In Vino Veritas: Tom Wins Our Judgment

Acknowledgments
In Taber’s account of the 1976 California v. France wine tasting, the assembled French critics approached the task of comparing French and California vintages with typical Gallic hubris. And they came away chastened by the scores they awarded to the Chardonnays and Cabernets from California. We, on the other hand, were never in danger of losing. At Tom J’s elaborately arranged dinner and tasting on October 21, it was provincialism at its best: all California wines, all night long. (Some of us were willing to make an exception for an especially fine Australian Shiraz, but after extracting it from its display case Peter would only let us fondle his bottle of Penfolds 1999 Grange.)

As a prelude to his fantastic meal of grilled stuffed game hens (to say nothing of the accompanying pasta and salad), Tom set up a blind tasting of three winning Chardonnays from this year’s Sonoma Harvest Fair. With each bottle reflecting a different market tier (approximately $10 v. $20 v. $40), the test was whether price really does matter. It didn’t. We voted in favor of Taft Street Winery’s 2006 production. And the 2007 Sebastiani, at the low end, fared almost as well.

Our two guests for the evening played excellent supporting roles: Charlie ably backed up Tom in the kitchen (a critical function given the rising impairment levels in the group), while Dennis supplemented Tom’s wine tasting with several outstanding bottles from Lewis Cellars, where he and his family have developed a fine reputation among midsize vintners in the Napa Valley. In addition to serving a Chardonnay and several excellent Cabs, Dennis answered our many questions about the business of winemaking. Thanks to both of these gents for spending the evening with us. And thanks, too, to John for making an exquisite flourless chocolate torte to put an exclamation point on Tom’s meal.

As if we didn’t have enough wine to sample, Tom challenged us to pair up and bring an especially good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. I can’t recall all of the labels, but the highs and lows stand out. Doug’s bottle of Chimney Rock (thanks for letting me pair with you, Doug!) was universally lauded as exquisite, and Dean/Dan/Tom’s garage wine (with fermentation help from Roy) reminded us why these guys haven’t quit their day jobs.

More later...

His Name Was Dan (But Mine Is Not Andrew)

What’s First Is Prologue

“A man’s home is his castle, but a man’s garage is his sanctuary”. So proclaims the plaque proudly displayed in Dan’s serene garage retreat. But for our September session, his home was transformed into a literary salon, serving the finest in insight-inducing cuisine. There was something about those mushrooms….

First, wild mushroom crostini (and thin-sliced salami and cheeses), beers, and wines to get both our conversation and salivary glands going. Pre-dinner talk touched on many topics, including a detailed discussion of the many ways that high school sports can cause leg injuries (IT ligaments, knee screws, you name it), various and sundry ways to intimidate your dog into respecting you (ask not how President Obama might make an example of Joe Biden in front of his puppy Bo, ask what you can do to your puppy), and how Garth’s golf cart mysteriously mowed down John, like something straight out of Stephen King’s Christine. I am glad to report that all athletes, pets, pet owners, and tractor babysitters are expected to make full recoveries, much as did our book’s hero, William Shakespeare, after his brief turn on the rack.

Dan nobly sacrificed part of his Labor Day to labor over the preparation of succulent haunches of venison (coincidentally, each was approximately the size of his lovable dogs, Buzz and Tink), imported from a gourmet meat purveyor somewhere to the east, which he then marinated and rounded off with a truly delicious sauce - a combination of Madeira wine and ….. more mushrooms. Fungh-tastic! Not to be overlooked were terrific rosemary garlic mashed potatoes and a bountiful tossed salad.

As always, several gentlemen contributed memorable beverages:

• Armando - Tequila Chamuco (his “current favorite”, but you know, there are just so many to get through)


• Paul - Bunratty Meade (somehow we managed to connect this with pouring pots of boiling oil on people, but you’ll just have to trust me on this one)


• John - Stone IPA


• Roy - his brandy-of-the-week (or the day?)

And so we dined.

