Meg Makes a Teetotaler

"...Your grandfather kindly offered us his best, and Aunt March actually sent some, but father put away a little for Beth, and dispatched the rest to the Soldiers' Home. You know he thinks that wine should be used only in illness, and mother says that neither she nor her daughters will ever offer it to any young man under her roof."

Meg spoke seriously, and expected to see Laurie frown or laugh; but he did neither, for after a quick look at her, he said, in his impetuous way, "I like that! For I've seen enough harm done to wish other women would think as you do."

"You are not made wise by experience, I hope?" and there was an anxious accent in Meg's voice.

"No; I give you my word for it. Don't think too well of me, either; this is not one of my temptations. Being brought up where wine is as common as water, and almost as harmless, I don't care for it; but when a pretty girl offers it, one doesn't like to refuse, you see."

"But you will, for the sake of others, if not for your own. Come, Laurie, promise, and give me one more reason to call this the happiest day of my life."

A demand so sudden and so serious made the young man hesitate a moment, for ridicule is often harder to bear than self-denial. Meg knew that if he gave the promise he would keep it at all costs; and, feeling her power, used it as a woman may for her friend's good. She did not speak, but she looked up at him with a face made very eloquent by happiness, and a smile which said, "No one can refuse me anything today." Laurie certainly could not; and, with an answering smile, he gave her his hand, saying heartily, "I promise, Mrs. Brooke!"

"I thank you very, very much."

"And I drink 'long life to your resolution,' Teddy," cried Jo, baptizing him with a splash of lemonade, as she waved her glass, and beamed approvingly upon him.

So the toast was drunk, the pledge was made, and loyally kept, in spite of many temptations; for, with instinctive wisdom, the girls had seized a happy moment to do their friend a service for which he thanked them all his life.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, 1868

Pot roast and pinot

I discovered a new pinot noir at the grocery store which I thought was delicious, and so it became necessary to prepare a dinner to go with it. A pot roast is a heavy dish for warm weather, but as luck would have it our spring has been so cold and rainy that we might almost consider this May to be still "an R month." Or a dead loss, depending on one's mood -- though to be fair the rain has been very encouraging to all that spring greenery.

A pot roast is one of my favorite meals. I start with a two-and-half or three-pound piece of beef chuck, and brown it in olive oil. After browning, I remove it to a plate, and then throw in to sear in the pan some chopped onion, celery, carrot, perhaps a leek, and -- this time -- some sliced mushrooms. It's easy to forget the garlic, but don't forget the garlic. A clove or two, sliced or whole.


When all these vegetables have begun to soften, I return the meat to the pot. This time, I poured over just a little of the pinot I planned to serve with dinner.

When making a pot roast, it seems to me that you can plan to have the finished product taste either mostly like tomato, mostly like wine, or mostly like beef. It depends on what a recipe might call for, and how you have changed and combined recipes based on your taste and experience. A near-authentic boeuf bourguignon will require two cups or more of red wine, while some old recipes from the '50s are heavy on canned tomatoes or -- rumor has it -- Coke. If you want just a plain beef flavor, you will braise the meat in water, but not too much, and don't forget the salt. More salt than you'd think, as James Beard advised.

I add thyme and basil, fresh or dried, and a bay leaf or two. A clove might be nice, or even a quarter teaspoon allspice. It goes into the oven at 350 for an hour, and then I turn the heat down to about 225 and let the roast simmer in there for at least three or four more hours. When it's done, you have this:

About half an hour before dinner, I remove the pot from the oven, take the meat out of the pot, and bring the accumulated juices to a boil. These I thicken with a cold water-and-flour mixture.

Back the meat goes into the gravy, and back the pot goes into the oven, while the rest of dinner throws itself together somehow and the kids set the table. (They hate that.)

Then we eat. Mashed potatoes and a vegetable of your choice go very well with all this. So did the wine, that Talus vineyards pinot noir that I found at the grocery store. No need to worry whether it had raspberry notes or a structured finish. It was just quite good. ("Quite" in the correct sense, meaning utterly, not more or less, as we use it now. A starchy character in an old Miss Marple novel, I think, explains this difference.)

Quite. Is it any wonder that religion found a way to give thanks for food?

The wine business

I much prefer to learn about wine as a wonderful and ancient and delicious drink than as the business that it also is. But the money-and-invoices, shipping-and-licensing business of getting a glass of wine to the table is just about as important as the more, shall we say, "pillowy" work of sunshine, grapes, barrels, and fermenting sur lie.

I work retail. I'm the last person who handles your wine before you take it home and pop the cork. It is wheeled in to me in cases of 12 bottles by delivery guys in trucks, who leave the cases in a corner and hand me the invoices to sign. I receive the delivery into our computer inventory, and file the invoice in a folder to be paid within 30 days. Old, paid-off invoices are kept in a separate binder, to be shown to liquor license inspectors any time they drop in.

The delivery guys picked up the wine from the warehouse of the wholesale distributor, whichever it was: Southern, Metro, Heritage, Maverick, Pure Wine Company. The wholesale distributors got it from ... well, from the actual wineries, I suppose. Here is where a fog settles in (probably a lovely, whirly purplish one). I don't think there is a fourth player in the vineyard-to-wholesaler-to-retailer chain that brings wine to you. Still, how the wholesalers choose what wineries to buy from, who tastes what and says "This is terrific, let's offer it to our retail accounts," is a mystery to me.

