Looking forward to 2013

Random Thoughts

I just have to mention. We called the Salvation Army to donate some furniture from my mom's apartment. We made an appointment several weeks in advance. When the day came they showed up and told us that the couch and dresser were not good enough for the Salvation Army and that we should try Goodwill! The couch was in very good shape but they said it had a slight discoloration on the arms. No no one told us nor does the website warn that the donated furniture needs to be museum quality. NYC is a tough market. Oh well.

Robert Parker has sold part of the Wine Advocate to Singapore investors. Stay tuned to what this means. Originally he said that the print version would go away and that there would be ads. He very quickly backtracked. Mr. Parker is 65 and a true iconoclast but there are many people vying to replace his notoriety. He has made a large impact on the wine industry and from what I understand, his impact has been very positive.

Santa was good to me this year. One son gave me chocolate red wine from Holland and my other son gave me some interesting bottles of beer from Germany. Other family members gave me
 Frogs Leap Cabernet Sauvignon 2009,
Stonestreet Cabernet Sauvignon Monument Ridge 2007,
 Sterling Platinum Cabernet  Sauvignon 2009 ,
Paoletti Cabernet Sauvignon Bella Novello Calistoga, CA 2008, and an
 Oregon Willamette ValleyPinot Noir Pali Wine Company Alphabets 2010.
2006 Terlato Vineyards Cardinals' Peak Napa

I gave out to family

Chateau Meyney 2009 France
Chateau Gloria 2009 France
Spcie Route Chakalaka 2009 South Africa
Chateau La Thil Comte Clary 2009 France
Chateau Dallau 2009 France

What will be the new food discovery for 2013? My top ten food and wine notables for 2012 are

Willamette Valley, Oregon - Really enjoyed our trip their. Domaine Drouhin  made an impact on me. I love their wines especially the Pinot Noirs. The winery visit there is exceptional. Say hi to Ashley.
British Columbia wines and Victoria, BC - Who would have thunk that BC would have so many wineries making interesting wines. Victoria is a great place to visit and I would not mind living there.
2009 Bordeaux - I am a broken record (if that saying has any meaning today). These wines, not including he first growths, are comparatively cheap and great to drink.
NJ law allowing shipping of wine to NJ -It was about time.
Anguilla - Our new fav in the Caribbean.
BYOB - Try it at restaurants that have liquor licenses. Call ahead first. You will be amazed how many places have reasonble corkage charges.
Cellartracker- Love this site. Great way to keep track of your wines and to see what other people think about particular wines. Can't praise this site enough. Check out their reports. I can print out a wine list of all of my wines by geography.
Fresh NJ fish- I get withdrawal symptoms in the winter. Hope things return after Sandy.The tuna went south.
Chocolates - Debrands and Donna's. Indiana and NJ - perfect together.
Food genes - Be patient. It has taken some time but both of my sons are now cooking all types of interesting food with very good results.

Recent new wines (purchases and/or consumed)

Champagne Lallier Brut Grand Reserve $28
Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin Champagne NV- gift
2008 Orlando Abrigo Barbaresco Rocche Meruzzano $30

2011 Carpineta Fontalpino Chianti Colli Senesi $11 A WS Top 100

2008 Giuseppe Cortese Barbaresco Rabajà $30
2006 Terlato Vineyards Cardinals' Peak - gift
2010 Bodegas Volver Monastrell Tarima Hill $8.99  Highly recommended but I did not enjoy. Alot of alcohol.
2010 Au Bon Climat Pinot Noir Santa Barbara County $16 Like this wine so I bought another bottle. Not a fruit bomb.
Louis Jadot Macon Lugny 2010 $10.99 A great bargain but I can't find anymore. It restored my faith in Macon white wines.
NV Codorniu Cava "Anna de Codorniu" $11.00 A cava made from Chardonnay. Have enjoyed in the past so I bought another bottle.
Spcie Route Chakalaka 2009 $15.99 The new fav. A very good wine. A Rhone blend from South Africa.
2011 Marchesi diBarolo Barbera del Monferrato Maràia $11 Piemonte, Italy,  A WS top 100. A real bargain. Barbera can be a very nice fruity grape. Enjoyed this wine and have another in the basement.

I am under the weather again but for New Year's Eve we will try for the Pekin Duck meal with the Lallier Champagne but we won't be going in to NYC.I think I might make hot passion fruit souffle.

 Does anyone remember Ben Grauer. He announced the ball coming down in Times Square for New Year's Eve for NBC. Ben died in 1977 the same year as Guy Lombardo who was Mr. New Year's Eve for 48 years. It was Guy Lombardo's death that paved the way for Dick Clark's popularity on New Year's Eve.

Start a new tradition for 2013. Any ideas, let me know.

Have a great 2013.