The Text’s the Thing

Our book this month was Jess Winfield’s My Name is Will, a two-pronged narrative that follows both William Shakespeare and Willie Greenberg, his crisis-ridden 1980’s graduate student doppelganger. Although most of us agreed with Dan that the book was great fun and presented both historical periods well (yes, gentlemen, we’re old enough that our college and post-college years are “history”), many of us also agreed with Doug that the two stories, despite coalescing during what seemed to be a shared hallucination, didn’t really come together, and with George that the “coming of age” moments for both characters sprang up a bit too abruptly as the book hurtled towards its anticlimactic end (ironically, since most of the book was downright chock-full of climaxes). And yes, for those keeping score at home, Paul once again played the “misogynistic, angst-ridden, male protagonist” card.

But for most of the group, the book’s high point was its poignant evocation of places and times from their lost youth - in Berkeley, in Santa Cruz, and even in Fresno (“When you live in Fresno, if you get a chance to go to the coast, you go!”). Because so much of the book took place in the Bay area, many of us could recall personal episodes at specific places it describes. Armando vividly remembered dropping his then-girlfriend / now-wife in the mud at the Renaissance Faire and confirmed that psilocybin mushrooms do indeed grow in manure, sometimes even in national seashore visitor center parking lots. Larry wistfully recalled riding the Davis-to-Berkeley library jitney (while Tom J. and Paul had to settle for wistfully recalling the jitney scene in the book). Paul waxed nostalgic about the Hate Guy and the Piano Guy in Sproul Plaza. John, just to be different, tenderly reminisced about his Mac Se and the Dark Castle computer game (described in the book as “a little warrior man with a pageboy haircut, throwing rocks at bats”).

John and Roy also took us back to chemistry and undergraduate – graduate student relations in the 80’s. (Insert your own details here.)

Dean read the book on a beach near the Navarro River, and just as he got to the scene with Kate and Dashka, who should walk up but a woman who introduced herself as “Pashka”? Thinking fast, Dean passed the book, strategically opened to said scene, to his wife. Subsequent developments were not conveyed to the group.

Which bring us, at last, to Stan, who used the book as a device to expound on the following themes, in ascending order of digressiveness:

1. the Shakespeare “authorship” question,


2. “history is bunk”, and we really don’t know anything about the past, and


3. the 80’s and the years that have followed ought to be compared not to the Renaissance, but rather to Rome in its decline, and oh, by the way, we are now living during the Apocalypse.

In the words of the immortal Shaggy, “Zoinks!”. Having seen Marin Shakespeare’s production of Julius Caesar the prior weekend, Larry leapt to the defense of the written word: “The play’s [or in this case, the book] the thing.” Paul found the sections of the book that dealt with power, politics, and religion especially interesting, and appreciated the historical background, clearly believing it to be unbunklike. Plus he ranked the secret Catholic mass scene right up there with the hot library jitney episode.

Talking about where we’ve been and who we were eventually turned our thoughts to who we are now, and, in our own version of parallel storylines, the experiences our kids are and will be going through. Despite the book’s mostly non-serious tone, we ended the night with a pretty serious discussion about how kids experiment and find their way in the world, our place in their journey, and what we should or shouldn’t tell them.

“Good Company, Good Wine, Good Welcome, Can Make Good People”
(Henry VIII, Act I, scene iv)

Or not.
(Anonymous)

For next month, a large majority of the group chose Judgment of Paris, the book on which the movie “Bottle Shock” was based. Even now, plans are being hatched to fetch the finest bottles from our respective wine cellars, bring in prestigious guest speakers, and generally engage in some pretty over-the-top wine behavior. Stay tuned.

Proposed Titles for October

Below are my three book selections for our October meeting. All books center on a “Wine” theme! I am hoping you will like my book theme idea because I plan to entertain you with good food and great wines. And, like always, everyone will provide the wonderful social and interesting book discussions.

Although the three books do not clearly meet our book selection criteria, I request your “relaxation” of the criteria. All are paperback and appear to be easy reads from the reviews I’ve read.

See you at Dan’s on September 8th and we can discuss. Thanks.

Tom J.

“The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine” by Ben Wallace. (323 pages) A New York Times Bestseller.

“Part detective story, part wine history, this is one juicy tale, even for those with no interest in the fruit of the vine. . . . As delicious as a true vintage Lafite.” —BusinessWeek
The Billionaire’s Vinegar tells the true story of a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux—supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson—that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it. Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries. Updated for paperback with a new epilogue.

“The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty” by Julia Flynn Siler. (464 pages) A New York Times Bestseller.

