Can’t tell your Viognier from your vodka or your Bogle from your Bloody Mary?   There is one wine-soaked event that will teach you everything you need to know -  as long as you are willing to work for it.  Once a year Gambit’s Reds, Whites & Blues wine tasting brings together 150 different wines (and other beverages) in a bluesy event at the Pavilion of the Two Sisters at City Park.  This is a teach-yourself evening where you stroll around the beautiful room, chat with friends, listen to The Harry Mayronne Trio and Leah Chase and nibble on goodies from, among others, Besh Steakhouse, St. James Cheese and Cafe Degas.

The best part?  There is a raffle to win 150 bottles of wine.  Trust me (my best friend won last year) that is a LOT of wine.  It might even get you thru this holiday season.

New Orleans has no shortage of ways to imbibe - but 150 different drinks at one event…and the chance to win a bunch too?  This is a must-do.  Bring friends.  Bring co-workers.  Bring visitors.  Bring a designated driver.

Thursday October 15

6pm-9pm

City Park Pavilion of the Two Sisters

Cheers!

It may be a cold, rainy Monday night in London but people all over the city are excited about what is to happen tomorrow in Washington DC.  Well, maybe not people ALL over the city - but definitely three taxi drivers, two advertising execs, a United flight attendant and two guys at a sporting goods shop in Fulham.  There is an energy around London that I can, with relative certainty, say was not here when Bush took office.

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The Lexi Theatre (up the street from where I am staying this week) is broadcasting inauguration coverage live from 8pm tomorrow night.  Tickets have been sold-out since Saturday.  The advertising agency my friends work for is tuning into the festivities first thing tomorrow and will keep their business television on Obamamania all day (plus providing snacks and doilies in red, white and blue). Craigslist London boasts of the American Expat Meet-Up group and their inauguration party for over 4,000 people.  Madame Tussauds is unveiling their wax figure of Obama tomorrow and Democrats Abroad’s Inaugural Ball at the Royal Lancaster Hotel is sold out.

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Whatever your politics, one thing is clear: in one small corner of the world, an ocean away from the United States, there are a helluva lot of people holding out hope that the change Americans have voted in is going to make the world a better place.

Like lots of people we spent Thanksgiving week traversing the highways and byways of Louisiana.  We started with dinner in Lafayette on Sunday night, New Orleans on Tuesday, Baton Rouge on Wednesday and New Orleans again on Thursday.  Punctuated by a super rainy weekend,  by Saturday evening we had no groceries and no energy.  The only option was dinner out.  We were treated to the braised short ribs (to be specific, “sweet and sticky fried beef short ribs with hearts of palm, cucumber and lime-ginger vinaigrette”) by Lilette at Gambit’s Red Whites & Blues fundraiser and swore we would visit the restaurant “soon.”  Though that turned out to be a month later, we were thrilled that we stuck with it. Lilette is a neighborhood brasserie without the pastiche of a brasserie.  The service was attentive without being annoying, the atmosphere was charming and lively and the food was fabulous.  Once again I found it refreshing to visit a  New Orleans restaurant lacking a sibling rivalry amongst the entrees, with each trying to outdo the other in size, number of ingredients and colors.

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The other great thing about Lilette was the wine list - which included an interesting and diverse collection of wines from $24 to $135 (not including a few expensive Champagnes).   We selected a 2005 Bordeaux for $42 that was a fantastic match for our meals.  I had not heard of the particular wine before, Chateau Tour Bayard, but I knew the region in Bordeaux (Montagne-Saint-Emillion) and I knew that 2005 Bordeaux was already building a reputation for being one of the best in decades.

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Five years ago the restaurant company I was working for in New York took on the laborious task of turning all seven of our restaurant’s voluminous international wine lists into strictly American wine lists.   It was just shy of a monumental task which our 29-year-old wine director accomplished by first finding wineries in each state, then by tasting a tremendous amount of wine, some of which was incredibly bad.  Fortunately there was a lot that was also very good.

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As it happens Louisiana is proud to be home to six wineries - but only one of those wineries produces wine from grapes, a primary necessity in selecting the wine for our wine lists.  Thru no regional nepotism, John Seago’s Pontchartrain Vineyards wine was selected as one of the wines we would not only have on our wine lists around the country but would also be featured at a press-heavy kickoff luncheon in Manhattan.  There were 100 American wines opened at this lunch event and American wine all-stars such as Michael Mondavi, Jess Jackson, Bo Barrett (of Bottle Shock fame) and Doug Schafer poured wines side by side winemakers like John Seago.

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John was wonderful.  He is an avuncular character well-versed not only on wine and Louisiana but how those two things intermingle.  As well he is quite a history buff and knows a tremendous amount about wine’s history in America.  His quest to start a vineyard in Louisiana is enough to fill several hundred pages alone.

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This Saturday, November 29th, from noon to 5pm, Pontchartrain Vineyards is hosting a Harvest & Holiday celebration with food, hayrides, barrel tastings, tours, music and, of course, wine.  Adults $7, Children under 12, free.  This is a great opportunity to meet and mingle with the people of Pontchartrain Vineyards and to taste wine local to Louisiana that doesn’t start with “strawberry” or “muscadine”

Click here for directions.

In conjunction with the inaugural release of their new Monterey line, La Crema, a producer of good, reasonably priced, cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines (each in the mid-$20 range)  also launched a new website to help consumers understand what is behind the flavor and aroma descriptors used on their wines.

