Hudson Valley Wineries

Jock and Jill

2010-01-22T09:19:00.008-05:00

Remember High School? I bet you think you do,--the problem is that for most of us as we grow older, those memories have become vague, slathered over by years of TV sitcoms and movies, a plaster of idiocy telling us how High School actually was. It has become a familiar cautionary tale, a staple of sitcoms and a host of ill conceived cheerful movies. How the jocks accost and bully the poor Nerds, shoving their heads in the toilet, how the sensitive but underthatgreenDolceGabbanasweater gracefully lithe and muscular male manages to negotiate the thin line between 'nerddom' and 'jockdom' and therefore attract the bevies of panting females who have just been waiting for a man who will not submit to to becoming mere charachiture.

Me? I don't remember any of those people, I don't think the word nerd had been invented yet. If anything preoccupied me during those years (besides the intense yearning for a series of unattainable females) it was the question of who was most likely to be shortly turned into a game of tic-tac-dead in Vietnam.

I was probably what the movies would call a nerd, I got really good grades, I found the academic work at once easy and challenging, and I occasionally smoked pot with my friends (or maybe it was banana skins, I don't remember) and played in the orchestra. I never had my head shoved down the toilet. I didn't even know who the
captain of the football team was (to my embarrassment), I didn't even go to the prom.
On my biggest date of my senior year, strolling down the Ocean Parkway bridle path I saw a man shot and bleeding out through the knees. My date, believe it or not whose name was I think Buffy, was really nice about the whole thing and handled it better than me actually, much better, but honestly it kind of turned me off to dating for a while.

Anyway, the point is that the easy stereotypes that we are offered as 'options' for self-characterization are always to some extent harmful in that the permit us to ignore our actual life experiences. Whether it involves becoming a 'good ole boy' in the south or falling into the jock-nerd dichotomy in High School, they all encourage us to become something we are not for the sake of easy classification.

In America it seems, everything is destined to be turned into a cautionary tale sooner or later. Beverages have likewise fallen into this same puerile pattern, beer is for jocks, wine is for nerds,--it is somewhat understandable, just imagine the contest in the movie 'Beerfest' conducted with Sauvignon Blanc--the butchness just disappears completely. Anyway, we should understand one thing, the rest of the world is not this way,--the foolish characitures by which we misremember our lives somehow do not obtain there, or at least they do in some way which is incomprehensible to the casual tourist. I don't know why this is,--I grew up here remember, but having traveled in Europe I got the picture to some extent, the effeminate, intellectual image of the wine drinker simply does not apply there.

Anyway, don't get me wrong, I love good beer, always have, but the next time you are gathered in front of the telly with a bunch of guys watching the Super Bowl, try asking for a nice Cab Franc, see what happens, maybe you'll get your head stuck in the toilet, maybe not --but remember this, at least there is a slim to none chance you will get shipped off to Vietnam.

"Hot Tomato" Wine in Grocery Stores

2010-01-12T09:47:00.011-05:00

I think it is high time for me to weigh in publicly in the debate whether wine should be sold in NY grocery stores. The issue has not died despite its failure to pass the legislature last year and has once again become a hot topic recently in winemaking circles with Scott Osborn of Fox Run vineyards leading the slightly staggering charge.

Let me say first that this is not really an economic issue for 90% of wineries since, as I have pointed out to Scott previously, I don't believe that Shoprite will be beating down my door (or that of any other Hudson Valley winery) with sticks of hardened muenster cheese to get me to place Silver Stream Chardonnay in their aisles. As Mike Migliore of WhiteCliff points out, in all probability it will result in the 'Walmartization' of wine with the larger more cost effective operations dominating the shelves. There is also the issue of fairness to liquor store owners who have been moderately cooperative already in promoting New York State wines. Also, it is kind of hard to imagine asking the shelf stocker who trains parakeets dressed in circus outfits in his basement for advice on which is the proper auslese Riesling to go with Veal in truffle sauce.

As with all contentious and apparently irresolvable questions I have a simple and unambiguous answer. Allow liquor stores to sell tomatoes. Not only will this level the playing field it will thrill Bloody Mary advocates.

Along these same lines I also have a remarkably easy, obviously overlooked solution to global warming; pipe all the excess carbon dioxide produced at coal generating plants into water and sell it as seltzer. I don't understand why nobody has come up with this remarkably simple fix. I can only guess that it is the powerful seltzer industry which has blocked this to date with their scare tactics regarding Government run big seltzer.

Which brings me to another issue. If I hear the term carbon footprint one more time I am going to have to shoot somebody. Why anyone coined this term in the first place is beyond me. For those enamored of anthropomorphising anything and everything Carbon does not have feet. It does not walk or dance. No one in the history of the world has ever had their rhumba interrupted by a misplaced lump of coal clumsily trouncing their big toe. However in line with my other world saving solutions (which I am offering here free of charge) it presents an obvious simple fix. If you want to reduce the carbon footprint just buy carbon smaller shoes. Once again it is probably the remarkable simplicity of this that has evidently caused scientists and environmentalists to overlook it.

So, in short, let me say this to those who would further complicate our already complicated lives with issues that most likely will only serve to inflame passions thus posing yet a new source of carbon as well as a danger to the brandy manufacturers, leave me out of it. I don't really care if I have to walk two doors down in Shoprite Plaza to buy wine. I don't buy that much wine since I have a whole cellar of the stuff anyway. While I am on the subject, there is one way to solve both problems at once: Wine Coolers! I don't know why I didn't think of this before,--perhaps it was too simple even for me! So get ready for the merger of PSE&G and Arbor Mist. 'Hey! What do you mean there is no ice?'!

Hybrid vs. Vinifera round two:

2009-12-27T13:29:00.017-05:00

At this point, after trying to appear objective, I have no choice but to confess I have an innate prejudice against hybrid wines. You can ascribe it to snobbiness but I dislike them in general for the same reasons that I cannot tolerate stupid people, they tend to repeat themselves ad infinitum and they seem innately incapable either of subtlety or of being insulted.

Where a grape like Cabernet or Pinot seems possessed under the winemakers hand of an almost infinite variation and evocative of an astounding array of flavors and aromas, varieties like Baco Noir and Seyval seem by comparison remarkably consistent in both flavor and aroma regardless of how they are treated. While this may seem to some a virtue, to a winemaker it presents a uniquely frustrating situation. It's akin to going to the Port Authority where you may buy a ticket for a seemingly unlimited number of destinations but finding that the bus invariably drops you off in Brooklyn. (again, don't get me wrong, I love Brooklyn, even minus the Dodgers, but, you know, if you are looking for a quiet beach, Coney Island does have its drawbacks).

Why this is the case is a puzzle but, it is unquestionably true. Hybrids just all seem to have this one dominant personality trait that one simply cannot ignore. It is something like the wart on your great aunt's face, whether you like her or not, it dominates and colors your interactions with her no matter how much you try to ignore it.

This brings us to the the current effort to establish hybrids (warts and all) as the signature grapes of the Hudson Valley. Climate dictates they will always dominate viticulture in the valley (you winemakers who are secretly hoping for climate change,-good luck). (As I said in the previous post, there are some exceptions but these are dependent on huge influxes of cash). If we are to develop a signature grape here there is no question (for the near future) therefore that it will be of a hybrid variety. One clearly cannot build a reputation based on a grape that is not native to or widely grown in your region; not really so much because it is dishonest, but because it presents and insurmountable marketing hurdle. This then presents the would be winemaker in the Hudson Valley with a unique dilemna, they may seek either to become a virtuoso utilizing only the limited flavor notes afforded by the hybrid varieties (which is something akin to becoming a virtuoso on an instrument with clearly circumscribed charm as for instance the harmonica or the accordion) or he or she may abandon any pretense at uniqueness and seek to compete purely on the basis of winemaking skill using grapes as local as possible but without that necessarily being the defining parameter.

The third and perhaps more interesting possibility is the path Carlo of Hudson-Chatham (and to a lesser extent myself) have gone down, which is to begin experimenting with blends of local hybrids with classical varieties obtained from elsewhere in the state. Carlo's 'Empire' offering (and though I kid Carlo about the use of the name Empire, though I named a wine 'Buckethead') I think is a very solid first step in this direction. It blends wines from different areas of the state and combines classical with hybrid varieties. The result is very drinkable and of reasonable complexity. The consistent undertone of the hybrid component which I have referred to emerges as something I can only liken to juicyfruit gum with a hint of licorice, in any case, not at all unpleasant or reminiscent of the astringency often associated with the red hybrid varieties.

Whether or not this turns out to be a viable viticultural/winemaking path time will tell. To hark back to the musical analogy it may turn out to be a curiosity like Mozart's glass harmonica concerto or result in longstanding innovation that vastly expands the available palette such as occurred with the introduction of the more 'strident' brass instruments into the post classical symphony orchestra. My suspicion is that it will be the latter but as I said, I am from Brooklyn and therefore by nature an incurable optimist (go Dodgers). In any case, the geni is definitely out of the bottle (as well as in the bottle), so let's use our three wishes carefully.

Pride & Prejudice

2009-11-19T09:16:00.018-05:00

Whenever Carlo Devito, as a wine writer, is about to offer some good humored criticism of a fellow winemaker he usually prefaces it in some fashion with a statement evincing his affection and respect for that individual about to come under his less than admiring scrutiny, not that I do not think he is sincere so, just let me say here (and I am not just saying this), I genuinely like Carlo DeVito, as I mentioned in previous posts he is one of the few winemakers in the valley with whom I feel I have something in common that goes beyond wine i.e. we are both enamored at the opportunity of waxing poetic over the grape, however, since this blog is not dedicated solely to my personal literary rants on topics of my discretion but to promoting actual discussion about wine I would like to respond to his recent post on EastCoastWineries blog regarding the hybrid vs. non-hybrid controversy in New York viticulture; in particular the segment called 'My Favorite Hybrid' which as presented, raises some issues that I would like to address. And as far as the preliminary praise, and in the spirit of obscuring shared ambition as exemplified so eloquently in Shakespeare's rendering of Mark Antony's funeral oration, let me first say I come not to praise Caesar nor to bury him, but to 'goose' him.

While the title of his post is obviously coy play on 'My Favorite Martian' (the 1960s sitcom with Bill Bixby and Ray Walston) it is clear that the point Carlo is trying to make with this is that hybrids are not in fact from Mars. He adduces the fact that Cab Sauvignon, one of the most loved and respected of the 'noble' grapes varieties is actually a cross between two venerable varieties, Cab Franc and Sauvignon Blanc.

I must admit here that the innate prejudice of the wine buying public in favor of the 'noble' grapes (a term which embraces all the vinifera genus) grates on some deep egalitarian instinct in me (can't we all just get along?) but we need to get some perspective on this issue aside from the political implications and the constant din of clamoring for 'quality' NYS wine which even when produced remains subject to some unfathomable instinctual suspicion.

Firstly, I must object to the classification of Cab Sauvignon as a hybrid in the same sense as we have become used to using the term here in NY. Hybrids here have generally come as the result of intentional crossbreeding programs at University sponsored experiment stations, they are not the result of natural selection or historical factors such as resulted in the production of many of the European so called hybrids. The reason for this is simple; new wine grape varieties are no longer produced by germination in the field (We all remember Gregor Mendel from Junior High School and his magic peas--not personally of course oh well, age jokes at my age are de rigeur), they are produced in commercial applications by grafting, so the likelihood of developing serendipitous field crosses (such as occurred in the case of Cab Sauvignon) through a process of selection by growers over decades or centuries such as occurred in Europe here is slim to none.

Secondly, as the term is commonly used in America, hybrid refers to varieties that contain genetic material from non-vinifera varieties. This is not the case in the example cited by Carlo. Cab Sauvignon is a cross of two vinifera species.

If I may attempt to play the devil's advocate for a moment, I will agree, there are excellent wines being made from hybrid grapes in New York and as Carlo correctly points out, the difference may lay largely in the skill of the winemaker and not in the native characteristics inherent in the juice but to address this last point let me introduce an analogy from a field I am more comfortable with. I am a bass player and I have two instruments that I own, basses. One is European (Czech) and the second was made by a luthier out of Middletown. You can play Beethoven on either of them and make it sound reasonably well. As a bass player, I am keenly aware that I have to struggle to as they say 'get the notes under my fingers' when using the Middletown bass (at the moment I have no choice because my better bass is in hock as the repair shop). Anyway it is just the way that bass is set up and constructed. Secondly, I know that under most circumstances, I well never get the American bass to make a tone as classically beautiful as the second. In other words, if I am playing Beethoven I would much rather be playing the Czech bass. As
everyone is aware however, Beethoven is not the only composer and classical not the only style of music. The American Bass is much boomier and has a big bottom, (lower range-- not in the booty sense). If I was playing jazz or country I would much rather be playing the other bass despite the physical challenges. I think the analogy to be found in this is appropos to this discussion and bears some reflection.

Also, if you know anything about winegrowing in the Hudson Valley, unless you are a multi-millionaire, growing nothing but vinifera grapes is akin to viticultural masochism. I can tell you this from experience, the amount of labor required to make them productive and the struggles with weather here will require huge constant infusions of that most American of commodities, cash. In case you haven't noticed, that is a commodity presently in short supply.

So, the (average) winemaker in the valley in these times finds him or herself in somewhat of a bind. What to do? Grow hybrid grapes and still be able to take pride in the fact that the product you produce was under your hand from inception or, buy grapes from the Finger Lakes or some other region where the weather is a smidge kinder to the vine or a combination of both?

(To be Continued)

Still Hopped Up

2009-11-08T11:46:00.042-05:00

'Tommy Ramone holding up bottle of Silver Stream Gewurz

I went to the Kleinert Center last night for the book promotion of 'All Hopped Up and Ready to Go' with the expectation that I was going to be sorely disappointed and also, that I was going in some fashion, in some as yet unknown way, to sorely disappoint. That is just how I generally approach these things and it is not without justification. These type of events are notorious for last minute no-shows of famous names, conversations based around an avowed disinterest in any topic except self promotion, leggy unobtainable and unapproachable 'hotties' floating at the edges of the crowd, me, I didn't care--I was just there selling wine,--so I thought.

The event proved anything but disappointing, the 'hotties' might have been sixty years old and the self promotion graphic equalizer turned to ten (but in a very classy way) but it was altogether a most enjoyable experience,--there were of course the expected no-shows,--Tony (that's Tony Fletcher, author of the aforementioned book) announced at the beginning that Artie Traum and John Sebastian (two of the big draw names) had other engagements and then graciously added 'well, I am glad at least they are still playing'. (What? no-ironic rancor?) Anyway, who was there? It was Tommy Ramone, (who I prepared to dislike and who was utterly disarming), Elda Gentile (who I had never heard of, ironically not having really paid attention to the punk scene but who proved eloquent and funny), Eric Weissberg (who I remember and whose beard I remember even more than him from the covers of old folk albums), and of course Fred Smith from Cerighino Smith Winery who (surprise surprise), also turns out (like me) to be a bass-player (only successful having played with Blondie and Television), and also currently (like me) a winemaker (only successful) and Tish and Snooky (also formerly of Blondie).

I showed up laden to the gills with amusing anecdotes about Markie Ramone (aka Markie Bell), who had grown up two blocks away in Brooklyn, (and who Fred recalled almost immediately had been a member of the Voidoids), my other claim to fame having played with Huey Lewis back when he was Hugh Cregg in a band called 'Raw Meat'. I kind of expected to be treated with bemused disbelief (as is usually the case unless I happen to run into an old Cornellian or someone from the old neighborhood). Anyway, to my surprise, I was not.

Now, I have to tell you all something, --when it comes to these stories
about the 'old days' nobody really gives an intense shit about them anyway, even the manic punk old days, where grandma and grandpa had safety pins tucked into their cheeks, so I guess the added disbelief is just kind of gratuitous,(witness my unread and perhaps unreadable memoir 'Down By Our Vineyard'), just nobody gives a shit except of course Tony Fletcher whose book is all about 'that scene', meaning of course the New York music scene of and in which we all participated in some fashion, hence this party, hence this meeting with Fred etc. etc.
But! and this is a big but, when musicians, true musicians get together (famous or not), there is a certain unconcerned humility that dominates the tenor of the conversation, this is not because the musicians themselves are humble, far from, we (they) can be as egotistically puerile as the next fellow, moreso, but rather it is from one common shared understanding, --that the distinctions of fame and money (and the corresponding investment in maintaining the fiction that that is what fundamentally separates them) is something like, well how to put this delicately, like watching your girlfriend screw the entire football team and then taking her to a Disney movie and trying to explain to her why Bambi's mother had to get shot,-- somehow you know your heart really isn't in it.

What was interesting about last night was that this was not where the conversation ended; it was where it started. Music was not about fame and tragic inevitability, it was about community, about art and about self-definition; that was a given and that's a pretty cool starting place if you ask me.
The topics and panel discussion really didn't get much past laying out those parameters and sort of devolved into reminiscences (which is what happens mostly when musicians get either hungry or thirsty, it is a sort of process of self preservation in the guise of self hypnosis).

