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[justwineaboutit]

Don’t be a Grinch and drink organic wine

This article about Trump Grill/Grille was a hilarious mockery of Trump's facade, but also bothered me for a few reasons. I think the number one issue I have is that the author doesn't take a minute to inspect her own privilege. She is writer for Vanity Fair, I assume living in New York city. She's college educated and obviously interested in eating good food (probs organic, cruelty free) at hip restaurants. Sounds like she's used to a few of the finer things in life. And then she comes out and calls TG a "cheap version of rich." I can only assume its because she knows a thing or two about chasing after the rich version of rich...ie liberal, "big city" culture and refinement? TG is definitely not the worst restaurant in America, it actually sounds like classic chain restaurant fare. The chef pops your meal out of a Sysco bag and heats it up in the microwave-- that has become the standard of "cheap but rich feeling" eating in chains across the country.

So the author's not really making fun of Trump, she's making fun of the people who eat at Trump Grill and in other places like it. She’s implying they’ve been duped.  As they were when they elected him president. But that nastiness towards your neighbor is what got us in this Trump-president mess in the first place- one side mocking the other side instead of listening. And the thing is, where does it stop? When do you stop judging people for their lack of class and start looking at how your “classiness” has blinded you?  I think we could all profit from taking a minute to inspect the ways we’ve been duped.

Imma lay a story of my own on you: I was doing a tasting at a high end organic butcher shop near DC. It was close to Easter and I'd just bought this awesome pink smoking jacket with a tassel tie, that was a little offbeat and looked good on me..kind of reminded me of a jacket my mom has from the 80s.  I really wanted to steal it from her to wear, but it had shoulder pads too ridiculous for even me to brave.

So I'm in the shop, feeling festive, pouring wine for people doing their healthful holiday shopping and generally bringing folks good cheer-- as wine and a smile are wont to do.

This mid-30s woman comes in with her mom. I offer them wine and they decline, claiming it’s because they have to drive (Petite pause-- it was literally a thimble full of wine...don't be ridiculous people, please stop giving me that excuse.  Just say no thank you, like I assume your mom taught you). Then she looks at me with a smile and tells me she likes my jacket. I am touched and say thank you. She asks me where I got it and I say H&M, an alterna-clothing store that actually has some policies against sweatshop labor..unlike most others. She keeps smiling and says "That makes sense," and finishes her shopping.  

It felt weird at the time, but I couldn’t put my finger on why, as the words out of her mouth weren’t necessarily negative. So as they were leaving, I made a point to say Happy Easter to them anyway, and wish them a good day with a smile.  I like to reward people with extra kindness when they take a minute to come out of their “I am alone in this world” bubble and converse with me.  

It was only later, pondering over her weird, 'that makes sense' comment and smirky smile that I realized she was totally mocking me.  Knowing what I know of the DC crowd, it seems probable that she actually thought my jacket was ridiculous and where I shop is poor and classless.  I don't remember her outfit, I guess it was pretty generic. But now I'm willing to bet it was bought at JCrew or somewhere even more expensive.

Having money is no excuse to be a horrible person.  Or at least, I don’t think it used to be.  Now we’ve elected Trump, one of the most uncaring and selfish people around as president.  And many supporters justified their choice because he’s “good at business.”  As if we believe money absolves all your faults now. 

I don’t shop at JCrew because instead of a $60 T-shirt, I’d rather spend $20 on clothes and the other $40 on good wine to share with the people I love.  Don’t know if those choices make me happier than the women mocking me, but I kind of think so.  Because I don’t go around feeling the need to be horrible to other people because of what they wear/drive/eat. And that makes my heart lighter.

Wine recommendation to go along with the “cheap but feeling rich” vibe I’m ending this on:  Our Daily Red, an organic, no-sulphur-added, red from California, usually around $10/btl.

Keep in mind, organic NSA wines are not going to be the same style of wine we normally think of.  Usually they have brighter acidity, and a generally fresher taste as you can’t really age them without sulfur.  However this wine is a great introduction to the category.  It has some oak presence..I’m thinking oak staves were added while it aged in stainless tanks.  And there’s a nice savory, wild component as well, making it a perfect mushroom & marinara kind of pairing wine.  Also, because of the name, I highly recommend enjoying it this holiday with a holier-than-thou attitude towards all haters.

Stay strong and drink well this Christmas!  xxoo

[justwineaboutit]

Lake water and Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence

I am dreaming of summer evenings, and white wine right now.

And I feel like the French really know how to do nice weather the right way.  Every day that is around 55°F or higher, the French are dining outside.  The rule seems to be that it's better to be slightly uncomfortable out in the fresh air than totally comfortable inside.

I really like being outside, too.  But after a certain point I tend to follow my father's sage advice, which is: "any damn fool can be uncomfortable."  So I try to avoid doing things outside in extreme weather.  But, as I have mentioned before, sometimes in France I have no idea what is happening.  Which is how I found myself tangled up in too much hike to handle.

About thirty minutes in, scrambling up the sun-baked gravel, I started to contemplate all the mistakes that had brought me to this point in my life...my insistence on making friends, constantly trying to be a "fun" person, and not wearing enough sunscreen, in that order.  Also, a summer's worth of eating French food and drinking French wine which had left me with a decidedly bourgeois body.

I stopped for a minute on the trail as all the healthy French people ran up the hill ahead of me.  It was one of those times you have to drag yourself back into good spirits by sheer force of will.

"This is fun, this is fun.  We're all having fun here," I told myself as I took a swig of water and contemplated rolling myself down the hot, dusty mountainside.

Emile came back to check on me, and he did his best to improve my motivation.

"You know, there's a lake at the end," he said.

I love water.  I drank so much of Lake Anna as a kid, I'm pretty sure that it makes up 98% of my body.  Dreaming about water is the way I trick my body into doing things in the summer.  Lakes, oceans, pools, or bathtubs, it doesn't matter-- I promise myself that there is totally immersive relief in my near future.

So I managed to pull myself together.  Thirty minutes turned into a hike of two hours, up and down the sides of a steaming canyon.  And it actually was a lot of fun.  We told jokes, scrambled over rocks, and I got to see adorable ruins after all.

