2010 Cave de Pomérols, Picpoul de Pinet, HB
100% Picpoul, aka Folle Blanche. A great value, this wine impresses novices and hardened geeks equally.Known as “the Muscadet of the South” in France, this is to the Mediterranean coast of France what Albariño is to northwest Spain…the default wine for fresh shellfish & seafood.

Borgo Belvedere Pinot Grigio 2009
Borgo Belvedere crafts some of the finest Pinot Grigio from the stony foothills of Friuli in northeast Italy. Here these blushed-pink grapes drink Alpine-sized gulps of liquid minerals from the region’s tough soils, producing white wines with great verve and energy on the palate. NBI selects from Borgo Belvedere’s cellar the finest lots of Pinot Grigio—refreshing, low-alcohol and pure white wine that is always vinified in tank to preserve every bit of steely, limpid fruit.

2009 Corbières Rouge, Col des Vents, Castelmaure,
50% Carignan, 35% Grenache, 15% Syrah. S.C.V. Castelmaure was founded in the 1920’s and today consists of 65 members, of which 15 bring 85% of the production. The winery is located in the unofficial Corbières cru site of Durban (there are 11 unofficial Cru’s in Corbières), which will become soon an official Cru together with Boutenac and Alaric. The Serre mountain in the south protects the little plateau of Castelmaure from the off weather patterns of the Mediterranean sea. Patrick de Marien, the president of the cave, and Bernard Pueyo, the director, work in conjunction with Tardieu/Laurent in trying to produce wines of higher quality each year.

2009 Montebuena, Rioja
“The 2009 Montebuena is 100% Tempranillo. Dark ruby-colored, it offers an appealing perfume of spice box, leather, tobacco, and blackberry. On the palate it is packed with ripe fruit, has outstanding concentration, and impeccable balance. It is a great bargain that offers a sneak preview of the great 2009 vintage in Rioja and northern Spain in general. It should drink well for 6-8 years.” – Robert Parker, 90 pts
Montebuena is produced by Bodegas Burgo Viejo that were founded in 1987 by six families of farmers. Burgo Viejo´s main asset has always been the exquisite winemaking process of grapes collected from its own vineyards throughout the years, back to the times when they were just a wine cellar selling in bulk (they started as a cooperative in the 1950’s). Young Gorka Etxebarria is the leading winemaker and has been working with Burgo Viejo since December 2003.

In the summer of 2008 I bought some grapes and with the help of my good friend Paul Hoffman made my own wine.  Now I’ve written about it ad nauseum here and there and everywhere, but as the grandfather from 16 Candles said “You don’t spell it son, you eat it!”  Or, in this case, you don’t blog about it son, you drink it!  And this past Halloween weekend drink it I did, I was so moved by the wine that I though a few words were in order.

The wine is a single vineyard Syrah from a cool climate area in Sonoma County.  We achieved the perfect balance of a wine, a foot in the Northern Rhone, a foot in Sonoma.  When the wine arrived last spring after a nearly two year process C&B staffer Jose (who possesses a razor sharp palate in his own right) proclaimed that there was no way this wine was ready, that it had all the stuffing necessary to go the distance and that it was truly an upper echelon single vineyard Syrah but that it needed time.  “Wait 6 months hombre,” Jose said, “This wine is going to be screaming.”  My proud papa eyes (and palate) at the time didn’t believe him, I thought it was pretty damn good.

So, fast forward to now, it’s been about 6 months since Jose’s declaration.  A lot of things have happened since then, the least of which being that I sold Cork & Bottle and Clever Wine Bar.  Certainly the craziest of which is that I’ve gone on a virtually entirely vegan diet.   Anyway, this past Saturday we had a block party for Halloween, which meant the unwashed masses were hitting the streets and I had to cook for a house of 20.  Going the simplest route a vegan triathlete in a non-vegan world can do I whipped up a double batch of my pretty damn good black bean chili.  Now having just come off training for a pretty tough race I really hadn’t been hitting the bottle too hard and I hadn’t been drinking too much wine recently.  The sudden burst of cooler weather last Saturday and the conspicuous absence of bacon in my black bean chili gave me all the inspiration I needed to pop open a bottle(s) of my Syrah.  Setting into a bowl of spicy black bean chili and a well filled glass of 2008 There’ s No Place Like Home Syrah I was ready for the experience of the wine I had brought in last spring.  Boy was I wrong and Jose, if you’re listening, kiss yourself for me.  You nailed it, hombre.

