Poured with Pleasure

New this year, Thirsty Reader: no lectures! No rants about the decline of reading! Instead, just a short detour to the land of electronic readers—Nooks and Kindles.  I’m recommending them for their splendid convenience ¶ My first Kindle weighed just 8 ounces; my latest [with a lighted screen], 15 ounces: that makes them excellent travel companions. Consider:  my complete Jane Austen—six volumes of deckle-edged letterpress, NY, 1924—was and is a many-splendored thing,  but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, it weighs 8 lbs. My one-volume The Jewel in the Crown? Three lbs. plus. Meanwhile, e-books are weightless. Yes, I still love the physical presence of printed books, but progress has its place. ¶ And now we hit the books—most of them fresh from the press, some not-so. The default gift for beginners is that king of the Vast Overviews, Wine for Dummies 5th Edition, by the duo known to many as ’Ed and Mary’ for the same reasons foodies refer to Julia Child as Julia. Since 1995 it has sold more than a million copies because it is clearly and crisply written, comprehensive, unintimidating and snobbery-free .What other book launched so many newcomers on confident starts in the daunting world of wine? But not that Judy Beardsall’s Sniffing the Cork and Other Wines Myths Demystified is also instructive. ¶

              

Chief among the many not-so-vast overviews is American Wine, by Jancis Robinson and Linda Murphy: the former needs no introduction and the latter not much more, as she created the wine section of the San Francisco Chronicle. They cover all 50 states: yes, Hawaii makes wine. So does Alaska [Mama Bear Red, I should think.] Also from University of California Press this year: Wine Atlas of Germany, and Wines of South America, with sommelier Evan Goldstein going beyond Chile and Argentina to cover the whole continent—almost: Guyana, French Guyana and Suriname have yet, apparently, to get with the program. Shrinking to the regional we come upon Charles L.Sullivan’s Sonoma Wine & the Story of Buena Vista, which deserves better than its drab dust jacket, and Tilar Mazzeo’s double-play, Back Lane Wineries of Napa and the same for Sonoma. Greens will go for the California Wine Institute’s Down to Earth: A Seasonal tour of Sustainable Winegrowing in California. ¶ Italy leads with its king and queen, Barolo and Barbaresco, by Kerin O’Keefe, who covers both staunch traditionalists and fractious innovators. Tom Hyland ranges Beyond Barolo and Brunello: Italy’s Most Distinctive Wines, exploring roads less traveled and wines less known. For decades now Gary Grunner and Bob Lipinski have been eating and drinking all over Italy, with Gary furiously scribbling into his battered, raggle-taggle notebook. At last they have core-dumped its into the 178 pages of Italian Wine Notes.

              

Marchese & daughters

Rather less wieldy is Ian d’Agata’s Native Wine Grapes of Italy, whose phone-book heft results from Italy’s staggering abundance of grape varieties. The weight of detail here rather smothers the author’s personality, which to me is a blessing. Of similar heft is Bob and Kathie Lipinki’s International Beverage Dictionary, whose waters are deep enough to drown in, somewhere between A Boire and Zytnia. ¶ Too many years ago I was still a punk in wheelpants when I was bullied into interviewing Marchese Piero Antinori—and on his home turf, too. Too scared to decline and too dumb to lie, I sallied unqualifiedly forth: down to the Arno, across Ponte Santa Trinitá and into Piazza Antinori, where, opposite the Cappella Antinori I turned left and unconfidently entered Palazzo Antinori. Home turf indeed. But let it be said that the Marchese was kindness and courtesy itself, innately gracious [maybe he  heard my knees knocking]. He’s the same on the page as in person in The Hills of Chianti: The Story of a Tuscan Winemaking Family, in Seven Bottles, in which he writes of passing on his six-centuyry-old family business to his daughters Allegra, Alessia and Albiera.

Gary Grunner’s book in three stages, from jury-rigged, hand-scribbled
editor’s nightmare to its ‘cleans up pretty nice’ published version

Rather less rarefied is A Toast to Bargain Wines, George Taber’s tour of  bargain country [which occasional splurges]. His chapter on [yellow tail] alone will set the snobs screaming. ¶ If you want just one drink, try Talia Baiocchi’s Sherry: A Modern Guide to the Wine World’s Best-Kept Secret; if more than one, the Mille Vini Italian Wine Guide. Eventually you’ll come round to pairing, and so to François Millo’s Provence Food and Wine as well as sommelier John Szabo’s Pairing Food and Wine for Dummies and Food & Booze: Essays and Recipes, a salmagundi from Tin House magazine. There’s not a drop to drink in Carol Hofberg’s Morocco on a Plate, but it’s here I’ve recently found some Moroccan wine, made from international varieties: Ouled Thaleb. You make wine in a Muslim country pretty much as porcupines make love. As John and Erica Platters’s Africa Uncorked explains,  Morocco and some other Muslim countries don’t officially permit wine production, but avert their gaze so long as sinners keep their heads down. ¶ For tech types there are Proof: the Science of Booze, by Adam Rogers, Amy Stewart’s The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks and Marni Wasserman and Amy Jeanroy’s Fermenting for Dummies.

