What's the correct vintage for an apocalypse?

White wine with fish is a no brainer, but the assembled dinner party was largely drinking red wine in honor, no doubt, of the evenings' entertainment, the appearance of a "blood moon".  The party took place in a sufficiently rural area with minimal light pollution for optimal naked eye viewing, and perhaps you don't realize how much even a small city produces until you see it glowing from a distance. The cloud cover most conveniently removed itself just as the eclipse started. And yes, it was a quite spectacular moon as the many images posted around the internet showed, further demonstrating that there are certain subjects for which phone cameras are just not adequate, and most amusingly so. The dinner was most excellent, and the post-dinner discussion and drinking topic that was most entertaining was what wine do you drink while waiting for the apocalypse, the harbinger of which was this reddish, eclipsed full moon? The conclusion was that this was a simple matter; drink the best stuff you have because it won't have a chance to get any better what with the apocalypse and all. No use hoarding a special bottle for an occasion that will now never happen, so pass that super Tuscan. While an amusing enough discussion, it remains deeply depressing that NASA, the Church of the Latter Day Saints, and others felt the need to issue statements trying to convince certain people that no apocalypse was actually going to happen. How can people be so gullible, and ignorant, in this day and age?  But if remain unconvinced, then give us your wine, but only the good stuff please. Clinking empty wine bottles together will scare away the blood dragon and restore our moon's color.

Coffee & wine bars - too cultured for the USA?

Zurich is littered with coffee and wine bars.  Most of them are pretty small, quite intimate, with little tables and a couple of lithe young women in tight black jeans and white blouses waiting tables.  When your feet get tired of the coble stones, or going through one of the best collections of European art, you find an inviting looking place, and sit for a spell while sipping a coffee, wine, or beer.  You don't pay when you are served.  The wait staff doesn't bug you about paying or ordering more until you are more or less ready, and sometimes not even then.  Of course, anything this civilized

is quite rare in the USA where somehow such an activity is still considered a sinful waste of time, especially on a Sunday. Yesterday was rainy, and today, a Sunday, was mostly sunny and everyone was out walking because most retail places, other than afore mentioned social bars, were closed. How nice. People came and went; groups, old couples (the Phactors were not out of place), young couples, people with strollers, guys with mostly shaved heads and tattoos, fashionable ladies, a real cross section of the humanity strolling by.  Now why are such places not more common in the USA?  Primarily, it's because such places only exist where urban centers are vibrant and where a significant part of the population walks from place to place. Cities and towns in the USA have to develop active, people places for places like this to be successful. The closest things in smaller cities are campus town areas adjacent to university campuses. Now don't get TPP started on the mass transit system in a place like Zurich. 

Flowering shrubs like a bottle of fine wine

Flowering shrubs are rather ephemeral things; their flowering displays while lovely usually only last a few days, maybe a week. And in this sense they are rather like a bottle of fine wine; you enjoy it, savor it, but it doesn't last for very long, an hour or so. So what's the solution? It's simple, have a lot of bottles of wine and lots of different flowering shrubs. Now the problem is to decide what vino goes best with each particular shrub. Let's see, maybe a nice rioja with a flowering quince? How about a sauvignon blanc for a star magnolia? This subject may be more appropriate for Mrs. Phactor.

March Snow - Signs of Civilization

It has been showering snow all day, and while it won't accumulate, it makes the day dreary as early March days often are. Saturday's quest was for gorgonzola dulce to use in a very interesting pasta for tomorrow (and probably the next couple of days too). Thirty years ago when we moved to this little part of heaven on Earth it was a total gastronomic wasteland. The "best" Italian restaurant around served ickily sweet bread; totally disgusting. And for a fellow who grew up in areas of New York state with very large Italian populations, it was unthinkable. Decent cheese, imported cheese, real bread, and decent wine were just AWOL and required a road trip to Chicago. What a difference a generation has made. My quest required but a single stop. Maybe it will snow tomorrow too, but cooking cheers me up. As will the cheese and ciabatta bread. These are signs of real civilization.

Global Warming and Wine

First off, I disagree with the premise that wine is an unnecessary luxury. Wine is a basic food group 0f the civilized person and must be included in at least one meal a day.

Now in case you happen to be completely ignorant about crops and climates, wine grapes is a crop associated with Mediterranean climates, which range from cool to hot, but basically they have cool, relatively mild, wet winters and relatively hot, dry summers. Different grape varieties do better at various points along that climatic gradient. In a bit of climatic irony, the Mediterranean area does not have a monopoly on Mediterranean climates, which are also found on the west coast of North America, in California, Oregon, and to some extent in Washington, in South Africa, in Australia, and in Argentina and Chile, just look at the latitudes on a globe. So it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out where all that wine comes from.

Global warming is certainly a concern, but by affecting wine, it’s getting serious. Climatic change associated with global warming may ruin Australia’s interior wine growing regions by increasing aridity, more and greater drought. Now granted this region does not provide the most distinguished wine, and elsewhere climatic shifts may have given some of France’s wine producing regions warmer, wetter summers and a fabulous 2005 vintage, but day to day, many of us don’t drink vintage year French wines. So this is getting serious.

Yes, without a little Long Flat Red to sip as you tend the Barbie (grill, not girl), you begin to wonder if life is worth living.

But similar shifts in climate are what will not just damage, but wholesale ruin many agricultural areas. And the Land of Lincoln is not immune from this. The maize and soybean desert will become more of a desert, a drier region, one that is too dry for its two main crops. Presently the USA produces about 70% of the world’s soybeans in a narrow latitudinal band. If soybeans are raised any further south, they do not get long enough nights to trigger flowering; and if try to raise them further north, then the growing season is too short for the fruits and seeds to mature after flowering takes place in late summer (longer nights). No need to mention that soybeans are the USA’s #1 agricultural export and their value is huge. And indeed, this commodity threatened by climate change, yet the scientific dummies running things still act as if this isn’t a serious problem.

Why it’s enough to make a guy drink. Pass the Hermitage Côtes du Rhône 2005 please. No time to waste on cheap wine.