I am here to tell you that this wine is singing from the rooftops right now!  The fruit and the oak have married to a level I didn’t think imaginable.  That slightly gruff earthy, bacony Rhone-ish character is still there, but it has evolved into a more subtle elegant singular symphony of aroma as opposed to its previous duet of dueling banjos.  And the fruit, oh my God, the fruit!  The palate is round and rich with a voluptuous texture and mouthfeel.  The finish is long and precise and the wine has really come around in a way even this proud papa never thought imaginable.  To say I am excited about the future of my Syrah is an understatement, if indeed more time in the bottle does this wine the benefit the last six months have.  Surely I have a bias here, but to me this wine is exactly what Syrah is supposed to taste like. (and the chili was a pretty damn good match too).

If you want to make my black bean chili its easy:

Black Bean Chili (shhh, don’t tell anyone its vegan)

You need:

• 1 bell pepper, diced
• 4 cups black beans
• 1 medium onion
• 1 jalapeno
• 4 garlic cloves
• 4 tablespoons chili powder
• 1 tbsp agave syrup (maple syrup does the trick too)
• 2 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tbsp cumin
• Finely chopped cilantro, for garnish
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 small tomatoes diced
• juice of one lime

1. Soak black beans overnight or bring to a boil with garlic cloves and then simmer on a low boil until tender (approx 3 hours). (if you’re in a pinch for time, canned Progresso Black Beans work just as good, just hold back on the salt – it has PLENTY). Reserve soaking water.
2. In a medium saucepan, heat olive oil. Add the onions until slightly brown. Add bell pepper, jalapeno, cumin and chili powder. Stir to coat. Squeeze the lime over it.
3. Add the sauté mixture to the beans and pour in reserved water until it just covers the beans.
4. Add cinnamon, salt, pepper and maple syrup. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer for twenty minutes.
5. Add diced tomatoes, cilantro and serve.

The day after Hurricane Katrina made landfall I turned my retail wine shop’s website into a Mid-City-centric blog (quite a feat in the blog wasteland of 2005) and for over a month after it became a lifeline for many, many people with connections to 70119, evidenced by the tens of thousands of hits it was getting a day. Writing those posts was the way I connected with everyone, the way I rationalized and distracted myself and it was the way I maintained my sanity through those dark days.  Never do I want to forget the frustration, the tears, the hopelessness and all the sleepless nights that went into building it.

Reading the blog at the end of every August is the way I make sure I keep it going in my memory. The memory of building the blog, of the avalanche of emails I got on a daily basis back when the blog was active, of exactly how ingrained into my being the blog became was a difficult one to face.

But that was then.  This is now.  We’ve won the Superbowl, we’re rebuilding our city, Hurricane Katrina is now a TV Show . . . we’re moving on.  I’m planning on some major moves in my life and will be doing another K+5 post when I do, but before that, though, I want to share with you one of my very first blog posts I wrote in Baton Rouge about a week after the storm and I still think its appropriate today.  Here it goes:

September 4, 2005 (Katrina, post 7days) – Fleur de Lis Pizza

Fleur de Lis Pizza is this old pizza joint on Government Street in Baton Rouge. They don’t take Credit Cards, there’s a jukebox and a bar (and an operating phone booth). It’s a real dive and the pizza is great. Kind of Tower of Pizza with a scruffy beard, if you will.

Last night I had dinner with my wife and Ian and some other fellow evacuees at Fleur de Lis Pizza. We laughed and joked and carried on. A few tables away were about 10 or so other evacuees I knew (mostly Mid-City peeps) who were also laughing and having a good time. We were getting up and exchanging seats at tables with each other, pizza was offered to everybody and even the server couldn’t keep track of which table to bring which beers to. It could have been any Saturday night at Liuzza’s or Katie’s or Mandina’s or any other New Orleans neighborhood joint.

Despite our revelry, however, it wasn’t entirely a party. When we joked, the laughs stopped short and there was an undeniable tension behind those laughs. There were some hugs and sighs and even evidence of puffy, teary eyes. We did, though, reflect on our fortunate situation being in a restaurant with a bed to go home to, albeit a temporary bed in someone else’s house. Most important was the fact that the one sentiment that did get expressed was that we ARE going back, we ARE rebuilding this thing, NOTHING can drive us from our home!

We were all facing fear and uncertainty last night and we coped with it the best way a good New Orleanian knows how: we laughed and joked, raised our glasses of Abita Amber and filled the room with joie-de-vivre.