              

These go well with an anecdotal mixer like Fred Minnick’s Whiskey Women, which one reviewer hailed as ‘oodles more fun than a women’s’ studies class.’ ¶ The martini [the Fred Astaire of cocktails] and the Manhattan [the Cary Grant] have long been in the limelight; now it’s Clark Gable’s turn, in a double-header: The Old-Fashioned: The Story of The World’s First Classic Cocktail, by Robert Simonson, and Albert W. A. Schmid’s The Old Fashioned: An Essential Guide to the Original Whiskey Cocktail. Rather more down-home is Mark Spivak’s Moonshine Nation: The Art of Creating Cornbread in a Bottle.  Interested in advanced technique, local produce and relentless innovation? See Architecture of the Cocktail: Constructing the Perfect Cocktail from the Bottom Up, by Amy Zavatto; Artisanal Cocktails: Drinks Inspired by the Seasons from the Bar at Cyrus, by Scott Beattie; Craft Cocktails at Home: Offbeat Techniques, Contemporary Crowd-Pleasers, and Classics Hacked with Science, by Kevin K. Liu; and The Curious Bartender: The Artistry and Alchemy of Creating the Perfect Cocktail  by Tristan Stephenson. For a little  [much-needed] frivolity try Jeanne Benedict’s Cocktail Pops and Spiked Frozen Treats. For a shorter title, Modern Cocktails, by Swedish bar-owner Jimmy Dymott. ¶ The literary/celebrity angle brings us Philip Greene’s Hemingway compendium To Have and Have Another; Tim Federle’s pun-laden Hickory Daiquiri Dock and Tequila Mockingbird [e.g., the Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margarita]; and Tom Smith’s Sinatra salute, Drink Up and Be Somebody. ¶ If a freshly made Alamagoozlum haunts your dreams, grab Ted Haigh’s backward glance at the 100 recipes of Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. For the straight skinny try The Art of the Shim: Low-Alcohol Cocktails to Keep You Level. Want to run your own bar?

                

Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s The Bar Book: Elements of Cocktail Technique, Jenn Fiedler’s [’bout time we got some women in here], The Essential Bar Book, and Ray Foley’s Bartending for Dummies make their bids to join the classics:  Dale DeGroff’s The Craft of the Cocktail and Gaz [ex-Gary] Regan’s The Joy of Mixology. ¶ Now is it just me or, looking back on the titles above, is cocktailery  getting a tad cultish and self-serious, what with its outlandish and extravagant concoctions [one cocktail I saw recently requires 16 ingredients; three of them made from separate recipes] and artisanal ice? Faddishness breeds familiarity, and you know what comes next. Therefore let’s relax—while relax we still can—with beer in all its amber, foam-topped glory, as in Beer for Dummies and by The Foodie’s Beer Book, a pairing guide by the pair of Brooke and Luter Fedora. ¶ And let us not forget that good drink can be read as well as sipped, which is why I recommend Natalie Berkowitz’s The Winemaker’s Hand and Terry Theise’s Reading Between the Wines.

A small sample from the latter: ‘I want to reassure you that none of what follows is a command. It is merely a proposal. It’s all right to think of wine like this, and it’s all right not to.  . . . Wine is a tactful invitation, not a summons. But let us be available, when it asks, to go quietly soaring, because the earthbound life is finally too small. Cheers! ©2014

Desperation—of writers for stuff to write about and of editors for stuff to publish—is a leading cause of How to Talk About Wine articles. This, Thirsty Reader, is not that article. This is How Not to Talk About Wine. ¶ It derives from the annual-or-not Poured With Pleasure Shivaree, a wingding for inmates of Liberty Hall [southwest corner of Harm’s Way and Nathan Lane] to disport themselves freely, at least until the cops arrive. One fine August day, led by our Grand Marshal, Ben Trovato the Italian fabulist, we wended northward to Bogus Corners, a hamlet about midway between Fisherman’s Bend and the Gadroon border. ¶ Our hoo-hah ws sparked by Michelle Armour, noted West Coast PR babe and meat packer, who‘d been driven round the bend by a producer’s demand that she publicize his bottom-dollar Cabernet under the mantra It’s Great Wine at a Great Price!  ‘Horsefeathers,’ Michele said, or is said to have said. ‘No way you’re getting two greats in one bottle for six clams a pop.’ Besides, Michelle’s J.A.M. PR does not, as they say, do dollar-store wines; in fact, her clients include such notables as Duckhorn, J. Lohr, MacRostie, Patz & Hall, Sea Smoke, Spottswoode and Talbott. Resisting the urge to propose a more realistic slogan [The Cream of the Crap came to her mind but not her lips], she feigned an attack of the vapors and discreetly withdrew to her fainting couch. In her swoon she fell to glooming on the subject of language inflation among wine people, and it was but the work of a moment for her to compile a list of deceptions and what they too-often really mean. Herewith a sampling:

