Georgian wine commercial

Been thinking about Georgian wines a lot lately. Last time I tasted one, it tasted like liquefied sausage. Truly. I'm much more into that kinda thing these days, though. Hm.

Farm Stories: Boys and their toys

Friday's on the farm were always hectic––harvest day. In the height of the season, they could start as early as 6:30am and go until dark, harvesting, then packing the van, eating lunch and finishing what tasks you could before nightfall. The next day we would get up at 4:15am, our bodies sorely protesting, and leave for Nashville around 5 for our Saturday morning market.

Ira was six. He'd spent his whole life in the forest, fishing, hunting bugs and lizards, swimming, constructing, deconstructing, and simply living a pretty ideal life for a six-year-old. And like many true country boys, he loved cars. One of these sunny Saturday mornings Ira was awake, and on our way down to Nashville he asked me about every car we passed.

"What's that one called?" A BMW.

"And that one?" That's a Scion.

"That one?" That one's a Toyota Corolla.

I was surprised by how many I knew, not being much of a car guy and all. He continued asking all the way to the Nashville and I didn't miss a single one, until we pulled into Richland park where they held our farmer's market he asked,

"What kind of tree is that?" and I had no idea.

Searching For Perfection: 44 points on this one

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce, James "he's totally being serious" Suckling: The man with the counting taste buds.





Note: He used to work for a magazine with a readership of over 2.5 million people. Hilarious creatures, wine critics...

The Importance of the Import: wine buying tips

Piping splashes of wine into less-than-fancy wine glasses in any damp, mossy cellars winemakers will let them into––the importer has a truly peculiar job. This job however has almost everything to do with what you drink. Only when the importer finds a wine they like, and a winemaker who will let them represent it, does a wine come into the country. And only then is it made available to you.

Naturally, these importers don't just choose their portfolios at random, but rather there is an extraordinary amount of factors in their decisions. For some, it's about taste, or technique, or how much say they can have in the process. Others might want not to interfere at all. Whatever their standards, they tend to be consistent, often bringing in wines of the same style, philosophy and quality.

There are thousands and thousands of wines in our country, and subsequently, every wine you like will not be in every place you are. Because one will no doubt be put in a position of having to choose from a list of wines they've never heard of, keeping track of the importers of wines you like helps to diversify your drinking possibilities, and ensure you will get something you can drink.

In a wine shop or restaurant, you can reference these importers to the sommelier or wine clerk. If they are the least bit savvy, they should be able to recommend something based on the importers you prefer, even if they don't carry anything by them. This is an approach I've always appreciated in the wine shop, because it gives you a surprisingly accurate understanding of someone's palate, what they want, and what they would enjoy in place of it.

Yesterday, likely because I was a little hungover and feeling old-fashioned, I suggested you buy a notepad and pen for your wine notes. I sorta forgot about cell phones––they work, too. My bad, but don't be shy about using it, especially for the wines that catch your fancy.

Quick list of notable importers to look out for:
Kermit Lynch
Jenny & Francois
Louis/Dressner (occasionally denoted "LDM")
Rosenthal
Jose Pastor
Savio Soares
Zev Rovine
Among others...

Good Monday, team!

How were the festivities? Super? How goes the recovery? Did you happen to catch my friend's The Breedings' performance at the Puppy Bowl halftime show? Maybe a touch risqué, but it was nothing short of adorable.

In preparation for Friday's post, I thought I might need to set the mood. Sensitive to the fact that not every person who has told me they read the BLAUG! is a wine nerd, I figured I'd attempt to remedy that with a "good Monday wine buying tip or two."

Wine people, feel free to add. Wine drinkers and prospective wine drinkers, feel free to ask questions. Everybody else? Drink more wine and don't lose to the Florida Gators. ...Sigh...


A Good Monday Wine Buying Tip or Two: taste makers

Your party supplies for this lesson consist of a small notepad and pen. Pocket size. Being the type of winter it's been, few of us are lacking in pockets right now, so no excuses. Then––and this is key––drink. some. wine. Preferably organic. Though I'm not dogmatic about this, I am dogmatic about the fact that you should drink more wine. But again, preferably organic.

Start a wine group or ask your local shop about upcoming tastings or both––go nuts. Drink, judge and think. Judging if you like a wine is as easy as deciding whether or not you want to keep drinking it. Take out party supplies. If yes, mark it. If no, mark it. If you're not sure, mark that, too, no one wants a blank notepad. I highly recommend tasting groups. They make it possible to taste a bunch of wines at one time and discuss them with other people wanting to learn. Good excuse to party on a weekday, also. Win win.

There is likely some writing on the label somewhere that tells you the producer, the region and/or the grape. Include what information you find and the price in your notes along with whether or not you dug it. If the bottle has three X's or the name Turley on it, you're drinking moonshine, so be careful. Now, turn the bottle over and find the importer. This is extremely important, but we'll cover that tomorrow. Write it down. Try a bunch of different wines, and don't bother worrying about vintages. Vintage means the year the grapes were harvested. You should include it, but it's most important for cellaring wines. As Kermit Lynch wrote, "a talented winemaker will come up with something worth tasting every year." Screw the vintage, just memorize that quote.

Also, don't worry about finding the same bottle you liked. Having a general idea of the type of wine you like will prove to be more valuable than having the name of one bottle you enjoyed, and will lead to less disappointment. That's the idea––you're looking for patterns among the wines you've liked. Names won't help. If you notice you like one Pinot Noir, or one Cotes du Rhone, or one New Zealand sauvignon blanc, chances are you will like other ones. Easy, no? Same with regions and importers. Importers we'll discuss tomorrow.