It's Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas

Wine Shopping and Champagne

This is a good time of year for wine shopping. Stores are having great sales. I find that the internet is making shopping easier and harder. Easier because you can take your time  and pick out the wine that you want and take advantage of the online sales. Harder because when you go into a store, you are never sure if you have the best price or are missing a special wine advertised online.

This week I have seen billboards that proclaim free shipping at the Wine Library using code Library. I have not seen this offer on their website or in an e-mail. Interesting marketing strategy.

It is time to think about Champagne. We love Champagne and always have a bottle or 2 on New Year's Eve. For many years my tennis friends and I had a Champagne and paella dinner for the holidays. Due to unusual circumstances, we are not playing tennis this year and hence no Champagne party. Boo hoo. Nothing is better than to drink 4 or 5 champagnes side by side to compare their styles. It is amazing the amount of styles. Some are big and bold - Bollinger. Some are lighter and elegant - Perrier Jouet and some are just good stuff.

There is much debate about what is the best Champagne to drink vintage, extra premium or non vintage. The non-vintage is what the winery wants their Champagne to taste like since they have the most control in making  it. Non vintage Champagnes are blends of several vintages. Lettie Teague had a good article on Champagne in this past weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/on_wine.html

I like the non vintage Champagnes and find them to be the best values. Vintage Champagnes can get expensive. Look on the back of the bottle for a disgorged date. This is the date the Champagne was finalized to be sold. Since you do not know how old a non vintage Champagne has been sitting in a store, the disgorged date helps alot. Many Champagnes have this date but some do not. Be wary of bottles without the date.

Champagne is also about marketing. The big names sell most of the Champagne - Moet, Veuve Cliquot, Piper Heidsieck etc. However do not be afraid to experiment with any Champagne that you see. Remember if it says Champagne it must be from the Champagne region of France. The only exceptions are some cheap American wines that have been allowed to use the Champagne name since they have been doing so for a long time.

Also remember that besides style, there can be different grapes in different Champagnes Many are blend of pinot meunier, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. A Blanc de Blanc is 100% Chardonnay and a Blanc de Noir is usually 100% Pinot Noir. Try to keep track of what grapes and styles you like.

Eric Asimov in NY Times also has a good Champagne article. Asimov always has interesting thoughts on wine every Wednesday in the Times.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/dining/pinot-meunier-unacknowledged-grape-of-champagne.html?_r=0

Recent Wines

2010 Domaine Drouhin Oregon Pinot NoirWillamette Valley VG 2010 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. $30 I bought this at the winery. Medium body, nice bouquet, terroir with good fruit, not a fruit bomb but we love this style. Not a sipping wine as it needs food. Had with rack of lamb. Not sure how it will develop as I have not had many aged Oregon wines. Like the style of DDO.
2010 Domaine Drouhin Oregon Chardonnay Arthur $40 Bought this at the winery. Love this wine. Fruit, balance, bouquet, complexity. I tasted it at the winery at an earlier date and it out shined a Drouhin 2009 Chablis that we drank side by side and I love Chablis. This wine has more fruit and less acid than a Chablis but it is a wonderful wine. The oak is used carefully as only half of the wine has been aged in oak.

NV Angove's Zibibbo South Australia Decent sparkler but too sweet for me. Clean flavor and my friends liked it alot

