... to make up for my Wine 101 class, cancelled due to low (practically no) enrollment. Too bad, for I had it planned out rather well, I flatter myself. I offered three programs, to be held three Friday evenings in a row in October, November, and December. The first two Friday sessions of each month's program would have been the same. Session 1, "From the farm and the lab" would have explored wine as a farm product and as something that is all about chemistry too; session 2, "Come to the table -- and the fridge" would have delved into flavor profiles, storing and serving, and food pairings; and the third session of each of the three monthly programs would have ventured off to a different major wine region(s) of the world. France and Germany, Italy and Spain, California and Argentina were my first choices. My idea was that everyone could pick the month he wanted to do Wine 101, based mostly on which regions, at the end, most interested him.
Alas and alack. Still, think of all the free evenings I have now. Let's taste some wine(s).
2008 Miner Napa Valley chardonnay, Oakville CA
pure honey -- caramel -- banana
apple compote
syrupy -- a harsh acidic burnt-ness at end
popcorn again -- burnt
thick golden color
Day 2 -- sweet -- moscato like
A common theme for my chardonnay-memory: burnt popcorn. Retail, about $22.
2008 Terra Andina Altos malbec-petit verdot, Sur Andino S.A., Valle Central, Chile
bright, light candy-cranberry color
smoke
(faint) paint -- cinnamon -- tea
equal parts acidity + tannin
barbecue -- light fruit -- cherry
smoked cherries
A common theme for my experience of malbec: cherry. Inexpensive malbecs remind me of gooey cherry pies, like the Hostess kind that used to be sold individually in wax bags. Pricier malbecs = smokier cherries. Retail, about $14.
2007 Bogle Phantom (petite sirah, zinfandel, mourvedre)
pepper (scent)
cinnamon -- cedar
clove -- prune -- barbecue smoke
deep mulberry purple
cinnamon and prune compote
fruit bomb -- good
A common theme of the red blends I like (see Apothic red): they are heavy on the zinfandel or petite sirah or both, therefore heavy on the lush, cinnamon-and-baked fruit, and sometimes chocolate, flavors I also like. If you try this one just after having sipped something much more acidic, like the malbec blend above, the Phantom's thick, sugary texture will startle (and educate) you. But dear me, will a liking for it nonetheless always be a sign of the non-sophisticate? Ought one to admire something leaner, racier, more elegant and subtle? Retail, about $17.
2008 Ca'Momi Bianco di California
soapy -- a bit bird poopy --
thick-bodied -- doughy
a bit caramel-y -- metallic -- acidic
A southern French type blend? (viognier, marsanne, etc.)?
bubble gum, flowers
overall, sweet, honeyed, punch-like
The theme here: watch me get this one wrong. Thus far in my wine drinking experience I find that there are only two wines I don't care for. Among reds, I find the carmenere (grape) harsh and off-putting. Among whites, I don't much like the blends of France's Rhone valley. The grapes in question here are, except for the increasingly familiar viognier, little known varieties with pretty names like grenache blanc, marsanne, and bourboulenc. If you look them up in wine books you will find all these grapes described as producing "full bodied" wines. Indeed they seem to do so. To my taste, that full body makes for a mouthfeel of thick, raw doughiness or even greasiness which, combined with a promising sweet floral aroma and a finishing dry acidity, adds up to a discordant disappointment in the glass.
Viz., Ca'Momi. A white blend, and I thought I was on to something. There was the doughiness, the thick body, the sweetness and a bit of the odd, discordant funk I call "bird poop-y." (We used to own parakeets, and the smell of an unwashed cage is something you never quite forget. Neither as sharp or offensive as the straight-up evacuative odors coming from cats or dogs, it is nevertheless uniquely musty and vegetal and organic and just sort of -- old. Reptilian, almost?) All in all, might this be "a southern French type blend?"
"NOPE," as I added to my notes after doing some fact-checking. Ca'Momi's Bianco di California blend is actually chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, and gewurztraminer. What a combination -- though it would explain every flavor component, from thick body and caramel (chardonnay, I think) to acid (sauvignon blanc) to bubble gum and flowers (gewurztraminer). Retail, about $10.
1998 Bodegas Montecillo Gran Riserva Rioja, Sociedad Anonima
Tawny maroon color
leaves -- brine -- smoke -- prunes
very briny -- light, acidic --
very refined -- not much fruit
brine = a sort of soured vanilla? (vanilla typical of American-oak aged Riojas, Wine for Dummies)
A final theme: some firsts. This was my first gran reserva Rioja (as opposed to either a crianza or a reserva, both Riojas made mostly from the same grape of course -- tempranillo -- but aged less before release). And yes, far from being the brawny, "massive" thing you might expect a Spanish red to be, it was, as Karen MacNeil in The Wine Bible notes of Riojas, surprisingly light and delicate, "almost fragile." Also, this is the first time I can recall having tasted a European wine whose maker merits a mention in another expert source. Bodegas Montecillo is a "consistent producer," according to Wine for Dummies. Expert sources are always chock full of firm and confident European wine recommendations that you and I have a hard time finding on local store shelves, because the wines in question are so good that they tend to jump ship in Manhattan or San Francisco and stay there, not bothering with the long journey to the interior where Franzia -- bless its heart -- is king. A cynical rule of thumb in the heartland is, if your local retailer can afford to offer it to you, even in a big suburban super store, chances are it's a fine but still yeoman product. Not so, it seems, with this wine from the cellars of Sociedad Anonima (the anonymous society? how mysterious). Retail, about $24.
One more, just for pleasure? Oh, why not. I have a niece who has just given birth to a little boy, within the hour. (She put it on Facebook. Young people nowadays.) A toast, then, to baby Austin -- why do I envision a car? -- health and long life.
2009 Terra Andina Reserva pinot noir, Sur Andino, Chile
currant jelly color -- beautiful
cherry + raspberry nose --
a little gaminess --
very gentle -- acidic but fruity --
very fine -- take care to keep it cool, otherwise very spiky
Retail, about $14.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Thinking about organic wine -- conclusion
Thinking about organic wine, a little more
If my kind reader has accompanied me this far in thinking about organic wine, I'm flattered. I didn't mean for the project to turn into a dissertation, not only on the plausibility of what the little beige tags on organic wine bottles say concerning sustainability and pristine-ness, but on forest cover statistics, DDT, and malaria. I'm flattered by his attention, and I thank him. Shall we finish?
An article in the March 2010 Wine Spectator brings us more or less up to speed re: the business of organic wine. It describes some California wineries which are "going green," installing things like "radiant flooring," insulation made from old shredded blue jeans, and the "high efficiency" light bulbs that, I presume, might be the same ones loaded with mercury and thus the ones we can't throw away, but must eventually put into landfills where they'll quietly leak poison into the future. We will all have to buy them, beginning in 2012 you know, barring revolt. Anyway the thrust of the article is precisely efficiency, efficiency, efficiency, how this is so much better than old-fashioned bad farming. Perhaps. Given the environmentalist movement's record of truth telling, we may never be privileged to know how well blue jean insulation worked. And I think I won't even approach the question of who "certifies organic," and under what rules, those vineyards that want to be certified organic. The preacher certifying the choir would, I daresay, sum it up.
