Wine Giques

Veuve with Verve

Silly title, I know.  But sometimes, when it's getting late in the evening, and you've spent the day convincing folks to talk about what you do (yeah, I'm a flack, among other things), and you're on your second glass of Côtes du Rhône, well, you stretch things a little.  But I'm not writing about that.  I'm writing about this:  The magic is working, and the Moveable Feast I've been wishing for is becoming more commonplace here in La-La Land.  Is it the economy?  The weather?  The fact that, as Salon.com claimed a few days ago, celebrity culture is dead? 

I'm not hunting for the reason.  I don't really care.  I only know that, on Christmas night, several handsome men showed up at my door bearing food, wine and holiday cheer, and all I had to do was crank up the tunes and set the table.  (Okay, I did the dishes, but I actually like that part, if you can believe it.  Nothing calms me more after a hard night of hostessing than wrestling the chaos back into the cabinets.)

Now, here's the part where I give props to the Veuve.  Remember that awful holiday party game I wrote about in my last post?  ("It's called 'White Elephant,' said Victor.  Well, that's a mystery solved, isn't it?)  I guess I have to drop my antipathy towards playing it, because it was a major source of my holiday libations this year.  I scored the Fabulous Mr. DeVito's Limoncello.  And Jeffy scored the Veuve Clicquot.  It was the Brut Carte Jaune -- the famous yellow label, serviceably delicious, perfectly suitable for the evening's festivities.

I have to 'fess up to a bit of a soft spot for the Veuve.  We drank it more than a decade ago to celebrate the birth of our daughter, although the occasion was, to us, a little more important than this year's Christmas party.  We feted the arrival of our little rose with a bottle of La Grande Dame Rosé.  The 1995 vintage will set you back 200+ smackeroos at the moment.  (For me, it was worth every penny, and then some.) 

I also love Veuve Clicquot because the Champagne house was founded by a woman--a widow, no less--who launched her career after the combination of a disastrous economy and typhoid (let's hope typhoid doesn't creep into our disastrous economy anytime soon) turned her into an 18th-century entrepreneur.  "Veuve," BTW, means "widow" in French.  Just in case you thought it meant something sexy like "This is wine Diddy would buy at a nightclub," or "If you drink this, George Clooney will kiss you."   To this day, Veuve Clicquot is run by a woman.  The latest president, Cécile Bonnefond, possesses a typically great French haircut.  All French women have great haircuts.  It's apparently a modern trait, however -- as you'll quickly determine once you check out the picture of the original Widow Clicquot on the website.

That's another one of my favorite things about Veuve:  reading the website.  Its fluid French copy just sounds better and better, the more Veuve you consume.  Try it.  Slurp down a couple of glasses and say this:  "Cette année, elle le met une fois de plus au service de Veuve Clicquot, en créant une nouvelle pièce, magnifique : un écrin mystérieux, abritant le champagne La Grande Dame 1998, réinterprété par Andrée Putman avec style, touch & twist." 

Hot, isn't it?  Maybe George Clooney will kiss you, after all. 

There's a new biography out about the Veuve with verve, BTW.  It's called The Widow Clicquot:  The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It.  Even though Christmas is pretty much over, and Amazon has declared their season a success, I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you picked up a post-holiday gift.  Just remember to read it with a coûpe de Champagne, and thank a certain widow who busied herself turning a crystal ceiling into glasses full of star-laced dreams. 

Bonne Année, mes chéries.

Beer and Biblical Plagues

Being from the South, my mother is prone to using very colorful metaphors.  Some of my favorites:  "He didn't know me from Adam's housecat," "Happier than a dead pig in the sunshine," and "Busier than a three-legged cat covering up shit."  Aside from the middle one (how can that pig be happy about being dead?), I often find these little idioms very useful when attempting to get someone's attention in a conversation --- particularly if that someone is one of my fellow Crazy Californians.

And when it comes to Crazy Californians, my mother also has a special turn of phrase for describing where we live.  She calls it "The Land of Biblical Plagues."  And, having lived through two major earthquakes, a couple of floods, and, lately, a slough of wildfires, I'm inclined to agree with her.  All we're missing are the locusts and the frogs, although we certainly see many facsimiles of the aforementioned in my neighborhood around Passover time.

So, what does all this have to do with a wine blog?  Well, everything:  Living in the Land of Biblical Plagues has encouraged me to abandon wine for a while in favor of its more bourgeois sibling, the lowly beer.  You see, it's been hot, hot, hot down here -- roaring Santa Ana winds, sand in the air, roses blooming their heads off just like it's the fifth of July.  It makes you thirsty.  That deep-down dust-bowl kind of thirst that a petite glass of Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine just can't satisfy. 

It makes me wonder, this thirst for beer, if this is what the Israelites were feeling when they were wandering the desert.  The relationship between human beings and beer has been long, uh, brewing:  It trumps even red wine as the oldest alcoholic beverage on record.  Yes, it seems the Stone Age had its frat-boy equivalents.

My beers of choice:  Well, Fat Tire is a perennial favorite, as is Widmer Hefeweizen.  (Like those Biblical beer drinkers, I have a predeliction for ale, not lager.)   And I always look forward to Pete's Wicked holiday releases -- beer-brewing and a sense of humor go well together, in my book.

So, next time you hoist a few, give a little thanks to the Stone Age brothers who brought us the brew, that eternally-reliable thirst quencher after days spent trolling the desert.  And, while you're at it, give a little dough to the folks who've been suffering in the latest round of wildfires.  Even our President-Elect is helping out.

What to Drink with Hockey Moms

You never know when yer gonna get hit with a puck. Shoot, the economy is hittin' middle class people like us pretty hard. But, there are some pretty affordable wines to be had. You might even be able to pay yer mortgage or health care premium after buying these puppies.

Randall Graham made Bonnie Doon wines famous and then sold the brand but any of the Big House Red, Whites or Roses make decent drinking wines and won't break the bank.

Likewise, the wines from Smoking Loon (Gallo, right?). Some are better than others, but for the money, the  Syrah isn't half bad... for the working man.

As for wines that are not from California, uh, I'll have to get back to ya on that.

Don't toss that wine! Maurice Carrie Muscat

I would never tell you that it's okay to drink a bottle of wine that has been sitting in your refrigerator for a week - unless it was bubbly that had a really tight stopper in it. And even that is dicey.
But today, I had a glass of week-old Muscat from... GASP...  Temecula! Maurice Carrie (they spell it a bit differently than that), 2007 vintage. It was really all there - the nose had a fresh, green, lively quality to it, not unlike Sauvignon blanc. It was a tiny bit spritzy and very fresh (I said it) and fruit cocktail fruity.

I can see the 2007 Maurice Car'rie Muscat being a great foil to some spicy prawns or a really good Kung Pao.

And it won't break the bank.

The Madrigal Feast

I have often complained that I miss the Moveable Feast-style of life I lived with my friends up in the Napa Valley.   That afternoon phone call that said "who's hosting dinner tonight and what are we drinking?"  Where we'd let the babies tumble on the floor while the moms whipped up fresh salads from the garden, tossed some pasta, and hauled out a couple of bottles that had been stuffed in someone's closet, sometimes unlabeled, because they'd just been pulled from a barrel somewhere. 

Well, the babies are half-grown, and I now live in the big, bad metropolis of El-Lay, but sometimes, when I'm lucky, I find that the moveable feast has followed me.  Sometimes to the back deck of my house, sometimes to my friend Linda's kitchen, and, sometimes, like last night, to a porch on the Westside, where we staged our own Moveable Madrigal Feast, only without Christmas and the Renaissance costumes.

The feast arrived this time with a phone call, and a friend who was more than willing to share his Leon Chopped Salad from La Scala Presto.  Believe me, friends like that are precious and rare.   Arrival at Casa Waldo produced some commotion in the armoire and the tops of kitchen cabinets, a hunt for the right bottle of wine.  (What, you don't keep your wine in the armoire?  Thought everyone did that.)  The first part of the Madrigal came in the form of that bottle of wine, 2004 Madrigal Zinfandel, from a small, half-remembered winery on the St. Helena Highway. (Apparently, I've stuffed my memories of Napa into an armoire, as well.  I'm presently excavating them, one transparent bottle at a time.)  We settled into chairs on the porch, and the second part of the madrigal arrived, wafting through the windows, a modern pastiche of voices as varied as Robert Plant , Neil Finn, and Frank Sinatra.  We added our own voices to the mix, marveling at the cynical choices of politicians, the magic of good writing, the mysteries of family behavior, the decibel level at Cut.  The Madrigal (the wine) was flavored with spice, and smoke, and hints of chocolate, and the taste of the north valley terroir, making that Leon Chopped Salad almost as satisfying as the company and the conversation.  Dessert was tiny delicious truffles from the freezer, dusted with dark chocolate, in a cellophane bag that seduced us into inhaling its sweet, heady fragrance before devouring the goodness within. 

