Buffaloed

There’s a lot for me to say about buffalo, and I love the word for its flexible application. You get opportunities to diddle with parts of speech at almost every turn but the magic happens when you can find a personal application with each. In my world, it goes like this:

- Buffalo as a proper noun is where I was born.
- Buffalo as a common noun is an interesting animal. I once had an unspoken conversation with a buffalo, and that’s just some information for another type of blog. As an erstwhile Denverite, I was introduced to buffalo as a dish – I enjoyed the occasional buffalo burger – but then, that was prior to the conversation. The American buffalo is once again facing extinction, so it is a topic of responsible conversation nowadays. But again, not in this blog.
- Buffalo’s Shipping is a long-time wine shipping company in Napa populated by some bright, helpful and cheery folks. About 2 weeks ago, I popped over to drop some samples in the mail for a friend and learned that just that morning they’d received an ugly little memo from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. The hammer dropped, coated with seasonings such as cease and desist, which invariably spoil one’s dinner plans if one is to pair the wrong wines with their cheese sandwich waffles and shoofly pies. You know what I mean if you’re reading from the relevant geography.
- Buffalo as an adjective – or, here: buffaloed as a past participle – is my state of being when I consider the numerous driving forces in life that collude to make me who I am, chiefly a person so influenced by food, wine and culture. From the standpoint of psychology and matter-oriented (hard) science, I’m a product of my environment. Aren’t we all? Doesn’t the idea just subdue you by inspiring awe? Does it stymie, perplex, bewilder or befuddle you? You, then, have been buffaloed.

One additional thing that buffaloes me (verb tense, there – we have such flexibility in our language!) is that, as fun as this act of writing about wine is for me, we’re losing wine writers all over the place, in one sense. Not only has there been an outlandish number of newspaper closures and bankruptcy filings from Chicago to Karachi, with the incumbent industries (packaging/fulfillment/transportation) suffering alongside the press, but writers are losing their jobs as well. To make things worse, I’m referring to wine writers. Yikes. New York and Los Angeles newspaper readers can now say farewell to viniferous prose, not to mention the fun and practical guidance of venerable writers such as Dorothy Gaiter, who taught me and thousands of other people how to make an occasion out of the average Tuesday night in order to justify opening the ’92 premier cru before it turned to swill. So the idea is Twitterization? That’s like replacing cork with silly putty in order to cut costs and frame wine closures in a publicly accessible format.

I’m not in the business of instigating, so there’s no call to action embedded herein. What I will say, though, is that if losing your wine writers to ten-word regurgitations (see the Silly Tasting Notes Generator ) ticks you off, make your voice heard. Do the writing yourself, send a letter or email, or lodge a voicemail with the editor of your local newspaper that dropped the wine journalist you revere. A colleague once said to me (when selling wine): “In selling cabernet, smoke and olives will get you all the traction you need.”

Untrue.

Published in: on January 19, 2010 at 4:38 pm  Comments (3)  
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Tasty Mistakes For a Hasty Bay State

If any of you Napa locals know about Lawler’s Liquor Store, give a shout. It has a staggeringly poor wine selection, a great liquor selection, and a nifty twist to the LQ business plan. Locals know – and I found out on December 30th, a day late – that Peter and his brother have institutionalized Italian takeout in the most Regularian way. Props to these guys. It’s a Napa tradition to bring some Tupperware, a saucepan, a crockpot, or whatever you please – in to be filled with some yummies for New Year’s Eve. The yummies in question are terrific red sauces, lasagnas and pastas. A unique bit of food they’ve been offering for several years is a century-old mistake called “malfatti” which is no mistake at all. Apparently, as the tale goes in Peter’s words, some guys in the Bay Area were in the business of making their own ravioli from scratch. If you’ve ever tried it, you’ll know where I’m going. The pasta didn’t cooperate on this fine day, which wasn’t the luckiest one of the month. The delectable little pillows didn’t seal properly and the pesto-based stuffing ran amok in pots of boiling water. Someone in the group ate one when the water was drained and decided to toss the idea of the pasta envelope process for the next batch – just roll up some of the stuffing between two palms, toss it into the water and enjoy. The little wads were named malfatti (the first syllable being a prefix denoting “bad” or “poor” in most Romantic languages; “fatti” has parallels with our English verb “to form”). Malformed. Malfeasance. Malfunction. Malpractice. You see what that prefix means in other circumstances and how it can change an innocent Saturday in a kitchen or on an operating table. The malfatti caught on, and Lawler’s serves them piping hot on demand. They’re quite good, reminiscent of gnocchi. I liked the general flavor profile, but as Peter warned me, the texture might be an acquired preference. He was right. I told him so, with the additional catch that I was anti-Scotch as well for the longest time until something clicked one night.