More curiously, the article does not mention anything about actual fieldwork, anything as mundane as pesticides or sulphur, or the carrot -- we chose the carrot, you remember, to represent any vegetal matter whose properties can't, in the end, be changed by organic farming -- remaining at the end of the day a carrot. I doubt the nice reporter was even allowed near the vineyards. (By the way, the wine gods have bestowed on organic wine- farming one terrific stroke of luck, and I probably should have put this in large capitals at the head of one of these three chapters: the low yields which risky, pre-modern farming produces also happen to show vitis vinifera at its best.) No, the Spectator article is all about fly-ash concrete walls and gorgeous views.
Disingenuous -- make believe? -- would be the word for this magazine's cursory look at a handful of billionaire wineries' embrace of "green"-ness. Big name, flashy concerns like Cade and Hall not only have Getty money behind them, they also at least have a chance of recouping their refitting investment with sales of $50 PlumpJack. More: no fools, they may fully intend to think ahead, and get on the right side of any new "green" laws allowing them to sell "carbon offsets" to energy-sucking Gallo or Franzia. It would be smart business to sell wine plus modern-day dispensations, and turn carbon-tax collectors for the environmentalist state. If such a wealth transfer dovetails in many ways with their own, shall we say, emotional satisfactions, so much the better. Cade's winemaker Tony Biagi talked happily to the Spectator about the future collapse of freedom, and the impositions of other people's purification disciplines, for the health of the planet: " 'In the next five to ten years, there's not going to be a choice: you're going to have to build certain aspects of this [i.e., eco-friendly or 'responsible' construction guidelines] into any building. So it feels good that we made the choice to do this.' " I wonder if all Californians agree, or remember electing winemaker Tony to some sort of high office.
PlumpJack represents the top of the green wine pyramid. For the poor exploding Brand X with which we began our story -- an organic, unsulfited wine, literally bursting with unkilled yeasts -- as for the rest of the industry, it's like this. Wine, especially inexpensive wine, is so uniformly cheap and agreeable today because of industrial practices. Machine harvesting, efficient chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and energy-sucking refrigerated stainless steel tanks all give us the reliable value we want. Humbler companies that give up or at least compromise modern methods in the search for emotional purity, omitting sulfites from boxed white blends for instance, risk paying the price which our ancestors knew as well as they knew wormy cherries and malaria. They risk fobbing off on their customers the resultant small harvests, iffy quality, spotty availability, and higher prices. What these companies then need, in order to recoup the investment they've made in sprawling farms and ruined inventory, is a customer base permanently loyal to the emotional satisfactions of organic wine.
Can they get one? We'll see. Should customers rethink that loyalty and stop buying unreliable product, Brand X is going to have to either nobly go under, or swallow hard and re-retrofit to meet the needs of the approaching 20th century. Unless of course, a dozen powerful winemaker Tonys simply decree, through whatever channels they can use, that we shan't rethink loyalty; we shall buy correctly, and nobly accept the consequences. Ridiculous, unimaginable of course. It would be as if the green movement could outlaw light bulbs.
And all for a carrot that remains a carrot. Organic, shmorganic? I'm not peeking into your shopping cart. By all means buy what makes you happy at the price you like, just as I buy what makes me happy at a price I like. But, yes.
Artwork by Clara Yos
These are the sources for all three articles, plus some additional reading (marked by *).
Environmentalist:
Not so much:
If my kind reader has accompanied me this far in thinking about organic wine, I'm flattered. I didn't mean for the project to turn into a dissertation, not only on the plausibility of what the little beige tags on organic wine bottles say concerning sustainability and pristine-ness, but on forest cover statistics, DDT, and malaria. I'm flattered by his attention, and I thank him. Shall we finish?
An article in the March 2010 Wine Spectator brings us more or less up to speed re: the business of organic wine. It describes some California wineries which are "going green," installing things like "radiant flooring," insulation made from old shredded blue jeans, and the "high efficiency" light bulbs that, I presume, might be the same ones loaded with mercury and thus the ones we can't throw away, but must eventually put into landfills where they'll quietly leak poison into the future. We will all have to buy them, beginning in 2012 you know, barring revolt. Anyway the thrust of the article is precisely efficiency, efficiency, efficiency, how this is so much better than old-fashioned bad farming. Perhaps. Given the environmentalist movement's record of truth telling, we may never be privileged to know how well blue jean insulation worked. And I think I won't even approach the question of who "certifies organic," and under what rules, those vineyards that want to be certified organic. The preacher certifying the choir would, I daresay, sum it up.
More curiously, the article does not mention anything about actual fieldwork, anything as mundane as pesticides or sulphur, or the carrot -- we chose the carrot, you remember, to represent any vegetal matter whose properties can't, in the end, be changed by organic farming -- remaining at the end of the day a carrot. I doubt the nice reporter was even allowed near the vineyards. (By the way, the wine gods have bestowed on organic wine- farming one terrific stroke of luck, and I probably should have put this in large capitals at the head of one of these three chapters: the low yields which risky, pre-modern farming produces also happen to show vitis vinifera at its best.) No, the Spectator article is all about fly-ash concrete walls and gorgeous views.
Disingenuous -- make believe? -- would be the word for this magazine's cursory look at a handful of billionaire wineries' embrace of "green"-ness. Big name, flashy concerns like Cade and Hall not only have Getty money behind them, they also at least have a chance of recouping their refitting investment with sales of $50 PlumpJack. More: no fools, they may fully intend to think ahead, and get on the right side of any new "green" laws allowing them to sell "carbon offsets" to energy-sucking Gallo or Franzia. It would be smart business to sell wine plus modern-day dispensations, and turn carbon-tax collectors for the environmentalist state. If such a wealth transfer dovetails in many ways with their own, shall we say, emotional satisfactions, so much the better. Cade's winemaker Tony Biagi talked happily to the Spectator about the future collapse of freedom, and the impositions of other people's purification disciplines, for the health of the planet: " 'In the next five to ten years, there's not going to be a choice: you're going to have to build certain aspects of this [i.e., eco-friendly or 'responsible' construction guidelines] into any building. So it feels good that we made the choice to do this.' " I wonder if all Californians agree, or remember electing winemaker Tony to some sort of high office.
PlumpJack represents the top of the green wine pyramid. For the poor exploding Brand X with which we began our story -- an organic, unsulfited wine, literally bursting with unkilled yeasts -- as for the rest of the industry, it's like this. Wine, especially inexpensive wine, is so uniformly cheap and agreeable today because of industrial practices. Machine harvesting, efficient chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and energy-sucking refrigerated stainless steel tanks all give us the reliable value we want. Humbler companies that give up or at least compromise modern methods in the search for emotional purity, omitting sulfites from boxed white blends for instance, risk paying the price which our ancestors knew as well as they knew wormy cherries and malaria. They risk fobbing off on their customers the resultant small harvests, iffy quality, spotty availability, and higher prices. What these companies then need, in order to recoup the investment they've made in sprawling farms and ruined inventory, is a customer base permanently loyal to the emotional satisfactions of organic wine.