Well, that's a good start. Ready to talk carbonic maceration? I'll bet you are, champ. I'll bet you are. Have a good day, I feel strangely inspired to go hit someone in the head with a soda.


Note: Women make up the vast majority of the clientele in a wine shop. I once got inspired to take a tally––it was 65% and 70% over two days. Just sayin, dudes, just sayin...

Wine Tasting

To get you pumped about today's post I offer this video.

Absolutely. Fabulous.

How I Came to Live in a Barn: part 1

Friends! You've made it to Friday! Congratulations and welcome to the first installment of "How I Came to Live in a Barn."

As a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. During that time I worked on a legitimately (though proudly uncertified) organic farm in Southern Kentucky. This series is about the many whims, fascinations and revelations that eventually inspired me to move from the grime of New York City to the dirt of Bugtussle, Kentucky, each piece of the story utterly invaluable to the next. Once we catch up to the present, I'll use the occasion to explain what I'm up to now, by that I mean, beyond the blaug of course. Shall we begin? Wunderbar.

Part 1. September Wines

September is a petite boutique wine shop in Manhattan's Lower East Side, specializing in small-production, organic, biodynamic and sustainably-produced wines. It gets its name from the harvest month of the Northern Hemisphere, and the fact that September is a pretty excellent month in general. The shop rests in a corner spot, its windows towering over the thoroughfare of Ludlow and Stanton with its facade illuminated by a brilliant set of interior light fixtures, ones of which I must have been asked about ten dozen times during my 4 year run as assistant manager there. Minimum.

I spent a healthy percentage of my 20's in that shop either tasting, talking about, or selling wine with all my might. My appreciation for the stuff grew exponentially in that time. What I liked about September was that the wines we brought in were a group effort. We tried to bring in wines upon which we all agreed. September is a store with neighborhood sensibilities whose selection has always been based on quality, not branding. The results of this method were that there ended-up being very few big-name brands in the store, but rather a constantly revolving selection of lesser-known gems that consistently happen to beat the brands in every category from taste to value.

Certain patterns emerged not only in the wines we carried, but in the wines I enjoyed personally. My preferences became increasingly centered around a specific style of wines that were unpolished and unashamed of it. Wine had never wowed me like these wines wowed me, and I realized that most of the wines I was falling for were unfiltered, organic, biodynamic or something like it. It was a trend I couldn't ignore if I were going to get my hands on more of them. Wines like the Hilberg Vareij, or Emile Heredia's "G" gamay for example, exemplified this and everything I liked about wine, and I drank a lot of bottles of them in appreciation. There was something alive about them––healthy even. Sometimes they seemed almost effervescent––other times they actually were. I wasn't particularly organically-minded at the time, but the quality of the experience was thoroughly undeniable, and helped make a valid case for why I should be.

The style of wine I'm talking about, we call "natural wine" for lack of a more appropriate term. Natural is a vague and untrustworthy label in reference to food, but it's remarkably specific in reference to wine; you can't fake a natural wine, they taste like nothing else in the world. If and when Yellow Tail decides to produce a "natural" wine (!!!), it will still taste like Yellow Tail, and that's how you'll know it's not natural.

We carried a number of natural wines at the shop, and more so as we all became increasingly enraptured with their genius. Truthfully, I liked wine before September, and before these, but I never obsessed over it. Natural wines consumed me and in next Friday's post, I'll explain how they changed my world, for this week however, I wanted to salute the place that introduced me to them: here's to September Wines - where oh where would I be without you? Parish the thought.

Cheers.

PHOTO BY TYLER MAGYAR

Job Opportunities!

Wow! They're doing some serious hiring over at The Breedings!

How I Came to Live in a Barn: The Series

As you might or might not know, I spent the better part of last year on a farm in Southern Kentucky living in a barn with no electricity and no running water, but the best damn food this side of the Great Salt Lick. Respectfully. Of course, there is a wonderful story behind how this came to be; a story about how someone would go from living in the sky in Brooklyn, New York, to living in the dirt in Kentucky.

Starting this Friday I will begin the series, carrying on until the story catches up. There will be drinking, foreign travel, food, wine and foolishness. Hopefully it will inspire a little, entertain a little, and kill a little time for you while you wait on your weekend. Every Friday there will be a new installment, so set you ICAL, friends, it's gonna be a party.



Cool runnings,
Jesse

Livestock Live and in Color

Welcome to the paddock move! As mentioned in an earlier post, the animals are given a set amount of square footage based upon the time of year, the density of forage and the amount of livestock. During the main season they are moved twice a day, every 12 hours, and the paddocks tend to be much smaller. If the paddock is too big, they wont eat all the grass, and thus wont utilize the space well. If it's too small they will not be happy with you, and cows are far from shy about expressing this. It's a difficult balance, but when done correctly can leave a pasture densely fertilized, while encouraging the growth of topsoil as well as the biodiversity of grasses and plants available for them to eat. Through this process, Eric has been able to restore fertility to these once heavily-farmed crop fields, while even bringing back native grasses that have not been seen on the farm for decades. Amazing what an hour of work a day will get you.

One other noteworthy bonus to keeping the cows and lambs together is that they do not share parasites. In fact, the lamb serve as a dead end to cow parasites and visa-versa. Also, the presence of the cows helps protect the sheep from predation. Symbiosis in motion

Darla is the brown one with the horns––rest in peace, my love.

Note: If you listen closely you can hear Eric's call. It's what we use to get their attention, and it works like gangbusters. Guesses as to what it is?