I drove home in the late hours, clutching a book for reading and a moody Graham Lindsey CD for listening, gifts from my feast-mate.   And I marveled, once again, at how life hands us its own jewel-like gifts:  musical, magical rewards that come just from answering a phone call from a friend.

Shatner's Revenge, The Sequel

Sometimes, life delivers perfection, wrapped up in a tiny red bow.  On Wednesday, I was watching Bottle Shock.  On Saturday, I was standing next to Bo Barrett at a wine-tasting event. 

"Hey Bo," I said. 
"Hey," he replied. 
"I just saw Bottle Shock. What was up with Chris Pine's wig?"
"I don't know," he said.  "They saw the pics.  I had an afro, not that straight stuff.  And besides, we got no creative input on the movie, beyond making sure the actors weren't holding the pruning shears upside down.  Heidi [Bo's wife] got to supervise the tasting scenes." 
"You know," I said, "I thought the glassware in those scenes looked kind of modern." 
"Yeah," he replied, "But they got the jelly jars right.  Plenty of folks used those, back then."

We both paused, and swirled the wine in our glasses. 

The wine, by the way, was made by Bo's wife, legendary winemaker Heidi Peterson Barrett, who, after years of hard labor in the service of others, finally has her own winery, dubbed La Sirena.  Run, don't walk, for a bottle of her 2005 Cabernet.  The wine is spectacular.  Tipped with dense fruit, earthy, full-bodied, with just a hint of tobacco.   A wine made with a woman's touch, with all the right ingredients for the perfect seduction.  Watch out boys, La Sirena is in the house.  It will set you back one-hundred-and-fifty smackers, but any good woman is worth that much trouble.  Sometimes, you just gotta put your cards on the table, if you know what I mean. 

"Okay," I said to Bo, "I'm sending you the link to my blog post about Chris Pine's wig."
"Cool," he said.  "Have a little more wine before you go.  And by the way, that movie wasn't for you, it was for the folks in Kansas." 

And that, my friends, was the beginning -- not the end!-- of a perfect Saturday night in La-la Land.  More to come--oh yes--there is more to come. 

Family Business

In many ways, getting older is a drag -- for me it means that milk and ice cream are no longer on the dining menu, second helpings go straight to my midriff no matter how much I run, and staying up until 3 am in Vegas now buys me two ensuing days of naps.  On the plus side, Mark Spitz looks much hotter to me now than he did when I was seven -- and my kid is also getting older, and taking a much greater interest in the family business:  being obsessed with all things food and wine. 

For many years, I have wondered how the offspring of a dilettante cookbook editor and a professional chef could be so prosaic in her food choices.  We're talking about a kid who'd been to at least seven foreign countries by the time she was eight -- and consequently, knows how to say "can I have fries with that?" in seven languages. 

But lately, things seem to be changing.  "We should cook more, Mom," she says yesterday, "Let's go to the store and see what interesting things they have."  Music to my ears!

Instead of the grocery store, however, we headed for one of the wonders of Los Angeles:  Farmers Market.  A very dangerous place to go if, as I did, you've neglected to eat lunch:  the aromas from all the food counters can drive you insane, one country at a time.  (Singapore noodles?  Oyster po'boy?  Brazilian barbecue?)  But the kid (who had eaten lunch) dragged me past them, destination firmly in mind:  Mr Marcel. 

Once inside, we wandered among the shelves, examining tiny jars of tasty sauces, smelling the baguettes, lingering over the cheese counter.  Our choices:  Gnocchi in a clever vacuum-sealed package decorated with emphatic Italian cooking instructions; ripe, rich Gorgonzola; Point Reyes blue cheese (for sentimental snacking when I'm thinking about west Marin); one of those baguettes; a box of tiny biscotti.  Back out to one of Farmers Market's produce counters for arugula and figs (we tried to buy a roasting chicken, too, but the chicken boys were busy), then home for dinner. 

