From: "Jim L. Ellingson" <jellings(a)me.umn.edu>
To: wine(a)thebarn.com
Subject: [wine] Terry Thiese, Bubbles, Scotch
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i
The TT tasting has been re-scheduled for next week.
Next Thursday. Terry Theise. 6:30 pm at Millenium
Details and Flights (16 wines) on the Surdyks.com website
$40.
Tomorrow. Carolyn's graduation party at Chez Gregory.
please coordinate w/ Warren and Ruth.
New Date is:
Thursday June 14th, 2007 at 6:30pm
Millennium Hotel -
Aperitif
Item # Name
15221 Milan Brut NV
Flight #1 Austrians
21023 Hirsch Gruner Veltliner Heiligenstein 2005
11961 Gobelsberg Riesling Urgestein 2005
11966 Alzinger Ries Hollerin Smaragd 2003
Flight #2 A Look at 2004
17473 Diel Dorsheimer Burgberg Kabinett 04
97458 Minges Gleisweiler Holle Kabinett 04
64386 Muller-Catoir Gimmeldinger Mand Kab 04
Flight #3 Cool 2005s
95061 Christoffel Erdener Treppchen Kabinett
27771 Loewen Leiwener Klostergarten Kabinett
95094 Weingart Schloss Furstenberg Kabinett
Flight #4 Great 2005s
11927 Deinhard Deidesheimer Kalkofen Spt
17478 Karlsmuhle Lorenzhofer Spt
95087 Leitz Rudesheimer Berg Shlossberg Spt
Flight #5 A Look at 2003
11925 Diel Dorsheimer Pittermanchen Spatlese 03
15056 Spreitzer Oestricher Lenchen 03
15101 AJ Adam Tholey Auslese 03
Surdyk's Everyday Low Price: $40.00
When: Thursday, June 07, 2007, 6:30pm - 9:00pm
From: "Jim L. Ellingson" <jellings(a)me.umn.edu>
To: wine(a)thebarn.com
Subject: [wine] Terry Thiese, Bubbles, Scotch
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i
Today Thursday Terry Theise. 6:30 pm at Millenium
Details and Flights (16 wines) on the Surdyks.com website
$40.
Tomorrow. Carolyn's graduation party at Chez Gregory.
please coordinate w/ Warren and Ruth.
Ruth requests guests bring a side dish and some back yard
wine. aka Accessible and Inexpensive.
May 6, 2007
Talk Dirt to Me
By HAROLD MCGEE AND DANIEL PATTERSON
It.s hard to have a conversation about wine these days without hearing the French word terroir. Derived from a Latin root meaning .earth,. terroir describes the relationship between a wine and the specific place that it comes from. For example, many will say the characteristic minerality of wines from Chablis comes from the limestone beds beneath the vineyards (although, when pressed, they generally admit that they.ve never actually tasted limestone). The idea that one can taste the earth in a wine is appealing, a welcome link to nature and place in a delocalized world; it has also become a rallying cry in an increasingly sharp debate over the direction of modern winemaking. The trouble is, it.s not true.
When terroir was first associated with wine, in the 17th-century phrase goû terroir (literally, .taste of the earth.), it was not intended as a compliment. Its meaning began to change in 1831, when Dr. Morelot, a wealthy landowner in Burgundy, observed in his .Statistique de la Vigne Dans le Dértement de la Côd.Or. that all of the wineries in Burgundy made wine essentially the same way, so the reason some tasted better than others must be due to the terroir . specifically, the substrata underneath the topsoil of a vineyard. Wine, he claimed, derived its flavor from the site.s geology: in essence, from rocks.
In recent years, the concept that one can taste rocks and soil in a wine has become popular with wine writers, importers and sommeliers. .Wines express their source with exquisite definition,. asserts Matt Kramer in his book .Making Sense of Wine.. .They allow us to eavesdrop on the murmurings of the earth.. Of a California vineyard.s highly regarded chardonnays, he writes, there is .a powerful flavor of the soil: the limestone speaks.. The sommelier Paul Grieco, in his wine list at Hearth in New York, writes of rieslings that .the glory of the varietal is in its transparency, its ability to truly reflect the soil in which it is grown.. In his February newsletter, Kermit Lynch, one of the most respected importers of French wine, returns repeatedly to the stony flavors in various white wines from a .terroirist. winemaker in Alsace: .When he speaks of a granitic soil, the wine in your glass tastes of it..