2010 Bodegas Borsao Garnacha Campo de Borja Tres Picos  $12 This is the expensive Borsao! I should like this wine but it didn't do anything for me. Spicy, some complexity, ok nose but no mouth feel and tasted thin. It is high in alcohol which may account for some of the above. I will definitely try this vintage again as I have had this wine in other vintages many times in the past. 2009 Château La Cardonne  Médoc Red Bordeaux Blend $16 This is an excellent wine, good nose, nice mouth feel; fruit, balance and complexity, should develop nicely, this is a wine for California cab drinkers if they want to branch out. A great bargain. 2009 Ghost Hill Cellars Pinot Noir Bayliss-Bower Vineyard, Yamhill-Carlton Flat, not much nose, lacks fruit, not like other 09 Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs. Random Thoughts My son and I chopped down a Christmas tree this year. It was fun but tough to pick one out.The trees seem so much smaller out in the open. We ended up with a great tree that my wife has done her usual masterful job of decorating. Why are many food gifts for the Holidays just empty calories? I think that we should try to send food gifts that friends or business associates will really appreciate. What would you want to receive. I doubt it is a wicker basket of fruit, mustard, crackers, nuts and vacuum packed fish. I think that wine is a good gift but only if the recipient loves wine and and only if you can pick out bottles that the wine lover will enjoy. You do not need to spend lots of money. Went to Lanskys, a Jewish style deli restaurant on Columbus Avenue around 71st Street in NYC. Bought the pastrami sandwich to take out. Not sure what it was, but it was not edible pastrami. Good pastrami has always been hard to find but it may becoming almost extinct. The problem with many foods is that when it is hard to find a good quality product, people start thinking that the product itself is not worth eating. Try Katz's in lower Manhattan for pastrami and only buy one sandwich for 2 or 3. Have not been there in a while but hopefully the quality is still there. Let me know. My wife makes pierogis for her brothers on Christmas. They are fabulous. Dough, farmers cheese and potatoes. Sauteed in butter. A treat. Just ate at Osteria in Philadelphia.osteriaphilly.com The restaurant is owned by Marc Vetri, who is a chef and has 4 restaurants in Philly. The restaurant is trendy and the food is good although the menu is too precious. Ingredients that no one has heard of are sprinkled throughout. We had a special of roasted vegetables and arugula which was OK. We then had a pizza  lombarda baked egg, bitto cheese, mozzarella and cotechino sausage. The pizza was good but nothing special as dough was not as crispy as I like it. The wine was good. It was a blend of 90% Sangiovese and 10% cabernet Sauvignon. Morellino Di Scansano Poggio Alle Sughere 2009. Apparently the wine is not sidely distributed. It is from a not so famous area of Tuscany. It was soft and fruity but no heavy.  I has doppio ravioli with pear, casatica and walnut pesto, which was very good.  For a main course I had roast suckling pig with roasted potatoes. It was very good but it could have used a side with more pizazz. I also had a side of polenta which was good and creamy. For dessert I had olive oil apple upside down cake with apple raisin composta and caramel gelato.  Enjoyed. The gelato was creamier than most. Overall it was a very good meal and probably the best meal that I have had in Philly. The prices are reasonable also.     Merry Christmas to all and to all ...

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

My favorite holiday especially since my birthday is always close to it. The menu is frozen in time as my family does not want any changes but...
This year
23 pound turkey
gravy
chestnut stuffing
baked potatoes and sweet potatoes
Spinach souffle
Cranberry relish
New this year-- stir fried Kale
Apple tart
Pecan pie
Chocolate
Italian pastries from Ferraras
Wine -- Chalone 2006 Pinot Noir magnum Everyone loved this wine last year so I bought some magnums. Wine was great.

I have been under the weather lately so my wine tasting has slowed down.
November is the time for Nouveau Beaujolais. It is not great wine but it is a tradition. Some years it is not drinkable. This year it was. It comes by air for the week before Thanksgiving and then it comes by boat. I bought the Dubeouf 2012 Nouveau for $7.98, which was a great price by air.


Pre- Thanksgiving dinner

Friends over for dinner. Menu of cheeses, scallops with fried rice, duck breast with roasted fingerling potatoes, vanilla cake with chocolate frosting, citrus sorbet and chocolate truffles that I made. Wines
2004 Bodegas El Nido Jumilla Clio A darling of the critics but not my type of wine. Light in color,nice bouquet, no real mouth feel, it opened up slowly, good initial taste, no middle and not a great finish. Not sure if I had an off day but this is not the quality of wine that people are proclaiming it. Do not be intimidated by Parker who gave it a great score. Finished my meal with a 1966 Warre's port which was wonderful. The Clio is somewhere between a port and wine and it is neither.15.5% alcohol for a wine is goofy. I am curious to try this wine again but I think that the emperor has no clothes.
 Prosecco  A generic sparkler that we had with the cheese
Chalone 07 chardonnay - Love this wine as always.
1966 and 77 Warres ports. My friends gave me the 66 as a wedding present. 26 years in my cellar and the port was awesome. It had a light color but a beautiful nose. The taste was intense but not overpowering. The 77 is a good port but when we drank it with the 66 it did not compare. These ports were a real treat. I had never had wine or port like these.

2010 Bordeaux

Critics are calling this a good year. I have not tried one yet. They are on my short list to try. I am still seeing a number of 2009 Bordeaux's available at great prices.

My Birthday

For my birthday we went to the Borgata in Atlantic City. I was still somewhat under the weather. We had dinner at the bar in SeaBlue, Michael Mina's restaurant. We had eaten there before and had good food. Ate mussels in broth, naan, onion rings and mini lobster rolls. The wine was a Pascal Jolivet 2010 Puilly Fume. We had a 1/2 bottle for $30. We had profiteroles stuffed with ice cream for dessert. Everything was very good and it was not expensive.

They have wonderful wine lists at the  restaurants at the Borgata. They are available online to check out before you go. Some of the pricier wines are especially good values. They had a Grand Cru Chablis for $100 which was a great price in a restaurant for that wine. I was tempted but did not feel like drinking much wine that night. I will need to return.

Enjoy the holiday season. Let me know if you find any interesting food or wines for holiday gifts.