Anyway, when I left, instead of the deflation and disappointment I had expected, I was inexplicably excited and calm at the same time,--I had really enjoyed this, if it was a freak show then I was part of the carnival. By the way, the 'Rock and Roll Red' which was the Cerighino Smith offering at the event was awesome, like the best Bordeaux I have drunk (drinken? drinked? drank I think) anyway cheers and keep up the good work.

All Hopped Up

2009-11-06T09:23:00.003-05:00

Just wanted to let all the 4 (four) readers of the blog that there will be an event at the Kleinert/James Art Center in Woodstock N.Y. tomorrow (Nov. 7)5Pm to 7PM for the book release of 'All Hopped Up and Ready to Go' Music from the streets of New York 1927-1957' by Tony Fletcher from . Wine from Silver Stream Winery and Cereghino-Smith will be served along with hors'd'oevres (is that how you spell that?) from Gabriels of Kingston. Article on the event in the Woodstock Times is
at http://ulsterpublishing.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=500891

The Funeral Oration of Lothos

2009-10-25T08:46:00.020-04:00

Perhaps the most famous funeral oration of all time is Pericles Epitaphios Logos. Given at the start of the Peloponesian War it is basically a self congratulatory paean to city of Athens and its inhabitants for being the light of the world. It was politics as pure theater and there is a school of thought that it itself fashioned the identity of the polis , the free citizen, the spirit of democracy, the words were not merely the reflection of the light of culture shed on the ancient world by Greece but the cause of it, the logos in its truest sense, as a creative force.

So, who is Lothos, then? Lothos was the Vampire King in Buffy the Vampire slayer. He accosts Buffy at the Senior dance, despite his great power and the fact that her predecessor failed and was killed by Lothos, Buffy, the cheerleader, still manages to kill Lothos.

Yesterday I went to the funeral of Tom LaBarbera. He was an artist in Chester among other things. I knew him but I did not know him that well. My grief at his passing was not really personal, there were not tears, it was regret at the loss of a valuable member of society and the desire to show respect for an honorable life.

It is amazing how we humans are so resourceful that can turn death into so many things. Like Pericles we can use it as a catalyzing flame to weld the varied elements of society into a unified whole, or, like Buffy we can use it to discover a whole unknown dimension of ourselves that contradicts our daily life, the priest at the mass yesterday used it as a means of comforting and a means of strengthening faith. We all find ways to use death to augment and provide purpose in a life that suddenly seems purposeless or pointless,--it is perhaps the most democratic of all states of existence, despite what the priest said, in it we are all suddenly equal.
--it is in fact probably this capability to utilize death to enhance life which most sets us apart from the animals, perhaps even more than walking upright, except of course when it comes to vampires. Vampires, like Lothos, are those who have escaped the great leveler, become something else, something transcendent. It takes a cheerleader to put them back in their place, to set the universe aright, to restore democracy to the human condition.

As life imitates art, it occurs to me the war on terror is something like the fight against vampires, not that it is being carried on mostly by motivated really cute cheerleaders, but it has all the same elements, at times it seems like an attempt to kill the unkillable, (those already dead) and its purpose is ostensibly the spread of democracy. We must be cautious. Like Pericles, it may be used as a pretext to empire. As in 'Buffy' it seems to represent the permanent and final removal from the world of a seemingly indelible evil a goal which we know is a convenient fiction as long as man is man.

On another note, Tom was of Italian heritage. Everyone knows that Italians on the whole love wine more that most people. Almost every Italian immigrant to American had a father or grandfather who use to make wine in the basement, even in the midst of a confusing new life they knew they had to hold on to something that was good. Perhaps it represented to them the glories of a faded empire, perhaps it represented the means for the temporary removal from the world of the seemingly indelible forces of present despair and inevitable defeat. (I'm a Jew so I really wouldn't know, but, as a writer and a Jew I know that the real danger as always is that the portrayal of character will become caricature.) Even in the words we use when drinking it 'Cheers!'. We seem to extol the victory of Buffy over Lothos. (Not that Buffy was of Italian extraction but in her we see the possibility of the ultimate Pax Romana, the restoration of the accord with death itself, allied also with a possibly winning High School football team) In drinking it, for a time a least we seem to become our nobler selves.

So, what does wine represent really, the hope of empire, or the banishment of inequality, the eventual victory of life over death or the attraction of our darker selves as the proving ground of our souls, is wine tied to the perpetuation of culture or is culture itself dependent on the dissolution of differences between men and women of good will. Who knows, and aside from what it represents it tastes good so, in the end, who really cares. Buffy can go back to the Senior dance and have fun, there will be other vampires to slay, Pericles can build a lasting monument to his culture from mere words, in the end all we can do is try to enjoy what is best in our lives and try to preserve it for those that follow --isn't that the point?
The priest said Tom LaBarbera was already painting away in his new abode. I don't know but I hope so, and if he is I hope he has a glass of wine as well.

So, Pericles, Tom LaBarbera, Buffy, Caesar Osama Bin Laden, it all seems suspiciously random and rambling, a bunch of nonsense, a temporary insanity incurred by a recognition of our own mortality, but perhaps it has its own form of exponential sanity, a means of reaching calculably to a higher dimension through mindless blather, maybe it is-- 'blogarithmic' , maybe it is, --one more glass of wine and I won't care.

Why I Like Beer (With apologies to David Letterman--he needs a few extra)

2009-10-18T10:39:00.008-04:00

First of all there is way too much wine in the world and there is never enough beer.

Secondly, Americans it turns out can make beer better than anyone in the world.

Thirdly, wine has a whole personality while beer has a profile. Sometimes you just don't feel like dealing with a whole person.

Fourthly, people who make beer are friendlier on the whole and don't really make you feel like an asshole when you talk about it.

Fifthly, it comes in six packs. (Twelve of anything is just too much and one is always too few.)

Sixth, nobody ever comes up to you and asks you for 'sweet' beer.

Seven, it fits better in the refrigerator and in general you don't have to pamper it for it to stay good.

Eight, nobody is looking for a deeper meaning in beer, if anything they are looking for less meaning.

Nine, bad beer is generally inexpensive while bad wine is generally expensive.

Ten, it looks better when it gets in your moustache or beard.

Anyway, that's my take on it, so people bemoaning the popularity of beer over wine in this country should just get over it. Of course, as a winemaker I am perennially hoping for a reversal of this paradigm but I don't see it happening in the near future. So for now, wine is the ugly girl at the party that the moderately pretty girls bring to make themselves look better.

So, all this begs the question, why don't I make beer instead of wine,--the answer is the same as why did I get married. From the outside it looks infinitely more interesting.

What Am I Doing Here?

2009-10-14T15:18:00.003-04:00

My wines were recently reviewed by Tony Fletcher on http://www.ijamming.net/
I think I may have mentioned, Tony's book
"All Hopped up and Ready to Go", W.W. Norton
is coming out soon, October 26th, it is a precis of the NY music scene and I for one,
(particularly as a musician finding someone finally with something intelligent to say about the contemporary music scene) am
eager to read it and so even if I have mentioned it you will forgive me.
Anyway, in the interests of pure laziness I am reprinting my response to the review here: (since probably no one else is interested)

Tony,

Thanks for the plug and the honesty. I would expect nothing less and I think you
captured it to a 'T' (though I think you undershot on the Chard,--it is really something quite remarkable now when at the right temp. Several wine professionals have liked it immensely)
but on the whole you did certainly capture the spirit of what I am doing better than anyone which falls somewhere in between the committed muscular amateurism of a 'garagista punk' on steroids (implying a willful lack of marketing polish) and the image of a parapalegic on crutches trying to make the winning kick at a football game also comes to mind. In short (not to make too much of a virtue of necessity) it is intended to reflect my opinion that great wine should be a drama each time and drama by definition should never be polished. Sweet wine is comedy, I really
have nothing against sweet wine or comedy, (I enjoy Rieslind ,(sic Riesling) and in fact I made a super Pear Wine last year. At $16 a bottle it was as good as $70 ice wine--still have two bottles left), it is only the saccharine approach (of) being driven by the market I really despise and the refusal to be driven by the market conversely something that I admire, even if I fail to achieve it myself, sometimes, --it is a challenge to the moon eyed self-swindlers who come and inquire 'do you have any sweet wine' --it is not a challenge to sweet wine per se only to the reluctance to throw off cultural shackles and actually taste something besides sugar when approaching (a) wine that bothers me.

Just to clear things up,

As for the 'Frankie' 'Franky' contretemps. I was aware of the different spelling versions however,
being a New Yorker, an unreconstructed Brooklyn Boy, putting 'Frankie'
on anything would constitute linguistic heresy.
Never even considered it.
Hence, in short not a copyright concern at all.
My previous successful red was called 'Call me a Cab',
so correct syntax is not really what I was going for.
Still pissed the Dodgers left:)

Ken

Tony's original message follows:

Ken

I posted my first review of the Hunter Wine Fest today. Focused on you and Suhru for obvious reasons. As a good honest winemaker you'll appreciate the need for honest tasting notes regardless of acquaintanceship. I found it interesting that you did so well with the red wines (compared to the whites, IMHO) as I think they're generally much harder to pull off in this region. And I love that you think independently and have fun with what you're doin...

All (the) best ..

The Big Lebowski or Where Have You Been Mr. Robinson

2009-10-06T06:11:00.020-04:00

I love old timers. I really do. I always have. They never walk up and confront you directly, they always kind of just sidle up and then you just happen to notice them standing there. As if they didn't want to impose themselves on you. As if they expect to be regarded as irrelevant. They don't necessarily have to be all that old either, like 'The Stranger' (Sam Elliot) in the Big Lebowski, they serve in my experience in our society something like the function of a Greek Chorus; conscience and narrator in one.

The Marlboro Harvest Festival had been rained out so we were setting up our tents on Sunday at Cluett Schanz Park instead of Saturday as had been originally scheduled.
"The grapes are no good this year. Not enough sugar." I had actually noticed the elderly gentleman before picking his way with his cane among the wine tents.
"Well," I temporized 'We'll see, they still got a few weeks, we'll see if it dries out."
"Yeah, I went to Cornell in 1967." This immediately struck me as a bit odd. The gentleman standing there appeared to be in his eighties, his baseball cap and stoop said he had done some farming in his day. I had gone to Cornell in 1968 and he struck me as being at least twenty five years older than I.
"You remember the Boxcar?" (OK, now I was really freaking out, as they said back in the day.)
"Sure I do, out towards Dryden, the Warehouse was in back."
I remembered the Warehouse distinctly. It was what it said it was, a warehouse converted to a club. The likewise eponymous Boxcar had been just a bar, sans music. I had seen Taj Mahal and James Cotton Blues Band among others at the Warehouse in 1969 I had in fact (children look away) got drunk on White Lightning in the dressing room with James Cotton.
"Yeah, sawdust on the floor." He smiled at the recollection.
"I know every joint that served beer within twenty miles of Ithaca."
"Yeah, you went to Cornell alright."
"I know all the farmers around here. I ran the Community Bank in Highland. Knew Mark, you know Mark Miller?"
"Oh yeah, only met him once but helluva nice fellow. Didn't care much for his son, Eric."
I had met Mark Miller at a HVWGA luncheon. He had sat there beaming the whole time but in this kind of impersonal way, the way people who all their life had blinded people with their intellect and now don't want to blemish that impression cultivated over a lifetime with the natural infirmities of old age do. Like an artist who knows when the painting is done and doesn't want to mar it with the extraneous brushstroke. Their erratic blinding light simmers to a steady beaming paternal radiance. They become masks. Finally, strangers to everyone and finally themselves. That was the Mark Miller I met. No doubt he too in his younger days had gotten drunk in the dressing room of some itinerant blues man or jazz artist.
"You know how he got started?"
I shook my head.
"Well he used to live down in Scarsdale. Had these two week deadlines."
Mark Miller used to be an illustrator (Saturday Evening Post and Herald Tribune I think.)
"He got so nervous you know with those deadlines. So his wife bought him this five gallon jug to make wine. That's how he got started."
"Really? Didn't know that. What's your name?"
"Fred, Fred Robinson. Yeah, --I'm the last of the old time community bankers."
"Ken, Lifshitz. I'm from Monroe." This was perhaps the first time I had ever said this and really meant it.
"Oh yeah Citizen's Bank, right?"
"Yeah, right, Marilyn from Citizen's Bank."

Anyway, the Hudson Valley within about the past year has lost two of it's greatest lights. Mark Miller a little over a year ago, and Ben Feder just last week. With their loss, we descend a little more into an impersonal age, an age where machines and algorithms make decision, not people, a world of beaming benign masks, a world where you could never drink White Lightning with James Cotton in the dressing room of the warehouse. I generally don't care really for this 'bemoaning the faceless present' stuff much, but lately it is growing on me. Maybe it's because I am getting to be an old timer myself. Maybe it's because I am getting to be a stranger to myself and everyone else. In either case, that is a shame.
"Yep, no more community bankers after me."
I realize that I am, at 58, a person with the sensibilities of an eighty nine year old man. This is not really surprising, as I have had the sensibilities of an eighty nine year old man since I was fifteen.
"Yep"
"Yeah, not enough sugar this year."
"Yep."

(Note to future biographers: The Mark Miller collection is being held at Cornell,
Mark Miller and Benmarl Winery Collection #6716. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.)

Bookface

2009-10-01T18:14:00.010-04:00

So I just sent a birthday message to my daughter on facebook that read
'Crunkay Badunkday' MC Dad

Clearly I have finally lost it.

This morning I burnt my thumb on a pot.
I knew the pot was hot, I was watching it
I watched it heat up with the flame under it.
Didn't stop me.
Something else to post to Face book.

I look at these both as pathetic attempts to keep current,
to feel alive in this computer and image driven age.
To be or at least appear relevant,
but, it is getting a little ridiculous,
the cost is too high,
aside from the second degree burns
I don't care what Debbie from Albany had for supper.
I barely care what I had for supper.
It is also a little scary.
Knowing all these things about people implies
some kind of responsibility, like now you don't just have to remember
their names and their kids names but also what there most recent emoticon
indicates about their current mood.

So I Was at Hunter Mountain Saturday doing the Microbrew and Wine Festival.
Really a blast.
Dave was setting up next to me.
"Yeah, I been doing this festival for ten years. That's the best
door to go out of." Pointing behind me.
"Yeah great. Where's Tom"
"He's doin' a farmers market then he's going to church. He's talking.
He a lectern."
Well to me a lectern is either a piece of wood that goes in front of
a speaker to hold his or her notes or it is just a folksy elision of 'lecturing'
I tried to puzzle this out, was his father-in-law 'lecturing' or was he
saying he was a piece of stage furniture? Still puzzled, I deflected.
"Yeah, the Bounty of the Festival was a bummer. Really didn't like being
treated like I fell off a turnip truck."
Dave treats me to a look of disdain. This is his normal look so I
don't think much of it.
"Yeah I been doing the Bounty of the Hudson Festival for ten yeeeaars."
I have decided finally that he is comparing his father in law to a piece of wood.
He moves away from me toward the vendor in the middle aisle selling watercolors.
"Yeah, my father-in-law isn't coming . He's a lectern." He announces to the politely disinterested watercolorist.
One might think I had learned my lecterns by now. I haven't.
"I'm going downstairs to pee. The bathrooms are really nice."
"I been peein' for ten years."
And so it went.

Then an interesting fellow walked up to me and introduced himself
as Tony.
Tony actually is relevant and,
he immediately got the post punk references on my bottle labels.
(Most people like the cute bulldog).
As it turned out Tony, was Tony Fletcher
music journalist and wine fanatic.
He has parallel interests to mine, wine, music and writing.
His website ijamming.net, apart from the interesting
articles and music interviews contains a better explanation of
the link between wine and music appreciation
than I have seen before and
his new book "All Hopped up and Ready to Go",
due out shortly (From Norton) treats a subject
near and dear to my heart, the pre-CBGB NY Music Scene.
I know I am going to reserve a copy on Amazon. F'Shizzle.

Anyway 'Crunkay Badunkday' to my kids and
F'shizzle to all you lecterns and
fly skiers and post apocalyptic
bubbles on the sea of musical serendipity.
I really know how to talk like this.
I have been doing it for ten years.

BTW Had tuna fish for lunch. OMG Happy face emoticon.

Integration

2009-09-16T08:27:00.044-04:00

What is integration:? I am glad you asked.

When I was a dewy-eyed pompadoured freshman at Cornell at the end of the sixties it meant social justice. It also apparently meant that my black friends with whom I stayed up with until 3:00 AM playing hearts the night before would studiously ignore me when they filed in to eat at the Willard Straight Hall Cafeteria at the 'black table' the next day. Word.

