ELENA FUCCI, TITOLO

Elena Fucci, Titolo, Aglianico del Vulture 2013, is the wine I chose for the weekend blind tasting practice for JC (truth is, I just wanted to drink it).

Aglianico is a varietal grown in Southern Italy, mostly on the volcanic soil of
Bacilicata and Campania.
High in tannin, acid, and alcohol, but beautifully balanced so it feels very smooth.

Having opened a wine like this, all we could think
for the rest of the day was
"what to have for dinner with this".
JC wanted grilled lamb or beef, but I wanted something "kotteri"←thick/rich, so he cooked Pasta Bacilicata style.
Yes, he is a very nice guy.

The "kotteri"ness of the pasta sauce really worked well with the tannin, although grilled meat would have been a great choice, too.

We are people who like to experiment something new/strange (no, it's not our fault. wine inspires us).
Wine's high acid might go good with vinegar flavor... so I brought fried eggplant marinated in vinegar and soy sauce (nothing fancy Japanese everyday dish) from the fridge, and paired it with the wine.
What? They were great together!

I love this wine for it's balance, texture and grace. To top them off, now I found its versatility.

Chateau Musar

Last month, I went to Chateau Musar Tasting in San Francisco. I had no knowledge of wines from Lebanon. I didn't even know that they made wine there. It's almost amazing how one could be so ignorant...

Lebanon is actually considered to be one of the oldest countries of wine production, although wine making was prohibited during the Ottoman Empire era.
Because Jesuit missionaries brought grape vines and wine making methods from France in 19th century and the country was under French control in 20th century, there is strong French influence over the modern wine production in Lebanon (Wines of Lebanon).

Chateau Musar was founded by Gaston Hochar in 1930. After studying in France, Gaston's son, Serge, became their winemaker in 1959. Their wines were consumed mostly in the domestic market, but when the civil war broke out in 1975, they were forced to seek out oversea customers, and this led them to earn the high recognition in England in 1979.

Lebanon's two mountains provide enough water for vineyards, but it takes 3 hours by truck from the vineyards in Bekaa valley to Ghazir, the town more suitable for the winery. This long trip sometimes causes problems like grapes start to release their juice before the truck reaches the winery. Especially during the civil war, the road was blocked and they had to take a detour which took them extra days, or couldn't reach the vineyards so the grapes were harvested a month later.

When I tasted the wine, I felt that I could see those obstacles in it. And if I saw the problems in wine, it should have tasted problematic; however, to my surprise, the Chateau Muser tasted fantastic! It must be one of the magic which wine is supposed to possess that the hardship is sublimated into great wine.
This is a haunting wine that after a month I still try to explain what I saw there. My limited knowledge of wine terminology prevents me to describe Chateau Muser properly, but this wine was unique and charming, that I can't let go of.
One of the reason why I started this blog is this wine: I'm an old-fashioned person who doesn't even own a cell phone, but had to come out of my shell and start a digital life because I had to tell somebody about this wine.

Serge Hochar's son, Marc Hochar, gave an informative seminar. He said that he wasn't looking for a style in wine: what he wanted to see in wine were challenge and curiosity.
I guess I found them.

wine for curry

Although JC is the wine guy in our household, it's my job to choose a bottle of wine for dinner (only because I use the wine for JC's blind tasting practice).
This day's task was to choose a wine for Coconut Curry with Shrimp.

Riesling is usually a good choice for curry. The sweetness of coconut milk may conflict with bone-dry wine, so I chose German Riesling.
I like to throw an adventure, so chose a rival wine: 2013 Savennieres, experiment to see how the high acid of Chenin Blanc would work with the spiciness of curry.

JC did good with the blind tasting.
He nailed 2013 Savennieres, and he missed the vintage and sweetness, but got Mosel Riesling right.

As for the pairing...Riesling was the winner.
Savennieres and curry pairing was hopelessly bad. JC thought that just like tannin wouldn't work with spiciness, the phenolic bitterness collided with spice.

Next day we had Savennieres with Cream Tomato Pasta.
The wine revived.

White Port Cocktail

Last week JC attended a Port Wine seminar in San Francisco.
He liked a port cocktail he tried there, and recreated it for me.

It's called...I forgot the name, sorry.

Ingredients are:
White Port
Agave
cucumber juice
cilantro
Tonic
sparkling water

The aroma is...cucumber...
But when I drink it, the green bitterness, sweetness and acidity complement each other and make refreshing summer drink. I can see myself drinking this everyday this summer.

Port consumption is rising since doing things "Portugal" is trendy among young Portuguese people right now (so I heard), so I might see more new welcoming Port stuff coming.                
         

Waking up to the new world

It's hard to choose which wine to drink from all the wines in this world, so I usually leave the task to professionals.
I'm lucky to have a local wine store which has good selection from the old world and people who know their wines. I don't know much about wine, but definitely developed appreciation for them. I owe it to the stores and people who love wines and are eager to share them.