If you ask a hundred people about the meaning of terroir, they.ll give you a hundred definitions, which can be as literal as tasting limestone or as metaphorical as a feeling. Terroir flavors are generally characterized as earthiness and minerality. On the other hand, wines with flavors of berries or tropical fruits and little or no minerality are therefore assumed not to have as clear a connection to the earth, which means they could have come from anywhere, and are thought to bear the mark of human intervention.
If this seems confusing . especially given that wine is made from fruit . it gets worse when you ask winemakers about how to get the flavors from the rocks into the glass. According to them, a good expression of terroir requires more work in the vineyards, or possibly less; it.s the hotter climate in California that leads to its high-alcohol, fruit-forward, terroir-less style, or possibly not; even the oft-heard contention that a winemaker must .work with what the vines give you. is contradicted by Ales Kristancic of Movia winery, whose family has been making wines from vineyards on the Italy-Slovenia border for hundreds of years. .Plants need to understand what the winemaker wants,. Kristancic says. .Only a winery with great tradition can make great vineyards..
Since there.s so little consensus among winemakers about how to foster the expression of place . what Matt Kramer calls .somewhereness. . in their wines, what are our wine experts tasting? How can a place or a soil express itself through wine? Does terroir really exist?
Yes, but the effects of a place on a wine are far more complex than simply tasting the earth beneath the vine. Great wines are produced on many different soil types, from limestone to granite to clay, in places where the vines get just enough water and nourishment from the soil to grow without deficiencies and where the climate allows the grapes to ripen slowly but fully. It.s also true that different soils can elicit different flavors from the same grape. Researchers in Spain recently compared wines from the same clone of grenache grafted on the same rootstock, harvested and vinified in exactly the same way, but grown in two vineyards 1,600 feet apart, one with a soil significantly richer in potassium, calcium and nitrogen. The wines from the mineral-rich soil were higher in apparent density, alcohol and ripe-raisiny aromas; wines from the poorer soil were higher in acid, astringency and applelike aromas. The different soils produced different flavors, but they were flavors of fruit and of the yeast fermentation. What about the flavors of soil and granite and limestone that wine experts describe as minerality . a term oddly missing from most formal treatises on wine flavor? Do they really go straight from the earth to the wine to the discerning palate?
No.
Consider the grapevine growing in the earth. It takes in elemental, inert materials from the planet . air and water and minerals . and, using energy captured from sunlight, turns them into a living, growing organism. It doesn.t just accumulate the earth.s materials. It transforms them into the sugars, acids, aromas, tannins, pigments and dozens of other molecules that make grapes and wine delicious.
.Plants don.t really interact with rocks,. explains Mark Matthews, a plant physiologist at the University of California, Davis who studies vines. .They interact with the soil, which is a mixture of broken-down rock and organic matter. And plant roots are selective. They don.t absorb whatever.s there in the soil and send it to the fruit. If they did, fruits would taste like dirt.. He continues, .Any minerals from the solid rock that vine roots do absorb . sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, a handful of others . have to be dissolved first in the soil moisture. Most of them are essential nutrients, and they mainly affect how well the plant as a whole grows..
Most of the earthy and mineral aromas and flavors that we detect in wine actually come from the interaction of the grape and yeast. Yeasts metabolize the grape sugars into alcohol, along the way freeing up and spinning off the dozens of aromatic chemicals that make wine more than just alcoholic grape juice. It.s because of the yeasts that we can catch whiffs of tropical fruits, grilled meats, toasted bread and other things that have never been anywhere near the grapes or the wine. The list of evocative yeast products includes an organic sulfur molecule that can give sauvignon blancs a .flinty. aroma. And there are minor yeasts that create molecules called volatile phenols, whose earthy, smoky flavors have nothing to do with the soil but are suggestive of it, especially in wines from the southern Rhone.
