Mock Turtle

Hemp Bliss?

Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease.

Found on the shelf at Loblaw’s.

Of all the things to name a hemp beverage…

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Update: More here

As Putin rears his head

and comes into the airspace of the United States of America,

where do they go?

It’s Alaska.

It’s just right over the border.

It is from Alaska

that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation,

Russia,

because they are right there,

they are right next to our state.

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We started a new notebook at the beginning of the year — conveniently, we were running out of pages in the old book just as 2007 was running out of days. The new notebook is apparently mainly a story of whites, which seem to have both more numerous and better than the reds we’ve tasted this year. We’ve had some nice reds (see below), but quite a few mediocre ones. Spain and Portugal in particular rather disappointing — a lot of notations to the effect of “nothing special” and “too much oak” even on some older wines where you’d think the oak would have had a chance to integrate more.

Highlights:

Most of these were Vintages wines; current availability unknown.

Whites:

Chateau de Cruzeau 2004, AOC Pessac-Leognan, 12.5%, $22.75. Characteristic (<– we hope) elegant white Bordeaux, subdued mature nose, yeast, minerals, lemon, “smoke” (i.e., oak). Pineapple and minerals, lanolin on palate, which is “paradoxically lean yet unctuous” (J.).

Kruger-Rumpf 2004 Munsterer Rheinberg Riesling Kabinett (Nahe), 10%, $16.85. Citrus (lime), “honey-dipped rocks”, limestone, medium intensity. Off-dry with med+ acid. An elegant, precise wine. Can stand up to Asian food e.g. a lightly sauced stir-fry.

Alois Legder 2005 Pinot Bianco (Alto Adige), 12.5%, $20.65. Pinot Blanc from northern Italy, juicy Chinese yellow pear on the nose with minerals, hint of oiliness, lees, tropical fruit. Silky smooth on palate; very well balanced.

d’Arenberg The Last Ditch Viognier 2006, 13%, $19.95. A ripe, lush Viognier from McLaren Vale. Minerals, yeast, lemon, coconut/pineapple on the nose. Dry, medium body and acid with good balance and length. A sumptious wine with enough acidity to keep it fresh. Well-integrated oak.

Blason de Bourgogne Cuvee 2006 Saint-Veran, 13.5%, $18.95. A white Burgundy (Chardonnay) from near Pouilly-Fuisse but without the P-F price tag. Dried mangoes, crisp pear, upside-down pineapple cake, mineral/limestone, sugar/syrup at room temperature. Dry, med acid and body. Elegant — rich on palate with good grip and acid.

Andre Blank Close Schwensi 2006 Pinot Gris, AOC Alsace, 13.5%, $18.95. A rich, well-balanced Pinot Gris from Alsace. They also make a nice Pinot Blanc. We had a surfeit of good PGs this year — should also mention Gerard Neumayer Pinot Gris 2006 and Bortuluzzi 2006 Pinot Grigio (the latter doing a mean impression of a good Chablis, but with “stoned fruit” on the nose, according to J.’s notes).

Domaine Roger Lugnot Pouilly-Fuisse “Terroir” 2006, 13%, $27.95. An elegant white burgundy; terroir on the nose — minerality, rocks, walk in the woods after a rain shower; hard to place the fruit (maybe apple?). Dry, med acid, med+ body. Worth the extra $$ (assuming you like the style). Birthday gift for J.

Another birthday gift, from last year: Domaine Louis Moreau Chablis 1er Cru Vaulignot 2004, 12.5%, $26.95. Fresh nose of limestone, lemon, green apple; barely dry with med+ acid, med body; good balance. “Pure class” according to J.

Reds:

Roccolo di Mizzole 2005 Valpolicella Superiore, 13%, $16.85. I’m a big fan of a good Valpo, though they’re hard to find these days except in a Ripasso style. Sour cherry, spice, earth, wood, oak on the nose, dry with med+ acid and bod, med tannin; a focused wine with good follow-through from nose to palate. J. tasting blind mistook for Cab Sauv. Good food wine.

Duque de Viseu Vinho Tinto 2004 (Dao), 13.5%, $12.95. A good value from Portugal on the Vintages Essentials list. Spice, toast/oak, dark berries (blackberries); mature nose dominated by charred wood. (Yes it’s rather oaky.) Good follow-through on palate; good food wine, good value for money.

Chateau Croze de Pys 2005, AOC Cahors, 13.5%, ~ $18. Vanilla oak on the nose, fresh/stewed cherries, brambly terroir, spice. Very dry. Good follow through from nose on palate. Soft well-integrated tannins. Could use another year or two.

