Asked to brainstorm unlikely business plans, you might devise something more improbable than a winery in Muslim Morocco — perhaps a boat dealership for Bedouins? a sex shop in the Vatican? — but the list wouldn’t be long.

More surprising still is the fact that Morocco’s oldest winery, Celliers de Meknes, has made a brisk business of selling booze in a country where 98 percent of the population is forbidden to drink alcoholic beverages.

Moroccan winemaker thrives

Bloggers must be anti-social, loners, dysfunctionally shy, or otherwise isolated from having to converse with people. I'm a [supposed] [part-time] [half-hearted] blogger. I have those tendencies. But I actually live with a person. And we often hang out with other people. Which means, when I ought to be taking note, writing notes -- drinking wine, that is -- I am usually listening to someone. Or talking.

I want to keep a record of my wine consumption. I want to be able to look up what I drank so I can either drink it again or not. So I can know what to bring out when Ms. Oh So Much or Sister Swirlene are coming over. I want to take sides in the New World / Old World debate. I want to declare allegiance, or at least affinity, with other people who drink and/or make wine that inspires, incites, ignites me. I want to call out the fools who drink expensive plonk or who don't know how to bonk.

Oh yeah, I also cook. In the time I wrote the above two paragraphs I had to stop twice to turn the oven down, to add the onions to the potatoes, to take the brussel sprouts out before they burn, to chop the roasted red peppers.

During all of the talking and cooking I am also drinking wine.

The blogging suffers.

I'm a Mac guy. Been using Apple computers since 1988 or 89. I predict the iPad to be a miserable failure.

Another blogger misstating the comparison between wine and pot.

While I agree with the gist of Tom Wark's post he completely misses the mark when he suggests these "acceptable reasons" for drinking wine as evidence of the difference between wine and pot:

1. It tastes good
2. It makes foods taste better (or at least different)
3. It provides a traditionally celebratory edge to an occasion.

At the very least, pot tastes good and is widely known to make food taste good even if it's not the first substance chosen for celebrations (arguably). I'm glad to see a couple comments calling him on it.

Eric Asimov joins the fray.

Well, if he loves processed, laboratory-created, chemically modified foods, what does that have to say about his standards for wine?

I’m sure he feels he’s breaking it down for the people, democratizing food and wine, but this is pretty infantile.

In spite of the increased numbers of cars on the streets, mopeds are still the primary means of transporting people and stuff. I previously described some amazing balancing acts including televisions sets, small trees, other mopeds and even some dead cows. On this trip I saw the following on a single moped: a family of five, a large stack of scaffolding frames and my favorite, two adult males and two live goats. The picture was snapped in a hurry from inside a moving car so it's pretty blurry but you can make out one goat and you'll just have to take my word that there's a second one in the passenger's lap.

We'll be traveling for the next 18 hours or so. A couple more stories will come.

Curiously, Twitter and Facebook are blocked here so I haven't put any updates on either of those (although Facebook is so 2009 I don't use it much any more).

Some of the nicest people I have ever killed met are gay people.

Secret Chemicals

The title of this post is an onomatopoeia.

I've been staring at this picture while masturbating for the last several minutes and all I'm getting is chafed. The pronographers at Hahn are gonna have to come up with something a little more explicit if they want to incite some serious jelly slinging.

I've been trapped in this abandoned religious theme park they call the Bible Belt since 1987 and I still seethe and fume over the fact that the christanists have so much to do with our day-to-day living down here in this intellectual cultural wasteland. If ever there were reason for religious persecution this kind of foolishness would provide a strong supporting argument. The Alabama Alcoholic Beverages Control Board has compelled the distributor to pull all bottles of Hahn Cycles Gladiator wines from the shelves of retailers throughout that state because the label has been deemed obscene. What the AABC simpletons don't realize is that trying to suppress something, anything, almost always ends up with a reverse effect. Further proving their idicocy is that they have delivered to Hahn what amounts to a smart and free marketing campaign.

You gotta love hate it.

a tip of the glass to Wine Harlots

I've always been disappointed that there aren't more decent news sites with global focus. GlobalPost is pretty good.

The obvious change since we were here 8 years ago is in the traffic. Here's a description from that trip:

We've mostly just walked with eyes agog at the traffic, the crowded sidewalk cafes, the tiny but densely packed storefronts and the multitudes of people. This city makes NYC look like a small rural town, not so much in terms of street or building sizes but in the numbers of people and motorbikes which crowd the way - street, sidewalk or otherwise. The sidewalks can be so crowded that we often must risk death by moped and step off into the river of motion which is constant and relentless there. Crossing the street is also risky and I've had one close call, having to leap over the hood of a small car just seconds before it would have taken out both of my legs. Granted, I was crossing against the light but in truth it's hard to follow the lights as a pedestrian since none of the street traffic does.