This three-player wine delivery system nevertheless seems pretty efficient. The trouble is that it leaves very little room for you, the wine drinker, to see what else exists apart from what you have been offered at retail. Just as, when I go to Target to buy clothes, I am choosing from the relative handful of choices that Target has chosen for me, so when I shop for wine I am choosing from the relative handful of choices that the retailer and his wholesale supplier have chosen to present to me.

As consumers we don't seem to complain about this situation too much when it comes to clothes or shoes or things. Isaac Mizrahi has had an inkling, and gets a few of his designs into Target for us, as Martha Stewart put a few of her paint color choices, I think it was, onto K-Mart's shelves at one time. I respect these two: here are two creative people trying to reach us, not because we, the ordinary, need exposure to their greatness, but simply on the understanding that we the ordinary might like access to sources of creativity that are normally out of reach.

So, efficient though it is, practiced oenophiles decry the standard three-tiered merchandising system as outrageous. As I read about it, I begin to grasp their point of view. They are thinking like Isaac Mizrahi: they want you to have more access to the creative source. And wine is not like clothes or paint. Not that it's somehow nobler. Simply practically speaking, it comes in smaller quantities and is consumed quickly, and there is so very much more of it in the world than there is either clothing or different colors of paint. How can we find out what the wholesalers have rejected on our behalf? Even if we don't necessarily plan to spend small fortunes on, say, grand and unreachable French wines, perhaps they have rejected fine little offerings from Texas or Virginia that might have been enjoyable. What do we do?

Given the morass of liquor laws tangling up all the fifty states, the answer seems to be, not much. If you travel, you can buy wine at a winery and haul it back in the trunk of your car -- maybe. Check your state's liquor laws; bringing booze into the state might be illegal. You can buy wine at a retail shop and have that shipped to your home -- maybe. Check your state's liquor laws (or the retail clerk will for you); it might be illegal. If you are flying home with a wine purchase, you may be able to ship it cargo, if that is legal. Of course you cannot bring it on board. It's a liquid.

There's always the Internet. I was thinking, myself, of just dipping one inexperienced toe into the on-line wine buying business, which would seem to open up all sorts of interesting possibilities in the exploration of the beverage. Then I found out: no can do. I live in Illinois. It's illegal, or will be in ten more days.

As of June 1, it will be against the law for Illinois residents to buy and have shipped to them wine from out-of-state merchants. Wineries are a different matter. If you belong to a California winery's wine club, for example, you can still get your deliveries. But if you would like a case of that delightful red blend mailed from that hole-in-the-wall shop you discovered in Saugatuck, or the Bronx for all I know, so sorry. Against the law. If, like me, you explore Internet wine sales and find an interesting wine that comes from a non-Illinois retailer, not a producer, again, so sorry. You can't try that. Against the law.

Why on earth? Morals? No indeed, instead it seems, money. Wholesale liquor distributors in Illinois contributed a total of $627,000 in campaign contributions to two major sponsors of the new law and to Governor Rod Blagojevich, who has received over $500,000 from them in total, and $50,000 since he signed the bill into law in October of 2007. Illinois wholesalers evidently prefer that that hole-in-the-wall shop in Saugatuck not get your business. The same goes for that supplier you might have found on-line. Their selections interest you, and seem reasonably priced? Too bad. There is plenty of wine in stores in Illinois, chosen for Illinois retailers by Illinois wholesale distributors. Just be happy, and buy your wine here.

Economists call the wholesalers' behavior "rent-seeking," a term which has nothing to do with paying the rent, precisely, but describes instead a small group's ability to get its way through actions whose consequences ("costs") are so spread out among the rest of the population ("the market") that they become negligible, and so prompt no reaction. We complain about special interests and lobbying, and think it all mysterious and corrupt. But there is a reason why it works.

We'll see how long this works. According to what I have read, Illinois' new law is flat-out unconstitutional. It violates the Constitution's Commerce clause, about which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005, "States may not enact laws which burden out-of-state producers or shippers simply to give a competitive advantage to in-state businesses." What the law, and the wholesale distributors of Illinois, do have on their side is time and indifference. I doubt there are many wine drinkers in the state whose blood will boil when they can't make Internet wine purchases anymore. I doubt they will react in force, quickly.

A third thing the rent-seekers have on their side is the very variety of the product that they do choose and present to us. Although the wholesalers are the villain of the piece in an ongoing, direct-shipping controversy roiling the wine world well beyond Illinois, I have to salute their spokesman, the chairman of the Wine & Spirit Wholesalers of America, for saying something pithy and funny:

"The American consumer who's complaining that he can't get some obscure frou frou wine produced and bottled by Croatian virgins is missing the point. The reason he even WANTS that bottle of wine is because of the incredible variety that is
already on the shelves. And how did it get there? WE put it there!"

Arrogant, contemptuous -- would he speak like that about the Consumer who wants frou-frou Scotch, or beer brewed by Croatian virgins? -- but at least somewhat to the point. Yes, having given us choices, don't flip us off when we want more choices; but then, it is hard to imagine living long enough to sample all the wines available in the state's retail stores now. I don't enjoy having blinkers put on me by pay-to-play politicians who probably say "rize-ling," but, at least arithmetically, Mr. Chairman has the tail end of an idea. The distributors do show us far more than we could ever have found ourselves. A wine-life without them would be unimaginably impoverished.

Perhaps at this point a true Pollyanna would comment that, if the wholesale distributors are this concerned about protecting their end -- their bloated middle -- of the business, maybe that's a good sign in the long run. Taking action to forestall competition and choice must mean that competition and choice are out there. That means people are spending money on wine, and hunting for it in new and independent and threatening ways. In the long run, and if they stick to their pursuits not to mention the Commerce Clause, it should all prove good, I hope, for everyone's business.

