Wine
terrasig | December 26, 2008For as good of an attitude as I normally seem to have on the blog, I just simply don't do well with the end-of-the-year holidays (but condolences should be sent instead to my dear friend who suffered a true loss earlier this morning). While it may take some therapy to truly understand my blahs this week, let it suffice to say that the return from our vacation and a continued mystery leak in our basement may have made me a bit more irritable than usual. After spending part of Christmas and much of today ripping out drywall and trying to diagnose the cause of basement flooding, you'd think I'…
terrasig | December 10, 2008Driving home tonight, I learned that NPR is cutting staff and canceling two shows produced at NPR West: News & Notes with Farai Chideya and Day to Day with Madeleine Brand. (Full memo at HuffPo)
Farai put up a blog post late this afternoon entitled, We Love You! (And, Yes, We Are Cancelled). I don't know if I'd have the gut and optimism to be so gracious in the face of having my show terminated effective 20 March 2009. The companion blog post at Day to Day certainly lacked this optimism. But Farai has many, many things going in her favor despite this setback:
Chideya, who was born and…
terrasig | November 24, 2008Salamanzar and the Grand Poobah Wine Swami (Seth Gross and Craig Heffley) of the nationally-recognized wine merchant and community resource, Wine Authorities, will be appearing today on the local NPR affiliate.
Here is the official word from the boys themselves:
Wow! This coming Monday, the 24th, we're going to be on the air with none other than Mr. Frank Stasio on WUNC/NPR's "The State of Things" radio show. This is possibly the highlight of our professional careers thus far! We love this show. So tune in online or on the radio this coming Monday (November 24th @ 12 noon) of Thanksgiving…
terrasig | November 21, 2008Recent Wine Experiences - Mediterranean (and nearby) Island Wines
by Erleichda
Sweetpea and I enjoy (gentle) hiking vacations, and we share this fondness with a small group of other likeminded hiker friends. I attempt to steer our selected destinations to places where grapes grow, and this has brought us, so far, to Sicily and the Greek islands. So when the theme for the latest gathering of Jim's Disciples were wines of the Mediterranean and nearby islands, I was excited by the opportunity to explore some wines not heretofore tasted, and whose origins might provide the basis for future…
terrasig | October 31, 2008Much hubbub is to be had today over the work of Dalhousie University mathematics professor, Dr Jason Brown, in solving the mystery of George Harrison's opening chord of The Beatles, "A Hard Day's Night," played on a Rickenbacker 360/12 guitar. The PDF of Prof Brown's report is available online.
As the report and article show, The Beatles did indeed record this in one take with no overdubbing such that Harrison could not have played the chord alone. We now learn from Brown's work and others that Harrison and Lennon played two different guitars but the nice flavor was added by producer George…
pontiff | October 29, 2008This weekend the grapes for my second "real" batch of wine were delivered to Mountain Homebrew and Wine Supply. Last years vintage, Villa Sophia "La Gruccia" was a success in that it didn't turn to vinegar and that over time it is definitely mellowing out, but I wouldn't say it was a fantastic wine. This year I'm a bit more hopeful and have some ideas for how to modify my process to produce a better wine.
Saturday, October 25:
Picked up grapes from Mountain Homebrew. I order 150 pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon, a full 50 pounds more than last year which should give me a yield of around 70 to…
terrasig | October 24, 2008When you read The Friday Fermentable posts I've written, you know that I am not a wine writer or connoisseur but rather a wine enthusiast. (The posts by my colleague Erleichda, however, are far more content-rich.)
My original post launching this feature details my wine philosophy, one that reflects my general philosophy about life: enjoy life, learn about everything you can, but don't be a snooty, arrogant ass about it. Wine appreciation is meant, IMHO, to be inclusive, not exclusive.
Despite my not being a "professional" wine writer, I was delighted last week to receive a comment from Mr…
terrasig | October 17, 2008If you're in Australia or North America, chances are your first experience with Shiraz was in the form widely-available from Rosemount Estates. Shiraz is derived from the same stock as Syrah that is grown in France's Rhone Valley. The Australian "father of viticulture," James Busby, brought Syrah to the continent in the 1830s while collecting vines in Spain and France.
I think I bought my first bottle of Rosemount Shiraz in 1996 or 1998 for $7.99 USD; it can still be had for $10 or $11. In this grad student/postdoc-friendly price range, the wine was quite drinkable as compared with too-…
terrasig | October 10, 2008Another Wine Experience- A romp thru northern Italy: the Piemonte
by Erleichda
Following a week of hiking around lakes Orta, Maggiore and Como, the eight of us piled into a rented van with all our luggage and headed for the Piedmont (or Piemonte) region, home of dolcetto, barbera, barbaresco and barolo wines. Lucky us (or was it good planning?), we arrived in Alba just in time for lunch and a few hours before the beginning of the annual wine festival. More than 100 wine producers, and a thousand different wines, awaited our tasting glasses (10 euros for a wine glass as an admission price,…
grrlscientist | October 9, 2008tags: Seattle Washington, Ballard Farmer's Market, fresh produce, fresh fish, wine, flowers
Dinner at Shannon's,
using fish, produce and wine from the Ballard farmer's market.
Image: GrrlScientist 28 September 2008 [larger view].
"Do you photograph every meal you eat?" Shannon sounded amused as I pointed my camera at the mushrooms in the frying pan.
"Well .. not exactly," I replied, thinking of all the meals that I had photographed, realizing that nearly all of them were meals I had eaten while traveling.
