Wines by Pablo: 2009

(A) Here are some tips on Cognac, the world’s finest spirit, hands down, which comes from the Charente Region of France. Two big towns there are Jarnac and Cognac – thus the name. This is taken from emails to a friend and is written in lc “Internet-ese”style, which in pre-Internet days was the style of poet e.e. cummings, and later the style of many, including Bob Dylan.

...i am thinking of a good cognac for you to try. But first, tell people to check out such things as

www.oktoberfestph.blogspot.com
www.bonjourfrompaul.blogspot.com
they have nice fotos, etc...

so in addition to videos i have reversed my policy quote unquote and have some nice high quality images on my blogs, taken with my leica dig. camera (with the tripod and “kugelgelenkopf [good german word for head and ball socket device] made for the very good Leica M8, i can get some nice photographs).
so back to cognacs.....the "gangsta homeboy types" and people like kanye w...who just got into trouble at the one awards show, which one music reviewer attributed to too much “yac”...often drink hennessy vs, vsop or remy martin vsop.

after having really good cognacs these all taste terrible...remy martin vsop would be the best......there is a lot to this (knowing about cognacs), including such things as:

if a cognac is from the two highest of six growing areas for grapes in the charente region of france, the grande champagne and petite champagne growing areas, with at least fifty percent grande champagne..it can be called a fine champagne cognac.

it has nothing to do with the sparkling wine..it is a description of the land ...

people always get confused with that.

so.....remy vsop is a fine champagne cognac.

as is courvoisier napoleon, for example (or was for sure when i last checked, and tasted, and should still be).

a good idea might be if you are in a nice restaurant to order a snifter of something like martell cognac bleu..that is complicated too, as in france they use a little tulip glass..not the huge snifter americans always use.

i should be writing this stuff on my wine blog..maybe i will get to that.....
(i guess i did!)

anyway...you want to drink it straight.

i was having dinner with one of the members of the Camus family, at the time, and I suppose, still, owners of the largest privately-owned cognac house in the world and the restaurant served a camus napoleon grade with ginger ale; the Camus family member became very angry.
you don’t destroy the good taste of a fine cognac with mixer.

(mentioning the finest cognac in the world brings me to this point: the only true cognacs in the world come from the Charente region of france, which is just north of the great Bordeaux wine region). i have had brandies in Greece and spain referred to as cognacs, but they are not, just as not sparkling wine outside the champagne region in france is not a real champagne; the usa is about the only country to still allow the word “champagne” on bottles of sparkling wines.
if you cannot understand this, consider Vidalia onions from Vidalia, Georgia. They are named for the place where they are grown. You couldn’t call a onion grown in the San Joaquin valley of California a Vidalia onion, could you?
(of course French champagne producers such as moet & chandon and mumm’s now have wineries for sparkling wines in California, but none of what they create there are true champagnes – they are sparkling wines.)
(note: good old Microsoft office is capitalizing some of this as I write: do not roll over in your grave, ee cummings).
So, with a cognac grade of vsop and below you can mix with water or ginger, say. (years ago i read that cognac aficionados in hong kong were mixing 500 dollar bottles of cognac with water and having it with their steak dinners: so, I mean, if you pay for it, you can drink it however you like, right?)
To that end, a very good cocktail is one third vsop cognac, two thirds champagne, and fresh strawberries (cut into very small pieces). That was my drink of choice as an apertif during one visit to the Charente. My guide for the trip asked me where I learned of the cocktail. In a brochure your office gave me, I told her. Note: it tastes great.)

and....you might try a little bit of remy martin xo in a restaurant..good quality..nice bottle..a recent rolling stone story on buddy guy and bb king playing together had a nice foto of them with a bottle of remy martin xo in the background; (note: the nice bottle is modeled after a hundreds-year old flask discovered at the site of an ancient battle). Remy xo used to cost about 110 us dollars for a fifth..this is nice for drinking straight.....

also, see if you can find a hine cognac; good light tasting cognac – the opposite of the very bold-tasting (good way of putting it) Hennessy cognac. (note to hip hop cognac aficionados and others in that realm of the cognac world: Hennessy has that Irish sounding name as an Irishman named Hennessy went to France, married a French girl, started making “Yac” (a homeboy term for cognac) and voila, you have the birth of Hennessy Cognac.
..or otard vsop is a very good cognac. The last time I had it, it was made from nine year old cognacs – that is aged longer than some cognac house’s xo’s. (that is something else, cognacs have to be aged certain years to get to be called, vs or vsop, or napoleon, or extra. etc.; I had this in every writing/photo package I did on cognac for wine magazines; I am not looking it up – it has to be easily available via your friendly (?) www.)