Finally, we're pulling into the home stretch, and I can see the glimmer of water.  I subconsciously walk faster, taking over the lead of the group for the first time all day.  I pull around the corner and the lake is spread out in front of me in all it's glittering, pristine glory.  And by pristine, I mean completely untouched.  There were people picnicking around the edges, and people zip-lining over the top of it, but not a single person in this beautiful, cool lake.  Emile explained that many of the lakes in France are polluted, so they're really meant to be seen and not touched.  At the end of the day, I found myself settling for a plain old shower instead.  But I have to say, it was one of the top three best showers of my life.

I'm not sure if it's a strange association in my mind now, but ever since this hike when I'm melting point hot I really like drinking a white wine from Provence.  For example,  a Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence like the Pierre du Sud from Chateau Bas, drunk after an almost equally hot day.  It was almost as good as going swimming.  I like the provençal blends with less familar varieties like Rolle and Grenache blanc.  It makes rich, unique white wines that aren't too heavy.  And it's fresh and fruity without making your mouth water--because you need to conserve every drop of lake water you have in you, you never know when you might see it again.

[justwineaboutit]

Guide to French Markets

Any guide book on France will have a section (excuse me: one section per town) on the markets.  Forget the Roman ruins or 17th century statues, the markets are clearly the best and most important part of any visit anywhere in France.  And granted, a good French market is really cool...just like a good local market anywhere in the world is cool.  Example:

Image courtesy of geektyrant.com

But what no guide book had was the really practical advice.  Like how to not be poisoned by something really "authentic" that you bought at the market.  Or how to properly eat the artisanal cheese you found that looks and smells like it rolled around in the mud for a bit before they sold it to you.

1) Wander: Wander around in the market first to get a feel about where the real French people are buying things.  Often, it is the Chinese food stand.  Don't be discouraged!  The Chinese food is very delicious.  But say you want some authentic, regional cuisine/products.  Keep wandering-- wander enough so that the French person you are with needs to keep asking you if you actually want to purchase something or just go home.  Wander so that all the vendors start to recognize you as that girl with the weird smile on her face creepily observing all the overwhelming splendor of the French market.

2) Observe: Don't be tempted to check out the young, hip, attractive people.  They are going to end up in front of the cheap cellphone cases and discount clothing.  You need to be checking out the old people.  What do the old women already have in their adorable, woven shopping baskets?  Which stand do the old men single out to stay and talk with the owners for long periods of time?  Those are the things and the people you need in your life.  Also, the young people are more likely to notice you staring at them and it is awkward.

3) Hygiene:  Homemade is one thing.  Homemade in unwashed tupperware containers is another.  In your search for artisanal sun-dried tomatoes, I would recommend not forsaking the basic rules of cleanliness.  Although, in the USA, we may be ever so slightly, um, obsessed with germs, I think I can safely say that some basic rules should still apply in France.  Mine are: food-safe containers hold the food, and the food is out of the reach of children and the noses of dogs.  But everyone can draw their own lines on these things.

4) Don't buy that cheese that looks like a gremlin mated with a brown paper bag and birthed a squishy, greenish Pet Rock.  If you do feel like you need to buy a stinky cheese to prove to the French that you are not a typical tourist, don't eat it until you confirm with a French person that you are or are not supposed to eat the earth-covered, moldy exterior.  You're welcome.

Boom.  With these pro tips you are prepared for every market in France.  If art was as easy to master it might have won the cultural contest.  But today is not your day, art.

[justwineaboutit]

Cat lovers and Vin Jaune

Almost every French person I have met has a cat.  And I am 100% on their side on that trend.  I am pretty jealous of cats, actually.  If society had no moral repercussions for being a complete brat, I would probably be the human embodiment of catlike perversity.  There have been times people have irritated me so much that I wanted to smack things off their counters into a sink full of water.  And I would expect them to still love me afterwards.

But my favorite thing about cats is their selectivity.  When a cat singles you out for attention, you feel like you've won a prize.  Even if they bite you right after.  It is a truly amazing and enviable skill.

So one time when I was sitting on a friend's porch, his cat looked me over impassively and then decided to jump into my lap.  I was so pleased with myself, that I needed to share this prize with Emile.  I started making faces at him across the table to indicate the magnitude of the moment.

To my horror, he started telling his friend all the other stories of me being more interested in cats than in other people, or famous monuments, or food.  I started laughing at myself, and then I couldn't stop.  A combination of sleep deprivation and self-deprecation led to laughter induced tears.  When the boys noticed, I, like a cat who has accidentally fallen off of something, tried to conserve my dignity.  And I blamed it on allergies.  To cats.

Like cats, the vin jaune of the Jura region of France unapologetically does the opposite of what everybody else thinks is normal.  I tried the L'Etoile from Domaine de Montbourgeau and it was delicious, but not for every palate.  The vin jaune or "yellow wine" of Jura is made by letting the white wine have plenty of contact with air-- which is what other winemakers try their hardest to avoid.  But it led to a honeyed, golden white wine, with notes of straw and dried peaches.  It was unique and I'm sure it's hard to get along with, but I can't help it-- I like it.

[justwineaboutit]

Still drinking French in VA!  The best part about having a common French boy's name is that you can pretend that you are very famous and popular.  Which I do shamelessly, all the time.

[justwineaboutit]

Toddlers and Armagnac

Conversations which require the accurate transmission of information are really hard for me, in general.  But in French, there's only a 15% chance of a total win-- they understand me, and I understand them.  It's much more likely that I'll panic and my vocal chords will close. The first part of my sentence will be lost in squeaks and choking, but they will immediately understand that I am a foreigner. When I try to clarify, they will latch onto the simplest interpretation of my question, and I will try to figure out whether they actually understood or not while I'm trying to translate their response. Just one word, misconstrued, can lead to embarrassing and frustrating situations. Like when the woman at the cheese counter in the grocery store somehow thought that I had never tried cheese before and I ended up with approximately $7 worth of the French equivalent to string cheese.

