Sunset

Sangria!

White sangria this time.

• 1 750ml bottle of white moscato
• 1 can "Peach Citrus Pop" (Fresca)
• 1 cup of diced peaches in light syrup
• Handful Strawberries (Smallish ones, from our garden)

I poured the wine and the pop into one of the pitches I described in last summer's post "Mmm-mm, good!" I poured the peaches into the "fruit infuser" tube, letting the syrup run into the wine/pop mix.

Then I put a handful of strawberries in, and assembled the whole thing.

Let it sit in the fridge overnight.

It almost made it through dinner...

Last week I made a batch with a 10 year old bottle of syrah and a can or 7-Up. That one used some ginger and mint as well as strawberries and a sliced orange. It needed some simple syrup, just didn't work as well.

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!

The horror... There's a global wine shortage - Oct. 29, 2013

Overheard at the dinner table

"This Vigonier* seems to be off, it IS an '03, after all.  See, this is why we need a Monogram Walk-In Wine Vault."

'Cuz the computer would tell us that the bottle in slot B73 was at the peak of it's drinkability.

Honestly, it's only recently we got all the bottles together and looked at what we have.  If you saw the movie Sideways, there's a scene where the character Miles is describing his "cellar" as a cardboard box under the stairs; that's not too far off from what we have.  "Had", actually: Like I said, we have all our wine in racks, and more-or-less inventoried now.


*Pronounced "Vee-own-Yay."  It was a bottle of Fess Parker Vigonier that actually got us started doing more than just asking the waiter what was recommended with whatever we were ordering for dinner.
Yes, Fess Parker, Dan'l Boone, Davy Crockett, the pilot in Them!.  And, speaking of Sideways, the scene where Miles drank from the spit bucket, set at the "Fraz" winery, was filmed in the Fess Parker tasting room.  FWIW.

FareStart

Re; Bearcat's post @ Bearcat's Spin: Yum, Yum! and for a Good Cause.
Here are some of the pics I took:

Seattle Waterfront.  The White Arches are QWest Field, with Safeco Field behind it them, and, of course, the Official Bird of the Port of Seattle, the Orange Crane.

Veracci Pizza had their mobile brick oven...  and a loooong line!

The waterfront from the edge of the Pier where the event was held.

Same, looking north-west-ish, towards the cruise terminals. (Actually, the hall the event is in is used for cruise ship disembarking, Customs and Immigration checks, etc.)

The famous Cherry and Irish Cake Bombs.

Just to prove we were in Seattle...

Out towards Puget Sound.  Seattle is actually on Elliot Bay.  FWIW.

How to be The Most Popular Guy at the picnic...

Show up wearing Pike Brewery's Backpack Keg dispensing Naughty Nellie...

Not pictured:  I dunno.   Lots of stuff.  Sampled wines from Fess Parker--yes, that Fess Parker, RIP--and Epiphany, owned by his son, Eli.   It was actually Fess Parker's wines which got us into wine as a hobby. We also sampled wines from  

• Chateau Ste. Michelle,  
• Columbia Winery,  
• Cypher Winery,  
• Zaca Mesa Winery ("Just up the hill from Fess, you should have stopped by...")

Urbane at Olive/8 had Lamb meatballs with a spicey yogurt, very tasty.  Brasserie Margeux had Red Wine Poached Summer Figs, ditto.  Bearcat's former employer, Charlie's Produce, had a very tasty (hmm, have to work on variety...)Watermelon and Feta salad. Salty's Seafood Grill, Oregon Bay Shrimp Louie.  Barking Frog at Willows Lodge had the Jivara Cremeux/Peanut Butter Powder/Caramel Mousse with Fleur de Sel--fancy pudding, to this midwest working class guy.  But, uh, yummy.  And Half Pint Homemade Ice Cream had Raspberry Sorbet and Lemon Sorbet.  We tasted others, but these made an impression.

Wine Blogging--You called it what now?!

Haven't blogged about wine in a while.  Haven't really had any worth blogging about--I mean, when what you are mostly drinking is "2 Buck Chuck" (which costs $2.50 in WA) there's not much point...

So today I wandered into the local Grocery Outlet and had to go see if they had anything noteworthy on the wine shelves.

 

John Kerr was a door gunner in the Southeast Asia War Games.  According to Wines and Wineries of California's Central Coast (Google Books), he was in the first chopper shot down over Cambodia.  Thus, I suppose, the name.