otard vsop is much better than remy vsop, and is available at many duty free shops at international airports.

to get a good cognac priced around 90 usd or used to be, try martell cordon bleu or courvoisier napoleon....

even on a diet a little cognac is ok.....

you might try buying a mini.....little bottle of say remy vsop.

or have a remy martin vs or hennessy vs..or whatever and mix with diet ginger ale...

ok, yeah i know them: cognacs...

and, in a novella and screenplay of mine, “Ernesto and Jimmy,” featuring as a main character ernest hemingway, I have hemingway introducing another character to Martell Cordon Bleu in a lesson about fine cognacs.

(I have studied Hem for years: ”google” Paul Heidelberg Ernest Hemingway to get to a story that ran in Sports Illustrated years ago; it is at www.si.com/vault)

on one of five visits to the charente region, home of cognac, the finest spirit in the world..hands down..even over best scotches, i spent the night in this old cognac distillery.......scotch is made from malt like beer, cognac from grapes, like chateau margaux, etc. bordeauxs....so i was the first foreigner since this cognac distillery was built in 1700 to spend the night in the place...it is an old fire and coal-fired distillery. modern houses use gas and computer operated-operated furnaces now.

so this distillery dates from more than half a century before wine aficionado thomas jefferson visited france, and bordeaux, south of cognac. i have thought he might well have stopped in cognac...

at this old distillery, the owner looked like a humble farmer.....dirty clothes from stoking a fire with coal and wood, etc....before we "retire" for the night, he opens the doors to this huge warehouse and points to hundreds and hundreds of 350 liter barrels.

pointing to the cognacs in the barrels, he says, (in french, of course) that is my grandfather's, this is my great grandfather's, etc.

all of this at around 70 to 300 usd at least for a .750 liter, is easily worth millions and millions of dollars.

in the morning he drove me into town in a v-12 1967 ferrari – wow!
so i wrote about that for the wine news i think it was.

he said...in the morning a train will wake you up about five.

did it ever...i mean the train was like 10 feet or so from the side of the building...whole building shook.

i was next to the final product dripping into this barrel, sleeping on a cot.

he said you will love the sound, you will sleep like a baby.

i slept pretty good all right..my sister Jeanette suggested the cognac fumes helped for that..i think so.

...so for grades of cognacs above vsop you always have them...neat, i.e. straight, and not in some gargantuan glass – the cognac will dissipate before you taste it.

in the states at a wineshop vsop will cost about 4 or 5 for a mini..if you can find say remy martin xo...it might be 10,or so...i have seen it for sale....is good. in a restaurant in la or nyc, say, the remy xo after dinner might run 15 to 30 dollars "a pop."

i visited the french embassy in wash. dc. for a cognac function and sampled remy martin louis XIII. very ethereal..at the time cost about $1,500 a bottle....they did not pour out a lot for me...

in the charente, and champagne regions, when i had cognacs, such as cognac frapin extra and courvoisier napoleon, they did. (I had remy martin xo at the excellent, and I mean excellent, Boyers Les Crayeres in Reims, in the Champagne region. It was my after dinner drink of course and I had to do the “say when” to stop the bartender before he poured about five or six ounces into my glass; looking back on it, not a bad time to hold one’s speech. So, the restaurant/hotel is no longer under the same management. To salute my two meals at the great establishment, let me now say, very loudly, to a fantastic chef, “A Votre Sante, Gerard Boyer.”
and I just did, out loud.)

ok...so look for a mini of say remy martin vsop, otard vsop, or courvoiser napoleon.

you might have with a good sparkling or not sparkling mineral water.....

more later,
paul

Photo: "Cognac Still Life, Paris' Sixth Arrondissement" (c) paul heidelberg

(B) Dining At The Boyer Les Crayeres
(Added October 30, 2009)

