Archives for November, 2006
Whoring for Free Wine
Josh at PinotBlogger.com has a “t-shirt for wine” promotion going on and I’m making a shameless pitch for a free bottle of Capozzi Pinot Noir. Here’s a photo of me in the shirt, which just arrived today. I know that it doesn’t technically qualify because I’m wearing the shirt in my kitchen and not out on the town but there are several wine fools with me who now know about PinotBlogger.com who didn’t before so maybe that will work. To hedge my bets, though, I’l try to wear it out in public soon.
Happy Holocaust
My own personal Thanksgiving tradition is to start the day making stuffing for the bird while listening to Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, Opus 36, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and drinking a glass of grape wine.
I used to feel conflicted about celebrating Thanksgiving. As holidays go, it’s less offensive than most and I enjoy preparing and eating turkey, stuffing and all the rest, as well as spending the day with close friends but I can’t help but feel that it’s also a celebration by the victors of a holocaust against the native inhabitants of this land. Thanksgiving might well be considered a national day of mourning by American Indians.
I heard a movement from Górecki’s 3rd on the radio while at work one day (back when I had a real job) a week or two before Thanksgiving. I was moved enough by the music to call in and ask what it was and I bought a copy of that same recording by the London Sinfonietta soon thereafter. I first listened to the whole thing that Thanksgiving morning before anyone else was up and the tradition was born. The symphony was written in the late 70’s but was popularized by this 1992 recording conducted by David Zinman and featuring Dawn Upshaw. It’s one of the best selling classical albums of all time so you may have heard at least a portion of it at some point. It’s a piece that demands your attention. Mostly sombre and slow it builds to a huge emotional crescendo and then retreats again. It’s in three parts and Dawn Upshaw sings in each of them. The texts consist of an ancient Polish Catholic lament and a Polish Folk song framing, in the second movement, a short prayer that was inscribed on a Gestapo prison wall by a teenage girl. All three texts are achingly sorrowful and have to do with a mother’s love for her lost child but there is a ray of hope shining through the shadows throughout the piece resulting in a magnificent melancholy.
No, Mother, do not weep,
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Help me always.
Hail Mary.
– 1944, Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna, 18 years old
Górecki is Polish and lived in the shadow of Auschwiz. The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs presents an enduring spirit in the face of unendurable sadness and loss and so seems fitting for a Thanksgiving remembrance ritual.
As I type this a couple hours later, others have risen and I’m now listening to Bill Miller singing My People purely by coincidence. Someone here with me happens to like him and while she has no idea what I’m writing — and I haven’t talked with her about this post or the inspiration or tradition behind it — she put his album, The Red Road on. One of those sweetly synchronous convergences of sensibility that happen frequently, if you’re of a mind to watch for them.
My people heard the thundering
as the iron horse crossed the land
it’s echos drowning out the cries
of those who could not understand
My people watched the buffalo
dying in the sun
while those tracks of steel led to the sea
their will be done
Now their blood flows through these rivers
and then into our veins
and their hearts are beating louder
than all the years of shame
– Bill Miller, My People, The Red Road
Thanksgiving is a day of thanks and celebration of family and friends but I resolve to always remember those whose blood was shed and whose way of life was ended in order to make way for the Wasichu inheritance into which I was born. I facetiously offer a toast every Thanksgiving to “millions of dead Indians” not out of callousness or disrespect but as a way to remind myself of the debt that our culture owes but would like to forget. I start each Thanksgiving day by listening to the music borne of one holocaust in remembrance of another. I am grateful and I give thanks for the bounteous abundance we have been blessed with but I promise not to forget those who came before and the sacrifices they made for a society that arrogated their tenancy of this magnificent land.
Wine is a ritual drink. To hold a glass of it over one’s head, to offer a toast — whether in honor of a friend, remembrance of an ancestor, abeyance to tradition or to remember millions of dead Indians — is to sublimate a seeming act of personal gratification into an act of contrition. The transmogrification of libation into consecration, the transmutation of wine into blood.
Small Sampler
I happened upon a wine store today. It was way outside of my geographic territory - Powers Ferry Road. I was up in the area for a class and wandered into the store during a break. From the proprietor’s perspective, zinfandels are lighter than cabernet and merlots. I was sort of surprised by that. I purchased a Rosenblum 2004 Zinfandel Appelation Series. The overarching experience of it was sweetness. I wouldn’t say it was particularly bold or heavy.
We then switched to the Aldberbrook 2003 Syrah. It a funny thing. Some times I am bowled over by it and other times its sort of a blasé experience. Tonight, after the really sweet Rosenblum the Alderbrook is really dry with subtle tannins. It is great with grilled brussell sprouts though and I’m enjoying it more and more as it opens and warms a bit.
I was also giving some European wines a try again. I opened a Torre Solaria Primotivo from Salento, 2002. I’ve found a number of primitivos that I have enjoyed but this one was thin, tinny and not good. I don’t see any point in drinking things like that! We moved onto a Five Rivers Pinot Noir 2004 from Santa Barbara County. Dry is probably the main word for it but it was very drinkable. It was a great improvement over the primitivo. Yeah! My first real posting.
Preston Vineyards, Madam Preston, Grape Wine, 2005 (A)
This certified organic wine is amazingly complex. It posesses a beautiful golden straw color, smells like a honey-wheat bagel and tastes like a sweet green salad with ripe pear, mandarin oranges and tobacco fried onion strings. Look at the label: Madam Preston, Grape Wine. That’s it. The vintage is on the cork and the legally required fine print is very lightly printed directly on the back of the bottle. No foil over the cork means this is a wine for the fridge, not the cellar (I’ve got six bottles down there anyway). I love their confidence in this wine.
From Preston:
Madam Emily Preston was an herbalist and spiritual healer who plied her trade and preserved her clients in the years straddling 1900. The place was the small community of Preston outside Cloverdale in northern Sonoma County. Spiritual needs of its habitués were satisfied by Preston’s Church of Heaven on Probation as well as by potions concocted from local herbs, spiced they say with alcohol and other pleasing things.
At Preston of Dry Creek, not far from Cloverdale, we also cater to the spiritual needs of our followers. With Madam Preston we present an amalgam of white Rhône varietals—Rousanne, Viognier, and Marsanne—that is rich, ripe, and golden as the hills of northern Sonoma County. It is a potion worthy of the Preston tradition.
Our Madam Preston is a twist on the great white blends of Hermitage. We flip the proportions of Rousanne and Marsanne, and then add Viognier to heighten aromatics and complexity.
Atlanta Corkage Fees Wiki
I have begun an Atlanta Corkage Fees Wiki page. It’s an open wiki meaning anyone who visits can edit it and add to the listing.