Trackback: "Getting Bent Over in Illinois," Tom Wark's Fermentation: the Daily Wine Blog

A wine like Jodie Foster

In her great book, The Wine Bible, Karen MacNeil writes early on of the difficulties encountered in describing wine, to yourself or to other people. Apples? Peaches? Leather? The infamous "cat pee" (a good thing, or at least a typical thing, in a sauvignon blanc)?

One day, looking for an adventure she says, she went into a wine shop and asked the clerk for "a wine like Robin Williams." Unhesitatingly, he found her one, and he was right in his assessment of it.

She doesn't explain any further, and at first reading I must admit I thought this short passage was rather loopy. But lately, two things have come together, and I think I understand what she was driving at. I've found a wine "like" Jodie Foster.

The actress made a movie fairly recently so of course interviews with her appeared in magazines that I read, weeks after they are outdated, at the dentist's office or in the library. She has always struck me as such a strange type. Very attractive, very intelligent, and yet changelessly icy and rocklike. The look on her face in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane is exactly the same as the look on her face now. And she cannot, but cannot, play a romantic heroine. She rarely tries.

So I have idly thought of her lately -- didn't see her movie -- and there on the shelf in the store was a wine I tasted months ago and never forgot.

Attractive. Intelligent. Icy. Rock-like. Changeless, I am willing to bet. I respect it, but would not necessarily buy a ticket for it again. A wine like Jodie Foster. Or has the name on the label, Forrester, simply jogged a mental gear, and made me see a pattern that is not there?

Port, part two

Once again, for information on port I have consulted Jason Brandt Lewis' article at The Wine Lover's Page.


Ninety-eight percent of all port made is "wood" port, as opposed to "vintage" Port. Wood port is so called because the wine, after having been pressed off the grapes, allowed to ferment briefly, and then fortified with high alcohol grape brandy to stop any further fermentation and remain sweet, is then put into wooden barrels for aging. It is not vintage because what goes into the barrels is a mix of more than one year's (one vintage's) product. In fact what goes into the barrels is a mix not only of several years' product, but a mix of several vineyards' product. (A vintage port is usually a mix of several vineyards' wines, too, but all of a single year. Only a "Quinta" vintage port is from one vineyard and one year.)


The youngest and sweetest example of a wood port is a type called Ruby. The bottle you buy may not say "ruby port" on the label -- true port, from Portugal, must say Oporto, and quite possibly the makers of the genuine article assume they need not bother to put a generally understood descriptor (in English) beside it as well. The one ruby port that I have tasted does not explain itself as such. What is also missing from the label, and what therefore alerts you that this is ruby, is the number, 10-, 20-, 30-, or 40-, followed by "year."


When one of these numbers is present, you have a Tawny port. These will be older and drier than the (painful to admit this, but -- almost cough-syrup sweet) rubies. A 10- or 20-year old port will be a wine mixed and aged in a barrel full of doses of wines which may have been technically anywhere in the neighborhood of 9 or 12, or 19 or 21, years old at the time the whole contents of the barrel were bottled. It's important to remember, therefore, that the label announcing 20 year port is not announcing vintage port. If it were, there would be a single year -- 1931, just like the Quinta do Noval served at David Peppercorn's party -- standing proudly on the label.


There are several other types of wood port, beyond the simple ruby/tawny distinction. Actually, the remaining types are still subcategories of tawny, but they are wines which are essentially classy and flavorful enough to spend less time in a wood barrel, or wines that are not great enough to bottle-age completely, like a vintage port, but that have come from a single vintage anyway. These subcategories are Vintage Character port (a blend of wines having the character of a single great year), Late Bottled Vintage (one year's wine, aged 4 to 6 years in wood), Crusted port (several years' worth of wine, aged 4 to 6 years in wood), and Colheita port (another single vintage, but aged at least 7 years in wood). There is also White Port, made from the pale grape port varieties, and Young Tawny, made from a mixture of Ruby and White ports.


As with all wood ports, these last half dozen or so subcategories of the tawnies do not benefit from any further bottle aging after you buy them, with the exception of the Late Bottled Vintage ports, which appear to be wines just a hair's breadth away from great, capital letter, Vintage Port status.


The wood ports are ready to drink now. Ports in general were the classic finish to a fine meal, especially for men. (I wonder if its usually accompanying cigars is the reason why, to this day, a sommelier must know cigars as well as wine.) According to authors Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace of the charming To Marry an English Lord, there were strict rules about port consumption, even after the ladies had left the table: port was passed around the table counterclockwise, and a gentleman who let the decanter pass him by could not change his mind and grab it back; he waited until it made the circuit of the table around to him again. The decanter was slid along the tablecloth, never lifted. This sounds bizarre and Druidical, but was no doubt practical. That vintage port in the decanter -- and the gentlemen at a fine party could no doubt afford vintage -- would have been throwing sediment as it aged in the bottle, which was why it was decanted in the first place. Sliding the decanter would ensure that any further sediment would stay at the bottom, and not pour into the gentlemen's glasses.


I started my journey into real ports with a $20 bottle of ruby, which I made sure to last probably longer than I should have. The tawnies will cost you twice that, at least. And as for vintage, well, until we all hit the jackpot, we can least look at them, virtually.

Delightful

Years ago the Chicago Tribune used to run a column called "Cook It Light" in its food guide section. Readers would send in recipes from the pre-cholesterol era, and would ask the Tribune's test kitchen staff to amend them and make them healthier. Calories and problems -- butter, cream, eggs, salt -- all went out the window, and the resultant triumph was printed below the old, artery-clogging horror.

