If Wine Tasting Were An Olympic Sport, We’d Be Gold Medal Winners

Yes, y’all did just read that title.  Welcome to the best part of late July/early August that happens once every four years: the Olympics!  Lindsay and I love the Olympics; we were on the phone with each other for a good part of the opening ceremony because that was… we’ll call it uniquely British.

Without question, though, the best part was when HM Queen Elizabeth and one of her most well-known subjects, Commander James Bond, took a helicopter to the games and then proceeded to parachute from it into the arena area.  Danny Boyle could have skipped the rest of the opening ceremony and just showed that on a loop for three hours, done the parade of athletes, let the Queen and Jacques Rouge open the games, lit the cauldron (which I think is, despite it’s simplicity, the most elegant cauldron in the history of these modern games; I can’t speak for the cauldrons at the opening ceremonies in Ancient Greece), given Sir Paula his bit, fireworks, fin.  It would have made more sense than what happened Friday night in East London.  For the most part, I think we can all agree that for the most part, it was an incredible show, but there were a few bits that didn’t make much sense.  Plus, it seemed to be a bit of an edited history of Britain that left out a few details that I guess we’ll just let slide.

Now that the games have begun, my TV will permanently remain on a network of NBC from sun-up to sun-down so I can critique the entire thing.  First off, how is gymnastics a sport?  They all do a different routine so how are performances judged?  I don’t understand this at all.  Also, Ryan Lochte, try all you want, win all the medals you want, but due to your arrogance and that tattoo on your back, you will never be Michael Phelps largely because he has Mrs. Phelps, the only middle school teacher with her own line of clothing at Chicos, a great personal story, the mom-approved role model image for young children and pre-teens,  and that “I’m just swimming like I always do” attitude.  Also, you have more than one “grill,” which would be understandable, but still not okay, if you weren’t a white boy from upstate New York who went to UF for college!  This has been a moment of honesty, Olympic edition.

Back here in Charlottesville, Hannah and I competed in our favorite should be Olympic sport: wine tasting.  We’re excellent at wine tasting and though the French will no doubt claim only they can take gold in this sport, we feel that as students of a university whose initials spell grape in Italian, we’re a formidable challenge for the high-brow French, the “Bunga-Bunga” Italians, nearly broke (any day now) Spaniards, and hippie Californians.  Oh yeah, and we’re both from Virginia, which is a major wine-producing state that has been producing wine since before the Revolution, thanks in large part to Mr. Jefferson, naturally.

Side note: If I have learned anything at U.Va, it is that regardless of the subject, even the obscure ones, Thomas Jefferson has been apart it somehow!  Every single professor for every single class I have taken here has found a way to make a Jefferson connection.

So Hannah and I celebrated day one of the Olympics by heading forty minutes outside of Charlottesville to the Barboursville Winery.  Naturally, there is a Thomas Jefferson connection as he designed the house for his friend, James Barbour, the 18th Governor of Virginia and a US Secretary of War.  The house itself burned down on Christmas Day in 1884, but the ruins of it are a National Registered Historic Landmark and the symbol of the vineyard.  It should be noted we were technically breaking the law by going up to the ruins eight minutes after it was “closed,” but if anyone asks us, we didn’t see the sign until we left!

As for the wine, it’s good (they serve the more affordable ones in the sleeper car section of the Auto Train).  Here’s why it’s a great place to do a wine tasting: It’s like a buffet of wine, but a civilized buffet, like the one at the Bellagio.  For $5, you get to try twenty-one of the vineyard’s twenty-three wines, including their award-winning Octagon, the vineyard’s signature wine.  Not only can you have as many tastes as you want, but you get to keep the glass and if you bring it back with you for another tasting, it’s only $3.

Since I was driving, Hannah tried most of them while I stuck to just a few that I really wanted to try.  Nonetheless, it was still a lot of fun and I ended up leaving with a bottle of the dessert wines Phileo and Malvaxia, the latter of which tastes like alcoholic sugar, and that tastes wonderful!  The Phileo is also very sweet, but not nearly as sweet as that Malvaxia, which is 14% alcohol!  Also worth mentioning: the Cabernet Franc Reserve 2010, a wine that is very smooth and oaky (I love an oaky wine) with currant being the dominant note.  The Octagon 2008 was great, but that Cabernet Franc really impressed me.

