December

(from Hugh Johnson's World Atlas of Wine, 1971)

Happy Bright Sun Food Day!

Waking up to magic light.

Isastegi Basque cider, prism light, good for breakfast drinking (on holidays) and while cooking.

Leeks!

Tarte aux poireaux.

Happy kitchen. My friends are doing all of the hard stuff this year, I got off easy with vegetable dishes and cider. Just had a long talk with my grandmother (turning 90 next week), who tells me she still misses waking up at 5:00 am to put the turkey in. I do too. She said she also wants to hug me 'til I pop, and wishes you could hug through telephones. I don't usually get sentimental around holidays, but she is an exception, also the smell of caramelizing carrots in my oven, and a browned leek-creme fraiche tart that is chock full of black pepper, and (as an old chef boyfriend of mine once said, somewhat lecherously, "full of love").

Drink good wine people, an drink it with funny and sweet friends.

"I Keep to Myself Such Measures...."

I keep to myself such
measures as I care for,
daily the rocks
accumulate position.

There is nothing
but what thinking makes
it less tangible. The mind,
fast as it goes, loses

pace, puts in place of it
like rocks simple markers,
for a way only to
hopefully come back to

where it cannot. All
forgets. My mind sinks.
I hold in both hands such weight
it is my only description.

(Robert Creeley, Words, 52)

Happy Birthday Brooklyn Guy

Vouette & Sorbee 'Blanc d'Argile' NV (2004) magnum!!!! Thanks to Peter Liem for bringing it from Champagne.

Aliseo restaurant in Prospect Heights!

stalking the "orange" wine

Does it even seem appropriate to call it orange wine anymore? With so much variance in method, region, and time of extended skin-contact, I am having a harder time lumping all of these very disparate wines together into one category.

Maybe it has something to do with the man who visited the restaurant I was working in last month almost every night for a week. He was from Fruili, IT and dumbfounded that I knew of so many producers from his tiny geographic area, but begged me to NOT call it orange wine, just white wine (and then proceeded to visit and beg the same thing for many nights in a row). He was strange and demanding, and horrendously appreciative all at the same time. His condescension made me angry, but his persistence about his point was compelling.

This is one of the serious debates my partner at my new restaurant and I have been hashing over. Should we single out wines as "orange", in a separate category, or call them macerated, or put them at the bottom of the white regions?

I have learned more about orange wines (and most New Yorkers have too), from the passion of a certain caustic-witted, lanky, talented sommelier named Levi Dalton, who hosted many gorgeous "all-orange" wine dinners at Alto restaurant in the past few years. I don't think I would even be wondering about their presentation on a list, or their changing roles for diners if he hadn't done so much to educate me and other brave wine lovers lunging for that extreme edge of palate. To think that "orange" has almost become a Brooklyn household term is astounding, exhilarating, and strange.

Is "orange" just is an applied American label, problematic because it prioritizes production technique over specific regionality? There are so many various characteristics within this group, so many different grapes and aging methods. (What about the Jura, or my all-time love sherry for that matter)? Are categories and terminology really that important?

Or should it just be the sheer tactile experience-- the multi-facetted sensations that set off chain reactions in your body like falling dominoes, telling every cell that THIS wine is good. Last night, my friend and I visited Masten Lake restaurant, where I used to work, and Marisa Marthaller poured us a glass of THIS:

Cascina degli Ulivi, Monferrato 'Montemarino' 2001 Piemonte, IT (Stefano Bellotti, Louis/Dressner)

Caramal through the middle, sea salt, bitter orange, dark orange, HEADY, all Cortese, aged in oak for 11 months on lees, gorgeous.