Grape minerals and mineral flavors are also strongly influenced by the grower and winemaker. When a vineyard is planted, the vine type, spacing and orientation are just a few of many important decisions. Growers control the plant growth in myriad ways, such as pruning, canopy management or, most obviously, irrigating and replenishing the soil with manures or chemical fertilizers. The winemaker then makes hundreds of choices that affect wine flavor, beginning with the ripeness at which the grapes are harvested, and can change the mineral content by using metal equipment, concrete fermentation tanks or clarifying agents made from bentonite clay. Jamie Goode, a British plant biologist turned wine writer, describes in his superbly lucid book .Wine Science. how techniques that minimize the wine.s contact with oxygen can increase the levels of sulfur compounds that may be mistaken for .mineral. character from the soil.
So, if vines absorb only rock that is dissolved in water, if grape and wine minerals are not a reflection of the rocks. minerals, and if earthy aromas in wine come from microbes and not the earth, do soil minerals have any real role in wine flavor?
Hildegarde Heymann, a sensory scientist at U.C. Davis, is skeptical about the usefulness of the terms .terroir. and .minerality. as they.re used today. But she is intrigued by .minerality.. .People who talk about minerality are describing something they perceive that.s hard to grab on to,. she says. .My guess is that it.s a composite perception, something like .creaminess. in dairy foods. .Minerality. might be a way of describing a combination of complexity, balance and a substantial body. We do know that mineral ions can affect wine flavor by affecting acidity, chemical reaction rates and the volatility of aromas. And we.re just now looking at whether they can affect the body of wine, its .mouth feel.. They might..
It.s possible, then, that soil minerals may affect wine flavor indirectly, by reacting with other grape and yeast substances that produce flavor and tactile sensations, or by altering the production of flavor compounds as the grape matures on the vine.
The place where grapes are grown clearly affects the wine that is made from them, but it.s not a straightforward matter of tasting the earth. If the earth .speaks. through wine, it.s only after its murmurings have been translated into a very different language, the chemistry of the living grape and microbe. We don.t taste a place in a wine. We taste a wine from a place . the special qualities that a place enables grapes and yeasts to express, aided and abetted by the grower and winemaker.
In the years following Dr. Morelot.s missive on terroir, the quality of a wine became synonymous with the quality of the vineyard where it originated. This meant the value of that wine was tied to the land instead of to the winemaker, which allowed it to be handed down from generation to generation. The French went on to codify their vineyards into legal appellations, creating gradations within those appellations that demarcated clear levels of quality (grand cru, first growth and so on), the economic effects of which are felt to this day. Given that it was landowners who benefited most, the commonly held idea of terroir . wine as proxy for a piece of dirt . looks a lot like one of the longest-running, most successful marketing campaigns of the modern era.
Today, it.s easy to ascribe all this terroir talk to commerce, to the European reaction to California.s recent rise in viniculture status. It.s been suggested that terroir is just the Old World saying to the New: It.s the land, stupid . we have it and you don.t. But that doesn.t explain why so many Americans have embraced the concept with near-religious zeal. To paraphrase the great French wine historian Roger Dion, why have so many brilliant and passionate wine professionals been so eager to attribute solely to nature what is actually the result of hard work by talented winemakers?
The answer lies in the complex relationship between tradition, culture and taste. Those wine professionals have all spent vast amounts of time and energy learning what traditional European wines taste like, region by region, winery by winery, vineyard by vineyard. The version of terroir that many of them hold is that those wines taste the way they do because of the enduring natural setting, i.e., the rocks and soil. These wines taste the way they do because people have chosen to emphasize flavors that please them.
The pioneering French oenologist Éile Peynaud wrote nearly 25 years ago: .I cannot agree with the view that .one accepts human intervention (in vinification) as long as it allows the natural characteristics to remain intact,. since it is precisely human intervention which has created and highlighted these so-called natural characteristics!. Modern European views of terroir recognize that typical local flavors are the creation of generations of growers and winemakers, shaping the vineyard and fine-tuning the fermentation to make what they feel are the best wines possible in their place. Typical flavors are expressions not of nature but of culture.
