In Search of Pinot Noir - A trip to Rodern

It’s Saturday.  A beautiful day blooms and my wife has an idea.  Ever the faithful servant, I pull out pen and paper and sit staring, much like a dog that can already smell the dog biscuit.

“I would like to drive to France,” she announces…or is that pronounces.  I no longer distinguish.

My mind rummages through a wastebasket of thoughts.  Seems to me… Of course, wine!  We need more wine!

“Rodern?” I offer.  The offer has a question mark because reading of minds is much to me like handling snakes.  But, Rodern is known as the ‘Cradle of Pinot Noir,’ so I can’t be too far off.

“Perfect!” she says.

We grab maps.  We google.  We load the GPS and fill the tank with gas. Planning at its most perfect.  Euros in the pocket?  Check.  Off on a cozy drive of three and a half hours through beautiful Alsace.

Rodern is an old, tidy village, one among many in the Alsace.  But, there’s a difference and that difference is the grape.  We’ve been there a few times.  Never tire of the place and a visit to our favorite vintner, Metz-Bleger.

You get off the highway and onto dusty, two lane roads.  Follow the signs into what appears to be a trip into the country. The village camps among expansive, rolling vineyards, overlooked by a sizeable castle.

Nestled in the heart of the village, appropriately located on Rue Pinot Noir, Metz-Bleger calls a very old building home.  Built in 1560, destroyed by fire and reconstructed in 2001, it looks new, outside and in, but proudly wears the marks of centuries, including a carriage-door frame whose stone is chiseled with 1541, and symbols of laborers and wine growers.  It’s not alone in its age.  The town is strewn with half-timbered houses, tile roofs, cobblestones, arched carriage doors, rimmed in carved stone and still bearing the symbols of coopers, vintners, and others.  These hark back to the days when not everyone was literate, much like parts of modern day America.

Metz-Bleger

The other side of Metz-Bleger

We stride into Metz-Bleger, just as a French family of four or five strolls out, cases in hand.  Sometimes the tasting room is open and sometimes one must ring the bell and wait for a stout, elderly woman, or her son to appear in the balcony and shout down at you.  Should it be a surprise we want wine and plenty of it???

She pours generously.  Our first trip here, we had a Designated Driver and could swill with abandon.  This time there’s just the two of us.  Even so, we try several Pinots and select a 2012 Réserve Particulière and a 2011 Vieillien Fut de Chene.  The first is a bright cherry red, but lacks nothing in flavor.  The second is a more typical Pinot, with deep color and a more redolent nose. Both sit smoothly on the palate. My French runs out.  The proprietress switches to German.  Good enough.

The history of Alsace is a history of warfare, especially in modern times.  War of 1870.  The Germans claimed it. Then came World War I and the French got it back.  Then came the Sieg Heilers and once again it was German until 1945.  A few years later, the people voted to become French.

Now the towns have either French or German names. History scattered from town to town. Older folks speak both languages, the youngsters only French.

Back to wine.  I confess, I had no idea about Pinot until I saw Sideways, the superb 2004 movie starring Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, and Virginia Maden, along with a most delectable Sandra Oh.  But, unlike the characters in the film, far be it from me bear the title of wine snob.  I know little and explore much.  The Bleger Pinots are superb to this unrefined worshiper.  I filled a car trunk the first time I came and have done some heavy lifting several times since.  Bought 48 bottles this time, along with a few bottles of Crémont, that excellent Alsace version of Champagne.

With a map/brochure to guide us, we wander the streets and alleys. A pity there’s no flesh and blood guide.  I suspect we barely clear the cobwebs off the history of this time capsule.

Yes, I could thrill you with details, but it’s more fun to go yourself.  Meanwhile, I’ll entertain you with photos of some of the town’s treasures.  You can walk the town rapidly, or take your time.  I suggest the latter.   You may have tasted more wine than you meant to.  Easy to do, especially when you know you’ve pleased your wife and can finally relax.

Wonderful wine at five to ten bucks a bottle, in a tiny, yet wonderful little treasure of a town in the Alsace.

House built in 1562

Here's the proof!

Church of St George.  Parts of it date to 1310.

The sign of a cooper, or barrel maker at 43 Rue de Pinot Noir

Down this road is the Schloessel, 1616

I could take photos of every shutter in the town!

How long did it take to wear down these steps?