At a placed called Fleur de Lis, no less.

In April of 2008 I did one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, I started a Farmer’s Market.  Figuring it would be very much an “if you build it they will come” type thing I moved forward with setting up all the farmers and fishers and food people.  What I found out is that its a lot of hard work.  Moreover, it gave me some tremendous insight into the dynamics and economics of the food business and what it really takes to feed people.  Turning the market over to a professional organization 20 months later was equally as exciting and although the market is now theirs I will always feel an attachment to the vendors and the incredibly responsible task they have of feeding the community.

Anyway, the point of this blog post is that though the Mid-City Green Market may indeed be a thing of the past it can still help feed people.  Just this week I unearthed two cases of Mid-City Market t-shirts.  Untouched by human hands these t-shirts are now something of a collectors item (well, to me anyway) and here’s your chance to grab one and do some good.

Starting today and all week next week at Cork & Bottle we’ll have a table set up with a display of the t-shirts and two donation boxes, one for cash and one for canned goods.  We’ll let you have a Mid-City Green Market t-shirt (made by American Apparel, nice stuff) in exchange for a donation of cash (or check) and/or non-perishable food for the Second Harvest Food Bank.  We’ll put the t-shirts out today with the donation boxes and will accept donations through next Saturday.  We’re not selling the shirts and donating the profits or anything like that.  Its a t-shirt for a donation, easy enough.  And, every time you don your new duds you’ll know you did some good.

Surely an organization like the Second Harvest Food Bank does great work, in particular at a time like this with so much need still out there due to the Gulf Oil Spill.  So, come on out and grab a piece of Mid-City Memorabilia and help a truly worthwhile cause at the same time.   You can even be uber-hispter and get a t-shirt far too small for you.    If you can’t make it over for a t-shirt but want to donate anyway, visit the Second Harvest Food Bank website.

The grape in question is Falanghina (the h is silent) and it is a de-light in the summer.  It hails from the southern Italian wine region of Campania, a region that has much in common with the heat of a New Orleans summertime.    Falanghina is an ancient grape that seemingly only grows well in the stark, hot, rocky climate of Campania and I was first introduced to its magical powers at a wine fair in Tuscany in July of 2006. With a heat index of damn near 115 and not a speck of A/C in sight drinking down this glass of Falanghina felt like diving into a refreshing pool of cool water, literally.  Maybe I was crazy from the heat, maybe the wine was just that good – regardless the wine was the perfect balance of dryness and fruit, neither one being too dominant and it really shows how well done a hot climate white can be made to pair with both food AND environment.

There’s one in particular I’m in love with and just brought a decent slug into Cork & Bottle.

2009 Cantina del Taburno Falanghina, $16.99

This wine was harvested last fall and spent a scant 2 months maturing in stainless steel tanks, preserving the freshness of the fruit.  The wine was bottled and away it went to us.  The flavor of the wine is just an absolute delight. It really shows the white calcareous soil of Campania with a load of austere minerality on the nose which combines nicely with its slightly fresh, fruity, ripe pear, pineapple-ish nose (and just a hint of herbs too).

It will be a perfect match with light pasta and seafood of all forms (for better or worse at this point).  In fact, I think I might spy in my future a little fresh pasta from Dan Esses mixed with some olive oil, sea salt and cherry tomatoes from Jim Core at the Crescent City Farmer’s Market enjoyed with a glass or three of this Falanghina this afternoon.  Care to join me?

PS – As a side note the Roman writer/philosopher Pliny the Elder who is credited with coining the phrase “In Vino Veritas” (there is truth in wine) met his demise in an erupting volcano in Campania.  I wonder if he was drinking Falanghina.

We’re tasting all the high end Jameson’s Irish Whiskey for free tonight in our wine bar, Clever.

The tasting will start tonight, Tuesday 6/22, around 6:00 and will go till about 8:00.

Enjoy!

At a time like this The Gulf Coast Fund is serving the needs of those that are “falling through the cracks” relative to other support mechanisms in place to handle this tragedy and we want to support this very worthwhile charity.

