The Price of P-Funk

If you’ve been reading Gourmet Squatter, you know I love my wines, funky. By funky, I mean I like my dry reds Virginia Woolf-deep, wines that provoke the androgynous mind, compelling you to take a second glance at the color, wines that make you stick your nose in the glass over and over again like a child at the beach, digging through the wet sand in search of treasure. You know you have arrived when you smell the earth at her most vulnerable. Some folks use words like wet cellar or wet leaves. But in my experience, these wines can smell like everything from stinky cheese and wet soil to armpit, sweaty socks and lovemaking. These wines possess Sly Stone-swag, your descriptors getting more and more creative as they unravel in the glass. When I think of the essence of grape funk, I think, Pinot Noir, and like all the things worth having, this grape is called the heartbreak grape as it is difficult to grow. It’s also difficult to find a really well-made bottle for under $25. Last year, when my budget took a boost, I bought several bottles between $20 and $35 mainly from Oregon and was really bored. The aromas were flat, vacant and uninspiring. Today I got off work ready for that good P-funk, so I told the wine dondadda at one of my favorite wine stores, that my budget was $30. He recommended the 2009 Soléna Grand Cuvée Oregon Pinot Noir as a supremely aromatic wine, but the bottle I had was aromatically dead. I tried and tried to smell something, but there was nothing there. A couple weeks ago I bought a bottle of 2009 Sonoma Cuvée Russian River Valley Pinot Noir for just over $20. P-funk jumped out of my glass along with aromas of braised short ribs and marionberries. On the palate, there were dark plum, stewed fig, clove and anise flavors that glided through the lush, cashmere body. I bought the ’08 vintage this evening which wasn’t as interesting, but sometimes, you have to hunt the P-funk.

 

Sipping the Winemaker

So I have a confession. I love wine. You know that. But more than I love sipping wine, I love sipping the winemakers. I love reading about the adventures of those who dare trade their nine-to-five gigs for the long shot, the jagged dream of making money as grape juice hustlers. These aren’t descendants of centuries-old wine families. They are everyday people who stumbled into a bottle that inspired them in the same way that music inspired Aretha and poetry inspired Plath. Helen Turley is the winemaker behind labels like Marcassin, Bryant, Colgin and Peter Michael. Wine Spectator Senior Editor—James Laube wrote in a 2010 article that Turley is a native of Augusta, Ga., where she grew up Southern Baptist raised on a diet of fried chicken and meatloaf. Not exactly a foie gras-Sauternes background, is it? In 1968, Turley and her man drove a VW bus cross-country, hippie-style, ending in California. It was a 1980 Sea Ridge Pinot Noir that changed her life. Mac McDonald came from a family of Texas moonshine makers. Laube wrote in a 2004 Wine Spectator article that MacDonald’s mother, Elbessie, along with her brother and sister, made sweet wine from apples and cherries. But that didn't pique Mac's interest. It was a 1952 red Burgundy that changed his life. When he was a teen, a group of doctors hired his father to take them hunting, and one guest left Mac with that '52 Burgundy. About eight years ago I met the Michael Duncan look-alike in downtown Brooklyn where he rose from the Lafayette Avenue subway stop wearing overalls and a straw hat. I got goosebumps when he explained that he aged his Pinot in Hungarian oak. Are your dreams aging? I know sometimes it feels like mine are. Afraid to take that long shot? Maybe it’s not that long. But are we willing to do the work, pick the grapes and see what ends up in the bottle?

 

Freedom in Bubbles

First I apologize to my Gourmet Squatter readers for being absent all this time. I just took on a rat race-gig that has consumed much of my miscellaneous energy. Still, it’s no excuse. But I’m back and grateful to be frolicking on the page. What have you been up to lately? What have you been eating and sipping? On this great day when we celebrate freedom, I’m sipping Graham Beck Brut Pinot Noir Chardonnay. I started sipping it yesterday, immediately picking up a funky, morbier cheese aroma at the frothy rim. Then the aromas evolved into freshly mown grass, apple crisp and cantaloupe. On the palate there’s Gala apple crisp and lemon drop with a burst of minerality at the finish. For $17, it was pretty good. I have one of those fancy wine stoppers specifically for sparkling wines, so today while the wine maintains its carbonation, it tastes more like an upscale Cava. It’s perfect for fish fry picnics, poolside gossip and lazy days away from the rat race.    

Tomatoes are So Secretive

Tomatoes are so secretive. We often see them in supermarkets in heaping piles, uninspired by their ubiquity. But a beautifully cultivated tomato is like a clandestine lover that seduces torn baguettes, French country and hard dough breads. Add a twinkle of coarse salt and simplicity becomes an unexpected trip to La Rochelle. Drizzle your tomato with anchovy oil, and your palate becomes a boudoir of flavor ecstasy. A neighbor gave my mother a Ziploc bag of baby tomatoes and we ate them like tangerines. They were so sweet and juicy, and I’ve been eating them with everything. I ate them with Wheat Thins and Jamaican crackers. I mashed them in boiled Idaho potatoes with chopped scallion. I wrapped them with sliced chorizo. I left them on the table while I went to church and now they’re gone—sneaky, little devils.      

Scent of A Sipper

This past week has been littered with bodies. It’s like the earth is regurgitating, and people are just falling into the next life. Did you hear about the Jamaican family—mother, father, baby and grandmother who were fatally injured in a car recent car accident? So sad. To these stories, my father often replies, “What is man?” The bible likens man’s life to that of a blade of grass. How quickly we forget.  How quickly we become guest stars in our own lives. How quickly we become dreams deferred. And so I choose to live. No matter how difficult the artist road may be, I live for the chase, for the next meal, the next gathering of friends, the next bundle of laughter, and the aromas bursting from vineyards I’ve yet to visit. I remember when I used to lock myself in my room and just dance and dance for hours—New Edition, Cherelle, Michael Jackson, Def Leopard, and Pat Benatar blaring from my speakers. I held all the secrets of an earthly paradise right there in my Toshiba boombox. Today, I summon that girl, that sweet, dream-juicy girl to keep dancing, sipping, living.