I COULD BE WRONG BUT I DOUBT IT (SORRY MR. BARKLEY)

It must be some sort of joke. I mean, there's no fucking way she was serious.

These two sentences are repeating themselves like a mantra in my head right now as I contemplate what may have been the most ludicrous assessment of a wine I've ever heard. I mean, I've heard Turley Zinfandel described as "elegant" and Kosta Browne Pinot Noir called "Burgundian," but the biggest steamer in my professional wine experience was laid today by none other than my septuagenarian boss.

The basement of the wineshop where I work is full of crusty old bottles of wine. Some of them are extremely valuable, and some of them aren't worth the time and effort it would take to break them. Many are unknown quantities whose value is pretty conjectural, value we could only determine by actually opening a sample rather than hording them like Viking plunder. Today, gripped by curiosity, greed, or possibly just boredom, the younger of my two employers brought up a forgotten bottle from the depths of our "cellar" (a term I use advisedly.) It was a bottle of 1986 Camp Gros Martinenga Barbaresco from producer Marchesi di Gresy in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy. Now, Piedmontese wines are my favorite wines from Italy and some of my favorite in the world - certainly my favorite reds outside of France. Naturally I was intrigued. So too was my boss, no doubt keen to discover how well the wine was showing and what bounty he could command for it.

Bossman tells me to pop the bottle and taste the wine, which I was only too happy to do. Corkscrew goes in just fine, and the cork seems pretty solid for an older wine. But there's little resistance as I pull it from the mouth of the bottle, and it's shrunken and oddly blackened on the wineward half in a way that's discomfiting. What's more, the cork left little stalagtites of wood adhering to the neck of the bottle as it was extruded. These are field marks that to me yell, "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!!" and flail their little robotic arms. Not that you can get a foolproof sense for a wine from just looking at a cork. I've had sublime wines where the cork slipped out of the bottle like a Vaseline-smeared hot dog. But the look of this stunted little stopper coupled with the less-than-optimal cellaring conditions underneath the store left me with little confidence in what was about to hit my olfactory bulb. Tabling my concerns for the moment I poured a tasting-sized portion of wine into my glass and prepared to get crucial with the Barbaresco.

Color is a clue when tasting wines, sometimes almost as much of a clue as aroma or body. Older red wines lose the bright, dark, opaque hues of their youth and become what is (or should be) lovingly referred to as "bricked." They exchange their purplish tones for brown, sometimes orangish ones, and are paler and duller than their younger counterparts. Less brown = less oxidized = better chance the wine has held together and will continue to taste pleasant. Thus, before the glass ever hits your lips you are tipped off as to what will likely come your way, be it sublime or sucktastic. This wine? Still a hint of pinkish red, but brown, brown even in the center of the glass where the wine is deepest, which is a dismal thing to see when you're hoping for signs of life. Does it pass the sniff test? Actually, for the most part yes; muted hints of rose petal (for which Barbaresco and other wines made from the nebbiolo grape are famous), dry leaves, just a whisper of red fruit... Then on to the palate, where the rubber hits the road. Or rather, where the dead, dessicated carcass of this wine meets my sensory neurons. Fruit? This wine has forgotten how to have fruit, forgotten even what having fruit might conceivably be like. What it hasn't forgotten is how to have tannins, which bum-rush your palate and take turns reenacting their favorite prison rape scenes with your tongue as you cringe and wince and wait for the punishment to stop. There is no front to the wine, no middle, but there sure is a backside, and it stings like the morning after barebacking a truckstop whore. How to describe the sensation of tasting this? Imagine adding a tiny dram of rose oil and a squirt of cherry juice to a quart of water, then adding liberal amounts of garden clay and decomposing oak leaves. Add a generous slurp of white vinegar and the contents of ten used teabags, then hit 'Puree' and float a jigger of rubbing alcohol right before serving. That's what drinking this wine is like. The skeleton of wine is there - the acid, the alcohol, and the tannins, oh god, the tannins - but the flesh, that is to say the fruit has been picked off the bones by those enemies oxygen and unstable temperatures. This is what they get for leaving wine to age in a basement that goes from 45 degrees in the winter to 75 degrees in the summer. It's like storing your best bottles under the kitchen sink. But I digress. The point is, this goose is cooked.

Bossman asks for my assessment. I dissemble and make some mention of "lots of oxidation," which I hope he takes to mean, "you or some dumbass like you ruined this wine and I won't tell you what you want to hear, which is that it's the best fucking Barbaresco I've ever tasted." He grabs a glass, takes a taste, shrugs, and says, "Seems alright to me... I've got gum in my mouth, I'll let it sit for a while." I know from past experience these are codewords for "I'm going to have the other owner taste it; if she says it's good, then that's my firm belief as well." Wow. Gutless, craven, and he can't taste for shit. Awesome attributes in a wine retailer.

But the fun wasn't over yet. The "other owner" comes out, a dour, mannish woman in her mid-seventies who last enjoyed life sometime during the Eisenhower administration. She's got experience on her side; she's met John F. Kennedy, been to Europe more times than I can count, and sold wine since my mother was in rompers. She'll be the voice of sanity here, right? She'll back my play, right? Yeah, as soon as she stops crowing about how "beautiful" this wine is, how "well-preserved," how "youthful." Sure, if we're comparing it to the mummified Egyptian cats you served as an appetizer, this wine's incredibly fresh. Otherwise... well, what can I say? I haven't had a great many 20+ year old wines in my life. But goddamn it, I have had a few, and they all beat the everloving shit out of this wine because A) they still tasted like wine and B) they hadn't been cozying up to the water heater in a humid basement for years before being drunk. What's depressing is that at one point this wine was almost certainly great. Had it been properly cared for, even now this wine would still be drinking nicely; maybe on the downward slide but still pleasurable. The only pleasure to be derived from this wine now is to use it for hilarious spittakes. Not even, because that would require putting it in one's mouth.

