CWD: What did you drink last night (or whenever)?

originally posted by Brézème:
The film used for the Bagnums I use for the Chat Fou, has nothing to do with those used for the BIBs.
The wine is exactly the same than in the bottles. The price also BTW.
An opened bagnum remains fresh for at least a month, and it is almost impossible to get air into it.
Unopened ones are still good after 3 years.
Perfect for everyday wine, IMO
Click to expand...

Ooh! Thanks for that explanation, Eric. I never knew that was what you called those things.

Mark Lipton
 
2016 Foillard Morgon Corcelette: The first night, the wine was marked by what I thought was distracting VA. Drinkable, but not performing well. The second day, that was gone, and the wine was pretty well integrated. Darker fruited than I usually think of Corcelette as being. A weird bottle.
 
So we were invited to Easter Brunch at the fancy hotel in town by friends. “The Easter buffet is a great deal compared to their regular brunch” our friends said. "'great deal and Easter Brunch are mutually exclusive' said M. She was right. Jesus freakin' Christ. Have you ever stayed at like a Budget or Hampton Inn in someplace like Kettleman City or East Saint Louis where they throw in breakfast for free? Y'know, pastry in plastic bags, make-your-own waffles and hash browns you cook yourself in the toaster? Well, brunch yesterday reminded me a lot of that, only with lamb and lobster on the steam tables. I’m surprised there wasn't an all-you-can-pour jug of truffle oil there too. The fruit was okay though. But not for $80. Per person. And they charged extra for the coffee, just to add insult to insult. Jesus Christ! (he rose again I guess, at least in this post)

But all was not lost because I brought a bottle of 2013 Ridgeview Blanc de Noirs with me. 55% Pinot Noir, 45% Pinot Meunier from southern England that 10 years on is really living up to its potential. In its youth it was all jangly and elbowy, throwing citrus around in one's nostrils like nobody's business. The acidity hadn't yet resolved to resolve but people drank it because of the novelty of it being a sparkling wine priced like Champagne that might be on the same chunk of rock extending from Champagne under the English Channel and under Brighton all the way to East Sussex. Global warming has added a couple of degrees C to the local environment, insuring that they can actually ripen grapes there on a reliable basis.

And based on earlier experiences with this wine, the word "ripen" might have been wishful thinking, but at Easter Brunch the wine was singing like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on a Sunday morning after a really good Saturday night. There was richness on the palate, the wound-up edginess had settled down into an acknowledgement that it had no obligation to compete with Champagne stylistically, but that it could more than hold its own on a qualitative basis. Tough call as to whether it's "as good as" a similarly priced grower/producer Champagne, but given the recent climate data, these UK wines are credible advance troops for what we'll likely be drinking in the future when we want to drink "Champagne."

-Eden (apologies to Mr. Hanlon on the bum steer of the Dunites Moy Mell but good to see the Ambyth showing well. I haven't tasted since their early days and back then, everything tasted pretty wild, and not necessarily in a good way. To see you're note that they "might even seem boring to the hard core natural wine crowd" bodes well for the future of some of the winemakers pounding rocks in Natural Wine Hell)
 
originally posted by Eden Mylunsch:

-Eden (apologies to Mr. Hanlon on the bum steer of the Dunites Moy Mell but good to see the Ambyth showing well. I haven't tasted since their early days and back then, everything tasted pretty wild, and not necessarily in a good way. To see you're note that they "might even seem boring to the hard core natural wine crowd" bodes well for the future of some of the winemakers pounding rocks in Natural Wine Hell)
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say the Dunites was a bum steer. It was an interesting wine, and I'm glad to have tried it. I could even see serving it at a dinner party. Pairing would be important, but fun. I'll gladly try something else from them next time I see a bottle.

There are still Ambyth wines that cross over the "too-natural" line for me. They have a tasting room in Templeton (inside a hippie-ish natural food store), and I stop by when in the area because I'd like them to succeed. I end up feeling like a grumpy old man, buying what they may consider their more pedestrian wines. But I'm glad they exist.
 
originally posted by Eden Mylunsch:
So we were invited to Easter Brunch at the fancy hotel in town by friends. “The Easter buffet is a great deal compared to their regular brunch” our friends said. "'great deal and Easter Brunch are mutually exclusive' said M. She was right. Jesus freakin' Christ. Have you ever stayed at like a Budget or Hampton Inn in someplace like Kettleman City or East Saint Louis where they throw in breakfast for free? Y'know, pastry in plastic bags, make-your-own waffles and hash browns you cook yourself in the toaster? Well, brunch yesterday reminded me a lot of that, only with lamb and lobster on the steam tables. I’m surprised there wasn't an all-you-can-pour jug of truffle oil there too. The fruit was okay though. But not for $80. Per person. And they charged extra for the coffee, just to add insult to insult. Jesus Christ! (he rose again I guess, at least in this post)

...

-Eden (apologies to Mr. Hanlon on the bum steer of the Dunites Moy Mell but good to see the Ambyth showing well. I haven't tasted since their early days and back then, everything tasted pretty wild, and not necessarily in a good way. To see you're note that they "might even seem boring to the hard core natural wine crowd" bodes well for the future of some of the winemakers pounding rocks in Natural Wine Hell)
Click to expand...

Eden, your posts are a pleasure and always deserve their own threads.