World-class:  Good
Excellent: Pretty good
Great: Lackluster
Good: Not very good at all
Instinctive winemaker: Repeatedly failed chemistry
Approachable: Uninspired
Sophisticated: Totally unapproachable
Lush: Cheap and over-manipulated
Accessible: Cheap
Prestigious: Expensive
Coveted:  Over-priced
Earthy: Tastes like dirt

This she idly sent in a cleft stick to Lindsay Woolsey, the ditsy fashionista and Liberty Hall denizen who is her BFF, WTF that may mean, and she in turn hauled it to our shindig for our edification and dismay. ¶ We had intended to roister on the shore of nearby Veronica Lake until we observed that that body is not, like the human body, 90 percent water. It is a foetid swamp that would have appealed to Poe and for which the term ‘superfund site’ is too good by a long chalk. Luckily an undiscriminating spa called the Bar None Ranch crouches nearby on the lower slopes of Widow’s Peak, and its management, if any, willingly received us ‘mongst its blooming groves of smilax, phlox and thorax. ¶ As the lobster salad and Sauvignon Blanc were passed around, so was La Armour’s list, to vocal support for both. ‘How about tradition,’ threw in Sutton Who, a British archeologist of no repute. ‘Like family owned, it’s something that’s for sale if the price is right. Traditional, on the other hand, often means antiquated winery. ‘You don’t want to leave out artisanal,’ said Cole Junger, the outlaw psychiatrist. ‘Too often it means rustic, rough-hewn or clumsy—but always steeply priced. I’ve even seen ‘artisanal marshmallows’ on offer, each one doubtless carved by hand using century-old chisels. Only $24 a pound, too.’ ‘There’s a lot of crafted and hand-crafted going around,’ said Homer Nods, the classical scholar and dolt. ‘You’d think the wine is made by hooded monks in caverns full of purple smoke instead of plants that look like oil refineries.’ For her part Lindsay would fain have talked about the new anthology she’s compiling for Fulcourt Press—her working title is Meh: Poems Jackie Kennedy Was Never Really All That Crazy About—but the spark had caught the tinder and the tinder the flame, as it were: there was no going back. ¶ ‘Let’s ditch iconic,’ said Harley Quinn, the gay Hell’s Angel. ‘Doesn’t it just mean clichéed? Or let’s restrict it to flat, two-dimensional wines, so we can get rid of balanced.’ Something of a free-for-all was developing, something that would cause thy knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine: Passion was skanced as mere livelihood and philosophy as rhetoric concocted by marketing. ‘Right! I’m so sick of people saying—intoning, actually—Great wine is made in the vineyard,’ added Jeane-Jacques Trousseau, the multiply married French philosophe. ‘Look behind the curtain and you’ll see their real Core Values are guys in white lab coats poring over gas chromatographs.’ Luxury was defined as priced for show-offs and curate roused the ire of Bartolo Colon, the flame-throwing right–handed copy editor: ‘Anyone using that word who isn’t a museum director or assistant vicar should be ill-behooved*. Same for anyone using eponymous, somethingcentric and channeling. Established was called code for heartless corporate leviathan and hidden gems drew the scorn of Lady SaGa, runic chanteuse and coach-class goddess of Icelandair: ‘After hidden they should add those three little words with good reason. Without these second-rate wines lots of self-important writers would have to shut up.’ Foodies took stick too. ‘Half of them would be struck dumb if only we could ban the word succulent’ said Basil Coulis, our French herbalist and pastry chef. That struck a chord with Sneaky Peat, the furtive Islay distiller: ‘Aye, laddie, and banning veggies and garlicky will silence the rest.’ And that, for the time being, silences me.

What we ate Cold Lobster Salad for four, adapted from Emeril Lagasse’s recipe. As follows: Emulsify 1 Cup Italian extra-virgin olive oil and the juice of two Florida oranges, then whisk in 2 Tbsp. of minced shallots and 1 Tsp. minced garlic. Drizzle with honey to taste, and salt and pepper. Toss 4 Cups fresh baby arugula with 1/3 of the oil mix and taste for seasoning; pile the arugula on plates. Toss stemmed and blanched green beans [Emeril uses haricots verts] and 1/2 Cup cured Greek olives, pitted and halved, with 1/3 of the dressing and add atop the arugula. Toss 1 pound of cooked lobster with the final 1/3 of the dressing; taste for seasoning. The lobster is Maine lobster, which Mainers pronounce LAHB-sta, not just because August is Maine Lobster Month but because it’s the best. [Hard to credit that in Colonial times lobster was fed to livestock.] Pile meat atop the beans, olives and arugula. Garnish with thin, salt-and-peppered slices of 2 hard boiled eggs and 1 Tbsp. of chopped parsley. Then, in the words of John Anderson’s A Fifteenth Century Cookery Boke. ‘Serve it forth.’