Can they get one? We'll see. Should customers rethink that loyalty and stop buying unreliable product, Brand X is going to have to either nobly go under, or swallow hard and re-retrofit to meet the needs of the approaching 20th century. Unless of course, a dozen powerful winemaker Tonys simply decree, through whatever channels they can use, that we shan't rethink loyalty; we shall buy correctly, and nobly accept the consequences. Ridiculous, unimaginable of course. It would be as if the green movement could outlaw light bulbs.
And all for a carrot that remains a carrot. Organic, shmorganic? I'm not peeking into your shopping cart. By all means buy what makes you happy at the price you like, just as I buy what makes me happy at a price I like. But, yes.
Artwork by Clara Yos
These are the sources for all three articles, plus some additional reading (marked by *).
Environmentalist:
- 50 must-read blogs for the organic shopper*
- Down to Earth*
- Best Green Blogs*
- "Organic, shmorganic?" Natural Holistic Health
- Hodgeslab.org: "Organic farming efficiency"
- "Organic farming success," Cornell University, 2005
- Science, 2002
- Treehugger*
- Inhabitat*
- Benziger Winery
- Badger Mountain Winery
- "Makers of Organic and Biodynamic wine," Vinography (Alder Yarrow), June 2004
- PAN (Pesticide Action Network) pesticide database (California pesticide use)
Not so much:
- "Environmentalism as a religion run amok," Michael Crichton, March 2004
- Green Hell
- "The all-American light bulb dims as freedom flickers," Deroy Murdock, National Review Online, July 2, 2010
- "2007 Energy Bill -- Are They Phasing Out or Making Incandescent Bulbs Illegal?" -- About.com (Home Repair)
- "Forest resources of the United States," National Atlas.gov
- "America's ruling class -- and the perils of revolution," Angelo Codevilla, American Spectator, July-Aug 2010*
- Climategate
- "100 things you should know about DDT," at Junkscience.com -- (citing William Ruckleshaus)
- "Ecoterrorism: extremism in the animal rights and environmentalist movements," Anti-Defamation League
- "The deadly war against DDT," by Elizabeth Whelan, National Review Online
- Drive Against Malaria * -- this couple distributes mosquito nets to African families.
- And finally: April 25, each year, is recognized in Africa as Malaria Day. See Africa News* for more on new treatments (2006) and on the estimated one million African children under five who die of this disease every year.
Friday, September 24, 2010
"Champ," or, how to eat butter like an Irishman
Let me emphasize that you will want a glass of red wine or two with this little treat, in order to clear the arteries. Assuming it's true that red wine serves that purpose -- sometimes I think the claim sounds too patly magical to be real. Anyway a red wine would taste good, too. Please, no buttery chardonnays or crisp and kiwi-laced sauvignon blancs, or even noble sweet rieslings, with this one. You'll want to pick a big, strong, burly, dry cabernet, or a gentle, lush, and languid merlot.
Or perhaps a wallop of Irish whisky would be even more to the point. These potatoes seem, after all, to be all about comfort.
The recipe for "Champ" comes from Barbara Haber's From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals.
She credits, in turn, Darina Allen's The Complete Book of Irish Country Cooking.
Or perhaps a wallop of Irish whisky would be even more to the point. These potatoes seem, after all, to be all about comfort.
The recipe for "Champ" comes from Barbara Haber's From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals.
She credits, in turn, Darina Allen's The Complete Book of Irish Country Cooking.
If Ms. Allen delves into the etymology of the word "champ" in her book, Ms. Haber does not relay that information. Online variations similarly leave the word unexplained, just as online variations leave out the wonderful butter-browned onions at the end, which to my mind finish and perfect the whole dish.
Champ's ingredients are simple.
- 8 baking potatoes
- 1 bunch scallions, including most of green tops
- 1 and 1/2 c milk
- 1 large onion, diced
- 8 Tbs + butter
- salt and pepper
Don't you love that promising "+" after the 8 Tbsp butter? Yes, why not have some more?
To begin, peel, quarter, and boil the potatoes. Both our professional cooks instruct us to boil the potatoes in their jackets, and then peel them, which method probably gives the potatoes more flavor, but is too inefficient for me. Especially on a pressed-for-time weeknight. I also took the liberty of adding a clove of garlic to the boiling water.
While you are merrily cooking the potatoes, put the diced scallions in a separate pan, cover them with the milk, bring to a boil, and simmer them 3 to 4 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the scallions steep while you proceed with the recipe.
Next, brown the diced onion in 2 to 3 Tbs of the butter.
As the onion is slowly browning, mash the potatoes with the scallions and milk. To this mixture, beat in 3 more Tbsp of the butter. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Now you will serve it forth. Pile a helping of potatoes into individual warmed bowls. Add a "knob" (such a good, honest, buttery word) of remaining butter to each bowl, and ladle on some of the deliciously browned onions.
Is this a side dish to a roast beef or chicken, or is it a meal in itself? You decide. Just be sure to pour that glass of ... well, whatever seems comforting.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Thinking about organic wine, a little more
Thinking about organic wine (in chapters)
What DDT could do, safely, to mosquitoes in tropical Africa, other pesticides do to fungi and nematodes in California's wine country. Safely -- perfectly safely? I don't know. But notice this. No high Namibian or Gabonese official will ever be able to ban 1,3-Dichloropropene for our fields and vineyards as EPA director William Ruckleshaus was able to ban DDT on behalf of all Africa and indeed all the world. Go green as an individual if you like, but as a society we'll take our own risks.
The second plausibility problem with organic food, the whole "health of the planet" thing, is also a problem which fantasy solves. Organicism's Herculean style in the fields, necessary to give us the clean, unbuggy produce we think is normal, actually seems to be worse for our Fragile Home than what is grimly called "monoculture." Both people who admire the practice and those who don't agree: the organic farmer must actually stake out more land and use more fertilizers, water, and labor, exemplified in hand weeding and mulching, for example, than conventional farmers do. The organic farm, pre-industrial for a purpose, has got to spread itself out so that the carrot, D. carota var. sativa, has a chance for a remotely worthwhile yield in the face of all those rules governing "companion plantings" and not harming hungry pests. This is why organic produce is nobly expensive.
To be fair, there are a few scientific papers and research studies advising that organic farming is not that much more inefficient than conventional farming; but this seems to be the best that can be said of it, and the statement still leaves unanswered questions. A year and a half ago the website Hodgeslab, maintained by a biochemist and Ph.D candidate at Berkeley, cited two studies on the matter, a Science article from 2002 and a Cornell University study from 2005. The one averred that organic farming is "80% as efficient" in terms of yield per acre, the other that yields of the two types are "identical" and that energy and water use is actually reduced, and soil quality improved, under an organic regimen. ("This has implications for global warming" -- yes, perhaps, especially if we consider how much energy the organic farm's ballooned labor force will use to get to work, and how much water they'll drink at work, and shower with after work.) Interestingly, the most encouraging of the two reports nevertheless admits that a Gaia-friendly husbandry is useless for cash crops. "Cultural practices" and the need for intensive labor mean the willfully pre-industrial farm is never going to feed post-industrial demographics. It is also not a promising choice for crops plagued by more pests than the studied cereals are: among which, first on the list is grapes.
