Jump to content

Terry Theise

Members
  • Posts

    33
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

Terry Theise's Achievements

clam

clam (30/123)

  1. Hi Guys - nice to be cited so often and so kindly, and thanks to Rocks for the tip-off. Joel makes me wish I drank coffee, because he's my kinda guy. But I think the curious sensibility conduces to any number of things where variations on a theme are present, and especially where those variations are based on things both unprovable and inexplicable. Whether the matrix is tea, cheese, wine, coffee, chocolate (among others) we first are intrigued and delighted by the complexities in play, and then we become intensely curious about how they arise. We can cloak ourselves in a high-minded moniker like "The artisan sensibility" but really we're just a wondering sort of humanoid thinking "HTF???" The nice part is that it colors our view of the world with vitality and multiplicity. We even learn that white asparagus grown in a small set of soils in certain parts of Europe is especially sweet and "elegant," or that the Door County cherry of Wisconsin is markedly more complex than other cherries, and so our world becomes a most wonderful place, and we are wonderfully alert to it. So to me a man like Joel is more than just a coffee Lama; he's an agent of appreciation. Thanks again to all who remembered me. TT
  2. Well, that's sort of my entire point, which isn't to get ludicrously granular but to demonstrate the various ways flavor combos can work great, work OK, not work or REALLY not work. It's very rare there's a "perfect" wine, but it can be very helpful to get a few basic rules under our belts. Put it this way, the goal isn't to hit the bulls-eye; it's to hit the TARGET. If you "prefer the #3 rather than the #7" you should only be prepared to share why, so that others can understand what it is you're experiencing. It's all enlightening. It's possible to understand German wine if you're a moderately intelligent 9-year-old whose parents let her drink wine. Stemless glasses and t-shirts at fine-dining establishments are a grim sign of the goofball social/civil entropy threatening to lay waste to all culture and values. Or not. Over and out for me. I hope to see some of you Friday evening, and please tell me you're a member of Don's fattening universe.
  3. Sorry, I ignored your question. Yes I do know (and very much admire) that book.
  4. Space is indeed limited but I'm not sure what the demand has been. I'm optimistic that every food-wine whack-job out there who wants to get in will get in.
  5. The fact they had both a test-kitchen and a chef willing to tweak the food into small variations on basic themes.
  6. I'd suggest German wines with RS, and the best place to get them is MacArthur; talk to Phil. If the cheeses are soft or semi-soft, Champagne would work. Goat cheeses can manage Veltliner if they're young, but aged examples really need a take-no-prisoners Sancerre.
  7. Yes; do call them, or call the shop and speak to Elli. And thanks to everyone for their kind words.
  8. The first time I visited Zola Kitchen and Wine Bar, I knew it offered chance to do a different sort of "wine dinner." The old formula is tired, and I want to revive it. So what we're doing is delving as deeply as possible into FLAVORS, and how they combine and synergize. We're doing three basic preps each of which will have small but telling variations, in such building-block flavors as acidity, herbs/spices, and sweetness. We'll have nine wines alongside, themselves arranged from driest to least dry, from the three segments of my portfolio: Austria, Champagne and Germany. This way the diner can see, for example, how the addition of more acidity in the dish makes wine #3 unsuitable but suddenly demands wine #7 - we can see flavors up-close and in detail, and therefore see wine as just another in a chain of flavors which undulate in various interesting ways. This is a first for me, and there's a chance I'm overreaching. But I'm willing to risk it because we so seldom get to think about these things in such detail. The idea came from Charlie Trotter's new wine-service book, in which he wrote that his kitchen will routinely adapt a dish to the wine being drunk. Lest this appear to be oh-so earnest, if any of you know me, you know it won't. I hope to see you on Friday evening; we start at 6:30. Terry
  9. An Open Letter to Washington City Paper: Dear Editor, While I take no issue with peoples' varying impressions of the food or service at Restaurant Nora, it is galling to see a quarter-century of capital-I Integrity dissed as " (an) incredibly pretentious organic credo" by some feckless doofus. This person cannot possibly be in a position to identify precisely where the "pretense" might lie. But we can; we have known Nora Pouillon, Steven Damato and Thomas Damato for more than twenty years, and there is not one scintilla of pretense in their "Organic credo". They embody their principles, they WALK THE WALK as the saying goes. Disagree with this or any credo if you wish, but spare us the anonymously delivered invective toward people whose commitment you'd be better advised to emulate than to take cheap shots at. Sincerely, Terry Theise Odessa Piper
