Wine News (48)

A great table wine from Beaujolais We opened several weeks ago a bottle of Philippe Jambon Les Ganivets, vin de table, a small fine print (L 05) hinting at it being a 2005. Wild-looking wine at first, something asking to be subdued, then opening into powerful aromas of ripe dark-red cherries and a feel of freshness at the same time. No SO2 at all here, and besides a lightly perly character, the wine stood all these years perfectly, and still so alive, like a devil moving after a few minutes out of the bottle in changing expressions. Yummy, full-mouthed wine of which I force myself to slow down the drinking. This bottle spent years in my Frigidaire wine fridge and the wine went through unscathed in spite of its lack of any SO2. A bit of sediments on one side of the bottle for having layed still during those years. Kudos to Philippe Jambon for this wine, here is a vibrant wine that we enjoyed just like that, before dinner as apéritif and during the dinner. I immediately leafed through Caves Augé catalog to see if they had this cuvée but it seems they don't sell Jambon's wines these days, although that's where I bought this bottle for a bit less than 10 € in march 2007. I have to call Philippe to ask where to find the last available vintage of this cuvée, just to get a few bottles and forget them again a few years...

More people choose slow travel (pic : Michelle Hopfner) This article which was published a few weeks ago says that car sharing has been hitting new records in France. First, because like in much of the world the gas prices have sky-rocketted here : prices vary depending of the gas station, but we have been paying routinely earlier this year about 1,6 € for a liter of normal unleaded gas (named SP 95 in France), which makes 6,05 €/7,82 USD a gallon. Even if prices seem to recede in june, this must be temporary, especially that the Euro is going down. The second reason for higher car-sharing is that the train monopoly here, the SNCF, is very expensive, and its prices keep going up. As a result, the main car-sharing website in France, covoiturage.fr, has doubled its registered membership (registration is free) to close to 2 million people. For example in march of this year, Covoiturage helped transport 350 000 individual passengers, or the equivalent of 850 filled-up TGVs. Car sharing offers the advantage of slow travel (not that slow actually if you count the train-breakdown delays at the SNCF), personnal interaction with other travellers and a huge economy for budget-minded ordinary people like you and me. For example, travelling to Strabourg with Covoiturage can cost as little as 24 € one way, compared with an average of 64 € to 89 € for the SNCF, which has otherwise been offering a confusing list of different rates, including cheaper tickets you often can't have actually because of the limited number of seats allocated to these rates, or because of the compulsory long-time-in-advance reservation imposed for these seats, thus fooling the consumer into thinking the train company is not that expensive. The article says in that regard that travelling with Covoiturage is about 3 times cheaper than on train. I'm proud to say that several people began to use covoiturage.fr following my writing about it some time ago, including for example Kenji and Mae, who make wine in Anjou (Loire).
Check gas prices in France by clicking on a given region. SP 95 and SP 98 are unleaded gas (normal and upper quality), Gaz and Gaz + are diesel (normal and upper quality), and GPL is LPG. A weedkiller-saturated vineyard in Burgundy This awful picture, when you know what mean this particular color and aspect of the soil as well as these mosses, was shot in northern Burgundy. Here is an otherwise-nice vineyard that stands on a devastated soil. I have a guess for you concerning this vineyard :

Is this vineyard owned by :
__ an ordinary conventional grower who is not aware that the life of a soil is a prerequisite to making good wine, or
__ a grower who is an official in the local Appellation system and works as a jury in the agreement commissions (you know, the guys who decide if your wine fits or doesn't fit the Appellation tasting standards)...