So how is it different today? It's worse. Much worse. Back then it was mostly bicycles and a lot of mopeds in the street (and on the sidewalks). Now it's mostly mopeds and a lot of cars. The river has become a torrent. On the other hand, it's easier to cross than I remember. The thickness and tightness of the vehicles has necessitated a slower speed making it more of a flow than a rage. Believe it or not, the best way to cross the street is to look straight ahead and just step into the fray avoiding eye contact and holding a steady pace. If you do this without hesitation the mob simply flows around you.

On a very narrow and busy street you can also employ this technique to walk straight on into the traffic as it charges toward you. You mainly use your peripheral vision while keeping your eyes softly focused on the spaces between the oncoming vehicles. It works amazingly well and, for me at least, feels perfectly natural after a few minutes. Pam, however, finds it quite nerve wracking. Here's how we do it together:

Ready, Pam? Here we go. Stay to my right. Start walking with me. That's it. You're doing great. Keep going. Don't worry, it's fine. We're gonna step right behind this guy with the scaffolding attached to the side of his moped. Ok, now let this group go buy. Keep moving. Good. Now, get on my left side. We're going between that moped and those bicycles. We're almost through. Good job. Don't worry about that bus. He's gonna pass behind us. Here comes the sidewalk. Don't rush. Here we go. Made it!

I haven't mentioned the fumes. The exhaust is so thick it burns your eyes, nose and throat. Or the mud. The weather is a constant misty haze and there's so much construction (sidewalks, roads and buildings) that everything, especially our feet and legs, becomes filthy. You know how riding a bicycle without fenders on wet streets leaves a splatter of water and dirt running up and down the middle of your back? That's what the back of both legs look like after a few minutes stroll.

Fortunately, taxis are cheap and plentiful.

Ben just left in a flower festooned Mercedes for the Sheraton where the wedding will be in a few hours. There have been indications that he and Huong are feeling the stress of the preparations but the overall mood has been calm and relaxed. We're staying in an American Embassy Guest House in two comfortable apartments across the hall from each other. Most of our visit has been thus far passed here visiting family and friends. Anna and Ben2 are rooming with Pam and I and Terry and Dinky are across the way with Ben and Huong but the doors are usually open and we pass back and forth through the hallway as if we're all in adjoining rooms.

Meals have been casual, mostly at nearby restaurants eating simple local food. Last night we had dinner in with several members of Huong's family, all of who have been enthusiastic and extremely gracious. Photos will follow (I forgot to bring the cable so I'm unable to import the photos to the computer right now).

Our touristing has been minimal. A brief visit to the Old Quarter, a walk around the lake and a trip to the coffee cafe has been the gist of it. Anna and Ben2 went to see Uncle Ho this morning and report that he's looking pretty dapper for a 120 year old corpse.

My only desire is that all of our Party and people, closely united in struggle, construct a peaceful, unified, independent, democratic and prosperous, and make a valiant contribution to the world Revolution. - Ho Chi Minh, 1969

It's a little uncomfortable for me to be walking around Hanoi looking as I do. My height and pale bald head are enough to attract plenty of stares but my Ho-style goatee makes me even more of a curiosity. Most adults look at me with mild puzzlement, kids smile and laugh and one angry old coot made a threatening gesture suggesting he'd like to chop off my goatee with a dull knife. Mostly, though, people are curious and welcoming.

I used to be able to write well but I have been out of the habit so long that I've lost that ability. My vocabulary has shrunk, my spelling worsened and the ease with which I put words together has almost disappeared.

The urge to blog isn't to live in the public eye (however miniscule the audience). It's to write for an audience (however miniscule the audience). I'm not interested in "journaling" but communicating. Telling stories. But about what?

I get stumped by the what and in fact have been so stumped for so long that I'm losing the how.

So this is practice. A place to grind. To find my chops.

I talked earlier about Cafe Mai coffee. I didn't realize at the time that this is the same company that sells "Caphe Cut Chon" or Fox Dung Coffee, something I was planning on seeking.