But culture, unlike nature, isn.t static. It evolves in response to shifting tastes and technological advances. Over the past 30 years, the staid world of European winemaking has been roiled by an influx of American consumers, led by their apostle, the writer Robert Parker. In his reviews, Parker has brushed aside the traditional practice of judging wine according to historical context (that is, how it should taste), focusing instead on what.s in the bottle. His preference for hugely concentrated, fruit-forward wines . the antithesis of distinctive, diverse terroir wines . has dramatically changed the economic landscape of the wine industry. Throughout the world, more and more winemakers are making wine in the style that Parker prefers, even in Europe, where this means abandoning distinctive local styles that had evolved over centuries. .Somewhereness. is being replaced by .anywhereness..
The simplistic idea of terroir as a direct expression of nature has become a rhetorical weapon in the fight against this trend. Kristancic . who interrupted our interview to raise his fists and shout to the heavens, .They.re ruining wine!. . sees an advancing wave of homogenization that will eventually turn wine into a soulless, deracinated commodity. Like many others, he is afraid of losing what is special about the traditional role of wine in human life, its way of connecting people to the land and to one another. Conjuring granite in Alsatian rieslings and limestone in Chablis puts that connection to the land right in the bottle, ours for the tasting.
If rocks were the key to the flavor of .somewhereness,. then it would be simple to counterfeit terroir with a few mineral saltshakers. But the essence of wine is more elusive than that, and far richer. Scientists and historians continue to illuminate what Peynaud described as the .dual communion. represented by wine: .on the one hand with nature and the soil, through the mystery of plant growth and the miracle of fermentation, and on the other with man, who wanted wine and who was able to make it by means of knowledge, hard work, patience, care and love.. .Somewhereness. is given its meaning by .someoneness.: in our time, by the terroirists who are working hard to discover and capture in a bottle the difference that place can make.
Home
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
From: "Jim L. Ellingson" <jellings(a)me.umn.edu>
To: wine(a)thebarn.com
Subject: [wine] Terry Thiese, Bubbles, Scotch
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i
Today Thursday Terry Theise. 6:30 pm at Millenium
Details and Flights (16 wines) on the Surdyks.com website
$40.
Tomorrow. Carolyn's graduation party at Chez Gregory.
please coordinate w/ Warren and Ruth.
Thursday June 7th, 2007 at 6:30pm
Millennium Hotel -
Aperitif
Item # Name
15221 Milan Brut NV
Flight #1 Austrians
21023 Hirsch Gruner Veltliner Heiligenstein 2005
11961 Gobelsberg Riesling Urgestein 2005
11966 Alzinger Ries Hollerin Smaragd 2003
Flight #2 A Look at 2004
17473 Diel Dorsheimer Burgberg Kabinett 04
97458 Minges Gleisweiler Holle Kabinett 04
64386 Muller-Catoir Gimmeldinger Mand Kab 04
Flight #3 Cool 2005s
95061 Christoffel Erdener Treppchen Kabinett
27771 Loewen Leiwener Klostergarten Kabinett
95094 Weingart Schloss Furstenberg Kabinett
Flight #4 Great 2005s
11927 Deinhard Deidesheimer Kalkofen Spt
17478 Karlsmuhle Lorenzhofer Spt
95087 Leitz Rudesheimer Berg Shlossberg Spt
Flight #5 A Look at 2003
11925 Diel Dorsheimer Pittermanchen Spatlese 03
15056 Spreitzer Oestricher Lenchen 03
15101 AJ Adam Tholey Auslese 03
Surdyk's Everyday Low Price: $40.00
When: Thursday, June 07, 2007, 6:30pm - 9:00pm
June 7, 2007
Listen Up, Everybody: I.m in Menopause
By ELIZABETH HAYT
IT was 8 a.m. on a Friday and Deb Caruana, 51, a personal trainer in Manhattan, had just finished working out with two of her clients, Jackie Greenberg, an interior designer in her 30s, and her father, Ronald Greenberg, 59, an art dealer.
The three were chatting when Ms. Caruana, who is in menopause, suddenly blurted out, .I.m having a hot flash..
The conversation lurched to a halt, followed by uneasy chuckling.
.It was awkward, but then it was funny,. Ms. Greenberg said. .I did a double-take: .Did she really just say that in front of my father?. .