"After photographing parts of the Farmer's Market, it just seems to be the right…
grrlscientist | October 8, 2008tags: Seattle Washington, wine tasting, photoessay
Glassware in the wine bar in Seattle.
Image: GrrlScientist, 28 September 2008 [larger view].
When I was in Seattle, several friends and I visited the Ballard Farmer's Market (part one and part two) in the morning and then went wine tasting at a nearby wine bar in the afternoon.
I was so fascinated by the Ballard Farmer's Market that Shannon could barely rip me (and my camera!) away. But the promise of free wine did the trick.
We walked down the street and went into a wine bar where Shannon knows a lot of people, and we sampled their…
terrasig | September 26, 2008I received this tip earlier in the week from a former PharmD student and Pharmboy lab alum who now lives in the SF Bay area. In saving it for The Friday Fermentable, I am now just another of the literally hundreds of media outlets covering the story.
If you haven't heard, there is a Chilean organic winery called Palin (but pronounced, 'pay-LEEN') that makes an organic Syrah, a lovely french wine grape.
I want to give credit (since the rest of the media hasn't) to San Francisco wine industry veteran, Amy Monroe, a marketing and sales associate at Ridge Vineyards, one of my favorite but now…
terrasig | September 12, 2008I can't believe that it's only been a year.
Back in March I wrote about the importance of local wine shops, community resources just as important as your library or local farmer. Therein I sang the praises of my local heros, Seth Gross and Craig Heffley, proprietors of Wine Authorities in Durham, NC, and their then-recent ink in Food & Wine magazine.
My latest Wine Authorities favorite is an unusual German Pinot Noir Spätlese from Weingut Schäfer in Mettelheim (US$18.99).
Yes. Red. German. A German Rhinehessen red. An overripe red. No kidding.
Their notes, accessible on their…
terrasig | August 22, 2008As a former resident of The Queen City of the Plains, my goal today was to write some travel tips for those bloggers attending the DNC in Denver next week.
However, I got a bit sidetracked by the case a couple of weeks ago about the gentleman who died of cyanide poisoning at a hotel near the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. You'll recall that "a pound" of sodium cyanide was also found with his dead body in room 408 of The Burnsley Hotel at 10th Ave. & Grant St. one needs only 50-100 mg of sodium cyanide to kill oneself so I still don't know what the other 453.9 grams was intended for.…
terrasig | August 1, 2008This morning our dear friend and colleague whose wine escapades often fill this spot awoke to the rewards of retirement. My senior cancer research colleague, Erleichda, has just closed the book on 30 years with a single pharmaceutical company, unheard of in today's climate of layoffs and jumping from one company to the next.
My friend began in this industry when it was still considered a noble pursuit and continued to be an ambassador for all that is good about pharmaceutical research & development, with his primary concern the welfare of those stricken with cancer and the cultivation…
terrasig | July 11, 2008Another Wine Experience: A Romp thru Northern Italy's Lake Country
By Erleichda (about the author)
We touched down very early in Milan on what, for all eight of us, would mark the beginning of our hiking week in the Lake Country of northern Italy, a destination we had chosen after last year's successful Lot Valley (France) hiking experience. Sweetpea had to crash as she is circadian rhythm-challenged (easily jet lagged) while the rest of us got our leg muscles warmed up by walking to the Duomo and then climbing up to its roof for a great view of the city. By the time we walked to La Scala…
terrasig | May 23, 2008Another Wine Experience - Syrahs from Europe and the US
By Erleichda
We've been having so many of our wine dinners the past two years that the group has had to return to its favorite haunts. Such was the case one Friday evening as we set about to taste Syrahs from the US and Europe. I have generally preferred my Syrahs blended, which is to say accompanied by other grape varieties such as one finds in the Rhone wines from the south of France. But tonight it was to be a tasting of just Syrah.
Getting a head start before any appetizers arrived, we passed around the first bottle of the evening…
pontiff | May 16, 2008Robert Mondavi, who helped put Napa Valley on the world wine map has passed away age 94. The most famous story about Mondavi involves a fight:
The Mondavis moved to Napa, and Cesare, Robert and Robert's younger brother, Peter, ran the winery. But there were disagreements about how the winery should be run, and after Cesare's death, Robert and Peter clashed. While Robert, the more flamboyant of the two brothers, pushed for better wines, Peter favored a more conservative path. One day, they ended up in a fistfight, and Robert was asked to leave the family business
So far, in making my own…
terrasig | April 23, 2008Just a little blurb in my local paper this morning that is making a big splash in the stock market: international pharma giant GSK is purchasing Cambridge, MA-based Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. for an estimated US$720 million.
Glaxo plans to bolster its pipeline with Sirtris's experimental biotechnology treatments targeting aging-related diseases.
In early trading, Sirtris shares gained 81.6 percent to $22.21 while Glaxo shares added 19 cents to $43.92.
Apparently I should've gone immediately from my morning bathroom newspaper reading to my online stock purchase website. Instead, you get a…
terrasig | April 11, 2008Another Wine Experience: North American Meritage
by Erleichda
The wine-dinner group met recently at a local unpretentious BYOB restaurant. We are surely fortunate to have so many of these restaurants in the vicinity for they curtail greatly our costs for dining out.
The theme for this evening's wine tasting was the blend of Bordeaux grapes known hereabouts as "Meritage." The term Meritage is a registered trademark, and red wines bearing this description must contain at least two of the grapes used in the mix found in the red wines from Bordeaux, i.e., cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet…