Glass distinctions. A friend of mine maintains that half of the perceived quality of a wine is the wine itself and half is the glass you drink it in. Such arguments, which are very convenient for companies that want to sell you a different glass for every varietal, and always seemed as specious to me as the idea that a facial cleanser with avocado-orange oil will really make you look better.
     This piece from the San Francisco Chronicle half convinces me otherwise, though. The writer went to a Riedel seminar and totally drank the Chardonnay-flavored Kool-Aid. "The Chardonnay glass' broad opening," she says, "sends wine to the sides of the tongue to bring out the wine's mineral qualities." Moreover:

Perhaps the most surprising lesson from the seminar was that the humongous glasses in which the red wines were served intensified the aromas rather than diluting them. Sniffing from the Riedels reminded me of standing in an acoustical space where a whisper can be heard from far away.

     I'm still way too skeptical to buy $89 wine glasses, and I'd surely break them within a week. But the article does make me want to experiment with somebody else's $89 glasses. Anybody care to lend me some?
 :: posted by Dante Ramos at 10:44 AM
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Black coffee, red wine. This interesting news item suggests that there's a strong correlation between how people take their coffee and what kind of wines they like. According to a survey by a group called WineVision, people who are sensitive to bitter flavors drink coffee with lots of milk and sugar and prefer sweet white wines. People who take their coffee black tend to like heavy red wines and dry white wines. For what it's worth, I'm a black-coffee drinker, and the pattern outlined in the survey certainly holds true for me.
     What's interesting is that 65 percent of the population is bitter-sensitive, and therefore may be biologically predisposed not to like the kind of wines that wine experts are always plugging. Moreover, the disconnect is likely to grow as food companies try to engineer the bitter flavors out of coffee and other products and bitter-sensitive people get less and less accustomed to such flavors.
 :: posted by Dante Ramos at 7:02 PM
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New site. The Cork & Bottle Web site is up.
 :: posted by Dante Ramos at 10:02 AM
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New BYO place? Has anybody been to a restaurant called Sea Level, which opened up recently on North Carrollton. I haven't but am curious. It's billed as "modern creole." (Shrimp foam etouffee? Mirliton hot jelly?) I called to get some details: They're open for lunch Tuesday to Saturday. They don't have a liquor license yet, so you can bring your own.
 :: posted by Dante Ramos at 1:24 PM
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Spain is the new France. So I finally managed to read all of this phenomenal New York Times Magazine piece about how all the gastronomic innovation in Europe is now happening in Spain rather than in France. (If that link doesn't work for you, try this one.) Spanish food and wine has been coming on strong in America for a while now; twenty bucks will get you a really good Ribera del Duero, and you can buy the fabulous Idiazabal cheese at Whole Foods or Martin's. But that's not what all the young chefs in Europe are pishing over.
     Instead, they're all trying to copy the foams and "hot jellies" of Ferran Adrià, chef at the impossible-to-get-a-table-at El Bulli. Adrià seems to be this mad genius given to answering simple questions with odd, vaguely Delphic statements like, "It is either magic or it isn't." Adrià became a celebrity for using new kitchen technology to construct food in new ways, and he's still at it. Now that everyone is doing foams, he declares, "Foams are out -- for us. 'I have created something five times lighter than the foams. The new texture that I create is air." The work he does is highly abstract and mystifying to most of the Spanish restaurant-going public, but in some circles he's considered the best chef in the world.
     The downside of all this is that there seems to be a fairly high B.S. factor among some of Adrià's acolytes. At one point, the Times writer eats at one such chef's restaurant and hates it.

"A carpaccio of scallops, shrimp and duck liver, with a dollop of green apple puree and a ring of smoked aioli, typified the problem. "When you eat this in your mouth, the texture is raw," explained [the chef]. "But at the same time, I trick your brain with the flavor of the mayonnaise that is roasted." My brain was not tricked. The mushy textures of the three components trumped any suggestion that they had been roasted.

Another issue is that some of these chefs don't really care whether people like their food or not. "Picasso would never have painted as he did if he cared whether people liked his painting," sniffs one of them.

 :: posted by Dante Ramos at 3:43 PM
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Washington Merlot. I decided to give wines from the Pacific Northwest another shot while in the Seattle area the last few days. I went with an Argyle Pinot Noir at one dinner after passing on a Pinot from another Oregon winery. The Argyle had a tad more body than the first, but both were kind of watery and nondescript. The bottom line is I consider myself even less of a fan of these wines than before. I had better luck Monday while sampling two Washington state Merlots at a tasting room near the big downtown market. I tried a 2000 Harlequin Merlot and then a 2000 Klipsun Merlot from Wilrdige Winery. Both were delicate and complex, far drier than most California wines as we've sometimes said. While the Washington wines are less accessible than some wines, I left intrigued. To enjoy these Merlots, you probably have to commit to them -- I think they're an acquired taste. I've decided I'm going to give them a shot. I probably would have bought the Klipsun, but I thought it was a bit overpriced at $29.
 :: posted by John Biers at 10:13 PM
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