Now, I never got close to Southeast Asia, but, enlisting in '80 as I did, most of the NCOs, Warrant Officers, and Field Grade officers I knew were, and most of the rest were "Viet Nam Era" veterans.  And I can tell you that none of them ever indicated that "Cambodian Red" referred to the color of the dirt there...

But, what the hell.  A percentage of the proceeds sale of this syrah (or "shiraz", if you prefer--same grape) goes to a fund for veterans of Viet Nam. Which is a Good Thing.

The wine:  My palate is not as well-developed as it should be for wine reviews--part of the reason I don't do this more often--but it is a rather robust syrah.  It may well overpower the ravioli I'm having for dinner.

But I will not be deterred.

UPDATE:  Pretty good, actually.  Mrs. Drang took a sip, decided she wanted some, which  surprised me a little.

SeaTimes: "Tips to finding a tasty wine from uncharted store shelves"

The Seattle Times' Wine Adviser shares Tips to finding a tasty wine from uncharted store shelves. Handy when you're travelling.

"In the Chalcolithic Age, when red wine was the rage..."

Signs of Earliest Winemaking Operation Found in Armenian Cave - NYTimes.com

Armenia?  Really?  I don't think we've tried any Armenian wine... unless that's where that "bull's blood" comes from, and we bought that mostly for the, um, interesting bottles.

Of course, even 50 years ago the mere idea of drinking American wine would be risible...

Screw it!

The 30 Second Wine Advisor posts a single picture that should probably be worth a thousand words in the on-going debate over the "best" closures for wine bottles.

The image... shows the state of 14 bottles of white wine sealed under various closures 125 months (just over 10 years) after bottling. This closure trial was conducted by the Australian Wine Research Institute to assess the relative effects of cork, plastic and screw cap closures on bottle-aged wine and has unequivocally shown the superiority of screw caps in aging wine.
It is well known that screw cap closures eliminate cork taint (TCA) and premature oxidization, but what this trial reveals is the fact that wine does mature/age in the bottle over time under screw cap. This is the most misunderstood aspect of the closure debate. Australians have been conducting both red and white wine screw cap trials for 20-30 years, so experience tells us this is indeed the case, but this is the first trial on such a grand scale to highlight this little-known fact.

...Thousands of bottles (of otherwise identical wine) were sealed with 14 different closures, including multiple natural and synthetic corks as well as one sample under screw cap.
The bottled wines were systematically analyzed over a 10 year period by sensory and analytical methods and photographed (you can see the sequential photographs below). The bottle sealed with a screw cap is positioned on the far left. While the pictures tell a convincing story, leaving little doubt as to which seal provides the most effective method of preserving a wine, it is the sensory evaluation results that are most revealing. The wines sealed under screw cap were still drinkable and showing appealing secondary aged characters while retaining freshness.

...there was huge variation in the results for the synthetic and cork closures, which was of more concern than TCA taint.
The biggest issue for any form of cork closure is variability, the wines sealed with screw cap were extremely consistent bottle to bottle and no other closure achieved results even similar.
Most of the wine sealed with closures other than screw cap were completely undrinkable, some synthetic corks didn’t even last 28 months.
The study was initially established to determine which would be the best performing cork and we didn’t expect screw cap to be much of a factor. It didn’t take long to work out that it was going to be the most reliable performer, and as it turns out the results are emphatic.

Like most folks I tend to think of screw top wine bottle as being the cheap stuff we drank in college, if, that is, we drank wine in college.

In addition to cork taint, there is also concern about supplies of natural cork, which is desirable for many uses besides sealing wine bottles if I could afford cork flooring!--but the harvesting of which has caused severe damage to the cork forests of the Iberian peninsula, with subsequent impact on the related wildlife.

Hop Scotch!

No, not the children's game.  Not the movie with Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson, either, although it was great.  There is a cinema connection though:  The Spring Hop Scotch Beer & Scotch Festival on April 23^rd and 24^th to benefit the Seattle International Film Festival.

Frankly, I was completely indifferent to SIFF, bordering on mild hostility depending on how long the person I was in earshot of was droning on about the arty Bolivian cinematic tour de force about the trials and tribulations of a coca planter they saw last night, but when I learned that they had a beer and scotch tasting to raise money for it, I decided that I could handle being a SIFF supporter.