In the end, it doesn't matter where the damage was done. Maybe my employers ruined the wine and maybe it arrived to them already on the road to ruin. Maybe, in spite of the producers' claims, the 1986 vintage of Camp Gros Martinenga Barbaresco was born under a bad sign. Maybe they both sincerely liked the wine and didn't believe it to be faulty. But barring the possibility they're both currently in treatment for late-stage maxillofacial cancer, I have a really hard time believing that. The real shortcoming, though, wouldn't be that these people own a fine wine shop despite having awful palates. The true lapse would be failing to call a spade a spade, cut your losses, and refusing to sell to your customers wines you know they cannot reasonably like. It's worse than bad business; it's cynical, a gesture of bad faith. The sooner I walk out those shop doors for the last time, the better I'll feel.

THE WILD, WILD WORLD OF ONLINE DATING

A female friend of mine recently joined the online sexual headhunting site match.com. Naturally, I have made it my task to get her into as much trouble on this dating site as I possibly can. To her credit, she's been almost as enthusiastic about this project as I have. So when she started receiving email messages from potential male suitors, I knew what we had to do: find the most objectionable fellow and send him furiously inappropriate missives. I was somewhat thwarted in my quest by the fact that my friend is, shamefully, deeply attracted to some of the worst offenders that have contacted her, but we did find one poor sap who combined douchebag tendencies with a shapeless, pasty face and corpulent body. Since he was too pathetic to date and useless to fuck, she agreed to let me have some fun with him. In response to his query, "what are you looking for in a partner?" I dictated to her the following reply:

Before we go any further, there is something i need to know: If I strap one on, will you go ass-to-mouth? I'm into the kink thing. My perfect Saturday night involves latex body suits, candle wax, japanese rope bondage, breath play, and other sub-dom role playing scenarios. Then, after waking in a pool of our own piss, sweat, cum, and spittle, I'd fix us hamdingers for breakfast and we'd eat them while watching old episodes
of MacGyver.

Can you dig it?

Tootles!

Poor desperate idiot, he actually responded that he wasn't sure he could accomodate my friend's predilections, but that he wished her all the luck in finding a suitable partner for whom erotic asphyxiation and active dildo play were just another day at the sexual office. I must say, it was kind of disappointing to have someone reply to our wretched excess with such a positive, affirming gesture. Damn but these match.com people are serious about finding love. Me, all I want is someone to go ass-to-mouth. No, dammit, what I meant to say was that I'm looking for love, too!! Ass-to-mouth is totally negotiable!!

But not the rope bondage. That's my thing. If she won't allow me to truss her up like a Thanksgiving turkey and drip hot candle wax on her hoo-ha, she'll never be my everything.

WINE NOTES BECAUSE, WELL, I CAN. COLD-SIT ON IT, Y'ALL!

Spent some time on Friday with a good friend of mine from my old wine distribution company. Like me, Dan is a fan of high-acid, funky European wines. Unlike me, he's extremely talented at sales and is making a damn good living at it. We watched the first McCain-Obama debate while drinking, which detracted only slightly from the enjoyment of the wines.

J.K. Carriere 2001 Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley

High-end, boutique Pinot Noir from Newburg, Oregon. This was already open when I arrived at Dan's apartment, a relic perhaps from the coffers at Maverick (or more likely a sample bottle he never tasted out with customers.) Aromas of rose water, orange rind, and crushed cherries that yield on the palate to flavors of Pinot fruit, cherry liqueur, and violet petals. There's a minerally, chalky texture on the palate that takes a moment to get used to. Tannins are much softer and more muted than when I first tasted this bottle two years ago, and the mid-palate is much more generous. There's acidity aplenty here, causing the much-loved post-swallow salivation, and oak is hardly a factor. Beautiful Pinot; you wouldn't confuse this with Burgundy but you would (or at least, I would) drink as much of this as was offered to you and then look around for more. In an era when so many producers are simply ruining their Pinots, Jim Prosser at J.K. Carriere has all the right moves.

Donnhoff 2000 Schlossbockelheimer Kupfergrube Riesling Spatlese

This was my contribution to the party, a bargain I unearthed at Chicago's best wine shop, and oh my sweet tits it's magic. Even in a bad vintage Donnhoff shows that they are the undisputed heavyweight champions of the Nahe. Aromas of sulphur and matchstick on opening quickly evolve into decomposing slate, petrol, and peach aromas. On the palate it's sweeter than I anticipated, with a fleshy stone fruit nectar attack and softer acidity than in other recent German vintages. Weighty through the mid-palate with more peach and nectarine flavors, then a musky honeycomb note that adds intrigue. Unlike the wines I've had from, say, Fritz Haag or Schloss Lieser in the Mosel which seem to dance and flit on the palate, this was more languid; it rolled and flexed rather than danced. It also tightened up over the half hour that it was consumed, ended better than it began. Not an all-time great for this producer, and certainly not like the experience of a 2004 Donnhoff related here, but head and shoulders above many other 2000 German Rieslings I've tried.

There was one more bottle in the goodie bag I'd brought, a bit of a novelty bottle from my current place of employ. My boss had found it in the dismal basement of the shop and offered it to me to take home, most likely because even he realized he would never be able to sell it. It was a 1996 Saumur-Champigny Rouge from producer Chateau de Targé. I remember pouring out a more recent vintage of this wine at a tasting several years back, and thinking it a fairly classy if basic bottle of Cabernet Franc. Would the 12 year old Targé hold up? Would we have three kickass wines back-to-back? No. The Saumur was tired, had lost a good measure of its fruit; what's more, no secondary flavors of interest had emerged in its place. It tasted listless and worn-out, almost depressed. Lots of wines merit contemplation even if they've lost a step or two, but this was mildly unpleasant. Score another point for my boss, he really knows how to pick 'em. It's telling when you work at a wine shop and yet sell hardly anything you'd ever want to take home.

