The Feiring Line

Book News From Spain

Cristina Alcala  reviews La Batalla por el vino y el amor

http://www.7canibales.com/?p=4171

 

Keeping Kosher (Natural Wine #2)

 I was a  refugee from Brooklyn to Baldwin. Jewels pinned in the skirt hemmed, we ran to the burbs. 

 I loved potatoes but cringed at the barren, potato landscape of the South Shore of  Long Island. Probably trying to get away, I quickly became a roamer. Even then, when the  fences weren't yet dividing the quarter-acre plots, and the lawns hadn't yet turned into sod, I roamed. I was the original wandering Jew, my mother liked to say. 

It was on a July afternoon when I walked into Rosie's kitchen, G-d knows why. She was a stranger. I was unbidden. I was also four-years old.

She offered me an apple.    

I asked her if it was kosher.

She, another red-head, but a pig and shrimp eater, became my mother's best friend.

We were kosher, I mean really kosher. The chickens were salted and bled. My mother burned the very last feather off the bird flesh. I can still summon up that devilish, sulfurous smell. Everything came from the blood-smeared-aproned kosher butcher who shuttered from mid-afternoon on Friday night , after making sure everyone took home their cholent meat, wrapped in white paper.

We weren't rich, we only had seven sets of dishes and flatware. Two sets each of meat and dairy dishes (fancy and casual) and then there were the Passover dishes, dairy and meat (for meat, fancy and casual).  

As a little girl I had to wait three hours after I ate meat to spoon down ice cream. When I was twelve that blossomed into an intolerable six-hour wait until I was able to head for the Breyer's after onion smothered roast beef. Always being a dairy Queen, this might have been one reason I turned my back on meat. 

 Back in that day, there were two  forces that creeped into the 1960's Yid world.

 Pizza! There was kosher pizza, on Avenue J! Oh there was a G-d! And then there were Kosher Jews who went out for Chinese on Sunday night. (sacre bleu!). Wait! They  kept kosher at home? What? 

Shumlke Bernstein's on Essex wasn't good enough?  There really were circumcised and shuckling Jews who needed their pork the way my brother needed Cel-Ray.

Were these people...."Kosher?" They weren't even reformed, maybe conservadox? They went to shul with a mechitzah. The world was coming to an end. 

At the same time the rush of Hungarian Jews flooded the country. The sales of sheitels became big business. These immigrants they also birthed  the concept of Glatt Kosher-- ultra-kosher became the standard bearer. Regular Kosher was not good enough. Regular Kosher was traif. (Hmm..hard core sulfur vs. sulfur at will, perhaps?)

 
Glatt Kosher Wine 

There are regs, however.  Kosher fish? Must have fins and scales...Both! No either or.

A Kosher animal must both chew its cud and have a cloven hoof. Both! No either or. 

What about fowl? Can't scavenge. 

Turkey?

 Turkey, which can be carnivorous, is debatable. 

What about sturgeon or swordfish before it loses its scales?  Gray zone.

This does bring us back to Natural wine and the definition and the San Francisco Natty wine week that was? 

Yes.  

The gray zone. But how gray is gray?  Dove gray? Battleship gray? Storm swirling gray? Do you eat turkey or do you swallow letter of the law?  Wine isn't religion, yet there should be parameters to what is in the realm of the natural world. While it starts with viticulture, it does not end there.  

Scales and fins, cud and hoof. Three or six hours? One is in the Torah one is debated in the Talmud and the oral tradition, yet there is the kernal of truth and there is the heart. Some people still think I'm kosher, hell no. My brain is kosher, my history is kosher but I am not kosher even if I don't eat pork and shellfish. 

I know I've lost you. Sorry. That's what my first serious English prof told me, your writing is a mixed blessing, you might now always know where you're going but.....

My last post was about Natural Wine Week in SF. From the looks of the comments, you'd never know that I'd been privy to quite a few conversations with winemakers, journalists and drinkers over their dismay of certain winemakers  being included, you know, Chinese food on Sunday night Jew/winemakers. 

You'd never know that just about everyone I talked to asked me not to use their name, but agreed that some winemakers slipped through the holes. 

Who were the they?  Bloggers and journalists with friends. Winemakers afraid to lose their place on wine lists. People encouraging me to speak up, because that's what I do. And I imagine it is perceived I have nothing to lose. But when I think of it, I must have some sort of masochistic streak that leaves me in the role of the whipping post girl. I'm not claiming victim, but you know, a little support would be great. 

 I feel alone. (As an old lover once told me, you are born alone and you die alone---this was never a comfort.)  On the other hand,  if you eat pork on sunday nights, you are not kosher. And, as a good friend of mine says, sucking in a cigarette he is trying to stop, "Oh, well." 

