Luxe Life II

I don't think I've ever felt so sad---light, heavy, enervated and morose, all at once. I think it is because I am able to understand (on some level) one thing (pacific oysters and a wine that tastes like ginger) and am baffled by something else, an unexplained, but unimportant phone call.

I think, I am too sensitive. That I am the type of person that never feels more alive than when sad, or, better still, learning something new.

Here's to the birth of the new. Something really good, too.

2003 Domaine St. Michelle Luxe Columbia Valley (about $25)

If you are thinking, "What cahones to vintage date an American sparkler from Washington", then I'm with you,and against you, too. Huge bubbles in sparkling wine, we call those "toad's eyes". Funny thing--this wine starts with toad's eyes and finishes with tiny, petulant streams of bubbles, blasting to the top of the glass, like synchronized swimmers of sperm. Not a pretty picture, but accurate.

When drinking this wine I remembered every health-ed film strip I'd ever watched, where tiny sperms cells raced to the top of the petri dish, just like those bubbles raced to the top of the champagne glass.

In the mouth, pure Ginger (Rodgers) and hazelnut and dried apricot and apples--just a little lemon. This sparkler went well with cucumber scented, pearly oysters on the half-shell, dotted with black pepper and served very, very cold by some self-conscious-somethings. No confusion there. Or sadness.

pinot from Peay

There were these dogs,
three of them,
A Hound and two Beagles,leaping in the snow.
Leaping from just-fallen snow like dolphins leaping out of the sea,
and they answered a question,
one that I see asked a lot, by experts (no--philosophers):
Do animals have souls?

Actually, they are soul-catchers,
energy circling tree trunks,
teasing the road,
catching souls that are just leaving the earth,
and releasing them.


2007 Peay Pinot Noir Sonoma
liquid corn smut
2007 Williams Selyem Peay Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast
gamey criolla chew

It was my good fortune to have two pinot noir, from the same vintage and same vineyard, but handled by two different winemakers.

I am consumed by prejudicial error and easily led, especially when it comes to pinot noir; expensive, California pinot noir.

Straightaway, I noticed the alcohol on the W. Selyem and wasn't particuarly impressed by the Peay; oblique,I thought.

Like Martha Stewert in prison, I made the most of it. "It" being tasting these two wines surrounded by other people that I did and didn't agree with.

And then, the wines changed. It was like discovering what happens to a soul-- that it never goes away, but instead, changes upon release,plunges into something else; becomes something else, like grapes, or wine or dogs running in the snow.

New member of the family

Amarone and Recioto DOCG approved Dec 1st.

A family traditon

1997 Sartori Amarone Classico DOC

The working name,Sartori , is derived from the occupation, sarto, or tailor, and nothing is more like a tailored velvet frock coat then this Amarone; rich with bittersweet chocolate, dried figs, prunes and craisin—in other words, fall flavors. Big, Bold Seductive Flavors to keep the narcoleptic turkey legs from passing on their ZZzzzs at the Thanksgiving table.

Unfortunately, frock coats, also known as Prince Alberts (forgive the modern images that this word brings to mind), were out of fashion by the time Amarone came into existence, sometime in the 1930s-- though they were considered quite smart in the reign of recioto.

traditionem, acc. of traditio which means "handing over, passing on with a focus”, specifically an oral transfer of information from one generation to the next. In this context, Amarone is a traditional Italian wine, not a historical one.

Traditionally, we stuff our Thanksgiving turkey with ground beef and chicken livers bound by eggs and cooked inside the bird, then removed and sliced and served along with the turkey with lots of skin to wrap the whole mess in. For us, a big, bold, low-acid red , such as Amarone, fills the bill. And for dessert, cheese and candied pumpkin with ginger goes well with a historical wine from which, Amarone was born, a sweet recioto or passito.



Bertani Recioto della Valpolicella Valpantena DOC

History,from Greek historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation", with a focus on written transfer of information. Recioto, made for hundred of years, by prescription, falls into a historical wine classification for two reasons: One, it has been made for a long time, and , two, it isn't really drunk (or produced) much any more. It has become a part of wine's history.


This winery was founded in 1857 and is one of few still making sweet corvina-based straw wines. One of the rumors surrounding the birth of Amarone is that a batch of recioto was left in barrel and forgotten about until fermented dry; hence Amarone is a traditional wine sprung from the historical. Sort of like the birth of wine itself; a bunch of grapes picked and left in the corner of a cave until they fermented. A historical crop, thousands of years old, was, at first, merely an oral tradition.

Recioto is lovely in its simple , historical, complications; hay and dead fall leaves, dusted with cinnamon and infused with currants and raspberry; just a light a snowfall of cocoa. It’s also pretty good with pumpkin pie, burgundy frock coats and family traditions.

2006 S. A. Prum Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Spatlese

I pour this wine for eight people and watch eight people pour it in the dump bucket like a poison. Like it’s a trick. The table, collectively, looks at my face as if they will find a punch line scribbled on my forehead.

I try again, for three more.

Same thing.