Integration was already starting to confuse me!

When I was a musician in the seventies it meant that our band had white guys and black guys searching for the musical apotheosis of incipient white anarchy and black militarism, the military had become the venue for social progress for blacks (not punkass, sleepy, white guys in dorm rooms--sorry Marion and Joe), and all this military precision seemed to infiltrate the music, seep in like toxic waste into Ninja Turtle sewers, mutating, turning snarky slouching blues into crisp sparkling R&B routines, --integration now happened at mealtime too, even if it was MREs in stinkin foxholes, while the punkasswhitedudes screamed, 'so long as it's their ass not mine', and the screamin, screamin' radios, and immaculately unthreatening but precise dance routines, every radio blasting, burning it into the already crisp air 'War, Hunh. What is it good for', the Temps turning psychedelic?,

A ball of confusion. Word.

Then when I was a merchant marine in the eighties it meant watching the Cajun oiler named LeJeuene and an ex-marine 2nd Engineer named Varnish congregate in my cabin, two bookends drinkin' beer. Fraternization was frowned on yo know but to Varnish, LeJeuene the lowly oiler was akin, no, not akin, WAS royalty. The very name echoing back to the cordgrass marshes of his South Carolina youth where he had found manhood and purpose, a purpose that had grown fuzzy and abrasive as the cordgrass at the edges, like the marsh gases obscuring the crisp outlines of the new day. LeJeune, well, he duh' living brea'ding embodiment of dat integration, Cajun, militaristic and anarchic at once and both eventually falling down drunk, but happy, no thought of race no thought of rank, just two shipmates worshipping at the bloodyassholebuddyaltarofsemper fi. When Varnish reported for shipboard duty, he slammed head first into the brick wall that was the side of the MEBA Union Hall, flipping assovercrackers, twisting the handlebars of his Harley into a chrome pumpkin vine and cracking his skull on the mural painted there of 'La casa de Micky Mouse'. Carried up on the ship unconscious, like snoring, bloody luggage. Absolutely nothin',wakin up next mornin hungover and glassy eyed with a bandage on his head and LeJeuene right there with a beer in his hand and his best sweat stained Filipino shirt on.
.

Cajun confusing.

In the eighties it meant taking the chunks of software written at different times in different languages for different purposes, and making them all play nice in the company sandbox, --then came the internet, more anarchy, more militarism, more snark, more temptation-- internet porn. Checking my eBay bids while typing code. LPS disappearing like a scratchy black vinyl tide down some vanished Ninja sewer, run aground on the hard edged (literal and figurative) coral of luminescent CDs.

Digital confusion.

The nineties, OK let's skip the nineties. (After all this is a blog, 'sposed to be.)

OK so now we get to what does integration mean to me now, today? As a winemaker it means getting all the elements of a wine to operate efficiently and pleasantly as part of a larger whole. It is the happy anarchy of the fermentation, blending elements, mixing freely, then the long night of isolation in the barrel, waiting to be called on, soaking in the stern discipline of the wood, values of honor and duty. The tannin integration, hunh, what is it good for. The tannins may have joined the fruit to quell the riot of a misspent youth but they are still standoffish, hard edged in public and suspicious, but secretly they like to drink with the oilers in the Cadet's cabin, bumping into the slew of chemicals racing around the deck of the SS Leslie Lykes on their Harley roadsters. Slammin' into the wall headfirst by definition, something you only do part time.

Tannins when not fully integrated are what give you that biting sensation of finality in the back of your mouth. Harsh, brittle, other descriptors; tense, astringent, bitter but sexy, raw and devout like a combination of Elvis Presley and Alan Ginsburg. When they are correctly integrated they provide amplification of the wines other qualities, like an echo chamber, the fruit and body bounce off them, resonate like the acoustics in a really good concert hall where the Temptations are playing. REAL. What was two dimensional, like a war on the TV screen, suddenly present, and contrary to what they tell you,--reality doesn't bite.

So, like the lame bar pickup line we are inclined to ask 'where do you come from,--originally.' The answer is they come from the parts of the grape that we usually discard, the pits, the stems, some from the skins--the woodier parts that once protected the plant and insured its posterity. They live on, in the wine, but mellow with age, like sixties militants, and ROTC cadets who by the time they hit fifty are both wondering what all the fuss was about, they seek out their former adversaries, the colorful anthocyanins and the starchy tannins seek to bond with each other, together they become more rounded, more colorful, former enemies now fast and never to be parted friends.

I guess that is what integration is. To be honest I'm still not really sure,--

Cockles & Mussels

2009-09-11T09:40:00.014-04:00

The song I awoke with this morning is an old one,
it is called Molly Malone and goes like this;
In Dublin's Fair City"
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, Cockles and mussels,
alive, alive, oh! ...

The words are a puzzle,
Who is it that is alive?
Is it the street vendor calling her wares,
or, her wares themselves?
The former reading is more poignant
but the latter more realistic
and perhaps of greater interest to the consuming public.
9/11 answered the above persistent question for me with a certain amount of finality. Who is that is alive?
The answer, at least that day, was loud and clear; 'me'.

We, as human beings are always engaged in an struggle between poignancy and
realism. Ourselves and what we are selling, hope and despair.
The vineyard is a microcosm of this struggle, at least
for me. This year it is realism, next year it is hope.

I watch the 9/11 memorial on TV each year. I don't know why.
I usually hate these type of things. To me they are usually creepy
and calculated attempts to force me to abandon my natural cynicism.
People talking to dead people you know,
pictures of people who I didn't know and
who I am supposed to care about,
PDEs-public displays of emotion,
a willful confusion of the personal and the public,
commemorators inserting their personal messages,
peripheral plugs for their organizations
--memorials inevitably degenerate into the kind of self serving spectacle
that I find abhorrent.

Not the 9/11 memorial.
Not for me.
I watch and listen and
don't know why.

Something is different.
The cops in NYC never look straight ahead.
They are usually looking to the side, eyes averted
or searching for something or somehow aloof, detached.
The cop in back of the speaking stand on the podium
for the memorial, his gaze is straight ahead,
attentive unwavering, present,
this can only mean one thing, somebody is either dead or,
accused of something/ in Dublin's fair city

Yes, and I saw the towers burning with my own eyes,
at least the smoke rising from that fire from the collapse,
the collapse of both hope and despair.
I cried at the display of flowers and wreaths
at the fire company on eighth avenue as I walked
to work in the days following/ Through streets broad and narrow.

The truth is, I did know one of those killed on that day at the trade center,
Nina Bell,--she had been working at TIAA-CREF and
transferred down there just a couple of weeks before.
Chance or destiny. I don't know.
I didn't know her well, but I was at CREF at the time too
and I knew her face.
Maybe that is enough/ Crying 'Cockles and Mussels'.

The vineyard is a mess this year.
I didn't get enough sprays in,
the downy mildew is stripping the green leaves from the vines with
a thorough avarice,
too many trade shows,
too much emphasis on the end product, the market,
not enough on me and my dreams, and new life,
--well, there is always next year, or years,
there'll be time to correct this,
I think, / alive, alive -oh.

The Lotos Eaters

2009-09-06T10:18:00.025-04:00

I once thought I was fairly unique in this industry in New York as a writer/artistic types-turned-winemaker however I have long since been disabused of that notion. The late Mark Miller of Benmarl was a noted artist, Bill Wetmore of Cascade Mountain winery is a novelist and Carlo DeVito is a wine writer with a book on East Coast Wineries, (Rutgers University Press). Since Mark Miller is deceased and Bell Wetmore has more or less semi-retired from the active running of the winery, most of my recent contact with this rather small community has therefore been with Carlo. I have mentioned Carlo and his wine in previous blogs ('Simple Gifts'), and not only is he a fellow writer (and competitor for the affections of the Watkins Glen ASPCA) but like me, his anger management protocol involves the application of what is called (in psychological circles) the Big Mac. One other thing I have noticed about him is that he has in general an impeccable sense of timing, therefore, when he chose this week to address in his blog the issue of wine in grocery stores and the state of the New York wine industry in general I found the timing most interesting. A bill to allow wine in grocery stores, pushed mostly by the upscale grocery chains like Wegman's and Whole Foods was put before the New York legislature this past spring, by summer it was excised from the state budget. Some of its more vocal proponents, like Scott Osborn of Fox Run vineyards have banded together to revive this effort. We'll see how that goes. For now the issue seems essentially dead. So why is Carlo addressing this issue now?

The rest of Carlo's blog (which you can read at http://www.eastcoastwineries.com) went on to bemoan the fact that New York State wineries have had a dismal history when it comes to penetrating the all important NYC market. At first I didn't see the connection between these two issues,--now I do. Rather than explain I will illustrate it with a series of vignettes.

This past June I happened to do the Union Square Greenmarket and I had the following conversation with Rory Callahan, one of the organizers of the NY Winestand. (I paraphrase)
Rory: 'Too bad about Rivendell.'
Me: 'Yeah well, the winery is closed but at least Susan (Wine) still has the Vintage New York store'
(a wine store in Manhattan specializing in NYS Wines)
Rory: 'They closed too.'
Me: 'Really!'
Rory: 'Yeah they never made a profit since they were open.'
Me: 'Really?'

This past week, noticing my October calendar was sparse I went looking for events to
participate in. I notice the NY Wine and Food Show. On closer inspection, the website noted that only wineries handled by Southern distributors were being allowed to participate. I sent the following email to Jim Trezise of the NYWGF.

'Jim

It seems to me that the NYC Wine and Food Festival on Oct 8-11 would be a great venue for NY State wines however, it seems none are participating as winery participation is limited to clients of Southern Wine & Spirits which I guess means Constellation. Is there any way to get a new york booth in there? Maybe through
Rory C?

Ken'

his reply follows:

'Hi Ken – No, unfortunately, it is a Southern event, so only their wineries (like Heron Hill and Bedell in NY) may participate. They do a similar thing at South Beach each year. Sorry -- Jim'

OK, so now, a few days later, we come to Carlo's blog about the inability of NY Wineries to penetrate the NYC market.

I read the blog and send the following to Mike Colameco who is an influential food commentator with a program on PBS.

'Hi Mike
I am a big fan of the show. (I have learned it is good practice to butter up people you don't know and are emailing out of the blue)
I wanted to direct your (sic) attention to a blog
on http://eastcoastwineries.blogspot.com/
called 'The Problem with New York STate Wine.

Ken'

Within minutes I had the following response.

'great article and basically all correct as well
though I'd have to add that some of the LI wineries price their products too high to mind as do many producers from the west coast Cali, Wash Oregon, and as a result
consumers who are always squeezed for dollars often find better value in imported wines from smaller old world producers
esp the Rhone, Beaujloais (sic) Cru's, the Loire, the vast LR regions as well as parts of Spain Italy , Austria and Germany where in the
$10 - 25 range there is a lot of great juice, and we didn't start talking Argentina, Chile Australia S Africa or New Zealand.

But I'd love to see NY get it's act together

mc'

Now Mike is the quintessential New Yorker, and since I grew up in New York too I understand his position. It is true, that New Yorkers routinely expect the best of the entire world to be brought neatly to their doorstep, and at a competitive price. No muss, no fuss. Scott Osborn and others like him who believe (like me) that NY is producing world class wines, and that the marketplace is essentially fair (which I don't) are pushing hard to bring NY Wines to a grocery store near you so we can compete with the flood of wine from Europe, Chile, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa on an equal footing. (To Scott I say, this is not about to stem the tide and); the effort of course is also partly a Trojan Horse to gain access to the all important NYC market.

All of which brings me to the Buffalo lady I described in my blog last week who suggested that we cut off NYC entirely and let it float away to sea. While this would evidently solve the above problem, in the end it may not be the best solution.

The problem as I see it is that this is not just a NY problem. The problem is that we have become a nation of Lotos Eaters. We produce nothing and expect the best of everything. The most smug, self-satisfied upstater is no less guilty of this than the most urbane, world-weary Manhattanite, they only have different priorities. What distinguishes the Lotos is that it grow directly in water and has no connection to the land. The soil beneath the feet of New Yorkers is what connects them. It is what connects us. When you buy a New York State wine you are touching that which connects us, --as I see it the choice is pretty clear, continue down the path of disconnection or find ways to connect with our own soil, the efforts of our neighbors, the fabric of our lives. To Mike Colameco I say sure maybe a bottle of NY Wine costs a few dollars more but maybe something more interesting will come out of it in the end. Maybe the time is right to look around seek out what it is that binds us together rather than what is tearing us apart. As they say, timing is everything and as the song goes sometimes one finds 'time in a bottle'.

If the Schubert fits

2009-09-03T08:41:00.015-04:00

I have been dreading and hoping for last weekend with all the assiduity, misplaced confidence and suppressed lust of a nerd on a prom date with a bi-polar cheerleader. It was the weekend of the annual chamber concert at the winery. The group had been practicing since October of last year working on the first three movements of the Schubert Octet in F and more recently some Rossini quartets. The logistics of managing rehearsals with eight people's schedules for the past ten months had been a nightmare; scheduling around boy scout meetings, bee stings, 4H clubs, PTA meetings, college visits by the younger players. Consequently it wasn't until two weeks before the concert that we actually had all eight players sitting in the same room at the same time. We were already awash in doubt about the wisdom of our plans. A performance at the annual chamber music concert at Morrison Hall and SUNY in May had not come off. The weekend it was scheduled for at the winery, tropical storm Danny was threatening pouring rain. I personally had two other events that weekend and no prospect of help from either of my two daughters who were attending a wedding in Putnam County. We were facing a looming soggy debacle with over $1,000 already spent on advertising, tent rentals and food.

Then Danny stalled off the Carolinas, (distracted by the sunbathers on Myrtle Beach), my sister's ambivalent agreement to donate her weekend turned into a firm commitment to show up and help, my neighbor, despite the fact it was her birthday, agreed to handle the tasting room duties. By mid morning on Saturday I was drenched from standing glumly all morning at the Cold Spring farmer's market where I had had a tiff with the market manager about where I could park the truck. Then the rain stopped. I drove the fifteen miles back to the winery, my hopes inflated by the series of fortuitous events (not counting the tiff and the drenching), I pulled into the driveway hoping to see the parking lot teeming with a throng of classical music lovers and cheerleaders (goooo Schubert!),-- alas, there was neither,no one there except Mai, the second violinist and Stan the bass player. It was 2:30 PM. Dismal. The concert was scheduled to start at 3:00 Then, a few minutes later the musicians began pulling up, one after the other, still the audience was composed mostly of people who had driven them to the event. Then a few other people begin trickling in. By 3:00 PM twenty of the twenty five audience chairs under the green and white tent were filled. I was ecstatic.
"Just hold off a few minutes to see if anyone else shows up." I asked Stan. He nodded.
"No problem."
Another car pulled up. A few minutes later the musicians launched into the spritely first movement of the Rossini.

Anyway, to sum up, it was a really nice event. The rain held off for the entire performance. My neighbor handled the tasting room like a pro and my sister, who I had not talked for months, and who no doubt was beginning to suspect that I was something of a sullen loser, was gushing with admiration.

Well, this post really doesn't have much to do with wine per se. It is more about how people will surprise you given half a chance. Anyway, the next day I went to Woodstock. It was the day of the Bethel Wine Fest so, I didn't have time to reflect on the concert and how it had gone. Now, some four days later I can sit down and think about it a little and start dreaming about and dreading next year, but it is an optimistic dread. Maybe the cheerleader will take pity on me.
Maybe I won't stab her with the corsage pin by mistake. Maybe she'll finally get some meds for that bi-polar thing. You never know!

Health Care Reform (or, Two Angry Jews with Stethoscopes)

2009-08-17T14:32:00.028-04:00

I have only one hard and fast rule in life; never ever do anything that you think is a good idea while driving. I don't know why this rule works or how but it has served me well over the years. So, when I thought of the idea for this post while driving back from the America's Grape Country Wine Festival in Dunkirk this past weekend I was immediately disinclined to write it down (yes despite the fact that these are called 'blogs' we still have to write them). Undoubtedly I will pay for this decision to ignore that rule. Anyway here it is;

It had suddenly occurred to me that at the last few festivals I have been to I have encountered very angry female customers. They weren't angry at me, (at least I don't think so). I suspected somehow it had something to do with anxiety over the ongoing health care reform debate. At the Catskill summer fest there was a redhead who came up to the booth. She seemed nice enough despite several intimidating tattoos. She offered to trade a massage for a bottle of wine. Now, not that I mind getting massages from strange women with tattoos in the middle of the Greene County Building parking lot you understand but nevertheless, I declined her generous offer but as she seemed harmless enough and it seemed like a good deal I suggested my daughter, who was helping me at the show, take her up on it instead which promptly she did. When the local tatteuse came to collect her bottle from me she handed me her card from which I deduced from that she was Jewish,--and that was when I noticed she was angry,- very angry.
Probably partly encouraged by the wine, she had launched into a rather lengthy tirade about how she had been mistreated and misdiagnosed for her medical condition. Her frustration was immediately understandable to me. We who share a Jewish heritage but have not followed the societal stereotype to become doctors, lawyers or accountants, needless to say, still have need of those services. We feel we are entitled to a little better care and attention from our fellow jews particularly in the medical profession, it's only natural. This doesn't ever happen but still we feel entitled to rage at the democratic lackadaisalness demonstrated by overworked doctors who seem only anxious to find the next pill to prescribe. I nodded in somewhat abstract agreement as she railed on (in my defense I was distracted, worried about whether my credit card imprinting machine was imprinting correctly). I saw her point. Despite the continuing perceived indifference we persist in expecting a little more personal interest. You know, after 5,000 years you could offer me at least a plate of 'kishkas' with my electrocardiogram. Of course, as I said, it doesn't ever work that way and speaking for all the jews not identified with professional corporation after their name, just so you know, it makes us angry,--and we're packing.