But, when it comes to the new world, I feel I'm lost.
California, I live here, but other countries, especially like Barossa Valley Shiraz, I didn't have a clue about the goodness of it.

Then I got to try this wine: Langmail 2013 The Freedom 1843 Shiraz.

W

It possessed characters of shiraz like plum or violet but in a different level. The elements were deep and rich, but not in excess. 
It surely was a big wine yet very tender. 
Kind of wine when you sip, you smile.

Having tasted this wine made me want to explore wines from different parts of the world. 

Jumping at Vino Nobile

It sometimes happens that you try the wine, love it, talk about it, dream about it, and one day you have a chance to try it again and the wine doesn't really live up to the (way too) high expectation.
It's not wine's fault. My wild imagination is the one to be blamed.
This sometimes makes me scared to drink wine I liked for the second time, but, hey, you live only once, don't let the fear control your precious life!

So I jumped at the opportunity to try Vino Nobile di Montepulciano from TENUTA DI GRACCIANO DELLA SETA for the second time. 
The tasting took place at PERBACCO in San Francisco.








There were Rosso di Montepulciano 2014, Vino Nibile di Montepulciano 2012, and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Reserva 2011.

I tried them in February at Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Tasting and really liked them. This time, I'm glad I jumped: they were BETTER than I remembered!
Maybe because I had them with food this time.
Rosso was light and went good with seafood appetizers, and Vino Nobile and Reserva enhanced the flavor of meat dish, but cut out the grease. This is good for people like me who like the flavor of meat but can't take the greasiness. I would love to have Reserva with lamb.

The winery's owner Sig. Giorgio della Seta was at the tasting. I told him that I liked his wine at the tasting in February. He said that letting people know about his wine through media or advertisement was important, but when people chose his wine among others without any previous knowledge, he felt really happy. I like to hear these comments. They are subtle, but show strong love and pride for their own wine.

new card case (leather craft!)

JC's name card uses very thick paper and his card case can carry only three of them, so I decided to make a new, thicker card case.

I used a pattern from "Leather Craft Vol.3"
First, cut the leather.

Then thin down and paste together the area where you sew later,

CLOVER's Wonder clips are for sewing, but I found them very useful for small leather project because they are small but very strong. Be careful not to leave any mark on the leather.
Then sew (forgot to take a picture...), check the size,

finish the edge, and ta-da!

Now he can carry 10 cards easily!

My leather craft is totally self-taught so finished products are not really sophisticated, but as long as I can use them, it should be fine! (this attitude prevents me from becoming better...)

good day

Tasting in San Francisco.
It was a big tasting that the pamphlet containing information of all the wines had more than 200 pages!

The first wine we tasted was Ca del Bosco Franciacorta.

The last wine we tasted was Paolo Scavino Barolo 2012.

They were two of my favorites.
Lumen Grenache 2014 from Santa Barbara, Lynmar Estate Pinot Noir 2013 from Sonoma, Henschke Henry's Seven 2014 from Australia, Ca Viola Barbera d'Alba 2013, these were all good too.

Being inspired by those wines, we had a golden pairing for the dinner: lamb and Bordeaux.

Wine was 2010 Chateau Patache d'Aux Medoc.
It's not easy to find a good, affordable Bordeaux, but this wine was recommended at WINE CLUB in San Francisco(it was $25 or under, I believe).
I probably wouldn't have this wine by itself, but it was very good food wine.

I had too much wine, means I had a good day.

Under construction

One of the things I was surprised to find out here after moving from Japan was the knitting pattern.
They are quite different.
While Japanese knitting patterns are graphical charts, the American version is written instructions.
With Japanese charts, I just look at them and know what to do. American patterns, I had to read the entire instruction, row by row, to find out the difficulty.
This was intimidating and daunting at first, but as I got the hang of it,
I found the American version very easy to use and, the best part is, easy to adjust the size.

So now I happily knit with America patterns. Current project is Armande cardigan from KNITTY Winter 2013.
I’m almost done with the body, and realized that I would probably run out of yarn.
So I  stopped knitting and started to spin...should have planned more carefully.

I don’t mind knitting in summer since summer in bay area is cool 

(this is another thing which surprised me), but I intend to finish knitting before summer.

Wine flight @ Berkeley

Italian wine flight at VINTAGE BERKELEY in Berkeley.

There were two Verdicchio from Marche,

and three Nebbiolo from Valtellina, Lombardy.

They were all great, but my favorite was the 2001 Valgella.
It had beautiful brick/orange color: fruity, smooth tannin, and still quite youthful in a good way.

They are good food wine, but so delicious that I would probably empty the bottle
before food is ready!

This is my first post. Hope I did ok...