Continuing the Jefferson connection to this week, I went on Thursday to Montpelier, the home of America’s Fourth President, James Madison.  Before I say anything about the house, I should say that I was the only person in my tour group not getting a Senior Discount and that was not fair.  Additionally, while the house itself has been structurally restored to the way it looked when the Madisons returned to live there following President Madion’s two terms in office, only four rooms are furnished, with very few things that were actually in the house at that time.  Most are reproductions or period pieces.  This is because, as the very friendly tour guide noted, Mrs. Madison had to sell the house and its contents following her husband’s death in order to pay debts.  When this happened, a large number of the contents were also sold so it’s definitely a work-in-progress.

Where Monticello has been restored to such a degree that Mr. Jefferson could walk in today and only ask how cold air is flowing through his house without windows open and why he doesn’t need candles for light, Mr. Madison would definitely have some questions.  The rotating exhibit on the second floor includes one furnished bedroom because, as my tour guide told me, “Once you’ve seen one bedroom, you’ve seen them all.”  Additionally, the second floor library, the room in which Madison helped draft the Federalist Papers, the basis for out Constitution, is now used to show a video telling the importance of the Constitution.

The house was owned, until 1983, by the duPont family, and following an extensive restoration starting in 2003, it was finally opened to the public in 2008, so this place is brand new, which is why I’ll let the lack of furnishings slide, for now.  Unlike Monticello, which will probably never change from its current layout, Montpelier is a place to which I’d like to return in five years to see how things have progressed.  Plus, with no disrespect to my soon-to-be alma mater’s founder (t-minus five days and counting), Montpelier was not designed to be artistic like Monticello, but with practically, and the drive up to the house is just breathtaking.  The duPont family added a lovely formal garden in the 1920s that has this incredible view as well as race tracks for horse racing.  The tracks are still used today for the Montpelier Steeplechase Hunt Race in November.

Now y’all know that’s a stately manor house.

Even the formal gardens have a picturesque mountain view.

Alas, as this weekend draws to a close and my final week as a college student is upon us, I’m off to educate myself on plankton, heleoplankton and whatever the hell else is on this list of terms.  Until next time…

-JD

I’d Prefer “Satanic Verses” To This Satanic Heat

First of all, yes I did make a reference to the beyond weird book that got Salman Rushdie his very own fatwa!

Anyway, Satan has once again decided to take his vacation above ground this year and the “aura” that surrounds him has come along for the ride because I moved well beyond hot flash yesterday and entered heat stroke territory.  Once again, for all the wonderful things Thomas Jefferson did (Lewis & Clarke, The Declaration of Independence, that incredible wine collection, U.Va), the man was awful at picking real estate because he found the one place in America where there is no breeze at the top of the hill.  I get to my class everyday looking like a disease and it’s just disgusting.

However, Satan did bring some good news because last night, Brian Stelter of the Times broke the most wonderful story of the year: the wonderful executives at NBC News are trying to get rid of Ann Curry as co-host of “Today” after a year of humiliation, to say the least!  I haven’t been this excited about morning television since Kathie Lee Gifford made it perfectly acceptable to start drinking at 10 in the morning, and that was four years ago (can you believe it’s only been that long?  Poor Hoda)!

But yes, America, it is soon going to be possible to watch morning television without ear plugs or the mute button.  According to the paper of record, Savannah Guthrie, the only attractive person on that show, is rumored to be the frontrunner to replace the nightmare.  If they did that, it would be wonderful because that Natalie Morales is a joke and Al Roker… as Andrew said to me last summer, “Your meteorology course makes you more qualified to do his job than he is.”  Speaking of Andrew, this was such big news that he even replied to the nightly email I sent him yesterday!

Other than that minuscule note of good news, Satan is just here to stay for a while.  He has made this very clear over the last few weeks since I have been robbed of so much money that went to graduation and birthday presents.

Can I just stop for a moment and ask a question: why did the parents of way too many people decide that September was the perfect time to conceive a child?  Was is it the celebration of not staining your one pair of white pants before Labor Day or being able to wear jackets again because frankly I’m at a loss.  Furthermore, do y’all not realize that I’m already reeling from buying people overpriced graduation presents!