Whom to believe? Perhaps looking at the organic farm from another angle would help give us useful information. An article about forestry at National Atlas tells us that, of the "nearly" one billion acres of forests covering America when Europeans arrived, we as a nation have cleared, mostly for agriculture, a whopping -- 300 million acres. That two-thirds of what was forest remains so, or has been returned to second growth, while our all too well-fed population has exploded like a 3 liter box of organic wine would seem to prove, absent scholarly studies, what efficiency really looks like. Something to think about, the next time you enjoy an afternoon in a suburban forest preserve. Why is the terrain so flat? Why are there bricks laid out seemingly to no purpose here and there in the dirt trails, and why are there weird, neglected cement structures half buried among the trees? Maybe it was an onion or spinach farm, as our own local woods were, and is no longer needed as such.
I don't doubt that an individual organic farm produces good food. I don't doubt your backyard garden does the same, without your spreading chemicals on it. "Organic farmers do what you would do," Hodgeslab tells us. They start vegetables from seed in greenhouses for example, and grow them until they are strong enough to be planted out, and to out-muscle weeds on their own. Yes, this is what we would do but are no longer obliged to do, because modern industrial farming has freed us all from the need literally to sustain ourselves. We are freed to do other things with life -- itself a type of efficiency -- and we accept what economists call the trade-off of having to wash fruits and vegetables which, granted, may carry a trace of an herbicide or pesticide whose terrors environmentalists have tended to lie about anyway.
The carrot remains the same, and the crux of the matter, the agenda, remains make-believe. Fantasy and, frankly, buzz words can quell doubts about health-of-the-planet issues just as they can about personal safety and pesticide issues. The words always sound so wholesome, so inarguable. The entire environmentalist project is proudly summed up in the simple, good word green. Or consider "sustainable farming" and "reducing carbon footprints." Think it over. The first is a tautology, surely. Mankind learned how to farm some ten thousand years ago. In what sense is it not sustainable? The only people for whom it might not be sustainable would be organic farmers, who hobble themselves with an acting-out of risky, pre-modern practices that American agriculture especially triumphed over, quite some time ago.
And as for the second, well. To take that seriously, you first must swallow hard, shut your eyes, and forget all you've learned lately -- since the publication of organic farming university studies in 2005, certainly -- about scientist-activists like Michael Mann and Phil Jones, ensconced in universities, throwing out inconvenient data negating that joy of their lives and that point of their careers and fame, "global warming." If it seems preposterous that good-souled greens would ever lie about matters so serious, allow me to remind you of the passions of Mr. Ruckleshaus.
Where does wine come into this? (You might think we had forgotten the exploding Brand X organic boxed wine with which we began our story. Not at all.) If organic wine makes the customer happy and gives an added fillip to sales for a while, fine. I simply think it's important to recognize make-believe where we see it, because make-believe is not in all ways harmless. We are dealing here not merely with food and drink and consumer buying patterns, but with a social movement that gives sheltered Westerners an intoxicating new sense of spiritual discipline -- beware, Africa -- but also doesn't take questions well and has long had cruel friends in awfully high places. And that has an unpleasing, and little noticed, attachment to violence.
Artwork by Clara Yos
What DDT could do, safely, to mosquitoes in tropical Africa, other pesticides do to fungi and nematodes in California's wine country. Safely -- perfectly safely? I don't know. But notice this. No high Namibian or Gabonese official will ever be able to ban 1,3-Dichloropropene for our fields and vineyards as EPA director William Ruckleshaus was able to ban DDT on behalf of all Africa and indeed all the world. Go green as an individual if you like, but as a society we'll take our own risks.
The second plausibility problem with organic food, the whole "health of the planet" thing, is also a problem which fantasy solves. Organicism's Herculean style in the fields, necessary to give us the clean, unbuggy produce we think is normal, actually seems to be worse for our Fragile Home than what is grimly called "monoculture." Both people who admire the practice and those who don't agree: the organic farmer must actually stake out more land and use more fertilizers, water, and labor, exemplified in hand weeding and mulching, for example, than conventional farmers do. The organic farm, pre-industrial for a purpose, has got to spread itself out so that the carrot, D. carota var. sativa, has a chance for a remotely worthwhile yield in the face of all those rules governing "companion plantings" and not harming hungry pests. This is why organic produce is nobly expensive.
To be fair, there are a few scientific papers and research studies advising that organic farming is not that much more inefficient than conventional farming; but this seems to be the best that can be said of it, and the statement still leaves unanswered questions. A year and a half ago the website Hodgeslab, maintained by a biochemist and Ph.D candidate at Berkeley, cited two studies on the matter, a Science article from 2002 and a Cornell University study from 2005. The one averred that organic farming is "80% as efficient" in terms of yield per acre, the other that yields of the two types are "identical" and that energy and water use is actually reduced, and soil quality improved, under an organic regimen. ("This has implications for global warming" -- yes, perhaps, especially if we consider how much energy the organic farm's ballooned labor force will use to get to work, and how much water they'll drink at work, and shower with after work.) Interestingly, the most encouraging of the two reports nevertheless admits that a Gaia-friendly husbandry is useless for cash crops. "Cultural practices" and the need for intensive labor mean the willfully pre-industrial farm is never going to feed post-industrial demographics. It is also not a promising choice for crops plagued by more pests than the studied cereals are: among which, first on the list is grapes.
Whom to believe? Perhaps looking at the organic farm from another angle would help give us useful information. An article about forestry at National Atlas tells us that, of the "nearly" one billion acres of forests covering America when Europeans arrived, we as a nation have cleared, mostly for agriculture, a whopping -- 300 million acres. That two-thirds of what was forest remains so, or has been returned to second growth, while our all too well-fed population has exploded like a 3 liter box of organic wine would seem to prove, absent scholarly studies, what efficiency really looks like. Something to think about, the next time you enjoy an afternoon in a suburban forest preserve. Why is the terrain so flat? Why are there bricks laid out seemingly to no purpose here and there in the dirt trails, and why are there weird, neglected cement structures half buried among the trees? Maybe it was an onion or spinach farm, as our own local woods were, and is no longer needed as such.
I don't doubt that an individual organic farm produces good food. I don't doubt your backyard garden does the same, without your spreading chemicals on it. "Organic farmers do what you would do," Hodgeslab tells us. They start vegetables from seed in greenhouses for example, and grow them until they are strong enough to be planted out, and to out-muscle weeds on their own. Yes, this is what we would do but are no longer obliged to do, because modern industrial farming has freed us all from the need literally to sustain ourselves. We are freed to do other things with life -- itself a type of efficiency -- and we accept what economists call the trade-off of having to wash fruits and vegetables which, granted, may carry a trace of an herbicide or pesticide whose terrors environmentalists have tended to lie about anyway.