I gotta get out of that place, if it's the last thing I ever do. As for the wines on this night, well, two out of three ain't bad.

IN WHICH I ALIENATE MY FEMALE READERS

Was just on Clark Street driving to work. The typical weekend pedestrian post-Bacchanalia crowd was out in force, clogging the roadways and generally making asses of themselves. At one point, an especially egregious breach of traffic laws was committed by a gaggle of sweatpant-and-sorority-hoodie clad, insouciant blonde bozos who jaywalked slooowwwwly across Clark Street, completely unperturbed by the lines of cars building up in both directions and smiling insolently at the honking horns. The following ignoble thought crossed my mind: women of this type will never be swayed by appeals to the Golden Rule, or Kantian ethics, or Nietzschian exhortations to overcome the craven, banal bullshit attitude that constantly opposes virtue. In short, they don't care about being polite, and they don't mind being the cyst on the ass-crack of society. Sad to say, the only thing that chastens such girls is the fear that they are ugly or undesirable. Thus, if you want to exact revenge on female douchebags like these, the only way to do so is to tell them (preferably loudly, from an open car window) that they are fat, repulsive, will never attract the attentions of sexually desirable men, and that their friends only pretend to like but in fact revile them. Unfortunately, that is a lot to express in passing from a car. God knows I've tried.

This is my inner sexist. His name is "Rodney." There are many like him, but he is mine.

THE TRUTH OF JEWISH GRANDMOTHERS AND THEIR HOLIDAY RITUALS

The will to gnaw on a turkey carcass is the will to live.

SNATCHING VICTORY FROM THE JAWS OF...

Went to Webster's Wine Bar tonight, which is far and away my favorite wine bar here in the Third Coast. Drank three bottles, all very different from each other in origin, price, and style.

First rabbit out of the trap was a bottle from Austrian superstar Weingut Prager, their 2005 Weissenkirchen Riesling Smaragd Klaus. This opened with a powerful wave of honeyed green apple followed by a milder wash of sweet green melon, finished off by pointy acidity. Pretty monolithic for the first ten minutes, not that it was a simple wine but all the composite elements played 'king of the mountain' for a while before integrating. Later on this enfant terrible fleshed out, bringing the surprisingly high residual sweetness into check with some beautiful notes of lime zest, white pepper, and talc. I always finish a bottle like this with mixed feelings; yes it is utterly delicious, but I also know that it's still a baby and won't show its best stuff for another ten years. Not that I'm complaining. Just wish they had the '92 on the menu instead.

After this we deliberated awhile. I was tempted as always by Burgundy, my first love in the world of red wine, and there were some alluring choices for Victim Number 2, namely a 1999 Coste-Caumartin Pommard "Les Fremiers" and a Drouhin-Laroze 2002 Gevrey-Chambertin. But after poring over the French section I took a look at New Zealand's reds and saw a producer I knew from my days with Maverick: Valli from Central Otago, Pinot Noir made by a very talented guy named Grant Taylor. He produces several single-vineyard bottlings, of which I have had the 2004 and 2005 Bannockburn and Waitaki Pinots and found them to be profound, elegant wines more evocative of Burgundy than the New World. Not that you'd confuse them with Bonnes Mares, but still, crazy-good wines, right? So I mention my prior experience with Valli to my drinking and dining companion Jimmy, a brainy young lawyer and oenophile, and he gets excited and wants to order it in spite of the fairly hefty $80 price tag. We order the bottle, the 2003 Valli Pinot Noir Bannockburn, waiter eventually returns with it, pours me a sample to smell - wine's not flawed - then pours it around. Sniff, sniff, taste... sniff some more. Flash of bacon fat on the nose and I think hey, this might be pretty cool. Then the typhoon hits, and too late I learn this Pinot Noir is a Starburst with fine wine aspirations. Blueberries, huckleberries, and raspberries. Just a wad of blueberry that hangs on the tongue like a cheap suit, some tannins briefly popping through on the finish but never long enough to stop the fruit parade. I look around to Josh and Jimmy who are seated at opposite ends of the table. Josh is nosing the glass, looking perplexed and, if I may say so, downright bored. Jimmy is nursing his own glass without much enthusiasm. The only effusive response comes from Jimmy's wine-rookie friend who qualified all her judgments earlier in the evening by stating, "I don't like one type of wine better than any other... as long as it's wine, I'll drink it!!" She, of course, was just ga-ga over this Pinot, saying things that I'm sure were well-meant but embarrassed the piss out of me, like: "This wine is just berry fruit from beginning to end!! It never lets up!!" And: "Oh my god, Jimmy, you're right, this DOES taste just like one of those cherry throat lozenges!!!" I just cringed inwardly and swirled my glass, hoping something brilliant would emerge therefrom to save the day. It was not to be. In the end, the wine wasn't unpleasant, just unremarkable and conventionally New World in style: no mineral, no earth, no pizzazz, with a faint but aggressive alcohol heat that assailed the nostrils. I don't know why this should be; looking at vintage reports later I found that 2003 was an unseasonably hot year in New Zealand - as it was nearly everywhere else in the winemaking firmament - but with such a talented winemaker at the helm and a track record of excellence I'm still surprised. Worse was the fact that this was Jimmy's first high-end New Zealand Pinot, and it was one of the most disappointing examples of the category I've tasted in a long time. More's the pity, he had offered beforehand to pony up extra money on this pricey bottle.

We were about knee-deep in our cups at this point, but I felt driven to rectify my error and cocked an eyebrow at Josh as I sounded the table for interest in another bottle. Stout fellow, he knew my state of mind and was quick to agree to one more before adjournment. The others, cowed by his decisive mein, uttered no words of protest. Josh noted this and a thin, cruel smile curled on his lip. He opened his frock coat just wide enough to expose the gleaming butt of a revolver of American manufacture, then placed the incriminating letters on the table. I was vaguely aware of the sound of a cart and four approaching the house in the growing dusk. Even as I fumbled for my sword cane, the room continued to fill with acrid smoke from the deskside lamp, and as the windows dimmed ghastly, spectral images flitted before my eyes, such things as I have never seen in life...

