At First Glass turns two (and has a cocktail)

For a while now I have had in my possession a copy of American Bar: The Artistry of Mixing Drinks, by Charles Schumann (Abbeville Press, 1995). This is the book that I picked up for a song at a used book warehouse, and that the gifts catalog Acorn was selling for over eighty dollars this fall, just in time for the holidays.

Since I have little knowledge of spirits or cocktails, American Bar has been a great study aide for the liquor section of the wine aisle. The book is, however, peculiarly organized. All its five hundred individual drinks recipes come first, followed by the explanatory material describing drinks categories, and then by very basic information defining the many liquors in the world. (By the way, is there any substance which mankind has not tried to ferment? -- he would ferment water and rocks if he could.) Lastly comes information concerning bar equipment and The Bartender. I believe an American publishing firm would have changed all this a bit, and insisted on a homegrown book's chapters being entirely flip-flopped; perhaps Abbeville hadn't the time to bother in this case, or perhaps they reasoned that the audience for this volume wouldn't mind the charm of a more European arrangement. For while Abbeville may have had a New York address, American Bar certainly reflects its provenance -- Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH & Co., KG Munich (1991).

Munich is also the location of Schumann's, owned and run by the famous, no, the legendary Charles Schumann, author not only of this book but of Schumann's Bar Book and Tropical Bar Book. When you open this one, almost the first thing that confronts you is a photograph, circa 1991, of the man himself. It's because of a glance at it that I'm sure I would never have the nerve to walk into Schumann's myself, still less to actually order a drink there. He looks rather fearsome, if not definitely downright scary. He looks as if he had been in his share of barfights already and would be glad to hold his own in a few more. A newer photograph shows him looking exactly the same, only with sweeping and magisterial silver hair and, granted, a slightly wider smile. Still, in his brief remarks on Dealing with the Public he writes, "the bartender is neither emcee nor circus director ... discreetly the bartender lets the undesirable guest know that this is not the place for him." Emphasis mine.

Dear me. But it is fun to read the reports of people who have screwed up the courage to venture into his precincts. There's a collection of old reviews of the tourists' experience at Schumann's at a website called Toytown Germany ("for Germany's English speaking crowd"), and another set of reviews, still older, at World's Best Bars. These latter seem to come from more hardened travelers. The gist of all the reviews is: legendary, expensive, great drinks, jam-packed, if you're in Munich you must go.

One comment, at Toytown Germany, is sophisticated enough and complete enough to be worth quoting in full. An anonymous who called himself "'Ratbert' " responds, in January 2007, to two women, one of whom had a glorious time at the bar, one of whom felt snubbed by the rude staff:

I think you two ladies perfectly summed up the Schumann´s experience. The first time I was in (the old) Schumann´s I met the owner personally, complimented him on his bar and his world famous cocktail book and found him to be friendly and professional. I have since seen him on several occasions and whether in one of his bars, walking the streets of Munich or (believe it or not) at dinner in Venice, have always found him to act with the same professional courtesy that one would expect from (whether you agree or not) a legendary barkeeper. Now, are most of his staff of the same caliber? Clearly not. Their names are not on the menus and it is not their reputation at stake. Some of the staff are rude and pompous, but hey, which of Munich´s many "institutions" (be they shopping, dining, or drinking) are not guilty of arrogant staff? If you are a tourist without a clue, well, let´s just say that there are places in Munich where you will be made to feel more welcome by the staff; but if you are there when the owner is working, I assure you that he will make you one of the finest `dry martinis´ you are likely to find on the planet - whether you realize it or not.

That last little dig about not knowing whether or not you've been served a great martini struck me as very a propos, since I have American Bar open in front of me and I've noticed one or two things about the master's work. For one thing, his drinks are amazingly small, surely. Measurements typically are "3/4 ounce," "1/4 ounce," "1 and 1/2 ounces," and even drinks which belong in a big glass -- and he includes a sketch below each recipe of the proper glass for it -- are obviously only "big" because they include lots of room for a non-alcoholic component. His Harvey Wallbanger, to be served in a highball glass, is only 3 Tablespoons of vodka and 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of Galliano. The rest -- a whopping 3 and 1/2 ounces -- amounts to about 7 Tablespoons of orange juice, assuming I've done my conversionary arithmetic right. I don't doubt it's delicious, but I suspect the average person fixing himself a H. W. at home, and merely "eyeballing" the measurements, is probably going to pour himself much more booze. That person will probably also be chagrined, if he should happen to visit Schumann's, at the expense of what little he's getting. Perhaps he'll chalk it up to the falling dollar.

