huevos con vino

This is an interesting weekend for me. It’s the first time since mid-2004 that I’ve been alone in my own apartment; my wife went to visit her family and there was no way I could take another week off so soon after our East Coast vacation trip. So while she’s gone I am trying to indulge in everything she finds less interesting than I do. For example, I watched John Carpenter’s The Thing tonight for the 12th time and made up a new drink. It’s 50% lemonade, 50% iced tea, and 10% Scotch. It would be an Arnold Palmer without the Scotch, so I decided to call this drink the “John Daly.”  But then I found out that they already named another drink after John Daly, so I guess any old rummy golfer’s name would do. Maybe the “Bob Hope” is a good compromise since the drink tastes a little funny.

Anyway, one of the things I try to do on my own is visit wine stores. I do enjoy visiting wine stores with my wife, but I have a way of spending 60-90 minutes inside a good wine store, feeling guilty the entire time as my wife waits patiently at first, then impatiently, then in the car with the engine running. I believe I did that to her on our honeymoon. Hopefully she decides to return from her parents’ house next week.

Since I had a gift certificate to spend, I wanted to give the Pike and Western Wine Shop in Seattle a serious look. I had been in once before, but not for any proper length of time, and that was with my vaguely patient wife. So today I went back and spent about 20 minutes poking around the small store. I quickly noticed that this store is both friendly and snobby. I’d say the clientèle makes the store snobby in this case as the staff were helpful but several other patrons nearly body-checked me into the Italian wines on a few occasions. That would have been costly.

Or perhaps not. The store didn’t exactly have a massive selection of wine, although what they did have appeared to be carefully selected, reasonably priced for the most part, and representative of France, Italy, and the Northwest US. I did find a couple of Radio-Coteau bottles ($50+) and the 2005 Hirsch Pinot Noir release ($60). Ouch. I decided to come back another time with my $50 gift certificate.

I strolled down the hill to The Spanish Table, one of my new favorite wine stores in Seattle. Their focus is Spain, Portugal, and a bit of Chile and Argentina, and their resident wine expert knows her stuff. She’s a little intimidating because of her tremendous command of regional Spanish and Portugese wines, and because she knows how to pronounce everything she sells. I took French and Italian, but never Spanish or Portugese, so varietals such as Xarello scare the heck out of me, phonetically speaking. But with Catherine’s help, I picked out a great wine for WBW #37, which is just around the corner.

As I walked back up the steep Pike Place hill toward my car, I saw something a bit strange. Now, I am not a parent, but a frequent topic of conversation between my wife and I is the parenting quality on display in and around Seattle. I can summarize it in two words: It sucks. People in this region make horrible parents, or at least the people I see with children routinely reflect their inadequate levels of common sense and ability to think of their children as children rather than miniature adults. I guess these parents would be better suited to the Victorian era, when children were perceived as adults and did factory work that adults were too large to do.  Seattle parents tend to be older and more educated than the parents I see elsewhere in the world.  Maybe that’s why Seattle parents try to reason patiently with their 2-year-old children at the grocery store in the checkout line right in front of me every time I’m buying two things and trying to get home to cook dinner.
But I digress.

As I walked back up the hill, I noticed a kid in a stroller next to a parked car. It was an odd sight because, hey, how the heck did that kid get himself into his stroller next to a car without an adult? At least, that was my first thought since I didn’t see any adults around. My second thought was, “So this is how kids get kidnapped.” It was pathetic: The car was a Volvo and the owner had his back to his year-old son, who had a scared look on his face as he sat in a stroller that was pointed down a steeply-sloping sidewalk. In fact, I would think about the son’s face again later, but with a slightly changed perspective.

I kept walking. I noticed the little kid, the late-model Volvo sedan, and the back of a man who was on the street side of the car with the passenger door open. He seemed to be busy with something. Just as I passed the car, the father said something:

“No butterfly cookie!”

My ears perked up a bit. No butterfly cookie? What the hell does that mean?

And then I heard another kid, slightly older, probably about 3 years old at the most. He was clearly pissed off. He said to his father:

“Daddy, you’re stupid.”

Nice one. I know a few kids like that, very charming. Also, they’re 3 YEARS OLD, so that’s the sort of thing you’d expect a tired, probably hungry, overstimulated little boy to say. Right? I would expect that. But this is where things got good.

The father quickly stammered his reply:

“No, YOU’RE STUPID. If you weren’t being so obnoxious to me right now, you’d get to have your butterfly cookie. But now you don’t get one! NO BUTTERFLY COOKIE! THAT’S ALL!”

He stuttered a bit as he delivered his rebuttal while his son sobbed in the back seat. The father was clearly angry about something; there was no other adult with him, so perhaps he was angry about having to take both kids while his goddamned wife got a facial at the spa again, where she seems to spend all of her time and HIS money lately, in case he hadn’t noticed, and meanwhile he has to wrangle these two annoying little brats all over town, buying them shit and being the responsible one while that bitch gets her stupid nails done!

At least, that’s what I assume he was thinking as I quickened my pace up the hill.

