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09.01.11

De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da

Pistol Annies

The Pistol Annies


Maybe it’s Grumpy Thursday, but IMHO there’s way too much wine pairing info on the internet.

Pages and pages of menus, do’s, don’ts and absolutes. Its all there.  But what’s missing is info on the art of pairing vino with the moment.

Friends often describe a wine-night-out with nary a mention of what culinary masterpiece they shoved down their gullet. The memories of the evening start and end with the mood. Of course, mood encompasses many things, but for our purposes let’s concentrate on one aspect of the equation, wine and music.

As an experiment, I had a few friends list their recent favorite ipod selections, which I then paired with wines.

Fun stuff.  Check it out.

Listener: Heather

Song: Busted by The Black Keys

Listener Comments: “I think of riding around PA in the country, summertime, windows down, in the back of my dad’s Lincoln Continental Mark III with faux white leather seats. My siblings and I melted crayons back there many times. I hated the oldies then. But this “new-wave” oldie type makes me think of those ‘easy days’.”

Ahh, The Black Keys covering Howlin’ Wolf.  Nassssssty.

When cranking these guys you may suddenly feel the urge to beat cardboard boxes, chew marbles and run down a dirt road in your underpants.  Good stuff.  Gritty down home grind needs something with a little grip, a little funkatude, and the fruit to make it go down reeeeal smooth-like.  Definitely a classic Rioja Grand Reserva-a wine once described by a famous sommelier as having “the aroma of sweet assness.”

I think you get the picture.

Listener: Steve

Song: Holland, by Neutral Milk Hotel (NMH)

Listener Comments: None

NMH, the fuzz-folk masters that make you want to pull on Daddy’s slippers and maniacally zip in and out of bumper-to-bumper traffic on a Vespa. Or, perhaps, sit in a corner and count the number of times you can blink in a minute.

We have to prescribe something here that plays AGAINST the frantic beat.  Slow sipping, thoughtful and focused.  Instantly leaning towards an Italian, a Sangiovese, say a Vino Nobile di Montepulciano or Chianti Classico.  Remember: Drive safely, dismount and then partake.

Listener: Todd

Song: Under the Bridge, by Red Hot Chili Peppers

Listener Comments: “Feel- motivated”

A big salute to the City of Angels.  You gotta go Californian here.  Zinfandel.  A big, briary red that will wash away the blues and keep you off the bridge.

Listener: K-Dawn

Song: Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee by Jerry Lee Lewis.

Listener Comments: According to K-Dawn this tune puts her “in the mood to dance with people that are not downers.”

What we have here is another jumper from The Killer his-selves. Definitely want a wine the entire family likes, especially the cousins. A crowd pleaser that’s not too complicated; otherwise you’ll be thinking about the juice instead of the dance floor moves. White wine.  Yep. Straight forward, and fruity without the tuitti.  We also don’t want to feel guilty about downing the remains if the song ends before we do.  Can’t lose with a unoaked California Chardonnay or Chenin Blanc. Whew!!  Goodness, gracious…

Listener: David

Album: Ghetto Pop Life, by Danger Mouse and Jemini

(Note NSFW)

Listener Comments: “Makes me feel cooler than I have a right to be”

I imagine David listening to this album while destroying his computer, ala Office Space. Need a refreshuh.  Even Ritchie Cunningham would look cool listenin’ to this stuff with a chilly glass of bubbly.  Go for the Cava.  It’s a crisp, dry and inexpensive traditional method sparkler. D-D-D-D-DANGER!

Listener: Michael

Song: Door Is Always Open, by Waylon Jennings

Listener Comments: “Feeling- Vindication”

Olorosso Sherry. Because she’ll be back.  Oh yes she will.

Listener: Lorie

Song: Hell on Heels, by The Pistol Annies

Listener Comments: “Makes me want to spank my own bottom and dance on the countertop”

Well, seems only right that we go pink here. Rose.  Garnacha.  Spain.

See you back here in a few.

TG

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08.18.11

SPF 47

As sunset falls on the Isle of Palms, SC, vacationers are asked to turn off porch and pool lights and avoid using flashlights on the beach.  Its an almost mystical experience, as beachfront homes teeming with renters sit eerily quiet with only glimmers of light peeking through the shutters.

The transformation from rowdy sun-worshipper haven to peaceful backdrop is never lost on my family.