In my youthful confidence I used to clip and save the original recipe, reasoning that the butter, eggs, cream, and salt probably gave the authentic dishes their flavor. Indeed, readers submitting their requests often sighed "My family loves this, but -- ".



One such concoction that I have saved and used over the years is "Salmon Delight," which combined, among other goodies, canned salmon, canned cream of mushroom soup, potato chips, and sliced almonds.

Originally, the recipe instructs that we drain the salmon, save its liquid, and mix it with a little milk, which is used to dilute the cream of mushroom soup. Then the salmon is combined with a cup of cooked rice and a few tablespoons of onion and green pepper sauteed in butter. Then we line a buttered one-and-a-half quart casserole with crushed potato chips, and the salmon-rice-peppers mixture is layered in with the soup alternately. More crushed potato chips -- almost 2 cups in all -- and the sliced almonds are sprinkled on top, and it all goes into the oven at 350 degrees to heat through for 45 minutes.

Even I could tell, youthful confidence aside, that this recipe is awfully heavy on the salt, and the potato chips seemed to me incongruous to say the least. The almonds, still more so. Canned cream of mushroom soup is going to make any recipe taste like canned cream of mushroom soup. So, I've made some changes. And these days, I'm thinking about the right wine.



I still start out, of course, with a mix of canned salmon and a good cup or more of cooked rice. Easy enough. No need to save the salmon liquid, as I won't need it. I saute, not just a few tablespoons, but a whole onion and a whole green pepper in a little butter.



Replacing the soup with my own cream sauce is easy and healthier. I make a roux of equal parts of butter and flour (4 tablespoons each),



-- and since we are a family with a gluten allergy that's all-purpose gluten-free baking flour (it does the job) -- and then add 2 cups of milk and stir to make first a paste, and then gradually a sauce.





Then, it's a simple matter to layer the salmon-rice mix -- not forgetting to add the cooked onions and green pepper to this -- into the casserole alternately with the sauce.



I lined the baking dish with crushed potato chips once and never did it again. They become strangely soggy and tough. Oven ready, Salmon Delight looks like this:



About 35 minutes at 350 is enough to give it a nice brown top. One handful of crushed potato chips, perhaps one-third of a cup in all, can be sprinkled on top after baking, as in the first photo, to give it a little crunch. I have never bothered with the almonds.



If you are married to a meat-and-potatoes guy, or a meat-and-potatoes woman for that matter, this dish may be too gloppy and pudding-like to count as "dinner." Save it, perhaps, for a night when Mom's working late, and it's just you and the kids. And yes, that's real butter and whole milk I'm using. I console myself with the fancy that at least this is more wholesome than the original recipe -- well it is -- and besides, there are vegetables in it!

Incidentally, I made fresh broccoli to accompany it, and the wine I poured was a Stone Cellars pinot grigio "by Beringer." Less than $5 at the grocery store, it was light, gentle, and freshly melon-like, a very nice accompaniment. I think a chardonnay would have been to heavy, as would most reds except perhaps for a Valpolicella or a Chianti, something clear and juicy that the Italians seem to do so well.

And anyway -- the furies are still nagging me -- don't wine and broccoli have all those flavinoids, which just whoosh the cholesterol right out of you? Many thanks to the Tribune, too -- which has unaccountably given up on its "cooking light" section long since.

Scylla, Charybdis, and Cleavage Creek

Learning about wine and, now, blogging about wine, also means learning about wine blogging. At present, I regularly consult three wine blogs, all of them interesting, well written, and containing good basic information for the neophyte. There are hundreds of wine blogs out there, of course, in English alone, not to mention the hundreds more in other languages.

I find that it doesn't take much for a wine blog to go too far over my head for me to enjoy it. So very many people seem to come to the table -- or the internet -- with so much experience already; they are able to post briefly about some new Domaine de Gloire Cuvee Reserve, and how the winemaker has clearly sold out to this interest or that, because now a formerly balanced wine is flabby, or a formerly delightfully simple wine is now overstructured, etc., etc. They do it all in one paragraph and their readers then comment with just the right virtual nod of the head. "This has been going on for years ... sad to see it reach Domaine de Gloire ... try Domaine de Joie down the road."

So I am not yet ready to venture deep into the wine blogging woods, where these sorts of perplexing discussions go on, and where dwell great names and mighty forces that I have heard of only. Alice Feiring ... Eric Asimov's The Pour (at The New York Times, no less) ... Doctor Weingolb. The three places that I do go to are Vinography, Dr. Vino, and Fermentation. This last -- and I will be truthful -- happens to be written by the nice man who also runs the Wine Blog Awards. This past week and more, though, I have had fun following events orchestrated by the equally nice Dr. Vino, who wrote a post asking readers to offer suggestions and pictures for a Worst Wine Label Competition.

Now this is my speed. I was the first to reply, and my offering was the label for Orin Swift Cellars' The Prisoner, a wine we have sold at the store. It's ghastly. The label, I mean. The wine, a zinfandel blend, is heavy and delicious.

My unappreciative comments about the label sparked some discussion at Dr. Vino, which was fun, and now The Prisoner label is a finalist in the competition. Do go and vote, if not necessarily for my choice. As a matter of fact I did not, because I had to give my vote instead to something better, something I had never seen before, the phantasmagorically ugly Cleavage Creek. It's a cabernet sauvignon, but who would care.

