Buying French wine in California

Feb 11, ’05 9:21 PM

I ran across something at Crescat which surprised me. Amy Lamboley, in a comment upon an assertion by Professor Bainbridge, claims that "few wine stores in California have a spectacular selection of European wines…"

As a resident of Washington State, where in fact only a few wine stores (especially the terrific folks at McCarthy and Schiering) do have a good selection of European wines, I have to wonder if we’re shopping in the same places. California, in my experience, is home to several of the very best importers of European wines, as well as some fabulous wine shops.

The list, for me, begins with Kermit Lynch Wine Merchants, of Berkeley. Kermit Lynch not only carries a number of lower-priced but excellent wines which go directly to refuting Bainbridge’s point, but they represent Jean-Louis Chave, Francois Raveneau, August Clape, Vieux Telegraphe, Tempier, Zind-Humbrecht, Robert Chevillon, and other wonderful producers. Sadly, Kermit Lynch doesn’t have a website, but you can receive their monthly catalog by mail, and likely you have a local representative or distributor if you’re near a major city.

North Berkeley Imports has also built a fine selection of producers, which includes Texier and a number of solid Burgundies. Then, one can look at retail shops like Premier Cru in Oakland, or a perennial favorite, K&L Wines in Redwood City and San Francisco.

Or if you’re interested in unique and very collectible wines, Rare Wine Company of Sonoma has one of the best portfolios in the country. In addition, RWC is the specialist in fine old vintage Madeira.

And if you’re looking for something special or rare and RWC can’t help you, Eddie Gelsman of the Wine Library in Petaluma can probably help you.

Riesling your thing? Age of Riesling in Berkeley is your best source, and Bill Mayer has impeccable taste and superb relationships with the producers.

And that’s just the Bay Area, and the folks I’ve dealt with frequently.

I will agree with Professor Bainbridge’s observation that good $10 European wines are largely gone. The exchange rate and soft dollar have driven prices on many wines which formerly were in the $10-12 range up toward $18-20. Case in point — the Produttori di Barbaresco Langhe used to be $10-12 in the Seattle market, and was a superb case buy. Nothing profound, but at $10 with a case discount I’ll drink it with pasta all year. Now, the 2002 is priced at $18-19, and is no longer worth it. This is happening across the board, but until the dollar is stronger there’s little we can do about it. Except be glad that there’s wine in the cellar.

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50 Book Challenge #5: Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country

Feb 9, ’05 10:17 PM

After finishing Philosophy and Social Hope, I went back and re-read Rorty’s Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (AoC). I’d read it prior to last year’s major spree reading liberal theory and moral philosophy, so I wanted to see how much more I picked up this time.

AoC improved upon re-reading, especially since pragmatism and anti-essentialism resonates with me strongly. After all, if we deny that there is a fixed "human nature," then it becomes difficult to articulate a single conception of the "good life" and thus to ground a universalist moral theory. In this sense, I agree with pragmatic (and "post-modern") critiques of Enlightenment rationalism. What I dislike about other critiques of rationalism — for example, Gray’s "modus vivendi" liberalism (about which more in a future post) — is that many appear to treat the incommensurability of ways of life as an unchangeable fact, to which all else must be accomodated. This seems to me to be essentialism, merely writ at the level of cultural groups rather than the entire species.

In the pragmatist vision, it’s true that different groups may favor incommensurable ways of life, or rival freedoms in incompatible mixes, but since we do not consider these to be "fixed" and permanent features of either individuals or groups, we are free to argue and discuss our way to compromises. Individuals and even groups are free to change and evolve their conception of the good, to include the compromises which are necessary to civil life. The pragmatist holds her views lightly, and thus can build political consensus or coalition much more easily than any view of liberalism which assumes a fixed human nature or an "optimal" way of life.

What Rorty accomplishes in AoC is to tie this pragmatic vision to an intelligent patriotism; this is attractive because what he calls the "cultural left" has spent twenty years deriding the goodness that does exist in American liberal democracy and civil society in favor of a vision of corruption and institutional evil. Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky are well-known products of such a left, and although each has made important points about the current political system, it’s also clear that neither is able to present a wholly balanced picture. Instead, Rorty calls upon progressives to keep the lessons of the cultural left with respect to cultural identity, but rebuild the practical bridges that the "old left" had created between leftist thinkers, the labor movement, and the economic middle-to-lower class population. That coalition, built so successfully by Progressives and New Deal Democrats, has eroded since the left turned away from economics in the 1960’s in favor of the politics of ethnic and sexual identity.