A wine grower's house...big surprise!

Paella Party - Olé!

It’s always nice to have friends, and not just when you need money or you’re your wife has thrown you out.  They’re especially wonderful when they can cook, and especially if they’ll teach you how.  Drinking you’ll have to learn on your own, although friends can be very helpful there, too.

I don’t disparage anyone’s cooking.  Great Cuisines cover the world.  None of them bad, unless you catch the Koreans on a night when they’ve run out of meat and you notice their dog isn’t barking.  Mexican menudo?…not a fan.

The Europeans in general?  Superb.  But, when it comes to the trifecta, drinking, eating, and partying,  the Spanish take a backseat to nobody.  These folks can start in the late afternoon and finish up with supper at midnight.  Everyone know the prime restaurant seating in Madrid is 10:30 p.m.?  Show up a couple of hours early and you’ll have the place to yourself.

Through my wife, I met a couple, he American, and she Spanish. Pili gives cooking lessons, which may also be classed as party lessons, or drinking lessons.  You gather hungry friends.  You make sangria.  You talk for hours and eat well, with discussions on anything that comes to mind after you've been hitting the sangria ... hard!

Lesson number one, Paella.  But with a Spanish woman, cooking is never just cooking.  It’s about having a few noshes to whet the appetite, washed down with wine, sangria, beer, whisky, or anything else that’s wet.  Then there’s an hour or more of conversation, and discussions on the merits of various foods, condiments, the prime importance of bread, and sentimental trips into the childhoods of everyone present.  The lips must be lubricated, as well as the stomach. 

Only Americans are willing to eat without conversation and a migratory pilgrimage to the kitchen. For the Spanish household, if you want to eat, these things are obligatory. Followed by chopping, dicing, and more intense drinking, interspersed with bubbling conversation and impromptu belly laughs.  Oh, yeah, also a few million instructions on creating Paella.  Pili is an exacting cook, which is a major reason why her paella is the stuff of hungry dreams.

If you’re not familiar with paella, here’re some hints.  Big, flat-bottomed pan. Rice. Seafood.  Chicken. Time. Patience.  If you don’t have the slow moving P word in abundance, make another plan.  Above all, paella takes time and preparation.

Let’s cut to the historic chase.  The dish dates only from the mid 19^th Century. Paella comes from several words in several languages, all of them meaning pan.  The typical paella pan is round and flat-bottomed, with two-inch high sides that lean outward, and support opposing handles.  A lot of non-Spaniards think of paella as Spain’s national dish, but a Spaniard with tell you no, no, no (with a shake of the head and a wagging of the index finger)…it is a regional dish, from the east coast, specifically the region around the city of Valencia.  Lots of different types of paellas.  Truth is, you can put in any meat you want. 

The Spaniards do. 

You make paella in two parts, the pan cooking part and the broth part. Then you combine them with a finishing flourish and a swish of the spoon.

The Recipe (for 6-8 people)

Part I, initial cooking in the paella pan

Olive Oil (I use only Spanish olive oil!)

3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced.

1 small onion, diced

1 small green bell pepper diced

1 small red bell pepper, half of it diced and half of it cut in medium strips

2 large chicken breasts (or 4 thighs) skinned, boned, and cut in bite sized pieces

2 calamari steaks, cut in strips (easy to do with scissors)

2 medium tomatoes, peeled and diced

2 cups small grain rice (risotto rice works well)

1 cup small scallops

18-24 shrimp (cleaned)

12 mussels ( An hour before cooking, put them in cold, salty water.  This will wash out any grit.  )

A handful of peas (not canned, but frozen is ok)

1 lemon

Part II, The Broth

2 cloves garlic, mashed in a mortar, with salt and chopped parsley

4 cups fish or chicken broth

½ teaspoon smoked paprika

½ teaspoon colorante (either adobo or turmeric)

2 teaspoons chopped parsley (see garlic above)

pinch of saffron

salt to taste  (along the way, you will want to taste from time to time to make sure the paella or the broth is not too salty)

Putting it all together: (you’re going to be dancing back and forth from paella pan to broth.  Read carefully.  Stick with it!)

1.     Coat the bottom of the paella pan with olive oil. Add the 3 sliced garlic cloves and the calamari.  This is to flavor the oil.