What we drank A splendid variety of Sauvignon Blanc in prices ranging from $9 Meridian to $22 Silverado and Miller Ranch. At $11-$12 we had Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve, Rodney Strong Charlotte’s Home, Dancing Bull,  2 from Dry Creek Vineyard [including the Fumé Blanc] and Matua. At $13-$16: Ch. St Jean Fumé Blanc, Kenwood, Simi, Murphy-Goode The Fumé, Cerruti Cellars’ Honker, De Martino, Souverain, Lake Sonoma, Buena Vista and Picket Fence. At $18-$20: Foppiano, Mt. Beautiful, Matanzas Creek, Hanna, St. Supéry and Robert Mondavi Fumé Blanc.

* Ill-behooved: kicked by a mule [The Laconic Lexicon, 2014]

©2014 Bill Marsano

Tags

Sauvignon Blanc,Fumé Blanc,Meridian,Silverado,Miller Ranch,Kendall-Jackson,Rodney Strong,Charlotte’s Home,Dancing Bull,Dry Creek Vineyard,Matua,Ch. St Jean,Kenwood,Simi,Murphy-Goode,Cerruti Cellars,De Martino,Souverain,Lake Sonoma,Buena Vista,Picket Fence,Foppiano,Mt. Beautiful,Matanzas Creek,Hanna,St. Supéry,Robert Mondavi

Vodka, the clear and present danger, lives in interesting times, as the ancient Chinese said.* Or are said to have said. Some tony modern barmen dismiss it as lowly industrial knockout juice, and thus beneath their notice. Mixmaster Tony Abou-Ganim isn’t buying it, and he combines facts, lore and recipes in Vodka Distilled to turn the tide.