Ms. Caruana, though, was unashamed. .Why hide it?. she said later of the episode, which occurred in March. .I kind of call my menopause my .red badge of courage.. People laugh. They.re never offended..
Thirty-five years ago, television viewers were shocked by a landmark episode of .All in the Family. when the normally meek Edith Bunker wreaked havoc on everyone around her because of a condition then delicately referred to as .the change of life.. But these days, among people of a certain age, references to menopause are just as likely to be batted across a dinner table as comments about the bouquet of the merlot.
.Five years ago, women would have kept that to themselves,. said Mr. Greenberg, who had been amused by Ms. Caruana.s immodesty. .Women who used to feel inhibited don.t anymore. They are honest about things they were never forthright about before..
More than that, though, many women are flaunting their menopausal symptoms. If they are not erupting in the literal heat of the moment, they are flinging wisecracks, adopting a single-sex argot comprised of wry, offhanded quips and punctuated by knowing winks and nudges.
.The wink-wink reaction is a way of saying, .I.ve been there, girlfriend,.. said Jeanie Linders, 58, the writer and lyricist of .Menopause: The Musical.. The farcical play, with songs like .Stayin. Awake/Night Sweatin. . and .Drippin. and Droppin,. . made its debut in New York in 2001 and has since been produced in 150 cities and 9 countries, with an audience of 8 million to date.
And the ribbing is not restricted to friends. Last December, Beverly Mahone, 49, of Durham, N.C., had a hot flash in a backed-up checkout line at the supermarket. Madly pulling at the front of her blouse to cool off, fuming aloud about the slowness of the cashier, Ms. Mahone said she exclaimed to the woman behind her, ..Girl, I.m having a moment here and she.s got to hurry so I can get the hell out of here!.
.I know what you.re going through,. the woman commiserated. Then, two women ahead of Ms. Mahone caught sight of her frantically fanning herself and laughed sympathetically.
Afterward, she said, in the parking lot, the group debated synthetic hormone replacement therapy versus herbal remedies, and Ms. Mahone, the author of .Whatever! A Baby Boomer.s Journey into Middle Age,. passed out her business card to the women who promised to buy her book.
.It opens up a whole dialogue,. Ms. Mahone said. .We.re laughing and making women who feel less comfortable know that it.s O.K. We.ve embraced it. It.s our exclusive club..
In New York last February, a similar impromptu bonding session occurred at the Park Avenue office of Dr. Alan Matarasso, a plastic surgeon. Four women in their late 40s to mid-50s, all strangers, sat wordlessly in the waiting room until one, Joanna Bonaro, 42, an actress, was called up to fill out paperwork.
She began chatting with the office manager, Lisa Holderby, 46, who mentioned that she had recently had a hysterectomy, which can trigger menopause. Coincidentally, Ms. Bonaro had undergone one, too. Within minutes, the two other women chimed in.
.We started talking about hot flashes and having to carry around extra T-shirts because of the sweating,. Ms. Holderby said.
She remembered when these conversations were so unheard of that mothers were even mum about the subject with their daughters.
But, according to the United States Census Bureau, some 21 million women are between the ages of 45 and 59, the span during which menopause usually starts and ends. They make up nearly 20 percent of all women in the United States and almost 7 percent of the total American population.
It.s hardly unusual, then, to overhear a middle-age woman grousing about a restaurant.s lack of air-conditioning . in the dead of winter.
And given today.s openness and even exhibitionism . including tell-all memoirs, diaristic blogging and YouTube stardom . a personal condition that is common and natural is no reason for discretion, many women say. Indeed, as far more private matters . erectile dysfunction, enlarged prostates, sexually transmitted diseases . are served up on sitcoms and in commercials, it hardly seems daring to air one.s menopausal memory lapses.
At the same time, the market is flooded with cutesy merchandise: refrigerator magnets, mugs, T-shirts and tote bags that say things like .I.m still hot, it just comes in flashes.. There is even a board game called .Hotflash!.
Whether such novelties are the fuel or fallout of the new candor is difficult to figure. In any case, women are striking up plucky repartees to solicit support, deflect embarrassment or to take the sting out of an experience that can be frightening, uncomfortable and overwhelming.