But I feel where they're coming from.  All that the toddler and I want to do is communicate our basic needs and have some fun. And it's so frustrating when people don't understand the root of what you're trying to say. There have been plenty of times I was sorely tempted to throw a temper tantrum in the grocery store. Or at parties. Or at the dry-cleaners. But I don't do it (usually), because I remember in time that I am a grown up.

Since we have so much in common, I get along pretty well with kids these days.  As long as we can play easy games that involve few rules and no talking. I was even a semi-successful babysitter for an afternoon with two charming French children. But I'm sure that the kid who could talk thought I was a really dumb 5-year-old in a grownup's body. We did well playing with his toys-- he would kill my fairy doll with a dragon and I would proclaim "Je suis morte!" and put the fairy back together for another flight around the living room and another inevitable demise.

But there's only so much of that a kid can take, and I was completely incapable of understanding what he wanted to do next. So when he suddenly charged out of the house, all I could do was grab the unsuspecting baby playing next to me and race outside after him. Terrified that I was such a lame babysitter that he had made a run for it, I scrambled up the hill to the backyard to find his father and form a search party.  The kid had already found his dad at this point, and was busy explaining that he and I were going to play at a friend's house. But his father began to realize the danger of leaving your children with the equivalent of a two-legged golden retriever as a babysitter. Just as he was wondering where the baby was if the pre-schooler and I were outside, I lumbered up the hill toting a happy (but heavy) toddler.  Between catching my breath, I assured him that everything was totally under control.

For all of those situations where you realize you might just be a large toddler in the eyes of the adults around you, I recommend Armagnac. Inspirational older sister of the more famous Cognac, Armagnac is made in a similar fashion to the darling of the rap world- wine, distillation, barrels. I had a taste of a fantastic Armagnac from 1986 at a comfy dinner in Bordeaux, and I remember thinking that this was what I want to drink when I am sixty sitting by a fire in a room of books. It smells amazing, warm and fruity, and it's deliciously unrepentant. Basically, it's classy, but it is also around 90 proof. Drink it up, you are a grownup. No matter what the 5-year-olds think about you.

(P.S. this is an old poster a winemaker had in his cellar.  At the bottom it illustrates how much longer you live if you drink wine,  backed up by Louis Pasteur's sage conclusion that "Wine is the most healthy and hygienic of drinks."  In your face, milk.)

[justwineaboutit]

Fence-jumping and Jura

When we were planning the road trip on a slim budget, housing arrangements kind of fell to Emile.  He knows people around the country, and staying with friends and family is cheaper and more fun.  Trying to minimize stress, I joked that I would be happy anywhere, even if we decided to sleep in the car a few times.  And after Alsace that is just what we did.

We hadn't finalized our itinerary with Emile's friends in Jura, and when we called them that day it turned out they weren't around.  We had an Airbnb.com reservation for an apartment the next day, but for this night we were headed down the highway with no destination.  Meanwhile, Emile pointed out that the Jura region was a very rugged, beautiful place.  Example:

I asked him (seriously this time) what he thought about camping out somewhere.  We still had a lot of stuff from Les Vieilles Charrues camping experience, and Jura is famous for it's fantastic cheese, comté.  So we ended up buying some bread and cheese and trying to find a spot off the highway to hideout until morning.

Surreptitiously glancing around, I pointed out a promising road off the highway.  We headed down a secluded driveway that seemed more and more deserted as we got further back.  When the gravel on the route was larger than pinecones, we figured it was a good stopping point.  We did a little off-roading into the trees and ended up at this little clearing.

I know what you're thinking...what about that creepy house in the background.  Yes, it was mildly unnerving in the light of a dying sun.  Thanks to my brilliant 4th year roommate the film enthusiast, I was all too aware how much this resembled the beginning of Evil Dead.  Did I keep these fears to myself and panic quietly every time a twig snapped?  Of course not.  Instead, I tried to jokingly mention how it looked like we'd stumbled into a horror movie, but some of my actual irrational disquiet leaked into my words instead.  I think it got to Emile too, because we unloaded the car very solemnly.

I started hearing something that I was pretty sure was not just in my head, but I decided not to say anything.  After a few more minutes, it was clear that Emile heard it too.  Heart in my throat I asked,

"Are those....bells?"

He listened for another second and turned to me and said,

"Yeah...There are a lot of cows here.  They put bells on them because they wander all around."

I stared at him. "Seriously?  The cows here wear bells?  For real?"

France.  Of course, even in the seemingly sinister places the cows wear actual cow bells.

And with that, I was over my fear of our hideyhole.  We were neither possessed by demons, nor trampled by errant cows that night.  And I ate way too much cheese and did not feel bad.  Because everyone knows you burn more calories just by eating outside.  The next day, we found a beautiful spot to go hiking, and we toted a bottle of Côtes du Jura Rouge and the rest of our picnic up to this waterfall.  The wine, 2011 Poulsard by Victor Richard, was perfect for the occasion-- light bodied, with a touch of forest berries.  A little wild and woody, but in a charming way.

[justwineaboutit]

How to Lose a Guy and Alsace

There is actually a scene in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days that I can relate to.  I know I'm not ruining this for everyone because this movie plays on TV at least once a week.  But if you haven't seen it, a couple spends most of the movie trying to break up with each other but they can't because there's a bet and an article in the school paper or something.  Most of the movie is ridiculously grimace-worthy, but there's one scene where Main Guy introduces Main Girl to the place where he grew up.  And watching it, it seemed like this was the major turning point in their relationship.  For me, It's always been important to make a good impression on (in?) your sweetheart's childhood haunts.  Almost everyone gets along with my parents because they are adorable.  But I can tell after an hour of showing off the places I love whether someone fits or not.

So that being said, on our Tour de France, I was a little worried about seeing so many important people and places in Emile's life.  I think, for the most part, I did pretty well.  But I had one epic failure.

We visited Alsace in July to see the place where Emile got his first job out of college.  Before we were supposed to have dinner with Emile's old boss, we hiked up through the vineyards to an beautiful castle ruin.  You can gain a lot of confidence from the top of a 300+ year old castle, so I actually did pretty well speaking French at dinner.  And after dinner, the former boss took Emile and I to his cellar and started opening up the most amazing, old bottles of Alsace Grand Cru.  We stayed up until 2am drinking this sweet, heady wine.  It's the kind of wine I always imagine whenever I read novels and the characters are drinking.  If a wine could taste like 18th century ball gowns look, this would be that wine.