The third finalist, alas, is another wine we have sold in the store, a Riesling called, in our inventory, Moselland Cats, more correctly Zeller Schwarze Katz. I say "alas" not because I'm sorry we've sold two of the three "finalist" wines in this contest -- the Cats riesling does not even have a label, it just comes in a cat-shaped bottle, admittedly not to everyone's taste -- but because the man who suggested the label also avers that this riesling is a bad wine. "Right up there with Liebfraumilch," he says.



Oh, dear. I kind of liked this wine. It may lack the richness I remember from the rieslings I tasted at my first professional, industry-sponsored tasting in Chicago some months ago, but it seemed nice enough for all that. And if it is made in conformity with German wine laws, which insist that a Qualitatswein must show certain characteristics before it can be labeled and exported as such, then why don't we trust the integrity of those laws and the people working under them? If this is the ordinary lunchtime drink of ordinary Germans, why isn't it good enough for us?

As always, the untried oenophile is caught between what we might grandly call Scylla and Charybdis in the wine-dark sea. Wine is a healthful everyday pleasure; but wait, wine is a miracle of complex glory that must be appreciated, -- which takes effort. (Tom Wark, in today's Fermentation, puts it beautifully: wine is not just an "alcohol delivery vehicle." It just isn't.) Oh, and wait, always remember -- it's dumb to like the sweet stuff. The other day, in the store, I fumed righteously to myself as I put away bottles, because yet another customer had refused to try a riesling. Oh they're sweet. It wasn't the cat riesling, either, it was something -- I feel sure -- a little better. I thought, ignorant as I am, that if anyone asked me to testify what is the difference between a truly amateur wine drinker and someone who at least promises to develop in interesting and joyous directions, I would say the difference is that an amateur, someone unserious about wine -- which is to say, someone joyless -- will not try a riesling.

Then again, I began my wine self-education with the wild-eyed Wine Avenger, who loves rieslings and snorts at newbies who vow they want "a nice dry wine." I think it was Mark Twain who once noticed that ninety percent of anyone's personality is comprised of what he has read, or heard, or absorbed from outside himself, and the other ten percent at best is truly the man himself, soul and all. In that case, when it comes to wine, I suppose I'm ninety percent Willie Gluckstern. Oh dear.

The noble grapes: Gewurztraminer?

(Revised July 28, 2009)

When I was growing up, my parents were interested enough in wine to drink a little on special occasions and at dinner out, and to collect a few books on the subject. One of my favorites was a 1982 edition of Michael Broadbent's Pocket Guide to Wine Tasting, first published in London in 1968. I used to glance at it as a teenager, and found it great, if rather snooty, fun. I'm sure the author did not mean to be snooty. It's just that all those pages of up-close photographs of wine meniscuses (meniscii?), and careful descriptions of color gradations from ruby to red to blackberry to plum, and what they all mean, seemed exactly what it would not help you to have in your pocket at your next wine tasting. They would help deeply experienced professionals, perhaps. My favorite page in the book was the reproduced, handwritten facsimile of real tasting notes from "October 22, 1981, David Peppercorn's 50th birthday dinner, London W.1," complete with guest list. (Fascinating. Who was Serena?) The party flowed with fabulous wines, ending with a '31 Quinta do Noval, "the Everest of Vintage Port." I'm glad.

Anyway, early in this thin, very closely-printed book, Broadbent provides a list of the major wine making grapes, from the ordinary to the superb, says flatly that only four even of the noble varieties are absolutely the leading noble varieties -- cabernet (sauvignon), riesling, pinot (noir), and chardonnay -- and then simply places an asterisk beside each other noble variety as he runs through all on the next several pages. Blink and you might miss chenin blanc's asterisk. Chasselas, directly above, doesn't get one. ("Neutral and prolific vine. White.")

He also gives an asterisk to gewurztraminer, or did in 1968. That makes it noble. Other authors do not agree. Karen MacNeil, in The Wine Bible (1998), does not. Jancis Robinson, in How To Taste (2000), says only that the grape is considered noble in its home, Alsace, though "rather tiring" even there. Why tiring? Why not noble without disputes and silences?

A grape is noble if it creates excellent wine practically anywhere, even moreso if it creates wine capable of bottle-aging. It would seem we have a problem with gewurztraminer, on both counts. The grape thrives in only a few cool but sunny and dry climates, which lets out very large parts of the wine world as potential producers of fine bottles of it. Alsace, in eastern France, is its preferred place, New Zealand a good second best. Even Alsace's examples of gewurztraminer do not age much beyond five years (so say Ron and Sharon Tyler Herbst in The New Wine Lover's Companion). After that, it loses any bracing acidity and develops an "oiliness" which no longer refreshes.

So what's good about this variety to begin with? Its powerful, floral, tropical aroma, followed by its unexpectedly dry taste. Wine writers have a hard time fully putting into words gewurztraminer's scent, and when you take in your first noseful of it, you'll likely agree it is remarkable. "Clouds of Yves Saint Laurent's Opium," "Giorgio of Beverly Hills," "lychee," "rose petals," "sumptuous," and "face cream" are a few epithets -- and these are all from one writer (Oz Clarke). I would add jasmine, pineapple, and orange blossom. Different people could add almost any lush, fresh scent descriptor pertaining to blowing tropical flowers and juice-dripping, sun-filled fruits, and be right about gewurztraminer.