DAMMIT AARON this is the 20th century and you are NOT the protagonist of a Sherlock Holmes story, alright? This is a simple recounting of your evening with friends at the wine bar, and you are not, I repeat NOT on the trail of the dastardly blackmailer who keeps attack lemurs at his country estate and burns rare Indian alkaloids to render his opponents incapable of resistance! Can we get back to the story at hand? Thank you! Now, as you were!

....................................

Sorry about that. Anyway, I am a firm but compassionate despot; also I'm not exactly flush with disposable income right now, so I knew this final bottle had to atone for my earlier failure without laying waste to anyone's bank balance. I settled on a category I know and love: Loire Valley reds. On my last outing at Webster's I drank a bottle of Pierre et Catherine Breton 2005 Bourgueil "Les Galichets," so this time I went for the other economy bottle in the section, the Chateau Gaillard 2005 Saumur, another Cabernet Franc from the central Loire. I make no exaggeration when I say that This. Wine. Saved. The. Night. Washed the jammy taste of shame and defeat right out of my mouth like so much Lysterine. If the Valli was blowsy and aimless, this was all verve and minerally ambition, lean and lithe, with beautifully balanced fruit, tannins, and acid all working towards a common goal: the goal of deliciousness. It was ripe enough to avoid the weediness that so often befalls Cabernet Franc, instead showing lovely crushed violet aromas and flavors of dark fruits, topsoil, and freshly cracked black pepper. Plus just enough of that trademark bretty Loire Cabernet Franc funk to let you know just where in the world is Carmen San Diego. Lovely, and light enough to leave us energized rather than torpid as we departed. A great nightcap to a delightful evening.

Oh, and as I rushed across the lawn to the dog-cart I could hear the pitter-patter of many tiny feet scampering after me. I felt as though my heart would burst from my chest, but ran as I had never run before, spurred on by terror as the Rear Admiral's attack lemurs converged in a pack behind me and began to close the distance. Reaching the dog-cart I turned to stand and fight the prosimian horde, drawing from my evening stick the Burmese sword-cane that had on so many occasions served.... OK!!! OK!!! I'll stop!!! No more Holmes!!!

Jesus, you people are touchy.

DIDIER DAGUENEAU 1956-2008

It is with sadness that I note the death of one of the world's iconoclastic winemakers, Didier Dagueneau. Found out about it reading Joe Dressner's blog here; apparently he perished in a plane crash in Cognac in Southwest France. Dagueneau was a luminary in the area of biodynamic viticulture and did much to popularize this once-obscure practice; like fellow Loire Valley vigneron Nicolas Joly, he helped make this arcane philosophical approach to vine growing and winemaking acceptable and even fashionable, especially among terroirist wine lovers.
Dagueneau made wine in the appellation of Pouilly-Fumé, in the village of Saint-Andelain. His wines were not always in a style that I loved; they were big, bombastic, sometimes outrageous white wines, and the prices rose meteorically as he achieved cult status. But then he was a larger-than-life character in all aspects: well over six feet tall, he sported a wild nimbus of hair and beard that was uncannily lionesque. He was demonstrable and excitable, and one of the most unintentionally funny pieces of wine journalism I ever saw was an interview between him and Jancis Robinson, wine writer for the Financial Times. She's English, very polite and proper, and it was hilarious to watch her meekly but earnestly pose questions to Dagueneau, then in turn watch him literally erupt and roar in response, gesticulating like a maniac, so caught up in the question that he repeatedly failed to notice the look of mild terror in her eyes.

He was a great winemaker, and he made the world of wine far richer for his presence. He will be sorely missed.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Much to relate from the front lines here at Clark and Wrightwood. To wit:

- Ilene recently broke a four-day embargo on showering in order not to grossly offend during a job interview. There was much rejoicing from all quarters of Apartment #515.

- My car was towed from a CVS pharmacy parking lot in Lakeview and I had to venture all the way to Skokie to retrieve it (more on this later... maybe.)

- We at 607 West Wrightwood have developed several new product concepts. Can't give away all our trade secrets right now, but I'll drop one on you for free, because, hell, nobody loves you like I do. Here it is:

Celebrity menstrual blood sausages.

You know how you always find yourself craving blood sausages at odd hours? And everybody digs celebrities and wants to score their body fluids regardless of cost. If you're like me, you sometimes find yourself torn between wanting to cook up a mess of blood sausages and trolling ebay, looking for authenticated jars of Dom Deluise's liposuction fat and Gwen Stefani's placental fluid. If only you could combine these two pursuits into one! Well, anguish no longer, because Ilene and I are about to make your dreams a reality. Soon you'll be able to sit down to a plateful of delicious dark sausage links made from the catamenic secretions of Angelina Jolie and Jenna Jameson! Let your inner gourmand revel in the subtle differences of taste and texture between your favorite actresses. Train your palate to distinguish between the tangy, youthful effluent of Emma Watson, the mature, funky flavor and chunky texture of Madonna, and the elegant, smooth, yet irresistibly racy Anne Hathaway. For Lucy Liu we took the classic recipe and added ginger and five-spice powder for that authentic Oriental flavor. And we think you'll find Selma Hayek's habanero-studded blood chorizo to be every bit as spicy and assertive as the fiery-tempered actress herself. ¡¡Que rico!! Makes my mouth water just thinking about it. Finally, for those of you counting calories and watching your waistlines, we even offer a line of "skinny" celebrity black puddings from the highly irregular menses of Mary-Kate Olsen and Victoria Beckham.