But it was the day after where I really impressed everyone.  Emile's car is a trusty piece of machinery, but she's a little old.  So she gets picky about things like radiator coolant and automatic locks.  We woke up late the next day, and we missed breakfast.  So coffee-less and starving, I headed down to the car to dig out some instant coffee and some chocolate cookies I'd packed for just such emergencies.  But when I closed the car door, I realized I'd left the key sitting there on the seat.  Since I'd opened the door from that side, I knew it couldn't be locked.  But when I reached for the handle, I couldn't get the door open again.  I looked down at the lock and I realized that it had fallen back into place when i slammed the door.

It was one of those moments where you can't really believe it's happening.  You look around to see if you've missed something.  Maybe the door isn't really locked, it's just teasing you.  But no, it was really locked.  I have to say, Emile reacted very calmly for someone with nothing in his stomach but cookies and instant coffee made from cold tap water.

With almost everyone in the family watching, Emile attempted to clean up my mess-- trying to hijack our car, calling garages, and debating breaking the window.  Eventually, the patriarch of the family had the brilliant idea to wedge the door open from the top and hook the key out like a high-stakes arcade game.  It worked perfectly, so one hour and one hot coffee later, we were on our way.  But just as I was thinking about the terrible impression I'd left on Alsace, Emile told me that this was not the first time he'd been involved in a lock-out disaster there.  Once when he was staying with the same family, he accidentally locked himself outside of the house.  However, that's a good story for another time.  But maybe it's not me-- maybe it's you, Alsace...

[justwineaboutit]

Rockstars and Cremant de Bordeaux

Despite the confusion and embarrassment that comes with having a name that's impossible to spell, Les Vieilles Charrues music festival is one of the biggest in France.  It's held in a giant field in the Brittany region of northern France.  Emile has been volunteering with the festival for years, and this year I got to go too.  And we got to tour around Brittany a bit, and it's really beautiful:

Not only was this my first festival, it was also the first time I'd gone camping in 10 years.  So ignorance combined with a faulty memory allowed me to get pretty excited.  Emile and I weren't really roughing it, though, because Emile got special privileges as a volunteer.  The people who help out with the festival have a private campsite closer to the event, and you can bring a camper, so we set up a sort of fort next to one of the fences.  There were trees for shade and awnings for privacy.  As more of Emile's friends/fellow volunteers arrived, the place became more like a living room than a campground.  Except, it had more drunk people peeing in it than happens in normal living rooms.

And that naturally leads me to the only part that wasn't perfect-- the bathrooms.  Again.  The festival bathrooms were really gross.  I mean, obviously.  But even more gross than you're thinking.  Before the festival actually started, they didn't have water and no one was cleaning them.  So imagine the possibilities, if you're not eating.  But Emile, being the canny charmer that he is, got me access to the nice bathrooms.

Using the classic "ask nicely" approach, Emile got me a volunteer bracelet like his.  It meant I could go backstage, but more importantly, I could use the bathrooms reserved for famous people.  And being a volunteer was pretty sweet.  I love being behind the scenes, and seeing the work that goes into events.  So I helped set up the chairs that Rammstein's black-leather-clad tushies would later sit in.  And I cleaned the outdoor tables so that Neil Young could potentially rest his sweet ice tea upon it.  But more exciting than walking on the same ground as Bruce Springsteen once walked across, was the fact that the nice bathrooms also had relatively nice showers.

This is important, because the showers we were using before they set up backstage were high school rugby showers.  Totally open, so anyone could walk in while you were getting your soap on.  Also, there were disturbing brown smears on the walls.  Emile assured me that they were from mud.

But the festival itself was amazing.  The weather stayed pretty nice the whole time, and there's nothing like experiencing music outside.  I understand why people go a little wild-- you can finally turn the music up as loud as you want, you're dirty and free, and there's no one there who will judge you.  Once, when I was walking to a concert around dinner time, I saw a cute old couple picnicking on the grass next to a group of teens smoking up.

And the volunteering was pretty cool.  I'm not really a late night person, but I was on night shift.  Which meant I was one of the people who went to help put the backstage area back together again after the artists had finished up post-show.  It wasn't as rockstarry as I imagined it would be-- no trashing of the dressing rooms, or people passed out behind the potted plants.  Maybe they tone it down when they're camping too?  One group that we were sure would be raucous partiers left their "after party" hours earlier than they needed to, herded out by their manager like sleepy teens on a field trip.

I'm not sure that I would want to do the music festival thing as a normal person, but with the upgrades of being a volunteer it is a pretty sweet deal.  And when I think about all the wonders of Les Vieilles Charrues, I think about the Cremant de Bordeaux Baron Huneau that I tried in the wine bar in Bordeaux city center.  It was sparkly, like being in the center of a giant, musical melting pot.  And, of course, drinking sparkling wine is so rockstar.  The wine was also pretty simple and fresh, with lots of green apple, which goes well with all the greasy food that the festival vendors serve.  And finally, sparkling wine from not-Champagne is more solidly in my price range.  Because after all, we're camping.

[justwineaboutit]

Party Crashing and Mercurey Premiere Cru

My chance to be a secret agent finally came.  In June, I went incognito at Bordeaux's Vinexpo.

I guess I could have legitimately signed up and attended.  But it costs money, is the thing.  And I absolutely had to go.  Every year there are thousands of exhibitors pouring wine from all over the world.  There are seminars, and conferences on everything wine related.  I had to go.  Learning things and drinking at the same time?  That is basically reliving college.  So Emile got on it, trying to pull some strings to get us passes.  Unfortunately, each time it fell through.  A week before the event, right as despair was sneaking in, Pénélope called to say she would be in town for Vinexpo and did we want to get brunch?  She was only going to stay for a day of the week long schedule of events, and then she and her friend, Madeleine, were heading back to Provence.  And so, a nefarious plot was hatched.  As they headed out of town, Madeleine would give me her pass to get into the Expo.

