Notre Dame

Louvre on the Lumix

No captions, just photo's, all taken on my Panasonic Lumix LX-3 at the Louvre

The Producers on Nasty Nas

Check out this promo, featuring the big four producers who worked with Nas on his breakthrough record. Any guess on what my next album review will be?

It ain't hard to tell....

Paris/Champagne 2009: Highlights for now and a taste of what's to come

So I'm back, possibly still somewhere between East Coast and GMT time zones, but otherwise doing quite well. Six days does not quite do Paris and Champagne justice; either place alone merits much more time and exploration. Nevertheless, you still can see and accomplish a lot in six days.

One thing I realized is that Champagne just might be the easiest to visit wine region that is proximate to a large city in the entire world. 70 minutes from Paris Gare de l'Est to Epernay. Only 45 minutes if you head to Reims and take the TGV bullet train. Beautiful countryside, picturesque older villages, sleepy towns (even the larger ones like Epernay are really quiet this time of year). And of course there is the champagne. My suggestion is to go. Especially if you're lucky enough to be employed and have some paid time off as I am...now is the time to go. There are probably still great flight deals, and the dollar is relatively strong against the euro. Not to say it's a cheap trip, but if you're smart, stay in modest hotels, eat some bread and cheese occasionally for lunch, you can do the trip for cheaper than you might have thought possible.

I will have plenty of posts to look forward to from this trip, which will most likely including four winery profiles and a few meal re-caps. For now, here are a few trip highlights:

- Berthillon ice cream (pistache and caramel, both excellent)
- Large quantities of delicious, inexpensive cheese
- '07 Dard & Ribo Crozes Hermitage Blanc at Le Verre Volee
- Quite randomly running into Robert Camuto at Le Verre Volee
- Creative cuisine and friendly folks at Le Verre Volee (yes, many highlights from - this terrific wine shop and bistro - thanks Guillaume for the rec!)
- Waiting in line for 30 minutes at La Duree for $3 macarons (ok, one snarky jab allowed)
- Driving in the Marne valley, from Ambonnay in the east to the beautiful village of Oeuilly just west of Epernay

Oh, thanks for your patience with the lack of new stuff up here. To make up for it, I plan a busy week coming up - updates should be fast and furious.

Happy rest of the weekend.

Gone Eatin' (and drinkin')

I will be taking off for a quick one week trip to Paris and Champagne tomorrow. Guess I'm a sucker for a cheap roundtrip ticket email offers. Speaking of email offers, this little rest will allow me some time to de-compress before helping to source many an email offer of my own at work - beginning April 1st I'll be buying Spanish, Portuguese and South American wines for K&L.

I might update or post a few photo's from France, but no guarantees. I will be sure to write up various parts of the trip after I return, however.

A la prochain....

A grenache hater's tale of one '05 Cotes du Rhone

Grenache is hot. It gets too ripe. It's all fruit, no nuance. It's part of the reason why many well informed, particularly astute and, well, particular wine drinkers have all but abandoned Spanish wines.

Personally I detest most Chateauneuf du Pape. Many Cotes du Rhone strike me as all fruit, no acid, occasionally prematurely oxidizing, boring red wines. Garnacha from Spain is occasionally interesting, but you need to be incredibly selective to find a good one.

Well, leave it up to Terroir to serve up one of the brightest, most delicious and fun to drink bottles of southern Rhone wine I have yet to have, the 2005 Eric Texier St Gervais. Eric Texier gets lots of ink (perhaps I should say 'screen play') on wine blogs. He makes wine sourced from the Maconnais, northern Rhone as well as the southern Rhone. As one would expect for a wine of this quality, the vines are grown naturally, with cover crops between rows and occasional tilling to loosen the soil, which consists of decomposed limestone, clay and gravel. Located on a south facing vineyard in the relatively cooler climate of the Rhone village of St Gervais, vines (predominately grenache) average 80 years of age.

While Texier makes a wide range of wines from a number of different vineyards, the wines are each fermented near their respective source vineyard, and then aged in traditional 228 liter wood barrels and larger demi-muids (450 liters) in his cellar outside of Lyon (Beaujolais).

It's quite unusual for wines from the warmer southern Rhone to go through elevage in Beaujolais, where the cellar temperature is cooler and more steady. Just as I imagine it is unusual to transfer grapes immediately after harvesting to refrigerated trucks and then on to the winery. This attention to detail, combined with the excellent vineyards Texier owns and sources, surely are key factors in producing some of the most lively and unique expressions of grenache based wines in the world. If you haven't already, you should try them sometime.

HUSKER DU - ZEN ARCADE

Released in July 1984 on SST Records, Zen Arcade won instant critical praise for its blend of hardcore, enduring melodies and boundary pushing aesthetic. In other words, this was not your older brother's hardcore - far from it. Easily the most important record from Husker Du, many people rightfully call it a visionary work which would, seven years ahead of its time, lead to the commercial predominance of power pop and so-called alternative music (remember MTV's 120 minutes, then later the more mass marketed 'buzz' video selections?) Between their formation in 1979 and breakup in 1987, Husker Du's work essentially paved the way for everyone that followed, from the Pixies to Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr to the Gin Blossoms.

I'll always look at Husker Du as one of those rare personal discoveries, not something recomended by friends or my musical mentor, older brother extraordinaire Michael Manekin. As I recall, I was thumbing through a copy of Alternative Press, reading a Bob Mould interview as he must have been promoting the debut album from his second band, Sugar. I think I was 13 or so at the time. Shortly thereafter, I purchased a copy of Husker Du's last album, Warehouse: Songs and Stories, and from there would buy each of their other studio records.

Zen Arcade is an important record. Clocking in at over 70 minutes, the double LP is ambitious in length alone, in a time when most albums were significantly shorter than they are now. There are standard two minute hardcore tunes, proto indie rock pop songs, a solo acoutic guitar and vocals song, as well as a whole lot of distorted, fuzzed out guitar, feedback and tape loops. It adds up to quite a powerful listening experience, one where I often times have a tough time sitting still and listening; the record has always caused me to get up and walk around, or in the case of yesterday's listening during Grant Hart's brilliant, intensely melodic 'Somewhere,' literally get up and take a break from listening. The melodies in songs like 'Broken Home, Broken Heart', 'Chartered Trips' and 'Whatever' seem to be hard-wired in my brain and are unforgettable.

A concept album, Zen Arcade touches on themes such as disillusionment, failed relationships and an inability to live a fulfilling, stable life. Though I paid little attention to the lyrics when I first discovered the record (not a huge loss, as one of the album's flaws is the poor, low level recording of vocals). What I was focusing on more was Bob Mould's disturbed growl, Grant Hart's anguished yells, Greg Norton's impressively steady and accurate (even at supercharged tempo) bass playing, and plenty of Mould's punk meets rockabilly guitar heroics. In between there was the high pitched repetitive calls in 'Hare Krishna,' the slow, spooky, churning tape loop driven 'Tooth Fairy & the Princess" as well as the album's closer, the fourteen minute avant jazz inflected opus 'Reoccurring Dreams.' Once again, not just another hardcore record.

Zen Arcade shows what can happen when a talented, dedicated band masters their chosen genre and reaches outside of it, in this case laying the foundation for a completely new style of music to come.

Oh, I highly recommend that you check out long-time Rolling Stone correspondent David Fricke's review from February 1985. He pretty much nails it.