FIREHOSE - Down with the Bass

Consider this a musical dialogue with one of my esteemed blogging peers, Mr. David McDuff. In case you missed it, he recently posted an amazing archived 1985 interview (conducted on January 3rd, my birthday, in fact) with Minutemen prior to a gig at the original 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., during their Double Nickels on the Dime promotional tour. If you were ever into this band, 'zines, or simply curious about an important slice of musical history citing what was arguably the most important record label in the 1980's, you need to read DMcD's interview.

Below, though, is a clip from Mike Watt's slightly jazzier, and at times surprisingly jam band-esque group, firehose (not to be confused with hard rockers Firehouse), from their album "Flyin' the Flannel."

Orange Wines -PT. 2

I found this second flight to be more along the lines of what I have come to expect in an 'orange wine': deeper, spicier, more cidery aromas and flavors with red fruit sneaking in. No doubt due to the longer skin maceration times of the wines in this sequence. While I was pleased that one of my favorites, 02 Radikon Ribolla, really shined, I was equally disappointed that the 01 Gravner did not show as well, to my taste anyway.

Flight 2, "Oh Josko, where art thou?"

1. Gravner 2001 Ribolla Gialla "Anfora," Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Venezia Giulia IGT
Personal notes - smelled indistinctive. Tasted a bit murky and 'marshy' (an in the moment descriptor - honestly I'm not sure what I meant there). If I would surmise a guess, it was that this seemed to lack focus and distinction. A disappointment given the pedigree.
Wine notes - Ribolla gialla. 6 to 7 mo. maceration on skins in terracotta amphorae, followed by 3 yrs in botte (ed. note - 'botte' is plural for 'botta' or cask; thanks for clarification, Slaton)

2. Damijan 2003 "Kaplja," Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Collio
Personal notes - not too expressive on the nose. Better on the palate, with stone fruits and mandarin essences.
Wine notes - Chardonnay, malvasia istriana, tocai friulano.

3. La Stoppa 2004 "Ageno," Italy, Emilia-Romagna, Emilia IGT
Personal notes - Smells great! Very intense. Spicy red cherries smell. Bit of brett ("brett factory" was uttered by another taster). Intense spicy red fruit flavors reminded me of top notch kriek, just vinous and not as sour.
Wine notes - Malvasia bianca, trebbiano, ortrugo. 30 day maceration on skins, then pressed into neutral barrels & stainless

4. Zidarich 2000 Vitovska, Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Carso
Personal notes - sort of white burgundy-like aromas. Strange, though. One taster likens it to 'nursing home pee.' Oak still shows on the palate. Definitely an outlier in this flight. Not a tasty one at that.
Wine notes - Vitovska. 8 to 10 days skin contact, then racked into mid sized Slavonian casks. Note: from the wine we drank it would appear Zidarichhad not yet started using extended skin contact back in 2000 vintage.

5. Radikon 2002 Ribolla Gialla, Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Venezia Giulia IGT

Personal notes - terrific, spicy, red fruit inflected aromas. Familiar wine, this. On the palate, great cutting acidity, with a linear quality and a whole lot to like. Nutty, sans soufre finish. I was not surprised to learn that this was Radikon's 2002 Ribolla Gialla, a wine I had brought to the dinner. It's not for everyone, but I love it and will continue to defend it. Awesome wine.
Wine notes - Ribolla gialla. 3 1/2 month maceration on the skins, including entire alcoholic fermentation. 4x daily punchdowns. Racked into neutral botte for 36 mo. No SO2 ever added.

6. Vodopivec 2004 Vitovska, Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Venezia Giulia IGT
Personal notes - Smells a bit like nail polish remover! On the palate, however, there are very pure red currant and mixed berry flavors. A mineral core to the wine. The purity here is striking. I wavered between this and the Radikon as to which was my favorite of the flight.
Wine notes - Vitovska. 15 day fermentation on the skins, then racked into botte & aged 2 yrs.

Please see some other takes on the SF event:

Organizer Slaton Lipscomb's notes
Richard Jennings' take

And for some New York City flavor (36 orange wines tasted - wow!):

Thor Iversen's write-up of the New York City tasting.
Might as well check out the incomparable Alice Feiring's take on it all
And many people's favorite critic and champion of the weird, Eric Asimov, was also reporting.

Orange Wines, La Cucina di Sardegna at La Ciccia - PT. 1

This is the first in a two part post about a recent orange wine tasting held last week. As I don't have many good pictures of the evening and try not to subject you to too many in-depth wine notes at once, I'm dividing this post into two. Enjoy.

So, how'd I arrive at the 'Clockwork of Orange' tasting? It comes back to two great connectors of people: Cory Cartwright's insightful, innovative 31 Days of Natural Wine series on his blog Saignee, and San Francisco natural wine merchant/bar Terroir through which I finally met Slaton, a cool, knowledgeable wine drinker who occasionally comments on this and other blogs. He invited me to tonight's west coast version of Levi D's New York City orange wine tasting, and I was all in.

Here's how it went.

Before we begin, though, a brief definition of 'orange wine' is probably in order. Wine made from a grape traditionally used for white wine production, which when fermented with extended skin contact with the juice (as is the case for red wines, anywhere from 15 days to eight months), obtains a darker color than is usual for white wine, an appearance which may be a clear or cloudy amber, occasionally with reddish glints. Sometimes this wine is aged for an extended period of time in clay amphorae. It may likely contain the barest minimum of added sulphites, or as in the wines from Stanislaus Radikon or Franck Cornelissen, none at all.

We starting the evening with a relatively young, fresh white wine, an 06 vermentino from 6 Mura, and enjoyed a few terrific appetizers, my favorite being a spicy, calamari based seafood sautee, which had some terrific olive oil which I think really elevated the level of this dish. Paper thin, delicate slices of smoked raw tuna were also quite good, as were the sardines if you're into strong, oceanic/fishy flavors.

On to the orange wines. For each of these I will include personal tasting note, as well as some winemaking notes provided by event organizer Slaton L.

Flight 1, "California does Zin, California does chard, but can California do orange?"

1. Frank Cornelissen 2006 "MunJebel 3 Bianco," Sicilia IGT

Personal notes - Controversial to say the least. This is wine from someone who is said to produce the most natural wines in the world. Acetyl, dirty, and uniformly disliked by the crowd, this was my least favorite wine of the evening. It may well be delicious when drunk close to his vineyards around Mt Etna in eastern Sicilia. Maybe, as someone suggested, it gets better after 10 days in the fridge (if that's the case then I certainly didn't see it). But at the moment, this particular bottle tasted like band-aids mixed with cider vinegar -not a good combination.
Wine notes: Carricante, grecanico dorato, coda di volpe. Vinified like a red wine, with long skin-contact.

2. Paolo Bea 2006 "Santa Chiara," Umbria IGT

Personal notes - citric, with orange and sweetened red grapefruit flavors that struck me as direct to the point of simplicity, though the wine did open up nicely and improve with air.
Wine notes - Grechetto, malvasia, chardonnay, sauvignon, garganega. 16 day fermentation on skins, finished in stainless.

3. Monasterio Suore Cistercensi 2007 "Coenobium Rusticum," Lazio IGT

Personal notes - as good a showing of this wine as I can remember. Many other tasters also quite liked the wine. Very distinctive and one of two wines which I fairly easily guessed, probably owing more to the fact that I have drunk it within the past 6 weeks than anything else. Pure, appley and pleasantly tannic on the finish. It showed less bitter chestnut honey than when I had last tasted it, a good thing in my book.

Wine notes - Trebbiano, malvasia, verdicchio, grechetto; 15 day fermentation with
the skins, extended lees contact. Yes, as we all know by now this is harvested by nuns....

4. Movia 2005 "Lunar"

Personal notes - this was my wine of the evening. Cloudy amber hued, the wine showed a good amount of red fruit and fetching oxidative aromas. Also a hint of washed rind, stinky cheese on the nose. A terrific, spicy, cidery balance bolstered by good acidity on the palate makes this a strong bearer of orange style.

Wine notes - Ribolla gialla, 65 yr old vines. Whole grape clusters are placed in barrels. The wine is never pressed off the skins or racked, and after 7 months the free run juice is bottled unfiltered.

5. Cowan Cellars 2008 Sauvignon Blanc "Silver Pines Vineyard," Sonoma Mountain (Barrel Sample)

Personal notes - Indeed this was very SB-like on the nose, with a touch of a grassy quality, which seemed to border on stronger vegetable root aromas with a hint of mintiness as well. It tasted like it has received the least amount of skin contact of this grouping, though it is still fun, bright and not at all boring. Probably the wine that best complemented our seafood as well.
Wine notes - For those of you who know him (and I suspect many of you out there do), Florida Jim makes this wine. Sauvignon blanc. 13 day cold soak with no sulfur, followed by 15 day alcoholic fermentation before pressing off skins. Full malo.

6. Natural Process Alliance 2008 Chardonnay "Skin Fermented," Sonoma Coast

Personal notes - Another wine which I had a pretty good idea of what it was. An interesting twist on New world chardonnay flavors: clean, pure, noticeably riper than its burgundian counterparts, but also a whole lot more textural, balanced and interesting than 99.9% of other California chardonnay. I'd be curious to see what would happen if these guys were to use less ripe grapes and increase the amount of time on the skins.
Wine notes - Chardonnay. 18 days on the skins (entire alcoholic fermentation) w/ 2x daily punchdowns, then pressed off to neutral barrels.

While going through this flight, I devoured a plate of fregula pasta in a sea urchins sauce. Rich, subtly powerful, deeply satisfying flavors and textures made this my favorite dish of the night, and good sustenance to ready me for the second flight.

to be continued....

MOP - Rugged Neva Smoove (DJ Premier Re-mix)

DJ Premier + M.O.P = good, rugged and raw hip-hop

My version of the French culinary master's take on an Italian dish, with an Italian red and a French white

'Italienne Macaroni' From the Escoffier cookbook:

"Cook the macaroni in boiling water; completely drain it; put it into a saucepan, and toss it over the fire to dry. Season it with salt, pepper and nutmeg; combine it wth five oz. of grated Gruyere and Parmesan cheeses, in equal quantities, and two oz. of butter, cut into small pieces, per lb. of macaroni. Saute well to combine, and serve in a timbale."