I'm not really a fan of breaking the rules, but sometimes it's worth it.  And in this case, it totally was.  However, not only did my pass say I was from France, Madeleine has a very French last name.  I mean, with every accent, circumflex, and weird letter combination in the French phrase book.  Or at least it felt that way to a nervous American party crasher, who could maybe speak 10 words of French.  On the bus ride to the convention center, I concocted a story about how my father and mother had met in France, and then after I was born she had taken me back to her family in the United States and raised me with no notion of my heritage.  Then, on my 24th birthday, I reconnected with my father and came to visit him in France.  It was a press pass too, so I wove into my cover some work as a foreign correspondent.  James Bond would have been proud.

But unsurprisingly, no one cared.  I maybe spoke three words to the people herding us wayfaring internationals through the expositions, definitely not enough to need a cover story.

However, the press pass did get me into a sticky situation.  I was trying to attend a seminar on adapting French wine branding to the American market, and it was a small group.  The woman organizing it came up to me, and using hand gestures and broken French, I finally realized she wanted me to sign in as a member of the press.  I had a moment of terror where I forgot how to spell my fake name, which was quickly replaced by the terror of having to come up with a fake email address that looked kind of real.  It didn't work.  She gave me a weird look after confirming that that was really the email I wanted to write down.  As she walked away I asked her if the whole seminar was in French.  It was.  "Ah, ok," I said, smiling apologetically as I gently backed out of the room.  And then I ran away.

The exposition part of the conference was awesome.  It was as close to a wine theme park as I have seen.  The "booths" were towering castles constructed with separate rooms, full-scale bars, white picket fences-- you name it, it was there.  Sadly, to preserve my hard drive's memory, I think I deleted a lot of the photos.  But here's one to give you an idea:

I tried wine from Chile, Argentina, France, Germany, Israel, and Saki from Japan.  I imagine it gets old for people who come back every year, or who have been doing this wine thing for decades.  But for a newbie going undercover in her mom's fancy dress shirt from the 80s, it was the best.  Emile showed up for a bit, but I spent almost all day, everyday there that week.

And what wine would I recommend for undercover exploits?  I drank a Mercurey Premiere Cru with some friends later on our summer road trip, but it reminds me of this adventure.  It was Domaine de l'Hermitage 2005, and our friend said it was around 12€ in the grocery store.  But when we tried it, it was one of the best pinots I'd had in a long time.   It was nuanced and fruity, and rich without being too alcoholic or overwhelmingly fruity.  A mid-range wine partying with the best in the business.  And I bet it had a really good cover story.

[justwineaboutit]

Time travel and Cote de Provence

Yikes.  I owe you, dear reader, an apology: sorry it’s been, like, two months since my last post.

But in my defense this was a good place for a pause.

I’ve been retelling the history of my first exploits in France, but we reached the end of my exploratory first trip.  After I got back to the USA, I started working on my visa hardcore.  And, preparing for the best wedding, probably ever.  But I’m biased since I was in it.

And after the wedding,  I spent half of the time worrying, and half of the time preparing for the trip.  Which involved a lot of: “A year with just one suitcase, that won’t be enough shoes!” and then a lot of: “This will never work, why am I even worrying about the shoes!?!”

But it did work, I got the visa said my goodbyes and came back to France.  And so began the learning French, trying to drink French, and basically "survive with my sanity (and my bank account) intact" stage of this sabbatical year.  And so far, it has been a blur of emotions, new encounters, and fantastic travel.

But the best and the worst part, by far, has been trying to learn French.  Before this trip, it's was impossible for me to truly understand how much of my identity is tied to my words.  I used to think I was a funny, confident, outgoing person.  Now I know that I am a funny, confident, outgoing English speaker.  The new "French me" goes into social situations sort of like a baby goat-- I know people generally think I'm cute, but if I draw too much attention to myself they might eat me...

The best experience I have to epitomize all the tactics and troubles of my French connections, is probably that one time I went to a wine tasting event with Emile's family (P.S. I felt bad for not giving Em a real name, so it's Emile now):

1) You will never really know what's going on-- always be prepared.

I'm noticing that plans are often made around the non-native speaker, because it's so much work to include them.  And when you find out the plan, the kind person explaining it is probably tired of repeating all details.  So anyway, this spring in Bordeaux was horribly rainy and cold.  Almost every event that was supposed to be outdoors but could be moved inside, was moved.  So when Emile's sister, invited us to a wine tasting where several wineries would be pouring (including Emile's parents) I just assumed it would be indoors.  Nope.  There I stood in the cold evening rain, in a skirt and my party boots, mentally kicking myself with them.  Which brings me to the second point of advice:

2) Be open to brainwashing

From one perspective, it was cold and miserable.  I was wet, improperly insulated, and kind of lonely as the French conversation swirled around me.  But when in an uncomfortable situations, I believe you can make a choice to just roll with it.  And instead of spending the night miserable, I chose to admire the way the rain fell on the adorable cobblestones of backstreet-Bordeaux.  And I basked in the oldtimey joy of the lively string band playing from the bed of a truck in the light of the street lamps.  By the time I found a patient, French-speaking, Polish immigrant to talk to, I was in a good enough mood to be the most charming version of "French me."  So far in my life, most social situations have been naturally inclined toward the good times.  And they can be great times if I just give myself a little mental push in the right direction.

3) Don't make faces

For me, one of the big language problems right now is that I'm in that awkward phase when you only understand around 15% of what people are saying.  I can usually get the main nouns/verbs and some context, but the qualitative details are really hard to grasp.  Example:

The Polish women, in French: "My daughter _____ _____ broken____ _______ ______both hands and a ______."

Me, in French: "Oh my goodness!!!" as I make a horrified face.

Emile, in English: "She just said that her daughter fixed a broken wine shelf by herself, but it took both hands and a brace"

Me, in French: "Ah ok, that's cool…"

Now when people are speaking French with me, I try to school my face in a sort of profound look, maybe with scrunched up eyebrows.  In fact, it usually substitutes for an answer.  People will sometimes even respond as if I made a well-reasoned retort.  Of course, there's always the risk that I just seem brain damaged.  But actually, I think that happens all the time, no matter what I do... so now I aim for profoundly brain damaged.

