To the south, on Atlantic Avenue, is Heights Chateau (picture above from their website), the largest of the three. Here, Judy has been unfailingly helpful in finding good, inexpensive wines from various places, and Dominique guided me to some nice French artisinal reds that fit my budget.On a recent visit to Heights Chateau, I got to chatting with a pleasant young woman at the checkout, during which I mentioned my admiration for Alice Feiring, and that I'd posted on my blog about her. She told me she also had a blog, and that she would e-mail me the URL. About an hour later I got the link to Elana's blog, So Many Wines...So Little Time. Her recent post on The Brandy Library sparked my interest, as I love good eaux de vie and single malt Scotches (the word "whiskey" derives from the Gaelic usquebach, which translates as "water of life", as does the Danish akavit, which derives from the Latin aqua vitae). Her series of posts about her visit to France, featuring Champagne and Burgundy, are informative and entertaining. Finally, hearty congratulations to Elana for completing the requirements for an advanced certificate in wine from the International Wine Center. I do like it that she resists the usual ways of writing about wine. As she puts it:
They teach you to describe [wine] with typical adjectives: fruit forward, oaky, tannic...but I still tend to tell our customers the following: so good it broke my heart, i want to put a straw in it and just drink, killer juice. Then there are my descriptions of some of my favorite spirits: made me break out into a jig, i love to wear it as perfume, or it's like a symphony (that can be used with wine as well). Sometimes you just have to go with that initial feeling.Update: Eric Asimov, in his "The Pour" column in today's New York Times, praises California vintners, like John Williams of Frog's Leap, who are producing old school, subtle, balanced wines, as opposed to Parkerillas. I suspect Elana and Alice will join me in cheering Eric's espousal of terroir.
their really is far to much tasty alcohol out there. never gotten too much into wine. i like it, and have a few staples for when i want it (gnarlyhead old vine zin and cloudline pinot noir), as well as a taste for austrailian tawny ports. i believe i've expressed my deep and abiding love of islay whiskies, particularly lagavulin. ah, and beer, glorious beer.
ReplyDeletemostly though, i'm chiming in to note that i found a spectacular gin i'd never tried before. typically, i stick with sapphire, but this one piqued my curiousity. called "bluecoat" and it proudly claims to be an american dry gin. that alone grabbed my attention; no matter where gin is made, it typically at least pretends to be english. so i picked it up. and it's great (gone now too). delicate seems an odd choice of words to describe a gin, but it's actually very delicate; yet without losing any of the flavor of gin. not as much juniper as some, but definately present and nicely balanced. makes a dangerously quaffable martini.
ack! "there", not "their". i hate when anyone screws that up, particularly when it's me.
ReplyDelete[hangs head in abject shame]