And there are certain drinks the master won't make, out of respect for the ingredients he is using. "I personally never pour vodka and gin together," he notes below the recipe he nevertheless grudgingly includes for the original Long Island Iced Tea, which has itself evolved, at least among some commercial producers, into any mucky combination of any four liquors you like plus caramel coloring. A hangover in a glass, as customers call it ($16.99 for a 1.75 liter jug). But that's not all the master won't make. He also won't pour together "gin and whiskey, vodka and whiskey, gin and brandy, or vodka and brandy." He won't mix gin with tequila or rum, either. ("Why would one mix those?") It all must let out I don't know how many commonplace drinks from Schumann's legendary menu. He also is appalled by very sugary concoctions, and who can blame him -- "even the list of ingredients makes me queasy" -- he is wary of excessive fruit and vegetable garnishes in or on drinks and commands that the bar not resemble a farm stand, and he absolutely declares that no martini shall be enhanced by anything but a whole green olive, with pit. "What place do stuffed olives have in a martini?" Emphasis his. And, in bold red print, in the Julep category: "Fruits do not belong in a julep!"

Why, why, and why not? Mr. Schumann's pronouncements all come down to this, a respect for the potables that go into drinks, most especially for the painstaking care and time that mankind has devoted to his fermented and aged and mixed and fortified and triple-distilled and otherwise doctored wheats, ryes, grapes, apples, rice, barleys, sugar cane, raspberries, agave plants, potatoes, coffee, molasses, corn, juniper berries, any and all green leafy things, and on and on, you name them. From all the possibilities for any one drink, he says, impose the guiding, classic order and pick three: the basis -- a gin cocktail should taste of gin -- the modifier -- "to determine which direction the cocktail is going" -- and the flavoring agent, which "rounds the cocktail off and brings it to completion." Shaking and stirring each have their purpose, as does either crushed ice or cubes, or the use of an electric blender or a cocktail shaker. Be aware of the effect of the cocktail and the hour of the day, too. Oh, and when you have made your work of art, keep in mind that "it is not at all suited to little umbrellas or national flags." It all gives new meaning to the exhortation to drink responsibly.

From his menu of five hundred "diverse recipes that strike me as more than sufficient" and which adhere to his classic requirements -- evidently he's never gone surfing the web for ideas, and found such an atrocity as the Bloody Tampon -- I think I'd pick the Sombrero to welcome in the new year. Here it is, and be respectful:

Sombrero

1 and 1/2 ounces brandy (3 Tablespoons)
1/4 ounce ruby port (1 and 1/2 teaspoons)
3/4 ounce cream (about 1 and 1/2 Tablespoons)

Stir the liquors over ice cubes in a mixing glass. Strain them into a sherry glass (in other words, keep out the ice). Carefully top with cream.

For further information: a useful glossary of terms in liquor, from a very bare-bones but interesting site called Taste of the Southwest.

Looking back:

At First Glass turns one (and goes on a field trip)

A not-port

Adriano, 2005, from the port maker Ramos Pinto, in Portugal's Douro Valley; it brings back memories of a similar wine called Altano. Made of the four grapes that make port: touriga francesca, tinta roriz, tinta barroca, and touriga nacional.



Image from Maisons Marques & Domaines (the importer)

My first impressions were of meatiness, and faintly, of cinnamon; which in turn brings back memories of customers and sundry nice people shaking their heads and marveling that they can't taste "all the things you're supposed to taste" in wine. It's okay, I'm not necessarily tasting meat and cinnamon even the next night, myself. Now I'm sensing more the "freshness" and "lively tannins" that Ramos Pinto's website tells me I'll sense. Perhaps now is a good time not only to remember the best wine writers' admissions that suggestibility plays a huge role even in their professional perceptions, but also to remember author Lawrence Osborne's contention that modern wine tasting's rigid, fruit-and-flowers metaphors are only about as old as the 1970s, and reflect the newly enophilic, comfortable middle classes' familiarity with the supermarket, as opposed to the wine buying upper classes' old familiarity with things -- and old wine descriptors -- like "breeding" or "commonness."