It would be about here when my own human Satan would no doubt remind me that the gift I’ll be receiving is going to be my education, to which I would reply by saying that you can’t wrap an education in a box with a bow and a card attached!

Now, it actually turns out that I know more people with July and August birthdays, but they make sense at least because October is a beautiful time of the year to decide to have a kid after a drive through the idyllic countryside that looks  not unlike the photographs on the covers of so many L.L. Bean catalogs.  November also makes sense because a bit of that idyllic October weather is still around and there’s the chance that if you have a daughter and she’s born on the Fourth of July then you can name her Betsy Ross!

Moving on from that lovely tirade of mine, the heat does have one or two positive attributes.  Case in point, my rather obnoxious and arrogant neighbors, who have taken a page from the Silvio Berlusconi and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi Guide to Life and insist on having “Bunga Bunga” style parties all day and night everyday, aren’t spending as much time in the sun/poolside because it’s too hot.  Sadly, that hasn’t stopped them from blasting their beyond awful music at decibels that making the floors shake.

My final morning here, I’m going to get sweet, sweet revenge by setting my very powerful Bang & Olufsen stereo to the maximum volume and play Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” at dawn.  Even though the song itself is very long and grand/imperial, it’s really those last few minutes that make it so entertaining!  I use it as one of my alarms each morning in fact.  Plus, my version has real cannons so you get the full effect!

The actual positive attribute to Summer is that it’s once again “beneficial” to our health to eat one of my all time favorite foods, ice cream!  So far, I’ve only made two ice creams in the last week and a half: Isaac Mizrahi’s Mint Chocolate Chip and Honey Lavender, the ice cream flavor that inspired my stomach to demand that I buy an ice cream maker.

What I loved most about that Isaac Mizrahi recipe is that he put his name in the title, which, aside from being narcissistic to a level that even Justin has yet to attain, means that if it turned out to not be edible, I would knew exactly who to call and yell at!  I used, for one of the few times, the Epicurious App, which I’ve had for over a year but hardly used because the iPod screen was always so small.

Now, however, with the iPad, it’s wonderful, especially since for only $0.99, the app will sync your iPod/iPhone recipe box with the one on your iPad so when you go to the grocery store, you don’t have to look like the obnoxious brat who takes an iPad with them to a grocery store!  Plus, you can actually see the recipe and all of the ingredients at the same time, which you can’t do on the iPod/iPhone.  All I need, though, is one of those protective screen that people have for cookbooks for the iPad because I was constantly worried that I was going to spill something on my new favorite toy.

Back to the ice cream, which I did not dye green because I’m not that crazy, it was mind-blowing to say the least.  I promptly made my friend Hannah rush over and try some because, as I predicted, it was gone 48 hours later by yours truly.

The only thing I would have done, and will do, differently is that even though the recipe calls for the chocolate to be coarsely chopped, I feel it should be chopped in a way that creates chunks that are found in Ben & Jerry’s Mint Chocolate Chunk because what child, or adult reliving his/her childhood, doesn’t love letting the ice cream melt in the mouth with those big chocolate chunks just resting there for a moment providing the coolness of an ice cube!  I’m salivating just writing that.

As for the Honey Lavender, it is rich, really rich.  However, it did curdle faster than I anticipated and so anyone looking into my apartment saw me looking like an addict as I was devouring all of the honey lavender scrambled egg that was left in the strainer.  One of these days, I’m just going to let it curdle  so I can have truly decadent scrambled eggs.

Unlike the Mint Chocolate Chip, the Honey Lavender is not an ice cream that can be eaten directly out of the container with a spoon (trust me, I’ve tried).  It just doesn’t feel right.  It needs something to go with it that can counter the rich, intense flavor that it gives off.  That’s why I’m making a pound cake this weekend and giving it and the ice cream to someone else so Andrew and Justin don’t tell me I’m getting fat!

Speaking of Justin, his photography interest has once again trumped his desire to sit down and study for the LSATs.  Last weekend, he continued what I will now refer to as “Justin’s Grand Tour of Florida” by driving about halfway between Winter Park and Palm Beach to a place I’ve barely noticed on my drives between the two glimmers of civility in Florida, Port St. Lucie.  From the well-taken photographs he uploaded, it looks like I wasn’t missing anything I couldn’t find in just about any other coastal city or town in Florida.