Flat Rock Cellars Gravity Pinot Noir 2004, VQA Niagara, 13.5%, $29.95. This is Flat Rock’s premium Pinot: intense cherry, preserved pork, floral (violet?) notes; complex and changing. Wild mushroom, earthy, barnyard notes. Very dry, med acid and body. Characteristic and classic but J. feels it’s a bit “light” compared to a good Burgundy e.g. a Savigny. I likes more than J.

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We did our quasi-annual day trip to Niagara today — the first and last time ever we do this on the Labour Day weekend — QEW traffic having transformed the day trip into something approaching five hours of driving (not to mention a bad decision that had landed us right in the middle of CNE Lakeshore traffic before we even left Toronto).

Traffic having been uncooperative, we had to scratch a few places from the schedule that we’d intended to visit — we wanted to go back to Peninsula Ridge to try them out again after having been a bit nonplussed there some years ago, and also possibly try out the new-ish Fielding Estates winery also in the Beamsville area. These were supposed to be fillers before lunch at Vineland Estates, but as things turned out we arrived at VE some 45 minutes after our reservation time, and some 15 minutes after they’d stopped serving lunch.

What Vineland has between lunch and dinner is a sort of “light” menu — mainly cold dishes and few hot dishes that don’t require too much hard thinking from the kitchen to prepare. We split a salad and a cheese plate as starters and I had the Cumbrae lamb burger with tzatziki sauce (I think there was also supposed to be feta, but not being a feta fan really I didn’t miss it) while J. had a cold charcuterie plate. J. is a charcuterie fan and greatly enjoyed her plate, and I was very happy with my burger. One of these days we want to do dinner there.

After Vineland we rambled over to Niagara College which has a teaching winery and wine shop at their  industrial-looking campus at QEW and Glendale Rd. It’s not the kind of place you go for ye olde wine countrie atmosphere. We had earlier enjoyed their 2005 unoaked Chard, $15 and good value for money, so we were curious what else they had on offer. We tasted and bought bottles of the 2006 unoaked Chard, the 2006 Pinot Noir, and the 2005 Cab Franc (also a Gamay, probably 2006, which we passed on). All smooth, likeable wines with reasonable varietal character (esp. the Pinot for its price), maybe a bit confected though, all under $20. We’ll see how we like them outside the winery.

They had a interesting educational program going — small tasting glasses with samples of actual peaches, pineapple, raisins, soil, tobacco etc. to compare with the wines. A neat idea to combine with a tasting maybe. They’ve also hired a graphic designer for their labels, which are now kind of cute and more likely to catch the eye on an LCBO shelf than the previous utilitarian design.

From NCT to our last winery destination, Coyote’s Run, was a study in contrasts. Coyote’s Run has their 2006 reds out. Somewhat to my surprise, 2006 was (for them, at least) a relatively lean year weather-wise. (I remember walking back from work during a week of ultra-hot days in the summer of 2006 but then that was only a week…) Their reds are generally at 11.5% and delicate rather than forceful. They’ve reintroduced the Red Paw-Black Paw distinction which they abandoned for the 2005 vintage (not enough crop I think — evil 2005 winter?), reflecting the two kinds of soil they have on their property. Among the reds they had a Black Paw Pinot and Cab Franc as well as Red Paw Pinot, Cab Franc, and Syrah. We weren’t too sure about the Pinots this year, so we passed entirely on the simpler (and cheaper) Red Paw but we decided to take a risk on the Black Paw, at $36 by far our most expensive purchase. Picked up a Cab Franc in both Paws — our server says she liked the Red Paw better and somewhat to my surprise I was inclined to agree, at least at the winery. It will be fascinating to compare them. Finally, somewhat to our surprise, we decided to take a risk with their new Red Paw Syrah — first vintage from these vines, mainly black pepper at the moment to my nose, fruit uncertain.

So a study in contrasts — smooth, likeable, well-priced wines from NCT; a bit of living dangerously at Coyote’s Run. We shall see…

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The Guardian on yesterday’s fuel protests in Europe:

Long queues formed at Spanish and Portuguese supermarkets after truckers said shops could run out of fresh food in days. Even before the strike began thousands of people formed long lines outside petrol stations and supermarkets.

Supermarket chains Eroski and Carre-four said they had stocked up on food ahead of the strike, but some markets closed yesterday.

Talk about food insecurity:

Last week, Meals on Wheels in Victoria announced it would be shutting down after 35 years of service, citing gas prices as one of the main reasons. Yesterday, prices in Greater Victoria soared as high as $1.49.9 a litre, among the most expensive in the country.

This all makes me want to load up on fresh food from the new farmer’s market on University at lunchtime.

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The whole fuss about BPA in water bottles and baby bottles is making me crazy.

