Been making wine all month...

Dah, it's that time of year, when I live over there...

Dear diary, my sweet paprika:

Dear diary, wassup?

Woke this morning and went downstairs to make coffee and stepped in front of the sink onto the little rug we keep there and it was soaked through.  Uh-oh.  After some quality time crawling around and emptying all of the stuff that's accumulated under there and drying things and watching where new puddles formed it became pretty clear the hose at the back of the dishwasher must be where the water's coming from.  Shut the cut-off valve and am gonna leave it that way for the day and not let it harsh my my Labor Day weekend mellow.  (This same dishwasher is wedged tightly under a soapstone counter that's a little too shallow for it, and it took some imaginative work to get the puppy under there.  So it doesn't come out real easy.  About 5 years (10?) when the latch to the to machine busted I decided to replace the broken part with a light, long machine bolt.  Problem was, the latch also acts as something of an electrical switch or lock, so whenever I drove the bolt into place, current would run through it and I'd get a pretty jimmying shock.  But because the washer is so wedged in, I decided not to try to pull it out to get to the electrical connection and unplug it.  Then for the better part of an hour I kept repeating a cycle of screwing up my courage, fiddling the bolt, getting jimmied until I couldn't hold on to it, and weeping as it slid back out of place.  Eventually I got it set, but not before two of my teeth had turned to soap.  And I can still put a q-tip half way into my left ear before it hits anything solid.)

Made coffee and went into the back with, darned chilly compared to what it's been.  Sudden bird-quiet, too, except for the cardinals which where futzing in the grapes.  Just last night we were saying how last year there was a heck of a lot of feeding in the grapes and shitting of totally psychedelic guano.  (I see now it was last Labor Day's post.  Gee.  With pics.)

Then back inside to put a batch of Hungarian peppers in the oven to dry.  I've been wanting to do this since last year when I bought a precious little jar of paprika from Bradley and as I was paying RB himself said, Why don't you make it yourself?  Wella wella.  So yesterday instead of buying paprika from Bradley we bought paprika peppers.  Maggy's Farm has a nice post about making your own.

Da Savino will be over in a couple of hours to bottle the last of his family's Grenache from last year so we can free up come ore carboys.  Lot and I have been concentrating a lot on this year's making, and buying a bunch of new equipment, as B has moved off to Staten Island and will be making his own wine there with the ancestral equipment.  Gonna have to change my pants before we bottle.  Threw on a pair of MK jeans that I bought on a whim a week or two ago at a discount place.  They're nice, but the distance between the top of the jeans way down there and my belly button way up here is interesting. 

By.  Good talking to you again.  Say hi.

Wine book??

Been thinking of creating a wine-making picture-book to share with the 11th Street crew - not theory, but a bunch of the procedural stuff that's easy to pass on to others, and some of the  rules of thumb I'm always forgetting...

What have you done with the Cobra jewels?

Wella. The party, she approaches. Don't know if M. Thatos will be there, but thinking about her this morning I remembered her fondness for Maria Montez.

What have you done with the other one, and why is Stumpster posting? Dunno. He's even stopped journaling at this point. Just making lists, and there's hardly ever more than 4 or 5 things on them.

This is the best book about Bigfoot I have ever read, bar none. Ever.

Bigfoot: I Not Dead, by Graham Roumieu.  I laughed, I cried, I shivered, I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one could see what I was reading.  Bubbles of snot formed and had to be whisked away.  Lori picked this up for the two of us for Christmas.  Ho boy.  (Big ups from Juju's local fishwrap - maybe he's read it?)

Right after finishing this miracle of empathetic graphigenic pornoviolent foctobiography -funny! - I tried to pick up Jonathan Nossiter's Liquid Memory.  I tried pretty hard.  Pretty sure this book is the opposite of Bigfoot: I Not Dead.  Pretty sure Bigfoot pop wine-guy head like bubblewrap.  There are no pictures!  None! Dense dense wordy wordy!  I will soldier on.