In all honesty, if his photographs depict all of Port St. Lucie, as opposed to simply a very gringy side of it, which he would do, then it basically looks like a has-been city that peaked in the 70s or 80s because everything he photographed looked like it was from around then.

However, because this is Justin, of course he only photographed the “real” city and completely ignored Tradition, a place I’ve passed looking at with curiosity over the years.  It’s essentially a town within the city of Port St. Lucie, located on the less-expensive side of I-95 that I was convinced would never survive the real estate nightmare of the last few  years in Florida.

It’s a terrifying place to drive past, especially at night because out of this sea of darkness is this glow of halogen lights that illuminate perfectly-planned shopping centers and roads that lead to nowhere.  You know it’s Tradition because of these two lighthouse-inspired towers at both ends of the community that inform you that you’re about to pass or have successfully avoided hideosity at its finest.

Truthfully, I’m a bit disappointed that he didn’t go to see what kind of people inhabit this architectural nightmare of a planned community (I can see Walt Disney, whose original idea of creating an experimental city of tomorrow (E.P.C.O.T.) on the very land that Walt Disney World currently sits never came to true fruition, just rolling around in his cryogenically frozen chamber at the very idea that someone would try to create such a hideous version of a utopia).

Back here in Charlottesville, a place people actually visit so they can see the beautiful architecture and then get drunk on local wine (as opposed to Tradition, where you get drunk on cheap tequila and then see if that makes the horror look any better), Hannah celebrated her Twenty-First birthday, which I missed due to an expected conflict.

The day before, however, we lunched at Feast, a place I was floored to learn she had never previously been since it is very much so her kind of food store.  Naturally, she fell for its numerous charms, including the Mediterranean Salad and one of those delectable little chocolate-covered peanut butter balls they sell at the cash register.  I, as usual, had the Turkey, Brie and Cranberry Panni, which didn’t disappoint.  Plus, proving that old age does have a few perks, I enjoyed a nice mason jar of red wine sangria.  I swear the fruit was more intoxicating than the alcohol.

Since it was tolerable, dare I say comfortable, outside, we dined al fresco under the covered seating area which was very nice until we noticed a decomposing cricket in the window next to where we were eating, which made our dining experience so enjoyable because nothing says bon appétit quite like a rather large, decomposing insect staring at you the whole time you’re eating.  She was lucky because I noticed it first while eating whereas she didn’t see it until she was practically finished!  At least we didn’t have a dull dining experience, right?

Alas, that’s all for now because I have to leave my air-conditioned cocoon and venture out into this dreadful weather which will do doubt make me look as though I just went swimming within ten seconds to go get my dinner that I don’t feel like cooking tonight.  I don’t know how my friend Tasleem is able to deal with this heat now that she’s living in Dubai where it’s pretty much gonna be in the triple digits for a lot longer than it will be here!

Until next time…

JD

Next Year, I’m Either Picking Up the Turkey From Daniel Boulud or Following Everyone to Boca

Despite the fact that I might actually love Thanksgiving more than I love my own birthday (for which I devote an entire month to celebrating), this year’s Thanksgiving just killed me in a way that may have rivaled the death of Muammar Gaddafi (or whichever of the 112 different spellings of his name y’all prefer).   So my grandmother is on her 900th life and isn’t really able to leave her home anymore, but she insisted that she be apart of Thanksgiving  this year, which we do at my house.  Even though we didn’t really start cooking until after the 85th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ended, Mother and I managed to stay on schedule, despite one of our ovens deciding to suddenly act like the electronics system on a 1980s Jaguar, until about Four when it was decided that we would move the entire dinner to my grandparents’s house.  That is when uncontrolled chaos began to ensue.  We had to transport all of the food, plus their serving platters over to their house, where we would finish cooking the stuffing, sweet potato pies, corn muffins, and the two French Apple Tartes.

The traveling and packing/unpacking may have put us behind schedule, but my younger cousin, Kevin, who this year sported a “limited edition” Black Friday 2011 tee-shirt (not kidding), wasn’t thrilled that we were starting dinner so late because as y’all may have heard, Wal-Mart, a place I’ve proudly only been twice, started its sale Thursday night, and he wanted to be there to the point that he spent most of dinner away from the table and glued to his computer screen.  I’m sorry, but it’s a holiday designed to celebrate the family—many thanks, Norman Rockwell—and not about spraying people with pepper spray in a Wal-Mart over a $249 40″ LCD television that isn’t even that good of a brand!