So, when another middle aged woman came up to me this last weekend at the Chautauqua County Fairgrounds asking me somewhat angrily, 'Where is your winery' I proudly and abstractedly pointed on my laminated map from Staples smack at the Hudson Valley region.
"All our money you know goes down there you know." she asserted unequivocably, pointing at the region just south of where I was pointing.
"You know what I think?" She persisted emphatically perhaps sensing my indifference.
"What?" already intuiting the answer.
"They should cut this whole thing off, (indicating the metropolitan area) and let it drop into the ocean, or give it to New Jersey."
Now, I had lived in the Finger Lakes for ten years and I was very familiar with this sentiment that occurs with some frequency among some upstaters regarding the city that has the hubris to call itself the same name as the state and always looked at it as a kind of veiled racial and anti-immigrant prejudice.
But,
I really was in no mood to deal with this anti-downstate sentiment and so I immediately pointed out that to New Yorkers we were also considered upstaters, trying vainly to deflect her anger by creating some spurious bond that I did not feel. I had been on my feet for six hours amidst the flies heat and hubbub, selling at most six bottles the whole time. My patience and my internal censor were both laying in a noxious puddle on the concrete floor, then for some reason, just as with this blog, full knowing that I was heading for disaster but unable to control it I launched into the following tirade of my own;
"You know what I would like to cut off?"
"What?"
"I'd like to cut off my dog's balls."
I was treated to a look of shocked incredulity. I plowed ahead.
"Yeah, he is always peeing on my bed. He's a chihuahua and thinks my
mattress is one big pee pad."
The conjunctive use of the word 'pee' and 'balls' obviously had offended her more than the sentiment.
She didn't say anything else but just walked away probably thinking I was a little nuts.
Well, equating New York City with a pair of Chihuahua balls may have been a little bit crazy but I was one angry jew and I really felt much healthier after I
said this, as if I had had a mental massage. So, this is my response to the health care reform debate; Whatever they do it's fine with me so long as they don't cut off my balls or send an unlicensed massage therapist to kill my grandma and thanks yes, I do feel better already. Would you like a plate of 'kishkas' with that?
or, perhaps some rocky mountain oysters...?

Pitchman's Paradise (Death of a Salesman)

2009-08-05T08:58:00.024-04:00

In the recent swirl of news coverage and subsequent furor over Michael Jackson's death the contemporaneous event of the passing of famous pitch-man Billy Mays was largely eclipsed. Mays was, even to the most casual observer, a true American original, a huckster, part con-man part show-man part self made entrepreneur in the mold of P.T. Barnum. He was a marketer extraordinaire.

Marketing, though widely despised among college graduates (and particularly feared by English majors), is in fact the grease with which the wheels of progress of the American dream proceed, it is also, when one comes down to it, largely a social interaction which is at root heartless and hollow, one which puts the practitioner in the role of observer, removed somewhere above the fray, calculating, making minute adjustments to his 'patter', the fuel for the engine of sales. What made Mays so distinctive and unique was that by sheer energy he lifted himself above that paradigm, he transcended the transcendence, he would have none of that, he was not just an inflated ego looking with a jaundiced eye for the next mark in the crowd, he was what most marketing experts will confess they dread and despise most; a sincere salesman. It is difficult to dissociate one's own ego from the process of sales. We are all marketing ourselves along with the product at least part of the time, Mays on the other hand wasn't selling anything but the product. That is what made him unique.

As you may have guessed, I have been thinking about wine marketing a lot in this season of farmer's markets, festivals and wine shows. There is in fact a certain skill one acquires wherein one can accentuate certain features of the wine and de-accentuate others depending on the buyer. However, when it comes down to it, the wine is either good or bad, it is either sick or healthy, only after that is it a wine you either like or don't like. You can, I have found, sell someone a bottle of wine that fundamentally they do not like. The question is, --why bother

I could write more here about the Bounty of the Hudson festival (my first real exposure to my fellow HV winemakers en-masse), my stint at Union Square Market, (the culmination of a lifelong dream), the Cold Spring farmer's market (stranger in paradise) or the upcoming Catskill event however, my feeling would be that I was merely telling tales out of school. The various and sundry shenanigans that go on to cast these different venues as mini green Peyton Places are the stuff of good story but in the end, unless they are transmuted into art by some means, it remains basically forgettable gossip which interests the participants more than anyone else. Thus I don't find them a suitable topic for a venue such as this, blogs, which are by definition a rather rawer form of communication.

Instead, let me talk about a subject that was close to the heart of pitchman Billy Mays, in his case as found in that (I have since determined somewhat overrated) product called Oxiclean and in wine in a process known and dreaded by all wine makers; oxidation. The fact is, unlike Oxiclean, the results of oxidation in wine are difficult to predict or quantify. The reasons for this are several;

1. there is always going to be a certain amount of oxidation occurring in wine
(unless it is pressed and bottled in outer space)
2. the oxidative processes have different outcomes depending on the compounds
in the wine which are oxidated (like the expression of genes in offspring some
characteristics become evident and some remain hidden) and,
3. the perception of oxidation is to a large degree related not to the mere presence
of oxidated compounds but to their volatility ('Seniors on Hondas' and 'Hells
Angels' are both motorcycle clubs).

Consequently, the term oxidized may refer to a variety of phenomena that occur in the wine and therefore the term is generally thrown around rather loosely to characterize almost any fault in the wine. The two most easily identifiable undesirable characteristics of oxidation are known to wine drinkers as either browning or production of acetylaldehyde. Browning is always evident to the eye, though moreso in white wines (but it can be seen in red wines with some effort) and acetylaldehide production is immediately always apparent as an overpowering nail polish smell. Both these are produced by oxidation but the former is generally a result of the oxidation of metallic compounds in the wine, while the second is a result of the oxidation of ethanols. It is to prevent the oxidation of ethanol from proceeding to volatilized acetylaldehyde that winemakers introduce SO2 which interrupts, but does not entirely prevent this process from occurring. The link in the chain just before the production of acetylaldehyde is the creation of Hydrogen Peroxide. The blondes in the reading audience may know that this compound tends to bleach out color and also reduce fruitiness. Just to complicate matters there are a whole 'nother set of compounds in wine which may oxidize. These are called phenolics and when these oxidize they produce something called quinones. (Armando Quinones also happens to be my neighbor. He works for UPS and plays in the college orchestra with me and the other bass players.)

So, (to sum up--I was told by someone very knowledgeable to keep these things short), as you can see, the effects of oxidation in wine can be varied and pernicious and can lead to anything from a loss of fruitiness in blondes to the presence of bass players in the finished wine. All I can tell you is that I am as confused as you at this point. Perhaps we need someone like Billy Mays to clear all this up! Perhaps we can come out with a product called OxiCab, or OxiMerlot, something which both stains and cleans your clothes at the same time. Just send in $19.95 and we'll add this second set of handy lint reducing wine glasses.

P.S. After an autopsy, the coroner announced that there had been cocaine in Billy Mays' blood. Another hero with clay feet.

Giving Wine (away in) the Finger ---(Lakes)

2009-07-22T09:27:00.071-04:00

A tribal roar deep in the bowels of the tent swept up from the crowd cohering like a balloon ascending lazily above the eerily vacant grandstand of Watkins Glen speedway. It was the Finger Lakes Wine Festival,-at last.
"What is that?" the woman with the Bacchus wreath on her head quizzed me mutely.
I shrugged.
"Probably someone getting naked or, -(pause), arrested, -or both"
She smiled, probably recalling the customary toga party of the evening before.
'Did I really say that out loud?' I wondered. I turned,--hoping sheepishly my daughter Julia had not heard me. (Luckily she hadn't, or pretended not to.)
"If one more person asks me 'Do you have a sweet wine' I am going to have to smack them in the face." Sonia, her friend from Indiana intoned, serious as a kidney stone.
"But I thought you were from the Mid West. Aren't you all supposed to be, you know,- nice?"
"Well I'm pissed off now.--"
"East Coast style." Julia winked knowingly.
It was getting to me too. I had to take a walk. Get away from the table for a moment where my wine sat regimented and morose, soldiers returning from an unwanted war, objects of uninformed self congratulatory derision, get away from the hordes of skeptics busily consuming it, blissfully unconscious of the sacrifice involved. I watched my emotional and physical inventory both shrinking before my eyes from a veritable inland sea to a mere dust hemmed puddle , post-war optimism washed away down the newly flushed arroyos of mutual suspicion and distrust. Glasses crashing around me like mortars, below, the ever-present helicopter hum of the crowd. Vietnam at 750 ml a pop.
"What tent is this?" I had spotted a bottle of Carlo's Hudson-Chatham Winery Brulle on the table set obliquely in the middle of the courtyard, (actually the apron of the nearby race track that loomed unoccupied like a monument to futility in the background).
"Humane society."
"Wait a minute!" I scooted back to the table and grabbed a bottle of my 'Franky Say Relax' Cab Franc with the bulldog on label inspired by the brilliant aptness to
pour napalm on the already raging flames of involuntary philanthropy. 'Even amidst the ambient futility can't let Carlo get the jump on me when it came to generosity. War is hell!' I thought. 'Especially Humane Society War!' I looked enviously at his elegant professional bottle and mine next to it now on the table with the hand-made label from my eBay Xerox printer. I began to reconsider my patently self-serving generosity.
"Ohh that's soooh cute! Oohh! There's a doggie on the label!" (Salvation!)
"Yeah--"
"That your dog?"
"No."
"What'zis name?" Ignoring the motto on the bottle "Franky Say Relax", the natural assumption following that it was Franky himself depicted, studiously ignored.
"Chewy Lewis." I replied flatly.
It wasn't till hours later I found out what it was, actually.
realizing how apt the combat metaphor was, that the periodic eruptions of the crowd were actually occasioned by someone shattering their wine glass on the asphalt floor of the tent; a difficult feat since they had been prudently tethered to their necks by the event organizers with varying degrees of rococo ornamentation added afterward by their new owners. It was, it turned out, a commendable service giving apt warning those attendees sporting sandals and an advanced degree of inebriation of possible impalement. There it was; The entire cole slaw and white bread theme of the event in a nutshell. Old fashioned practicality wrapped in the protocol of Bacchanalian frenzy, camouflaged by the American mandatory and muscular good humor, like the 'Have a Nice Day' emblazoned in blinking LED characters on the brow of the oncoming bus, glimpsed the moment before it runs you over; just as my acquiescent, victimized smile was designed to conceal my irritation at the onrushing assumption that I actually enjoyed giving away my wine, the wine that I had labored so mightily over.

I had been working non-stop to get ready for the show all the previous week, bottling, printing, stacking, take it out of the rain, take it back outside, load the truck, unload the truck, make the labels, apply the labels, apply the capsules, check the bottles all so I could give it smilingly away to someone who was mostly already disappointed because I didn't have 'sweet wine' and the guy across the way was selling Chardonnay at $12 and I was charging $15.
I don't know why or if I really expected something different.

I went out to the food service area to mull things over. Grab a quick bite. The lines for the meatballonastick truck was twenty deep. It reminded me of the days at Cornell. Johnnie's Big Red Truck behind the freshman dorms. 'Poor man's pizza and meatball subs.'
"That's a big red! Didn't expect that from you guys." Surprised.
"Why" I wondered silently "Was I wearing a shirt with 'talentless moron' emblazoned across it in big pink letters?"
"Big reds don't really go over here" The guy in the booth next to me from 'Warm Springs Winery' cautioned as his partner spun up another batch of wine malteds made from Pinot Noir and some kind of chocolate mixture in a jug. I had given him a sample of 'Franky' to try. 'Warm Springs? Wasn't that where FDR went for polio therapy?' Then it hit me; Franky said 'relax'.

The nachopretzel truck was no better than the meatballonastick franchise run by Giovanni. It was indeed as if suddenly the depression we had all been fearing for the past year had finally arrived, people on breadlines waiting to get fed, only there was no bread, only nachos with pools of melted Velveeta and skewered meatballs.
The barbecue truck stood curiously bereft of customers. "Out of meat" The hand lettered sign read. I saw stacks of what looked like bar-b-que brisket on the cutting board.
"What's that?"
"Fat, all fat"
"No I mean that piece." Pointed to a four pound chunk of charred meat that stood still proudly erect on the cutting board. It was the butt end of what had been a large brisket.
"You want that?"
"Yeah, better'n standing on line for a half an hour for a stinkin' plate of Doritos."
"Know what you mean." The thin, bearded red haired man nodded sympathetically, forking the impressive piece of gristle onto a paper plate.
"A dollar."
There I sat in the food court tearing the charred shreds of meat that clung to the edges of the impressive hunk, clawing the vagrant strands of delectable protein off with my hands and stuffing them quickly in my mouth, congratulating myself for avoiding the lines and spending less than eight dollars on lunch.
People were looking at me aghast.
"What is that? Roast beef?" A woman finally, with enough courage to ask.
"Brisket fat." I replied smiling greasily. "Can't stand waiting on lines."
I looked back down at the impressively adipose section of cow anatomy spying another strand of sedimentary meat deposit amidst the unctuous geology of gristle and blubber. I was no longer homo-erectus. I was a caveman proud to be worrying the kill that had been transformed with his recent invention; fire, the Eskimo stripping his tribe's whale kill.

Forty years earlier I had been a shiny undergraduate not far from here; On the next lake over; A new shoot of hope planted in the verdant fields of intellect and now I had been reduced to this. "Og Hungry. Og Eat."
Another guttural primal roar rose in the distance from under the tent. Another wineglass bit the dust. Another kill.
Back at the table.
"If someone asks me if we have sweet wine, I'm going to have to kill them."
"Uggh" I nodded.
Fast forward forty thousand years and there she stands; Helen of Troy. The most beautiful wmaan I have ever seen. Undoubtedly the most beautiful woman anyone has seen. She was leaving. Oh well. Og Hungry.
"Reserve Chardonnay? Sure. Oops, just let me clean my fingers."
Leaving the festival, there she was again, pulled over by the cops this time at the gate standing at the side of the road being given a breatholizer test. I continued out the gate, steering my oar-swept ship across the wine-dark sea.

Proper Attire

2009-06-24T10:20:00.028-04:00

I was doing the Park Slope in Brooklyn farmers market all summer. That was my plan anyway.
The first day I went down there I was operating on three hours sleep.
Fixing the tractor the day before, resetting vineyard posts all week, no time for a proper laundry, the entire house a disaster area, here I was launching my season,
all my hopes for 'southern exposure' (aka NYC presence) bundled up in boxes in back of a late model Dodge truck with front-end problems. It was Sunday. Laundry day had been Wednesday. I pulled a wrinkled shirt out of the dryer.
Fatal mistake.

I'm setting up the tent, it's slightly dirty, 'I can't do this, wait, I forgot the ice, where can I get ice
in Brooklyn? Do they have ice in Brooklyn? Don't be stupid. I grew up here. We had the Dodgers. We had ice. Of course they have ice.'

The redhead next to me has no tent at all. She his sitting there in a chair with an 'if you please' smile, a sun dress on and a Mexican hat, (not a sombrero, more like a Japanese style sugegasa). In front of her is a tray of what look bonsai gardens in square rock containers. They must weigh sixty pounds apiece. 'How is she going to sell these?' I wonder. 'Who wants to lug around a chunk of concrete all day?'
"Succulents?" I ask, perceptively.
She looks up smiling, as if I had just solved the Da Vinci code.
"Yes that's right, they're succulents."

The market manager is eying me. Not too friendly. More like an appraisal. Something about her is off. The feeling you get when you walk into a 'carny' tent and somehow you know you are just another 'mark'.

The park is a kids' park. Thirty-somethings with strollers. Mostly guys. Mostly white with a few old neighborhood Ricans sprinkled in who were probably there before the area was 'gentrified', whatever that means. All of them have five dollar coffees. Something about them screams, 'I can have everything', --and they do, for now. One hour. Haven't sold a thing. Two hours, still haven't sold a thing.