Unfortunately, that scent seems to be at once the grape's glory and its handicap. Devotees of it want hibiscus, Shalimar, and mango bursting out of their glass; too much of that is precisely what strikes connoisseurs as tiring, "blowzy," even "embarrassing." But if gewurztraminer is grown and vinified to be subtler, it loses its raison d'etre. I have tasted California examples -- not from Alsace and therefore, of necessity, not the wine at its best -- and they seemed reminiscent only of ginger ale. Ginger is a spice and gewurz means spice or "perfumed," so perhaps even here the poor, half-noble thing is trying.

Another difficulty with gewurztraminer is that it is fussy in its growing requirements. Oz Clarke writes that because it buds early it can be harmed by late spring frosts, incidentally a hazard of nice cool climates. But, because it ripens at mid-season, any unusual early summer warmth will prompt it to reach hopelessly high sugar levels, resulting in a "flabby" wine lacking good acidity. Ideally it wants a perfect combination of steady sunshine and cool temperatures. It doesn't like too much rainfall, either. (The answer to this almost arithmetical problem, sun + cool climate + dry weather equals, always in all wine books, Alsace.) And, as with all grapes but particularly those asterisked noble ones, a winemaker wanting to produce a flavorful beverage must keep his vines' yield low. Too many grapes will all be bland and watery, while a well pruned vine will direct its strength into fewer but better berries. Gewurztraminer, finicky as it is concerning climate, surprisingly yields a lot when it is happy. So the careful grower faces high labor costs in keeping it under control -- all to eventually put out a wine that frankly didn't have much chance to do really well outside a few regions, and that, if it does well, has an "in your face" personality harder to sell compared to better known, tamer chardonnays and pinot grigios anyway. The result is, well, gewurztraminer. not widely grown because hard to grow well, hard to pronounce, for many people hard to like.

Yet, it endures. It seems to have originated in the Alto Adige region of northeastern Italy, specifically near the village of Tramin which gives it its name. Maybe. Historical records first mention Traminer around the year 1000 A.D., but is this our gewurztraminer, or is it an almost identical if slightly less perfumed twin properly called savagnin rose? Scientists who study grape genetics are not sure. Alsace has grown a "Traminer" since the middle ages, calling it either by that name or, after 1870, gewurztraminer too. Since 1973, though, Alsace has in turn dropped the name Traminer completely. This is to avoid confusion ... while just across the border Germany still uses both.

And wine writers still disagree on its nobility. Worthy of an asterisk? Michael Broadbent thought so. Too perfumed? Not age-worthy enough? Jancis Robinson and Karen MacNeil thought so. I find that, to begin exploring gewurztraminer, it's worthwhile just to try a $5 or $6 California bottle. It will at least be more interesting to drink with dinner than another thousandth pot of tea or, still duller, water or ginger ale. In time, try an Alsace version, and learn more. Oz Clarke recommends it as a good wine to pair with heavy duty foods, whether Alsace's own roast goose, onion tart, or smoked fish, or Chinese or Thai cuisine loaded with ginger, lemongrass, and coconut. In fact -- those are real party foods, aren't they -- host a party, where you introduce your friends to "luscious," "head spinning" gewurztraminer, and everybody practices saying the name. Don't be shy. Pronounce everything. Ge WURZ tra mee ner.

Oh, and don't be shy. Invite Serena. And me.

Wine blogging Wednesday: Old World Rieslings

For information on German wine labelling, I am indebted to The New Wine Lover's Companion by Ron Herbst and Sharon Tyler Herbst.

Wine Blogging Wednesday is a "virtual wine-tasting" dreamed up four years ago by some good people in the wine trade (whom ... sshhh ... I had never heard of either).

But it's a delightful idea. Bloggers and wine enthusiasts try an agreed-upon wine -- the theme for the month -- one blogger "hosts" the tasting, and the notes are collected and linked at Wine Blogging Wednesday (WBW). It so happens that the choice for May, my first time participating in this event, is Old World Rieslings, and rieslings are thus far my favorite wines.

I was lucky enough to be able to try a fine, rather pricey (for my budget) riesling at the store. The label says, all in one breath, Weingut Leo Schwab -- Winzermeister -- Weinbautechniker -- D54470 Bernkastel-Kues -- Saarallee -- Gutsabfullung -- and then, below the artwork, 2003er -- Bernkasteler Badstube -- Riesling Spatlese. Below that, Qualitatswein mit Pradikat, then some letters and numbers, then at the very bottom of the label, Mosel - Saar - Ruwer.


View Larger Map

German wine labels are famed for their specificity. The most important words on this label are Bernkasteler Badstube and of course, Riesling Spatlese. The latter phrase tells us that this is the riesling grape, picked at the second harvest when the grapes were just a little riper than they would have been if picked at the first harvest (kabinett). Bernkasteler Badstube introduces us gently into the complexities of German wine law, as it involves both production and labeling.

Like other European countries, Germany requires that wine assemble itself, so to speak, into certain quality categories and then announce its quality category on the label. Generally, the more precise the announcement of where a wine has come from, the higher its quality will be. Product of Germany means an okay wine. Wine from an Anbaugebiet (quality wine-growing region) is a little better. Wine from a Bereich (a subregion) is better still. Wine from a Grosslage (general site) within a bereich is still better. Wine from an Einzellage has come from a vineyard site or actual vineyard within a grosslage, and is therefore better still. (Are the grapes just supernaturally "better" because they have grown in smaller specified areas? No; what the designations mean is that the winemaker has been held to higher and more specific standards as he makes, or claims to make, wine from grapes, sites, and vineyards that historically ought to display great, and typical, quality.)