I wish for you the Lawler’s malfatti experience. I think they’d be a good foil for a young Barbaresco or cabernet franc. If you live in Massachusetts, perhaps one day I’ll be able to air-mail you a half dozen malfatti and a 6-pack of Gaja. No, you say? Ahoy, yes, I respond. It’s true. The federal courts have once again ruled in favor of the grape. I won’t go into all of the details as though the matter is news, but just understand that for the longest time (it feels eternal when you want to get wines on tables all over the US and can’t), states have been engaged in a battle royale on behalf of wine enthusiasts. It’s a big economic fight, in the end, but the first step in keeping wine consumers happy and able to order their favorite wines from other states is to have the shipping legalities taken care of. The federal government is the overseer in ensuring our Constitutional rights. It is then up to each state to pass legislation in its own way to simply get with it and figure out how to make the state budget numbers work while maintaining a happy, wine-loving populace. The morality card is the one in effect since Prohibition, but if we face up to the truth, we realize that it’s about the shekels.

So let’s celebrate the fact that the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals determined yesterday that a 2006 law that created a challenging multi-tiered system in Massachusetts violates the state’s Commerce Clause in today’s world. Prior to yesterday, the law affected large (30,000 case) wineries’ ability to operate smoothly in a competitive environment. It’s not a done deal. Again, the Massachusetts legislature has more work to do, but this is a lobbying opportunity for wineries to obtain the right to ship to Bay State consumers’ office or homes in a totally compliant manner.

It’s a complicated issue – retail/wholesale, small wineries/large wineries, two-tier/three-tier…..but just know that there are people working day and night to improve how much great wine you can mail-order, no matter where you live. If it means a lot to you, your freedom I mean, check out www.freethegrapes.org from time to time. It’s a fascinating repository of matters related to wine shipping, and just another way to get a barometer reading on this great country in which we live. (foreign readers, pardon me, but I don’t feel syndicated at this juncture)

Published in: on January 15, 2010 at 8:50 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Cheap Wine and Cheap Shots

I went thrifting this weekend. Thrifting defined for the non-Regularian is tooling around in search of second-hand stuff that you want, need, or don’t really need but might relegate to a burgeoning supply of extra crap in the garage that one day may be put to use but will probably clutter the sidewalk with a “free” sign stuck to it with duct tape. (Note: If you’ve got something hot, use Freecycle.org knowing full well that you’ll get all kinds of phone calls or emails explaining extenuating circumstances and overwhelming needs that dictate your moral responsibility to defer relinquishment of aforementioned crap to the person whose tearjerker takes the biggest slice of cake. I posted a bunk bed and met all manner of mothers with post-chemotherapy children, special-needs family situations and heart-wrenching drama sufficient to put the writers of After School Specials on furlough for a year.)