     

2.     Lower the heat.  This is where patience comes in.  Add onions, peppers and peas, along with a bit of salt to help the vegetables sweat. Add the tomatoes. And stir them in.

3.     After a few minutes, take the garlic and calamari out and set aside.  You’ll use them later.

          As the vegetables slowly cook, make the broth in a separate saucepan.  This allows you to taste the broth and get the flavors and color perfect before you add it to the paella pan.  Pour the fish/chicken broth into the saucepan and add the paprika, colorante, reserved sliced garlic and mashed garlic, and a splash or two of either sherry or brandy.  This will help tenderize the meat when the broth is added to the paella pan. Use a white spoon to stir and you will be able to see that the broth is a rich yellow. If it’s too pale, add more colorante.  Cook the broth separately for about 15 minutes to let the flavors meld.

4.     Take the strips of red bell pepper out of the paella pan. They will be used to decorate the dish before serving.  Add the chicken pieces to the paella pan.

5.     Do not stir too much, only enough to turn the chicken.   Don’t worry about the chicken being uncooked.  The paella/chicken will continue to cook as more ingredients are added.

6.     Add rice to the paella pan and stir.  You want the rice to get a nice coating of oil and vegetable juices before you add the broth.

7.     Add the broth to the paella pan and stir quickly, then do not stir again.

8.     Add the prepped mussels to the paella pan. (Do not eat any mussels that have not opened after they are cooked.)  Cook for 15 to 20 minutes.

9.     With 5 minutes to go, decoratively add the scallops and shrimp on top.  Also add the reserved strips of red bell pepper and reserved strips of calamari.

10.  Taste to make sure the rice is cooked.  When it is cooked to your liking, cut a lemon decoratively and put the pieces on top of the paella.  Cover the paella with foil and let it rest for 10-15 minutes.

Remove the foil and serve the paella in a burst of steamy goodness.  Don’t forget the bread, salad, water, and more wine!

Watch your greedy guests smile!  Oh, well, they did bring the wine, right….I mean, they did, didn’t they??

Next lesson:  Tapas!

Random Half Thoughts on Steven Pinker's, The Language Instinct

Is language more than the sum of its parts?  Words are words, right?  What’s the big deal? Wait ‘til your wife asks you to take out the trash…again!  Wait until your fat prick of a boss mentions: "It’s Thursday.  Report ready?"  Just words, but they blast you like a short fused grenade.

Words ride on an express train of ideas. Some make you want to use a bazooka to carve your name in a tree.  And even the simplest of phrases carry complexities, just as one hair off your head conveys your entire DNS. But let’s not get too complicated.  I may spill my beer.  One small example:  nevertheless.

Sure, it’s a compound word, but what do the words mean separately?  Never. The. Less.  If you know the separate words, but had never put them together, would they naturally fall in place?  We never separate nevertheless and explain to ourselves what it means.  We just know what it means.  Hell yeah!  Problem solved.  Take another swig.  We know the idea and that idea contributes to the totality of what we’re saying or hearing.

“Nevertheless, I’m going with Sam’s curvaceous wife to checkout…er, something she wants to show me.”  Nevertheless implies a lot of things.  “Jack is a notorious bastard, nevertheless, I’m meeting him for a beer.” No matter what it is, nevertheless ties a neat bow around it.

There’s something else to consider.

We think in pictures. When I mention tits, do you only see the words?  Gentle men and women of the jury, I rest my case.  If I say ‘car’ and a French woman says voiture, and a Japanese man says, kuruma, all three of us are going to picture more or less the same object, although in the case of the French woman you may still be stuck on ‘tits.’ In our own separate ways, we’ve learned a sound that produces an object, or an idea, or a movement, or a mood.  A slight tonal change can make a hell of a difference.  “Honey, I swear you said we could meet someday, not Sunday!”

Speaking of mood, we dress up ideas, using facial expressions and body movement.  I can say, “I don’t know,” meekly, embarrassed that I don’t know the answer, or I can say it loudly, with eyes wide and a snarl, meaning I’m going to kick your ass if you ask me again!  Same words.

As any husband knows, if your wife gives instructions and asks you to repeat them, you may come close, but chances are you won’t repeat the words exactly.  Your mind may be elsewhere. French woman.  Tits.  French woman. You got the idea. Whether you’re lucky, or not you have to scratch for an answer.  No way will you capture the exact words.