That’s a challenge of Canute-like difficulty, for in snooty joints—such as have printed cocktail menus, ‘bar chefs’ and unmarked entrances—vodka orders may be greeted with derision or insult. ¶ ‘Those guys are just a bunch of snots’ says my upstairs neighbor Brandi Alexander, ‘who think they’re too good for their customers.’ A sweet-tempered ex-cocktail waitress, Brandi remembers ‘back when I was hauling trayloads of libations at the old Café des Trois Outfieldres, we used to say the customer is always right, if not always bright, so we gave ‘em latitude, not attitude.’ ¶ ‘Vodka has earned its place in any bar,’ Tony says. ‘It’s one of the oldest spirits there is’—much older that scotch, bourbon or gin’—and, he adds, uniquely self-effacing. While some vodkas do have traces of taste and character,** most are simply neutral, the base of alcohol on which creative barmen can erect new cocktails. But never you mind: vodka isn’t going anywhere, despite the pomposity, despite the Wall Street Journal’s ‘Vodka is passé’ declaration: it’s what the public wants. Americans, voting by cash register, buy 65 million cases of it every year. ‘Nuff said. ¶ The big names and exotics include Absolut, Grey Goose, Tanqueray, Ultimat, Double Cross, Skyy, vintaged Kauffman, Effen, Mongolia’s new Soyombo, and more. The
range runs from Tito’s Handmade, whose price-quality balance makes it a Texas David amongst Goliaths, and Sweden’s Purity, created by Thomas Kuuttanen, who claims a distinct character for it from his own 34-distillations process. [His own martini is three parts Purity to one of water, surely melted down from his own glacier.] ¶ Most top names are pricy and beyond, especially when labeled ‘luxury’ or ‘ultra-premium,’ so value brands eagerly elbow in, claiming, like Tito’s, to shrink the gap between top drawer and bottom dollar. Value titans Smirnoff and Seagram’s now rub along with Sobieski [a bargain in liters and 1.75-liter ‘handles’]; Stön and Reval, also in liters [increasingly popular for vodka], Rökk, Svedka, Denaka, Exclusiv, and jolly, irrepressible Wodka, which promises ‘Hamptons Quality, Newark Pricing’ and is packaged accordingly. Wodka’s plain-jane jug can’t even touch Wyborowa’s bottle [designed by Frank Gehry], Absolut’s rich limited editions, Crystal Head’s skull, American Harvest’s frosty column, Finlandia’s and Iced’s faux glaciers, Stoli elit’s artillery round and the sculptures of Kauffman, U’Luvka, Purus, Mamont and Black Elk. Wodka’s paper labels, which might be run off by night on a wonky printer at a southern penal farm, pale before the etched and enameled flourishes of Van Gogh, Voda, Chopin, Belvedere, Frozen Ghost and Snow Queen, let alone Medea’s programmable LED display [mine says ‘Not tonight, dear. I have a headache’]. ¶ Of course, you pay for that—and what else? Lately, it’s filtration fetishism. Activated charcoal has been replaced or supplemented by diamond dust, diamond crystal, quartz sand, rare earths, silver, gold, platinum, lava or powdered marble, alone or in combinations. And so, naturally, you can now choose Belvedere UNfiltered vodka as well as Russian Standard regular and Russian Standard Platinum. You also pay for poetry, such as it is. Ketel One has claimed that its every drop came from an ancient pot still, distileerketel #1. Reverentially enshrined in KO’s promotional video, the thing seemed ridiculously small, so I asked how much it actually produced. The p.r. babe cocked a snook, as it were, and replied in wounded tones ‘Please! Ketel One is about quality, not numbers.’ Suitably ashamed, I asked U.S. Customs, which had logged 953,000 cases of KO the year before. That’s about 2.3 million gallons, so maybe KO is going Double Dutch with double shifts. Ya think? Or maybe Bob Emmons, author of The Book of Gins and Vodkas: A Complete Guide, was right: KO is bulk alcohol shipped from France and Germany. ¶ Are you paying more for kosher? Don’t. All Domestic non-flavored grain or potato vodkas are OK, ‘certified’ or not, say kashrut experts. Are you paying more for gluten-free? Don’t. Distillation, q violent process, destroys all but the verytiniest traces of gluten, so any distilled spirit is safe, per celiac.nih.gov/. Extremely sensitive folk play safe with gluten-proof vodka, i.e. not grain-based. No problem. There are potato vodkas by the long ton: Chopin Potato and Blue Ice; Boyd & Blair, Luksusowa, Monopolowa, Glacier and of course Idaho’s Grand Teton [but not, oddly, Ireland’s Boru]. Grapes make Cîroc and DiVine. Tito’s and Smirnoff are corn, and Cayman Blue [Vodcaña in Canada] is from sugar cane. ¶ Potato vodka is considered a Polish joke by Russian, who vaunt their wheat and rye, but Polish distillers are ecumenical. Belvedere bottles separate vodkas from each of the major bases, for example, and Ultimat, looming majestic in its elegant decanter bottle, is a blend of all three. Suntory makes Ao vodka from rice, and your thrifty Russian housewife may practice home economics by home-cooking table sugar into a simulacrum called samogon, which she sells out her kitchen window for about a buck a liter. Its popularity may suggest that a Russian woman’s place is in the kitchen. Corn works, as do sugar cane and soy beans [Inox and “3’’, respectively]. Ingenious Mongolians have used yak and camel milk. Tuthilltown makes a fine vodka from apples, which are superabnundant  [and cheap!] in T’town’s Hudson Valley homeland. ¶ Truly, were some hardy visionary so inclined, lawn clippings might well make a Long Island grass vodka called Subur. Green Jacket [‘The Vodka of Champions—Now Bogey-Free!’] might be made artisanally from the mowings of Augusta National. ¶ Russia is joined inseparably to many many consumers, which is why Putin’s bullying anti-gay law sparked a U.S. boycott of Stoli, which is Latvian. Just as naturally, many brands pirate Russian names: Red Square and KGB are British; Military Special and MiG Pilot are American. Molotov, presumably just the thing for cocktails to be thrown at enemy tanks, is from Trinidad. Keglevich is Italian and Gorbatshow German. [Legitimately Russian in source and name are Red Army and Kalashnikov. [I imagine the latter’s ads use peppy slogans that run something like ‘Vodka Kalashnikov: It Will Blow You Away.’] There’s a lot of such foolery in origin of this species. Galileo is Polish, not Italian [why isn’t it called Copernicus?]Alaskan Rock is made in Australia and was inspired by Italian restaurateurs. Kosher vodka is made in Jamaica. And so it goes. ¶ As vodka wins consumers by its very simplicity, so is it beloved of distillers for low production costs. No deep limestone cellars or towering rick houses here; no long years of ‘aging gracefully’ in new-oak barrels that are used but once and then either sold cheap to Scotland or cut up and sold even cheaper as planters. Vodka’s tao of profit is a speedy one: out of the still, into the bottle, onto the shelves and down the hatch. Some craft distillers have adopted vodka because it’s relatively easy to make and sells like crazy, supporting their bottom line. [The only beverage with a higher return on investment is bottled water.] Not that it’s always easy. Chris Weld, founder of Berkshire Mountain Distillers, says ‘although vodka still dominates the spirit world, I struggle to sell my craft vodka beyond my local environs—most distributors actually don’t even want to bring it in. They have plenty of vodkas from the big guys.’ And they’re much cheaper [his Ice Glen is $30] and available at big discounts. ¶ The low prices are low indeed. Some of the 1.75-liter plastic jugs return change from a $10 bill. You may be wary of any brand in plastic bottles, especially in pints, half-pints and $1 shots designed à la Manet for le déjeuner sur l’curb. Devotees of such stuff
 
warn against drinking it straight and suggest drowning the taste with juice [cranberry, orange and grapefruit preferred], running it through a Brita filter a few times, or steeping it with Gummy Bears. In the end, you may wish to take a tip from Kirstie Alley: she uses to clean toilets, at home and in flight. What the hell: it’s cheaper than Lysol. ¶ Cheers!