And what, you ask, is the best wine to go with this relentless optimism?  I would have to say this Cote de Provence Rose I tried later in my travels, called "Made in Provence!" by Ste Lucie.  First, it was a double magnum (3 liters of wine), which is perfect for those uncomfortable moments when you feel like an outsider.  And second, it was so easy to drink-- it had pink summer fruits, a hint of English candy, and enough acidity to make it refreshing.  Which is important for reminding you to have a little fun, and stay refreshing yourself.

[justwineaboutit]

Road Trip: The Reckoning and Vin de Pays

After Portugal, Em and I headed to visit some friends in the southeastern part of France, near Avignon.  And like the young, brave people we are, we decided to do the road trip in a straight 22 hour shot.  We finally reached France after almost 12 hours of driving through Spain and Portugal.  We pulled over in a small town around 6am to try to negotiate a sandwich from a bar.  The bartender was not amused.

When people ask me what I miss most about the United States I always say 24 hour grocery stores.  In France, the consumer culture is way behind the USA: grocery stores close at 8, everything is closed on Sundays, and the customer is usually wrong.  Especially when they want a sandwich before mid-day-- then they are offensively wrong.

Instead of driving, I tried to help by keeping him awake.  First we tried multi-lingual hangman, but it's pretty tricky.  I didn't really realize how hard it is for the guesser to predict letter combos without knowing a language fluently.  As a native English speaker, I can kind of tell, for example, that "e"s and "n"s like to hang out together.  But playing hangman in another language is like shooting in the dark.  We can skip over how bad I was in French.  But even Em, who is successfully bilingual, took 30 minutes and a complete hanged man (on a horse, also) before he guessed the word "pony."  So we started playing 20 questions instead, but soon I started asking a question and falling asleep before Em could answer.

But it was totally worth it.  Our friends, Pénélope and Leon, live in one of the prettiest villages in France.  Objectively-- it's an official thing, with a commemorative neon sign.

Yhere are actually a lot of adorable villages perched on hillsides around Avignon that look almost like they haven't changed since the middle ages.  Wandering up the streets with Pénélope, I admired a view which sometimes gives you glimpses as far as Avignon.  And the best part?  They have a ruined castle.  When someone asks me my favorite thing about France, it is definitely the castles.  Ok, I admit, I love the food and the wine.  Obviously.  But there is something so exciting about driving through a country where castles are scattered across the horizon like it's no big deal.  Castles are to the French landscape what broken down cars in front yards are to the Virginian landscape.  Intriguing remnants of a lusty, blood-and-alcohol soaked past?  Maybe it's my overactive imagination, but I nerd-out a little every time.  As evidenced by this joyous, haphazard selfie I took with the castle:

Dinner that night was emblematic of the friendship between the Frenchies and myself.  We drank a lot of wine, and listened to loud music.  The standout wine was the Chêne Bleu "Abelard"  Vin de Pays du Vaucluse.  It is an interesting contradiction, as it's marketed as super-premium wine, but it is from a denomination usually indicating a table wine.  But the "Abelard" shone with a complexity that makes me wonder how much the AOCs really mean anymore.  A vin de pays is supposedly a wine grown in less ideal terroir.  And yet, this wine had fantastic character.  So I guess it's up to the consumer how much credence they want to give labels.  But, consumer be warned, the wine did have a pretty negative impact on the music selection.  Helped in part by the fact that every time my three friends started speaking French I would retaliate by sneaking over and putting another Ke$ha song on the playlist.  Maybe all of the best things in life are a varying mixture of high-class and low standards?

[justwineaboutit]

Second chances for Portugal and Pomerol

So, I have had some problems before with foreign bathrooms.  And in Portugal, for some reason, the bathrooms also cause trouble.  They all have the light switch on the outside of the room.  I'm sure there is some logic behind it, but in the morning when you're half asleep you forget.  I usually ended up grumpily fumbling around for a light switch that didn't exist in a completely dark bathroom until I remembered it was outside.  Right before we and the family parted ways, I had another great cultural exchange involving these electrically challenging bathrooms.

I really hit it off with one of the children, and even though we had no idea what the other one was saying, we developed this great game together.  It involved her jumping up on my waist, me grabbing her ankles, and spinning her around upside-down until both of us were dizzy enough to almost fall over.  It was fun the first 50 times.  Then sweaty and grass-stained, I decided it was time for lunch.  Ana didn't really understand that I was done, though.  So she continued to follow me around the house until I finally gave up trying to reason with her and, like the adult I am, I just hide inside the bathroom.

At first I heard her whining outside the door.  Then, as I was washing my hands, she became quiet.  I thought she had left, but as I reached for the towel everything went dark.  She had turned off the light of this giant bathroom I was stuck in, and I now had to try to blindly stumble out of it.  Fortunately I escaped without major injury, and with my sense of humor still intact.

Em and I said goodbye to the family and spent the next week working on our business proposal for the project in Portugal.  We spent some time in the town of Sintra, renowned center of mystical energy, visiting friends of Em's while we killed time before our final meeting with the family.

I began to appreciate the beauty of a country whose recent history I knew basically nothing about.  I guess whoever does standardized tests for Virginia high schoolers believes that Portugal disappeared sometime after 1885.  So I managed to make it into my twenties with only a vague knowledge of the western part of the Iberian peninsula.  But apparently, not only is Portugal still around, it is both beautiful and delicious.  As well as percerves, you can find these delicious pastries in Sintra:

And Sintra is also the proud home of Cabo Rock, the closest point on continental Europe to the United States.  So I waved at my home country across the Atlantic, and I started to hope that I might get to know Portugal as a new home country in the next couple of years.