I guess you'll say asking the question is answering it. Ivan Karazekidi on Russian TV Here is a Russian TV program where you can see both the guest and the TV anchor sip live excellent wine while speaking about Russian wine and politics, I find that great. Alex Dubas, the journalist who is also a writer, had invited Ivan (or Janis) Karakezidi in Moscow for a long and (almost) freewheeling interview. Ivan Karakezidi is the most iconic artisan winemaker in Russia, and he has been invited here to discuss several topics, including politics as this took place before the Russian presidential elections. Karakezidi's wines are impossible to find outside his facility in southern Russia, in the Kuban region near the black sea, even if he says that he was very honored that the Patriarch of All Russia choose his Kagor wine for sacramental use. The conversation drifts on wine and politics, Karakezidi saying in substance that artisans like him cannot get a licence to make wine in Russia because the system gives the permit only to the large industrial producers, the price to pay for getting this licence being also huge. He says that although he's making high-quality, old-school wines, he is unable to sell officially his wines because of this system, and he has to resort to diverted ways he didn't elaborate here. He had put his hopes then on the presidential candidate Prokhorov, whom he sees as the best fit to change the rules and allow free trade in Russia. He says that what Russia needs is a Russian Pinochet, someone who will free the economy and the small businesses [Pinochet is viewed here more for his successful economic reforms inspired by the Chicago-boys and Milton Friedman than for his military repression]. He says that Russia must produce more, and the country needs economic freedom and competition for that. The Journalist interrupts Karakezidi a few times, and at one point he abruptly invites a young singer to come on stage. Karakezidi at one point says that in France small producers don't have this bureaucratic licence thing that prevents them to start a winery and sell their production, he says that people making quality, artisanal products in Russia should be able to work and sell their products freely. You can follow part 2 (where at one point Ivan plays flute) as well as part 3 here. Brazen anti-illegal-parking campaign in Moscow Not related to wine but I find this issue amusing and heartening : You may know that Moscow is increasingly clogged with traffic and many car owners think they just can do anything. A group of young Russians have decided to fight careless driving and jay parking by themselves and they have mounted special-ops actions against double-parking or driving on sidewalks, using for that big stickers and filming the scenes to prevent violence (as much as possible) by the angry perpetrators who sometimes look mean. There are countless video mini-stories like this one on the Internet. Here on this one the guy seemed to have mafia connections and was armed... It's not that common hopefully for these young activists even if there are often rough winds during their performances.
Recently, they unknowingly went to a car owned by the wife of a Chechen big shot, she was agressive, called for help by phone and this led to a messy brawl (1:25 minute in this video)...
Stop Kham (means "Stop the Rudeness") is a group where you also find daring young women like these ones preventing cars stuck in traffic jams from driving on sidewalks, like it's common in some areas. Stop Kham is a branch of the Nashi youth movement, which has support in the presidential circles.
It reminds me, on a completely different level, something I read a couple years ago about the one-man fight by a New-York guy against idle cars keeping their engines running while parked. I don't find a link but just by giving his business card to the (sometimes angry) drivers, he could bit by bit force these people to switch off their cars or leave.
To find more thrilling videos about the Moscow streets, paste the words СТОП ХАМ in Youtube... Antique wine cup (Kherson, Ukraine) I stumbled upon a photo report showing antique wine vessels, amphorae and cups which were salvaged in the area of Kherson (formerly Chersonesus) in the Crimea (Ukraine). There is no dating of these items on the report but the wine culture there is said to have been active as early as 400 B.C.
You can see many other pictures by Serguey, the photographer, on his webpage. He lives in Sebastopol, a historic military port in Ukraine. There are quite a few photo reports related to wine here, like this showing a wine tasting that took place at the Theater of Wine and Crimea, a public museum featuring many wine and distillation tools. Crimea officials and tourism promoters organized this tasting and journalists were offered to taste a few local wines. This other tasting which took place in a high-end hotel in Yalta is also interesting, sort of, if you have never seen a Mouton-Cadet Rosé or a Marquès de Caceres handled by a white-gloved sommelier, this is is here. This brings the question of import duties in Ukraine as well as Russia : lowering them would bring more choice to the local consumers, and also encourage the competition.
Serguey also visited a winery and in addition to good, informative pictures, the writing is lyrical.
On this site the author even gives a recipe for taking good sunset pictures : the sea, seashore, 2 guys, 2 tripods, 2 cameras, a few snacks, onions, slices of salo .... and a bottle of your favorite vodka. Ukraine rocks... Kampai ! in the nursery Beer-lookalike beverage for kids : the Japanese have now a golden drink with gorgeous foam for the kids' parties. The Japanese children will have to wait a few more years for the real thing but they'll be well trained and will know the rites and the moves of a cheerful gathering around booze. I don't want to sound nationalistic but French children have been enjoying their own Champagne Champomy for decades (1989) in their birthday parties.
I found that video on Eryk's This Japanese Life, a website full of inspiring reflexions. Eryk Salvaggio is an American expat who reports deep reflexions on Japan from the inside. His essay on Drinking in Japan is passionating because it sheds a new light on company workers drinking with their co-workers and/or with their boss. Indians ! Here's to the first of the day, fellas. To ol' D. H. Lawrence. Nik-nik-nik-f-f-f-Indians !
First, this is to ask the question : when is your first glass of the day ? We all tend to drink more than the average, but I hope that you first hard liquor (or even wine) isn't in the morning (except for special tastings or occasions) and also that you don't have a whisky or another hard liquor every day. At least that's the way I feel it for myself : wine everyday is OK (evenings), but hard stuff not, even though I don't follow this line when I'm in Russia, but there's something special going on there between vodka and food.