Simple. 

You might feel kosher, but you're not. 

And if you yeast your wine (at the least) and over sulfur and acidify (in the least) you are not natural. Even if you want to. Even if that's where your heart lies. 

But here is what I love. I love the debate about what is natural and what isn't. When in the history of wine has this happened? I believe this kind of dialogue (and please, yes, a dialogue) will ultimately lead to a real Golden Age of winemaking. 

 The fights that spring out around the topic are thrilling.

 In my interior life I'm still the Yeshiva Girl I had been. True, always a rebellious one. The one who cut classes, ran into the city, read Bukowski and waited for just the right time to bust out.

Last week, in San Francisco, thanks to the efforts of Ian Becker and Wolfgang Weber and the stores and restaurants who participated, there was something thrilling going on. Proof was evidence that the taste and the wild side of winemakers on the edge provoke drinkers, tasters and the curious show up.  

Coming to a book store near you soon, world wide natty addresses, eat, drink, enjoy.

SF Natural Wine Week

Here's what's on mind. 

Last  year we saw the start of secular Natural Wine Weeks.

The first one was in SF 2009. 

While I thought it was organized by the Dressner folk, I am now corrected and find out that the motivating force was by Ian Becker (bravo), and the seminar supported by LDM, thanks to the help of the lovely Shawn Mead. 

 There was another in the Spring in Los Angeles, mostly spurred on by Lou Amdur (Lou on Vine) and full disclosure--I was there for the wrap up panel. 

This year the second edition of SFNWW was championed by a collective effort and taken up by restaurants and wine stores around the city. Some wines this week showcased are Arianna Occhipinti from Sicily, Laureano Serres from Spain, Arnot-Roberts and NPA (Kevin Kelley). There's Puzelat and even at RN74, they're pouring some interesting juice.

Most  venues are featuring people who live and die by natural and living their principles. This is something  worth celebrating. Passion is worth celebrating. Principles coupled with sensuality (meaning principles coupled with sound wine)  is worth celebrating. It's worth ones liver for sure, especially,  when the wines are not just ideological but delicious and give so much pleasure. 

Yet the line up up at the restaurant A 16 gave me some pause.

 Now, I don't know the owner and I don't know the wine list from this celebrated restaurant but I am confounded by their choices. Below is the blurb from the calendar of events. 

... expect to find the regular by-the-glass list to lean heavily on Italian natural wines. That focus is complemented by Palmina (Monday, 8/23); Robert Sinskey (Tuesday, 8/24); Bonny Doon (Wednesday, 8/25); Unti Vineyards (Thursday, 8/26); Whetstone Wine Cellars (Friday, 8/27); Peay Vineyards (Saturday, 8/28); and Brown Estate (Sunday, 8/29). Each producer will be able to talk at length on the various natural, organic or biodynamic practices they employ, and what it means to work with these methods in California.

I'm trying to figure it out: are they saying that we're having natural Italiano's and if you want to see more conventional wines and compare the difference? Is that what they mean? Do they mean compliment or do they mean contrast? I'm actually not sure why some of those names on this list are included in a Natural Wine Week.

Here's where this is disturbing. The category of natural wine is a somewhat slippery slope except predicated by the tenets of nothing added nothing taken away, a touch of sulfur as needed if needed. Basic to the cause is no inoculations and please, no acidifications. There is a transparency in the wines that excite out of control affection for certain drinkers predisposed to the wine roller coaster.  

If the week had been called 'Natural and Sustainable" well, what the hell. I could rock with the A16 list. At any other time, for any other wine promotion, sure.   But here some 'conventional' winemakers included in this line up will be getting a free ride from a different association. No 100% commitment needed. In other words, why buy the cow when the milk is free?  

Obviously I'm having a little fun with the analogy and I'm sure there was no intent to confuse here, but just some confusion. I imagine this comes from confusing organic or biodynamic and commitment to the soil as resulting in a classically natural wine. While all of the wines on the list might be good, I would guess not all of the wines on the list could claim that they don't inoculate or acidify or water back or....well...whatever.  That is an essential difference between those who are natural and those who work more naturally. And while having a Natural Wine week where great and natty wines are poured all over town, getting people to drink them, it seems like not such a great idea to muddy the waters of perception unless there's a conversation around it. But most of the consumers won't know the questions to ask.

 Never the less, it seems as if SF is filled with some terrific events and venues this week, including A16, Some  will party like the 1970's. Check out the blog for the full run down.