The origin lore says they French plantation bosses were so stingy with their beans that they only allowed the workers to use beans picked out of the feces of civets that roamed the plantation. The civets ate the coffee "cherries" but only the flower and the shell of the berry were digested with the bean itself being shat out. It turns out that there's some kind of chemical change, or even a fermentation that the beans undergo that results in a very rich and exotic coffee.

It sounds conveniently romantic but I can't think of a better reason why people might have bothered to use coffee beans that have been through the digestive tract of an animal. This coffee is found throughout Southeast Asia and goes by several variants of the name, including Kopi Luwak (Indonesia), Motit Coffee (Phillipines) and Kafe-Laku (East Timor). It supposedly can sell for as much as $600 per pound. I imagine that may be the case for beans that are collected in the wild but here in Viet Nam, where it is also known as "weasel coffee," it is harvested on civet farms.

(The cynic in me suspects that the whole thing is a scam and that the coffee beans are merely subjected to some kind of artificial process which simulates the real thing. But there's no fun in that so I'll go along for the ride.)

Cafe Mai sells Caphe Cut Chin under the name, "Paris Mai," for 500,000.00 dong per kilo (about $27) or you can get it by the cup for 40,000 ($2).

So what's it like? It's very thick with a creamy satin smoothness until you get to the coarse grit at the bottom of the cup. It tastes like the aforementioned Cafe Mais Arabica (nutty chocolate) but much richer with added flavors of molasses, nutmeg and malt. It's so sweet that I have a hard time believing there wasn't sugar added to it but it's brewed at the table in individual single serving pots and it sure looked like there was nothing in there but ground coffee. The mild bitterness was tempered by a strong saltiness. Too rich to drink daily -- at least for my tastes -- but it makes a great digestif for special occasions.

cross posted to winefoolery.net

I talked earlier about Cafe Mai coffee. I didn't realize at the time that this is the same company that sells "Caphe Cut Chon" or Fox Dung Coffee, something I was planning on seeking.

The origin lore says they French plantation bosses were so stingy with their beans that they only allowed the workers to use beans picked out of the feces of civets that roamed the plantation. The civets ate the coffee "cherries" but only the flower and the shell of the berry were digested with the bean itself being shat out. It turns out that there's some kind of chemical change, or even a fermentation that the beans undergo that results in a very rich and exotic coffee.

It sounds conveniently romantic but I can't think of a better reason why people might have bothered to use coffee beans that have been through the digestive tract of an animal. This coffee is found throughout Southeast Asia and goes by several variants of the name, including Kopi Luwak (Indonesia), Motit Coffee (Phillipines) and Kafe-Laku (East Timor). It supposedly can sell for as much as $600 per pound. I imagine that may be the case for beans that are collected in the wild but here in Viet Nam, where it is also known as "weasel coffee," it is harvested on civet farms.

(The cynic in me suspects that the whole thing is a scam and that the coffee beans are merely subjected to some kind of artificial process which simulates the real thing. But there's no fun in that so I'll go along for the ride.)

Cafe Mai sells Caphe Cut Chin under the name, "Paris Mai," for 500,000.00 dong per kilo (about $27) or you can get it by the cup for 40,000 ($2).

So what's it like? It's very thick with a creamy satin smoothness until you get to the coarse grit at the bottom of the cup. It tastes like the aforementioned Cafe Mais Arabica (nutty chocolate) but much richer with added flavors of molasses, nutmeg and malt. It's so sweet that I have a hard time believing there wasn't sugar added to it but it's brewed at the table in individual single serving pots and it sure looked like there was nothing in there but ground coffee. The mild bitterness was tempered by a strong saltiness. Too rich to drink daily -- at least for my tastes -- but it makes a great digestif for special occasions.

cross posted to foolcrow.com

...the one I drank last night, New Year's eve.

2004 MontGras Quatro Reserva, a Chilean blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Carmenere and Syrah.

What makes it wine of the year? Context, of course.

I hang out with a lot of non-wine drinkers. I left home a week ago and spent two days in LA with a couple of them and then moved on to Hanoi, Viet Nam where I am now. In LA I drank some nice gin: Leopold's and Tangueray Ten. In Hanoi, I have been drinking beer: Bia Ha Noi, Tiger and some nondescript drafts. I don't generally drink beer and drinking watery, thin, flat beer hasn't been exciting. I've been looking for wine, and even tried one local bottle (see below) but, that interesting experiment notwithstanding, I haven't had a glass of wine since Atlanta. Most of the wine stores, and even a couple of wine bars, are located in different districts than where we're staying. I hope to get there soon but as the only person craving good wine I haven't been able to push the group in that direction yet.