But the wine. It's juicy, shrinks the mouth first with its tannins and then fills it up again with the reaction to its acidity. (Why is saliva such an ugly word? from the Latin salix, derived from willow; it seems there is a glucoside extracted from the barks of willows and poplars, and for heaven's sake why shouldn't there be? -- and it's got something to do with the helpful digestive juices in our mouths.)

Suggested retail, $13. For the wine, not your juices.

Challah

Once in a while, it happens that Christmas falls on a Friday or Saturday. In that case, you might be celebrating a different holiday, for which you'll want challah, the traditional Jewish sabbath bread. This recipe comes from The Joy of Coooking, and is in fact one of the few I ever found in the Joy that was really much use. (I'm told the pre-World War II editions are better than the mid-1970s edition.) The other is cream of tomato soup, to which challah makes a beautiful accompaniment.

To begin, you'll need 6 cups of flour, 1 Tbsp salt, 3 eggs, 1/4 cup vegetable oil, 3 Tbsp plus 1 more tsp sugar, and 2 packets of dry yeast.

Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs, 3 Tbsp sugar, and oil -- use a combination of part vegetable oil and part olive oil if you like, since olive oil alone gives too strong a taste.



Meanwhile, place the 1 tsp sugar in a Pyrex measuring cup, and measure into it 1/4 cup warm water. Sprinkle the yeast over the water, stir it in, and let it stand and bubble for 5 minutes.

Add the yeast mixture to the flour and salt. Then, stir two cups of warm water into the egg mixture, and pour that carefully into the bowl with the flour and yeast. With everything in one bowl, mix and stir until you have a sticky dough that you can maneuver from the bowl onto a floured tabletop.

Flouring the table, the dough, and your hands as needed, begin to knead the dough. Knead for ten minutes, until it becomes smooth and satiny (as the cookbooks all say. And it will).



Put the dough in an oiled bowl to rise. Cover with a clean towel. Let it rise for about an hour in a warm place. The large amount of yeast and sugar means that challah rises quickly.

When it has risen, punch it down and divide it in half. Knead each half just a little, to get rid of any stickiness. Then, divide each half into three pieces, and roll them out into longish tubes. They shrink up as you work, but don't worry.

Braid the three sections, and lift the braid onto a cookie sheet. Do the same with the other half of dough.



Cover the braids with the towel again, and let them rise about half an hour in a warm place. Preheat the oven to 400. Brush the dough with an egg wash, either of an egg yolk mixed with water or (simpler), a beaten egg.



Put the bread in the oven, and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 F, and continue baking 15 minutes more.



The whole process takes three hours from start to finish, but, as with so many recipes that sound time consuming, it does not require what you might call three hours' work work. And the bread is so good with anything -- any meal, as the base for any sandwich, certainly as a Christmas party offering. Need we say, it will go with any wine?

And as for French toast, well. Next up, with the leftovers of this bread, will be Jinx and Judy's "Eve's toast," from The How to Keep Him (After You've Caught Him) Cookbook (p. 38). This is a French toast fried in an orange flavored batter and topped with honey-dipped oranges. I think they call it Eve's toast to conjure up images of delectable, wicked temptation, and so on.

Comment spam (in Romanian?)

I believe it's called comment spam when a comment arrives in your inbox that is clearly not generated by a person, but by a computer or software system trawling the web for the right places to plug in a preformatted (advertising) message.

Still. When it's in Italian, it just seems so pretty.

"Restaurant Pizzerie Vechile Coline Iasi va ofera un meniu select pentru evenimente si mese festive, in cadrul unui ambient nascut din eleganta si meticulozitate.

"Va asteptam sa va petreceti atat o seara linistita si deosebita in cadrul ambientului nostru dar si in compania serviciilor noastre de catering.

"Festiv - nunti, cumetrii, reuniuni, aniversari, petreceri corporate, revelion, etc.

"Corporate - conferinte, receptii, congrese, traning-uri, lansari, intalniri de afaceri, festivitati de promovare a produselor, inaugurari de sedii, etc."

But look again. Is that Italian? Romanian? It's the romance language that everyone forgets, after they have cudgelled their brains for memories of high school foreign language instructions, and dutifully listed French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese in the Latinate roster. And where is Iasi? Good grief -- is there such a thing as Romanian wine? Why not?

I know NO-thing, but "I lah-rn, Mr. Fawlty, I lahrn."