We play hard at the beach, and later, at the dinner table, we toast each other with gusto and glasses of zinfandel, gruner veltliner and  tempranillo.  We laugh one moment, cry the next, realizing that this is it. We may continue this tradition for the next 20 years, or never again. Who knows what life holds for one or all of us.

We only know that albarino in a ridiculous blue plastic glass tastes wonderful when it’s shared with a loved one.

Hope you enjoy the photos.

See you back here in a few.

TG

Toasting Sunset with the Perfect Plastic Glass

Toasting Sunset with the Perfect Plastic Glass

Dusk

Dusk

Greatest of Ease

Greatest of Ease

Castles in the Sand

Castles in the Sand

Left

Left

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08.09.11

Who Knew?

Roommates.  Can’t live with them, can’t live without ‘em.

We recently shared an evening with my wife’s college roommate, Kathy King-Greene, and her precocious 10-year-old daughter, Kate.  The two K’s were enroute to the Smokey Mountains where they would later be joined by the rest of their family.

We’d seen Kathy from time-to-time, but seven years had passed since we last spent time with a then 4-year-old Kate.  Seeing how she’d changed, I suddenly felt old, and caught myself wanting to say old people-ish things, like, “Look how much you’ve grown!” Or the old standby, “I remember when you were blah-blah-blah.”

That would have been a major shock to the system, so instead Kate and I simply smiled, shook hands and gently hugged one another. Kate then quickly volunteered she’d forgotten Uncle Buddy, the name she’d given me the last time we were together, followed by an awkward moment where we stared at each other with that “now what?” look. She broke the silence and stated she also didn’t remember our house, but, she approved of it. So much so, in fact, that she’d made a walking-tour video of the entire floor plan before I’d gotten home from work.  The plan was to put it on the internet and teach people how to design a place with a very cool layout.

Ahhh, the fruit, obviously, did not fall far from the tree.  There is after all, a K-a-t-hy in Kate.

See, College Roommate Kathy has apparently always been a little bigger than life. My wife Lorie often recounts her University of Florida days with descriptors that rival the Bill Brasky of Saturday Night Live lore. “She’s ten-feet-tall, showers in Chanel #9, and feeds her baby shrimp scampi!” A legendary knockout with a wicked sense of humor, Kathy flew through those four years effortlessly, always casting her cape just above the hands (and heads) of smitten young men. She was, as Lorie once told me, someone wise beyond their own years and experiences, someone who just knew things. I had no reason to doubt this, but for the entirety of our marriage I could only take my wife at her word. Until this particular evening, the few, brief conversations I’d had with Kathy had been mostly by phone. I’d always liked and admired her, but I now realized I felt a little cheated out of getting to know this Wonder Woman.

It had been a tough Spring for Kathy.  A sharp pain in her breast proved to be the dreaded “C,” and two days prior to sitting in our kitchen she’d completed her second round of chemo. It was only a few more days before she’d begin experiencing the full wallop of her body going to war with cancer.

Lorie was packing that night to go on her own cool weather vacation, so Kathy and I bellied up to the barstools.  For a moment we quietly drank our chard.  “This is really good,” she said.  I glanced at her, and wondered how she looked more radiant than I remembered.

The wrap she’d chosen to cover her balding head reminded me of a crown and a strange chuckle echoed in my belly.

She held her glass at an angle, admiring the juice inside like it was the first taste of wine she’d enjoyed in years.  “No. I mean, this is really good.”

“Right!? Who knew a freaking chardonnay could taste like this?” I said, as we stared at our wine glasses.

Who knew?  Wonder Woman did.

See you back here in a few.

TG

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07.28.11

Ratings: Have We Missed the Point?

Over the past two decades, ratings have sprung out of every wine magazine, book, nook and cranny. Google “wine ratings” and you’ll load nine million results. Add “good or bad” to that search and you’ll have approximately 111 million web pages at your disposal.

The individuals doling out these ratings range from established critics like Robert Parker or The Wine Spectator staff, to Arty88, Your Trusted Bordeaux Bro. How much power do they wield? Wine industry professionals know many consumers won’t consider buying a bottle unless it has passed their chosen critic’s taste test.

But do all these numbers floating in cyberspace create more confusion than clarity? Are they right, wrong, good or bad? Who do we trust?

In an effort to blow past the industry BS, lets do a quick rundown of the most common points for and against ratings.

