No commercial yeasts?

The folks are in town and so we headed south to the Willamette Valley outside of Portland for some delicious vino. We took a tour of Domaine Drouhin, started by the famed Burgundy producer/family/brand Joseph Drouhin. I had always assumed that they were huge commercial producer, ala Georges Dubeouf to Beaujolais. Okay, so Burgundy is unique, with all those vineyards designations and the Drouhin group produces wines at many levels (price points and quality), so my assumptions may be partly true.  Mark, our tour guide, tells us that at that location they only irrigate sparingly (vines under 3 years old),  don’t use pesticides, replant from their own vines and don’t use commercial yeasts. Can this be true?

The tour ended in a tasting with them pairing an average Cote-du-Beaune Villages with their Oregon Pinot Noir. Guess who won? Good marketing or mark of superiority? Probably a bit of both.  It was pretty good stuff, although at $45+ out of my daily drinker and “nice meal with friends” categories and into my special occasion bracket. Was it special occasion good? Not sure, but their property is beautiful and I recommend a visit. 

On our way back we stopped at Vinopolis in Portland and I picked up a bottle of Evesham Wood Pinot Noir, Tempranillo Rose and Pinot Gris/Gewurtraminer blend.  According to the clerk Evesham Wood does use native yeasts but only in the pinots. Who knows? I couldn’t verify this on their site (although they did talk a lot about trying to craft a wine that is unique to the region using sustainable and responsible agricultural practices). Is it important (native yeasts)? As a semi-informed consumer perhaps I should know more about this before writing whole wineries off, but the thought of a yeast designed in a factory to fabricate a flavor or characteristics of a wine does not appeal to me. “Yes, but it’s a Burgundy yeast!” Yes, but… I want Oregon Pinot’s to taste like Oregon- the weather, soil, yeast and all that creating a unique taste and experience. But, I can’t afford to taste Burgundy Pinots, not good ones, anyway. So, I can’t compare them. Should it matter? When looking for variety to please folks with different tastes, I think it does. A lot of people make whacky decisions as to why they do or do not buy things. For me, given a choice between two wines, each having been untasted, I will go for the one made with less manipulation involving machines and laboratories (if that information is even disclosed by the winemaker) and I will seek wines like these out.

We drank the Evesham Pinot that night and it was delicious, better than the entry level Drouhin and $20 less in price.  In my opinion, both wineries seem to have the right ideas and goals when making wine and I hope more wineries approach it this way, and if they already are, let the public know about it. 

Can I be a locavore?

Can I be a locavore? Maybe a better question is, do I want to be? I have been half-joking with Sara, refusing to eat something that did not come from someplace nearby. “Do you want a latte, because I going to grab myself one?” Sure, if you can get beans grown in Shelton with cream from a cow grazing near Tenino and raw sugar from a plant in Chehalis. Which then leads to the practical question, can I give up coffee; and Dairy Queen blizzards on a hot day when the kids have just finished a soccer game and want to celebrate; and a nice Cabernet Franc from the Loire.

The answer, of course, is no. So where to draw the line? I am going to try and figure that out without frustrating my wife and kids with this adventure. I see it as an adventure, but they may not agree. The biggest hurdles for me are the staples- rice, bread, tortillas, pasta. These starchy dry foods either have to be made myself (bread sounds fun, but tortillas?) or perhaps not eaten at all. Where do I get rice? Does it even grow in Washington?

Here’s what I (or rather my wife and I) plan to already tackle. Making the following things at home.

• Yogurt
• Bread
• Canned vegetables and fruit for the winter (from our own garden and CSA).
• Dried herbs from our garden (for the winter)
• Wine (wait, not wine)
• Ice cream

I am still trying to get local milk from Smith Brothers but they are way too busy apparantly and can’t call me back. Looks like I will be checking in to some resources for local meat.  If I can go most of the week right now during Summer when it’s easiest to do with eating local food that would be a great accomplishment and give me momentum for the coming Fall and Winter.