I set the Point Reyes on the counter with the baguette and the figs (just a few bites were enough), whipped up a Gorgonzola sauce with just a dash of red pepper for the gnocchi (see Julia Child's The Way to Cook for the difference between béchamel and mornay), tossed the arugula with a little homemade dressing, and we were on our way.  Dessert was sliced strawberries and peaches, with the biscotti.

Libations?  Well, for me, the grownup kind:  San Felipe 2007 Roble Malbec, spicy and tannic enough to cut through the richness of the Gorgonzola sauce and leave a little tingle on my tongue, an adventure ride for only $10 a bottle.  For the kid:  Strawberry Ramuné, a favorite that she discovered, not while visiting Tokyo--want to see a picture of her there, eating fries?--but here in cosmopolitan LA. 

We're now researching how to say "Can I have some Gorgonzola with that?" in Japanese.  Welcome to the family business, kid. 

Tits and Totes

Got your attention, didn't I?   Well, I did it on purpose, because I wanted to ask the age-old question:  Do you have any wine in that purse?

Here's the thing.  I was lucky enough to attend Sunday Supper at Lucques two Sundays in a row.  (No, I have no idea how I generated so much good karma in the space of a week -- usually takes me at least a couple of months. Years, even.)  The second Sunday was even their fabled RibFest, for which you have to achieve reservations weeks in advance.  Let me tell you, the chow was good.  The ribs -- beef, pork and lamb -- were perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked, the sauce perfectly spicy.  But it was the side dishes that stole the show.  Corn on the cob, cole slaw, Wonderbread (yes, Wonderbread -- have you ever made a rib sandwich with Wonderbread? awesome), cornbread.  And collard greens.  Now, I'm from the South, and even though I ate collards at least once a week while I was growing up, these were still the best collard greens I've ever tasted.  Please don't tell my grandmother. 

But here's the other thing:  the joint was packed, and most people brought their own wine.  Now, as I've alluded previously, Lucques has a fantastic wine list.  But it's also a bit spendy.  And though Sunday Suppers are a relative bargain at $45 a head, a bottle of wine can quickly bust your budget. 

Lesley, one of my dining companions, is a bit of a tastemaker in the food world here in LA.  And she has a great collection of wine.  "I got out some really good stuff," she said "I've been saving it for the right occasion."  "What for?" I asked, jokingly, "Didn't you see Sideways?"  "I meant to bring it," she said, "But there was so much going on, I forgot."

So, back to my question, or the second half of the question:  Why are the guys so much better at the BYO thing when it comes to restaurants?   Is it because they like to collect, and show off what they collect?  (See Hefner, Hugh).  It certainly isn't because they've got the bags -- we chicks have got a lock on those things.  And lately, the bigger they are, and the bigger the locks they sport, the better they seem to be.  (See Chloe, Overpriced Purses by). 

So, I'm challenging the fashion world to come up with a bag that's suitable for those of us sporting tits to tote some wine.  I've found a few chic Italian-looking items on various websites:  the Cluster (yes!) Wine Tote, the cute but unfortunately-named Murge Horizontal Pink, the Laguiole Wine Valise, which actually sounds like a disease (yes, I know Laguiole makes fantastic knives.  I've used a few, sometimes on things I won't mention).  But I'm talking haute couture here.  I want a bag with a big old Hermès label on it, from which I can produce a fierce bottle of 2005 Clos du Papes Châteauneuf du Pape and reduce the room to silence.  ("Look at that bag!"  "Look at that wine!")

Tom Ford, are you listening?  Get busy, boy.  You might want one of these babies yourself, tits or no tits.

The wine, you ask?  Oh, we had a bottle of 2006 Lang & Reed Cabernet Franc.  Serviceable, but not quite up to the power of the ribs, although we certainly could have given it a very dramatic entrance if we had yanked it out of a big, red, lock-encrusted handbag.   

Le Dîner Sur Le Lac, or Olympic Basketball in Vegas.

So, we had an excuse to abandon Wine Giques headquarters and head to Vegas for two of my favorite things, both best served hot:  basketball and great food.  The basketball was compliments of the Men's USA Olympic team, who proceeded to blow Canada out of the water.  ("Hockey's our game," say all my Canadian friends, "Talk to us during the Winter Olympics, eh?  This, we don't care about.")  Yeah, I cheered for Kobe.  Don't tell any of my relatives, please.