The point is that I went thrifting, and other than the odd crystal decanter, the mint-condition martini mixing kit, circa 1925 in leather valise (nabbed it, so come over for a negroni), and the wine aeration device for $1.50 (ehh – they strip aromas away, in my opinion), it was a chance to stock up on batteries and toilet tissue. But a memory came back to me – there’s this one “dollar store” that occasionally pulls in a couple pallets of uber-plonk that sometimes is actually drinkable. I have a contact who has a contact who has another….let’s start again. Agent A notifies me when Agent B spots the plonk and notifies Agent C to buy a case (cases only); then, when Agent C gives it a reasonable thumbs-up (you can pour it at parties and not get the stink-eye), (s)he reports back to Agent B, who inevitably buys a boatload and leaves little for Agent A, who then may get around to notifying me that the stuff ain’t bad and will be gone the next day. I’ve scored before. Again – it is super-cheap and nothing but cooking wine or stuff to pour at the block party whilst trembling over the good stuff you’ve got breathing in the kitchen all the while. So my pals and I stop in at the dollar store and ask after the plonk of the week. Alas, no dice for the past 6 weeks or so. It’ll be back. But it’s out of my way now, with my schedule and inclinations, so no foul, but it woulda been fun for my pals who, incidentally, don’t know pith from pow. I love everyone, so long as it’s a humane, simple kind of love that doesn’t cloy, burden, or play the “mwah ha ha, now I have you where I want you” game.

Speaking of which, there’s something else to discuss when it comes to the ol’ “mwah ha ha”…That’s the subject of who to love and how much to cuddle. This is an interesting state to live in, California. The beaches, the produce, the ability to grow produce nearly anywhere, the cultural diversity, the manifold opportunities, the countless ways in which to exercise one’s freedom to prosper, learn and enjoy the one life given. There’s something to be said for life’s journey. One can stop here, stop there, sniff here, rest there, work here, play there. And once one jumps back onto the freeway, one would think a chapter has passed and that it’s possible to wave “hello” to anyone from earlier in life with nothing but gratitude for what warrants it and a tale of what’s transpired since.

What we find occasionally, though, is that some people we’ve met have a dragon’s mentality that manifests itself as rage, jealousy and a petty dependence upon its own perception of dominance in matters not only dragonly but deerly, fishly and even treely. “Come on,” one says to the dragon, “move on with your life. You don’t even recognize me for my change of hair color. I never even cared about your gold. I prefer silver and I found my own.”

Another way to put it is that when you take intermediate tennis classes, your instructor shouldn’t hate you because you knew how to play before you showed up. And he shouldn’t forbid you to take the advanced class from someone else.

Almost two months ago, the Second Appellate District published a decision about the enforcement of non-competition clauses in California. In Dowell v. Biosense Webster, Inc., 09 C.D.O.S. 13991, it was decided that non-compete and non-solicitation agreements not narrowly constructed only to protect trade secrets are void under California law. The question remains: are the even narrower non-compete agreements legal in California? It’s been an ongoing controversy, and I must admit to rubbernecking.

I learned tennis in New York. Get it? Where did you learn the game? Is your intermediate tennis instructor threatening you or claiming that he invented the game and that if you don’t pick up a new sport he’ll bring the whole sporting world to a screeching halt? …and how does it make you feel? Violated? Aggravated? It should. For now, however, I don’t see teeball or squash leagues springing up like all the rage, so all I can say is that one day we’ll go to Wimbledon and laugh about it all like it never happened, darling.

Published in: on January 10, 2010 at 7:18 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Hug or Haircut?

So I’m going “over the hill” to earn my daily bread. I’m on Adobe Road, that handy way to make the jump from Petaluma to the Carneros Highway. There’s a double-yellow line, and the road’s not exactly a butter-smooth speedway. And what to my wondering eyes should appear in the rearview mirror but a big, white rig much larger than the average sleigh strapped to eight (or nine) mongo-sized reindeer (tiny ones can’t really do the job, one realizes logically) – climbing right up into my sphere of influence. It’s veering over the double yellow a good 4 feet, jockeying for the right time to pass me and the Saab thirty feet ahead. Yeah, I’m originally East Coast, but here we go again: California road etiquette. The guy either wants a hug or a haircut. I just want to enjoy the gorgeous strains of “Birthday” by the Sugar Cubes that are streaming from my cerebellum. That was one of the greatest songs ever created, and I’m thankful that on my 39th, I can remember it well enough to sing it on my morning drive. Suddenly, the truck finds a left turn and heads toward Glen Ellen. Whew.