The carrot remains the same, and the crux of the matter, the agenda, remains make-believe. Fantasy and, frankly, buzz words can quell doubts about health-of-the-planet issues just as they can about personal safety and pesticide issues. The words always sound so wholesome, so inarguable. The entire environmentalist project is proudly summed up in the simple, good word green. Or consider "sustainable farming" and "reducing carbon footprints." Think it over. The first is a tautology, surely. Mankind learned how to farm some ten thousand years ago. In what sense is it not sustainable? The only people for whom it might not be sustainable would be organic farmers, who hobble themselves with an acting-out of risky, pre-modern practices that American agriculture especially triumphed over, quite some time ago.
And as for the second, well. To take that seriously, you first must swallow hard, shut your eyes, and forget all you've learned lately -- since the publication of organic farming university studies in 2005, certainly -- about scientist-activists like Michael Mann and Phil Jones, ensconced in universities, throwing out inconvenient data negating that joy of their lives and that point of their careers and fame, "global warming." If it seems preposterous that good-souled greens would ever lie about matters so serious, allow me to remind you of the passions of Mr. Ruckleshaus.
Where does wine come into this? (You might think we had forgotten the exploding Brand X organic boxed wine with which we began our story. Not at all.) If organic wine makes the customer happy and gives an added fillip to sales for a while, fine. I simply think it's important to recognize make-believe where we see it, because make-believe is not in all ways harmless. We are dealing here not merely with food and drink and consumer buying patterns, but with a social movement that gives sheltered Westerners an intoxicating new sense of spiritual discipline -- beware, Africa -- but also doesn't take questions well and has long had cruel friends in awfully high places. And that has an unpleasing, and little noticed, attachment to violence.
Artwork by Clara Yos
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Thinking about organic wine (in chapters)
I was on the phone with a wholesale wine salesman. "Do you have any more of Brand X on the shelves?" he asked. "Because we're having a problem with it exploding."
This salesman is an ex-actor with a fine "chesty" voice and a fondness for the quick pun, so I was about to try to give him one of my best and reply, "You mean, exploding sales, or just exploding?" Har har. But I didn't get the chance. He went on to say that a few of the boxes -- we are talking about a boxed wine, I should explain, 3 liters per -- had actually made a mess in the trunk of his car and that the same thing was happening elsewhere. At the warehouse, I presume. He did not dwell on details and anyway is working strictly on commission, so tends to be in a hurry to get on to his next, paying gig.
I told him we had none left on the shelves and he was relieved. No one wants customers bringing home wine and having it explode on them. Three liters equals four bottles. That's a big mess.
The problem child in this case is not just a boxed wine but an organic boxed wine. Its packaging proclaims "No Sulfites Added." (NSA is a common acronym.) Unfortunately, it is sulfites you need to counteract the yeasts and benign bacteria that may be present and may continue to work in a wine after it is made and bottled, or boxed. What is happening, therefore, to Brand X is that fermentation is still going on among all the unsulfited life sloshing about in the box. The buildup of gases eventually reaches a critical point. The cellars of Champagne used to be notorious for startling noises and a detritus of glass shards on the floor each spring, as warm weather reached even underground, and bottles of plain chardonnay or pinot noir whose remaining yeasts had been stultified by cold reawakened, re-fermented, and set about making, well, Champagne. Originally this was not what Dom Perignon wanted his wines to do; the bubbles which we now think so delightful were considered a flaw. Little did he know he was also making organic wine. But then, he could hardly help it. He flourished around 1700, when everything was organic, pre-industrial, pre-preservative, pre-pesticide -- pre-safe -- whether anybody liked it or not.
Which brings us to the great question -- I hope we're not shocked --: organic, shmorganic?
In my opinion, yes. It's not just because of the aggravations and failures of methode-champenoise, double magnum boxed wines. It's because organic wine, like organic things in general, logically can only be make-believe. Harmless make-believe, perhaps. But really. Let's think.
It simply makes no sense that a fruit or vegetable grown "organically" is any different, as a product, from one grown conventionally. Surely species don't change, surely an apple or a carrot, or a grape, does not emerge with a totally new color or new and better properties thanks to organic farming. At the end of the day Daucus carota var. sativa, the carrot, remains D. carota var. sativa. The great thing that organic farmers do, it seems, is to avoid pesticides, on the theory that a carrot not sprayed with protective scary chemicals is better for us "and for the planet" than one so treated.
That sounds plausible. When we think of ingesting poisons, we shudder. It seems right that food should come to our table without them. (Incidentally, The Organic Garden by Christine and Michael Lavelle, Hermes House, 2003, recommends, of all things, sulphur as a natural pesticide.) But there are two problems with this nice plausibility, and they are both problems that make-believe solves.
One is that we lack our ancestors' everyday experience with buggy food. Oh, I doubt it happened all the time, but I doubt also that everything from the grocery store was as pristine as we expect now. (Little snapshots of a previous era can be very startling. Katherine Mansfield wrote a memoir called In a German Pension, in which she describes a woman shuddering in revulsion at a gentleman's kind offer to share some fresh spring cherries. "I understand," he soothed her. "Ladies often don't care for cherries. It is the little worms ...." It was 1909.) We seem to think clean, sound fruits and vegetables are normal while pesticides literally cloud the issue, just as we tend to presume healthy children are normal while vaccines are dangerous impositions on the ordained functionings of the body. Not quite. Insect life cycles and larvae are perfectly natural, as are things like diphtheria and polio, and far more serious these last.
Because we think spotless produce is normal and won't tolerate anything less, we open the door to the only task the organic farmer may be permitted to do: he must go to Herculean efforts to make sure he gives us D. carotus var. sativa, while he is yet stripped of all the easy modern tools that have long made the carrot what we want, technically. He has to give us the default carrot, you might say, which is also an emotionally magical carrot, a carrot of pre-industrial escapist fantasy.
The buyer gets the emotional satisfaction of a adhering to a religious discipline, really, along with eating good produce. It seems people will pay for and enjoy that discipline, even when the produce itself can't be organic despite the grower's best efforts: "Even for organically grown fruit and vegetables," advises the site Natural Holistic Health, "it is wise to wash because the farmer in the next field over could have been spraying pesticides that inadvertently entered the organic farmers [sic] crops." So for those who believe, it seems that even D. carotus var paradoxica, the illusion of the illusion of obedience, is what matters.
"Green" consumers (and producers) will probably want to point out now that pesticides, after all, are meant to kill life and so surely it must be better to have no contact with them than any. That sounds right. Still it leaves open the question, what are they, and where?