The first began with Chef Gerard Boyer’s “Salad For My Father,” in French of course. I tell people if you see a wine that is Martha’s Vineyard, Or Pour Mon Mere Edith, it has to be good. No good chef or winemaker/winery owner is going to name a bad product after a loved one.
So, onto that first meal. The night before I had dined at a place that would not be described as shabby – the Royal Hotel and Restaurant in the countryside near Epernay (my room of four nights had sliding glass doors that looked out over about four or five miles of vineyards, mostly owned by Moet & Chandon, that stretched to Epernay).
So, for that night before, I had a salad with foie gras pieces about the size of one’s thumb. The foie gras, the salad and the rest of the meal was a fine dining experience.
But, the next day at Boyer Les Crayeres (at the time the restaurant sat only about 60 in any season – there were no outdoor tables) my meal began with Gerard’s salad for his father. My first bite was a piece of foie gras about the size of the nail on a little finger.
There was an explosion of taste that is simply indescribable.
Next came a course of fish, followed by a demitasse of ginger tea to “clear the palate.”
(Throughout the three-hour dining experience, my hostess and I enjoyed Pommery Brut Royal: Pommery, which owned the building where the restaurant was located, always had a table on demand, sort of like Frank Sinatra at the 21 Club in Manhattan, or a similar fine establishment; we had Pommery Brut, only, with each course, so I could see how well champagne goes with all foods, my hostess explained to me.)
The next course, a filet of beef cooked inside a breaded pouch, came rolling to the table on a cart; the waiter used a knife to open the breaded pouch, used to seal in the meat’s flavor, before slicing our next course, and presenting it on our plates (the breaded pouch was discarded; I am thinking as I write this, I wish I had it now, and not to discard!).
The final course was a home-made in the Les Crayeres’ kitchen pistachio ice cream, served in a small dish that had been rubbed with some fruit concoction, raspberry I believe.
Let me be succinct and say simply, the meal was superb.
Earlier in the day, my hostess has asked if I had ever dined at a three star restaurant in France (Michelin three-star, the top ranking in the world).
I replied, no I had not, and she just smiled.
An important note: earlier in the day someone representing a Champagne producer’s association replied, “Of Course,” when I asked if I should wear a tie.
Before that meal, answering the same question, my hostess said, “If you wish.”
Well, I had on a nice grey suit that I always wore in places like Paris, Washington, D.C. and New York City back then. I figured it was enough.
It was.
Of the thirty or so men dining that night I would say 60 percent or more were “sans cravat.”
I tell people if you can afford to dine in such an establishment, you can wear what you want to wear.
(Looking up the prices of that meal on the beautiful large-sized menu I kept for a souvenir, decorated with representations of watercolor paintings executed by a painter friend of Gerard Boyer, I saw that the price of the meal I had enjoyed, sans Champagne, was the then French Franc equivalent of 400 U.S. dollars.)
My second dining experience came at the Boyer Les Crayerer at “lunchtime” (sounds too parochial for that sort of feast!).
I remember having the aforementioned cocktail of cognac, champagne and fresh, small sized pieces of strawberries; then I had a bottle (by myself) of a Mumm’s Blanc de Blanc (from the chardonnay grape only) Cremant that was unbelievable (I do not think it was sold outside of France at the time). Then I had a half bottle of a fine (and very strong) Bordeaux rouge with a duck course, followed by a glass of Pommery Champagne Cuvee Louise Pommery in honor of the woman (that’s right, woman) who introduced dry champagne to the world; before Louise Pommery, who took over Pommery after her husband died, introduced that style of champagne to the world, all champagnes were sweet.
(Mentioning only chardonnay grapes go into a Blanc de Blanc wine, I should add that all champagnes are made from these grape varietals only: chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier.)
Afterwards, after my second dining experience at the Boyer Les Crayeres, I had that multi-ounce glass of Remy Martin XO, which I wrote about earlier in this blog.
And then, I am very proud to say as an artist and photographer, I took a hand-held, natural-light image of Chef Boyer in his kitchen with my professional grade Canon 35 MM camera that was good enough to be published in a national wine magazine in the U.S.
How I captured such an image after drinking all that I just described must say a lot about the benefits of fine French cuisine.
Writing for either The Wine News, or Wine Enthusiast, I don’t remember which, I noted that with many trips to the places where Champagnes and Cognacs originate, and with sampling both during many different visits to champagne and cognac houses each day, and with more wine or cognac with meals, I never suffered a bad hangover during my working trips to France.
I guess it was because I was dining well at the time.
So, that is the tale of the two meals at the Boyer Les Crayeres.
To repeat myself, let me say the toast again, that I made above:
“A Votre Sante, Gerard Boyer.”
(Let me add: What A Chef! When you experience cuisine prepared in the kitchen of such a chef, you understand why France regards its best chefs as it regards its best politicians and artists: from DeGaulle and Mitterand (from the Charente Region, home of Cognac) to Picasso, Miro, Braque, Hugo, Bizet and Ravel. Also, searching the Internet, I just discovered that Gerard Boyer has written a book: to get a better idea of the great dining experiences I had courtesy of this great chef, I have a two word suggestion – Get it.)