This is a great time for reflection. I mean, I’m driving 50 miles to my day job. You’d think I could reflect. So I do. Starting with the most recent memories, there’s some practical wine advice I want to impart, this being a wine-related blog…. You may have heard of Monticello (Napa Valley). It’s a second label project (re: bread ‘n’ buttah, keep-the-lights-on and keep the payroll account full to prevent a tasting room uprising). The chief cook would be Jay Corley and the Corley family, who landed in the valley in ’69 to pave a better way in the wake of some awesome viticultural discoveries from Rubicon to Trefethen to Joe Heitz’s property. There was much more to be learned and, since the Napa Valley was at that point still fairly pristine – no land rape evident yet – the alluvial fans and eucalyptus groves had much teach us about how big ol’ rocks, sunshine and fog could make for the most successful winegrowing region on the West Coast. The Mission grapes had become part of a robust, transcontinental trade but the magnificent cabernet sauvignon was yet to find really good footing. Groan. This is looking like history – gotta stop that.

Point: Corley is a good winery. The ’07 chardonnay from Corley’s Oak Knoll estate property goes like this….
Corley 2007 Chardonnay – Estate Oak Knoll District, Napa Valley
½ hour – 2 hours of air: Slightly hot immediately but blows off to curd, popcorn, white pepper. Viscous, memorable. Overripe pineapple finish, low acid.
24 hours of air: Nose: Toasty balsa wood, lettuce. Palate: Lemon, lime, mouthwatering slate. Lost weight. Finish: Oaky banana.
I like it. I’m getting away from higher acids and rejoining where “yum” left off. But then I love Batard-Montrachet. Don’t you??

Also, notes on a red, with the incumbent culinary experience to go with it (one you wouldn’t expect):
Corley 2006 Proprietary Red – Napa Valley
½ hour – 2 hours of air: Color: Bricky. Nose: Nutmeg. Feel: Astringent, light-bodied, empty, cottony leather-raspberry fruit in a wire cage of large tannins.
5-7 hours of air: Mouthfeel plumps out with striations of spicy bramble, round and classic merlot and a raspberry-zap dialect to the cab franc. Much improved.

** Kitchen caveat: I came home late and needed to don the mantel of chef. Thankfully, the fam was patient, so I par-boiled some baby taters, pearl onions and French shallots. Then I grilled them while I sautéed tofu, shrooms and fresh OG broccoli with poultry seasoning, in EV olive oil, with a new pepper sauce I hadn’t used before. It’s made with soy and garlic, and sounded good. (I want to use more sauces to improve my life and the lives of others, but cannot invent them from scratch yet. Hooray for Trader Joe’s.) The stir fry rocked and the kabobs rolled. I like to pronounce “kabobs” like “kebabs” to sound British. Don’t you? Isn’t Ben Kingsley iconic? Anyway, this food paired with the Corley Prop Red sucked. You never know. I stretch the rules as often as possible to see what holds water and what needs to be reinvented. But that pairing failed because the tannins set fire to the black pepper. Too much, Pedro, too much. If I’d only had the courage to pop a Rieussec – but it wasn’t Birthday Night yet.

Regularians don’t maintain 5000-bottle cellars – they visit or design them. Can I get a holla?