We went last year.  In addition to the scotch and beer, last year they added wine and tequila.  (Links go to this year's "line up" of breweries, brewers, and wineries.  Note that, especially with the breweries, they may have more selections than those highlighted in their write-up.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

"Self-Guided" Scotch tastings are $10.00, with a Master of Whiskey present to answer questions.

On Friday night, there will also be a Scotch and Chocolate Pairing Seminar ($40.00):

The Scotch and Chocolate Paring Seminar challenges the palette with a participatory experience combining fine Scotch with premium organic Theo Chocolate. Lead by Master of Whisky Ari Shapiro and Theo Chocolate Founder Joe Whinney, guests explore an assortment of complementary tastes and discover their favorite pairing.

On Saturday the $10.00 self-guided Scotch tastings continue, and there are three more seminars:  Two Scotch Seminars with Master of Whiskey Ari Shapiro, at 2 and 7:

Master of Whisky Scotch Seminars:  Join Ari Shapiro, one of only 15 experts in the United States to earn the distinction of "Master of Whisky," for a private one-hour educational seminar that will introduce you to the complete range of taste experiences, which includes 8-¼ oz whiskies for only $30. You'll learn about the details of whisky production and engage in a guided, in-depth tasting that will turn you into a pro for the next time you order Scotch.

We were originally going to attend on Saturday so that we could attend this, but when we checked our calendars we realized that it would be awkward, to say the least, to tell Stitch Witch that we were ditching her birthday party for a Scotch tasting.  (Although she does have a Good Scottish Name, so maybe she would have forgiven us.  Maybe...)

I'm pretty sure that, even if Saturday had been open, Mrs. Drang would not have joined me for

The Scotch and Cigar Pairing Seminar presented by Johnnie Walker, Partagas Cigars and Rain City Cigars is a chance for taste and smell to collide for a stimulating party of the senses. As guests go through a portfolio of Scotch, bouquets of fine rolled tobacco leaves are added to the blend, training senses for true aficionado status. Complimentary cigars will be given to guest to enjoy after the seminar. $40. The Scotch and Cigar pairing seminar takes place Saturday, April 24th at 4:00pm for only $40.

although I could be mistaken, since there will be no actual smoking of cigars involved, this being in the Soviet of Seattle.

If you are going, all seminar tickets must be purchased in advance ONLINE!   Which we didn't know, to our displeasure, last year.  If you don't want to attend a seminar, advance tickets are available at a variety of locations, including my favorite store in the whole, wide, world, 99 Bottles.

It should be noted (for readers of this blog, at least) that "You must be 21  years of age or older to attend", which also means that concealed weapons are verboten, even with a valid CPL.

There will be food on-site, although I don't recall that we partook last year.

I will also say that the music being played was for, shall we say, a younger demographic than Mrs. Drang and I.  Not offensively so, at least, not so much that we were driven to violence, let alone to leave before we had used all our tokens.  (Actually, I may have some tokens from last year, I'll have to see if they're still usable...)

RIP, Davy and Dan'l

The New York Times reports that Fess Parker has died.


Just the other night we watched "THEM" on cable;  had forgotten that Fess played the part of the Texan pilot who first reported the "ant-shaped flying saucers."


After he stopped acting, he made a pretty good living making wine.  In fact, it was a Fess Parker Vigonier that got Mrs. Dang and I into wine in a big way.   We visited the winery, staying at Fess Parker's Wine Country Inn, a few years back. 

We have lost an American Icon, and he will be missed.


Our thoughts go out to his family.

Kudos!

It seems that our friends at The Grape Adventure have been voted The Best Wine Bar in Western Washington for 2009, AND our friends at 99 Bottles have been voted Western Washington's Best Beer Store for 2009!

Wooho!  Congrats folks!

Katie and Scott at Grape Adventure also won Wine Spectator magazine's Restaurant Award of Excellence for 2009, AND have announced that their second child is due in March!

After a long hot day...

I like to relax with some light reading and a refreshing drink.

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, by F.A. Hayak. (Link goes to a different edition.)

Knipprath* Sangria of Columbia, chilled overnight with orange slices, peaches, strawberries, kiwi and golden kiwi fruit, pineapple, and lime slices. Oh, and a few small pieces of crystallized ginger. (Mrs. Drang says the lime may have been too much.)