DO YOU TASTE THE WOOD IN THE WINE?

(Update: Vieux Telegraphe Chateauneuf du Pape La Crau 2007 was ranked Number Three in the world by Wine Spectator magazine in its Top 100 wines for 2009.)

I had planned for my next post to be about the great meal I enjoyed at the Boyer Les Crayeres in Reims (Raaaaaahhhhmmmmm is about how you properly pronounce it, not "Reams" as I once heard some Brit say), but I think I will first tell the tale of my mother and Vieux Telegraphe Chateauneuf du Pape.

Chateauneuf du Pape is an excellent, complex red wine that I have always found drinks well when young, unlike some Bordeaux reds that can take decades "to come around."

My mother, who passed away in 1999, and is remembered, with other loved ones, in "Paris, Prague and Salzburg: A Remembrance," which I wrote in the Spring of 1999 on laptop computer in each of those cities and published at http://www.paulheidelberg.com/, had a humble upbringing on a farm near Marion, Texas, but she had innate intelligence and taste.

During my frequent trips back to Texas from Florida in the late 1980s, when I was working as a writer and columnist at the "Sun-Sentinel" newspaper in Fort Lauderdale, I would bring wines to share with my family or purchase them in San Antonio.

My brother had introduced me to wines years earlier; we typically liked reds, and my sister-in-law and my sister preferred whites, such as a good chardonnay such as the chards Marimar Torres is creating in Sonoma County, California.

My mother liked reds, for a very interesting reason, and Vieux Telegraphe was her favorite, so I always bought a bottle of that wine for my Christmas visits.

I never met my grandfather, as he died before I was born, but I heard stories about his making homemade wine and beer back on the farm in Marion (not far from San Antonio, now the seventh largest city in the U.S.) Early in my teens, I had a chance to experience that winemaking when we were cleaning the garage in San Antonio owned by my grandmother, our "Oma" (German for grandmother).

We came across a huge -- and I mean huge -- ceramic container in the back of my grandmother's garage that she had forgotten about, that had made the trip from Marion to San Antonio, when my grandmother had moved there after my grandfather's passing 20 years earlier.

We Americans are not like the Italian kids I saw while stationed in Italy during four years in the U.S. Air Force: you'd see eight year-old boys walking down the street, drinking from two liter bottles of vino they had just gone to the local wineshop to get to take home to their families. So I was surprised to be allowed to have a taste of the wine all the relatives were making such a fuss about when I was not much older than eight; I was also surprised to think it didn't taste too bad.

That the wine had made it through all those hot Texas summers without being "cooked" is also surprising. After five trips to the Charente Region of France, home of the world's finest spirit, Cognac, I have realized that wine might have become fortified by the heat over the years. It might have been taking on some of the aspects of brandy.

Back to the Christmas tale.

Growing up on a farm, my mother did not have the opportunity to enjoy wine tastings as young American women now often do.

But the first time she tasted the excellent Vieux Telegraphe, she said, sounding like the most erudite oenophile in the world: "Do you taste the wood in the wine? It reminds me of my father's wine." That is when I learned my grandfather used to age his wines in wood. To make them, he used the wild Mustang grapes that covered the Central Texas landscape, not the 13 types of grapes that go into Chateauneuf du Pape, which includes the increasingly-popular-on-its-own Syrah, but he knew what he was doing when it came to making wine. I know because I tasted the product.

And my mother knew what she was talking about when she tasted wine, unlike some would-be wine lovers who use every adjective imaginable to make futile attempts to describe the tastes and smells they are experiencing (if I hear foxy one more time...).

My mother, raised on that farm in Texas with her sister and three brothers, could have competed with the most expert panel of wine tasters at a tasting in New York City or San Francisco: she had nailed it.