Treat yourself: chocolate glazed rum fudge brownies (from three cookbooks!)

Betty Crocker's Ultimate Cookie Book (1992) is the main source for this Ultimate Brownie. I chose the recipe because it calls for no less than 5 squares of baker's chocolate,



plus the addition of chocolate chips to the batter. Lacking chocolate chips just this one day -- I promise I'll have them next time -- I opted to add a sprinkling of rum to the finished pan, an idea taken from Jinx Kragen and Judy Perry's fun 1969 The How to Keep Him (After You've Caught Him) cookbook. This book leaped out and shouted "Buy me!" from the shelves of the local thrift store, because on one of my cookbook research trips to the Chicago Public Library a few months ago, I had found and copied down some recipes from the gals' previous effort, Saucepans and the Single Girl (1964). Browsing through that book, I could just imagine the two of them toddling around the big city in pencil skirts, careful coiffures, and high heeled pumps, buying groceries and liquor for a chic weekend dinner party brimming over with eligible bachelors. With How to Keep Him, they had evidently picked their bachelors and become wives and moms -- and no-nonsense ones at that. You want Rum Fudge Brownies? Sprinkle some rum over a pan of store-bought, box-mix brownies. You're done, and Jinx and Judy are free to go on psychoanalyzing Your Mate: "Western men have long been fascinated by the shy, gentle women of the Orient. It's no wonder, really, that Japanese women are so desirable. A well bred Japanese girl is trained from childhood in modesty and service ...." Therefore, make sukiyaki. This is from the chapter called "Rekindling the Flame."

Dim memories do stir, here, of a time somewhere about the Johnson and Nixon years when some suburban rendering of sukiyaki was fashionable. Still, Jinx and Judy's rum fudge angle is a little easier to adopt. And, as we're treating ourselves, why not cover our brownies with a chocolate glaze, from Marion Cunningham's Fannie Farmer Cookbook?

It was an adventurous afternoon.

Chocolate glazed rum fudge ultimate brownies (from three cookbooks)

For the brownies:

• 5 squares baker's chocolate
• 2/3 cup butter (10 and 2/3 Tbsp)
• 1 and 3/4 cups sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup chopped nuts
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Melt the butter and the 5 squares baker's chocolate over low heat in a small saucepan. When completely melted, remove from heat.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter a 9 x 9 x 2 pan.

Mix the sugar, vanilla, and eggs in a large bowl.



Beat in the chocolate mixture and combine well.



Beat in the flour until just blended, and then add the nuts and chocolate chips, if using.

Spread the batter in the pan.



Bake 40 to 45 minutes, or just until brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool completely.



While they are baking, make a free form Chocolate glaze (this is based on two frosting recipes from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook).

• 1 square baker's chocolate
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• about 1/4 cup milk
• about 1 tsp cornstarch
• a dash vanilla (less than 1/4 tsp)

Melt the chocolate and butter in a small saucepan (you can use the same one you started the brownies with). Add the sugar and blend. The mixture will be grainy, so add the milk and blend; then add the cornstarch a little at a time, and cook until the glaze is the consistency you want. Finish by adding the vanilla. Remove from heat.



Sprinkle 2 Tbsp rum over the finished brownies. Cut into squares and place them on a platter. Plop, smooth, and/or dribble the glaze over them, depending on how thick you made it.

Eat. Share. (No really.)

M.F.K. Fisher took it as blindingly obvious that no one in his right mind would think of pairing chocolate with red wine -- which is precisely the pairing that is considered wonderful and fashionable now. By the same token, most wine writers say that of course one never drinks a fine dry sparkling wine, least of all a champagne, with sweet desserts, but I see no reason not to. Why not a refreshing light prosecco with these brownies? Or, if we must venture into red wine territory, why not a briny, raisin-y tawny port?

Treat yourself.

Labels

I've never tasted this wine, but the label is lovely. You can find it, and more, at Wine Label World.



It's a sweet white from France's Loire Valley, specifically from the Coteaux du Layon AOC (Appellation d'Origine Controlee -- a precisely defined growing area, one of fifty within the Loire valley). The producer is Domaine de Baumard, the grape variety chenin blanc. In years of fine weather, the grapes for this wine are not harvested until they are superripe or even botrytised -- attacked by a beneficial fungus, botrytis cinerea, which shrinks them and concentrates their juices -- so the fact that this particular pretty label carries no vintage year may indicate that the weather was not terrific and this wine is therefore a little more ordinary than not. However, the Loire is known for its fine white wines, so we should be careful how we bandy about the word "ordinary."

