Drink Eat Love

Burgers and Booze

For a good long while I’ve been hearing about Burger Tuesdays at the Rosamunde Sausage Grill and the cult following it’s attracted. And I keep forgetting about it, which is dumb because I work from home on Tuesdays and can walk to Haight and Fillmore in minutes. Yesterday was different: the Tuesday Noon Siren went off as usual, but my brain said, “Hey! Noon! Tuesday!” and I was out the door.

Green Wine - Ecology in a bottle

Eric Asimov has a good article in today's New York Times regarding organic, sustainable, and biodynamic practices in wine making and selling. It provides a good beginner's overview on these categories and what they roughly mean. Many of you in the Bay Area that pay attention to such things may have noticed a trend toward sustainable/organic/biodynamic being noted on wine lists. Retailers around here are also starting to distinguish wines in this way.

Feuillatte Grand Cru Champagnes

Before I start this post, a disclosure. I presently work for a company that distributes and represents Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte in California, whose wines I discuss in this post. I will always abstain from rating any wines I sell or which my company represents, to prevent any appearance of conflict. I will occasionally talk about such wines, but always with a disclosure of said representation, mainly if I encounter something totally cool or especially blog-worthy. I hope you agree this is the case here.

Yesterday, part of our staff assembled in the historic Spencer House on Haight Street for a very special tasting with Jean-Pierre Vincent, head winemaker for Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte. We tasted through several single vineyard Grand Cru champagnes - 2 Blancs des Blanc (Chardonnays) and 3 Blancs des Noir (Pinot Noirs) - which are some of the component of the Cuvee Palmes d'Or (PDO). He is touring around with three of each, but our bottle of Cramant Chardonnay was poured earlier in the day in place of a corked bottle. None of these bottlings are available in the US.

Vinho Portuguese

I attended the Annual Trade Tasting of Portuguese Wines this afternoon in San Francisco. My expectations weren't high - but they weren't anything, really. Outside of Port, I went in knowing next to nothing, and having tasted one still red wine, and maybe a few Vinhos Verdes.

Honestly, part of me was wondering if this was a great undiscovered viticultural area, the next great frontier. The answer is not really. Don't get me wrong, there were quite a few stand-outs, as well as some really yummy Port, and lots of solid, well-made efforts that I would be delighted to drink at a streetside Lisbon cafe. The wines tended to fall into one of two categories: international - well-oaked, could-be-from-anywhere; or rustic - grapey, sometimes very tannic reds and shy, medium-to-high acid whites.

DIY wine school

The New York Time's Eric Asimov has just started a follow-along-at-home wine class on his blog, The Pour. People ask me about this all the time: where can I take a good wine class? Start at home! It should be fun to follow along with him on his adventures. Even if you're lazy (like me) and don't want to locate all those wines to follow verbatim, the advice in the accompanying article is still sound. Check it out!

Links
Wine class post
The accompanying article

When it happened

Amberly & I were sitting in Pizzetta last month, drinking a Charles Joguet Chinon over some of the finest locally-sourced thin-crust this side of the Mississippi, when George Harrison started singing "My Sweet Love" on the stereo. In a Proustian moment, it all came together for me.