Sat Feb 28, 2009
Happy Birthday Wine Notes
Phillip and I share a birthday. He celebrated by inviting all his cool friends over and cooking them dinner.
The menu was South American themed. The wine was mostly French. I helped consume them.
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Fri Feb 27, 2009
Elie Wine Co. and me - part 2
I think Elie Wine Co. was established in 1994 or 1995. I had a job for a time at Amicci's Pizza which was then located next to Holiday Market. I did not own a car, so I would walk home past Elie's shop and occasionally I would go inside and buy a bottle.
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Wed Feb 25, 2009
Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young
4 comments (312 views) | Posted by: putnam | Feb 25, 09 | 4:10 am
Tue Feb 24, 2009
Elie Wine Co. and Me
I am now working for Elie Wine Co.
Sun Feb 22, 2009
PJ's Lager House
PJ's Lager House is now serving Dragani Chardonnay. I had to set aside some prejudice about "Italian Chardonnay," but this wine is quite convincing.
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Sat Feb 21, 2009
In Season
It's 2009. Have you noticed how great the blueberries from the southern hemisphere are right about now? Seasonality. It's the best. Soon we will have our local foods of spring: radishes, peas, spring garlic, baby greens, and, a bit later, asparagus and strawberries.
Steve said we should have a 10 year seasonal retrospective, so he opened this wine while we made dinner:
Observing the clarity and white/gold color it looked to me like it was 2 years old, not 10, but the taste was more revealing and in keeping with the laws of bottle age.
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Sat Feb 14, 2009
Selection
What's missing from this picture?
Thu Feb 12, 2009
Wine Additives in History
"Apparently, the practice of treating wine with gypsum or with lime was very common in antiquity. But Pliny shows that the practice was not always looked on with favor when he mentions wines treated with marble, gypsum, or lime, and asks in a characteristic manner: "Where is the man, however strong he may be, who has not stood in dread of them?"
Tue Feb 10, 2009
carbonara
Norberto will be back from Mexico this weekend. I hope he returns to making his celebrated carbonara with his wife. I foolishly, perhaps drunkenly, challenged her (via norberto) to a tamale competition. She will make tamale frijol, which will be the best thing ever eaten. I will make tamale with (probably) fatty pork.
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Sat Feb 07, 2009
Staple Wines
I am looking for thoughts, comments, etc. Please share.
Between the summers of 2005 and 2006 Joe Dressner had just ended his hiatus from Michigan. The first waves of Louis/Dressner wines to hit our state were mostly the tried and tested sort. These are the easiest, most friendly wines in the collection. They are relatively easy to relate to established commercial categories. Cotes de Duras, for example, is like Bordeaux (but superior to any I know for sale). Bourgogne Rouge is made from Pinot Noir in a well known neighborhood; it should be a familiar concept too.
(Only later would I learn about Thierry Puzelat, Marc Angeli and Eric Nicolas.)
The intelligence and labor behind these "core" wines should assure buyers that they are good no matter what the vintage. The vintage is decisive in making them, but since I've been following them, it's always a good and interesting variable. These have no record of refermenting or behaving unexpectedly. (The one remotely possible exception might be the 2004 Marechals which went through a controversial vegetal period sensible to a vocal consituency; regardless, judging from a recent 2004 Cuvee Gravel, they've emerged gloriously in early 2009.)
This is my list of the top 10 Louis/Dressner wines that should be in fairly adequate supply, enough to attract and maintain a satisfied and loyal local fan base:
1. Chateau d'Oupia Minervois
2. Domaine Pepiere Muscadet
3. Quinta do Infantado Ruby Porto
4. Mas des Chimeres Coteaux du Languedoc
5. Clos Roche Blanche Sauvignon
6. Domaine Marechal Bourgogne
7. Clos Roche Blanche (alternating red: Gamay, Cabernet, Pif, Cot)
8. Domaine de Roally Macon-Vire
9. Domaine Girard Sancerre
10. Mouthes le Bihan Cote de Duras Vieillefont
BONUSES:
11. Breton Bourgeuil Trinch!
12. Francois Cazin Cheverny (Sauvignon and Chardonnay)
13. Some form of Tue-Boeuf or Puzelat Cheverny Rouge, or several of them.
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Fri Feb 06, 2009
Glassware
This is a perfect glass to drink very good wine from. Tactile satisfaction extends from the wine itself to the vessel that carries it, and this container feels good. The taper allows me to hold it by the rim without warming up the liquid below the fill line. I can smell it just as well as as I could from any balloon-shaped glass, because the wine itself is naturally aromatic.
I like a wine glass to be clear, made from unleaded glass and easy to wash. There are other complicated considerations, including weight and balance, which must support any judgment of a wine glass, but these can be personal, and I worry about diverting attention away from what makes wine a pleasure to drink.
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Tue Feb 03, 2009
Grand 11 year old Marcel Lapierre
These are obtainable at The Fine Wine Source on Middlebelt just south of 6 mile. If they charged what they are "worth" they'd still be there, and they are!
It's a strange store, but one of, oh, only 5 in southeastern Michigan that has an identity, provided principally by the decisive, intelligent James Lutfy.
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Sun Feb 01, 2009
Domesticated Species
Garnacha Peluda? (a.k.a. "Hairy Grenache")
There are ~3000 varieties of wine grapes belonging to one single species (vitis vinifera). White ones, red ones, fat and oblong berries, tiny berries, etc. Like dog breeds (canis lupus familiaris), grape varieties are the outcome of generations of selection, natural and artificial, formal and informal. Wine grapes amount to a genetic record of climate, economics, knowledge, and human taste.
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