Now, I understand that people have bad days. I know that we all get stressed out and upset over petty things. But holy hell, when you start calling your 3-year-old son “stupid” that forcefully, in public, while your 1-year-old son sits in a stroller pointing downhill…well, perhaps you should stop for a moment and consider the responsibility you have to your family. I get the same feeling every time I eat at a restaurant and I see two parents not talking to one another as they drink their third margaritas while their young children get into trouble all over the joint without any sort of parental attention or reprimand. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned. Perhaps I’m simply getting old. Or, perhaps, I’m not really aware just how difficult it is to raise children. Maybe kids really do drive you to drink. Maybe kids really are stupid and deserve to be called out as such by their parents. Then again, maybe not.

I don’t really know what to think about the whole situation with this specific family. I do know why the younger child looked so alarmed as I approached on my way up the hill. Kids pick up on so many nuances in their parents’ behavior, speech, and moods, and they take it hard when parents get angry. Luckily, many kids are pretty resilient and they grow up to be nice, happy people despite childhoods spent defending themselves from inadequate parents. But no kid deserves to be called “stupid” by his own father, particularly at such a young age.

Now I know why, from time to time when I enter a wine store, some of the patrons seem like royal assholes. It’s because they are assholes, even to their own children. That’s just sad.

I guess even parents need a butterfly cookie sometimes.

On gently sloping hillsides, dusted with early morning fog and tinged with effervescent dew, rest a handful of artisans who enjoy nothing more than to caress and serenade the world’s most exclusive grape vines. Surrounded by a blast of autumnal colors and verdant stripes of pasture, these vines require supreme attention to yield their elusive nectar. But before this sybaritic elixir can be created by our Nobel Prize-winning winemaker, the grapes themselves must first be carried unblemished to the winery on the backs of tiny peasant women born and raised in an extinct province of Burkina Faso, women who were only brought to the United States in 1963 on an immigration technicality. There is no finer workforce in the world.

Once the precious cargo has reached the winery doors, the grapes are gently crushed with platinum, an inert metal, before being sluiced in a very gentle way into a 27-tier, gravity-fed, ermine-lined system of golden tubes.  These tubes lead to the diamond-encrusted, 120% French Oak barrels hand-toasted by none other than the former President of France and renowned cooper, Francois Mitterand, shortly before his death in 1996. This “late” period of Mitterand’s work is considered his finest.

After no less than 47 years in these barrels, the wine is nearly complete. A final blessing is spoken over every barrel prior to bottling, rendering the wine both kosher and suitable for Catholic church services in every state except New York. The bottles are taken from the incomparable Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, where geological pressure formed them naturally over the course of 800 million years and where they grew in such conditions as to create deep punts that extend from the base of each bottle to just 5 millimeters below the neck. Labels are printed using 50% post-consumer waste and 50% recycled illuminated manuscripts. The cork used to seal each bottle comes from the tomb of Cleopatra, who was mummified inside a cork sarcophagus and who was buried with enough beeswax to enclose just 15,000 cases of our wine. Should you so desire, Jeroboams and Nebuchadnezzars are available for an additional shipping fee, packaging fee, handling fee, insurance fee, and a “fee” fee that is actually a fee for incurring so many lesser fees.

Once this wine touches your lips, hits your tongue, makes its way past your uvula and into your stomach, you will experience a sensual and aesthetic pleasure rivaled only by those brave souls who have complete a pilgrimage to Cythera, or who have tried our late-harvest Riesling. Our “second-pressing” wine is actually made from the excrement of those lucky tasters who drink our estate-bottled reserve wine. Please sign up for our mailing list and be sure to join our wine club, which features a new wage garnishment clause that our top customers will appreciate as a way to insult those lesser customers who cannot afford to remain in the club after the first shipment.

I write about Radio-Coteau fairly often.  This post marks the 10th on this blog dedicated to Radio-Coteau in some capacity.  For a while there Google was indexing my site above the Radio-Coteau home page.  Amazing!

But then, I think R-C deserves the attention.  They make great wine and they are a small garagiste operation.  I had to pass on their 2005 vintage final offer recently, but I did notice that their incredibly good Von Weidlich Zinfandel sold out quickly, while their Pinot Noir and Syrah remains largely available.  Interesting.

Until recently, I had never tried a Savoy Pinot Noir from Radio-Coteau.  So far this year, I had tried the 2004 La Neblina Pinot Noir and the 2005 Von Weidlich Zinfandel; last year I drank 3 bottles of 2004 La Neblina Pinot and 1 bottle of the 2004 Timbervine RRV Syrah.  That’s half a case of Radio-Coteau right there!  That’s a lot of hooch.

So when my friend, who also stores half of my wine collection in his basement wine cellar, suggested we try one of our shared (aka “community”) bottles of 2005 Savoy Pinot Noir, I said yes.  We were going to have barbecued chicken and salmon for dinner, so it seemed like a fun pairing.  We also decided to open the wine early and let it decant for a good 1-2 hours.  It turned out to need more than 2 hours in the decanter, which is to be expected for such a young Pinot Noir that is built to age, so to speak.  Eric Sussman suggests decanting and aging this wine; apparently it will last at least 10 more years in your climate-controlled cellar.  Nice.