Set in California's lush Napa Valley and spanning four generations of a talented and visionary family, The House of Mondavi is a tale of genius, sibling rivalry, and betrayal. From 1906, when Italian immigrant Cesare Mondavi passed through Ellis Island, to the Robert Mondavi Corporation's twenty-first-century battle over a billion-dollar fortune, award-winning journalist Julia Flynn Siler brings to life both the place and the people in this riveting family drama. - Barnes & Noble

“Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine” by George M. Taber. (352 pages)

The Paris Tasting of 1976 will forever be remembered as the landmark event that transformed the wine industry. At this legendary contest -- a blind tasting -- a panel of top French wine experts shocked the industry by choosing unknown California wines over France's best. George M. Taber, the only reporter present, recounts this seminal contest and its far-reaching effects, focusing on three gifted unknowns behind the winning wines: a college lecturer, a real estate lawyer, and a Yugoslavian immigrant. With unique access to the main players and a contagious passion for his subject, Taber renders this historic event and its tremendous aftershocks -- repositioning the industry and sparking a golden age for viticulture across the globe. With an eclectic cast of characters and magnificent settings, Judgment of Paris is an illuminating tale and a story of the entrepreneurial spirit of the new world conquering the old. - Barnes & Noble

He Can Carry Our Water Anytime....

Today's story in the Marin I.J. (http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_13191322) about the 7 candidates for the board of the Marin Municipal Water District mentions the involvement of one of our own. Too bad the article highlighted so few of Armando's many qualifications for serving in this important role. As a former Recreation and Parks Commissioner in San Rafael, a school district volunteer and activist, the chair of the Sequoia Parks Foundation, and in his prior life a National Parks Service Ranger in Pt. Reyes, Armando is ideal for the job. You have our support, Armando!

Another Pulitzer Evening at Larry's

Acknowledgments
First, my apologies for this tardy summary. Larry’s fine hospitality on July 28 deserves better than this late—and abbreviated—post about an otherwise delightful evening. But, with summer hard at hand, my attention has been elsewhere.

The first time Larry hosted MBC, it was on a winter evening and we drank corn liquor, ate a hearty stew, and talked about the Battle of Gettysburg. This occasion could not have been more different. Seated outside and overlooking Peacock’s 12th fairway, we were served a delicious paella followed by Larry’s homemade burnt sugar ice cream (thank you for the recipe, Larry!). While Larry’s menu tacitly acknowledged the colonial history of the Dominican Republic, Paul’s beer selection was less subtle. The Oskar Blues label reminded us that Oscar’s trajectory was more tragedy than triumph.

Our numbers were thinner than usual, but Jack’s return more than made up for it. It was also a pleasure to have our friend and neighbor, Tony, join us as a guest. However, with his Oscar Award in one hand and his passel of advanced degrees in the other, he was almost as intimidating as our resident rocket scientist, Glenn (whose absence for back surgery was duly noted and mourned).

The Book
Since this post is meant to be short, I’ll cut to the chase. Diaz’ novel about a multi-generational immigrant family living in New Jersey but forever rooted in the Dominican Republic was profoundly polarizing. Stan sung its praises and gave it a 10; Dan flinched and graded it a 3. We would have ignored Dan’s complaints (as he didn't finish the book), but they were largely mirrored by George, our Thoughtful Republican, whose vote was a 4. Even with Doug, Larry, and John celebrating the book’s virtues, we couldn’t develop a consensus rating above 7.1.

Whether it was the language (tough for the monolinguists), the cultural and political asides (the footnotes were clever, if distracting), the author’s in-jokes (enough geek content to last a lifetime), or simply the herky-jerky narrative quality (confusing POV shifts), the book was a hard read for some. And yet the book was both a fascinating cultural statement (who knew the DR was so interesting?) and a suspenseful narrative (even if Oscar's finale was like a beautiful slow-motion trainwreck). Paul sidestepped all of this and repeated the common observations he made about the last several books we’ve read. To his thinking, we can’t seem to avoid deeply flawed misogynists!

Next Up
We were given and agreed to read Ollestad’s Crazy for the Storm during August. We’re also set to discuss Jess Winfield’s My Name is Will when we meet next at Dan’s on September 8. Let’s see if George’s prognostication comes true and Blindness is finally dislodged from the top of our rankings.