The argument in AoC resonates strongly now, not just because of the additional reading I’ve done but because we’ve been through the 2004 election. We’ve seen how Republicans have captured much of the left’s former lower and middle class constituency, through a combination of patriotism and what the pundits and pollsters are calling "values." There are many theories about how the left failed, but I am coming to prefer Rorty’s view that the left’s turn towards post-modern identity politics alienated them from their mass audience, who had little use for the over-theorizing of the academic left and the anti-Americanism of the "new Left" of the 1970’s. The country has not so much become authentically conservative as it has fallen into the conservative orbit as a result of lacking a liberal left to which most people can proudly identify. Rebuilding such a left could be highly successful (if time-consuming), because much of the population still appears to support New Deal-style liberal policies, as well as strong protections for civil liberties. If such a consensus can be rebuilt, we can also satisfy the needs of cultural leftists who demand progress on identity issues; sadly, the reverse has not proven true — cultural leftists have not been able to satisfy the needs of those who view their country patriotically but simply want more economic fairness and justice.

Naturally, this topic deserves a fuller exposition. At the moment, I highly recommend Achieving Our Country as a prelude to how a Deweyan pragmatism might be reborn within contemporary progressive politics.

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Google Maps: fascinating but still very beta

Feb 8, ’05 10:56 AM

Google has introduced another fascinating technology prototype: Google Maps. The premise is that you search for terms which are then associated with map locations.

So just for fun, I tried the search “vodka in Seattle”, trying to find either liquor stores (I’ve been trying to find Hangar One’s Kaffir Lime vodka lately to replicate a drink I had at May, in Wallingford) or bars. Google returned (partial list):

  • Bambuza Vietnamese Bistro

  • Tamara Wilson Public Relations

  • Tini Biggs Lounge

  • Earth and Ocean

  • Designer Furniture Galleries

  • Rossi for Governor

The restaurants I get. But apparently I’ve been shopping at the wrong furniture store all this time, and I know who my next PR firm will be.

But the real surprise is that Google thinks that Dino Rossi’s Bellevue campaign office is where I ought to be looking for vodka. (suppressing evil grin)

Clearly the technology is still in its infancy, so play with it while it’s still wacky and fun…

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GoDaddy’s missing second ad spot during the Superbowl

Feb 7, ’05 5:00 PM

Apparently, the GoDaddy ad spot from yesterday’s SuperBowl was supposed to run twice, not just once during the first quarter. For those who didn’t see the game, in the spot a young brunette testifies in front of a fake committee wearing a tight white tank-top and manifesting serious cleavage. Predictably, one of the shoulder straps breaks, and she dances a bit. Various old folks look upset, and one old guy is huffing oxygen, apparently overcome by the woman’s dancing. To be clear, at no time is there a "wardrobe malfunction" other than the strap breaking, and no actual obscenity occurs. But apparently somebody didn’t like the ad and killed the second spot.

The CEO of GoDaddy blogged today on why the ad didn’t appear twice. It seems that the NFL asked Fox not to air the ad a second time, and Fox complied. One imagines that GoDaddy will get its second 2.4 million bucks back, but more interesting is the blogospheric reaction. Some have been quick to call this censorship, others are wondering about breach of contract.

It’s not censorship. The relationship between GoDaddy.com and Fox is a private business relationship, undoubtedly with a standard written contract. Without seeing the contract, it’s difficult to know if Fox breached, but one imagines it’s likely that Fox retains the right to not air material at its choice, and would then simply be liable for a refund or credits for future ads. Frankly, there’s nothing interesting here from a legal point of view.

I do find it fascinating, however, that Fox and the NFL were sufficiently freaked out about public opinion and the general cultural climate in our country that an ad that involves a fully clothed woman dancing was considered problematic.

