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 Have Discovered Something Even Paula Deen Hasn’t and It Involves Bacon

On Friday night, I went to dinner at Brookville Restaurant here in Charlottesville not really expecting to have anything beside a simple dinner that wouldn’t even be worth mentioning to anyone.  However, it would be a shame to not talk about what I ate for dessert.  Yes, my roasted flank steak was delicious and cooked perfectly and my glass of 2009 Xavier was so smooth and perfectly spiced; the cornbread was…well I’ve had better (it fell apart the second I touched it).

However, the reason I’m going back is because of one thing: Bacon, Chocolate Chip and Heath Bar Cookies with a shot of milk!  Yes, bacon INSIDE the cookie!  It was a moment of euphoria made even more wonderful because I didn’t have to share with anyone!  And it wasn’t just some bacon bites that were sprinkled into the dough.  Oh no, there were delicious pieces of bacon inside each of the five cookies on the platter; I could feel my teeth sinking into crispy bacon that was partially covered in chocolate and while already a huge fan of the salty-sweet dessert combination, but this taking that to a whole new level!  These five, very tan (yes, I’m using the word tan to describe a cookie) circles of joy melted in my mouth; they were so warm that the bottom of each cookie had that buttery feeling they have that leaves a little stain on the piece of parchment paper on which they’re baked.  Yes, I know I’ve devoted 250 words to a cookie, but this was unlike anything I’ve ever had before in my life!

Trying to move on, I finally got my Birthday present from Mother and Scrooge (four months late, but whose counting?) and here’s what I know: it has a lot of buttons that make absolutely no sense to me!  And Justin’s response to this is that I should have gotten a simpler camera, but it’s just so much more aesthetically pleasing to look at in contrast to some of the other cameras out on the market today.

Yes, I’m admitting that I bought a camera simply because I thought it looked nice.  Look, I like to take a pretty picture, that’s it.  I will never even try to act like I’m the next Henri Cartier-Bresson; I simply want to take a decent photo and as much as I love and adore my Konica Minolta, I want better quality photos.  That, and I’m sick of Andrew calling me out for having a camera made by a company that no longer makes cameras!

My new Leica X1 arrived when Mother and Scrooge came to visit at the beginning of the month for his birthday.  On that Sunday that they were here, we drove about an hour away from Charlottesville to the town of Orange to have brunch at the Inn at Willow Grove.  It was beautiful to say the least, but what I had for brunch was so good, I’m actually salivating at the very thought of it!  I had what was described as a French Toast Brick!  That was the most beautiful, most delicious brick I’ve ever seen or had in my life!  It was coated in a layer of sugar and accompanied with mascarpone cheese, blueberries, the most decadent maple syrup I’ve ever had, and bacon.  I finished it so quickly that Mother only got half of one bite!  Needless to say, I cannot wait to go back there.

As much as I love my new Leica, Grace and I really love the piece of software that accompanied it: Photoshop!  Finally, after years of bad hair, bad teeth, poor lighting, you name it, I can finally show photos of certain member of my family that haven’t been seen by anyone else in years!  Now, of course, because my life just happens this way, it didn’t come with the “right” version of Photoshop, according to Andrew and Justin, who of course have the $999 version I apparently need to have.  Fortunately, there’s a $199 student price that I might end up getting when my 30-day free trial ends.  But I already know that the second I buy it, Andrew, like he just did when I told him I signed up for Netflix on Friday, will tell me not to keep it because there’s something wrong with it even though he has been telling me to get it for months.

Speaking of Andrew, I’ve come to the realization that he and I have something in common with Oprah and her best friend (and much more entertaining person), Gayle and that is that while Oprah just did the shows and never watched them, Gayle was just like every member of the audience; she watched the show and tuned in to see it every day even if she was on that day’s show.  Well, I am Gayle and Andrew is Oprah.  He would rather watch a show months before it airs on a DVD and know what happens before anyone else whereas I am the ultimate viewer; I follow shows on Tweetie Bird, I do my homework during the commercial breaks.  There is something about the experience of watching the show on TV with the rest of the country that can’t be replicated on any early copy release on a DVD.  This became most obvious a few weeks ago regarding the show I have declared to be the most intriguing show of our time, Downton Abbey.

Andrew doesn’t understand why I haven’t just watched the DVDs of the original ITV show to see what happens instead of having to wait until tonight to see what happens with Lady Mary and Matthew.  I, on the other hand, have never been this excited about Sunday nights in my entire life!  OH MY GOD!  The suspense is killing me!  First, he was told he would be incapable of activity of any kind below the waist, then he started feeling “tingly” feelings down there and then he starts walking again!  And of course, the second the feet (and other things) start working again, the Dowager Countess immediately starts pushing Lady Mary on Matthew just like any good and proper Jewish Grandmother would!  And then Lady Sybil with the chauffeur!  In an understatement, I was plotzing when he burst into the salon before dinner (wearing a day suit, no less) and broke the news that they were in love and moving to Dublin, not caring about losing all her money and worldly possessions!  Do y’all wanna know why she didn’t care about losing her money?  It’s because she has no concept of what things cost!  I can’t wait to see how she turns out in Season Three (which started filming just a few weeks ago!).  Then, that… thing, Lady Edith.  Well, let’s be honest, no one really cares about her anyway.  And the plotting to get rid of cousin Isobel is the best part of the show; I’m completely for sending her back to whatever hell hole she came from!  I mean really, offering up a house that isn’t even yours to be used as a nursing home!  That’s almost as tacky as Mr. Pamuk dying in Lady Mary’s bed after taking her virginity, if not solely for this line:

And of course, one can’t forget Mr. and the new Mrs. Bates!  And the newly departed maid’s attempted romance with his Lordship (scandalous!) or O’Brien’s sudden change of heart over her Ladyship.  Thomas, however is the one person I think we’d all like to see just go somewhere (like back to playing with the overly hairy chest of Duke Crowborough) and never return!  He deserved to get taken for all his money regarding that beyond stupid deal he made with the black market grocer!

As y’all can see, I am OBSESSED with this show on a slightly disturbing and possibly unhealthy level, but it’s simply unlike anything else being offered on television today in our world of Snooki and Teresa Guidice.  Andrew thinks I’m insane because I could already know how the season ends and not have to wait just a few more hours to find out.  Sadly, Andrew just doesn’t understand.

Well that’s all for now because I’m off to go play in the snow that has been falling for the last few hours and then get ready for the season finale of Downton!  Until next time…

-JD