Ha Ha , now I get it. Riesling.

But, this isn’t “Fargo”, a hysterical murder, though the wine I’m serving offers as many crooked smiles and awkward pauses as that movie. And, I’m not pouring “Summertime”, a biography of someone else, though really it is.

Not only does the wine taste like summertime and sunshine, but this wine IS a biography spanning 200 yrs. of familial winemaking.

(of the Prum family, specifically Raimund, the current owner and winemaker at S.A. Prum.)

Shake it off. They don’t realize that you’re wounded, a mother seal on an ice flow in Antarctica, watching her cub clubbed.

2006 S. A. Prum Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Spatlese

From the Graacher Himmelreich vineyard in the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer comes something I really like, ( I like tricks too, but this isn’t one), a wine with the intensity of Gabriel’s stare and summer cum autumn and a love life with someone you won’t see sleeping, ever.

Riesling.

Rose petal jam on broiled grapefruit and pear tartin. Ginger. Gas and piss on the nose, mixed with sweet nectarines and honey rolling down a rock quarry. While fermenting, it spent five weeks in the company of some fine natural yeast. What went on in there?

Summertime, cum fall. The Life and Times of S. A. Prum.

This wine could sit around for as long as I’ve been alive and just get better. I can only hope for so much.

Mutual of Omaha, Wasps, Insignia and really, really meaning no Harm

The nest hangs in an eave on a side porch of my house. The grandfatherly Marlin (me) watches wasps buzz in and out of the paper-like nest from the safety of a bush.

Marlin (I)say(s): The wasps are good predators; they eat the white flies that attack the grape vines . But, they are most ornery in the fall, when they go after sweets left at picnic sites, especially in the daytime, as they gather food, and while the queen lays the last of her eggs in her papery nest. We are going to disturb this nest by knocking it down with a broom.

Enter Jim (this is also me), broom in hand, he swings, scattering the wasps from their nest. He runs, exhilarated, his poosely frame enlivened from the act of fucking with something dangerous, life threatening even, for those allergic to the insect.

Of course, Marlin(me) stays in the safety of the bush and continues to narrate.

Marlins says: The wasp is like the Taliban, it is tireless and must know that you are serious in your efforts. They will return to this nest in a few hours and we’ll be here, in this bush, with a broom and maybe a bucket of water. We won’t use a pesticide, which would take away the old-school thrill of thrusting a creature from tranquility to hunt it, dislocate it and observe it really pissed off.

There is no such thing as non-interventionist wine making. Biodynamic wine making is really fucking with Mother Nature, but in a nice way. If Marlin and Jim were biodynamic wine makers, they would probably have worked at a place like J Phelps, alongside aging patriarch Joe, with a broom and a bucket of water.

Marlin would narrate. Jim would do the heavy lifting. I would encompass both of them as I hunted wasp nests at the winery.

2006 Phelps Insignia
Though it is difficult for me to get excited about a wine that retails for around $200, I was, definately, after tasting this new release. Why so? It was a smash soon after I opened it.
And, also, there is biodynamic winemaking at Phelps, 100% in two of their vineyards, which will soon be Demeter certified. The two biodynamic vineyards are Home Ranch and Bacchus, but Insignia juice is also sourced from the other five vineyards owned by Phelps, as well as from the biodynamic ones.
The wine, made only from grapes grown on the estate is a blend of 95% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Petit Verdot. Dense and chewy, it spent 2 yrs in French oak developing sweet cherry, bramble berry and nutmeg flavors accented by moss and forest aromas. Yes, I know this sounds like a slew of Parkerisms, but his words really describe this wine well. And, after being stung while hunting wasps nests today, I have no original words for this wine, just original thrills from drinking it. Wasps are not the only creatures I’ve messed with lately, just the last ones to sting me.

Nobody is Perfect, Except Me and Bummer Hardluck

It is an eastern philosophy--I am part of all I have met--that keeps Bummer Hardluck's chin up. Not famous, not young and not pretty like his brother, Less Hardluck, Bummer sweeps up at Franciscan, while waiting on that record deal.

That deal will never come. Too scared to play when it counts, B.H. is like that little green frog in the Warner Bros. cartoons---he sings when no one is listening.

He plays backup for friends. He's a component, like this bottle of wine he found one day.

2004 Petit Verdot ( Franciscan)
Bummer's find came from a dismembered blending kit used for component tastings. He didn't realize he had given me something kinda rare, an unoaked, 100% petit verdot.

I'm not a winemaker, or a sought-after taster, so I don't think I'll get this opportunity again. But, I'd sure like to smell this wine a time or two more.

The perfume was leafy. The aroma morphed to smoke, like a straw house on fire. It was sweet smelling and herbal, as is homemade root beer. And in the mouth, a curious sensation of pernod and ash, but no roundness or vanilla The berries were dried blueberry, cherry and plums. I had to pull my tongue from the roof of my mouth, the wine was so tannic.

I stuck my tongue out at Bummer, who told me it was black.

So, this is what 1% tastes like?

It's Bummer's lot to find things while remaining hidden himself.