For a long time intellectual fashion has persuaded us that those clouds of pesticides are, to mix a metaphor, laid on with a trowel and that our bodies stagger under their accumulating toxicity every day. Natural Holistic Health muses that, when we get sick, who knows but what it won't be from that. "When you or your family members are diagnosed with a chronic illness doctors cant [sic] often pinpoint an exact cause. Is the cause the pesticides from your produce and processed foods? You’ll never really have the answer." Possibly not. But remember that our forebears ate organic everything all their lives, and still died, often shockingly young. (What of? I don't remember, literally. The green movement, like the anti-vaccination movement, feeds off historical amnesia.) In any case talking of illness, do let's re-introduce ourselves to just one of humanity's stern old bunkmates, malaria. The classic example of the safe, effective, tragically and hysterically banned pesticide is DDT. It helps stop malaria, or would do if it were allowed. Michael Crichton writes, in his article "Environmentalism as a religion run amok:"
The Limbourg brothers, the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (October)
This salesman is an ex-actor with a fine "chesty" voice and a fondness for the quick pun, so I was about to try to give him one of my best and reply, "You mean, exploding sales, or just exploding?" Har har. But I didn't get the chance. He went on to say that a few of the boxes -- we are talking about a boxed wine, I should explain, 3 liters per -- had actually made a mess in the trunk of his car and that the same thing was happening elsewhere. At the warehouse, I presume. He did not dwell on details and anyway is working strictly on commission, so tends to be in a hurry to get on to his next, paying gig.
I told him we had none left on the shelves and he was relieved. No one wants customers bringing home wine and having it explode on them. Three liters equals four bottles. That's a big mess.
The problem child in this case is not just a boxed wine but an organic boxed wine. Its packaging proclaims "No Sulfites Added." (NSA is a common acronym.) Unfortunately, it is sulfites you need to counteract the yeasts and benign bacteria that may be present and may continue to work in a wine after it is made and bottled, or boxed. What is happening, therefore, to Brand X is that fermentation is still going on among all the unsulfited life sloshing about in the box. The buildup of gases eventually reaches a critical point. The cellars of Champagne used to be notorious for startling noises and a detritus of glass shards on the floor each spring, as warm weather reached even underground, and bottles of plain chardonnay or pinot noir whose remaining yeasts had been stultified by cold reawakened, re-fermented, and set about making, well, Champagne. Originally this was not what Dom Perignon wanted his wines to do; the bubbles which we now think so delightful were considered a flaw. Little did he know he was also making organic wine. But then, he could hardly help it. He flourished around 1700, when everything was organic, pre-industrial, pre-preservative, pre-pesticide -- pre-safe -- whether anybody liked it or not.
Which brings us to the great question -- I hope we're not shocked --: organic, shmorganic?
In my opinion, yes. It's not just because of the aggravations and failures of methode-champenoise, double magnum boxed wines. It's because organic wine, like organic things in general, logically can only be make-believe. Harmless make-believe, perhaps. But really. Let's think.
It simply makes no sense that a fruit or vegetable grown "organically" is any different, as a product, from one grown conventionally. Surely species don't change, surely an apple or a carrot, or a grape, does not emerge with a totally new color or new and better properties thanks to organic farming. At the end of the day Daucus carota var. sativa, the carrot, remains D. carota var. sativa. The great thing that organic farmers do, it seems, is to avoid pesticides, on the theory that a carrot not sprayed with protective scary chemicals is better for us "and for the planet" than one so treated.
That sounds plausible. When we think of ingesting poisons, we shudder. It seems right that food should come to our table without them. (Incidentally, The Organic Garden by Christine and Michael Lavelle, Hermes House, 2003, recommends, of all things, sulphur as a natural pesticide.) But there are two problems with this nice plausibility, and they are both problems that make-believe solves.
One is that we lack our ancestors' everyday experience with buggy food. Oh, I doubt it happened all the time, but I doubt also that everything from the grocery store was as pristine as we expect now. (Little snapshots of a previous era can be very startling. Katherine Mansfield wrote a memoir called In a German Pension, in which she describes a woman shuddering in revulsion at a gentleman's kind offer to share some fresh spring cherries. "I understand," he soothed her. "Ladies often don't care for cherries. It is the little worms ...." It was 1909.) We seem to think clean, sound fruits and vegetables are normal while pesticides literally cloud the issue, just as we tend to presume healthy children are normal while vaccines are dangerous impositions on the ordained functionings of the body. Not quite. Insect life cycles and larvae are perfectly natural, as are things like diphtheria and polio, and far more serious these last.
Because we think spotless produce is normal and won't tolerate anything less, we open the door to the only task the organic farmer may be permitted to do: he must go to Herculean efforts to make sure he gives us D. carotus var. sativa, while he is yet stripped of all the easy modern tools that have long made the carrot what we want, technically. He has to give us the default carrot, you might say, which is also an emotionally magical carrot, a carrot of pre-industrial escapist fantasy.
The buyer gets the emotional satisfaction of a adhering to a religious discipline, really, along with eating good produce. It seems people will pay for and enjoy that discipline, even when the produce itself can't be organic despite the grower's best efforts: "Even for organically grown fruit and vegetables," advises the site Natural Holistic Health, "it is wise to wash because the farmer in the next field over could have been spraying pesticides that inadvertently entered the organic farmers [sic] crops." So for those who believe, it seems that even D. carotus var paradoxica, the illusion of the illusion of obedience, is what matters.
"Green" consumers (and producers) will probably want to point out now that pesticides, after all, are meant to kill life and so surely it must be better to have no contact with them than any. That sounds right. Still it leaves open the question, what are they, and where?
For a long time intellectual fashion has persuaded us that those clouds of pesticides are, to mix a metaphor, laid on with a trowel and that our bodies stagger under their accumulating toxicity every day. Natural Holistic Health muses that, when we get sick, who knows but what it won't be from that. "When you or your family members are diagnosed with a chronic illness doctors cant [sic] often pinpoint an exact cause. Is the cause the pesticides from your produce and processed foods? You’ll never really have the answer." Possibly not. But remember that our forebears ate organic everything all their lives, and still died, often shockingly young. (What of? I don't remember, literally. The green movement, like the anti-vaccination movement, feeds off historical amnesia.) In any case talking of illness, do let's re-introduce ourselves to just one of humanity's stern old bunkmates, malaria. The classic example of the safe, effective, tragically and hysterically banned pesticide is DDT. It helps stop malaria, or would do if it were allowed. Michael Crichton writes, in his article "Environmentalism as a religion run amok:"
I can list some facts for you. I know you have not read any of these in the newspaper, because newspapers do not report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen, did not cause birds to die, and never should have been banned. The people who outlawed it knew that it was not toxic and halted its use anyway. The DDT ban has caused the loss of tens of millions of people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced Western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the Third World. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the 20th-century history of America.
From reading Crichton you must conclude it was not merely tragically and hysterically banned, but maliciously banned. Let the little brown people far away die -- God, there must be plenty of Gabonese or whatever already -- while mosquitoes in their backyards live and thrive; we want to feel good about protecting Spaceship Earth, our Fragile Home. It's because we enjoy uninfested food and can expect to live past thirty, all thanks to modern chemical miracles, that we can afford both to forget the people who still do live hideously close to nature, and yet jump through emotionally satisfying hoops to pretend we do, too.
Perhaps you don't care to trust Michael Crichton. Trust, then, the words of the man who banned the godsend chemical, EPA director(1972) William Ruckleshaus. According to an article called "100 things you need to know about DDT" at the site Junkscience.com, as an assistant attorney general he testified to DDT's "exemplary" record of safe use in the ending of malaria, explaining regretfully later to environmentalist leaders that, while in court, he had had to submit his emotions to scientific facts. (He was a member of the Environmental Defense Fund.) He banned it later because his position atop the EPA gave him the power frankly to "make policy" as he liked.