An attractive older brunette with a fashionable haircut sidles up to me. In a few minutes she's standing next to me, not in front of the table but next to me behind it. Maybe late fifties I'm thinking. The hands always tell, but nicely preserved. Good bones.
"You know, I don't mean to get personal but you know you're shirt is, well, I can't begin to tell you how many things are wrong with it, it's got a hole in it, fraying,
and stains on it."
"Yeah, I know, it's been a rough week. Laundry hasn't been one of my priorities."
"You are a good looking man, but that shirt. Really."
"I'm a what?" I hadn't heard the last part.
"Yeah, you are, you are a good looking man. I just had to say something. I'm a teacher at FIT. You know, it is just something that is in me. Had to say something"
"About me?"
"About the shirt."
"Do you want to maybe grab a coffee later."
"Well," she looks surprised, "Not today,--maybe next week."
"I get it, OK I'll buy a shirt by next week. Save you the embarrassment.
"I used to model you know."
I believe her,the bone structure again. OK, now, never in my life has a woman come up to me and told me I am good looking, and especially not one with good bone structure, (except of course my mother)
I'm driving route 17 back to Monroe.
"What the heck was that?" I wonder, shaking my head.

So the next day I send an email to the people running the market.
I'm not a happy camper. I'm selling the wine right by a kids park. Plus I'm shoved off on the side street, like week old bananas. Paying the same rent as the vendors on the avenue.
I offer to switch to another market. Two days later I get the reply.
"You have to develop a following. Maybe next year we will put you on the avenue. The market manager already told us you were poorly groomed."
Poorly groomed!? This is a farmer's market,-on the street, what do they want? A tuxedo!?
Then it clicks. The woman from FIT. She was a plant. A hundred ten pound bonsai. They had sent her over on the QT to work me. I was the mark.
Next email I send; "I won't be participating in any of your markets. Thanks for
everything."
My world view, restored.
Ahh, Brooklyn.

Poopy Pants Lane

2009-06-12T20:08:00.005-04:00

"He ordered prank pizzas to 888 Poopy Pants Lane. Everyone knows Poopy Pants Lane ends in the 700 block." With this line Luigi condemns Bart Simpson most likely to
a life in prison or at the least a long spell in 'Juvie'.

Anyway, for some reason I couldn't get this line out of my head. Working in the vineyard, repetitive motions, tie, trim, repeat, move on, repetitive motions inspire repetitive thoughts, like mantras, perhaps it is meditative perhaps it is just stupid. Maybe in the sixties, if my Yoga mantra had been 'Poopy Pants Lane' rather than whatever it was (still not allowed to tell) I would be a much happier person today.

Maybe when we focus on the ridiculous operatic aspects of life we miss the real problems, maybe the real problem are much more mundane and logical. This is perhaps what Luigi is trying to tell us. What is it to be a winemaker? It is to be at once logical and conscious of the pranks of nature. It is mind numbing, humbling repetition, punctuated by the smile of someone who likes your wine, it is not living on the edge it is living beyond the edge, in a world of imaginary numbers on an imaginary street in Hilbert Space. 888 Poopy Pants Lane.

What is this ranting all about. I am trying to make some Peach Wine and I can tell you, it isn't going so well. The Pear Wine I made last year was excellent, (I can safely say that because it's all gone now) but, for some reason I can't get the Peach to behave, it is not cohering, something is not gelling. Was it ridiculous to believe that I could repeat that wonderful accident that produced the Pear Wine using another fruit entirely. I didn't believe so, but I was wrong. The fundamentals were not there; the wine is turning out acidic, sour like those straws of multi-colored powder we used to get in the candy store.
'How should I correct it. Add vanilla? No, that's a coward's way out, I need to work the wine, work the acid, not cover it with other flavors.' I tried adding Malolactic bacteria. This is the usual method used on grapes to flatten the acid profile. Then, the next day I read somewhere, Malolactic fermentation tends to mute the fruit flavors in fruit wines, sometimes you can even get a sauerkraut aroma profile, peaches and sauerkraut, I am shaking my head, I am going to end up with something more like a hot dog topping than a wine. Is this a prank? 55 gallons of Sauerkraut juice. Maybe I should have just waited, give the mantra of the wine time to work, time to sink in. Everybody knows Poopy Pants Lane ends in the 700 block. Maybe I should have just made the Pear Wine again, at the risk of repeating myself. Maybe repeating oneself isn't so bad. Maybe it is the slow death of creativity. Who knows. Maybe there is a reason. Maybe mindless repetition isn't so bad after all.
Maybe mindless repetition isn't so bad after all.
"Say, is this the bus that goes to Poopy Pants Lane?"

War, Memory and a Pack of Camels

2009-05-25T10:03:00.024-04:00

Memorial Day is a unique holiday mostly perhaps because on it, we do something voluntarily that we most often either have to be forced to do or only engage in only when the ravages of physical debility and time have left us little other choice; remember.

Memory is both a funny thing and a powerful thing, jester and king in one. It not only honors the past and the sacrifices of the past but it can provide a powerful alternative perspective that shapes our future behavior. I first realized this when I tried to quit smoking. My theory was that the memory of the pleasurable association with cigarettes even more than the present physical need was what was making this task extraordinarily difficult. I am a very visually oriented person so it seemed evident to me that the continued presence of any visual association with cigarettes was inevitably going to send me into a tailspin of craving and cause me to eventually fail. I went through the house throwing out the empty cigarette packs thankfully bereft of their sweet cargo that had formerly summoned me to their altar, I scoured the ashtrays removing any trace of silky ash that I sift between my finger recalling the lost wonders of Shambala, I opened the windows, clearing the haze that had wafted through my living room like the morning mist on Dunis Moor, I threw out all my videotapes (yes videotapes) of pre-1975 movies, especially war movies depicting cigarettes as one of the few un-guilty (then) pleasures of the foxhole, and any movie with Molly Ringwold. I hid all my lighters and even made sure that all the plastic pull tabs on food items that were similar to the little golden seductive strip of promise at the top of the cigarette pack were pre-removed from any food items in the refrigerator. I knew this last was extreme and dangerous and might cause my Oscar Mayer bologna to go bad, but, I was determined! This was war!

Then I went out back to work on bottling my 2007 Merlot wine and take my mind off smoking. There was clearly something wrong; not perhaps with the wine but with my plan. Despite the fact that I had purged all visual cues to my unhealthy preoccupation I was still seized with an insatiable desire to run out and buy my next pack. Was my theory incorrect? Was the habit of smoking really more a physical than a psychological addiction? As I pondered this question my gaze fell onto the identifying label on the cartons of bottles I was using to bottle my Merlot. They were the dark burgundy style 750 ml. bottles of the sort that lend themselves to red wines. My mind traced over and over the line of numbering and lettering giving the capacity and color of the bottles, staring repetitively back at me from each stacked white carton on the skid, the black bold letters; "750 Smoke". "750 Smoke".

So on this Memorial Day I think it is important to remember a couple of things; first, that no matter how hard you try you cannot escape the past and second that memory can often be a tricky thing and that even pleasant memories are impossible to completely shut out, let alone unpleasant ones. So on this day when we consciously seek to remember the sacrifices made on our behalf by our brave soldiers, let the recollection of their selfless deeds be a spur and prompt us to seek a better future and not a reinforcement of habits causing us to repeat the mistakes of the past. Now where did I hide that lighter again?

Simple Gifts

2009-05-18T19:36:00.004-04:00

Usually I have something funny to say. Today I don't. There's an Aaron Copland piece based on an old Shaker melody called 'Simple Gifts'. It and another piece calle 'Ashokan Farewell which was the title theme for Ken Burns mini-series called 'The Civil War' are two of my favorite pieces of music. There is something in the simplicity of these melodies that speaks to me, something beyond the notes or words, something quieter than laughter and louder than sorrow.

The bottom line is that we seem to have forgotten that complexity is somewhat over-rated. Things don't necessarily need to be complex to be good. When I was working as a computer programmer I had one motto 'KISS', 'Keep it simple stupid!" (Of course with apologies to Gene Simmons.) The idea was that if you kept the various parts of these highly convoluted and complicated programs simple, the whole would come out better, more functional and far more elegant.

So, when I finally got to taste some of Carlo DeVito's, from Hudson Chatham winery Paperbirch Raspberry I knew that whoever produced it also valued simplicity. Don't get me wrong, there was complexity if one cared to analyze it, but I realized almost immediately that I didn't really care, here was just something that was welcome and familiar, something that brought an instant sense of recognition and of ease, like a familiar simple melody that somehow has gotten in your bones and makes you smile, like a rocking chair that somehow has acquired the perfect shape for your ass, like an unexpected big wet kiss from your favorite cocker spaniel,
(OK, I could make a joke about Gene Simmons here but like I said, I'm just not in the mood.) That's about all I need to say about that.
Rock on Carlo!

Collagen Monkeys

2009-05-13T09:49:00.021-04:00

I was supposed to have been a scientist. That much was clear to me since the age of nine when I got my first chemistry set. I don't know who gave it to me or why but I suspect it was a birthday present and like many birthday presents one that was intended to launch me on a path to a respectable profession or avocation. (Boys got chemistry sets, girls got dolls with sparkling blue eyes). I don't recall the precise contents of the set but I am certain it contained phenolphthalein solution, Sodium Hydroxide and Copper Sulfate the latter two being contained in squat squarish bottles and the former in a little round bottle with the eye dropper already in it. I am quite sure it did not come with a pair of safety glasses (but that was OK because by nine I was already wearing glasses and had long since stopped playing with dolls). I also recall the rather pungent and totally foreign odors that were associated with some of the contents of the set. (On reflection it seems to me that I probably should not have been sniffing them.)

There were several experiments that you could do but by far the most gratifying was the acid titration test. In this test you took the solution of Phenolphthalein and using the provided eye dropper slowly dropped a solution of Sodium Hydroxide into the test tube and watched the liquid gradually turn pink. I remember the excitement when the first shy streamers of pink began suffusing themselves through the mixture. I didn't really know what it meant but it was fun. I never turned anything pink before (though I would many times after that). What was even more amazing was that as you continued to add the base solution the liquid turned clear again. This seemed beyond amazing to me. This was magic! Making something disappear like it never even happened. This, it seems, was sufficient to prepare me for a life of crime which was what I had intended before I got the set.

As a side note, I never followed through on either my scientific or criminal aptitudes and apart for a brief period in the late sixties I abandoned my inclinations to experiment with chemicals.

Making wine has finally forced me to revisit the chemistry set. Controlling and testing for acidity plays a critical part in the winemaking process. You cannot guess at it. Winemakers are told that wines with low acidity will not do well over time, that it is the acidity in part that protects against microbial spoilage. (I don't know if this is really true. Have you ever tasted Orange Juice that has been left out of the fridge for week?)

Acid it something like the wind blowing across your palate and controlling that acid in wine is like flying a kite, Too little wind and the kite sinks to the ground, too much and it tears to tatters or snaps the string and flies away. New York State winemakers are very familiar with the problem of too much acid in the wine which lends the wine a tart character (like sucking on a lime) whereas California winemakers on the other hand are more preoccupied with the problem of too little acid which can result in a flaccid wine (Whatever Man!). So, metaphorically speaking, the difference between a taut well structured aerodynamic system (metaphorically speaking) and a tattered hunk of plastic streamers stuck in a tree is quite simply the acid content. A big part of the reason for this is that acid tends to stimulate saliva flow (the body attempts to dilute any acids entering the system). Good saliva flow is essential to savoring the various components of a good wine in the proper balance. (Where is the Olympic Spitahlon event?).

There are three accepted methods for testing acid in wine, one is titration (known to me from my chemistry set days) the second is a digital pH meter, and the third is paper chromatography. The last and by far cheapest method is tasting it.

Just to complicate matters, there are no less than four organic acids in wine; tartaric, malic, lactic and citric. Tartaric, as its name suggests tends to precipitate out as tartrates and can leave a crust on the bottom of the bottle similar in appearance to what you find on your teeth if you have not visited the dentist, but different in chemical composition (potassium not calcium based). Malic acid tends to be sharp and spiky whereas Lactic Acid, which occurs in milk products tends to be rounded and milder. If you have tasted a sour apple, that is the taste of Malic Acid. If you have tasted sour buttermilk, that is the taste of lactic acid. (If you poach your apples in buttermilk you're on your own.)

Winemakers sometimes will intentionally introduce bacteria into some wines to convert Malic to Lactic Acid. This process also produces, in addition to CO2 and Lactic Acid something called diacetyl which is the flavor element of butter. When you taste a 'buttery' California Chardonnay this is almost certainly due to the presence of diacetyl. If you taste a 'buttery' Cabernet this is probably because some winemaker accidentally dropped a stick of butter in the tank. Diacetyl is also implicated in something called 'Popcorn Workers Lung'. When heated it tends to volatalize as a mist that will irritate your lungs. So, here's a hint, keep your wine out of the microwave and under no circumstances try to smoke it.

Citric acid is usually a minor component of wine but it can be introduced into sweeter wines to diminish the 'cloying' sensation that sugar produces. This is by the way why lemonade tastes so good.

Anyway, you may be asking at this point what this all has to do with Collagen or Monkeys. Well it turns out that scientist have been experimenting with something called a PLLA-braid, testing it of course on monkeys. They have found that PLLA which is a collagen/lactic acid hybrid provides a scaffold for the regeneration of muscle tissue. So, here's another sentence that should be added to the government warning on wine labels : Warning: Consumption of wine by people who have had collagen injections or plastic surgery may result in a rare condition known as 'Muscle Lip'. As for the monkeys, I have personally seen some of them pumping five pound weights with nothing but their lips and Monkeys exposed to both diacteyl and PLLA have been known to eject Popcorn Kernels a distance of fifty yards or more. OK, now I'm turning pink. I do that when I lie.

The Bikerman Coefficient

2009-04-29T09:18:00.022-04:00

I hate foam. I hate it with an irrational passion that is akin to my hatred and fear of snakes. I hate it in all its incarnations; sea water foam that collects in sickly yellow pools under piers, styrofoam that grates on my teeth with a high pitched dog whistle squeal, couch foam, foam fingers, the foam that exudes from various bodily orifices on episodes of 'House', dish detergent foam that invaded rivers and streams until Rachel Carson pointed the accusatory foam finger at it in 'Silent Spring'; I hate it all. The present fascination of haute cuisine with various types of foamed food is beyond inexplicable to me. The idea that any food could be made more appetizing with the addition of foam to me is a heresy perhaps exceeding that which resulted in the burning of the Czech Jan Hus at the stake in the 15th century.

Having said that, I must admit, there are two incarnations of foam that are not objectionable to me; that on top of beer or on cappuchinos. In both these cases I tolerate it. I suspect it is because I look at it not as real foam but as some kind of fizzy fashion accessory, such as is implied by the use of the word 'head' in relation to beer, (though most people don't look at a head as a fashion accessory, after a few beers it generally can be) and the prefix 'Cappu', implying, in Italian, 'hat'.

Obviously, being a winemaker, (I am told that is what I am now), the inevitable occurrence of foam at certain points in the winemaking process is both fascinating and horrifying to me. It appears at two distinct junctures in the process; first during what is the 'maceration' period of the primary fermentation, when the cap forms on top of the wine and secondly at bottling when a colloidal foam forms in the headspace of the bottle. In the first case the foam is far more pronounced and substantial (as measured by the Bikerman coefficient) in red wines, and in the second case moreso in white wines. The formation of the foam cap in the must of red wines is a welcome and well studied phenomena as well as an integral part of the winemaking process. The formation of foam at bottling is regarded as a mere nuisance and is generally regarded as having no effect whatsoever on the finished product.

Part of the task of the winemaker is to pay attention to things that you have been told not to pay attention to; I call this the 'Wizard of Oz' rule as this process of peeking behind the winemaking curtain is almost always immediately disheartening and only secondarily and eventually productive in helping you reach your goal. So, this week when I was bottling the Cayuga White I happened to notice that the foam produced in the bottle at filling seemed unusually durable and stable, I decided to attempt to yank the curtain aside, so hold on to your dog, Dorothy, it's about to get bumpy, again.

There were two possible culprits that immediately presented themselves; two components of wine that might produce sufficient heightened surface tension to noticeably affect persistence of bubbles, to result in foaming in the finished wine; fatty esters (not one of my relatives) and polysaccharides, both naturally occurring compounds, both also components of glycerine. I immediately dismissed fatty esters. My reasoning was as follows; since Cayuga White has a notoriously low finished alcohol content; this low alcohol content is probably due to the fact that fatty esters tend to break down into volatile ethanol and water (as opposed to fermentation which produces only alcohol). The assumption that it's low alcohol content was probably due in part to the increase in water content as these compounds broke down seemed reasonable. This left me with polysaccharides.