.Humor is a great way to dull the jagged edges of menopause,. said the comedian Roseanne Barr, 54, who joked about it on her TV show in the 90s. .Humor makes everything that.s big, smaller. You can first recognize it, then you name it and then you manage it..
But for some women, smirking at a sweat storm dilutes the seriousness of their woes. .When I.m having these symptoms, I don.t understand it and when they come back you.re mired in it and it.s kind of scary,. said Lee Ann Jaffee, 50, a New York real estate agent. .I don.t think there.s anything funny about it. It.s a tough time..
And some people have expressed concern that the broadcasting of menopause can backfire, reinforcing ageist and sexist stereotypes by playing into the notion that women are at the mercy of biology.
.Women are still in the minority in companies,. said Betty Spence, the president of the National Association for Female Executives. .They stand out more than men. Women are more cautious about speaking out in general. They keep their heads down as far as menopause goes..
Still, some 15 years after Gail Sheehy.s .The Silent Passage. became a best seller, some women are defying workplace and social conventions and becoming downright garrulous.
At the North Suburban Library District in Illinois, nearly half of the 40 female employees are in what they call the .hot zone.. At the Roscoe branch of the library, some have taken over a computer room that is chilled to a bracing 64 degrees, dubbing it the .Hot Flash Room..
.We all think it.s funny,. said Melody Newton, 56, a clerk. .It.s like a group thing. Everybody is real open about it..
Recently, Diane Jacobson, 48, a circulation clerk, tacked a poster on the room.s door of .The Hot Flash Club,. a novel by Nancy Thayer about four menopausal friends.
But not everyone finds it amusing.
.I didn.t have a clue the women were using the room to cool off,. said Peter Caton, 34, the library.s network administrator who works out of the room. .I only found out it was the .Hot Flash Room. after they put up the poster. I was shocked and kind of offended. It.s my office. If I was an older man and I put an erectile dysfunction ad on your cubicle, how would you feel?.
Some women say they feel snubbed. .You.re not part of the group unless you.re in menopause,. said Regina Blackmon, 45, a legal assistant at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York. But now that she is, she said, .we send e-mails . menopause jokes and cartoons . to each other. A lot of chat goes on in the ladies room when we do our hair. It.s a secret underground..
Some women confessed menopause can come in handy, the middle-age version of claiming menstrual cramps to get out of gym class.
.A hot flash is an opportunity to get away with saying stuff that you wouldn.t otherwise be able to do,. said Ms. Mahone, the Durham author. .You can curse at people. That.s your moment to get even. Afterward, you can apologize and they.ll understand and feel sorry for you..
Her husband, Nathaniel Gibbs, 50, said he has been on the receiving end. .It.s like a built-in excuse for everything,. he said. .If she forgets something or something goes wrong, her final trump card is, .Well, I.m in menopause.. .
.That stops me dead,. he said. .You accept your loss and move on. It.s like a jungle movie when the guys come upon a bunch of heads on sticks that mark a taboo territory. That.s my wife. Nobody beyond this point..
But the topic now knows no limits, even in the most unlikely setting. Lest there be any doubt, consider this: At the memorial service last fall for Ann Richards, the former Texas governor, her friend, Liz Smith, the gossip columnist, recounted for an audience of luminaries . including the Clintons . the night in 2005 Ms. Richards brought up the M word at a gala.
In an e-mail message, Ms. Smith said that the event inaugurated Women.s Voices for Change, an organization promoting positive attitudes toward women over 40 and menopause in particular. Among the few male guests at the gala, nicknamed the Menopause Ball, was Vernon Jordan, the power broker and lawyer.
.I don.t think Vernon had ever expressed any interest in menopausal women before that night,. Ms. Smith remembered saying in her eulogy.
Millions of people watching C-Span .fell out of seats laughing,. Ms. Smith wrote, recalling the reaction to her anecdote. .They weren.t laughing about menopause. They were laughing that menopause was out of the closet and dragging along for laughs the likes of Vernon Jordan. Now that.s progress!.
--
------------------------------ *
* Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu *
* University of Minnesota, tel: 651/645-0753 *
* Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *
