Greek wines

Salon has a good article titled "Greek Wines Ditch Their Tragic Past."



Just think about the role that wine played in ancient Greek art, literature, and mythology. It's great to see Greek winemakers up their game. I think the increasingly-complex web of international commerce is incentivizing all winemakers to get up or get out.


http://www.salon.com/food/2010/01/28/kolpan_greek_wine_ext2010

2010 Portland Indie Wine Festival

Indie Wine Festival:


75 craft wineries (this means they have very small production)and some great food, packed into an historic building where WWII ships used to be made.

Saturday, May 8, from 2-6pm. $75.

I'll be there. Sounds like fun!



More info at: http://www.pdxfoodpress.com/

On Wine

"One may dislike spinach, carrots, beetroot, or the skin on hot milk. But not wine. It is like hating the air that one breathes."

-Marcel Ayme'

Fast food burgers - unsafe at any speed!

The New York Times ran an amazing article about Beef Products, Inc., supplier of ground beef to McDonalds, Burger King, and other fast food chains.

This lovely beef company is adding ammonia, a known poison, to its ground beef, in order to kill any e.coli bacteria which may be lurking therein. In addition, it waters down its ground beef by adding something called "pink slime" to the beef--something that reputable butchers would never sell as ground beef. That is one reason why your hamburger at McD's and B.King can be so inexpensive. Sadly, the ammonia didn't even kill the e.coli--but it did cause several states to return the beef as inedible, due to the overpowering ammonia smell.

I admit that I occasionally drop by McD's, or B.King, or Dairy Queen, for a burger. No more.

Safe sources of beef (no pink slime; no ammonia added; no antibiotics or hormones added):

Burgerville

All McMenamins locations (Oregon Country Natural beef)

Lots of restaurants who grind their own ground beef, but you have to check.

Safe source of chicken: Chipotle; Panera

Safe source of pork: Chipotle (but note: Chipotle is not a safe source of beef)

Yuck. Sad day for our republic, when the government, which is so bought off by industry lobbyists, will not only do nothing to prevent something like this, but our government actually allowed it and tacitly encouraged it. All we can do as citizens is complain, "throw the bums out," and stop buying fast food burgers, while telling the food chains why.

http://newyorktimes.com/2009/12/31meat.html and search for "ground beef"

Endangered Species: The Successful Corporation?

Get this:

The natural average lifespan of a company could be 2 or 3 centuries or more, but there are only a few examples of that (Sumitomo is one). Shockingly, however, the average life expectancy of a Fortune 500 company is only 45 years, and ONE-THIRD of the Fortune 500 companies in 1970 had vanished by 1983! Those are our largest companies, which are thought to be the most stable ones.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/degeus.htm

Just in this past decade, look at the ten largest companies which went bankrupt, causing their shareholders to lose absolutely incredible amounts of money: Enron, Worldcom, GM, Chrysler, Pacific Gas & Electric, Conseco, Washington Mutual (the largest S&L), Thornburg Mortgage (a large mortgage REIT), CIT Group (a large business lender), Lehman Bros (a 158-year-old investment bank). Then, consider that there are hundreds more companies of smaller size, which failed. Talk about lost jobs and lost investments!

Companies are managed in such a way that they tend to fail rather quickly. It seems odd to me that a corporation, which is granted PERPETUAL existence and is supported by dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of dedicated, talented people who are committed to its success, nevertheless has a significantly shorter lifespan than we frail humans.

Of course, the case may be made that the primary cause of company failure is poor management at the top. If upper management, on average, performs so poorly and causes companies to fail, why are CEO's receiving $100million bonuses and salaries that are 300x the lowest-paid workers? I'm just asking.

Just for the Halibut

Gentle Readers,

I am YET ANOTHER resource in your food-wine pairing dilemmas. A customer asks:

"I am serving pan seared halibut with a cranberry tomato chutney and chipotle peppers. What kind of wine would you serve with this dish?"

Accessing the incredible potency of the World's Library, I respond:

In researching this, I find answers all over the map.

The most obvious answer is: Sauvignon blanc, and probably the crisper, more minerally style that one finds in France or the US, as opposed to the fruitier, softer style of New Zealand.

But you could also do a Grenache (or Garnacha, in Spain); it would match the robustness of the chutney and peppers. It could push past the delicacy of the fish a bit, however. It's risky but I love the concept for its boldness. I think I would not serve just the Grenache with this dish, however.

If you're feeling daring, you could pour both an SB and a Grenache, and let your guests each find their own balance. That would be fun.

If the topping is spicy and hot enough, you could pour a Gewurztraminer.

One writer suggests a nice dry French rose. I can see that.

Or, you could do a White Burgundy (or good Oregon Chardonnay); I think you could go with either a Fume blanc (aged in a charred barrel, which might match the Chipotle well) or an unoaked one with lots of structure.

Have fun!

2005 Mount Eden (Santa Cruz Mountains) Estate Cab

Mount Eden builds their Cabernet sauvignons for longevity. The old vines sit atop a mountain, at 2000', where only a thin layer of topsoil overlies a mountain's worth of slate. The wine is tannic and shut down now, but it should age into a real beauty.

93 points from Wine Enthusiast: "Rich in black currants, mocha, and cedar. The score could rise considerably, after 2011." Parker: "Dense, ruby-hued cab boasts a sweet nose of incense, toast, charcoal, and red and black fruits. Elegant, with a first-class Bordeaux-like structure."

K&L Wines is selling this gem for $55. They are a great retail shop in the Bay Area; ordinarily, their prices are very good. But my local Portland distributor put this wine on special (because everybody's inventories are too large now), and thus I can sell this wine for just $32. Given California's more-favorable wine laws and taxes, this is a real coup. But Matt Kramer (Oregonian's wine critic) recently praised the wine, so it will probably disappear quickly.

Just remember to let this one sleep. There is no comparison between what it is now, and what it will become, given time. Think of it as a geologically-slow butterfly, metamorphosing in a glass cocoon . . .