Montinore Resurrected

Monday was a root day, but that didn't make a difference, A Day of Biodynamics was underway at the 320 acre Montinore estate in Oregon.

 Montinore in Oregon used to make pretty much, plonk. But Rudy Marchesi, who was managing the property believed in it. When he had the chance to buy the estate in 2005, he pounced and converted the conventionally farmed (dry farmed) 320 acres to Biodynamics. Not only that, but he hired the most hard core and determined believer in this country, Philippe Armenier to guide him.

Marchesi, an affable man, articulate survived making wine in New Jersey for God's sake. He's training for his MW, and he has had a long time interest in Biodynamics. He makes some of the best cheese I ever had from his neighbors cows (he should go pro. this fromage was the bomb) and he has three noisy dynamizers on premise as well as several hundred cows horns for his  500.

  One of the best things I learned about the horns in this 'Day of Biodynamics" was that they can be used 6-7 times before petering out. I also learned that they only use copper in the vineyard one time a year. And I was able to relive the nauseating smell of a pigs stomach waiting to be turned into rennet, when picking up and smelling a worm of pigs intestines (destined for holding chamomile flowers). 

 I am often called on to defend Biodynamics, and the form of farming is often under attack. Why? I'm not sure. I'm not sure why the attack or why me. But let me tell you this I don't need science to prove anything, if bioD is your choice, good luck to you. If it makes great wine, well good luck for us. Whatever Rudy is doing seems to be working and the wines and the land speak to transformation. 

Rudy should win an award. Give the man something. A medal of honor, I should say. Why? He is determined to give America affordable wine that is biodynamic and natural enough--native yeast, no enzyme or hocus pocus, and he's using more 500-600 liter barrels than barriques, and barely a new one in sight. His Pinot Gris is delicious, almost dry, gentle with the ginger, nice zip, and it costs $12. The super cuvée is the Cataclysm pinot noir, which had kirsch, piercing nose and yet not cloying ( I know. Faint praise but it was good!) @ $35 with an $18 pinot thrown in for the ride. 

I left that night. The full moon rose over Mt. Hood. Root Day was over.

Damn, some of the best domestic cheese I ever had. 

Portland's Irving Street Kitchen

Was there for a quick in and out and a visit to Montinore, to see up close and personal a fantastic redo . (more coming.) 

But Saturday night meant cocktails and food, at a new joint, Irving Street Kitchen, which was so famous for PORK my friend Lisa wondered if I'd have something to eat. 

This is one of those PORK (pulled and whatever) and wines on keg. (for my taste, the choices could use some work but as the gent next to me said, it takes the snob out of wine. So, I'm all for it.)

The space is large, airy, very Portland by way of Vermont meets Boston Rathskeller. The tiny bit of food we had was terrific. (Summer vegetable tagine--summer squash based and not one bit of water in those yellow squash, and not afraid of the spice.)

However, there was one kick ass appetizer, so simple and delicious, thought I'd share it with you. 

I actually can't think of one way to tweak it, and it sure went well with the 2008 J-P Brun Terres Dores Beaujolais Blanc ($33)

Edamame Puree

 

2½ c    Blanched soybeans

¼ c      Watercress, picked

½ c      Water

2 T       Olive Oil

4t         Rice wine vinegar

2t         Wasabi Powder softened with water

2T        Horseradish, grated

4t         Lemon Juice

 

 

Blanch the edamame in boiling salted water till tender then shock the edemame in cold water. Combine blanched beans with ¼ c water into a to vita-prep.  Starting on low setting ramp power up until mixture becomes smooth > adding watercress, vinegar, wasabi, horseradish, lemon juice and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. 

 

Irving Street Kitchen
701 NW 13th Avenue
Portland, OR 97209

Bunuel-thought of the day

They call  Bunuel everything: traitor, anarchist, pervert, defamer, iconoclast. But lunatic they do not call him. It is true, it is lunacy he portrays, but it is not his lunacy...this is the lunacy of civilization, the record of man's achievement after ten thousand years of refinement. -- Henry Miller

Valvigneres Returns

And it distressed me to miss this tasting in August. Pigs on spits and all.
1° Fête du Vin Naturel en Ardèche à Valvignères
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Grape Radio Interview

Last week I was the guest on Grape Radio and thought I should let you know. It was great fun talking to the gents over there, and I thank them for having me on. If you head over there to listen, you might be interested in the assortment of comments. Sound quality was not the greatest, but it's a long way from NYC to their studios in California . Grape Radio

This Weekend's Wine Obsessions

$20 and.. $18 and... $27 (I think I might prefer the acidiy on the '08, but this is so pretty, chamomile, fennel, yellow flowers, and a chenin-like wet wool)