  10. 1) Flutes of varying roundness. I keep three different types, using the narrower bowl for Chardonnay-based Champagnes and going wider as the red-grape proprtion increases, or as the wine gets older (in which case I don't want to quash all those yummy secondary aromas). I also have two of the Richard Juhlin glasses I sometimes use for primo stuff. One thing is I always use two different glasses (one for me one for my sweetie) so that we can compare. That said, I appreciate TASTING Champagne from "wine" glasses, either INAOs or else the many tulip-shaped glasses you see in growers' places in the region. I prefer to drink Champagne from flutes because I appreciate the beauty of the mousse. 2) Ah yes, the Austria story. The offending Champagne was Deutz, which does rhyme with "hurts" and not with (ex)ploits.
  11. You could do it by varietal or by region, or both if they intersect. So for instance, drink nothing but Sauvignon Blanc and Syrah. Or nothing but Chianti and Riesling (even more specifically starting with, say, Mosel Riesling and morphing into other German regions and then beyond Germany). Then just buy whatever you can afford, and, guided by your books, start yankin' corks and slurpin'.
  12. Hi Brendan, great to hear from you. The answer to your various metaphysical questions is...YES. Nor am I being facile. The "essence of authenticity" involves these few phenomena: first, there is a kind of trinity-of-meaning wherein soil, family and culture intersect. As indeed they do in artisan wine wherever it comes from. This is to my mind concretely meaningful to the drinker, and here's why: Taking, say, Willi Schaefer as an example, Willy knows intimately that his wines from Himmelreich taste one way and those from Domprobst taste another. His forefathers knew it, and so does he. It is a matter of simple fact to him (I come along later and philosophize emotionally over it, which makes him chuckle) but it has the effect of establishing an order of priority, first the vineyards (i.e. the soil), which change hardly at all and then v-e-r-y slowly, and then the human, which changes each generation. Thus Willi is connected to his land, and the wine he makes expresses the connection. Why? Because he knows the land's innate flavors existed both before and after his particular period of stewardship, and so he gets out of the way and lets his land speak. (This is what we mean by non-manipulative winemaking: no flavors ADDED in the cellar but instead the preservation of what comes out of the vineyard.) Then you come along and drink the wine. Let's assume you like it. You know it comes from a family, not a factory, a "him" and not an "it". A guy just like you or me. You're connected to Willi becdause his reality is plain to see. Willi is connected to his land. You're connected to Willi, and so you are ALSO connected to his land. I don't see this as being metaphysical in any way; rather it strikes me as explicit and simple. Authenticity is, therefore, the preservation of a loving humility towards one's land which then expresses in the wine. If you put all these many artisans and their families together, it comprises a culture of detailed tending in a matrix of collegiality between man and soil. Yet for me to come along and explicate it is somewhat dangerous, because these are experiences of soul, and soul-experiences are inferential. They are about knowing but not knowing how you know what you know. When it comes to the wine in your glass, to refer to your question about the notes you "don't hear", in my experiences every authentic wine has two levels; the levels of its "flavors" and the level of its "flavor". Flavors-plural are all those bits and nuances we love to delineate. But FLAVOR is the holistic impression of the thing in its entirety. It is the thing that plays in silence as well as sound. It is why a poet famously once said the last line of a poem is the silence following the reading of the final line of text. It's the unit of time between the tick and the tock. Are we having fun yet?!?!
  13. There's only one wine book anyone strictly needs to own; Hugh Johnson's (and Jancis Robinson's) World Atlas Of Wine. There are two other great wine books recently issued: The Accidental Connoisseur (Lawrence Osborne) and The New France (Andrew Jefford) though neither is an all-purpose for-beginners book. Karen MacNeil's Wine Bible is also useful and charming. I never took classes and don't know how they might work. It depends on the quality of instruction I guess. What I'd personally recommend is to read the Wine Atlas and see what sort of wines most arouse your curiosity. Then drink ONE type of white and ONE type of red for at least 4 months and even better 6; really go deep into those wines until you start to know them (old hippies will appreciate it if I say to "grok" them). Then take another two types and instantly your mind will compare and contrast to what you already know. Build that way and what you build stays built. I think it's useless to dabble in 60 different wines and expect to understand anything about them, about wine, or about yourself.
×
×
  • Create New...