It's not that the restaurants we've been to don't serve wine. All of them had at least a couple offerings but we're mostly in restaurants that cater to locals, few of whom drink wine. The choices have not only been low-end plonk, which I'm not above drinking when desperate, but the chance that said plonk hasn't been stored properly is high. I can drink cheap wine but I can't drink vinegar.

Wine is also expensive here, comparatively speaking, because of the import taxes. Last night's dinner for eight people came to 1,550,000.00 ($84) and 640,000 ($30) of that was for the bottle being blogged about.

It was well kept and served at a decent temperature and my first thought upon tasting was, "aaah, this is my drink!" It was an inky dark and moderately tannic pleasure. It wasn't the flavors of chocolate, black cherry and vanilla that prompted me to designate this as the WOTY. It wasn't anything particular about this wine, even. It was that it reminded me of a hundred other times I was delighted by a simple, competent wine. In a single sip I was transported to Sonoma, Italy, France and all the other places I've sipped wine in tasting rooms with the people who made it. The highest accolade for an ordinarily pleasant wine.

Foolish? I hope so. I hate those fucking idiotic declarations about the best wine/winery/winemaker of the year.

have been posted to my other blog.

I'm a coffee lightweight but only because I'm hypersensitive to caffeine and I don't like the physical buzz. I appreciate quality coffee -- witness the Rancho Silvia in my kitchen -- but I usually only drink a single decaf soy milk cappuccino in the mornings (shades of LA Story).

Oh, and I sometimes will have a leaded espresso after a big meal.

Vietnamese coffee is damned good. Cafe Mai coffee is thick and creamy with a nutty chocolate flavor. Perfectly balanced acidity and creamy sweetness. This coffee could be reasonably compared to Jamaican Blue Mountain any day and at $10 a kilo we'll be packing a few pounds home with us.

update - referring to arabica, not robusto

Before leaving home for Hanoi it never occurred to me that wine might be made here. It is and it's called Dalat and I wouldn't be the fool that I am if I weren't willing to give it a try. The producer, Vang Dalat, makes several variations of this wine in both colors as well as "champagne," fruit wine and gin (along with various other products including fruit juice and nuts). I chose the Superior which cost me 66,000 dong (about $3.50USD) at the supermarket. As far as I can tell it's non-vintage but there's some tiny print on the back that may include a year.

(I wasn't smart enough to bring the cable for my camera so I had to use Photo Booth to create the fine image of the label you see here.)

Dalat is made primarily from Cardinal grapes and also may include some small amount of Syrah or strawberry. I didn't know that when I took my first sip and I wouldn't have guessed (about the strawberry, I mean). The real shocker is that it's not a bad wine. Not exactly good but better than any Two-Buck-Chuck.

It's light and thin with mild smells of earth, violet and petroleum. The color is pale cranberry tinged with a vague hint of fuschia. Tastes like fresh rhubarb and rose hips.

Not recommended for the casual wine drinker.

Picked up a bottle of local (Viet Namese) red wine at the market this morning but will open it later. This morning I tried some Kweichow Moutai, a fermented sorghum drink from China not unlike Grappa or Eau de Vie. Pretty good stuff. The bottle looked pretty old and moldy which isn't saying much -- a lot of things look old and moldy here. At 53% it's no lightweight drink but it's sweetly mellow with a strong honeyed wood flavor. Quite lovely.

A few days ago someone dropped some ripe cherries on the floor in the barn near the kerosene can and under the hanging saddles.

I saw "Avatar" today. Here's my viewing note:

a gigantic bioluminescent turd

update - I found something to like about it... 'Avatar' arouses conservatives' ire

Captain Tumor Man:

...humorless and clumsily over the top ...Soupy Sales without a pie ...Glen Beck with a spittoon ...I cringe when I watch his interviews.

Hosemaster:

..."the Human Stain" ...an idiot about wine ...the image of wine expert as buffoon--rude, overbearing, filled with braggadacio, hot air and payola, unaware of the stink he spreads on all of us

Drama 2.0:

...a Fucking Idiot

I wasn't gonna post this 'cause I thought it was just mean. I don't really enjoy making people feel like poo. Lie. I do. But only when they ask for it.

I finally got around to watching a Gary Vaynerupchuk episode. What follows isn't a review so much as a spew. I did it in the style of a liveblog because that's easier than actually writing.

Passport to South American Wines – Episode #772

First impression: Gary Vaynerchuk is a histrionic, over the top, used car salesman.