So our Bernkasteler Badstube would seem to be in the third tier of specificity for wine quality, almost but not quite to Einzellage level. It comes from a Grosslage in the Bereich of Bernkastel, which lies in the general region (Anbaugebiet) of Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. However, there is another mark of quality on the label, in the biggest print at the very top: Weingut Leo Schwab. Weingut means "wine estate," so this phrase is the equivalent of an English language label saying "So and So's Vineyard." Legally, it means that this riesling has been made only from estate-grown grapes -- which would seem to put it in the final and best Einzellage category.

After all this, how does it taste? There is nothing like a riesling. That honey-yellow color, that syrupy pour into the glass, the aroma of lemon cake and cinnamon; then a taste like sweet-tart apples, followed by a startling dry finish, reminiscent once again of cake -- you can almost taste the crumb.

I have met people who won't try a riesling, "because they're sweet, aren't they." I don't yet know what to say to them. And I begin to see where wine snobbery comes from.

The human corner

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a customer at the wine shop. This was a middle-aged gentleman, originally from India, who said among other things that his grandmother would spin in her grave if she could see him drinking wine. He also said that all religions forbid alcohol because it is not necessary for, and in fact interferes with, spiritual growth, the practice of any kind of meditation, and closeness to God.

Now I had to (affably) take issue with him on the pronouncement that all religions forbid alcohol. Jews usher in every Sabbath, for one thing, with wine, and re-creating Jesus' Last Supper with ceremonial bread and wine is the heart of Christian liturgy. In antiquity, wine was so sacred and so miraculous that the Greeks believed that in drinking it, one drank the blood of Dionysus, the wine god himself. His rituals were weird and exciting, half-understood, apparently often grotesquely violent (and possibly fueled by narcotics, apart from wine); in the book Vintage Hugh Johnson traces Dionysus' worship from the very ancient East to Greece to Rome, and offers as one of its lessons "the truism that wine is a blessing in moderation, and a curse in excess." This seems to approach what my customer was saying: that religion, all of it he thinks, shies away from alcohol because it is a product that can lead to loss of control and, I suppose, loss of God-given human dignity.

His contention that wine doesn't bring one any closer to God, however, puzzled me. How is that wine's job now? He elaborated by saying he felt sure the Pope, for example, does not drink wine with his meals as a regular thing. The Pope is so far advanced in spiritual matters, my friend implied, that he would hardly tolerate so pointless a thing as a glass of wine at his table.

I would have taken issue with this, too, except that a) I'm a coward and b) there's no point arguing with a customer too much. But why would the Pope not enjoy wine with his meals? He's a European, a German, from a land of glorious wine and winemaking traditions. My friend's assumption that wine has small purpose apart from, is even by its very nature in competition with, spiritual concentration struck me as pouring far too great a burden into the glass. Given that we all don't go up into the mountains and tear men's heads off in honor of Dionysus anymore, isn't wine just a healthful and tasty pleasure?

In any case, my customer's linking of alcohol, the divine, and taboo did make me think about those two poles of human experience, pleasure and (often religious) duty. Jews sanctify wine, but follow kosher laws which, in all their strictness, do put out of bounds a great many foods and food combinations which seem to me just innocent pleasures that need not have been quite so thoroughly forbidden. And a careful reading of the Bible will show that health was never the rationale for them. Indeed, why not forbid wine? Muhammad did. It may have been sheer luck that Moses did not.

Of course, to a devout person, these things are not luck, they are divine law and are to be rejoiced in, not altered by human whim or human temerity. Christians forbid nothing that I know of in the realm of comestibles, but traditionally include in the liturgical year some sort of limits to what can be eaten and when: meatless Fridays, Lenten sacrifices. Hindus forbid beef; my customer of yesterday said he had been a vegetarian all his life, as many Indians are. Here is a man who has never eaten a roast chicken, a steak, a filet of grilled salmon. I look at all the religious taboos on good things to eat and drink, and I consider -- another truism -- how short life is, and that each of us only gets one. And I wonder if human beings were ever right in their notions that somehow, denial of gustatory pleasure pleases God.

I suppose once again devout people would point to the inexplicable-ness of divine revelation, and would further say that it would have been always salutary anyway for people to impose some sort of control on human appetites. Perhaps. But the control imposed on you or me can often be such a matter of luck. Born Muslim, and stay obedient, and you will be denied wine and pork. Born Jewish, you will be denied pork, shellfish, and the mixing of meat and dairy. Born Hindu, you will be denied beef. Why is there no divine revelation forbidding lamb or chocolate specifically, or insisting -- why not? -- that one must eat cat? And of course, there is no end to what you may deny yourself, not least of all by religious conversion. Even apart from that, there can be the denial of fat or sugar or caffeine or carbs, for the sake of health or to help in what I believe the English used to call "banting" (dieting). I have read that some people even embrace a gluten-free diet, willingly. This is a doozy of a choice for which I have no respect, because I live in a family with a serious gluten allergy: for us, avoiding bread, noodles, pie, crackers, cake, cookies, and everything else made of wheat is necessary and permanent. We can't change our mind about it if it gets tiresome, or if dieticians' advice for the average healthy person changes.

At the end of her book How To Cook a Wolf, M.F.K. Fisher wrote something that would most likely outrage a religious person. It will be easy to spot:

...since we must eat to live, we might as well do it with both grace and gusto. ...I cannot count the good people I know who, to my mind, would be even better if they bent their spirits to the study of their own hungers. There are too many of us, otherwise in proper focus, who feel an impatience for the demands of our bodies, and who try throughout our whole lives, none too successfully, to deafen ourselves to the voices of our various hungers. Some stuff the wax of religious solace in our ears. Others practice a Spartan if somewhat pretentious disinterest in the pleasures of the flesh .... I believe that one of the most dignified ways we are capable of, to assert and then reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war's fears and pains, is to nourish ourselves with all possible skill, delicacy, and ever-increasing enjoyment.