Not only are these sausages great for either a casual meal at home or dressed up as part of a fancy multi-course dinner, they make great gifts as well. Do you have a frightfully creepy uncle or older cousin, the kind of guy who lives alone despite his 40-plus years and has nude teen candids as his computer screen saver? Really, that many? Isn't it alarming how many of these guys are out there? Then of course you know how difficult it is to think of good gift ideas for these fellows come the holidays - gifts that won't immediately be thrown in the wastebin or converted into storage units for pornography. With Ilene's and my new line of artisanal black puddings, you can buy presents for them confident in the knowledge that they'll love your gift the way a feral dog loves to roll in the greasy, maggot-encrusted carcass of a deceased woodchuck.

I don't want to give the game away, but the next step is to put together tasteful sampler packages à la Hickory Farms, combining our line of sausages with a selection of unpasteurized celebrity breastmilk cheeses and evaporated sweat boutique salts. Can you say 'corporate clients?' Forget flowers and fruit baskets; our samplers are the real way to leave a lasting impression with your most important business partners.

Speechless? I believe the words you're looking for are: "thank you!" Well, you're so very welcome. Let me take this opportunity to thank you, our customers, as well. We love our work, and that's why we keep doing what we do, in spite of all those civil lawsuits from California and 'cease and desist' letters from the FDA.

COME ONE, COME ALL!!!

So as some of you may know, my friend Nathan Tumulty is a sometime party and club promoter. He's been working on a new venture at a restaurant in River North called Hop Haus, which is owned by veteran Chicago restaurant group Leona's. They've developed a new late-night program with a lounge/dance vibe called HausLounge that promises to be a welcome addition to the more intensively clubby venues already in the neighborhood. The grand opening of this new lounge is TODAY, Thursday, September 11, 2008, at 10 pm. NB, there is NO cover charge.

I'm very keen on helping Nathan make this a successful opening, especially since it materialized so quickly and could open a number of doors for him. So, I'm asking that all able-bodied readers make a trip down to 646 N. Franklin, Chicago 60610 at around 10 pm to help kick off this new venture and show some love to one of Chicago's zaniest, funniest, and most intelligent dudes. Hope to see you there!!

Oh, and if tonight doesn't work, or you read this after the fact, do go and check them out as soon as you can. They'll be open 10 pm - 4 am, Thurday through Sunday each week, for all your late-night partying needs and desires. Thanks all!!!

Peace, love, and understanding,

Aaron

AMY 1, DAVID 0

I've come to the conclusion that I don't like David Sedaris's humor. Or let me rephrase: I don't like it when David Sedaris tries to be funny. He's probably a decent fellow and clearly he works hard at his craft, but he stumbles because too often behind the laugh, behind the smile, lurks a sneer. Go on, he seems to dare you, laugh at the absurd shortcomings of my characters. And we do, but I always get the feeling that David isn't laughing with us. He's watching us laugh, trying to figure out why, and whether that reason reveals something unworthy in us. Maybe that's why his sketches about homosexuality are, to me, some of his least funny. "You want to laugh at my gay antics?" he seems to say. "Fine, but just what does that say about you? Are you sure that's wise?" Sedaris is no Richard Pryor or Rodney Dangerfield, neither of whom was afraid of his inner fall-guy; instead Sedaris's self-deprecation seems measured, calculating, and the quickness with which he shifts from goofy, bumbling everyman to caustic, withering scold is unsettling. Suddenly you realize this queen has nails: humor is his weapon, and you wonder whether in real life he's sizing up everyone as a potential target. It aborts the humor, like watching Stan Laurel moon and dissemble, and then knife Oliver Hardy in the back.

To be fair, some of his stuff is just brilliant, the apogee of satire. But that other side rears its head often enough to make you wonder: "what's his game?"

Now that Amy Sedaris, she's funny. Piglet? Christ, I thought I'd die laughing.

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE $300,000?

Now, I've been told on numerous occasions and by many different people that the absolute worst job in the world is to be a restauranteur. Heard it, understand it, granted it. Don't know whether the sewer inspectors in Mumbai would concur, but whatever: having spent the better part of the last three years in the restaurant scene I've come to understand the sentiment. Still, there's an insistent little voice in my head that enjoys nothing better, alas, than to devise plans for new restaurants.

Take, for instance, the phenomenon of the wine bar. For some reason that I've not fully worked out, wine bars are much more numerous back east than they are here in Chicago. This imbalance is nowhere more striking than in New York. You literally have multiple wine bars on any given block in the Lower East Side. Granted, New York is larger and more concentrated than any other American city, but neither of these facts accounts for why wine bars practically outnumber fast food restaurants there. To my mind income and the prevailing culture account for much of the disparity; wine is a relatively expensive diversion, and while the overall cost of living is higher in New York, so too (significantly) are median wages. Also, Chicago's proximity to the major beer brewing centers of the country predispose the city towards a thirst for beer. But there's another reason for the relative scarcity of wine bars, and it's more a matter of style than of substance. Wine bars, by and large, suck.

Sure, there are the occasional gems: Terroir and The Slanted Door in San Francisco; Terroir (no relation), Gottino, and the overwhelming Cru in New York, and Webster's and Avec in our fair city; but by and large, I'm underwhelmed by these places. Many are pretentious, but it's not the pretense that bothers me most; it's the lack of substance, of a workmanlike attitude towards serving customers. A wine bar should be as accessible as the neighborhood tap, or at least nearly so. Ambience is nice, but that should be the last of a restauranteur's concerns. The prevailing philosophy at my wine bar (oh boy, there it is) would be this: the beginning, middle, and end of the business is quality in the wine, the food, and the pairings.

A word about small plates: they're finished. In a culinary reverse spin on Kant's categorical imperative of moral judgment, I wouldn't serve anything to share that couldn't reasonably stand alone as a complete meal, or at least a light entree. Pizzas? Fine. Frisee salad with ventresca tuna? Absolutely. But no fritters. No carved-fruit decorative elements. No emu mini-burgers. No gels, foams, powders, or syringes. And no bacon "lures" dangling from hand-crafted Vanadium-steel "fishing rods," pace Grant Achatz.