Flowery nose, creamy texture: more northwest chanterells & more pizza

Well, I know, you're sick of hearing it, but I'm not yet sick of eating it.  We were in the northwest again this last weekend (WA, this time), and again there were wild chanterelles at the farmers' market.  Bought some, and some garlic and red cippolini onions, some canned San Marzano tomatoes.  And a pizza stone since our host didn't have one.  We bought a handful of bottles at Patrick Hub's fabulous Olympic Wine Merchant (noo, laddie, no web site, you just have to go there).  (My fave was a Buty Sémillon, Sauvignon and Muscadelle blend. Oh, slay me, I am a pig of a pig of a pig.)  Lota made a salad, C made an apple crisp, and we stuffed ourselves!

Mos' wine time '09

Yes, ladies and gentleman, this past weekend was kick-off for wine time '09 on 11th Street in our little burg.

Here's what's happened:
B&L have dropped out for the year due to moves & timing complications.
M&P.S. have dropped in for the year.
Don Jaime, el zorro plateado, is in the hen-house.

M&P.S. put have crushed of central valley Grenache, and are also working with some Syrah juice from Lodi, aiming at a Rhone blend.

S&L and P have crushed together a 70% Merlot, 20% Cab. S., 10% Petite Sirah thang. And also a small batch of Muscat Alexandria - their first foray into white. All central valley CA grapes.

Along side the new mess we still have all of the S&L and P North Fork Cab. S. from 2008, and a carboy of Sangiovese from 2007, and a case or two of bottled 2006 Zin / Alacante blend. Oh, looks like we're gonna have to have another Puttanesca party in 2010!

Great Family Wine & Bottling Company

I've had the image on the left for quite a while - picked it up one day while browsing at Library of Congress, thinking I might use it on a wine label. This morning I was looking through files, saw it again, and focused for the first time on the address. Well, there must be a Union Street in every town. Or anyway, every town in the old industrial North. Still, I wondered: could it be Union Street in Brooklyn? My Union street?

Wella, wella, wella, plugged in '"Great Family Wine" & Bottling' to the goog, and where did it take me to but the fine library at Duke, where they have both the front and back of the card. Brought a tear to my eye. Been to the spot many a time. Happens, too, to be only a few doors from the childhood home of the mighty mighty Jimmy G., who cooks the world's best puttanesca for our yearly new-wine party (and where Jimmy G's own dad made his own home made wine.)

Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been

Well, thank goodness Juicy Pernil has been on the table while I've been doddering elsewhere away, or there'd have been nothing to eat at all!

Been back in the big city since Tuesday evening but haven't been able to muster the concentration to say a thing about our little time away. Stayed mostly at, and can't say enough nice things about, the North Fork Table and Inn, in Southold. The people and the place, both, fabu. We chatted each morning with Claudia Fleming and gorged ourselves on her scones. We poked around Southold, Greenport and Orient, and our last full day mostly lazing and swimming at Crescent Beach on Shelter Island. Most amazing were the backroad ponds and marshes out at Orient. I'm ready to sell the house, buy a shack, and suck on clams and oysters, watch ospreys fish and out-still the herons. Aldo's was open (hallelujah) and we drank his espresso every time we passed through downtown Greenport. On the trip home we visited our friends at Channing Daughters, and in the few days before then we also stopped in at Old Field, Shinn, Wollfer, and the Tasting Room - we dwank widdle bit, and bought more. We saw the fireworks over the fireman's carnival, and listened to Big Suga playing on the waterfront to the local crowd. We ate the tasting menu at NoFoTI, and three dinners at Frisky Oyster's two places. (It's true: God Bless the Frisky Oyster.) Ate 'em raw, and ate 'em friskafella'd. Begorrah!

Our last meal out there was a breakfast at Pat & Steve's on SI. I had the omelet special: shrimp. It was late for breakfast at P&S (though probably before anyone had breakfast yet at Sunset Beach). Cook came out, apologized for interrupting us, and asked how the omelet was. Great, I said. She told me I was the only person to order it, that her Dad mad it up that day - he likes to make things up - and she'd let him know. I told her it's become my policy to never pass up a shrimp omelet. Complements to Dad.