The grapes that make the Loire's fine white wines are primarily chenin blanc and sauvignon blanc; many wine drinkers will recognize the name Vouvray as mentally translating to "chenin blanc," and Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume as translating to "sauvignon blanc." Karen MacNeil, in The Wine Bible, goes over the ground:

Like Champagne, the Loire exists on the fringe of the lowest temperatures at which grapes can ripen. This is a plus in warm years. When the grapes get enough heat and sunlight to ripen, the cool climate gives the wines of the Loire their elegance and haunting precision (the result of high acidity). In great years the best wines can have such dynamic tension they seem poised on a tightrope. In French, their refreshing vigor is described as nervosite. ... Vouvray, Coteaux du Layon, and Quarts de Chaume epitomize the complexity that chenin blanc, planted in the right place, can achieve.

A map of France will be helpful here.

Since I flatter myself that I am now deep in the study of Italian wine, I do fear getting muddle-headed by veering off, even for a moment, to other places. What actually first struck me about that pretty-as-a-peacock label, when I found it at Wine Label World, was that it belongs in my PREWIAKDS (Pink Rose Euphoric Wine Imagery Anti-Killjoy Defiant Seduction) Club and Virtual Gallery. And that led me to think a little more about labels.

Though it may render me the most ridiculous curmudgeon, I have a quibble about wine labels. The trouble with them, when they are given a lot of artistic thought and all dressed up and prettified, is that they reinforce many consumers' expectation that wine is a uniform product. And that means that the consumer, perhaps disappointed one day in his search for his favorite label, goes away without buying anything, and therefore without trying or learning anything new. He goes away without an appreciation for wine as a half man-made, half nature-made product, part of whose charm lies in its unpredictability and its miraculous dependence not only on nature's caprice or kindness, but on the skill, effort, and accumulated experience of all winemakers. It's natural to want to drink your favorite wine again and again, but the Cute Label, pleasing the eye and revealing nothing, obscures the fact that there is something of an experiment going on in this bottle -- and there always will be. Wine is not supposed to be a finished, perfect product all the time. If your eye-catching label disguised a pinot noir, why not try another pinot noir when you can't find that one? No? -- because it won't be the same?

And there are so many cute labels. Marketing departments, bless them, work very hard on them for a reason. Each one can be a kind of little trap from which the consumer may or may not realize he is permitted to escape. At least the French peacock label has lots of information on it too, in the European style.

Ah well. Good thing, in a way, that the world does have bigger problems than whatever your local neighborhood wine curmudgeon can think up.

More labels, anyone?

Irish potatoes or colcannon

If you're looking for comfort food against a raging winter storm, this could hardly be simpler. Leeks, celery, or cabbage -- or any combination of same -- are cooked in butter



and then mashed into mashed potatoes. I found that one leek and a quarter of a cabbage, sauteed to tenderness, were enough to nicely augment seven or eight smallish potatoes, mashed with butter and milk. Add salt and a generous dose of pepper. The Settlement Cookbook also recommends drizzling melted butter over them.



Good with any roast meat, any poultry -- anything.

A "blind" tasting of the under-$10s

Consumer Reports' December 2009 issue has an interesting article on choosing good, affordable wines for this economically challenged holiday season. The magazine found several examples, domestic and imported, of each of six major varietals -- cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, riesling, etc. -- in the under $10 range. The wines were sampled in a blind tasting by "our experts," who sipped and judged each bottle without knowing either the winemaker or the exact price.

The resulting tasting notes, touching on the usual topics of fruit flavors, sweetness, acidity, and so on, help guide the reader to a cost-efficient and pleasing personal choice. What's most interesting about the project, however, is the fact that almost all the wines that end up identified are, of course, grocery store and liquor store stalwarts: Chateau Ste. Michelle, Fetzer, Frontera, Yellow Tail, Lindeman's, Dancing Bull. Given that the premise of the round up was "let's keep this under $10," the people in charge could scarcely not have arrived at this or a like collection. Which leads me to ask, in a nice way of course, what is the point of a "blind" tasting of these types of wines? At this price point, we are going to discover sound, decent product and that is all. But, to be fair, that is a great deal -- for we are therein going to find proof that those wine writers are right who say there has been no better time in history to be a wine drinker than now, when it's the ordinary wine that is very good. Far better than what our ancestors knew, who had to drink it even when it was vinegar, because few other liquids were safe.