(The one exception I would happily make to this rule is for brandade. God, I love brandade. Put good brandade on a roofing shingle - nevermind decent bread - and I'll wolf it down, no questions asked.)

Speaking of which, the bread at this conceptual wine bar would absolutely punish. You remember when you were small, and your grandmother would bake bread, and when you went to visit her the smells were so vivid and alluring you couldn't concentrate until you'd been given a slice still warm from the oven, porous and feathery, toothsome and crusty all at once, butter percolating through the fissures and onto your hand as you ate? Neither do I, but doesn't that sound just rockstar-good? That's the kind of bread this place would have. "Atkins" would be a forbidden word under my roof.

Oh, and the wine. Look, it's the 21st century. We are blessed with relatively unfettered access to the best wine from more regions of the world than any other society in history. At the same time, the cost of good "fighting varietal" (Chardonnay, Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Merlot) wines from blue chip appellations has far outstripped the rate of inflation. You want good, I mean good Pinot Noir? Expect to pay $60 per bottle, $15 per glass and up if it's from a familiar appellation. Ditto quality Cabernet Sauvignon. If you insist on both quality Cab and a Napa Valley designation, make it more like $120. Chardonnay will hurt less, but don't expect to be blown away by a bottle that's $40 or under.

So, what to do? Go global. Go family-owned and artisanal. As a priority, go organic or biodynamically-grown grapes and wines made with minimal intervention. Go with varieties that might be less familiar, but are affordable and delicious. I can't pour a good Pinot Noir for $9 a glass, but I can pour a $9 glass of Beaujolais that simply rocks from one of the appellation's greatest producers. Likewise, no Chardonnay worth a dime can be had for $7 per glass. Damn good regional French whites, though, made from grapes like Ugni Blanc and Colombard, certainly can. Never heard of them? There was a time when we'd never heard of Viognier, either.

This is not to say that a modest country white is interchangeable with great Chardonnay. But at $7 you won't get great or even good Chardonnay. You'll get mass-produced, highly manipulated, soulless Chardonnay - the Coca Cola of the Chardonnay world. It probably spent most of its life in a tanker truck and got its oaky flavor from an additive made by Monsanto. That no-name French white at least might have some raciness, some zest, some personality. Might even have been picked by human hands and taste of the stony hillsides where it grew. Now, wine can't compete with beer in a race for the bottom: no $4.50 glass of wine is worth drinking. But if that's a market I can't have, that's OK; there are enough people who find wine sufficiently rewarding to pay a few more shillings than they would for PBR. Plus, steak frites just doesn't taste right with PBR.

The fulcrum of a winebar is always the waitstaff. For me this would be especially important as Aglianico and Romorantin don't exactly make most customers' eyes light up with recognition. The front of the house would have to be both glib and whip-smart when it comes to wine. Budding Master-Sommelier smart. This would absolutely take primacy over previous serving experience. I'd give anyone aged 24 or older with a serious love and knowledge of wine and the right attitude a three-month training stint, then if the fit was right I'd offer them a full-time position and generous healthcare coverage to encourage them to stick around for at least a few years. In my experience, most restaurants treat their servers like chattel, offer them no benefits and then wonder why they flake out and fall off the map without so much as a phone call. I never believed in karma until I'd spent a few weeks as a wine sales rep. Now, it's become my operative philosophy.

Yes, health care is hella expensive. No, I don't know how I'd afford it the first few months of operation. My location would perforce be low on the rental scale and essentially a turnkey enterprise, no major renovations or interior design until we'd achieved solvency. Oh, and both parking and proximity to public transit would be essential. Surely, though, there are many locations that would fit the bill in a city the size of Chicago.

To me this scheme sounds so intuitive that it must be flawed. Maybe there's some overhead or prohibitive start-up expense that I'm ignoring? I realize I would work 20-hour days for months before I could relax. I'd have to vet employees with extraordinary care; for every solid worker in the restaurant business there are five coked-out, social-climbing, borderline Napoleon-types. But even given these caveats and more... doesn't it sound like it just might work?

Shit, there's that little voice again.

I...AM...SO...SCARED

I was forced to watch the Republican National Convention against my will... by a wild progressive Democrat. What follows is only a mild dramatization.

9:22 pm: I have returned home tonight after a long day's work hoping for an evening of peace and quiet; perhaps a few fingers of Pimm's and a volume of Byron's later works. Instead, upon entering the apartment I find Ilene foaming at the mouth, her body covered in warpaint. She is screaming at the television and scalping a papier-mâché effigy of John McCain with a butter knife. Am now worried that the Republican National Convention may be having a somewhat unhealthy effect on the mental well-being of my flatmate. At least now I know what she has been doing in her room with all those newspapers for the past five days.

9:28 pm: Rudy Guiliani is speaking on the television. Every time the audience cheers some bit of conservative boilerplate, Ilene snarls and sinks her fangs into the pasty-white head of the replica McCain. I have taken the precaution of sending my will to an attorney friend via text-message.

9:33 pm: I have begun preparing a simple dinner, being careful not to move too quickly or turn my back on my roommate for more than a few seconds. Palin is about to begin her speech. Ilene has now decapitated her McCain chew-toy and is now feasting on the innards, which appear to be made of strawberry jam and live earthworms.

9:42 pm: Palin has begun her speech. I had never heard her speak before now and, oh my sweet fucking lord, she has the most revolting voice of all time. It's like steel wool on a goddamn chalkboard. Or Fran Drescher forced to do double anal. I seriously am more distressed by Palin's vocal timbre than I am by the fact that Ilene has begun stalking me like a rabid bear.