Polysaccharides are interesting little buggers and the fact that they are utilized as foaming agents in the pharmaceutical industry seemed to lend credence to my theory. As it turns out, since they are also the component of the yeast cell wall that when the yeast cells dies and breaks down producing foaming in the must, the fickle foam finger of fate seemed even more firmly fixed on their malfeasance and Occam's Razor further suggested it was at work in both instances of red and white wine.

This led to the secondary question as to why, since the byproducts in the degradation of yeast eventually precipitate out, why would the polysaccharides in the Cayuga White remain in suspension. The answer I have come up with is this: Cayuga White is a particularly cold hardy variety and polysaccharides are implicated in the production of the natural anti-freeze that protects grapes in winter hence it is reasonable to assume the must has a higher concentration of these. The addition of sulphur in the form of Potassium Metabisulfite in the winemaking process causes the formation of sulphuric esters of the polysaccharides in suspension which is more pronounced in Cayuga White because of the higher polysaccharide content. These long chains of sugar-like compounds that are bound together by a fatty ester produce durable foam. QED. Whew! Too much technical jargon but here's the kicker.

Certain polysaccharides, particularly the Sulphuric Esters of Polysaccharides also have a very specific effect on the human circulatory system called 'Brakykinin'. In essence they are powerful vaso-dilators, i.e. they have the tendency to lower your blood pressure. Hence, it seemed that the very effect which was raising my own blood pressure as I bottled the wine and cursed the foam, contained the antidote for that very condition. Ironic! Do you see now how insidious foam is! So, the next time you are at a baseball or football game waving that foam finger in the air, it would behoove you to think how treacherous and tricky foam can be, and to consider the possibility that foam based fashion accessories may in fact produce the opposite of the intended effects and cause your team to lose instead. Just something to consider. And for all you chefs out there intent of finding new uses for foam in the culinary arts, a cautinary word, 'beware of the nefarious mousse!' Now, where is my cappuchino?

Dodgeball

2009-04-21T19:31:00.009-04:00

There is a moment in dodgeball that everyone experiences, the point where one has no perceived advantage in going left or going right, the instinct to avoid the ball is short circuited, one remains frozen in place for what seems like forever,the nervous system's fight or flight reaction disconnected from the musculo-skeletal structure, ripped out like the spiky backbone of a juicy sea bass,
or a jockey stripped from the double harness, the twin trotters of time and space, hurtling along like a funky sulky on autopilot curled round and round the knife edge of indecision like a cocoon,--OK enough metaphors.
What we have been dodging lately are bubbles not balls,--the principle is the same though, we stand frozen like deer in the headlights waiting for the inevitable call of 'yer out', sometimes for seconds, sometimes months, sometimes for years on end, we are frozen, transfixed and yet can not get out of the way, one bubble after another hurtling toward us penetrating our sussurated, semioperable, synaptic, stupefaction,

the tech bubble --bam! you're out,

the housing bubble--bam!--you're out,
.
the investment bubble--bam! you're out,--BAM, BAM, BAM,

wake up, we're not in Kansas anymore we're in the Emeril City, or Dodge City BAM!
All these bubbles! All these balls to dodge.

You know what it reminds me of? Something else that recently seems to have no real center no real essence just a reflection of expanding expectations --strawberries,--yeah, you heard me, strawberries.

What do strawberries have to do with bubbles and dodgeball? They too seem caught in this same uncontrollable soulless expansion. They are huge, and they have no centers and what is more they seem to have lost the essence of what they were, they
have lost their 'strawberriness'. They are gorgeous shimmering replicas of their former more compact selves, expansive gargantuanly irrelevant superficialities, like us, like the bubbles, --BAM!

Why do I like winemaking so much? It always encourages the contrarian in me. Turns the bubbles inside out. It's always about focusing on the opposite; bubbles do not signify the end of a process; they signal the beginning; the surge and ferment that helps us emerge better, more essential, more cogent, more
connected to our teeter-tottering, trotting neural networks, more, not less, --yes that is what is nice about
wine,-- and bubbles,--while there are still a million talking heads talking about the one current bubble, there are a million bubbles that will be worth talking about it in maybe a year or two years when the wine calms down, when this one head calms down enough to drink that wine, recalling bubbles and balls we dodged, then it is our turn, and the bubbles that come hurtling at us one after the other are full of promise that energizes rather than tasteless emptiness that enervates us and surprises us with it's vapid non-essentialness. They say 'wine is life', well
not the life we have been living maybe, but maybe the life we should have been living, instead of trying to avoid. Tiny bubbles, getting bigger.

Two Festivals

2009-04-11T10:47:00.015-04:00

"I am a Jewish boy from Brooklyn, Hebrew and Public School born and bred." This I confessed to the heavy set smiling woman with the purple apron emblazoned with the word "Mary" on it, whose smile immediately becomes fixed, as if varnished by my unprompted revelation. There is no escaping the past in Orange County, not even on a motorcycle. As a word of explanation, I was at the Burke Catholic H.S. sponsored Wine, Chocolate and Music festival, which for anyone who was thinking of attending and did not,--shame on you, it was a lot of fun, anyway, I'm talking to Mary, the woman I had been emailing back and forth about participating. In my defense for the faux pas, I am not by temperament overly inclined toward blurting out unsolicited, self-revelatory anecdotal fragments(heaven forfend! blogs notwithstanding), but in this case I did feel somewhat like a sore thumb amidst all the semi-pious good humor, there in the small gym announcing the past triumphs of the basketball team in large white letters as we, present occupants the field of those past contests, zealously poured wine, hand dipped strawberries, brewed lattes, sampled apples, furtive frankfurters, equinimically dispensed pizza, homely ziti and coquettishly frilled bon-bons all to the tuberific strains of 'If you knew Susie Like I knew Susie, ohh, ohh!, ohhhh-what a gal!'

Anyway, so now it's a week later. I decide to go over to Noble Coffee Roasters. They had been there at Burke too and I had a hankering for a latte (can you say that?). I see the fellow that had been there at their booth. Dark haired, young, good looking, brooding.
"Weren't you at the Wine and Chocolate festival?"
"Ohh yeah, the, what is it? the wine guy?"
Clearly I am irrelevant.
Grabbing my mocha I pick up Orange Magazine, amidst increasingly uninteresting and repetitive profiles of random occupants of the county, there is a picture of Allan Gerry and Paulie Teutel with a bike, a chopper built for the Bethel Woodstock museum,-- the caption reads 'two entrepreneurs cut from the same hippie fringe', who could be more different than Allan Gerry and Paul Teutel, there they were painted with the same fuzzy hippie brush,
"Were you at Woodstock?"--back at the Burke festival, I immediately snap back into focus,--I am talking to Tom, from Pazdar winery, actually the father-in-law, they are setting up next to me, he seems extraordinarily friendly, more than the usual, 'hi I'm your best buddy for the next four hours or until I packupandamouttahere',
market buddies, way,-- Tom starts giving me some of his history,
"Marine Corps. Bergen Catholic H.S., thirty years as an insurance investigator"
"Insurance investigator? Why is he asking me about Woodstock? Did I set something on fire there,--maybe Hendrix' guitar?"
"Heyy, Burke's got a real dynamite basketball team!"
"Did you see the Yankee game?" Clearly not Jewish.
"Exhibition game."
"Yeah I was at Woodstock, lotta mud, couldn't see much, (kinda like now)."
"But you could hear it,--right."
"Yeah."
I am looking at the magazine back at Noble Roasters. A week later. Forty years later! jeez!
Feeling ever more irrelevant. The young brooding guy has a baby, 'Simon' I learn his name is.
They are speaking some foreign language. For some reason I think it's Albanian,--for no particular reason, no more that for thinking Pazdar was Jewish at least, --I look at the bike in the picture, big reclining leather fringed seat, two tier, something evocative,
The front part is a strange, tapered kaleidoscopic shape, like Leonardo's telescope in technicolor, heyy!
weren't we giving birth to the new nation, there in the mud, weren't we the midwives of the new American Renaissance? Where's our Leonardo.
"Old Huey L on the radio 'Power of Love', --that's what the shape was,--
the strange, inelegant shape. A machine of love."
There's a funeral in Campbell Hall I am passing it, timeless somehow, the
man in the military hat, the group is somehow coherent, as if reinventing itself,
The Power of Love, reinventing itself thru death,
Me, I still feel irrelevant, even to myself. Not interested in a reinvented me.
Stick to the routine,--some strange light is emanating from
the group gathered there over the casket, like a Normal Rockwell
light, something gone, like the wrong side of tapestry, something comfortable, structure without the contention of color.
I see another cemetery, empty vacant, dominated by the over sized large cross,
on the rise in back is the red and white, cereal box cell phone tower,
"Wbo you tryin' to call man. Is this 1969 trying to call 2009 to tell me
that I am now irrelevant, old,--unreinvented, and possibly wanted for an
imaginary arson,--spring, supposed to be a season of rebirth, somehow I
just don't feel it, the flowers yeah they are there but not in a rush like usual,
waiting for the inevitable question.
"Lotta babes there not wearing much?"
"Dunno, didn't see much, too much mud."
Yeah, flowers, and the blasted drizzle,--mud.
"What did you eat?"
"Some hippies from California fed us." by this trying to distance myself
avoid being painted with the broad fuzzy hippy brush, impossible,
"Hello, I would like to make a call,--"
"Hello, I would like to make a call,--"
"If you knew Susie. Oh, oh, oh."

Glynwood

2009-03-24T09:19:00.005-04:00

I am in the process of joining a farmer's market group called Community Markets and yesterday they called the annual vendors meeting at a place called Glynwood a few miles west of Cold Spring. Glynwood Farm is located about a mile up a dirt road that runs off of Route 301. I had been expecting something like a conference facilty or a catering hall so when I got there I was quite shocked to find a fully functional working farm with sheep gilded by the morning sun idyllically grazing on the hillside, ancient fruit trees bowed under the weight of past abundance. Even in winter it was so picturesque and authentic that I suddenly felt myself transported from a world where the stock market was dropping faster than a clubbed steer and the sounds coming from the TV talking suits sounded like the cries of the damned in Dante's inferno, to some slower less frantic place.

In all honesty I had not been looking forward to this event. It had been indicated on the 'invitation' that attendance was 'mandatory' for new vendors. First of all the word mandatory always suggests to me a minimum prison sentence and in fact the program which seemed to focused more on the needs of fruit and vegetable growers than wineries seemed to promise that my confinement was going to be cruel and unusual in that I was guaranteed, like an arsonist at an insurance convention feel somewhat out of place.

I was again almost immediately surprised, as I pulled into the parking area there was an attractive young woman, evidently as confused as I was who had arrived somewhat late.
"I just drove from Pennsylvania,--took me about and hour and three quarters." She smiled somewhat abashedly as we both struggled to gain our bearings about where we were supposed to be.
"Well it's a beautiful morning for a drive." I supplied noncommittally.
"Yeah, and it's still better than making cheese all day."
I didn't have a response to this so I just returned her smile.

After the obligatory introductory speeches, the main speaker from Wegman's supermarkets stood up and began his lecture. I was surprised to find myself actually paying attention to what he was saying about how to price your cauliflower, unloading
unsold produce, grape pies, his charming story about tying a ribbon with a recipe card around usually unsaleable mammoth zucchinis and of course the gratuitous picture of his wife and child and finally the attributes of attractive displays. Like all up and coming young men associated with a profitable enterprise he conveyed the impression that his experiences and 'knowledge of the business' were somehow immediately cogent and prescient and worthy of attention. Still, in this context
his remarks seemed to convey an aura of authority and authenticity. The 19th century means of production meet the 21st century concepts of marketing so to speak.

Anyway, following a passable but pleasant lunch and another obligatory hour of heated conversation about the once again timely subject of Food Safety I discretely made for the exit infused with a sudden inexplicable urge to create attractive displays and to vertically position food. Somehow it reminded me of the program I had been watching last evening on the Discovery Channel about the 'Bird of Paradise' and the vivid plumage displays it puts on to attract a mate. What was I really doing here? Trying to sell wine? To attract a suitable female? Safe food? Safe sex? Was this my spring time mating ritual?

My response to this state of biological/mercantile confusion was after returning home to immediately run out to HomeGoods to try to purchase some device that would allow me to vertically position my wine at market. HomeGoods was fresh out of vertical positioners. They had none. (I would have been better off running to the doctor to ask for a prescription for Viagra.) I lept into the car and drove down to TJ Maxx in a panic where after several unsuccessful attempts to buy a broken down lucite floor display they were using for a motley assortment of picture frames I settled for three pair of socks.

Hey, life is just like that sometimes. Looking for love and acceptance sometimes you just end up with socks.

Proctical Magic

2009-03-04T08:37:00.026-05:00

This last Saturday I went up to the Capitol Region Wine Festival that was hosted at Proctor's theatre in Schenectady. I have never been to Schenectady and have never really harbored a desire to visit there at least until recently when the film 'Synecdoche New York' came out. I happened to hear an interview with Charlie Kaufman, the writer director of the film on NPR. I don't know what it was, but there was something in the interview that told me that Schenectady was somehow more than the first island in the archipelago-connect-the-dots trip along the Thruway toward Buffalo. To give the devil his due, it was also coincidentally on NPR that I had heard about the festival at Proctor's.

The name, 'Proctor's', understandably does not inspire an especially warm feeling for me. It evokes either a hyper-anal High School guidance counselor warning us sternly to 'put your pencils down' after the math section of the SAT or another kind of unpleasant exam where someone is shoving something like a pencil up into what I like to call 'the English section' of my large intestine (yes, they give the SAT there too).

In any event, because of the combination of factors that implied somehow all this was
(much like a colonoscopy after 50) seomehow fated, I was approaching this event with that rather strange combination of awe inspired passivity and adolescent belief in what Carl Jung called 'Synchronicity', a series of inexplicable coincidences that inspire an unwarranted confidence in the operations of fate, a kind of ice cream sundae enema of karma, slathered with the whipped cream of trepidation, topped with a hemorrhoidal cherry marinated in my own 'free associative' reactions to the name of the theater.

So, accompanied by my daughter, I arrived at the theater about 10.00 AM, confident that I was both already late and also nagged by the feeling that I had somehow forgot something. I parked in front and walking inside, was directed to a hand cart trolley to be used for bringing in the cases of wine from the car. As I exited the front of the theater pushing the noisy cart, gratified at the considerate planning on the part of the hosts, I pushed open the front door of the theater with the cart and promptly snapped off the bright brass, expensive looking kick-down doorstop that was affixed to the sturdy metal strike plate on the door, and on which I had pinned all my vain hopes of doing no immediate damage. Ignoring the look of horror on the face of the woman just entering, I sheepishly finished unloading, asked my daughter to take the car and park it in the back lot and went in to face my fate.

The Proctor, you must understand is not just a theater, it is a magnificently restored venue, a former vaudeville house with a full proscenium stage flanked by elegant woodwork and plaster moldings, a fully carpeted arcade housing a book store, a music store (a real music store), a coat check, various well appointed lounges, it was added in 1979 to the National Register of historic buildings all recently restored to their former glory at a cost of 2.5 million dollars. I took the evidence of my guilt and wedged it between the boards of the trolley not sure exactly how to inform the officials of the heinous anti-architectural act. I rolled up to the table set up for the vendors with my four cases of wine, denoted in black magic marker as 'Proc 1 thru 4', retrieving the bright shiny, now useless doorstop from between the boards, I held it up like a self-accusatory supernumerary digit.
'Doorstop.' I managed to squeak out. Kaufman's dreamlike Synecdoche already running a loop in my head, 'Krapp's Last Tape', visions of an eight track nightmare of melted videotape.
'Oh Silver Stream, we've been waiting for you!'
'There's a lunch set up across the lobby for the vendors.'
I let out a little sigh of relief.
Apparently they had chosen to overlook my indiscreetly destructive entrance, either that or they assumed that I always traveled with a snapped off $150 bright brass doorstop.

It turned out, (much like the dream sequence known to every college student of waking up late for an exam for which you have totally forgotten to study) that what I had forgot to bring with me was the wine (totally!). Well, not entirely, but I had forgotten that I had offered to donate three bottles of Pear Dessert Wine to the silent auction. This left me with only five bottles left for four hours of tasting. 'Give tiny tastes' I admonished my daughter. The hopes of this strategy working evaporated rather quickly. A thousand people had bought tickets at the door, there were tables serving cooked to order pasta, bruschetta, calamari, imported cheeses, the vendors lounge for Chrissakes was serving hand carved rare roast beef sandwiches and sushi, Opici, Charles Krug, Mondavi they all had booths there supplied with sleek, handsome bottles of wine, plenty of it, they were not going to run out, here I was with my five bottles of dessert wine and the broken off doorstop wedged guiltily back in the slats of the hand cart, it was the SAT and I had a rubber pencil!, it was Charles Kaufman droning on about the dream state to Terry Gross on NPR! it was a proctological exam and I had forgotten to shower! it was a quickly becoming pre-choreographed nightmare! then I looked up,--floating serenely high above the crowds, there it was, - a polka dot octopus with heart-sleeves and a chiffon satin sash. It was the Proctopus! Well really it was a ball gown with eight legs with black outlined suckers, (if that makes any more sense) but somehow it assured me, everything was alright, you'll get through it. Don't worry!