Speaking of whisky, we don't often address the way this spirit is served, albeit depending of the serving mode you can get a wholly different type of drink. I've been changing my ways of drinking whisky these last years, and this post gives me the opportunity to write about it. You can drink whisky dry or mixed with water or soda. I like too much whisky to mix it with soda, but drinking it like Jack Nicholson in this iconic scene of Easy Rider isn't either my favorite way, it's particularly harsh an experience, and not only when it's cheap booze. I always prefered some kind of dilution, even for the standard 40 ° strong that you find most commonly. Since my early 20s' I used to dilute with a couple of icecubes that would progressively melt into the drink. But in the recent years I favored what I think is a gentler way for the whisky aromas : I just add a bit of room-temperature water (5 or 10 % maybe) so that I get more of the silky and aromatic side of Whisky or Bourbon, and less the harsh, kick butt side favored in this video. One thing is that you get high as well with this light diluting way, you'll not get it better by drinking straight and burning your throat. Something I never really indulged into, except a couple times in Japan, is the Japanese way of drinking whisky. It's so Japanese that it has a Japanese name-tag on it : Mizuwari (水割り), and it's basically whisky being drown into water and ice. I don't blame anyone and purists probably look down my own small dilution, but still, mizuwari to my opinion doesn't let you enjoy the aromatic and silkyness potential of a given whisky, it's way too cold and diluted. I know Japan is hot in spring and summer, but still, so much ice will ruin your whisky experience. A TV wine ad without uttering the "W" word An amusing consequence of the virtual interdiction of wine ads in France since the Evin law was adopted by the socialist government of François Mitterrand in 1991 : here is a suit-proof TV advertising where you don't see wine and where the W word isn't even uttered once.... Welcome to pre-sharia Europe, where people and businesses comply to the morality militias looking for infringements. They even have printed the compulsory sentence at the bottom of the ad ("pour votre santé pratiquez une activité physique régulière" which in short means "for your health, have regular sport activities") which you must include by law in the ads for certain foods and drinks.
The ad was commissioned by "Sud de France", a bizarre, weird-sounding new regional brand created a few years ago to purportedly simplify the visibility of southern-France's products here and abroad. The TV ad in question is supposed to help boost the sales of Languedoc-Roussillon wines. There's an unsual rebelness mood in this otherwise-bland video, as the sommelier-dressed guy, speaking with a southern accent in a cool cellar, vaunts the grapes of his region, saying that "the sun helps grow these excquise grapes and"(showing the casks around) "all this range of..." then he interrupts himself, looks on his back as if checking if someone else listens, and just says ...about this, I can't speak to you.... Seems to me the first advertising for wine where there's an obvious allusion to the censorship issue. Beyond the humoristic second degree, this TV ad is quite appalling and if censorship-proof, I'm afraid it lacks the colorful visual vibes of a glass of wine. I don't see how the consumer would feel more compelled to go buy Languedow wine after viewing this. A similar ad was made to promote the restaurants of Languedoc, and with these empty glasses on the table near a jug of water, you really feel the whole country has turned dry...
On the Sud de France webpage listing all the videos of this advertising campaign, they really took care that the word wine was nowhere to be found, and when you mouse-over the different ads of this campaign, the wine one reads "chai". Appalling.
No comparison with this humor-filled Israeli Samsung ad featuring disguised undercover Mossad operatives meeting in Iran. Explosive. (Samsung has been banned from Iran as a result) Unthinkable production in France After the appalling French wine-ad-without-showing-wine-and-uttering-the-W-word, here is a bit of fresh air found in the Land of the Free : Cougar Town is an ABC sitcom created by Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel, it takes place in Florida with wine holding such a central place that the characters (many women actually) are seen drinking a lot and enjoying it. A nightmare for any French TV channel, they would be sued and force to pay huge fined by the morality squads using the anti-alcohol Loi Evin. I'm not particularly fan of American sitcoms (often cheap in many ways), but this one seems so refreshing in this regard. Again, who would have ever imagined that the United States, the country of prohibition, would be one day viewed as a permissive paradise by the French ? This is much about Europe, it seems to me, and I feel almost like I'm watching a program of the free world from somewhere in the defunct Soviet Union; didn't the Czech president Vaclav Klaus say that the European Union was some sort of new Soviet Union with its own political correctness ? There's some truth in that.
Apparently the sitcom has been purchased by a minor French TV channel (NRJ 12), these guys are suicidal....