Especially since, if one watches any of a half-dozen other Fox shows (e.g., Totally Outrageous Behavior, the O.C., American Idol, and virtually every one of Fox’s exploitative reality shows), you’d see a heck of a lot more than was displayed in the GoDaddy SuperBowl ad. Let’s face it, Fox isn’t exactly known for family entertainment and wholesomeness. So I find it both hilarious and kind of creepy that Fox moved that quickly to ensure that our delicate minds weren’t re-exposed to GoDaddy during the final minutes of the game.

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Tasting notes: 2001 White Burgundies

Feb 6, ’05 11:18 AM

Last night, a number of us gathered at Bill Fleckenstein’s home to finish up a series of 3 tastings: 1999, 2000, and 2001 white burgundies. Last night we focused on the 2001’s. Eight wines had been decanted for several hours and were served in blind decanters. We knew the lineup, but did not know which decanter held which wine.

The 2001 Raveneau Montee de Tonnerre Chablis stood out from the rest, with a wonderfully subtle, stony, and lemony nose. The rest of the wines were all from the Cotes d’Or and thus required more analysis. At least one bottle was simply bad, beginning the evening with a squashy, oxidized nose that worsened as the evening continued, though it was clearly a good wine given the palate.

The clear standout, rated as the wine of the night by everyone, was the 2001 Coche-Dury Meursault. Most then preferred the Ramonet Champ-Canet, which had a hint of the piney aroma characteristic of Ramonet’s Chassagnes, but was subtle and understated. After this, preferences were much more individualized. I liked the Colin Deleger Puligny Les Demoiselles next, but I believe this ranking is anomalous because the Pillot Vergers Clos St. Marc (squashy wine) and Leflaive Clavoillon were off bottles and normally would have knocked our socks off. In the middle, or what normally would have been the bottom end of my rankings, were the Marc Colin Vide Bourse Chassagne and the Carillon Champ-Canet. Both were good, solid wines, but they paled in comparison tonight with the Coche and Ramonet.

Fleck then served a “reference wine” by way of comparison — a crisp, pale, young-tasting wine with a huge nose and a smooth, mellow palate. This turned out to be the 1979 Ampeau Les Combettes, served to demonstrate how age-worthy white burgundy can be. A phenomenal wine — several at the table guessed the wine was only a few years old.

During a dinner of grilled whole beef tenderloins and simple pasta with mushrooms, we drank a lovely but slightly fading 1985 La Chapelle Hermitage, a slightly oxidized but lovely Camigliano 1997 Brunello, and a 1990 Pichon Baron which reminded everyone of a young, juicy Quilceda Creek. I had brought Henri Bonneau’s 1992 Cuvee Celestins, but the early consensus was that the bottle was off or slightly corked. Chuck Miller disagreed, and indeed the initial “corkiness” appears to have been a bad case of bottle stink, as I happily confirmed later that night at home. Chris Camarda brought his 1997 Andrew Will Klipsun Merlot, which is starting show some maturity and complexity but also has plenty of life left.

We finished with a fascinating 1959 Banyuls and molten chocolate dessert, and a bottle of 1983 Climens which Fleck swears goes perfectly with chocolate. In all, a fabulous evening.

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Richard Olney and Lulu’s Provencal Table

Feb 6, ’05 10:11 AM

Since Crescat Sententia doesn’t have comments, I’m writing in response to Waddling Thunder’s discussion of Olney’s book Lulu’s Provencal Table. I happen to agree that this classic has less Olney than one might ordinarily expect, but from my perspective, Waddling Thunder is missing something crucial. This is no ordinary cookbook; it is, rather, a tribute to a great winemaking family and their "extended family" of associations from Olney to Kermit Lynch to Alice Waters and her compatriots. Olney intentionally removes himself from the foreground in the book, preferring instead to allow Lulu Peyraud to tell the story of the food, wine, and friends associated with Domaine Tempier.

Peyraudstempier20001

For the book is nothing less than Olney’s argument that certain foods, certain wines, and a group of special friends can transcend each of these categories and become something richer: a community. This community, and its history, do receive a much deeper treatment in Olney’s Reflexions, but to my mind, Lulu’s Provencal Table stands as an essential tribute to the Peyrauds who built Tempier and those who carry it on into the next generation.

(photo of Catherine and Jean-Marie Peyraud by the author, November 2000)

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