*My phishing filter does not like this web site at all. Claims that the Air Force Reserve Field Grade Officer/Pilot who runs it its trying to rip me off. He's a KC135 pilot, the sales guy we talked to in Long Beach is his boom operator...

'Diamonds Are a Wine's Best Friend'

Here we have a bottle of Madeleine Angevine wine from Whidbey Island Winery.

As you can see--well, maybe, it's a crummy cell phone pic--it is a 2002, which is getting rather mature for this grape...

And here you see something that causes many Americans to discard a perfectly drinkable wine: Wine Diamonds.


Okay, forget the Wikipedia article on Tartaric Crystals, as it contains a lot of chemistry.

Try this one:

Tartaric Crystals in Wine: the "Wine Diamonds" of Quality
By Stephan Schindler Platinum Quality Author

Have you ever come across what appear to be white flakes floating in your bottle of wine? Did you assume that this snow-globe appearance somehow meant the wine was flawed or ruined?

What you had most likely seen are tartaric crystals, commonly referred to as “wine diamonds” or Weinstein (”wine stone”) in German speaking countries. So do these wine diamonds signal a bad bottle of wine?

Opinions about this issue are divided and the reason is simple: you have bought flawless wine, but you have not bought aesthetically flawless wine. Depending upon where you are from, this can matter to you more or less.

The American wine drinker is not used to finding wine diamonds in their bottles. Here, most wines undergo a cold stabilization process, which is when a wine is cooled down before it is bottled so that the white flakes, called crystallized tartaric acid, “fall out” and can be separated from the wine. But what price beauty? Cold stabilization influences a wine’s balance and taste: as some winemakers put it, the wine is actually being ripped apart, and the rapid cooling changes the wine’s colloidal structure. One might call it a clear case of style over substance.

There is another interesting correlation between wine stones and the quality of a wine: the longer the grapes hang on the vine (familiarly called “hang time”), the more wine acid will accumulate in the grape, and it is this wine acid which is the building block of wine diamonds. Furthermore, the more time the wine is given to ferment, the less wine diamonds will fall out during fermentation, but the more they will instead build up later in the bottle.

In other words, wine diamonds are an indicator that the grapes ripened for a long time, and that the winemaker fermented the wine slowly and with great care. Both are important precursors to crafting high quality wines.

The wine was absolutely drinkable, I assure you.

Good work, if you can manage it...

So, all week here in Long Beach Mrs. Drang and I have been driving by the local wine shop, which has been closed. "Tastings on Saturdays." Great, we're going home Saturday, not doing a wine tasting before driving the thousands dozens of miles between here and there...

Until this afternoon, we're driving down the main drag and I realize that the sign in the window of Peninsula Wine Merchants says "Open." Oh, well, what the hell...

And the representative of Knipprath Cellars was there, pouring, an (apparently) unscheduled tasting!

Ah, Knipprath Cellars! Chocolate Port! Vanilla Port! White Port! Gluhwine! Sangria!

So, we blew the budget on wine--we haven't actually done that for quite a while. (Don't tell our financial adviser, OK?) Also on sausage and wine wafers, and some nice cookbooks...

OTOH, we now know what we want to do to support ourselves in our retirement; the only question is, will Long Beach WA be able to support two wine shoppes...?

"I Asked Her For Some Happy News..." (edited)

Here's some, courtesy Gateway Pundit and Reuters:

Blundering Afghan suicide bomber blows up 6 militants
Thu Mar 26, 2009 9:58am EDT KABUL, March 26 (Reuters) -

A would-be suicide bomber accidentally blew himself up on Thursday, killing six other militants as he was bidding them farewell to leave for his intended target, the Interior Ministry said.

"The terrorist was on his way to his destination and saying good-bye to his associates and then his suicide vest exploded," a statement from the ministry said.

edit:  Few things make me happy like getting to do The Dead Tango Dance.

Getting to do so because Achmed The Dead Tango scored what I believe the soccer-playing Euro-weenies call an "own goal" makes it all the more joyous an occasion.

I think I'll have pork and some wine tonight, to celebrate.

(Well, OK, Mrs. Drang had already taken the pork cutlets out to thaw, and I have half a bottle of a yummy '06 Brander Cuvee Natalie left from last night's dinner, but this is a special occasion!)