————————————————————————
*Or are said to have said. Wikipedia says ‘no Chinese source has ever been found.’ Phrases.org.uk calls it ‘neither Chinese nor ancient, being recent and western,’ noting its faux-Oriental ‘Confucius say’ style. It is cited in the 1930s by
French-sounding Frederic René Coudert, Jr. [actually a native-born New Yorker] and a contemporary British Ambassador to China who bore the magnificent handle Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen. 

**Taste-test for such nuances with neat vodka in wee glasses and at room temperature.

©Bill Marsano 2014

The summer’s gone, and Heaven’s to Betsy, all the roses falling. That’s the way of it here in Gotham, where burning Sappho loved and sung. Oft before the gloaming comes on I’ll retreat to the Locanda del Pavimento, a.k.a. sidewalk, there to sit in the open air and sip thoughtfully at some life-sustaining beverage [just now it’s Kenwood’s Sonoma County Zin]. As I gaze toward the lordly Hudson and the

Evening at the Locanda, where I am choosing my wine with aplomb as the venerable sommelier Garçon McCullers takes my  order with scruples

Snooki Monument beyond, far off toward where the River Phoenix flows gently through Rudy Vallee toward the limpid waters of Turhan Bay, I compose my mind in peace for a backward glance at recent news of note. ¶ For example, Tom Wark, indefatigable warrior for the consumer’s right to buy wine unhampered by politicos, has opened a new front in his long war: he’s now executive director of the American Wine Consumer Coalition [which I like to call the CAB, for Campaign Against Backwardness]. What gets Wark’s goat and mine too is that 11 states absolutely forbid out-of-state shipments to consumers;  36 ban shipments from out-of-state retailers; 17 nix wine sales in grocery stores; 4 forbid Sunday sales; and 15 don’t allow BYO in restaurants. And Pennsylvania and Utah still tyrannize consumers via their state monopolies. [See Wineconsumers.org for more on how and how often politicians abuse the public to protect their campaign contributions.] ¶ Speaking of backwardness, Doug and Linda Pendleton deal with it daily as owners of Indiana’s well-regarded Grapevine Cottage. They have two outlets in Zionsville, which holds the gorgeous east in fee, or would if it could, but it can’t. The Pendletons are forbidden to ship out of state–and even in state. Can’t ship, period. But that’s beside the point. Recently, Doug and Linda did

The legal drinking age in Indiana is 21, but in a fine example of Hoosier Daddy backwardness, the Doug and Linda must card customers up to age 26! That’s what Indiana’s Excise Police say. I kid you, as Queeg said, not.

what a lot of people have thought of doing but never got round to: staging a wine-saving face-off between Vacu Vin and Private Preserve. They poured two glasses each out of two bottles and set them aside for re-tasting after 48 hours. They did the same with a third bottle, which they gave the traditional re-cork-and-refrigerate therapy. The wine was Columbia Crest’s Grand Estate Merlot, which Doug and Linda chose for its ‘remarkable consistency’. The results? The re-corked bottle had to be poured right down the drain. Private Preserve’s blanket of inert gas got a ‘preservation score’ of 65-70%: after a little swirling, the wine was ‘still very enjoyable.’ Vacu Vin’s wine won hands-down [75-80%]: the tannins were still firm, Doug reports, and the nose almost indistinguishable from that of the fresh bottle. ¶ My own experience validates the Vacu Vin, and I’ll say that claims of its ‘sucking the life out of wine’ aremere wine-snob voodoo. Just pump until you feel resistance and you and your wine will be fine. [Over-pumping will damage wine: if you see bubbles as you pump, the wine is actually boiling.]

Cheap, effective and durable: the Vacu Vin. Seldom is so much available for so little. Shown at left is the bottom-dollar basic model; slightly fancier models don’t cost much more. Shop around and you’re talking single-digit price tags.