“Go to the store and pick up some milk and anything else we need to make an omelet.  Now what are you going to get?”

“I don’t know…some milk…maybe some eggs.  I think I’ll get some bread, too.  And do we have any cheese?”

“Yeah, we’ve got cheese.  Just get the milk and eggs…and…what was that other thing?”  It’s not the forgetfulness that makes us change replies, it’s the limitless possibilities.

And so it goes.  Did you know we almost never repeat ourselves exactly?

In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker points out that given a sentence of twenty words, the number of sentences a person can construct using those same words is ten to the power of twenty (a hundred million trillion).  “At five seconds a sentence, a person would need a childhood of about a hundred trillion years…to memorize them all.” Do you realize how much beer that would take?

So after you talk about your trip to the beach, and someone says, “You’re repeating yourself,” the truth sits squarely in the center between yes and no.  The ideas, maybe.  The exact words?  Not a chance.

Lots of people, many of them sadistic language teachers, think that grammar is the penultimate in language learning.  I once had a language teacher tell me that a person cannot speak a language without knowing grammar. Tell that to an eight year old.  But in a sense, I grudgingly admit she was correct, but not in the way she meant.  Read on.

Underneath formal grammar is a built-in grammar code. Again, from The Language Instinct, comes this tidbit:  We all have a sense of grammar, simply from knowing a language.  Speaking or writing can be grammatically correct, yet still just “not sound right.”  It’s an inherent grammatical code.  Yoda makes complete sense, but when he says “A nitwit you are,” it doesn’t fit our built in code of word order, and in this case it may piss you off.  How about, “Sally poured with water in the glass.”  No split infinitives.  No dangling participles.  Yet…yet…it just don’t sound right, although Sally never was that bright!  And, when I express myself ungrammatically, you still know exactly what I mean.  What a conundrum!

Here are a few more examples of knowing what is meant, without examining what is said:

In the meantime.  “In the meantime, you worthless dog, I want you to mow the lawn.”

As far as it goes.  “I like marriage, as far as it goes.”

Anyway.  “Anyway, let’s not argue about your meddling mother.”

Just in case.  “I bought the 12 pack of condoms, just in case.”

None of your business. The Germans say, “It’s not your beer!”

Keep it to yourself.  “As for you and me, Eileen  (wink, wink), let’s keep it to ourselves.”

We sometimes exclaim:  Never heard of it!  But not, “Never seen of it.”

How about:  I haven’t made up my mind.  Can you say, I haven’t made up my thought, or haven’t made up my decision? They’re every bit as grammatically correct in the formal sense, but English speakers, even those with no sense of grammar, never say them. Breaks the internal grammatical code.  Also makes your friends think you’ve been tapping the keg before breakfast.

Many times these words and phrases are what you could call social noise.  You could leave them out….but they’re not left out, at least not by those who are thinking in a language.

In the play, The Miracle Worker, about the life of Helen Keller, the teacher is asked by Helen’s mother, what will you teach her?  The answer?  Language. “Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye.”  We can easily tell a drawing from a photo, even though we may not remember everything we see in a photo.  Lack of detail?  Just doesn’t look right?

With speech, you can understand something, but it just doesn’t sound right.

Why can you take four years of Spanish and still not speak it?  Doesn’t make sense.  Yes, it does.  Language is so complex, so individual, that a list of words, or conjugation of verbs, or rules of grammar are to language as a quick pencil sketch is to photography.

Riding a bicycle.  It’s not just sitting up straight and pedaling and steering.  Your brain has to adapt to direct all your body parts for balance. Give your kid all the hints you want.  Won’t make a difference.  Takes time for the brain to curl around the balance thing.

Friends, who are fluent in another language, tell me you must be immersed to truly learn a language. Same thing as learning to ride a bike. It takes time and magic for your brain to twist and turn and develop an internal language code.  Big difference between speaking a few phrases, or passing a written test, and actually thinking in a language.

Had a more honest language teacher once tell me, “Pay attention in class, study hard, and in five years you’ll be fluent.  Or, don’t study so much, don’t take the class so seriously, but stay active in the language and in five years you’ll be fluent.”  Thanks, Bob.  I’ll take door number two.

Anyway, in the meantime, let’s just sip a cool one and think about it.  Nevertheless, it’s none of your business, and I hope you’ll keep it to yourself.

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