I found these two stories on Bourgogne-Live.com Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposohical center in Dornach (Switzerland) All Rudolf Steiner online and translated in English
It may be interesting for those of you who are curious about Rudolf Steiner's agriculture teachings to read his conferences on the subject. The Rudolf Steiner conferences about agriculture can be found on this unique web resource where it seems that you can find all his lectures. Rudolf Steiner's conferences in general are a unique source of inspiration, and he gave plenty of them in cities spread all over the German-speaking world (and even beyond), from Strasburg to Leipzig and Breslau to Dornach. But they ask for a preparadness in an understanding of the world and cosmos that is not conventional, to say the least.
The agriculture lectures which are regrouped under the tile The Agriculture Course consists of 8 lectures which took place in Koberwitz (Silesia, then Germany) in 1924. the transations look good and you can learn directly from the source here. You'll find the links to the 8 lectures on the page, plus additionnal Q & A transcripts. Great resource indeed.
I shot the picture above a few years ago when I visited the Goetheanum in Dornach (Switzerland). Your next car if you're caught twice driving under the influence You see them more and more on the French roads the voiturettes like the French call them, these 50-cc mini cars that you can drive without a permit and a maximum speed of 45 km/hour. It used to be that there were only a few of these yogurt-like, Trabant-sounding plastic cars on the roads, because this was the only option for some elderly people intimidated by the driving school, often widows who used to be previously commuted by their husbands. But in the last few years, you see more and more normal, middle-aged or even young drivers in these mini-cars, the fault being the driving-permit points which some drivers loose to the last, especially after a couple of positive breath checks. that's why the niche market is booming, and in the last decades these vehicules have quietly evolved from the ugly yogurt of the 1970s' to pretty seducting models. When they first appeared, they looked then more like the Johnny cabs of Total Recall than real cars, but now from afar if not for their snail pace, you'd mistake them for the real thing. I even saw a few of them which seemed to go at a much faster speed that the supposed 45 km/hour maximum, but that's another story, some owners having taken the risk (in terms of fine) to unbriddle the engine, that is, remove the engine restrictions so as to get more power and speed. Don't think their price is proportional to their horse power, they're as expensive as a real car, as they cost (new) between 9900 € and 15 000 €. Several brands thrive on the market : Aixam, Microcar, Chatenet, Secma, Casalini, Grecav, Ligier, JDM and Bellier.
I even heard that some people who still have their valid driving permit use such a 50-cc minicar when they know they'll be over the limit in terms of breath-check allowance, because they know they'll not be pulled over. I don't know if it's true but if yes, that's a way around the problem of going out with friends and driving back home safely, both physically and fiscally...
Because of lost points or because of the excessive price to pass the driving permit (1200 € on average if you don't fail the tests), it is estimated that around 400 000 people drive without a valid driving permit in France, some regions like the northern suburbs of Paris having a higher occurence of the infringements.
Video report about a minicar manufacturer near Limoges, France (from min 1:45)
Specialized website and forum on minicars. Breathanalyzers in a candy bowl (French supermarket) Maybe to avoid having to drive these minicars, the French law makes breathanalysers compulsory in all motor vehicules (including motorcycles) from july 1st (2012). Yet another layer of compulsory items to have always with you in your vehicule on the French roads (in addition to fluorescent vests and a self-standing warning triangle in case of breakdown along the highway). The disposable breathanalysers are waiting in line in the supermarket shelves where they've been hanging for years already, but with few takers probably. Now they're going to sell more, especially that the police or gendarmerie will occasionally check their presence in your vehicule and also look at the expiry date of these one-use devices. There's no compulsory regular use of these gadgets though, and most people will just keep them stuck somewhere under the seats. During the first months after july 01 2012, the offenders will not be fined, but from november 1st, you'll have to pay a 90 € fine if you don't have any unused and packaged breathanalyzer in your vehicule, the same fine you get for most speed violations. There are also a bunch of electronic breathanalyzers on the market, and people may buy them more (looking for a gift idea ?).
The ones featured here were spotted early june in a supermarket, they cost 2 € apiece with a validity up to 10/13 (october 2013). This thing seems to weigh no more than 10 grams and the company that made these, named Turdus Testers Of Capacity [sic] is going to be very profitable...

Comments

[Neville Yates]

I did a tasting with Philippe Jambon in his cellar last year -- he still has a 2005 Beaujolais in barrel that he says is not ready for bottling yet! In fact he has lots of wines that tasted delicious but he is waiting for the right time to capture them in bottle! Fascinating guy.