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The website is www.lacrema.com.  The site takes a while to load and, for your own sanity, make sure you are on a high speed connection, but once you are there it is well worth the journey.  Winemaker Melissa Stackhouse talks you through a “virtual tasting” of their Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines explaining the various aromas and flavors you can expect from their wines.  Another option finds her coaching you on how to host a  “tasting party” for friends.  The idea being that you can purchase and prepare aroma and flavour components frequently mentioned in wine (examples:  cherries, black tea, butterscotch).  You buy these components, put them in containers, let your friends sniff everything out then see if you can find that aroma in the wine.  It is an excellent idea - is a lot of fun for both a novice and an experienced wino alike.

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So, for anyone who is still in front of a computer at work, not yet on official Thanksgiving holiday leave…check it out!

With just 5 shopping days until Thanksgiving it is time to think about wine.

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The first rule - the only rule, really - is, “Don’t stress about it.”  It is sort of like a wedding - you expend a tremendous amount of energy thinking about exactly which water glasses to use and whether your sister walks before your cousin or after and whether your 3-year-old nephew should wear a white rose or a blue carnation in his lapel  and the bottom line is:  It just doesn’t matter.  No one remembers the glasses, the order of bridesmaids or the ring bearer.  People remember whether you had fun, whether they had fun and whether Uncle Bernie hit on your college roomate (again!).

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Keep the same thing in mind for Thanksgiving.  Family holidays are….well, they are not exactly what Hallmark would lead you to believe.  They are high-stress, high-travel, high-expense gatherings.   If you are fortunate enough to be the one hosting Thanksgiving you have to clean, cook and manage expectations. You want a beautifully set table, perfectly prepared food and a fun and relaxing day.  When it comes to wine, just do not stress yourself out by trying to find the absolute best wine possible to match with dinner.   It’s a crapshoot anyway.  Who knows what Cousin Gerty is going to bring this year.  Last year it was that fluffy green pudding.

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Here is a list of a few wines that will go well with Thanksgiving this year.  They are all accessible and reasonably priced and will make you a very happy host or guest.

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Cellar masters may be sleeping and Cork & Bottle may be locked up tight for the night but at exactly 12:01am (local time) on the third Thursday of  November, wine drinkers all over the world will be celebrating the release of Beaujolais Nouveau.

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Truly a masterpiece of marketing, a full third of France’s Beaujolais region’s wines are sold as Beaujolais Nouveau, a term invented by Georges Deboeuf to describe wines   created for quaffing within weeks or even days of being released.

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Beaujolais wines are made from the Gamay Noir grape, a cousin of both Pinor Noir and Chardonnay, and are made by a technique called carbonic maceration (aka whole-berry maceration) which leads to them tasting much more fruity and grapy than most wines.  With carbonic maceration whole grape clusters are put in cement or stainless steel tanks which naturally crushes the bottom third of the grape clusters.  The natural yeasts found on the grape skins begin fermentation, which produces CO2, which then seeps into the skin of the grape and begin to stimulate fermentation at an intracellular level due to an absence of oxygen in the tanks.  The bottom line is that a fruity wine with very little tannin is produced.

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It looks like Phoenix Recycling can, again, accept cardboard.

Effective immediately, WE CAN TAKE CARDBOARD (shipping boxes, cereal boxes, pizza boxes, etc). Our collection crews have devised a way to keep the cardboard separate. Please keep cardboard separate from mixed paper - flattened next to or under your bin.”

But GLASS is still a no-no:

The Recycling Foundation of Baton Rouge can no longer market all they take in. We need any help you can offer in finding markets for what amounts to clean, heavy sand. It makes an excellent dustless road pack, if you have a shell road on your property or business and want to test it out, let us know. We are watching for research results in Florida for use as a wetlands and beach stabilizer. The real problem is that most large buyers are very far away and there is a glut in most markets. Many Municipal programs do not accept glass. We are working on finding markets and resuming glass collection.”

Beginning this month Sam’s Club will be selling its first Fair Trade Certified wine with a really cringy name.  Neu Direction  is made from 100% Malbec Grapes sourced from 20 small farms in the Lujan de Cuyo wine region near Mendoz, Argentina.  It will run about $10 a bottle.

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You have probably seen the term Fair Trade Certified on coffee, flowers and maybe sugar or flour.  What it means is simple and good:  FTC means fair prices and guaranteed minimum floor prices to farmers.  It also guarantees fair (and safe) labor conditions, eliminates unnecessary middlemen, creates and allows for representative organizations for the farmers and workers, fosters and funds community development and encourages (and sometimes demands) environmental sustainability.

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With 47 million Sam’s Club members worldwide, that is a lot of potential for development of schools and medical clinics in needy places.  No one in New Orleans is a stranger to how welcome that is in the world.  Or next door.

In most of America you would not be seeking out a great white wine in nearly-mid-November.  As we are well aware, however, New Orleans is not “most of America.”  The recent cool evenings may hint at winter coming just around the corner but until then the hot sunny days keep our convertible tops down and the white wine flowing.–

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It was in that frame of mind that I ordered a white wine before dinner last night and was rewarded with one of the best white wines I have had in a really long time.  A 2007 Stadt Krems Grüner Veltliner “Kremstal” from Austria’s newly indoctrinated Kremstal DAC (explained below).   Grüner Veltliner is a wine similar to Pinot Grigio but more consistently good (imho) and with richer and more complex flavors.  This wine was intense and full bodied with classic Grüner  flavors of superripe pear, spice, and stone fruit.  The finish was long and smooth with fresh citrus and tropical fruit flavors lingering for ages.  The wine was absolutely outstanding.  Emeril’s Delmonico sells it by the glass for $10 and you should be able to buy it by the bottle for $16-$20 elsewhere in the city.  It is imported by Vin DiVino in Chicago so if you can not find it, ask your local wine shop to get it in for you.

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