A preliminary P.S.: could the tide be turning? A new documentary on the banning of DDT, 3 Billion and Counting, premieres in Manhattan on Friday, September 17. That's tomorrow.
The Limbourg brothers, the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (October)
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Chianti tomatoes
This recipe comes to us via an old-fashioned source, not often encountered in these high-tech days of cable TV and satellite cooking shows and a thousand food blogs, all their own feasts of unique and delicious content. It comes to us by word of mouth.
Recently a customer asked for a good chianti to use in cooking. After she had chosen, she opened up and revealed the secret of what to do about all the fresh, homegrown tomatoes with which good gardeners are overrun at this time of year. I listened, blinking in amazement at the simplicity of it, and then as soon as I could, I wrote it all down on whatever came to hand. A paper plate in the employee break room sufficed.
Unhappily, I am not one of those good gardeners blessed with too many homegrown tomatoes, nor do I know anybody who has such a store. (You might think me either laughably or tragically deprived, this being mid-September for heaven's sake. Or maybe both.) My immediate neighbors and I tend to concentrate on highly inedible geraniums and New Guinea impatiens, or in my case, goldenrod. But since you might be pomaceously luckier than me, I share the recipe. Tomato-poor, the beautiful photographs I acknowledge to come from Katie, who lives right here in the same town, cooks, gardens, takes pictures, and shares all -- sumptuously, pomaceously -- on her blog, Katie's Passion Kitchen.
Chianti tomatoes
Easy homemade limoncello
Buttermilk waffles with plum compote
Baked eggplant
Recently a customer asked for a good chianti to use in cooking. After she had chosen, she opened up and revealed the secret of what to do about all the fresh, homegrown tomatoes with which good gardeners are overrun at this time of year. I listened, blinking in amazement at the simplicity of it, and then as soon as I could, I wrote it all down on whatever came to hand. A paper plate in the employee break room sufficed.
Unhappily, I am not one of those good gardeners blessed with too many homegrown tomatoes, nor do I know anybody who has such a store. (You might think me either laughably or tragically deprived, this being mid-September for heaven's sake. Or maybe both.) My immediate neighbors and I tend to concentrate on highly inedible geraniums and New Guinea impatiens, or in my case, goldenrod. But since you might be pomaceously luckier than me, I share the recipe. Tomato-poor, the beautiful photographs I acknowledge to come from Katie, who lives right here in the same town, cooks, gardens, takes pictures, and shares all -- sumptuously, pomaceously -- on her blog, Katie's Passion Kitchen.
Come to think of it, lush homegrown tomatoes might be better served simply by being harvested, sliced, and eaten as is, rather than soaked and herbed and dried as this recipe outlines. But perhaps you have enough to justify doing it all. Or perhaps the recipe would really shine as a sort of supporting vehicle for store-bought tomatoes, which are not much more than just acceptable, year round. Your choice.
Chianti tomatoes
Slice fresh tomatoes thickly, and soak them to cover 24 hours in chianti. Drain them, and reserve the wine for use in the same way again -- but only one more time, I was told.
Lay the tomato slices on a baking sheet and sprinkle them with herbs -- parsley, basil, and oregano. Place the baking sheet in the oven, set to the lowest temperature possible -- 175 or 200 degrees F. Bake, or rather dry, the tomatoes for 8 to 10 hours, or overnight, until they are leathery but not crisp.
Freeze them in freezer bags for storage, and use them in all kinds of ways throughout the long, gray-brown days of winter: in breads, in soups, in stews, in sauces, in omelettes, in anything.
A sampling of Katie's recent posts for you to enjoy -- and I am happy to assure you, she far outcooks me:
Easy homemade limoncello
Buttermilk waffles with plum compote
Baked eggplant
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The millenium has arrived: I like a beer
The packaging got me. I took a field trip to a large local liquor store and, while browsing, couldn't resist a little brown bottle of beer with a pretty picture of a medieval lady on the label. It's called Duchesse de Bourgogne Belgian ale, made by Brouwerij Verhaeghe, Vichte, Belgium.
And it is so very good. Of course I know next to nothing about beer, so you have no reason to trust my judgment. Come to think of it, there seem to be as many kinds of beer in the world as there are wines, so when you further consider how daunting a prospect it is to learn a bit about the latter, and then further muse on how little time I devote to the former, well -- all of it should further illumine the awful depths of my ignorance.
The few beers I have tried have disappointed, being either very strong, black-brown porters or stouts resembling a besoured liquid pumpernickel bread with foam on top; or faintly inoffensive paler brews tasting more or less like a handful of aspirins dissolved in water; or very crisp, very light, fizzy concoctions tasting like one or two aspirins only, dissolved perhaps in a pitcher of very weak and heavily carbonated lemon-lime soda. Every time, it has been the bitterness I can't cope with. Some people rave about loving "hoppy" beers, and those who know much more than I do have listened to my complaints and then recommended to me brands which they consider "not too hoppy," or as exemplifying "the malt flavor more than the hops" -- just what I'd like.
Still no luck. No luck until now, when, let loose unchaperoned in the wilderness of a megastore beer aisle, I picked entirely by label. Why not choose the pensive, veiled Flemish princess, all garbed in gold and black?
"Smart Tarts," Tasting Table, March 2009
Flanders red ale, Wikipedia
And it is so very good. Of course I know next to nothing about beer, so you have no reason to trust my judgment. Come to think of it, there seem to be as many kinds of beer in the world as there are wines, so when you further consider how daunting a prospect it is to learn a bit about the latter, and then further muse on how little time I devote to the former, well -- all of it should further illumine the awful depths of my ignorance.
The few beers I have tried have disappointed, being either very strong, black-brown porters or stouts resembling a besoured liquid pumpernickel bread with foam on top; or faintly inoffensive paler brews tasting more or less like a handful of aspirins dissolved in water; or very crisp, very light, fizzy concoctions tasting like one or two aspirins only, dissolved perhaps in a pitcher of very weak and heavily carbonated lemon-lime soda. Every time, it has been the bitterness I can't cope with. Some people rave about loving "hoppy" beers, and those who know much more than I do have listened to my complaints and then recommended to me brands which they consider "not too hoppy," or as exemplifying "the malt flavor more than the hops" -- just what I'd like.
Still no luck. No luck until now, when, let loose unchaperoned in the wilderness of a megastore beer aisle, I picked entirely by label. Why not choose the pensive, veiled Flemish princess, all garbed in gold and black?
I brought it home, chilled it in the fridge, forgot about it for a few days, and then opened it and poured. Wa-la, as bad novelists say when they want to be insufferably cute.