Oh, it was a lovely, lovely time away. (!05 denrut iroL, hhhss, dnA)

I said what I said, and I meant what I meant...

Nice label!

Bitter sage

Cross posting a pic from our wee private winemaking blog. Have a sage & lemon thing happening on a grain alcohol base, that should finish just in time for the big summer party hereabouts. Naming it Juju Pongo's Love Balm.

Billionaire's Vinegar

Just read the first third of Benjamin Wallace's The Billionaire's Vinegar. A fun whodunnit, especially for me in this time when I seem to be awash in booze (prep for the 3rd annual puttanesca and new wine bash, trying to get Pietro to bottle his 2007 wine so I can make some room in the cellar, experimenting with making a couple more liqueurs...). There was something I read in the book yesterday that, on first blush, I scoffed at, but then quickly changed my mind about.

There was a romantic aspect to it all. Rodenstock and his new friends were "drinking history," as they liked to say, and would commonly wax historical about what Goethe, Schiller, or Napoleon was doing in the year of the vintage they happened to be opening just then.

And I thought, poo, poo, but almost immediately followed that thought with, Hey, we have some old wine. I want to drink some wine that was made before 9/11. Hmmm. (I just went down there and checked - the oldest bottle is a 1966 antique port. Boom boom.)

Amaro me, Dr. Memory (crosspost)

(The partners in our little 11th Street winemaking group have a private blog - and I'm cross posting this little ditty from there.)

Started on the Amaro recipe at about.com. The hard to get herbs all came from Aphrodisia, and the grain alcohol and vermouth from Slope Cellars. Since the recipe is silent on amounts for the roots, I used 5 grams of each, and where I had dried herbs rather than fresh, I used a teaspoon. And where I had leaves instead of root, I winged it. So:

• Lemon balm 1 tsp
• 5 leaves fresh sage
  
• 10 leaves fresh rosemary
• Centaury plant 1 tsp. dried
• 15 juniper berries
• 5 cloves, check
• 1/2 inch cinnamon stick
  
• Orris root 5g.
• Calmus root 5g.
• Gentian root 5 g.
• Blessed thistle I have is dried leaves, not root, and I am using 2 tsp
• Milk thistle 1 tsp dried
  

Step 1 is complete. Sugar is dissolving in vermouth, herbs are steeping in grain alcohol. More work a couple of times in the next week or two, then 8 months of waiting.

Cellar archeology, 001

Hey, kids, we're dedicated to making the cellar more usable / less creepy-scary in 2009. Not exactly a resolution, more like a survival tactic.

So! Cellar Archeology entry 001!
There's a grape carton that a lot of our supplies are in - B's had it since I don't know when and it made it's way over to out cellar on September of 2006. It's got all sorts of stuff in it, some new and useful, some old and useful, some corroded metal implements that are just begging to experiment with your blood, some empty containers and some full but spoiled. I've decided to get rid of some of the older jazz, but am using Cellar Archeology to document them.

1. One half filled 500 cc jar of formerly liquid food grade enamel yellow paint, O'sullivan Paint Co., purchased some time in the past from Presque Isle Wine Cellars. Last year we bought a fresh jar of the same. Still liquid. It's what we paint the iron bottom piece of our press with. The current term of art is Gondola Enamel. Available in black, red, white, and yellow.
2. 4 oz. plastic container of formerly powdered sodium metabisulfate, packaged by Crosby & Baker, and - judging by the $1.75 price sticker - purchased at Party Creations. Who'd a thunk? We haven't used sodium metabisulfite for cleaning these past three years - we use potassium metabisulfite. Probably why this sat around until it solidified.
3. Plastic container, empty, which formerly held 50 Campden tablets. Another form of sodium meta. Price tag says it was purchased at L.J Lapide, Inc., $2.49. Mrs. Lapide is who the group has traditionally bought it's (CA) grapes from - until this past year when we bought LI grapes directly from the grower.
4. Cracked, dirty, empty plastic container. Skanky. 120 cc of nothing you want to put your tongue near.
5. This I like, and if I wasn't dedicated to cleaning out the cellar, I'd keep it, just as it is. 10 oz. Kerr "self sealing" mason jar, once filled with peach butter from Centennial Farms, Augusta, MO 63332 (Send for our catalog), and re-used to hold tartaric acid, with a sticker over the original label and on the lid. Rust on the lid, residue inside the jar. A thing of beauty. Who ate the peach butter?
   