Badly done, Matthew, badly done

So, in Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, he mentions that a girl once told him that the key to understanding a woman’s heart can be found in reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (only a girl would use the phrase “understanding a woman’s heart” so it must be an accurate quote).  It just so happens to be my wife’s favorite book so I read it a few years back and even watched the BBC mini-series (with my infant daughter, no less, in a tiny Panamanian air-conditioned room to pass the time). What I gleaned from it was that if are a really decent guy you have a good chance of living happily ever after with a decent and witty woman. If you are really decent guy and owner of a massive estate in the English countryside you have an even better chance.

There have been a lot of movies of Austen books done in the last 10 years, from modern adaptations to abbreviated retellings with A-list stars. We have seen them all. I don’t mind saying I enjoy them. I enjoy watching my wife enjoy them.  There is a scene in one of them that I seem to always remember and I am not sure why. It’s in Emma and the main character (Emma, of course) is being rebuked by a male friend for belittling another friend of theirs. I won’t get in to the specifics but he says “badly done, Emma, badly done”. For some reason I can always picture the look on her face. It shows real remorse, but there is nothing she can do about it. She can only try to fix the hurt she caused.

So, all this said, today I missed my son’s award ceremony at school where recieved an achievement certificate for reading over 1,200,000 words in books over the past year. The little guy is in the 3rd grade, so that’s quite a feat and a well deserved honor.  A lot of things happened that made me miss it, and I won’t get into them, but needless to say I feel really terrible about it. Badly done, Matthew, badly done.  Like all parents you know you will make mistakes, but the look on his face when he asked me why I wasn’t there was something awful. I love him. I want him to know how proud I am of him. He is good kid. He is a great son. He needs to knows that his efforts do not go unnoticed from his father.

Now, if I can just get my wife to read Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino…

I don’t care about condos

So thanks to a reference on olyblog, I had people checking out my post on Oly 2012.  Since all of the talk is about condos, and I am noticing pretty little signs popping up around town with “Save our View” on them I can’t help but chime in. I think when I have contemplated downtown’s potential it didn’t center around who would be moving in and living there but a central gathering place for everyone in the area because of the variety of things to be found there.  Maybe that’s naive, I don’t know. I guess I can’t expect change without people actually drawing up plans, breaking ground, and most likely tearing an existing building down to make way for the new.  They may have a variety of reasons why they want to do this, but chief among them would be money- maybe to make a lot of it and, they hope, not lose any.

I don’t plan to buy one of the condos,  so the issue only concerns me if it adversely impacts the ability or the willingness of other people’s plans to try something downtown that I think would be enjoyed by many.  However, if cultural issues are the greatest hurdle in revitalizing downtown, I can’t think of a worse place to start than there.  Frankly, it doesn’t offer much reason for me to go there now (specifically the parking lots and buildings beween the Oyster House/Bay View and the park on the other side) and it wouldn’t after the development. There is that fountain, but unless it’s hot and it can provide a bit of misty refreshment it’s not much to look at.  Right now there is a big building blocking my view and there would be another building blocking my view, too, if the developer succeeds.  Now if someone were to say, let’s remove the building that’s there, build a square with a fountain with lights on in the evening (see below) or commission a sculpture by an important artist that people will want to see in 50 years,  I would be all over that. But that’s not going to happen. So, in the end, nothing would be all that different.

Okay, maybe this is too big a fountain.

Where football flows like beer and water

Every time I drive up Capital Boulevard (which is funny since it’s actually south and I equate going up with going north) and by the old brewery I see the land in between where the railroad tracks head toward the river and over to the Valley Athletic Club I think that it would be a perfect spot for a soccer stadium. How cool would it be to take the bus on a Saturday afternoon over here, donning a jersey and joining several thousand other Olympia fans as we cheer on our local team to promotion.  I am not asking for much, just something along the lines of Fratton Park in Portsmouth or Fulham’s Craven Cottage. 

 

 

I guess I will just to watch the Euro’s from the comfort of my living room starting tomorrow. Go Spain!