What fer Doug Fir?

In our 13th year in Portland, we finally went to the Doug Fir lounge on East Burnside. Had $50 dinner certificate and two tix to the concerts afterwards.

Wow; this is a different place. I love it. For the schick of the restaurant, imagine that Stanley Kubrick combined a 1960's Elvis diner, and the set from the cartoon The Jetsons, and a teen rave, and you're pretty close. There is a devious hall of mirrors that masquerades as the way to the restroom. There are young and "pretty" people; lots of skin and tatoos. The waitstaff is cool beyond cool. This is a city place.

The food was very good. Farotto with veggies (a risotto-like dish made from farro) was excellent. So was polenta with sausages and grilled onions and peppers. So were the fried oysters. The food's also fairly priced--the entrees we had were $12 and $14. The bar is talented; we had an excellent blackberry cosmo.

The wine list is well-chosen for those on a tight budget. Makes little sense to take your own wine to the Doug Fir: We bought a Bogle Old Vines Zin (thank you, Kelly, for noting that wine to us many moons ago) for $22; it's probably about $10-12 at retail, so the corkage wouldn't save you much.

Downstairs are the new bands with ridiculous names and musicians that almost make up in effort what they don't have in talent. It was fun. We liked aspects of the music by Radiation City.

What an interesting place! If you go and you're over forty, try not to dress like it. For example, my feeble attempt to fit in was to wear a polo shirt with skulls and crossbones all over it. The maitre'd-ette nodded approvingly at my shirt, as we went in. Yes! Life is good ;)

Chambers Street Wines

Slate.com just published a good article about a boutique wine store in Manhattan. Located just five blocks from the old World Trade Center tower site, the shop almost didn't survive 9-11. But now it's thriving.

Its secrets:

1. The owners don't display critics' scores. Their reasons are (a) scores have crept up over the years, thereby having diminished importance; (b) the owners' palates differ from the tastes of most professional critics'; and (c) for some reason, younger wine drinkers are paying less attention to critic scores.

2. The owners choose only wines which they, the owners, like. This results (in their case) in a huge selection of wines from the Loire Valley, and a puny selection from Napa and Bordeaux.

I say Bravo! to this effort to chart an honest, personal course through Wine World. Chambers Street Wines sounds a lot like the old Square Deal wine shop here in Portland. Square Deal focused on littler, unknown wineries that the shop owners loved; my only issue with Square Deal (and I really liked the owners and their business model and their passion) was that my palate was so different from theirs that I really had difficulty liking many of the wines on their floor.

Apparently, that is not an issue for the steady stream of customers at Chambers Street.

Georges Deboeuf Beaujolais Gamay

A great wine for summer! Lighter body. Full fruit. Good balance. And it's only $7.99 (from me) for its 87 points from Robert Parker.

We've drunk this one for years.

2010 Bordeaux Futures - in the Twilight Zone

Oh, my. That is Chateaux Margaux on your right. I have stood at that gate and taken the same picture that you see here.

The 2010 Ch. Margaux futures offering came out today. Each bottle of this 100 point wine (rated by James Suckling of W.Spectator) costs $1000.

That's a grand. A thousand clams. For one bottle of really, really excellent wine. And the price will go up from here. The second tranche may be 20% more expensive. Eventual retail price will be higher still, most likely.

I once bought a couple of 100-point Margaux from a retailer in London, for $70 each. Those were 1990 vintage.

My, my. I suppose a few Americans will buy some of these, but it seems more likely that the buyers will mostly be the newly wealthy in other countries, such as China, India, and Brazil. That is what happens when your own country (just like the UK has done) has become a second-rate economic power.

Margaux is a First Growth. La Mission Haut Brion is not, and yet it's priced at $1000 per bottle as well. Palmer is $350; Cos d'Estournel is $319. Montrose is $216. Lynch-Bages a real bargain, stands at $170. It was not so long ago that these wines (2nd-4th Growths) could be had for about $40.

Sure, it's a fantastic vintage, but the industry is really sticking it to the consumers with these prices. It's difficult to spend more than $20 or so to make a bottle of wine, so they can sell it for A THOUSAND? A grand experiment; we'll see how it goes. I will be surprised if these wines increase 12x in value over the next twenty years, as they have in the past two decades. But if the USD falls as precipitously as some predict, that could happen. Capital gains are good, right? Not so fast--you would have a cap gain (on paper) from the sale of the wine, and you'd have to pay tax on that, but in reality inflation might have wiped out your entire gain. In other words, you'd lose money (after inflation) AND you'd have to pay tax on non-existent gain.

We should all pay our respects to the folks in our government who are driving this country into the ground, by debasing its currency with massive debt. (And we're not upset just because it's become difficult to buy fine wine ;) The nation's fiscal mismanagement reaches much further down than that. It reaches all the way past twilight.

Finally Summer in the Northwest

Our growing degree days, year to date, are now 327 (my closest station, Hillsboro), which is more than quadruple what they were a month ago (72 on May 31). In recent years the GDD's have barely more than doubled in that same time.

So we are catching up. But from a very deep hole. Our total is still the lowest of the past four years (15-31% lower than each of those years).

GDD's are a measure of heat, which is used as a proxy for sunshine.

Barnard Griffin Rose of Sangiovese

I've been drumming the praises of this wine for a long time; I've probably offered it three times or so. What's not to like? It's a signature rose for the Northwest: Crisp (enough acidity to match beautifully with food), fully-fruited (watermelon, cherries); dry. And it's only $9 or so (from me). Best of all, it is a Double Platinum winner by Wine Press Northwest (against only the major Gold winners). That is pretty rarefied air.

Now, it is heartwarming to see the New Seasons' wine buyer praising this wine. Here's the article:

http://www.portlandfoodanddrink.com/2011/06/rose/

Drink up! Let me know if you want some of this great summer wine.

The Farmer's Life

The farmer lives under siege. He/she is beset by all the following traumas, and can do little to avert any of them:

1. Predators destroy the crops: Today and yesterday, deer came into my back yard and munched my grapes, my fig fruit forming on the fig tree, my black currants, and some other stuff. This is despite my putting up deer fencing all around the back yard, at considerable cost and effort. So how did this (young adult female) deer enter, you ask? Hmm. You won't believe me. I chased it out with a stick, and it ran towards our East Gate (an arched portal across which I wove a rope lattice. Through one of the holes in that rope lattice it jumped. I measured the hole at 12" square. The deer passed its entire body through that. Go figure. So part of today was spent replacing the rope lattice with plastic mesh. It has 1" openings, so let's see the deer pass through that!

2. Birds eat the grapes' fruit. So growers put up nets, but starving birds can worm their way inside, or else peck out the grapes through the openings.

3. Insects eat the grape leaves.

4. Moles eat the grape roots. I have become proficient at trapping them, but it takes about a month of continuous trap relocation, to finally catch one of the wily buggers.

5. Germs kill the vine or retard its healthy growth.

6. Weather is variable and sometimes inimicable to ripening (such as 2011 and 2010).

7. The market for the product might go south.

There is no bet available in Vegas, which has more ways to lose than does farming. I wonder how any grower puts up with it. Is it masochism on a grand scale?