The food came compliments of Julian Serrano, via his restaurant in the Bellagio hotel, aptly named Picasso.  I say "aptly" for a number of reasons:  Like Picasso, Julian is a divinely-talented Spanish artist, although apparently considerably less temperamental.  And like Las Vegas, le maître Picasso was cavalier about money, draped with a bevy of women, and undeniably larger than life. 

I arrived at the restaurant in an advanced state of starvation: A couple of basketball beers and some trail mix consumed on the road are not adequate sustenance for a red-blooded girl.  My dining companion looked good enough to eat in his suit, but I decided to save my appetite for the menu. 

I was rewarded for my discipline. 

First, you must note, everything is bigger in Vegas.  This "intimate" restaurant seats nearly 100.  The flower arrangements sit on oversized wooden tables designed by Picasso's son Claude.  $50 million worth of Pablo's doodles hang on the wall.  The wine list is 95 pages long.  And the restaurant prices come in two levels:  expensive and more expensive.  After a bit of dithering about reading glasses (eventually a pair was produced by our spectacular and ever-observant waiter, Richard), I delegated that muscle-bound winelist to the Boy in the Delicious Suit and settled in with the menu, which was terse, vibrant and evocative, just like Picasso's best neoclassical work.

Here's the list of what we ate:  Boy in the Delicious Suit:  Warm Quail Salad with Sauteed Artichokes and Pine Nuts; Ragoût of Vegetables with Foie Gras; Roasted Milk-Fed Veal Chop with Rosemary Potatoes au Jus.   Me (girl in the Françoise Gilot-style ballerina dress):  Poached Oysters with Osetra Caviar and Vermouth Sauce; Grilled Langoustines with Lobster-Tarragon Jus; Roasted Pigeon with Wild Rice Risotto.  And some tasty dessert.  And little amuse-boûches at the beginning and the end (the latter taken away to the hotel room in a handsome fabric box).  Spectacular.

The wine?  Suitably, not Spanish, but something from a little farther south in France, a soulful, spicy and round Gigondas, 2004 Domaine Les Pallières.  Fruit, leather and herbs.  An appropriate accompaniment for Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe and the spirit of Pablo.

BTW, the Boy in the Delicious Suit and I shut down the joint.  But not before we enjoyed the Bellagio's famous night-lit fountains to the strains of a soaring Italian aria.  An excellent thing to do with someone whose company you enjoy.  'Nuff said.  Merci, Maître, et une trés bonne nuit à vous, aussi.

Bastille Day: An American Homecoming

My friend Paul is something of a recorded music maven.  He seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the stuff -- and he has very, very good taste, to boot.  ("That's all relative," says my kid, who also has good taste, but who tends to focus on the more head-bangerish and hip-hopperish genres.)  Paul also has this interesting idea that you can pair wine and music to marvelous effect.   Since both wine and music seem to stimulate my senses in very positive (and sometimes memorable) ways, I think he's on to something.  He writes a blog about that, and various other things, called Tasting Notes.

When I discovered that Tasting Notes contained a set list of American music for the 4th of July, I was delighted.  You see, I have some friends who were returning from a tour of duty overseas that included a stop in Kuwait (yes, he's a Marine; he left his family in Okinawa while he was in the Middle East), and they arrived with a 3-years-long pent-up hunger for all things American.  While they enjoyed their time in foreign lands, and came to appreciate things like Okinawan beer, tiny painted flowers on their toenails, and women shopping in burkas, what they really wanted when they arrived at our door was a couple of slices of NY-style pizza, a big old piece of medium-rare steak, and used DVD's from Blockbuster.

They arrived on July 14th, which is not quite American Independence Day, but a good French substitute.  (And no, I never called them "Freedom Fries."  Those of you who have forgotten what Lafayette did for us should be ashamed of yourselves.)  We picked them up at the airport, and skedaddled to Wine Giques' SoCal HQ, where all the aforementioned items -- pizza, steak, DVD's -- could be found within walking distance.  They feasted on their chosen bits of Americana, then we all retired to the back deck, where I streamed music from the Tasting Notes set list, and we lit candles, drank wine, and chatted. 

The wine?  Well, in hommage to Lafayette and Bastille Day, we drank French.   2004 E. Guigal Côtes du Rhône.  Lovely, full-bodied, silky and plummy; a smooth match for the Cali twilight and the piano stylings of Dick Hyman.  A perfect wine and music pairing, for what proved to be a perfect homecoming for my friends.   Here's to the freedom to drink what you want, and the courage to defend that freedom to the last drop.