hiya keedz

ya know me misses ya when ya away for so long...


from NPR, Fresh Air, today's show, lovely conversation about wine with two lovely people, link to show here..

our own T day celebration passed enjoyably, hoping you all had fine times with friends, family, maybe, if you really lucky, both.

I am the one on the right

We partners have a little private bloggie off to the side for our nefarious local wine making endeavors. Posted the above LOC pic to it yesterday, along with a number of others.

How' it goin' you ask? MyTFine, I answer. The Cab S. is 25 days off the vine, and 17 or 18 days post press. MLF is sending out the occassional bubble. Dark and lovely. First racking some time around Christmas. Even been fiddlin with the first few label ideas. (Here. Here. Here. Here. There'll likely be a hundred or so before anything actually gets into a bottle.)

Salute!

Vinous involvement

Ufta, went AWOL there for a few days while we immersed ourselves in winemaking and asthma.

6 AM Saturday morning we hit the road to be in Greenport, LI, in fields managed by Michael Kontokostas and the Kace Group, by a tad after 8.  And there the lovlies were, in their stacked pickers crates, about 750 lbs. of Cab. S. which, after chatting and bsing for a while, we dumped into plastic trash bags and loaded into the back of B's minivan (with a good deal of low-riding resulting - dude, check those shocks & your tire pressure).  Back to 11th Street and we'd finished crushing by shortly after noon, when P brought in some beautiful pastas from Bar Toto, Lori put out some salamis & bread, we popped a bottle of last year's 11th Street Sangiovesi and ate the lunch of the just.

Then, back to destemming.  Now, really, that's tedious.  It encouraged talk of retiring the mid-90's crusher we've been using and ponying up for a crusher destemmer.  B&L de-destemmed before the rest of us and declared their grapes ready for yeast.  Lori & P, bless their obsessiveness, kept destemming for what seemed like a couple hours more, then we pitched our yeasts, started the cleanup, more or less passed out.  

The grapes are much lower brix than California grapes would be, so we'll have pretty low alcohol - we didn't chapitalize.  Somewhere around 10% rather than 12%.  Worser things could happen, and when I remember how many folks stumbled out of our last year's wine celebration party, the lower content might be a positive good.  

Anyway, it's been a lot of time in the cellar the last few days, punching down, making notes.  The must is heating up, the brix is dropping and it's already smelling like wine rather than grape juice.  Giddyap.

a weekend in El Dorado county...

visiting J & J's place in Fairplay (near Placerville), yourstruly spent a very pleasant afternoon hanging out at two fine wineries, those folks at Shadow Ranch who always make us feel like friends, and our first visit to TooGood was made all the more memorable by meeting some really nice people from Hawaii who accompanied us during the barrel tasting, hosted by Seth (Thanks, Seth!) whose generousity (well, it ain't like it was his wine, right?) was greatly appreciated.

that pic up there is ms Judy herowndarnself, feeding a baby possum, one of the four five survivors of a litter of nine ten. She and her pals do good work under the guise of Sierra Wildlife Rescue

Not currently in BKLYN

We've ballooned to the j.p. coast but landed one state too north, and find ourselves drifting even further so...

Schein on mein neighborhood

Saw Jenny Scheinman @ Barbes last evening. I've been listening a lot to her latest (vocal) album. Last night was not that but was intense & fun more or less at the same time. Show was being taped - does she always do that with her eyes, or was it the camera? Begorah!

Got mail today Slope Cellars for the first time (just joined their list). I like them a lot and no one there is snooty, unlike the shop that is closer to me where I have been snooted at more than once and I won't name big nose. I like, too, that in their email there are shameless plugs for bands, bars, and the shop next door. O, a fine place to buy whatever wine you're buying.