The beer's color is a beautiful clear amber-red, the head frothy, enormous, and long-lasting. (This is said to be a measure of quality, I believe?) The taste, thankfully, was entirely sweet without a hint of bitterness that I could sense. It reminded me of a very delicate, thoughtful, and grown-up cola, a comparison which I hope will not be taken amiss. More astute drinkers have reviewed Duchesse de Bourgogne elsewhere and have noted its fruit and chocolate tastes and its pleasantly sour, dry finish, reminiscent even of balsamic vinegar. Needless to say I did not recognize anything like that. I only found it rich and delicious, actually finished the entire bottle with my lunch (and felt strangely as though I'd like a nap afterward), and now look forward to returning to that store for more. I'll have to remember to bring money, to be sure, since an adorable 11.2 ounce bottle costs $5.99 plus tax.
Technical details are spelled out simply on the label and at the website of the U.S. importer, D&V International. Duchesse is a combination of 8- and 18-month old beers, the 18-month old portion having also been aged in oak barrels.
Its being named for a late-fifteenth century duchess reminds me of old testimonies we read, in histories and biographies, of ale being a major part of everyone's diet when water was unsafe, wine unreliable and expensive, milk reserved for cheesemaking, and coffee and tea unheard of. Ordinary families brewed their own beers, while the lord of the manor hired an ale-wife to brew for a great household's needs. Even children guzzled their daily pints or more, we are told, beginning with breakfast and carrying on. I have never understood how children in any era could have been prevailed upon to drink down, every day, the flagons bitter stuff that I don't like. Now, having tasted the Duchess, I begin to understand. If the ales of centuries past were anything like this, I'm sure any four-year-old and I could happily imbibe at the crack of dawn, and lunchtime too, for pleasure as well as calories, carbohydrates, and necessity. And the low alcohol level meant -- and means -- that getting a "buzz" would be among the least of its attractions.
I'm pleased also to report that, according to good sources, not only are Flemish red ales "the most wine-like of beers," but Duchesse de Bourgogne specifically is "the high priestess of Flemish reds" and enjoys "a cult-like following." How thrilling. Induct me.
"Smart Tarts," Tasting Table, March 2009
Flanders red ale, Wikipedia
Monday, September 6, 2010
We have a giveaway winner
... and thanks to all who entered and gave me advice about how to manage a giveaway (this is only my second). Thanks also to CSN stores, which sponsored it and will be sending a $55 gift certificate to the nice lady whose email I pulled from a hat -- no kidding, well it's not really a hat but more of a nice clean bowl, but I do write down all the emails on individual slips of paper, including multiple entries, and then fold them and jumble them up and pick with my eyes closed -- anyway, they will be sending the good news to Katrina, of the blog Wakeboarding Mama.
Thanks again to all, and happy Labor Day.
Thanks again to all, and happy Labor Day.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Now this is fun -- wine tasting videos in French
The company is I.D. Vin -- Identite & Developpement, "le marketing au service du vin." When you surf to their website, put on the sound on your computer, so you can hear the lovely trilling of French birds (I presume) in French vineyards.
The company works to publicize the wines of a long list of clients, concentrating it seems on winemakers of the Rhone, the Loire, the south of France, and Bordeaux, although they serve exports (Chile, Spain -- good old Freixenet) as well. Part of what they do for their clients is to make short wine tasting videos in which a French woman, sitting calmly in a very plain, white-backdrop setting graced by natural light, greets the viewer with a pleasant bon jour, then observes, smells, tastes, and comments upon a wine. She concludes with food and wine pairing recommendations. Each video lasts about two and a half minutes, and is accompanied by sidebar links to the winemaker's home website and to a fiche de degustation, a PDF of technical information about the grapes used, aging methods, and so forth.
If you studied a little French in high school you might enjoy the challenge of trying to understand a native speaker on a topic with which you are somewhat familiar. I was able to grasp perhaps one sentence in ten, and that was with obvious contextual clues If nothing else, in one of them you can hear the French pronunciation of the Spanish "Freixenet," which I was told should be pronounced "fresh-net" but which the nice lady simply rolls off the tongue the way it is spelled: FREX-eh-net.
The first video of the series is embedded below. At almost five minutes long, it is a primer on wine tasting in general, and I wish I could understand more of it because our I.D. Vin hostess gives very particular advice about swirling a wine vigorously even in a restaurant where people might be looking at us oddly, and about holding a good sip just at the front of the mouth, and sloshing it about above the front teeth, between upper lip and cheek. This makes you look inelegant but seems to be important in experiencing and judging a wine's tannin. (In all the videos, these women take good healthy mouthfuls too, and they swallow and they appear to be judging unrehearsed, though of course they are not going to say of their clients' products, "C'est la lampee" (swill.) She also says something about all rose wines having or being something "sauf exceptions," without exceptions, but I confess that went over my head too. At the end, luckily, she encourages us all to form "votre propre opinion" on any wine, and then she calmly says "au revoir." In this primer video, the bottle and glass of "Chateau la Pompe" hold, of course, only water, as our hostess says we have long since noticed. Frankly I wouldn't be too sure. It took me a while.
And la pompe, my dictionary tells me, means "on draught." All in all, a bit of stimulating fun for your bon week-end.
The company works to publicize the wines of a long list of clients, concentrating it seems on winemakers of the Rhone, the Loire, the south of France, and Bordeaux, although they serve exports (Chile, Spain -- good old Freixenet) as well. Part of what they do for their clients is to make short wine tasting videos in which a French woman, sitting calmly in a very plain, white-backdrop setting graced by natural light, greets the viewer with a pleasant bon jour, then observes, smells, tastes, and comments upon a wine. She concludes with food and wine pairing recommendations. Each video lasts about two and a half minutes, and is accompanied by sidebar links to the winemaker's home website and to a fiche de degustation, a PDF of technical information about the grapes used, aging methods, and so forth.
If you studied a little French in high school you might enjoy the challenge of trying to understand a native speaker on a topic with which you are somewhat familiar. I was able to grasp perhaps one sentence in ten, and that was with obvious contextual clues If nothing else, in one of them you can hear the French pronunciation of the Spanish "Freixenet," which I was told should be pronounced "fresh-net" but which the nice lady simply rolls off the tongue the way it is spelled: FREX-eh-net.
The first video of the series is embedded below. At almost five minutes long, it is a primer on wine tasting in general, and I wish I could understand more of it because our I.D. Vin hostess gives very particular advice about swirling a wine vigorously even in a restaurant where people might be looking at us oddly, and about holding a good sip just at the front of the mouth, and sloshing it about above the front teeth, between upper lip and cheek. This makes you look inelegant but seems to be important in experiencing and judging a wine's tannin. (In all the videos, these women take good healthy mouthfuls too, and they swallow and they appear to be judging unrehearsed, though of course they are not going to say of their clients' products, "C'est la lampee" (swill.) She also says something about all rose wines having or being something "sauf exceptions," without exceptions, but I confess that went over my head too. At the end, luckily, she encourages us all to form "votre propre opinion" on any wine, and then she calmly says "au revoir." In this primer video, the bottle and glass of "Chateau la Pompe" hold, of course, only water, as our hostess says we have long since noticed. Frankly I wouldn't be too sure. It took me a while.
And la pompe, my dictionary tells me, means "on draught." All in all, a bit of stimulating fun for your bon week-end.
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