The For Scores

The “For Scores” peeps believe that numbers, points, or stars are necessary to hone in on a bargain or overlooked gem. Retailers love this, as ratings are the ideal sales tool for supermarkets and Mom and Pop wine shops. To print serious money, retailers will feature the 90 and above reviews front and center.

Another positive aspect of ratings is the idea they can be used in conjunction with other resources to improve our palates and assist us in our quest of evaluation.

For collectors and re-resellers, ratings are paramount in choosing portfolios and assessing market value. In the event the wines need to be sold in after-market auctions, the 95-100 pointers will often fetch many times their price at release.

And what of Ms. Rushing-Home-From-Work who’s overwhelmed with the number of Cabernet Sauvignons on the shelf? No worries. The fears quickly fade as she whips out her Smartphone and logs on to a few choice apps. PING! Up pops a number (usually “88” and above) insuring she’ll walk out with a good bottle of wine.

All that powerful info right at her fingertips.

The Againsters

Those in the “Against” column reject the idea a wine can be reduced to a score. Fermented grape juice = 88 points? Really? Can we do the same with Kittens? Squash? Hey, what if I rate your rating of my squash and we publish that in an organic garden trade magazine geared toward squash eating kittens? 97 points.

Another beef is that the ratings game is nothing more than BIG business for media companies, wineries, importers, and retailers. With so much at stake and little or no checks and balances, the scores have the potential to be a little “funny.”

Whatever happened to learning by doing? Againsters believe that by choosing to validate rather than educate, wine raters have created a generation of lobotomized wine buyers lurching toward the supermarket cold-box in search of the next critic’s darling. Me want ‘good’ wine. Me only drink 89 pt and above. Except for Riesling. Grrrrrrrrr.

Have We Missed The Point?

This is by no means meant to be a comprehensive list of positions, and provides limited insight into why supporters on either side are so impassioned. But maybe that’s the point.

Rather than debating whether ratings are good or bad, maybe we should be asking if ratings are really the issue? Is the wine world in the toilet because of them? No. Will the industry collapse if one day the Internet no longer recognizes the words “wine” and “ratings” in the same search? Of course not.

But what would happen if we forgot about the numbers, points, and gold stars and asked ourselves the following: In the quest for ‘good’ wine, have we forgotten the joy of experiencing wine?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

TG

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07.19.11

ACT II: VINO

Recently, I came across some old theatre playbills from my former life as a director and actor.

One in particular, from Joe Penhall’s brutally honest play, Love and Understanding, sent a chill up my spine.  I flashed back to opening night in the basement of a tiny coffee-shop, where four of us poor theatre fanatics were mounting the show for one reason: we loved it.

The audience settled as the boom-box bellowed Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon. The company of actors, all of us “seasoned pros,” hugged in the janitorial closet that served as backstage. This was it. The thrill of opening night. The reason we do this.

Our tech director dimmed the tiny stage lights, and in one of the strangest moments of my professional life, I took my seat at the center-stage table and thought, “I’m willing to not know what’s going to happen.”

How prophetic. A split-second after they’d crossed my mind, I realized I’d actually muttered my thoughts aloud and in front of the entire audience.  In the mind numbing quiet that followed, I could feel my fellow actor and friend Brian across the table thinking, ‘Oh dear God. We haven’t even started and Tim’s re-writing the script.’

Just as I began to pull it together, a patron in the front row whispered, “Holy shit.  Now that’s an opening line.”

It wasn’t of course.  It was just another part of the process. The mumblings of an exhausted theater rat who knew that 6 weeks of rehearsal were about to become an abandoned scaffold demanding to be swept away.

I now file that event under Category A- “Being Alive”

I’m  often asked “How- or why- did you go from a life in the theatre to a life in the cellar?”

It’s a valid question, but one I’ve never known quite how to answer. I’d love to be able to say something like, “It was an epiphany. I tasted a red Burgundy for the first time and fell on my knees weeping with joy.” If only.

What I do know is that wine, like theatre, is a passion that affords anyone that’s interested the opportunity to be endlessly curious. You can never know it all. And to truly love and understand wine requires only that you open yourself up to the moment.

Which brings me to my hopes for the conversation we might have via this forum.

I would like to imagine that we’ll sit together at a table in the dark – a couple times a month — and say to ourselves, “I’m willing to not know where this glass is going to take me.”

Meet you back here in a few.

TG

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