That, combined with some other “interesting” (that’s the best way to describe it) events has made me realize that maybe Andrew, and about twenty other people I know, are on to something by going to Bubbieland USA Boca and letting someone else do the cooking for them.  We’ve only done the restaurant gig once and that was in 2001 because we were in New York for Thanksgiving.  My only issue with being in South Florida for Thanksgiving is that it just doesn’t seem right to be surrounded by people in short-sleeves and palm trees and other plants with leaves on them in late November.  Now oddly, I have absolutely no problem with this same scenario in December for Christmas.  I don’t know why, but the whole White Christmas thing doesn’t appeal to me at all.  This might have something to do with the fact that I’m Jewish, but I may be wrong.

The other alternative I’m thinking about for next year is Daniel Boulud’s $395 pre-made Thanksgiving Dinner for eight to ten people, sans desserts (my stomach is already getting excited).  Yes, that sounds like a lot to spend on a meal, but if you do the math, it’s kind of the same amount you’d spend if you made it all yourself.  Plus, the difference is that you can avoid hell grocery stores and the lovely human satans suburban housewives that can’t competently shop in them, not to mention the fact that you get your dinner prepared for you by a world class restaurant team!  And, you just get your guests, family included, to bring the wine and dessert so you don’t have to pay for them.  Who ever thought that I would be somehow saving people money?  I blame the sleep depravation.

The rest of my time home can be summed up very quickly: I was a vegetable.  In fact, the only time I actually left my house following Thanksgiving was on Saturday night when I went with Mother and Fozzie Bear to dinner at Todd Jurich’s Burger Bar in Virginia Beach.  Todd Jurich is a local chef whose hugely successful and award-winning Todd Jurich’s Bistro has given him a bit of an ego.  M. Jurich opened and then closed a French bistro-style restaurant before deciding to jump on the high-end burger joint train started by Danny Meyer with Shake Shack (an affordable version of heaven).  I hope this somewhat out-of-the-way restaurant is a success because it was delicious!  The All American Bison Burger with Sweet Potato Fries were excellent, although I did have to basically deconstruct the burger in order to eat it was it was rather large.

The reason to go to M. Jurich’s new restaurant, however, isn’t even the food, but rather the Nutella and Burnt Marshmellow milkshake.  I can’t say that I’ve ever had a Nutella milkshake before, and while I’m curious as to how they managed to turn a product that specifically says that you’re not allowed to freeze it into a milkshake, I’m also afraid to ask because what I don’t know, won’t hurt me!  I will say that I would have preferred a little more milkshake and a little less burnt marshmallows, but it was delectable nonetheless and I highly recommend that y’all go if in the Virginia Beach area.

Justin, whose ancestors attended the first Thanksgiving, briefly went back North to Cape Cod to freeze his little tuchus off for 48 hours before getting on the first flight back to Florida because he’s now afraid of the cold.  Each time I spoke to Justin while he was home, he did nothing but complain about how it was bitterly cold even though was born and raised in Massachusetts.  My how three years in Florida can change a man.  While on holiday, Justin did mention something to me that I’ve found to be both wonderful and depressing.  Apparently, the wonderful people behind Nutella, my well-documented addiction,  have created two Nutelleria cafés, one in Bologna, and the other in Frankfurt.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m over the moon excited that these two places exist, but I’m so mad that I didn’t see the one in Bologna when I visited the hidden Italian gem back in April, especially since I was only two blocks from it at one point!  I guess there has to be a reason to go back, right?

Finally tonight, there is something I’ve been meaning to share with y’all for way too long and my earlier mention of M. Bunga Bunga himself, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.  Following the eccentric Libyan leader’s death, the folks at Time got creative and put together a slideshow documenting the many outrageous outfits that Muammar wore over the years.  Despite these lasting images, I feel my lasting image of M. Bunga Bunga will forever be this clip from SNL:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Okay, well I’m off to go watch The Godfather for a class so until next time…

-JD

PS: There are only seventeen more days until I board the Auto Train to Florida!