Also while in Irving...

J

Jeff Grossman

Jeff Grossman
I posted about my evening tipple two weeks ago. Now it's:

Envinate 2014 Vino de Mesa, T. Amarela, Parcela Valdemedel - Day 1: young wine, tight cork, zingy acidity, pure and clean fruit, a hint of red candy, some minerality lurking somewhere in there; Day 2: the primary fruit recedes a little in favor of lighter and more flowery scents, minerality is still tangible but playing peek-a-boo; Day 3: now striking a good balance, the fruit is leaner but more fragrant, the minerality is more obvious due to more obvious tannins, and still a pretty lingering flowery note. Overall, I liked it.

NB. While Envinate is known for making wine in the Canary Islands these grapes are from Extremadura. Speaking of which, the T. Amarela variety is the same as trincadeira.
 
Hipster wine alert!

These four winemakers make wine in a handful of different places. I tend to seek out Ribeira Sacra rather than Canary or Extremadura because the climate is cooler, but hope to taste some of the latter again at a fair in Lisbon in two weeks time (a fantastic fair, btw, in case anyone is looking for a vacation destiny for June 30/July 1).
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Hipster wine alert!

...I tend to seek out Ribeira Sacra rather than Canary or Extremadura because the climate is cooler...
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Is Canary that much of a bakehouse?
 
Same latitude as the Sahara, except with ocean winds, of course. But I still wonder, with so many producers to discover in the Goldilocks zone and so little time...
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
These four winemakers make wine in a handful of different places. I tend to seek out Ribeira Sacra rather than Canary or Extremadura because the climate is cooler...
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Tsk, tsk. I expected you to be the first to jump on and tell us about the high altitude of this vineyard!
 
Ah, but my gripe is that geezers think they can plant at any hot latitude as long as they plant on mountains. Of course, if it weren't for the altitude, you could forget about it entirely, but even with the altitude, it may still be forgetaboutable.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Ah, but my gripe is that geezers think they can plant at any hot latitude as long as they plant on mountains. Of course, if it weren't for the altitude, you could forget about it entirely, but even with the altitude, it may still be forgetaboutable.
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But this seems to work on Etna.
 
Yes, for some varieties, on certain soils, altitude can save the day if you're on an otherwise too hot latitude. But such examples seem like exceptions, since the ratio of heat to light is so very different.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Yes, for some varieties, on certain soils, altitude can save the day if you're on an otherwise too hot latitude. But such examples seem like exceptions, since the ratio of heat to light is so very different.
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But what does the vine want, in terms of ratio of heat-light?
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Yes, for some varieties, on certain soils, altitude can save the day if you're on an otherwise too hot latitude. But such examples seem like exceptions, since the ratio of heat to light is so very different.
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But what does the vine want, in terms of ratio of heat-light?
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Depends on the variety, but for Pinot, let's say, what the vines get in the Coat Door and Sonoma Coast.
 
Currently reading a highly informative book called Guns, Germs, and Steel (Cliff must know it well) that traces how more complex civilizations were made possible by the domestication of wild crops (or their arrival from wherever they were first domesticated), allowing the transition from hunting & gathering to farming, generating an exponential rise in the food supply, fostering larger populations with specialized tasks, etc.

The other night I ran into this paragraph:

I have been dwelling on latitude, readily assessed by a glance at a map, because it is a major determinant of climate, growing conditions, and ease of spread of food production. However, latitude is of course not the only such determinant, and it is not always true that adjacent places at the same latitude have the same climate (though they do necessarily have the same day length my emphasis, because of the light hours). Topographic and ecological barriers, much more pronounced on some continents than on others, were locally important obstacles to diffusion.
 
I read Guns, Germs and Steel many years ago, O. I found it to be a very thought-provoking book with many well-reasoned arguments. The writing, however, was as leaden as it gets: repetitive, clumsily worded and overly long. His follow up book Collapse, about how societies succeed and fail was equally compelling and IMO easier to read.

Your friendly nonfiction critic,
Mark Lipton
 
Agree with your analysis, Mark. "Guns" seemed to have been written in chunks by someone who frequently forgot what had already covered elsewhere in the text. OTOH, Diamond's points are well thought out, and "Collapse" shoud be required reading for every civil servant beyond City Council of burgs of 50,000 in population. I am reading "God's Bankers" and "Origins of the Urban Crisis" right now. They are both good, but "God's Bankers" is the one I can't seem to put down.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Currently reading a highly informative book called Guns, Germs, and Steel (Cliff must know it well) that traces how more complex civilizations were made possible by the domestication of wild crops (or their arrival from wherever they were first domesticated), allowing the transition from hunting & gathering to farming, generating an exponential rise in the food supply, fostering larger populations with specialized tasks, etc.

The other night I ran into this paragraph:

I have been dwelling on latitude, readily assessed by a glance at a map, because it is a major determinant of climate, growing conditions, and ease of spread of food production. However, latitude is of course not the only such determinant, and it is not always true that adjacent places at the same latitude have the same climate (though they do necessarily have the same day length my emphasis, because of the light hours). Topographic and ecological barriers, much more pronounced on some continents than on others, were locally important obstacles to diffusion.
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This sounds remarkably like a real life geography course.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
I read Guns, Germs and Steel many years ago, O. I found it to be a very thought-provoking book with many well-reasoned arguments. The writing, however, was as leaden as it gets: repetitive, clumsily worded and overly long. His follow up book Collapse, about how societies succeed and fail was equally compelling and IMO easier to read.

Your friendly nonfiction critic,
Mark Lipton
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True 'dat! But he is so earnestly and admirably multi culti that I have been content to overlook this clunkiness you and Ken point out. Plus it helps me get back to sleep if I wake up in the middle of the night after the soporific effects of half bottle of wine wear out.
 
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