3:00 PM. I am out of wine. Not just dessert wine but all the wine. I am sitting disconsolately at the table.
"My name is Dennis"
"I'm sorry Dennis but I'm out of everything. Even business cards." Writing my website on a matchbook cover.
"Come on Ken! How can you do that!" (He saw my nametag I assume because I had never met him before.)
"I'm a bass player." I have no idea, I am reaching, reaching for anything, eight arms grasping desperately trying to hold on.
"Hey I'm a bass player too!"
A young nice looking woman with dark hair standing at the table next to him.
"Hey,-I'm a bass player too!"
"Wow! What a coincidence."
Well, all wasn't exactly forgiven, I didn't exactly expect it to be, but then there was this quirky kind of camaraderie it trumped all the gaffes, the mistakes, the miscalculations. It was a brotherhood/sisterhood based solely on pure coincidence and a ten-foot flying polka dot octopus.
"I'm definitely moving here." I said to the greyish-blondish-haired woman in the purple shirt sitting at the table when I exited the exhibition area.
"You're moving here?" she asked incredulously.
As we drove away, I saw the big GE sign rising over Erie street, un-illuminated, abandoned, still somehow it was beaming, smiling, smiling right at me like an electric warming sun. 'We bring good things to light'. Hah!

'

Emotional Sense

2009-02-19T09:53:00.031-05:00

Is there really anything called emotional sense?
Short answer: Yes.
Is it ever the truth itself?: No, at least not the whole truth.
What good is it? It shows us what the truth is.
How?: It reveals through a particular phrase, an expression, or an idiosyncratic use of language a deeper truth that logic has overlooked. Voila! The Socratic method is not dead.

Take the recent case of the chimp in Stamford that viciously attacked a woman. I think we all knew something strange was going on there but then logic told us, 'nothing ever really strange happens in Connecticut, that's where Martha Stewart and David Letterman live!' What was the particular phrase, the telltale tic that was the key to unraveling this primate mystery? I will tell you. When the chimp began attacking the cops, the owner yelled out 'Shoot the chimp! Shoot the chimp!' Somehow, this didn't make emotional sense to me. No loving pet owner would yell out 'Shoot it! Shoot it' unless it was attacking a loved one. There is an emotional equation at work, not logic. However, viewed from a strictly logical standpoint, it made eminent sense to yell that out under the circumstances. Then the story began leaking out. The woman was feeding the chimp wine and filet mignon. She was dressing it up and sleeping with it. Suddenly, it was clearer. As a pet she couldn't have wanted it shot, but as a misbehaving surrogate husband, well, in that case gentlemen, fire away. Being from Connecticut, what else could you shout out under heightened emotional circumstances but the logical thing. She might sleep with a monkey but she would never betray her class.

It's funny how an expression will give away the emotional dynamics of any situation. Take for instance how black people generally phrase the fact that it really doesn't matter what race you are; they more often use the expression; 'black, white or indifferent' to describe this. 'Indifferent' isn't a color, it's an attitude or an emotion. By employing this phrase they indicate by extension that, from a black perspective, the differences they see in race are largely ones of attitude and emotion, that is what primarily distinguishes them. This approach has its limitations; witness (despite Snoop Dogg's amusing reverse tolerance) white rappers. White people will on the other hand, I have observed, instead use the phrase 'black, white, purple or green' or some variant of that. This is immediately irritating because there are usually no actual purple or green people except in the morgue. What this indicates is that white people generally regard racial difference at root as a matter of simple observation. Undeniable. However, in 'emotional sense' terms, what this leads to is an attempt to extend that logic, to use it to justify the pre-existing associated emotional attitude; this is called 'rationalization' It leads to all kinds of fun pseudo-logical and pseudo-scientific attempts to extend the visible difference in skin color to invisible differences like; logical capability, work ethic etc. etc., I don't have to expand on that, there is, despite the image of a black president in the white house, plenty of that kind of nonsense still around, or didn't you notice.

Having established that 'emotional sense' in fact exists, what then is it about wine then that might or might not make emotional sense. What is the one phrase we employ that will give away the key to it, the truth of the matter. When I first started in this business I went up to Royal Kedem winery in Marlborough to talk to the winemaker there, you know, to get an inkling. The first question he asked me was 'Will you make red or white wine?" He was looking for a key to my personality; an insight into my particular emotional truth. That in fact is the task of the winemaker to ferret out the emotional truth of the grape and then apply the logic of winemaking to it. Unfortunately, this critical first step, in this fast paced society in which we live is often overlooked or neglected. In my previous posts, I have mentioned that it is possible to skip steps in the winemaking process, this is one more piece of evidence of that; that even the most fundamental step can sometimes be skipped. The result is apparent in any liquor store; shelf on shelf of Chardonnay that is just Chardonnay, or indifferent red wine that could be Cabernet or Sangiovese or Syrah, it really doesn't matter. What has to happen to get people to focus on what they are drinking not as a generic experience but as a very particular experience, an experience with its own particular emotional truth? Well obviously, part of the blame goes to winemakers who are putting out this 'standardized' product. They are behaving of course as logic dictates they should. They are behaving as if they are from Connecticut. What about the consumer? Since there is no one phrase that will serve under every circumstance, the next time you are drinking a bottle of wine let me suggest an approach. Try shouting out, 'Shoot the monnkey! Shoot the monkey' then quickly taste the wine and see whether there isn't something different about the experience. I'm betting there is.

Fifty-Eight Twice

2009-02-07T11:42:00.043-05:00

I am actually 57 but I have been telling myself and everyone else for the past year that I am 58. Why, one might ask, have I done this? It seems a little bit strange to lie to yourself, make yourself older than you are (unless you are a teenager trying to buy cigarettes or beer). My reasoning is as follows. As everyone is aware, as you get older, time seems to speed up, the years start to fly, this is my way of slowing down that process, by skipping 57 I get to be 58 for two years and time seems somehow readjusted to the pace that I remember.

You may criticize me, and justly. 'Isn't this just obvious facile self-deception?' you may ask. The answer is 'of course it is', 'yes', but! it seems to work. I feel more relaxed, not under so much pressure associated with a date certain in the future, my birthday will inevitably come but it will not signal any change, all will be the same, I will just be 58--again. -- I will have a 'do-over'. We all have our dirty little secrets. This is mine.

One of the remarkable (and sometimes frustrating) things about wine is that you can't really rush it, nor can you slow it down or go back. It just takes time, all these processes of infiltration, coagulation, clarification, transmutation the resolution of myriads of complex interactions, links in the chain, rungs in the ladder that must be ascended one by one, no skipping, no going back. In wine there are no 'do-overs'.

By now the reader should be able to recognize that last paragraph from beginning to end is just one more facile self-serving lie. You can't always expect a perfect vintage, so, it is, or should be, common knowledge that a winemaker can also elect to compensate for the vagaries of nature and time. One can mask a deficient vintage with heavier oaking; a sickly Pinot can be turned into a passable Champagne; the natural bitterness of a Gewurztraminer can be easily masked with the addition of a little sugar. Steps can be skipped, even omitted. Yes, the winemaker's dirty little secret is this; the mistakes or deficiencies in wine, as in life, usually can be corrected, however, in winemaking there is no corresponding impunity; in winemaking there is always a price exacted. Winemakers who learn to correct flimsy wines with oak tannins or other methods can easily fall prey to the assumption that all their efforts will benefit from this approach. Do I exaggerate? Do I kid? How about fifteen years of over-oaked Chardonnays from California?

When correction becomes a habit instead of an ameliorative (and it always does), that is the danger. An ethic of correction inevitably becomes an ethic of over-correction. With a little marketing you can make over-oaking acceptable, even desirable. It then becomes the same in life. One can say or do whatever one wants without regard to people's feelings because it can always be smoothed over later, one can play fast and loose with quality and fix it later with a good ad campaign, the goal becomes no to do 'the best one can do' but rather 'the best one can on average'. In the world of statistics better and worse are equal heresies. It is the ethic of the 'do-over'. What's wrong with this approach, arguably, the statistically correct approach? Well maybe you happen to miss that one perfect vintage, that grape that really needed nothing or next to nothing to make a perfect wine. Maybe it will be 1 out of 10, maybe it will only be 1 out of 100 but, with the 'do-over' ethic you are sure to miss it. Maybe 57 would actually would have been better than 58 twice. The fact is I will never know. The one good thing is that 58 twice is not 116.

Blogging Blogojevich in Blogadoon

2009-02-01T12:39:00.012-05:00

Everyone knows the story of Brigadoon, the mythical Scottish village that only appears once every hundred years. No one from the village may leave or it will disappear forever. OK, it's time admit it when the fairytale is over. We baby boomers grew up in Brigadoon, a place protected from change, a place ensconced in the mists of legend and lore and protected by the mysterious hand of fate. A place no one could never leave or it would cease to exist forever. We all knew the consequences so we chose to remain. That no longer seems to be the case. Someone has left and the next time we all disappear, it may be forever.

We must find out who it was, who was improvident enough to put his own personal good above that of his fellows, ferret out who was it that left? Was it possibly Rod Blogojevich when he departed from Illinois to appear out of the morning mists on Good Morning America and the Early Show? Was it bonny Blogojevich, the all-American tough kid from the north side of Chicago who made good and got an expensive haircut, did he ruin the spell and spell ruin for the rest of us? Did he cross some invisible boundary, thrust himself out into an unwary world at the expense of his colleagues and his state? Will the state of Illinois or possibly America disappear never to be seen again except in a Lerner and Lowe musical revival? The process of disappearing seems already to have begun. If you look on the Illinois State website for his bio, there is no Governor Rod Blagojevich, his bio is gone, missing, disappeared, nada. It is only the first sign of many? Are we all destined to now disappear, be replaced by a '404 file not found' error in the webpages of memory. Perhaps only Oprah can save us from this fate!!

For some reason I felt sympathy for Blagojevich. There was Harry Smith on CBS looking like ole' Rod was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, something he stepped in and was glad to find himself wearing brown shoes. Yet, here I was feeling sorry for the weaselly guy who it seemed everyone knew was finished except for him. Why was that I wondered? Then I realized, --that's exactly my job. A winemaker's job is to hold on to something with very public desperation, something everyone else knows is likely to disappear, then to bottle it and sell it. Here was Rod, selling the public desperation. Tryin' to hold on to it against what all of us saw as reason.

What keeps us going? What kept Rod going?
Well, for one, sometimes we do pull it off. Sometimes we do capture that ineffable combination of aroma and taste and there suddenly it is again, the essence of that grape, swinging away like a prizefighter at the Golden Gloves.
We stop asking; How do you capture something that is evancescent? How do you recognize it when it is present? When it disappears how do you know when it is likely to appear again? How do you prevent it from disappearing forever? Can you bottle it?
.....
And if we do bottle it. So? what happens then? Well, let me introduce you to Oprah Winfrey the junior senator from the great state of Illinois and Brigadoon.

Stop and Smell the Asphalt

2009-01-28T09:34:00.018-05:00

In my life as a computer programmer people would often come up to me, usually with a kind of scary smile that one associates with an impending car crash, and ask me what I studied in college. "Music" I would reply innocently, waiting for the inevitable response, "Oh yeah! Programming must have some connection with music. There's a lot of music majors who are programmers", which provided the perfect opening for my stock reply, "Yeah, the connection is that we are all poor". I structured my response this way in an attempt not to exact pity, but to forestall the inevitable nonsense about programming and music being both fundamentally 'mathematical' activities. What exactly this mysterious 'mathematical' component in either programming or music I must have somehow failed to grasp over the last twenty years. I think what they mean to say is that they are both somehow abstract, which is far more believable and accurate (but then again why be either one of those).

What music and programming do have in common is that they are both made up languages; entirely human inventions with arbitrarily constructed grammars. In both, one must follow the rules to a 't' or the entire effectiveness will be entirely lost. This of course is in direct contrast to normal language which was evolved rather than being intentionally constructed (like Esperanto) and which consequently permits all kinds of liberties with no fundamental harm to the underlying meaning.

Lest one leap to a conclusion, because a language is made up however, does not necessarily mean that it is abstract. The language which is used to describe wine is also an entirely made up language, but a language almost entirely constructed of metaphor, that is, it uses concrete objects to describe an abstract experience (this is, when you come to think of it, the exact opposite of abstraction). We have an unbalanced vocabulary when it comes to describing wine; the few non-metaphors (acidic, tannic, sweet, soft etc.) and then an extensive vocabulary of metaphors (cherry, peppery, herbaceous, black currant, vanilla and on an on), in fact, reading a wine list in almost any winery can almost immediately induce a state of metaphor fatigue (in engineering known as 'metal fatigue', in music as 'heavy metal fatigue', and in programming as a 'coffee break').

The sad truth is that smell and taste are the gangsters of the senses. One can peacefully coexist with an unsightly mess (witness my office) but an offensive smell or taste, once they've got you, they've got you by the short hairs (forgive the crudeness of the metaphor, but it is especially apt). They are the least prone to abstraction and not susceptible to negotiation (I'm gonna make you an odor you can't refuse). Neither is sight, for example, as indelibly wedded, or 'fixated' to specific objects. We do not generally call the color black, 'night' or the color red, 'apple' (orange is the exception) but the point is we have abstractions of color that serve us fairly well. The same is not true for aroma or taste. If we want to convey how something tastes or smells we generally have to link it to a concrete object (via metaphor not handcuffs). 'It smells like hibiscus', has meaning, saying
'it smells like spring' is virtually useless (unless you are a mattress salesman).

The explanation I have seen for this is that language is fundamentally a left brain activity while smell and taste is processed in the right brain. I am not too sure about this. What about if I turn around? (blonde joke here).

Anyway, by far the most interesting reaction I have gotten in my own tasting room was to my use of the term 'asphalt' to convey an aromatic component of my Cabernet blend. This invoked suppressed laughter and the accompanying suggestion that perhaps the grapes had fallen off the back of a truck while they were being delivered. I would like to reply here in that I have looked it up and 'tar' is in fact a member in good standing in most most wine descriptive lexicons. It's dues are paid up to date. It's funny you know that when you come to think of it there's a lot of musicians who make wine, I think it's because, you know, 'guitar', it has 'tar' right there in it!

To Sir2 With Love

2009-01-26T08:39:00.022-05:00

There should be a government warning label on blogs when the blogger is about to go off on an ill-informed rant that concerns health issues. At least in this case, it concerns a subject which is of current interest to the wine (making and drinking) community, and, I will be in good company. The subject of course is aging, and my co-ranters (if anyone suspects that this is an article concerning the Islamic prohibition of alcohol, please note, that the phrase 'Co-ranter' has nothing to do with the Muslim bible which in English is generally spelled with a 'K', or a 'Q' never with a 'C') are Morley Safer and Sixty Minutes who last night did a 'science' piece on Resveratrol, the so-called 'anti-aging' component of red wine.

Winemakers in general (me included), tend to wet their pants whenever there is a high profile piece done on the benefits of Resveratrol. The reason is of course is that we see instant dollar signs on the assumption that increased public awareness of the health benefits of drinking red wine will translate into increased sales. The Sixty-Minutes piece provided a good illustration why this hope is probably ill-founded in that the American proclivity for distilling every possible physical pleasure or benefit into pill form is already well underway. According to the piece, a company called 'Sirtis' has been formed to develop and market Resveratrol in pill form. The piece featured the well tanned and youthful founders of the company, David Sinclair, a Harvard researcher and Dr. Christoph Westphals.

We, as a society, seem increasingly preoccupied with the subject of aging, witness the movie, 'The Case of Benjamin Buttons' and the 'The Case of Barry Manilow' (and of course who could forget the memorable 'Case of Viagra')all instances where the normal processes of aging seems to have been confounded. Before we all rush out to return the 'Depends' to Shoprite, I think it's worthwhile to take a closer look at the question of the benefits of Resveratrol.

What exactly is Resveratrol? In this blog we have already talked about one component of wine which as a group are called 'polyphenols' (also called anthocyanins), Resveratrol is a member of this group. It occurs almost entirely in the skin and seeds of the grape (as do all polyphenols).

One of the biggest challenges in growing grapes is their susceptibility to various forms of mildew and rot. All grapes require anti-fungal sprays and, as most winegrowers are aware, white grapes in general require several more anti-fungal sprays throughout the season than do red grapes (there are of course a few exceptions). Resveratrol plays a significant role in this in that it is a natural anti-fungal. This of course explains this discrepancy in susceptibility (in that red grapes have more anthocyanins) and why it occurs in the skins of grapes as that is the point of entry for fungus. Most people however are not particularly susceptible to topical fungal infections (with the exception of athlete's foot, which may explain the popularity of grape stomping), so why does Resveratrol have benefits for us?