Another thing about the wine tasting game. That Corley Estate red wine clearly evolved over time. Go back and read my notes, won’t you? The same held true with the chardonnay; again, see those notes? What we can cull from this is that, naturally, the pop-n-pour first impression is rarely the one to go by. We know this. But as a friend told me he learned from Andre Tschelitcheff (re: granddad of California wine production, period.) the best thing you can do to learn about a wine is to taste it every two hours all day long, as well as revisiting it the next day. I used to do this with every new vintage of Bryant cabernet when I was in the flow with the broker. Ah, the golden age of yore… But since joining the wine biz, I have been milking every wine I can for at least three days, either sucking the air out or just dropping the cork in. If you don’t, you can and should. That way, when you taste aluminum, cranberry, dog breath or cat pee, you know you were a cheapskate when buying that bottle. (( Shopping strictly for the deal will get you exactly what you requested: a reject, a bottle-shocked flagon of plonk, a stinker. Drink Campari instead. ))
Similar to this Corley experience and nearly every other positive one I can relate if you ask me to…. a culmination comes to this conversation. Simple Math chardonnay is this type of wine. I’m eager for you to experience it, particularly on the second day it’s open. It goes from fresh, cuddly and toothy to straight cush. Just how I like it, and anyone who enjoys Russian River Valley fruit will find oodles of merit in this juice. It is dirt cheap but it ain’t marked down, cowpoke. Ne’er shall it be besmirched with an orange sale sticker. If the Gary Fisher’s out of reach, Huffy is still completely reasonable until you hit it on the slots. We’ll keep making it and we’ll keep the lights on for you.

Until next time I have anything to say about wine (heh – ask my wife to refute that one; she’ll take you up on it)…peace and wellness.
C

Published in: on January 6, 2010 at 2:20 pm  Leave a Comment  
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More on those Simple Math pinots ‘n’ that Simple Math chardonnay

Now is the time, as I’ve been known to say in another life, wearing another hat, beating a different drum (which I still beat with my left hand concurrently with wine in the right). The luck just keeps coming. We are in the midst of a grand new year, a fresh decade.

There does happen to be a viral YouTube video someone just turned me on to, one that describes the true happiness we all can foment by choice in the face of the uglinesses that some would have us buy into (re: doomsday, 2010=2012, Hollywoodization of our own dark fears). I would recommend searching it out – it’s easy to find as a “2010 predictions Eskimo” query. Not the most academic or content-laden clip, and a titch long, but worth it.

My point is that we’re swimming in the happy pond if we choose to see things that way. Let’s get down. I don’t know about you, but what I have cooking now is some abso-fab-yumtastic wines to bring on board. On the one hand, there’s a Simple Math Cellars 2008 Chardonnay chiefly from Sonoma Coast fruit, with Sebastopol as a focus. This is the kind of beverage that brings pure, pure chardonnay to the forefront – where lemon and honey meet a crisp yet applesauce-y mouthfeel. The most judicious use of oak comes through but, believe it or not, not until Day Two. That’s right, open a bottle and keep it around for over 24 hours. Delicious stuff, and that’s why I chose to make it part of the repertoire. Wine like this has been going for $35/bottle, but since that’s unnecessary according to both the Simple Math outlook and the Regularian Manifesto, the price is much more gracious. Enjoy.

Next up is a duo of pinots. Not because “everybody likes pinot now” – come on. I’ve done the Burgundy thing and get it. Before any sort of movie prodded me, I might add. And mi partnero has been a pinotphile since before I even bought a bottle of Woodbridge and then swam my way through the Kosta Brown, Red Car, Cargasacci, Nuits-St.-Georges, Clos Vougeot……Pinot noir is a lovely thing. If you like it, then wonderful. That’s another reason you won’t have to take the math test. Simple Math is presenting both Napa Valley and Sonoma Coast ’08 pinots because there’s much to offer on each side of the hill. The Napa wears a cherry crown and the SoCoast brings you flowers. They’re both mighty wines and terrific values the way Simple Math is selling them. I would encourage further investigation while the getting’s good.

In fact, there’s not much Simple Math to go around. It’s like the analogy I use: when you want a breakfast pastry, a doughnut made in the bakery at 4 AM is far more satisfying than a mass-produced donette (or Suzie Q, or what-have-you). When you go to where a human being placed a lot of energy into that morning treat, you can taste the difference. Thus, with wine. As above, so below. And as in the morning, so at night – assuming you enjoy wine at least after lunch….

There’s a Simple Math Cellars tasting in Windsor, California at the end of May. More info to follow. But for now, there’s some more work to be done. So hang in there and stay tuned for announcements of releases and tastings. And please drop a line so we can keep you in the loop.

All the best,

Christian

Published in: on January 3, 2010 at 9:06 pm  Leave a Comment  
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