You can find more details on this wine here, but all you really need to know is where the grapes are from.  CellarTracker lists 6 different 2005 Savoy Vineyard Pinot Noir releases, and the names are impressive: Ken Wright, Littorai, and Adrian Fog are all there.  Littorai compares elements of Savoy Pinot to Hirsch Pinot, and those are almost fighting words for me given how much I love Hirsch Pinot Noir.  Clearly, the Savoy Vineyard fruit has a strong, almost cult, following.

So what did I think?  Here are my tasting notes for the 2005 Radio-Coteau Savoy Pinot Noir:

• Aroma: Very dusty at first with hints of cherry; evolved into a rich, red cherry and red plum bouquet with a sort of mild blue cheese undertone that I sometimes detect in nice Pinot Noir.
• Flavor: Rich, potent acidity and tannins; lots of sour cherry, plum, and loganberry; a robust Pinot Noir that needs time to age or decant.
• General impression: A great wine that definitely needs 2.5 hours in the decanter right now; anything less is a waste of good wine!

Those are some basic notes, but I feel we drank too much of the wine prior to decanting it for 2.5 hours.  Still, it’s a great wine, and I am glad I have a 2004 Savoy sitting at home, resting, waiting…at 480 cases, it’s a tough wine to get.  In fact, that wine is getting into the $75-$85 per bottle territory.  Nice.  But I think I’ll drink my bottle.

I like a good Zinfandel. When I think about the elements that comprise a good Zinfandel, I think about blackberries, black cherries, baking spices, and a smoky, chocolate/vanilla/leather backbone, all in that order. The trick to a good Zinfandel is the proper balance among these elements. If any one element is too potent (it’s usually the baking spice flavors), the entire wine tastes one-dimensional and hot since the alcohol content is typically well over 15%.

When I look back at the Zinfandel wines I have tried in the past two years, a few names stand out:

• Radio-Coteau makes a knockout Zinfandel from grapes picked from the Von Weidlich vineyard
• Robert Biale makes some nice Zinfandel as well, judging by the Grande Vineyard release I had earlier in 2007
• Peter Franus‘ Brandlin Zinfandel is possibly my favorite of these three, although the Radio-Coteau is neck and neck

So, in honor of my first anniversary of marriage to my wife, we went to Ray’s Boathouse in Seattle. After hearing about the Mediterranean-style albacore tuna special, I decided to get the restaurant’s last half-bottle of 2001 Biale Old Pato Ranch Zinfandel. This Contra Costa County Zin packs 15.5% alcohol into a small container. What’s it like? Read on:

• Aroma: Potent blackberry jam, huckleberry pie, and black cherry with molasses. Not complex, very straightforward and enticing.
• Flavor: Lots of spice, mostly of the black pepper and clove varieties; some blackberry fruit pie and roasted coffee flavors in there with the spices. Not very complex, still somewhat tannic so there is some life left here.
• General impression: Not bad, but not too exciting either. Just okay overall. The tannins suggested that this wine could survive at least a few more years in the bottle, too, so perhaps it will gain complexity and lose a bit of the overriding spiciness.

Overall, this wine was okay, but not terribly gripping.  Perhaps I prefer the slightly less spicy Zinfandels, or else this wine needed a bit of something else (Charbono? Carignane?) to balance out the spice.  I’m glad I tried it, but I’d go for something different next time.

Mothers are good for a lot of things. Many of those things are obvious, but both my wife and I were reminded of yet another terrific use for our mothers as we spent our last day in Manhattan: They remember what we did when we were too young to form lasting memories ourselves.

Case in point: My wife has been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on two occasions. Apparently, she was there when she was about nine months old, but she clearly didn’t remember this visit when we went back earlier this week. Her mom took significant delight in telling me about this previous trip, which I think is understandable because it sounded like such a great memory for her, carrying her very young daughter past all of the incredible art on display at the Met.

I thought about my own mother as we took the cramped elevator to the top of the Empire State Building. Signs everywhere within this building refer to it as the ESB, which I have long associated with Extra Special Bitter, a type of beer I enjoy. I guess for me, the bitter beer face that Keystone Beer advertising used to lament isn’t entirely bad.

Anyway, one of the buildings I looked for once I got to the top of the ESB was the Flatiron Building in Manhattan. My mother worked there during the 1970s, one of many things about my own family that seemed normal to me when I was 5 years old, but that now seems totally incredible. The fact that my parents saw Alice Cooper perform in Europe in the early 1970s fits into this category as well, along with most of my mother’s hairstyles from the 1980s and my early taste in music.

So as my summer vacation drew to a close atop the ESB, I thought of something my friend Tom told me: “I like to do three things in New York City - wander, eat, and gawk.” I have to agree, and I think my wife is a believer as well now that she has had a proper bagel, a black and white cookie, and a bit of a slice of pizza. The pizza and bagels in Seattle are about as good as the Mexican food in Finland. Black and white cookies, in particular, are impossible to find on the West Coast. When you do stumble across a few, they are always frosted with icing rather than glazed with sugar as they should be. And the cookie itself is more like birthday cake than any other typical cookie. You’d be surprised how few people know these things in Seattle.