The reason advanced by the Dick Clark look-a-likes in lab coats on Sixty-Minutes (does Resveratrol help with bitter anger?) is that Resveratrol activates an anti-aging gene call Sir2. Activation of this gene results in various benefits including increased elasticity of blood vessel walls, cancer-suppression, diabetes suppression, greater motor coordination, reduced susceptibility to stroke and cataract reduction. All this much is pretty well established, and this, without even the necessity of putting it in ironic context, is great news!. Where there is still some disagreement is whether Resveratrol actually extends the life span. Sinclair's tests on yeast and worms seem to indicate it does, other studies, (Pearson et al., 'Resveratrol Delays Age-Related Deterioration and Mimics Transcriptional Aspects of Dietary Restriction without Extending Life Span', Cell Metabolism (2008)), seem to indicate otherwise. The suggestive title of the second article indicates that there is in fact another way to activate this gene which there is, that being by prolonged semi-starvation or what is called (somewhat both ironically and euphemistically) in scientific circles, 'DR' (dietary restriction) and indeed this 'mimetic' effect is what prompted Sinclair's original work.

Because of the anti-fungal properties of Resveratrol previous studies had been done to determine if it had any anti-bacterial or anti-yeast qualities. Interestingly, these showed that there were, but only on specific bacteria, namely those that cause meningitis or gonorrhea. (Docherty, et al, Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (2001)). Normal staph and strep germs and yeast were all unaffected.

So, to summarize to this point, (and I apologize for the level of technicality of this blog, which, if you were taking Resveratrol you would have no problem with), Resveratrol, in people, causes the body to think it is starving, in test tubes it prevents gonorrhea and meningitis and in grapevines wards it off fungus.

All this information has encouraged me to form my own company called 'Starving Over-Sexed Artists Being Blatantly Attacked by Mushroomlike Entities' or "S.O.S ABBA ME". As indicated in the Sixty Minutes piece, it would take one thousand bottles of wine to deliver the amount of Resveratrol found in one pill. My plan therefore is to sell miniaturized bottles of wine with one thousand bottles to the case. My only problem may be getting approval for the government health warning on the labels about the risks of drinking wine. The type may be too small to read without glasses.

Super Bass-O-Matic 76

2009-01-22T17:08:00.002-05:00

Before there was sushi there was the Bass-O-Matic 76. Never mind the painstaking artistic hewing of plump maroon slabs of Ahi Tuna into bite sized delectable portions of exquisite proportion by keen eyed artisans with razor edged knives. If we are to believe the breathless injunctions of Dan Akroyd's smarmy informercialist on SNL, 'you'll never have to scale, cut or fillet again'. Just throw the whole fish into the Bass-O-Matic 76 and voila, fresh, drinkable sushi without all the, smiling, bowing and messy green toothpaste looking stuff that makes you feel as if you were being dragged uphill by a meat hook inserted in your nasal passages when you've eaten a portion the size of a small mole. Fast, not labor intensive and refreshingly
simple, no messy waste and it does not require mastering the use of chopsticks.

The Bass-O-Matic however also serves another educational purpose; it demonstrates that under the right conditions, most protein is water soluble. Why and under what conditions protein remains soluble is a question that faces winemakers frequently, particularly in the production of white wines where the sudden appearance of 'protein hazes' and precipitates can markedly influence the marketability and sometimes the taste of white wines. What is 'protein haze'? Is it related to 'purple haze'? Will it make you 'kiss the sky', or 'kiss this guy' (a veritable close-captioner's nightmare which perhaps explains why Hendrix gets very little TV airtime) while under its influence? Well, it seems that Hendrix once again has proven somewhat multi-lexically prophetic, if still obscure, in that the appearance of haze, purple or otherwise is somehow related to the quantity of acid in the system. Protein solubility in liquids is, to a large extent, a function of the pH of that solution which in turn is related (indirectly) to the overall acidity. The worst possible pH of a liquid (when it comes to solubility) is about 4.0. Most wine has a pH of about 3.2-3.4. Red wine is slightly higher. The tricky part for winemakers is that white wine's pH will slowly increase over time. This slight increase of even .1 pushing the wine toward that twilight zone of minimum solubility is enough to precipitate out proteins which are then immediately noticeable as whitish stringy, dancey long globules, (like the goo they show you on CSI when they are doing the DNA tests, with Gucci safety goggles of course). In any event, it means the wine can start to appear something like a slightly anorexic lava-lamp. There are of course other factors, like heat, agitation, the presence of unbound complex polyphenols (and thank goodness for these! I could drink them by themselves) which insure that if you throw a slightly hazy wine into a Bass-O-Matic 76 the result will be creamy and delicious. Far Out! What could be a better match! White wine and fish!

The easiest method of removing these proteins, long before you have a Woodstock commemorative concert in your bottle, is to add a quantity of bentonite to the must which turns the proteins into a wine slushy that sits on the bottom of the tank or barrel or whatever you are using to keep the wine from spilling onto your Ahi Tuna.
The problem with this method is that it also removes a lot of the flavor compounds as the bentonite does not distinguish between proteins that have already attached to polyphenols and those that are living the carefree bachelor life. I guess there are no easy answers in life. 'Scuse me while I kiss this bass'.

Reversal of Fortune

2009-01-20T08:59:00.004-05:00

Today is a really remarkable day. Yesterday I watched an image of Joe Biden and Barack Obama standing together on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial while Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger sang. There was the president-elect and vice president-elect and I couldn't help noticing that something in me, call it conditioning or an unwillingness to suspend disbelief was almost forcing me to perceive, in contravention of fact, that the roles were reversed, (not Pete and Bruce but Barack and Joe); that I should be encouraged about our society because we had finally come so far as to elect a black man vice-president. A moment later I realized just exactly how remarkable this picture I was viewing was.

Changes in society are sometimes not incremental but they never come out of the blue. It is like a big chunk of ice breaking off from a glacier. It' the sudden, dramatic visible evidence of decades of tedious pushing from behind and cumulative pressure along a broad front. A big chunk has broken off today in a very visible and dramatic manner but we should not forget either all the pushing from behind or the fact that it is dropping into very troubled waters.

So how do we relate this to wine or Hudson Valley wines in particular? Well, our terrain here is to a large extent determined by the path of a previous glacier, one that carved out the Hudson River Valley and pushed thousands of tons of Canadian soil, rock, gravel and hockey sticks down to our area here. What they call the 'terminal morraine' or the deposit of rock and soil that marks the point furthest south that the glacier reached is to found in Brooklyn, specifically it is a hill that occurs in the otherwise mostly flat borough that is the location of Greenwood Cemetery. A lot of famous people are buried here in Greenwood, including the abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, Leonard Bernstein, the famous composer and conductor, and George Catlin the famous Indian painter. There are also quite a few mobsters buried here including Albert Anastasia and (Crazy) Joey Gallo (no relation to the winemaker), Hey, it's Brooklyn.

In the last few posts I focused on 'debunking' some of the myths about wine (this in a reversal of my normal tendency toward 'bunking'). On this remarkable day, this particular day when we are looking forward, I would just like to suggest that we also look back, to remember that the wine industry in New York State today would not have been possible if it had not been pushed forward by some rather remarkable and some arguably crazy individuals, individuals like Mark Miller, Konstantin Frank and Charles Fournier and others. While the big chunk of ice has not yet broken off for us, there is definitely a perceptible cracking sound and we can clearly mark the terminal morraine where their efforts ended and our work begins. So, when it feels like things are not really moving ahead, listen for the sound of falling ice (and let's hope it is not just the sound of someone drinking scotch on the rocks at an inaugural ball, or cleaning the White House roof from icicles before the new tenant moves in).

De Department of Homewand Secuwity

2009-01-18T15:39:00.005-05:00

"I'm going to catch dat wascalwy terroirist if it's the wast ding I do" --Elmer Fudd

There is something about the phrase, 'Homeland Security' that makes me vaguely uncomfortable. It has a disconcerting, somewhat abstract, almost European feel. The word 'homeland' is not one that, previous to the coining of this phrase. was in general usage or employed in any conventional context to describe America. I suspect it was invented 'de novo', cloned, not born, specifically for the purpose of naming a government agency after it (I have the same suspicions about new breeds of dog like 'Labradoodle', I think the dog was invented to suit the name and not vice versa) .

The use of the word 'security' in conjunction with it does not improve matters much as it seems to imply that America is some big mall and that terrorists are simply trying to boost a pair of jeans from the 'Gap' (call Security!). Maybe I'm just being picky, but when I use a word to describe America, I prefer 'country' or 'land', even 'neighborhood', any of those sound far better than 'Homeland'
which ranks up there with 'Motherland' and 'Fatherland' s one of my least favorite words. Worst of all, it doesn't make me feel like the place it is describing is anyplace special, it is 'the Homeland' without even the benefit of a possessive pronoun like 'my'.

The French have a word to describe what makes a certain piece of land, a certain location special; They will tell you that it is some ineffable mystical combination of sun exposure, soil, wind, temperature and terrain. It is generally used to describe why it is that wine from a certain piece of land is different in character from that produced on another piece of land whether that second piece be across the ocean or just over the hill; that word is 'terroir'. Americans have another word to describe something that is ineffable, impossible to define and produces hard to categorize results. They call it 'b_llsh_t".

If I seem skeptical about the concept of 'terroir' as contributing anything whatsoever to the quality of wine, it is not because I do not believe that all the elements of weather and terrain are important to producing grapes of quality; of course they are, but, to assert that they somehow collectively seep in to the grape and make my grapes (and consequently the wine) somehow different from Joe Snow's grapes over the rise is just nonsense. The reason my wine may be better or worse will stem from the fact that I have planted grapes appropriate or not to the terrain, picked them at the optimal time or too late or too early and had a winemaker who knew exactly how to handle them, or, I used 'Winemaking for Dummies'. Nothing mystical about it.

Let me tell you the reason this idea of 'terroir' has become so entrenched and so facilely adapted as an explanation for varying quality. Europeans had some six or seven hundred years to determine which grapes were appropriate for which soils and locations. This resulted in a mutually beneficial adaptation of site to grape, and also over time, through selection, of grape to site. This all came to a screeching halt around 1860 when a little North American root louse called 'phylloxera' was accidentally introduced into European vineyards. Since that time, all the European vineyards had to be replanted on grafted onto American rootstock. By the time this was largely accomplished, some thirty years later, the fate and character of the majority of wine grapes was fixed forever. Every (non-hybrid) grapevine that was planted thereafter was a clone of one of these original replanted vines. In essence, grapes that were transplanted or newly planted were no longer adapting to soil, climate and terrain any more than a biological twin who goes to California when their sibling remains in New York will automatically undergo physiological changes. It doesn't, as a rule happen, at least not in any predictable manner ('What-evh-her dude').

Don't get me wrong, I truly believe Blue Mountain Jamaican or Hawaiian Kona beans make the best coffee, and probably San Marzano tomatoes are superior for making lasagna (I'm still not sure on this one) but, what should be realized is that these crops are still undergoing cross fertilization and selection, that is to say, still adapting to their unique environments. Terroir notwithstanding, clones, which for our purposes means grapevines, do not adapt, and until there is a radical change in the susceptibility to that little root louse, they never will, at least not the classic varieties.

So, the next time somebody tells you that it is just impossible produce a wine as fine as they do in Bordeaux or Mosel or even California, because those places have a unique 'terroir' you can tell them
'Be vewy qwiet! I'm hunting b_llsh_t.'

First Rule of Horseback Riding: Don't Lick the Saddle

2009-01-16T10:23:00.004-05:00

While this may be an odd thing to admit on a wine blog site, most people will tell you that beverage consumption in the west was vastly improved with the introduction of something that had been known in the Far East for millenia, tea.
The English love tea. Wars have been fought over it. In 1773 a good deal of it was dumped into Boston Harbor. In 1973 another great deal of it was dumped into San Francisco harbor also, --well the cops were chasing me, it was dark! --Just kidding.

The habit of wearing of clothes was greatly improved when Armani discovered leather, not really just any leather but fine Italian leather, but as cave-man movies and historians of skin will both
testify, skins and furs have constituted apparel from time immemorial.

Well, what do these do improvements to Western Civilization have in common? They are based on
tannins. Tannins are what give tea its pleasant astringency and they are also what is useful in 'tanning leather', thus, it is actually the case that 'tanning' here refers to the use of tannic acid in the process and does not refer to an assemblage of cows in bikinis.

Tannins, (as mentioned in my previous post), also are an important component of wine and in this case, and unlike tea, their presence in wine can be directly traced to the woodier part of a plant. (At my age, I'm glad when it occurs anywhere.)

Tannins, (as in the case of Emporio jackets), as well as in wine, act as a preservative and they contribute a quality, interestingly enough in both cases, called 'suppleness'. (Also interestingly, when I went to the Armani site to price Emporio leather jackets, I got an 'unsupported browser', error-- even my computer can't afford them.)

The question is, why does this occur. Without going into a lengthy technical discussion on the subject, the simple answer is that tannins love proteins, they dance with them, they bind to them, they,-- complete them. When you drink either wine or tea (or chew on an Armani jacket), what occurs is that the tannic components bind with the proteins in your saliva. The result of this
is less viscosity to your saliva which we interpret as astringency. Viscosity is a quality that most people are familiar with in reference to motor oils but I can assure you, that most people have thirty or forty weight saliva
which is really not optimal either for winter driving, or for wine-tasting. In fact, the reason why plants produce tannin is for this very same quality. Pests usually penetrate into plants by biting and injecting saliva. Interestingly the tannins have the same effect on insect saliva as they do on human saliva. (The lesson to be learned here is perhaps that if an insect is spitting at you the best defense is a tea bag.)

Not to stray too far from the subject at hand, we have mentioned that younger tannins can be a bit harsh, a bit judgmental, and the reason for this is something called the law of averages. Have you noticed that whatever it is you might roll down a snow covered hill in the winter, whether it is a stick or a, package of Ding-Dongs, or a VW microbus, by the time it gets to the bottom, it has acquired a roundish shape, or at least the roundest shape of which it is capable. The same occurs with tannins in wine, they tend to aggregate in rounder and larger shapes over time, thus minimizing the sharp and protruding edges. This is not just a metaphor it is an actual chemical fact based on the shape of larger molecules. Gee! Who would have thought you could taste how round a molecule is but the fact is you can! The less biting rounded tannins are large round beach balls of molecules while the taste you interpret as sharp is just that, sharper, more angular in shape and smaller.

The Case of the Heartfelt Sediments

2009-01-15T11:47:00.000-05:00

Does wine really improve in the bottle? To a large extent this depends on how the wine was handled before it ever got to the bottle. Determining whether a wine is alive or dead, much like Schrodinger's famous cat, can often be a tricky undertaking. The brutal fact is that all wine needs to be murdered, but how slow or fast this is accomplished determines whether you have a wine that will improve with time or something that is already as immutable as a piece of static artwork exhibited under glass, which accordingly may be representatuve a variety of well codified stylistic characteristics, whether they be of museum quality, (a Botticelli or an Andy Warhol) or, something you might rather tape up on the refrigerator.

The winemaker goes to great deal of trouble to 'stabilize' his product and this process is always to some extent a Holbeinian Dance of Death. Living yeast is introduced to convert sugars to alcohol but then the yeast must be killed off. This can be accomplished by any number of means from natural attrition to the introduction of anti-organics like meta-bisulfites, or what is called cold-stabilization, (literally freezing the little buggers to death). The wine itself contains some naturally stabilizing elements like tannins and acids. In some cases additional tannins are introduced, this also by a variety of means; from exposure to woody components of the grape itself like the rachis or the seeds, or through storage in a receptacle that leeches them slowly over time like barrels, or quicker methods like oak wood chips. These tannins, when 'young', tend to be harsh, like fresh idealogues without the tempering of time and experience to round and soften them. In other words, when it comes to tannins you don't want them to present themselves in black in white like the sharp edged Sean Hannity or Joe Scarborough but in nuanced variation, more like a fuzzy, elbow patched avuncular Tom Friedman or Chris Matthews who can evince everything in shades of gray.

The unfortunate fact is that wines may be overstabilized; they can smother, in other words, be filtered, fined and saturated with SO2 to the point where they will never live to improve, (of course, neither will they get any worse).

The dangers of understabiliziation stem from the fact that you will get volatile components organizing chemical revolutions from the dregs of unemployed proteins, rabblerousers, unantipated outcomes, guillotined aromatics, foul and inflammatory finishes, and if the most radical elements are given sufficient breathing room, that bane of polite society; vinegar.

In other words, as in any healthy society, in the bottle there must be a large stable constituency but one that does not completely stultify or overpower the smaller creative elements of discontent and ferment that move things forward, so the wine improves.