Our Guest: Samanatha Brown -- a wannabe actor who couldn't make it but somehow got a gig on the Travel Channel -- wine credential: 10 years as a waitress.

A couple minutes in an there's too much talk about her life irrelevant to wine.

Every wine related word used by GV is spoken as if it's "in quotes."

4 minutes and still no real wine talk.

Finally at 4:30 they start talking about wine but then GV asks about her again. Has he got a "crush"?

6 minutes and we're still hearing about her very unimpressive and uninteresting "credentials".

Memorable quote from SB: "as you know, wine is an amazing concept... it changes constantly"

to which GV snaps his fingers three times -- too bad it didn't transport him back to Kansas.

6:45 and they're finally getting to the wine!

OMG! They're both swirling their glasses like centrifuges. She seems to be following his lead. He starts, she starts, He keeps the glass on the table, she keeps the glass on the table. He stops, she stops. Yap, yap, yap. He starts swirling again and OMFG so does she! It's the very definition of self parody.

Memorable quote from GV: "Let's give it a sniffy sniff!"

GV: "this is a very aromatically interesting wine."

I just noticed he keeps touching her -- creepy.

OK, here come the goods, I guess, as they start giving their impressions of the first wine tasted...

SB: "perfume-like, I should pour it all over myself" -- is it a mutual crush?

As they continue their "aroma notes" they keep saying different things but then agreeing with each other.

SB betrays the whole thing by saying, "it's almost like a sauvignon blanc." Ahem, that's because it is.

GV looks like a badly drawn cartoon ala South Park and when he swishes the wine around his mouth it only exagerates the effect. It would be comical if it weren't so frightening.

She's clearly swallowing her taste as he sticks the spitton helmet in her face and she faux spits. Oops, I guess she forgot that pro's don't swallow.

She agrees with everything he says -- he throws so many tastes at her it's ridiculous and she just keeps nodding her head. I think this is the key to his schtick. Speak fast, use as many descriptors as possible -- some of them are bound to be accurate -- just keep slinging the bullshit and trust that people will be eager to go along for the ride. Classic flim flam.

GV notes: enourmous amount of rock salad, flinty rock, blue stone, squirt of lemon, citrus notes, lemon/lime, sprite invaded this wine, bright fruit, fig component on the back end, yap, yap, fucking yap...

Moving on to the second wine.

GV: this one is "aromatically challenged" -- let me guess, the third wine will be "aromatically austere"

More creepy touching.

To her credit, the longer this goes on the more uncomfortable she seems to get. It's starting to look like she doesn't enjoy being his foil. She looks like someone who made the mistaken of opening the door to some Jehovah's Witnesses" and doesn't have the spine to tell them to go away.

GV aroma notes: "smells like argentinian honey candy - waxy, honey candy" -- how can you argue with that?

GV: rubber, "product" not a ball, though

Argh! The swishing noise. Please. Stop.

At the words "premium potpouri on the mouth" I can't take it any more.

Click.

We're leaving for Hanoi on xmas day. I will be blogging some of the trip. Notes from our first visit are being added below.

This post is a compilation of emails sent from our first trip to Viet Name several years ago. I decided to post them here since I'm getting ready to blog about a new trip.

Culture shock is shocking. It's been a few days since we landed in Hanoi so the imagery of that first shocking night has faded somewhat. We arrived in late evening and the shadow of night added to the mystery and strangeness. The taxi took a circuitous back road into the city. The streets were crooked and barely paved, lined with low, darkened, industrial looking buildings that were pieced together in patchwork fashion out of large sheets of fabric, tin, old signs, brick and concrete. The only noticeable lighting were strips of wire with bare low-wattage bulbs hanging between and inside a few of the buildings. As we neared the center of the city the buildings began to get larger and look more residential. The architecture was difficult to discern in the dark from the back of a moving vehicle but the influences appeared to include elements of European colonial, Asian pagoda and third-world primitive. As we approached Ben's neighborhood in the heart of the city, a little south of what's known as the Old Quarter, the traffic was light and the few signs of pedestrian life were small groups of figures squatting closely around sidewalk fires and the occasional street sweeper. The sweepers wielded brooms with very long bundles of sparse, thick twigs that were curved from the constant pressure against the ground. They gripped the brooms with locked arms reaching out from the sides of their bodies and created the sweeping motion by pivoting their entire torso, arms and broom moving in wide arcs back and forth with the body.

I think I would like these people even though I'm deathly afraid of rope burns.