I’ve never cared for Private Preserve. Irrationally because my first can was thrown out by the char lady, who thought it was empty. I could hardly blame her: full or empty, the can weighs the same to any scale short of a nanomechanical mass sensor. Rationally because, as my locapour neighbor Art Vindepays says, ‘It gives me no feedback, no way to be certain that I’ve used it properly. You get a hiss when you spray, but nothing you can see. And what if I move the bottle—will that disturb the gas?’ ¶  If, Thirsty Reader, you are inclined to experiment for yourself, you’ll find that scientific inquiry has never been cheaper. Online, the spray goes for a low of $8.42 and the basic Vacu Vin bottoms out at $5.94. Similar pumps by Jokari and Fox Run are even cheaper. ¶ Dr. Jekyll and Nauga Hyde, bipolar specialists in rec-room decor, dropped by to crow that New York judges had again told Nanny/Mayor Michael Bloomberg to piss off and take his soda ban with him. Hizzonor, you may recall, was upset by the king-size drinks sold in movie houses and restaurants. In March, judges shot his imperious ban down as unconstitutional, arbitrary and capricious, so he appealed. Now he’s lost again. He noted, a little huffily, that more than 2000 New Yorkers have died of diabetes in the interim but didn’t say how many of them had actually been to the movies. ¶ Stop press! The Comité Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne mounted its high horse in response to rumors of new Champagne-colored iPhones. And hinted at legal action! Risible as it may seem, the CIVC has ‘protected’ Champagne in Europe, quashing an Yves St. Laurent perfume and a Swedish yogurt, but in the U.S. they’ll have to put a cork in their complaint: the name is not so rigorously restricted here, as witness among other things Korbel California Champagne and Lawrence Welk’s Champagne Music Makers, to say nothing of Alice Lon. ‘We can’t say that a Champagne color exists,’ the CIVC’s legal explained. The CIVC, I imagine,will be to start legal

Champagne Lady Alice Lon,  sole soupçon of sex appeal on Welk’s drearily wholesome TV songfest. Her prom-style getups left everything to the imagination: a hem a smidgen too high, got her sacked. “Cheesecake’s not for us,’ said Welk, adding explaining that ‘Alice liked to show a little too much knee.’ He was rich but stingy, paying union scale, and out of touch: He okayed ‘One Toke Over the Line,’ thinking it was a real gospel song.

action against Toyota for its Champagne-colored Camrys, Home Depot for its house paint and various makers of makeup and hair colorings. Not to mention Pantone, global color arbiter to artists, designers, manufacturers and retailers, which confidently lists Champagne Beige and Pink Champagne on its palette: Nos. 14-1012 and 12-1107. [You could look ‘em up.] And then, egg on face to the CIVC, the color turned out to be gold. ¶ Our Laconic Lexicon defines BOYCOTT as a ‘fashionable means of expressing moral indignation, appearing virtuous and accomplishing nothing, all at one go.’ It’s relevant here because of the simple-minded boycott of Stoli vodka to protest Russia’s anti-gay law, which Putin put in.  Save your dudgeon and stow your dander; you might as well boycott all Russian dressings, Russian River Pinot Noir and the Russian Tea Room, because they, too, like Stoli, are not Russian. Stoli is distilled in Latvia and the company has sponsored gay-themed events here. Moreover, even a boycott of all real Russian vodkas, such as Kauffman, Russian Standard and [cleverness alert!] Fukoff, would cost the Russian economy a paltry $59 million. So lose the halos, kids. ¶ OK, so it’s no ‘Inverted Jenny’ but it’s a bungle nonetheless: a flea-market sortie unearthed a not-rare example of  the ‘Prohibition Enforced’ commemorative stamp issued by the post office in 1998. The image shows three men dumping a barrel of wine into a sewer in aid of National Sobriety. Never mind that home-made wine was legal during Prohibition, as was the ‘altar wine’ made for Catholics and ‘sacramental wine’ for Jews. Georges de Latour and Louis Martini made such tsunamic quantities of the stuff a fellow might have thought

the Noble Experiment signified America’s vast spiritual reawakening. But Eliot Ness and his boys ignored wine, as did Al Capone and his:  the big bucks were in beer and whiskey. Yet mayhap, Thirsty Reader, you are too young to know of all that, even as I, sad to say, am not. Cheers!
©2013 Bill Marsano