By the end of the week, though, I realized that it wasn't going to work out between Portugal and me.  The fatal blow in our business relationship with the family was a case of mismatched expectations.  Em and I wanted to build a winery, and the family really just wanted to play at winemaking.  But I've noticed that disappointed expectations happen often in the wine world.  You hear a lot of stories about a harvest that's ruined right before the grapes are ready to be picked, or someone who makes a stellar wine only to find they can't sell it.  Back in Virginia, I tasted a wine from Pomerol for the first time-- and I was expecting greatness.  I was being introduced to French wine by some French friends in their cool, minimalist living room.  This cute Frenchman named Em was telling me how Pomerol was one of his favorite AOCs, and I wanted so badly to like it too.  Unfortunately, this particular wine was a little too earthy for me, with strong notes of animal and leather overpowering the fruit.  So it didn't work out for me and Pomerol, or me Portugal, the first time around.  But, I'm still glad Portugal didn't disappear in the 19th century after-all.  And I'm all for giving people, places, and wine second chances.

[justwineaboutit]

Sexism and Seductive wine

The next few days, Em and I were staying in the family's house like we were guests and being fed and wined like family, but we talked business like we were employees.  And yet, no one actually said to us "Yes, we are definitely interested in this project."  It was always "Well if this happened, maybe this could happen," etc.  The "ifs" and the instability were making me nervous, and I have to say I wasn't comfortable enough to be as charming as I probably should have been.  But the second morning we were there, I tried to redeem myself by learning to prune.  Like a scissor happy kindergarten class, the six men at the house and I headed out excitedly to learn about vines!

From what I understand, pruning is like trying to do a math problem by intuition.  You look at a vine covered in shoots, and try to divine which are the best ones to leave.  And you're not only making decisions for this harvest, but for years to come.  After one lesson on pruning (in Portuguese obviously), I was solely responsible for the lives of all the vines I could prune.  Which turned out to be three.  I'm not great at math and/or intuition.  When the patriarch of the family felt that it had been a reasonable amount of time since the last meal, we headed in to eat and drink some more.  And I had earned it-- the constant terror of destroying 30 years worth of vine growth makes you pretty hungry.

Waiting for us in the house, was a unique Portuguese/Spanish delicacy.  They're called "Percerves" (pronounced pear-cher-beys) in Portuguese, but the matriarch of the family told me the closest translation of the name in English is "understandings," which I thought was adorable.  And also a very appropriate name, because once you try them you understand the hype.  They're strange looking things, but they taste deliciously like the ocean.  They're apparently known as goose barnacles to the English speaking world. This is how you eat them:

At this point, the conversation got a little weird.  For some reason, the men of the family were obsessed with when I would be pregnant.  They brought it up several times during our stay, but my favorite was that day.  After looking at me lasciviously over the percerves, a friend of the family told me that all the women in Portugal know that Portuguese red wine makes you more fertile so I should be careful how much I drank that night.  There were so many things I wanted to say in retort to the gallant drinker across the table from me, but instead I just kept smiling.

But, fortunately, for at least every two horrible people I meet in my life there is one really wonderful person.  And Em and I met a really wonderful, organic wine proprietess a few days later who was a welcome change-- easy going, friendly, and honest.  Her project is so clearly her passion, and the wines really make it clear that she's doing something right.  And the red wine, or "tinto," she produces can only be described as "seductive" (as Em so appropriately put it).  It has the nicest blend of ripe fruit, delicate floral notes, and just the right balance of oak and alcohol.  It really was some of the best wine we'd tried from the area.  Over and over again I meet people who are doing the same thing in the wine world.  But one person is doing it for the love, and one for the money.  And I know it's not possible to be a perfect idealist, everyone wants to make a profit.  However, the people who are doing something the right way because they believe in it are my kind of people.  It makes a difference for me when I work with them, and it matters when I drink their wine.

[justwineaboutit]

Driving stick-shift and Portuguese wine

Though I had promised several times to be navigator on our trip to Portugal, I only managed to stay awake long enough to roll myself and my suitcase into the car.  Then Em was flying solo while I enjoyed three extra hours of sleep.  When I regained consciousness, I realized we'd crossed the border to Spain.

"Wasn't there border patrol?  Or does it not matter in the Schengen area?" I asked, trying to remove my morning breath with a sour gummy worm.

"Uh yes, there was," Em replied, "but you were kind of drooling up against the window, so neither of us wanted to wake you up."  A classic border-jumping trick, works every time.

Because of my cellphone GPS dependency and Em's raw sense of adventure, neither of us thought of getting a map until 11pm the night before the trip.  So I found myself with an armful of Google maps, which I rotated until I could figure out what road we were on.  I started to get pretty confident in my skill as we reached the mountains between Spain and Portugal.

"Ok, coming up next is a long straight stretch, maybe 80 kilometers," I informed Em.

"Great, do you mind driving then?"

I had told that Em that I had driven standard before, which was technically true.  What I didn't mention was that it was two years ago, and that I had driven through a stop sign because I was afraid to try downshifting.

So Em pulled off at a gas station, while I was nervously calculating the disaster probability (= amount of hill x the amount of roundabouts) I was going to tackle coming back up to the highway.  Em must have been too tired to realize his danger, even after I failed to get the car into first gear five times and started uncontrollably giggling at my incompetence.  But the sixth time was the charm.  With a few jarring moments and a stroke of really good luck, we made it through the roundabouts, up the mountain and onto the highway without meeting another car.  I started breathing again and Em fell immediately to sleep.  I had an hour or so to quietly admire the rolling hills of olive trees and listen to the new Maroon 5 song three times on the Spanish radio station before it was time to hand over the wheel.  To avoid having to shift gears I simply held the clutch and the brakes down until we stopped, and I think Em finally realized his peril.

We became really lost as we crossed the border into Portugal.  The towns were beautiful, very simple houses with fresh colors or tile work patterns.  And many of the streets were still cobble stone.  However, the signage was almost as charming and therefore, impossible for me to match up with my directions.  Also, the highways, once a public service, are now privately owned.  To avoid the exorbitant tolls, we were trying to negotiate the winding back roads of the Algarve.  So we arrived at the house of our potential future employers three hours behind schedule (a 17 hour trip total) and completely disgruntled.  We were soon sipping wine and sitting awkwardly in the family's living room.  Em speaks a little Portuguese, but I speak nothing except English.  So I tried to just smile a lot instead.  The patriarch of the family looked me over and said something to his wife.  She translated:

"He said, you look exactly like an American.  Em, he could be French, or Spanish, or Portuguese even.  But you are very American."