This is about as simple a recipe as one could hope for from Auguste Escoffier. Which was perfect a few nights ago, when I was looking for a quick mac and cheese recipe to try. That having been said, I had gruyere but lacked parmesan, so I substitued cheddar cheese. I also had a head of collard greens I needed to use, so I chopped that up and sauteed it in olive oil. Then I combined it with the cheese coated macaroni, put into a round cazuela, grated a little extra cheese on top and put underneath the broiler for several minutes. I did not serve in a timbale.

The results were quite delicious if I say so myself. My girlfriend agreed.

As for the wine, I had a delicious bottle of 2007 Grange Tiphaine Montlouis Sec - a dry, rich chenin with tell-tale quince chenin flavors, as well as intense citrus oils, ripe acids, and a bit of a fat, ripe fruited style which really worked quite well with the richness of the pasta. Less successful: a 2007 Ruggeri Corsini Barbera d'Alba. On its own, the wine showed really sweet red pitted fruit flavors, foursquare, new oak. Doesn't sound like a good pairing, right? Well I suspected this would be the case, so I happily drank chenin throughout dinner. Next time I'll need to try gamay, poulsard, or maybe Les Cretes Tourrette if I want to keep things Italienne.

In fairness to the Corsini, it has opened up considerably in the past two days. I'm drinking it now, and though it's oakier, fatter, and less cutting than I would prefer my wines to be these days, the acidity is showing more prominently than on Friday night. There are slight floral and mineral components, and I guess that I don't mind the wine; otherwise I'd cork it up and wait another 2 days.

Hope it's a great week for everyone out there in food and wine land.

Beastie Boys - Hey Ladies

Here they are, them Beastie Boys, showing their trademark sense of humor and pushing that 70's aesthetic a good five years before it became fashionable. 'Hey ladies' is a classic jam, guaranteed to turn any tiny nook or corridor in a city apartment into an impromptu dancefloor.

The primary motivation for posting this, however, was to wish Adam Yauch a speedy recovery. We all hope you heal up quickly, MCA!

I'm posting on a Sunday (yeah that's right, I did it)

It was another wine filled evening last night at Terroir with a few 31 Days of Natural Wine contributors, 31 Days planner Cory Cartwright, Spanish importer José Pastor and assorted other fans of the fermented grapes of the world all in the house. We enjoyed a good variety of wines, some of them humble and tasty, others of fancier pedigree and unmistakable quality. Here's a rundown:

Equipo Navazos La Bota de Fino No. 15

I've been meaning to try one of Equipo Navazos' sherries for a while now, and thanks to José Pastor I had the opportunity to do so last night. Likening it to the Jacques Selosse Cuvee Substance of the sherry world, José explained to me how this is a negociant selection of a few of the finest barrels (averaging 10 years of age) of Valdespino Fino. It is bottled unfiltered, a rarity in Jerez. Think of your favorite fino. Intensify and amplify the unmistakable sea salt, nuts and fruit aromas. Add a significant amount of weight, richness and texture to the palate, but do no subtract any of the grace and elegance which typify good Fino. There you have it, my new favorite fino sherry. Rare and tough to find, though I have every intention to track some down to have around home. It's that simple, I got to have it.

2007 Becker Landgraf Riesling Feinherb

Satiny texture, bright and clean stone fruits, well made Rheinhessen riesling. This is a great accompaniment to most (if not all) of the Chinese dishes at Heaven's Dog, where José and I loaded up on some tasty veges and a bit of pork prior to drinking.

2006 Les Cretes Petite Arvine 'Vigne Champorette'

Waxy textured, with plums, yellow fruit skins, and a ripe, plump, juicy yet still fresh flavor profile. Fun.

2006 Franck Peillot Bugey Mondeuse

Gritty cherry fruits, with some minerals, moderately assertive tannins and a bitter snap to the finish.

1978 Lopez de Heredia Viña Bosconia Rioja Gran Reserva

Soft, very savory, earthy, slightly smoky and reminiscent a bit of aged Cote Rotie. If this bottle is any indication (and given the variation, this is not necessarily any indication) then this wine should probably be drunk within the next several years. It's very good, for sure, though not nearly as wound up, high toned and high acid as the '81. While I really enjoyed this '78, it did not really remind me of Bosconia's typically Burgundy-like flavors and textures.

2000 Pierre Overnoy Arbois Pupillin Blanc

The unbelievably high acidity in this wine made up for what I perceived as an acid deficit in the Bosconia drunk before this. For a grape I love so much, I have such a tough time describing savagnin sometimes, especially when it's as piercing, cutting and chiseled as this. At this moment, the only thing I can liken the sensation to is listening carefully to how the high hat cymbals were mixed in many mid 70's Jamaican recordings.

Big thank you to Cory for organizing the party. It's always fun to see familiar faces while meeting some new folks as well.