9:57 pm: Have offered Ilene a bowl of the rice-a-roni I fixed for my meal. I'm terribly hungry, and there's not enough to share, but I'm hoping this peace offering will prevent Ilene from disemboweling me with her thumbs the next time Palin mentions McCain's war record. Perhaps later I can find some fragments of jam and earthworm on the floor where Ilene was shaking McCain's head in her jaws like a terrier dispatching a rat.

10:02 pm: I am nearing the end of my tether. Several times I have asked - nay, begged - Ilene to turn off the speech, but at each request Ilene has cackled demonically and spread her bony reptilian frill to frighten me away from the remote. As little as I think of this strategy, I must admit it's been very successful.

10:06 pm: Palin appears to be wrapping up right now. Christ, I hope so, because arterial blood is spurting from my eardrums every time she utters a vowel. On the plus side, I think Ilene believes I will soon be dead from blood loss and will then be able to feed on my corpse at her leisure.

10:10 pm: It is over, Allah and Santa Claus be praised. Unfortunately for me, the suffering has only begun. My roommate has removed her warpaint and is now wearing the protagonist's outfit from the 1975 exploitation classic Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. She has begun babbling incoherently and is sharpening her teeth with a woodworking file. I am calculating whether it would be best to sit perfectly still and hope she has satiated herself on earthworms and newsprint, or throw a copy of The National Review into the far corner of the apartment and then run like hell for my bedroom while she savages it.

11:03 pm: Made it to my bedroom, don't ask me how - I've already suppressed the memory. The door is locked, but it's pretty flimsy, and in her state Ilene would have no trouble knocking it off its hinges with a well-placed head-butt. I'm writing this fast because I don't know how much time I have left. It's almost entirely silent in the apartment right now, but the furtive, intermittent sound of cloth against hardwood and snakelike noises from without tells me Ilene is crawling towards my bedroom door, hissing. I am clutching my stuffed walrus, a pipe wrench, and my Bible. I have smeared the floor around me bed with a mixture of pine tar and broken glass. I cannot get out, but maybe, just maybe, this last line of defense will repel her. Good night and goodbye, everyone. Tell my sister she can have my car.

Oh, and vote for Obama.

OUR FIRST FIGHT

OK folks, I've really put my foot in it now. Not only did I leave the toilet seat up (gasp!!!), I also managed to leave the toilet seat up on the SELF-SAME DAY that Ilene very kindly washed my bath towel because it was, frankly, stinking like the colon of a dead wildebeest. And not a freshly dead wildebeest, if you catch my drift.

Anyway, feeling sheepish about my bathroom gaffe and already chastened for befouling the apartment with my towel, I've taken it upon myself to serve as Ilene's job interview fashion consultant. Turns out I'm ludicrously talented when it comes to telling Ilene what to wear to an interview so that she gets invited back for another one. I've said "No!" to the liquid eyeliner and nine-inch clear-plastic stripper heels but "Yes!" to the staid, conservative, but stylish pantsuit and midrise Mary Janes. I scolded her for the backless tube top and nipple stickies, but when she returned from her shopping trip to Club Monaco and BCBG Max Azria I was all smiles and kind words. Now, if I only knew why she keeps scheduling these interviews at four am in the Viagra Triangle and the hourly-rate motels in Uptown, I could really help her land the job of her dreams.

It's the least I can do, especially considering the colon left a big pink stain on the bathroom tile and is starting to slough its lining.

PORK AND PINOT (AND OTHER THINGS THAT DO NOT SUCK)

Went to Ravenswood yesterday to celebrate Labor Day through the time-honored tradition of gorging myself on pork products. James, a friend from my old company Maverick Wines, had acquired two twelvish-pound pork shoulders and a pair of briskets, and had loaded them into a waist-high smoker to cook for - and this is a conservative estimate - 343 hours. In attendance were several other ex-colleagues from Maverick as well as a random assortment of James's other wine industry friends, neighbors, and seemingly every dog for a 16-block radius. The pork was sublime, not least because we had to wait for literally hours until the shoulders reached the magic temperature (180° Fahrenheit.) With so many wine industry types in the audience, there were some pretty kickin' bottles on tap. Here's what I drank with my sweet, sweet pork meat:

Weingut Prager 1997 Riesling Federspiel Weissenkirchner Ried Steinriegl

(No picture; Prager's website is not very copy-and-paste friendly.) Prager is one of my favorite Austrian producers, which is kind of like saying Tiger Woods is a pretty good golfer, or that I have a boner for Adriana Lima. Color was medium piss-yellow, with that inscrutable opacity that these wines take on after their first youth. Funky, unyielding nose at first, then gradually gave up notes of white mineral and Meyer lemon. Again, hard as nails on palate, but finally gave up more citrus notes, lime, white pepper, and stone dust. The bottle was drunk quickly, which is a shame as this had barely found its feet before it was gone. This has another ten, fifteen years of good life, easily.


Marcel Deiss 2002 Engelgarten Bergheim


Marcel Deiss is notable for its wines that are not varietally-labeled, but rather are "field blends" of multiple grape varieties grown in a single vineyard. His wines are expressions of terroir, rather than of varietal typicity (that's the Engelgarten vineyard at left.) This vineyard, and hence this bottling, contains Riesling, Pinot Gris, Pinot Beurot, Muscat, and Pinot Noir. Deiss's wines rock my world. This had a dark straw color, with a subtle nose of tangerine rind, petrol, and musk. Sadly, on the palate this showed the unmistakeable wet basement funk of TCA, and the fruit was really mute. Still, intriguing flavors of mushroom, wood smoke (or was that the pork?), and more petrolly, minerally flavors managed to poke through. People kept coming back for this in spite of its being corked, and I really wanted to see how a more pristine bottle would have showed.


