wine has also been on my mind because I’ve been following Alice’s truly excellent posts on the nature — semantic, metaphysical, and sensorial — of natural wine, the winemakers and movement(s) that support and profess it, and the new space it occupies in the language and the perceptions of the mainstream. The latest post, entitled “What is Natural Wine?”, may be the best, but I highly recommend the previous two posts (here and here) and the Washington Post article that prompted the series, “Natural Isn’t Perfect” by Dave McIntyre.

bacon

Above: Not only did Alfonso bring the Gravner last night, he also brought some awesome bacon from Robertson’s in Salado, Texas. @BrooklynGuy, you would love this stuff.

In other natural wine news, the excellent Italian wine blog Intravino posted a profile of natural wine trailblazer Joe Dressner and the blog devoted to his truly heroic battle with brain cancer (also brought to my attention by Mr. Ziliani and btw here’s a link to Joe’s blog).

In an email I received yesterday from Étienne de Montille, the famous winemaker wrote that “I should have left for Tokyo Sunday but… Nature has decided otherwise.”

Volcano or no volcano, the transatlantic dialogue moves forward as “natural wine,” however it is conceived or perceived, indelibly enters into the collective vinous consciousness. Only good can come of it.