I kept smiling and resisted the urge to self consciously ask if that was a good or a bad thing.  I did not actually want to know.  I just wanted to go to bed.

With dinner, we had the 2010 red blend, mostly made from the Cabernet Sauvignon grown on the estate.  It had the stewed, jammy fruit flavors of grapes that have been really well ripened in a hot sun.  But there was an almost musty taste hidden under the surface.  Definitely nicer at the first sip than when it finished.

[justwineaboutit]

Dessert, Coffee, and Clairet

While my trip in January was mostly vacation, it was also an investigation of potential job prospects for the next harvest.  One of those paths led to Portugal, working with a family that Em had come to know through his work in the country in past years.  To honor the ending of my initial Bordeaux tour, I ate.  My poison of choice is always dessert.  And fortunately for me, the French encourage dessert, even for breakfast.  So I started the day with a chocolatine, more commonly known as pain au chocolat.  It is a buttery croissant, wrapped around two sticks of dark chocolate.  It is perfect with coffee and, basically, everything in life.  Later in the day, I hunted down the traditional Bordelais cake, the canelé.  Legend has it that the canelé was created because the Bordeaux winemakers were using a lot of egg whites to filter the wine.  They needed to find some (preferably edible) way of making sure all the egg yolks wouldn't go to waste.  So they created a dense, spongy cake that bakes in tiny copper molds until the outer crust is thick, crispy, caramelized deliciousness.  Unsurprisingly, canelés also go fantastically with coffee.  So coffee and dessert were the theme of the day.  Eating my way through a candy-coated Bordeaux, I began to feel more comfortable in the foreign.  Ok sure, the language is different and the lifestyle is different, but as long as I can get along with the desserts of a place I feel like I will be maybe fit in.  

However, my sugar crystal of confidence crashed at lunch.  For background: it seems to be no secret that the French don't like the British very much.  Maybe it is because the British do like France so much?  Apparently, many a British citizen vacations/retires in the French countryside.  Regardless of the rationality, during my trip I developed this fear of being assumed British.  It's like being condemned before a fair trial.  And of course, two weeks into my trip it happened.

Eating our last lunch in Bordeaux, my plate was dropped in front of me with a muttered "Anglaise."

Em was quick to defend me, "Non, she's American."

Our waiter shrugged, "Same species," he said definitively in French, and headed back to wait on the good, French customers.

Called out for my otherness.  But, I took a little comfort in the fact that he had made the weirdest chili I had ever eaten.  At least my species knows how to do Tex-Mex.

England made another appearance that night.  We had a Bordeaux Clairet, which is a rose "bled" from the red wines or from grapes pressed after some time on the skin.  I think in the middle ages it could be a red or rosé wine, but now it's a term reserved for this specific style.  It was meant to be a light and approachable alternative to red wines. "Claret," as a non-regulated term, is a label we can thank the British for.  I've seen it used on bottles in Virginia, on everything from a high-end blend to a mixture of the dregs of the red barrels.  But the French version was pretty good--it was a very drinkable rosé, fresh and not sweet.  And I nervously drank a lot of it, thinking about the 15 hour road trip we had planned for the next day.

[justwineaboutit]

Hello Aquitaine! and all the AOCs

Elle had left Em and I a galette des rois for breakfast.  In the two weeks surrounding New Year's the French bakeries, or boulangeries, make large, flat, donut-shaped cakes.  They hide a "bean" in the cake, and the person who gets the slice with the hidden item is the King for the year.  Or something like that.  Handing me a slice, Em warned me that the hidden item was probably not a bean, and was probably made of ceramic.  So he cautioned me to chew slowly,

"Doucement, you might break your teeth."

Fortunately, it turned out after my first tentative bite that I had the piece with the bean.  It was actually a ceramic tile in the shape of a box of macaroons.  The chain boulangerie it was from, Paul, had it's name emblazoned in tiny letters on the side.  I immediately felt like people who win minor sporting events must feel.  I was one of the elite.

Em and I headed to the fantastic and free, Musée d'Aquitaine.  "Aquitaine" is one of the names for the region where Bordeaux resides.  Like AOCs, names of areas in France are shrouded in mystery.  Why is the area called Aquitaine and also Gironde?  Perhaps, you are only allowed to call the area Aquitaine if you've been friends for a while?  I think Aquitaine and I are on a first name basis now.  In fact, Aquitaine is a region that encompasses several official "departments," including Gironde.  And the museum had some really interesting artifacts. The only downside was that all the information was in French.  So while Em and I looked at copies of the cave paintings from Dordogne, and the Roman relics, I would try to guess at what it was and Em would tell me if I got it right.  Hint: no, never.  But it was still a good time, and we were the only ones there.

We headed out into the cold afterwards and decided the best thing to do would be to hit up a wine bar Elle recommended.  And it was.  I knocked out several AOCs that night, and this was actually where Em suggested trying to drink through all the AOCs.  Like all ideas suggested while drinking, we knew it was a good one.  We compared Pessac-Leognan Blanc with an Entre deux Mers Blanc.  The Pessac-Leognan had more of the grape variety, Sauvignon Blanc in it and had the aroma of cat pee pretty strongly on the nose.  This is a real thing, I did not make it up, but it's something to explain in another post.  We also tried Pessac-Leognan Rouge, Graves de Vayres Rouge, Saint Julien, and Saint Georges-Saint Emilion.

After we finished, we headed to a restaurant Elle had groupon-ed for us.  It was the site of a few more firsts for me.  I had my first ever expedition in molecular gastronomy.  It was a parmesan foam, and it was pretty tasty.  It was sort of like when you gargle with a hydrogen peroxide rinse, and your mouth is filled with bubbles after.  But the bubbles tasted like salty cheese.  And equally exciting, my first escargot.  Which tasted like sausage, but with the texture of a marshmallow.  Amazing.  We finished the meal with Sauternes from Bordeaux.  It was so sweet and floral, just grazing the point where it would be too much.  Which was also what my stomach was saying: "Just almost too much…"