Why do this?  Well, my first thought of the day is my best – they usually go downhill from there.  The other day I woke up and immediately began thinking about the ongoing crisis with the oil spill in the Gulf.  I thought about its impact on the men and women affected by the various industries that rely on the Gulf of Mexico for their living.  I also thought about how lucky I was to be so excited about my wine project and how proud I was about making such a top notch wine.  Then I pictured those men and women who make their living from the Gulf of Mexico who aren’t nearly as lucky right now and I decided to take the (literal) fruits of my labor to lend assistance to them by donating a portion of the proceed from Cork & Bottle’s very own wine to oil spill relief efforts.

So, for the month of June Cork & Bottle will donate $5 for every bottle of 2008 Cork & Bottle Selections purchased from our retail store and $1 for every glass poured from our wine bar.

On Thursday, July 8th we will present a check to The Gulf Coast Fund.  We ask that you please help us give some assistance to those so terribly affected by this ongoing tragedy (and drink some really fantastic wine in the process)!

Thank you.

More information on The Gulf Coast Fund can be found online at http://gulfcoastfund.org/bp-oil-disaster.html

Join us this Friday June 11th at the historic Pitot House on Bayou St. John as we continue into our 5th year of “Vino on the Bayou” a monthly wine tasting/fundraiser.  The event lasts two hours from 5:30 to 7:30 and costs $10 per person.  All proceeds are donated to the Louisiana Landmarks Society which helps to preserve and protect some the most historically significant landmarks in New Orleans.

A mix of the old and the new, located just down Bayou St. John from each other, Cork & Bottle enjoys a view of the bayou perched from the relatively newly renovated American Can Company building whereas the Pitot House has been a Bayou St. John fixture since the 18th century. The charm of the Pitot House attracts visitors, inspires artists (such as the work done by local artist Corey Allen and it is a key fixture in the history of our city.   Now, more than ever, the Pitot House needs your support. Fine wines, an historic property, beautiful gardens and a setting sun along the bayou: what a perfect marriage and a great way to help the week melt away.

Featuring live music by The Courtyard Kings, the cost is only $10 for a tasting of four wines in a gorgeous setting with some really nice traditional jazz all in one of the most beautiful and serene settings in the City that Care Forgot.

For more information call us at 504.483.6314.

The Pitot House is located on the web at www.pitothouse.org and on planet earth at 1440 Moss Street.

What’s WineSense, you say?  Well, WineSense is the series of educational seminars we started back in 2003.  They’re laid back, educational, a hell of a lot of fun and a great wine to taste some fantastic wines.  Tastings are on Wednesdays, they start at 6:30 and last about an hour. To book an early seat click here, or just stay tuned to the blog.  We also have a great way to save on our tastings this summer too.

Here’s the line-up this Summer:

June 23 – Que Syrah, Shiraz – or – Rhone on the Range, $25
Its no secret that Rhone wines, and Rhone inspired wines, are your humble wine merchant’s favorite wines made.  Join Jon as he walks you through a tasting of 8 wines, whites and red, of how the wine world interprets grapes like Marsanne, Viognier, Syrah, Grenache and more.  Its everything you ever wanted to know about Rhone Varietals but were afraid to ask.

June 30 – What’s Better with Cheese: Wine or Beer?  $25
Our in-house beer geek Jeremy Labadie and Dan Stein of Stein’s Market and Deli team up against Jon Smith as we taste through 6 wines, 6 handcrafted beers and 6 artisanal cheeses to determine what goes best with cheese: Wine or Beer.

July 14 – Under the Radar: France, $20*
Its an under the radar Bastille Day.  Taste through 8 wines completely off the beaten path from myriad wine regions of France.  This is the first in a four part series of Summer WineSense tastings and we’re starting with a country that we do best.  Check this one out for sure.

July 28 – Under the Radar: The Southern Hemisphere, $20*
Our second installation of our WineSense where we introduce you to wines off the beaten path brings us down under to the countries of Argentina, Chile, Australia and South Africa.  Inspired by the World’s Cup, we hope to “score” a winner with you on this tasting . . .and other corny lines.

August 11 – Under the Radar: Spain, $20*
Forget the old familiars, if any country has blown the beaten path up its Spain.  The third part of our four part wine tastings this summer bring us to the Reino de España.

August 25 – Under the Radar: Italy, $20*
Wrapping up our Summer long series we welcome in Mr. Chris Noyes (remember him) who will walk us through 8 wines from Central and Southern Italy that you’d never know existed, but would be so happy to get to know.

*(buy a seat to 3 of the “Under the Radar” tastings and get the 4th tasting for free!  That’s only $60 for the chance to taste 32 amazing, new, exciting wines with instruction on some of the world’s great wine regions)