-Yule (one of my most memorable meals happened during a road trip I made from South Dakota to St. Louis (unfortunately, I just missed out on East St. Louis during this trip, though I have driven through that city many times before -- always an adventure), staying at a grimy motel (not of the hourly variety, thank god) somewhere around the Quad City area, enjoying a continental breakfast of stale Hostess pastries, scrambled "eggs" out of a carton, curdling in a chafing dish, and make-your-own waffles with the batter pre-measured in tiny styrofoam cups, yet with the sides of the griddle still caked with the blackened overflow of excess batter. The people watching during that meal was well-worth the price (complimentary) of admission)
 
And wasn't East St Louis the place that Chuck Berry was busted by the cops for doing his Big Joe Turner homage, being "like a one-eyed cat, peeping at the seafood store"? Or maybe that was the real St Louis, a town I've been through only once when I was flown there to review a Keith Whitley performance. It never got above zero degrees and the sadly, the gifted singer apparently drank himself to death the following year. Not that I had anything to do with it -- I gave him a darned good review. But East St. Louis is to St. Louis what Juarez is to El Paso: the people watching may be a lot better, but only if you survive to tell of it.

-Eden (not exactly the sort of problem you encounter crossing the border between Sopron and say, Rust or Siegendorf)(BTW, I'm thinking about opening an American food stand there called "Burgers of Burgenland" and if business gets good and I can encourage the locals to hang out there, they'd be the Burghers of the burgeoning Burgers of Burgenland)
 
Old Chuck's malfeasance was indeed on the west side of the Mississippi.

A working Hampton Inn would be a blight in most places, a palace in East STL.
 
Yeah, I think the Chuck Berry peeping Tom incident happened at Blueberry Hill in the Loop neighborhood of St. Louis (which is literally on the West County border, as far away from East St. Louis as you can get while still being in St. Louis).

I used to live in St. Louis for a couple of years, and spent a lot of time eating toasted ravioli and playing darts at Blueberry Hill. Chuck Berry was still alive back then and performed there frequently, but, unfortunately, I never got around to seeing him live. The things you take for granted.
 
originally posted by Yule Kim:
Yeah, I think the Chuck Berry peeping Tom incident happened at Blueberry Hill in the Loop neighborhood of St. Louis (which is literally on the West County border, as far away from East St. Louis as you can get while still being in St. Louis.
Click to expand...
I guess that's where he found his thrill.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
Although born in Alton, IL, Miles Davis grew up in East St. Louis.
Click to expand...

Jeez, I sure do learn some interesting things here at Wine Disorder!! I read that Davis' father owned a sizable farm in the area. I saw Miles play the Hollywood Bowl on my birthday, and then a couple of years later he died on the same date. At that time he was living in a Morraccan-looking mansion on the beach in Malibu, right across from my cheesy condo on the land side that looked like it was just about to be red-tagged by the authorities just on basic principle. I always kind of hoped Miles' aura would rub off on my playing, but I guess I was just too far removed from the waves for the vibe to build up. I could at least see white water (a big deal in the real estate world) from my deck, at least until some developers erected some houses in the $35-$40 million range between our "Hades by the Sea" condo buildings and the ocean.

-Eden (the only revenge on the developers is that when there was an offshore wind, the cooking smoke and grease from Neptune's Net would blow all that aromatic excitement up for the swells to smell in their ritzy houses, and that place can pound out 1000+ orders of fish 'n' chips on a good weekend)
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
Although born in Alton, IL, Miles Davis grew up in East St. Louis.
Click to expand...

Anyone know the origin story of Duke Ellington's East St Louis Toodle oo?

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by MLipton:
Anyone know the origin story of Duke Ellington's East St Louis Toodle oo?
Click to expand...
You mean, like this?
gotta scroll down a bit to get to the good parts
Click to expand...

Not quite. Still no explanation (other than metric concerns) for using East St Louis in the title.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by MLipton:
Anyone know the origin story of Duke Ellington's East St Louis Toodle oo?
Click to expand...
You mean, like this?
gotta scroll down a bit to get to the good parts
Click to expand...

I thought they were all good parts! Rabbit holes are put there for a reason. Which is how Steely Dan's nearly note-perfect version of Ellington's East St Louis Toodle-oo sent me searching for the original, lo these many years ago, resulting in a period of Ellintonomania wherein I wound up with a couple of boxed sets of almost everything he'd ever recorded, including things he probably didn't remember he'd recorded. So likely I'm NOT the woman that Marsalis referred to "who was able to see the relationships between vastly different ideas that no one else could" because then I'd have known that Duke used that title to pique the interest of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen and they'd record the song that would then lead me to buy a whole mess of Duke Ellington albums I listen to maybe once a decade (if that). I guess I did my part to keep his heirs and record companies (RCA and Sony mainly) in cigarettes and fast cars.

But not to promulgate thread drift in a thread titled "What did you drink last night (or whenever)?" I'd like to remark on a wine I opened last night and have continued with tonight. It's the 2013 Marie-Elodie Zighera Confuron Fleurie Clos de Mez La Dot. (the "La Dot" always reminds me of my years in Southern California where you'd see "La Dot" when they were digging streets up because it was the friendly name of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation). Delightful wine the first night, aromatically pushing up cherries as one would expect from Fleurie, but with a little earthiness beneath the cherries and acidity poking through a little. But tonight that's all come into alignment- the wine has picked up a little weight and the depth of flavor has gotten depthier and grown more interesting. The finish feels short on first sip but seems to grow longer if you think about it analytically. But this isn't the sort of wine you want to analyze. There's just enough VA to make it interesting, and most importantly, it went well with last night's pizza (Calabrian sausage/'shrooms) and with tonight's tacos crammed with grilled pork chops left over from a couple of nights ago. Nice wine now a decade from harvest, and worthy of the cellar space it's taken up. I bought a bunch of similar wines from Fass Selections wines back then and they've all turned out to live up to his hype. He's like Rimmerman at Garagiste: lots of enthusiasm and based on the price points of the wines I buy from both importers, they're good values, taste like where they came from, and (almost) always improve with time in the cellar.

-Eden (I may be cheap, but I drink pretty good)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top