(Edited to add material I didn't get to before Blogger shut down for maintenence.  Achmed the Dead Terrorist is a true hoot-and-a-half.)

I'll drink to that!

On this day in 1933, the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment, and therefore the Volstead Act.

EDIT: IN the Washington Hometown Forum on www.ar15.com, there's a thread about beer in which someone has declared that "fruit does not belong in beer."

Nevertheless, I have celebrated the occaision by enjoying a New Belgium Brewing Frambozen

(From the New Belgium Brewing website:)
Frambozen begins with the aroma of fresh red raspberries, followed by the ripe seductiveness of a fruity brown ale with depth and delicate malt notes. It is deep ruby in color, with flavors just as rich. Every year, New Belgium sends a delegate to the Pacific Northwest to oversee the process of turning freshly picked berries into a pure juice to be added in fermentation. The coming of Thanksgiving at New Belgium is ushered in with the first sighting of our cellar operators scuttling about, covered head to tow in a festive crimson berry wash.

"Head to tow"? Someone's copy editor needs to stop sampling the product before working...

Dinner...

So the other day Mrs. Drang was looking in the freezer for diner, and uncovered a roast. A Prime Rib Roast. A year or more old. Color us embarrassed.

It was well wrapped, and we could see no signs of freezer burn or anything, but still... So, after it thawed out, we cooked it in the Big Green Egg.

The Egg is a barbecue/smoker made of the same material they make space shuttle tiles out of, about two inches thick. Retains heat very well, thank you. Marvelous cooking tool. Yuo can go "low and slow", or, if you build your fire right and manage the air flow correctly, well, I got it up to about 800 degrees Fahrenheit the other day; I say "about" because the thermometer "only" goes up to 750... (That was a fluke. I usually barely manage 300. Mrs. Drang is much better at running the thing than I am.)

She made a rub with some seasoned salt we had...
Label says "Sea salt, garlic, rosemary", and not much else.

Ears of corn were 3 for a dollar at the Kent Farmer's Market. (Been one for a dollar at the local grocery stores, thank you very much, Mr. Gore...)
And green beans, and some cucumber sliced thin in red wine vinegar, and some tomatoes...

And a very nice Fess Parker 2004 Santa Barbara County Syrah. (Yes, "the" Fess Parker. Little coon skin cap on the label, and on the cork. Opened a winery when he stopped acting. Very good wine. In fact, while my parents took us to our first two or three wine tastings, and tasting rooms, Fess' Vigonier--pronounced "Vee-ohn-Yay"--actually launched us into our interest in oenology.)(By the by, that wine is still listed on the web site...)(The Frontier red, by the way, is an excellant red table wine, with a picture of Fess as Dan'l Boone on th elabel. When we visited the winery back in '04, we bought a little souvenier coon skin cap that fits on the bottle cap...)

Either the salt, or the cooking/smoking process (we used mesquite chunk/lump charcoal) had th effect of turning the 'rind" of the roast red.

Still. What a magnificent meal.
The Big Green Egg is heartily recommended for anyone interested in backyard cookery. While we do not recommend aging a roast in the freezer for a year or more, it does not seem to have come to harm. (I had my doubts about smoking it, but figured after a year or more in the freezer, what the hell?)

So long as it ain't the issue stuff...

From Decanter.com comes this tidbit:

French foreign legion launches wine
June 16, 2008

The French foreign legion is venturing into the wine industry to help raise money to fund its ageing veterans, it announced last week.

The wine, L'Esprit du Corps, will be sold at €7 (£5.50) a bottle on www.legion-boutique.com. The first wines in the range, from the 2007 vintage, are a red and rosé from the Cotes de Provence appellation.

They are made on a 40 hectare estate in Puyloubier, Provence, that also currently houses over 100 invalided legionnaires.

Annual production is rated at around 300,000 bottles.

According to the Legion, the wines are being sold in a bid to supplement the French government's inadequate pension veterans.

Money raised from sales will be used to house and care for veterans as well as help them re-adjust to civilian life.

Have to ask at the local wine store if they intend to carry it. The proprietor is a vet...

A couple of times in my career I served with someone who had trained or been on an exercise with the French or the Italians, and they had some leftover field rations. Wine in a tube, yum.

UPDATE: Please note that it is Decanter.com which can't spell Esprit de Corps, and which capitalized "Franch",but not "Foreign" or "Legion."