First, there is no good science that shows any deleterious effects in humans at normal levels of BPA consumption.

Second, it’s pretty hard to make polycarbonate water bottles (or baby bottles, for that matter) leach much BPA. Hard plastics like polycarbonate are pretty stable. You have to heat them up for a good while before you’ll get any significant BPA out of them — and even then, the amount that leaches is well under the recommended consumption limit.

Third, bottles are a wildly minor source of estrogenic compounds. That white stuff that lines cans of food, including baby formula? Full of BPA, and cans leach much more than polycarbonate baby bottles. Also, meat, soy, and lots of herbs and vegetables. But I don’t see anyone banning tofu or soymilk or celery or tinned tomatoes. Quite the opposite: the soymilk-and-tofu crowd have been loudly demanding action on polycarbonate bottles. Soymilk in a stainless-steel sippy cup isn’t exactly the improvement, estrogenically speaking, that they think it is.

But most importantly, it’s yet another example of worrying about the wrong thing — a ban on BPA-containing baby bottle is a small and pointless trick that gives the illusion of action and control, designed to make us happy while distracting us from the bigger issue. BPA is not the issue. The issue here is that we’re eating the wrong things because our system of food production is focused on “products”, not on food — and most definitely not on health. But it’s so much easier to take advantage of people’s poor risk-assessment skills to pick on one unfamiliar, unpronounceable chemical than it is to even mention that maybe, just maybe, we should do something about the way we produce and consume food.

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It’s about time. Acoording to Rex Murphy, “the days of Tim Hortons as an essential Canadian experience are dwindling and few”:

Their “roll up the rim” is a farcical gimmick. Their signature phrases — “double double” being the most familiar — gall more than they please. Their ridiculous lineups — in some places it takes longer to pick up a coffee than to pick up a licence at motor vehicle registration — have lost the kind of self-congratulatory charm they had some time back. People used to smile at each other for the silly indulgence of lining up for a not-very-good cup of coffee. They don’t smile as much any more. They mutter.

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I had M. with me when wine shopping on the weekend, so we ended up with a case full of mostly sub-$13 experiments. (Yay, strong Canadian dollar!)

So far:

Willm Riesling Reserve, France, Vintages, $15.85: all petrol and varnish on the nose. Tastes a bit thin. Won’t buy again at that price, but those fond of very dry, very petrolly rieslings may like it.

Spinelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Italy, $6.95: not a lot there, but very smooth — no harshness at all. Pleasant with food; managed somehow not to clash too badly with my tunaburger and D.’s pork chops. Good alternative to Farnese. Would buy again.

Volto Primitivo, Italy, $13.95 in a PET bottle: thought we’d give it a try because of the PET bottle despite the rather goofy label (at left — purple with a carnival mask). Decent character — nothing special but perfectly drinkable; possibly moreso than the Wolf Blass PET offering. A shoo-in for camping trips. Will definitely buy again.

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HT to Val Dodge’s blog:

I first saw Beyond the Orchard apple slices in the local Sobeys in early January, but didn’t see it again until mid-March. They’ve been in stock steadily since then, so presumably people are buying them. This package­­­­—a plastic box containing five individual sealed wrappers—contains just 285 grams of sliced apples, equivalent to about one and a half regular-sized apples. Each package contains seven very small apple wedges that together represent about one quarter of an apple.

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Did you know that there is a pitched battle being waged over the composition of cheese?

Since technological advances have made possible the creation of a whole new generation of milk products (for example, isolates or milk protein concentrates), which are not necessarily subject to tariff quotas and can therefore be imported freely into Canada,(2) how the FDR and the DPR are interpreted clearly has economic implications for industry stakeholders. On a practical level, the use of isolates or imported milk protein concentrates allows cheese processors to reduce their costs, since imported milk protein is typically much cheaper than milk protein originating in Canada. Therefore, it is to the processors’ advantage to rely on the DPR interpretation whereby all milk solids can be used in cheese production, in that this interpretation allows for an increase in low-cost milk protein imports. However, this interpretation puts Canadian dairy producers at a serious economic disadvantage in that a higher level of milk protein imports would result in reduced revenues from milk sales. When cheese processors import milk proteins, the result is lower sales of milk proteins derived from Canadian milk. Canadian milk proteins are thus “displaced” by imports and must be sold off on domestic markets that yield a low return, such as the market for animal feed. This state of affairs translates into major economic losses for Canadian dairy producers. Therefore, strict enforcement of the FDR is very beneficial economically for Canadian dairy producers.

I thought another side of the whole cheese vs. globalization issue was that we did not allow milk producers to use their own milk to make cheese, but that wasn’t mentioned.

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