Furst 2004 Spatburgunder Centgrafenberg



Ahh, German Pinot Noir. Confusing as all get-out. Robert Parker hates these wines, and it makes perfect sense as he's a simple man with simple tastes, and not much patience for what he doesn't immediately understand. For me, these wines can go one of two ways: sublime and delectable, or ungainly and weird. This bottle showed a classic Spatburgunder nose of candied cherry, rose petal, and iris. Palate gave cherry lozenge, cinnamon, nutmeg, clay, and a sweet earthy note that I pick up in a lot of German Pinots. Had a glass, then didn't really want another one. Furst is a great producer, but this wasn't entirely my cup of tea.


Michel Tete 2006 Julienas Domaine du Clos du Fief


A wine from New York importer Joe Dressner, which for me is usually a good and often a great thing. Julienas is one of the 10 or so villages that make the very best Beaujolais, a wine that is kind of like Burgundy's little brother. Joe imports almost exclusively organic and biodynamic wines, and while Tete's wines aren't certified as organic, they're almost certainly de facto so. This was a rush of bright red berry fruit, girded with enough dark mineral to give it some tension. Just plain delicious juice, wonderful served as it was with a slight chill, and a mercifully accessible bottle after the German Pinot. Given that I wasn't really expecting to be blown away, this was definitely the sleeper hit of the night.

As it happened, the Michel Tete also gave me the push I needed to leave. A woman walked into the kitchen where I was standing over the pork platter, feeling dazed by my meat intake. She approached the wines and was looking at them quizzically. Her friend, who I'm sure was trying to be friendly and inclusive, looks at me and says, "Oh, you're a wine guy - why don't you tell Vicky what to drink over here?" Now I'll admit that being flattered as an expert always suckers me in, but I try to accommodate with as little fanfare as possible. Anyway, I figured I'd speak my piece and leave, so I said, "Drink the Beaujolais, it's beautiful." Whereupon "Vicky" turns to regard me. She's tall, rail-thin, pushing forty, and has both a ridiculous platinum dye job and the most heavily-made-up eyes of any woman I've ever seen who wasn't offering to blow me for forty bucks. I mean Jesus, this woman's father fucked a raccoon. Anyway, she gives me this dismissive sneer, then says, "Well, I've lived in France for almost ten years, and I have to say, nobody in France drinks Beaujolais." Now, I know this to be utter and complete bullshit, and she's qualified herself as a fucking moron, but whenever this sort of thing happens I ratchet up the charm to near-toxic levels and adopt my "oh, I didn't know that! Please, teach me, oh wise and wondrous sage!" demeanor. Anyway, I listen to her tell me how the French don't drink Beaujolais, that it's really a joke wine that only stupid Americans like, and the French wouldn't be caught dead drinking it, and that by the way, most Americans are really stupid. Meanwhile, "Vicky's" friend has poured some of the Michel Tete into her own glass and now holds it up to "Vicky" saying, "here, what do you think?" "Vicky" looks pityingly at me, takes a small sip, then says, in a very small voice, "that's really... good."

Yeah, bitch, you want to suck my dick now, or wait till after you've given my balls a tongue bath??!! Actually, that would be an insult to my testicles, of whom I'm enormously proud and who have never done me a wrong turn in their lives.

So maybe that's a bit harsh, but if so it's because it was the only obnoxious moment in an otherwise blissful lyric of mass meat consumption. I should probably just take solace in the teachable moment and cut the woman some slack. In any event, it punctuated an end to the party for me that was oddly satisfying. Please also note that my regard for James and his pork-shoulder voodoo is just sky-high, and I was careful to tell him in no uncertain terms how much of a culinary genius and overall mensch I consider him to be. Y'all find a well of sweet water, you don't piss in it, that's my advice. James, if you're reading this, thanks again for an awesome barbecue. Next meal's on me.

I AM SO SORRY

Fuck-a-duck, that first post was boring! God a-mighty!

I promise never, ever to do that again. There may be plenty of boring posts from here on out, but not quite as pedantic and airy-fairy as that one. I mean, for fuck's sake, Aaron!

I'll just take it on faith that the people reading this will know the key players, and if they don't, will be sympathetic enough to continue reading in spite of their ignorance. If I had to write another entry like that again, I think I'd bite out my own radial arteries. And you would cheer me on.

Never again!

LARGO AL FACTOTUM

Hey, is this blog on?

But seriously folks, this whole "blogging" thing is getting out of hand. Time was when I was the only person I knew who read blogs - hell, who even knew what a blog was. This was way back in the misty dawn of time - early 2002, if memory serves. Back then you could count the number of blogs out there on one hand, practically, especially if you were one of those lucky-duck polydactyly types who have like 22 fingers. Flash-forward five years, and I read that now there are like 5.7 weblogs for every man, woman, and child in the Western Hemisphere. The market is saturated; there are terabytes of useless text floating around the web, and of course we know from economics that the more readily available a commodity, the less valuable it becomes.

What I'm saying is, this blog is essentially worthless. Worse, if you consider the opportunity cost of time spent writing in the ether, time that could have been put to use at some salutary activity like lobbying for human rights in the Sahel, or anal bleaching. It's just as bad for you, and shame on you for reading as far as you have. So please, I beg you, STOP RIGHT NOW AND SAVE YOURSELF FROM THE SIREN SONG OF THE WEBLOG!!! KILL YOUR INTERNET!!!! ATTICA!!!! ATTICA!!!! ATTICA!!!!


You still there? Good.

The fact is, I have a very good reason for creating this weblog, and her name is Ilene. Ilene and I are old college friends who have recently become roommates, and the hue and cry for a blog chronicling our exploits has reached - dare I say it? - a deafening roar. Herewith, then, the tale of two young hopefuls: a nice Jewish girl from the North Shore, and a not-so-nice Gentile boy from the heathen Northwest Suburbs, living in the treacherous slums of one of Chicago's toniest neighborhoods. Season liberally with a cadre of friends and associates the envy of any Russian organized crime syndicate, garnish with the ever-present threat of financial ruin (at least for me), and you have a dish that is... delightful? Exquisite? Boring as an eight-day cricket test match for the blind? As yet no one knows, but when I find out, you will too.