Somewhere in one of his books, The Importance of Living I think, Lin Yutang wrote that Chinese civilization is so old that it has learned to abandon all the "blind alleys" that younger cultures explore, alleys leading to abstractions like political ambition, grand social betterment schemes and frankly, religion's dwelling upon ritual, sin, theology, and taboo. China, he wrote, loved instead simply being human, eating, drinking, looking at the moon with pretty women, planting vegetable gardens, and so on. Like M.F.K. Fisher, he seems to be saying that in the quarrel, if there is one, between pleasing the body that God created hungry, and pleasing the God who also mysteriously forbids selected pleasures, really pleasing the body ought to win out. Here the body is, after all; it is going to get fed, or die; why should the feeding be a penance? God doesn't eat or drink. We do.

It is odd that sensual pleasure, not riot or dissipation but just pleasure, should be such a threat to holiness, but my wine shop customer seemed to sense that it is, and Fisher seems to and Lin Yutang, on behalf of all China, seems to also. Did the prophets also sense it, and is that why it was revealed to them to forbid things? Perhaps the Greeks were wiser to try to co-opt it, and call it Dionysus the god.

Then, on a lighter note, there is the quite scary chef Anthony Bourdain, who in Kitchen Confidential doesn't philosophize but merely gives the back of his hand to anybody with any food or drink dislikes at all, regardless of the reason. Lactose intolerance does not impress him, and as for vegetarians, "and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... they are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food." He is in the same corner with Fisher and Yutang, and I think, me. The human corner, if I may call it that, although religion is human too. (Delicious paradox.) All three repeat that word in their encomiums to food -- human, human, human.

Of course, Chef Bourdain did go on to film a TV show in which he traveled the world and managed, if I am not mistaken, to find a reason to eat raw, freshly harvested monkey brains. If I were God, that would be forbidden. Don't ask me why.

The noble grapes: semillon

Semillon must take the prize as the noble grape few people have heard of. According to Oz Clarke in his New Encyclopedia of French Wines, semillon is actually France's second most widely-planted white grape variety, after another white variety called ugni blanc, also known as trebbiano -- which is the grape made into brandy.

(And why on earth are such "obscure" grapes so widely planted? My guess is that we are looking at cultures where, not to belabor a point, wine drinking is an age-old and normal part of life; the acres of land devoted to grapes need not be devoted to all those wonderful and finicky and difficult to grow prima donna varieties, which make a barrel or two of exalted wine for kings and dukes. The land instead can be and is devoted to humbler, perhaps less interesting blending grapes -- Clarke frankly says the ugni blanc is "tasteless" -- which will serve to make the vin de pays or country wine that is on tap in homes and cafes everywhere.)



Nevertheless we started by calling the semillon noble, and indeed it is. It is partner to the better-known sauvignon blanc in white Bordeaux: semillon has a high-alcohol, seeming-sweet "fatness" which rounds out sauvignon blanc's crispness, acidity, and pronounced melon or citrus scents, creating complex, dry wines of fine character (and fine price). Being a thin-skinned grape, semillon is also prone to infection by a mold called botrytis cinerea, or "noble rot." Jancis Robinson in How To Taste explains that in autumn, before the harvest, a combination of damp foggy mornings and warm afternoons can create ideal conditions for the growth of this mold. (Makes sense. Think of your shower stall -- moisture and warmth. Or maybe don't think of it.) Botrytis does not puncture the grape skin but shrivels the berry, removing its water and concentrating the sweet juices. A picture of a bunch of grapes caked with this rot is quite revolting -- as with "the first man who et an oyster," it must have been a brave man who decided it was worth trying to make this lump into something potable anyway.

The resulting wine, made of up to 80 percent moldered semillon, is the sweet, luscious, and expensive Sauternes that crops up so reliably in old-fashioned dinner menus, usually paired, bizarrely to my mind, with the fish course. Semillon, un-rotted, is also grown and vinified alone in Australia's Hunter Valley and Barossa Valley, making "world-class dry wines" that are sometimes marketed as Hunter Valley Riesling (this information is from The New Wine Lover's Companion, by Ron Herbst and Sharon Tyler Herbst). Semillon is also vinified on its own in the Pacific Northwest. The Herbst book mentions Washington state's Hogue Cellars specifically, but the book was last updated in 2003, and Hogue's website currently gives little space to semillon.



Semillon is also now sometimes blended with chardonnay, the grape of white Burgundy, and I have tasted an example of this in Lindeman's Bin 77. I found it "hot" (that's alcohol), dry, and non-descript, but then I prefer sweeter wines. On paper, the blending of semillon and chardonnay would not seem too propitious an idea. The books say that both are fairly aroma-less, low acid grapes which ferment to high alcohol levels and respond well to oak aging -- semillon is "even weightier" than chardonnay, Jancis Robinson says -- so in combining them, it would seem winemakers are combining a rather plain middleweight with a rather plain heavyweight. To what end?



Now, all this time, a lovely, grape-y photograph or two, or a picture of a label saying "Semillon," would have been appropriate here. But it's the first of May. Spring has finally arrived, and I'm lucky enough to live near some woods. .... A non sequitur, if no one minds: if you like pagan myth, you know that last night was May-eve, the mysterious Walpurgis Night.