However, some studies have shown that people who taste wines "blind" can still be swayed in their opinions on flavor if they are told that some of what they are swirling and sniffing is expensive. (Knowledge about high prices actually stimulated the area of the brain that governs the experience of pleasure.) So, I'd be very intrigued by a wine round up in which the experts, gathered before a collection of grocery store wines, were told -- maybe truthfully -- that two or three of the anonymous ones were in fact a Chateau Margaux, a Dr. Pauly riesling, or a Penfolds Grange (famed Australian shiraz -- feel free to spend $200 to $600 for a bottle). The challenge of being able to pick out which were really exalted would be irresistible, a princess-and-the-pea style proof of each Expert's experience and innate class. And what grocery store wine, if any, would get any prizes? Would any taster have the confidence to say, "I think they're all pretty much Gallo. And not bad at that." Or, "I think they're all '06 Burgundies -- maybe one is a Rhone vin de pays."

It's further interesting to see, in this tasting project, that the wines which did earn any unusual comments were a Chilean cabernet sauvignon from Frontera and two 2007 German rieslings. The cabernet was, at about $4, "the cheapest wine Consumer Reports had ever recommended," and the two rieslings both come from producers -- St. Urban's Hof and S. A. Prum -- which are at least grand enough to show up in my German Wine Guide (Armin Diel and Joel Payne, Abbeville Books, 1999.)

Does this matter? I took it as an omen of their stature, but perhaps I was premature. A digression: I found my German Wine Guide recently at my favorite used book warehouse. Is it all right to consult a ten-year-old book, on the assumption that it will contain some information that remains constant? My particular grocery store's riesling's producers, for example, Schlinkhaus and St. Christopher, do not seem to show up at all in the Guide. I presume it's because, whether now, ten years ago, or ten years from now, most of them hail, hailed, and will hail from huge wine making areas boasting those mass-production habits that preclude their ever being more than what Jancis Robinson frankly calls "Germany's shame" -- the QbA, sugar water riesling. A QbA wine, or a Qualitatswein bestimmter Anbaugebiet, is simply a wine of a certain level of quality guaranteed to have come from one of thirteen (large) regions, anbaugebiete, in Germany. No further promises given, about grape blends, flavor, value, or anything else. I imagine that it's considering what rieslings can be which prompts Ms. Robinson to resort to the rather strong epithet "shame" for those that don't try hard enough.

Consumer Reports' two German rieslings were QbA wines anyway; hence the danger of my judgments being premature. Just because their producers show up in my ten year old Guide does not mean those two wines are, so to speak, the peas beneath the princess' mattress. Still, their being singled out, along with a Chilean cabernet, even in an under-$10 blind tasting would seem to offer a little more proof of what wine writers mean when they talk about whole categories of wines being unusually good values. German rieslings, especially once beyond QbA status, and Chilean wines in general always earn a mention among the experts. So do Rhone reds, and guess what? -- where I work we've got six on our shelves, whereas we carry no proper red Burgundies (two white) and only one Bordeaux. We can afford to get in a little Rhone by the case, and give it shelf space while waiting for one customer in a hundred to show an interest; probably no grocery store within miles can afford to carry the Burgundies that are produced in much smaller quantities to begin with, and then snapped up in wealthy areas far away before you can say "south side." For their part Fetzer, Yellow Tail, Gallo, and yes, QbA German wines are good values because the companies responsible make it their business to get large amounts of uniform quality product on the shelves at a good price.

The other kind of good value, in the sense of a more interesting, better made wine selling for less than it could be worth, has everything to do with reputation and the market's demand. Wine writers delight in these little anomalies, offering the same gladsome advice: sshhhh: snap up those wines before everybody else scanning the lower shelves figures out what they've been missing, and prices rise.

St. Urbans Hof
S.A. Prum
Frontera (Concha Y Toro)

Wine as sculpture

Strange carafes, indeed, from artist Etienne Meneau.



Do they remind you of tree limbs? Balloon sculptures? Otherworldly, many-legged animals?

How would their use affect your red wine?

And -- I hate to be pedestrian, but -- how on earth do we clean them?

For more photos and more of Etienne Meneau's art, see Strange Carafes.