Thirsty Reader responded to my Christmas book post with a line from Auntie Mame: ‘Books are awfully decorative, don’t you think? Mame’s blithe spirit conjured my favorite moment from another film, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, in which Mr. Right gives a book to Ms. Wrong, a gorgeous model he delusionally thinks has a mind. Uma Thurman, who plays the model, plays the moment perfectly, hefting the package, unwrapping it cautiously, eying it speculatively and then, as the light dawns, cooing with manufactured delight ‘Why it’s a . . . it’s a book!‘ ¶ You, 
 unlike Ms. Wrong, are a reader, and so, since it’s summer it is also summer-reading time. For the drinking class there are plenty of books for porch, beach and patio, for deck chair and easy chair, for bed and chaise longue. Spanking new or slightly seasoned, the following will pair well with pulled corks, twisted screwcaps and popped tops, so don’t lean in—lean back. ¶ One book that is truly seasonal is Kara Newman’s Cocktails for a Crowd, in which expert testimony  proves that ‘batching’ drinks requires more
than a times-table. Many modern bartenders skance vodka; they consider it mere booze for getting blotto pronto. Bar chef Tony Abou-Ganim is not among them, and he makes vodka’s case in Vodka Distilled: The Modern Mixologist on Vodka and Vodka Cocktails. He’s not quite alone, because Ray Foley’s Vodka 1000: the Ultimate Collection of Vodka Cocktails, Recipes, Facts, and Resources was ahead of him, and now both are joined by Tony Conigliaro’s The Cocktail Lab: Unraveling the Mysteries of Flavor and Aroma in Drink, with Recipes. ¶ East Coast locapours are served a new edition of Summer in a Glass, Evan Dawson’s handy guide to New York State wines, while anypours have Jancis Robinson and Linda Murphy’s American Wine in view. The World of Sicilian Wine, by Bill Nesto and Frances Di Savino is, says Nesto, ‘just the start—there is much more of Sicily to explore.’ Drinking with Men is by Rosie Schaap, who grew up in bars and says that at 15 she was telling passengers’ fortunes
for beer in the bar car of a Toonerville Trolley-style railroad. You may readily suspect her of having many another cheerful tale to tell. ¶ Francopours, always well-provided for, can entertain themselves with the likes of Ray Walker’s The Road to Burgundy: The Unlikely Story of an American Making Wine and a New Life in France, Remington Norman’s Grand Cru: The Great Wines of Burgundy Through the Perspective of Its Finest Vineyards, Benjamin Lewin’s Claret & Cabs, Oz Clarke’s Bordeaux: The Wines, The Vineyards, The Winemakers, Bill Nanson’s The Finest Wines of Burgundy: A Guide to the Best Producers of the Côte D’Or and Their Wines, and Jane Anson’s Bordeaux Legends: The 1855 First Growth Wines of Haut-Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Latour, Margaux and Mouton Rothschild. ¶ For self-improvement look no further than  Bruce McGechan’s Wine Marketing Online, which is instructive to buyers and sellers alike, and Oz Clarke again with The Sommelier Prep Course: An Introduction to the Wines, Beers, and Spirits of the World. ¶ In The Vineyard at the End of the World: Maverick Winemakers and the Rebirth of Malbec, Ian Mount writes of the maverick Argentines who tamed Malbec, Tim James follows tradition and revolution in Wine of the New South Africa and Paul Lukacs goes back 8,000 years with Inventing Wine: A New History of One of the World’s Most Ancient Pleasures. The New York Times Book of Wine spans a mere 30 years, but who among us doesn’t miss Frank Prial and R.W. ‘Johnny’ Apple? Thomas McNamee treats of another Times writer in The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance, and doesn’t shrink from the details of Claiborne’s harsh, even cruel upbringing, as well as his self-destructive later years. ¶ If, like me, you believe in daily bread and daily red, Jim Gordon’s 1000 Great Everyday Wines is just the ticket for Thrifty Drinker and Thirsty Reader. Fans of Michael Jackson, the non-singing one, will be grateful that his decades of devotion to malt whiskey are carried forward in the sixth edition of his Complete Guide to Single Malt Scotch, now updated by Dominic Roskrow, Gavin D. Smith and William C. Meyers. ¶ Brewers seem unable to control themselves, at least so far as stopping at beer and ale. They plunge onward to every other kind of fermented drink, as in Emma Christensen’s

True Brews: How to Craft Fermented Cider, Beer, Wine, Sake, Soda, Mead, Kefir, and Kombucha at Home and Andy Hamilton’s Booze for Free: The Definitive Guide to Making Beer, Wines, Cocktail Bases, Ciders, and Other Drinks at Home, which will suffice until Dorling Kindersley releases World Beer in the fall. Equally frothy is James Conaway’s Nose, a sharp and sharp-elbowed satire of Napa pretensions. And this just handed me: Tim James’ Wines of the New South Africa. ¶ Cocktail-lovers’ summer lazes occasionally expose them to hosts or saloons whose idea of bar tools stops at bottle openers. Such dire straits are made for the Bar10der. Leatherman-like but much beefier [14 oz. and 9.5”], it holds and unfolds a life-saving array: jiggers, muddler, reamer, knife blade, zester, channel knife, strainer, folding stirrer, corkscrew and bottle-opener. That said, it’s really for emergency use only, but if you’re off to the remote and arid wastes, don’t leave home without it. ¶ And if the urge to study or compete should strike like a bolt from the blue, you can just download Marques de Casa Concha’s new Wine Expert, which has been designed for the app-happy among us. The beauty part: it’s free if you visit www.MarquesdeCasaConcha.com. Naturally it includes a feature that tells you where you can buy MdCC wines, which are the spiffy, single-vineyard bottlings of Chile’s Concha y Toro. ¶ Now then: Read responsibly and don’t forget trowel on that sunblock!
©2013 Bill Marsano