One of those moments…

Do you ever have those moments in life where you think to yourself… “Holy crap- how did I get here?”  or “When did I become so grown up, so responsible?”  or maybe “When did hangovers hurt so bad?”  This past couple weeks have been moments like these… I feel grown up- not broken and need someone to hold my hand- but decision making, tax paying, accomplished in life grown up.

I’m not gonna lie to you- I am kinda enjoying it…

So what was it?  Well, try not laugh, but it was the little things… my new website, a random Saturday night dinner with no recipe, and a tough workout.  It’s Sunday night and I am thinking to myself… “damn, it feels good to be grown up!”

This is really an accomplishment… if you know me and you know how RIDICULOUSLY bad I am at anything internet, social media, etc.  You know just how big a deal this is!  I managed (with the amazing platform Squarespace) to actually redesign From Vine to Wine’s website.  I have never wanted my own business and quite frankly never thought I had the personality to do it, but after this accomplishment- I am feeling good!  I can take on anything!  So I did!  I have a NEW booking platform as well that I was able to incorporate into my website with the MARVELOUS help of my new friends at Checkfront!  There are still some tweaks to be made here and there, but I am really proud of myself.

 Then came this dinner… I mean, it’s just a dinner, but I really enjoy finding recipes and making complex dinners and am completely unable to just ‘throw something together’.  My husband is great at looking in the cupboards and making great things from nothing- me not so much.  But lazy Saturday night came and all I wanted was a nice hot meal is this freezing Lyon weather and a bottle of wine to warm me up.  So, I attempted to throw together pork tenderloin in a herbs de provence, onion, garlic, carrot thing with chunky mashed potatoes and (what we like to call) an American salad.  And it was really tasty!

Paired it with a GREAT AOP Minervois Otonis from Les Celliers d’Onairac.  A small wine with a big heart comprised of Syrah, Grenache Noir and Mourvedre.  It is balanced in tannin and fruit, creating a warm mix for a variety of flavors.  And… because I do have a tendency to eat and drink a bit… I have once again started Fitness Blender and MAN is it KICKING my BUTT!  My apologies for the photo… but I tell you it was just a good workout!  I couldn’t walk correctly for the entire week I was so SORE!

There are certain things in life that make up feel good.  For me, and I assume most people, when my life is together and well rounded I am doing well.  That means that work is moving forward and I am feeling accomplished in my tasks, my husband is well fed and I can sit down at the table with him to share a meal and good wine, and when my body is NOT expanding ;).  This week was a good week for all those things and I feel grown up.

Sometimes it is just good to dwell on the positive things.

Voila…

Something big…

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy having a blog.  I mean, when I think about it- who wants to read what I have to say?  Not to mention- how can I come back to blogging after Poitiers?  But at some point, something big was going to happen and I was going to have to get back in the game… but what would it be?

That’s right.  That is my wine being filtered using a tea kettle and coffee filter.  The story?  Gosh, I have no idea how it happened… but I will try anyway.

My husband and I are on a ski vacation in Montchavin Les Cloches- a little ski station in the French Alps.  Tonight we had an amazing raclette dinner paired with a Gruner Veltliner and this 2006 Chassagne-Montrachet.  For those of you who know me you know my love hate relation with Chardonnay… for those of you who don’t know me you should try to get to know me, I’m a pretty cool person.

Anyway, I have opened up a LOT of wine in my life- my mom would say WAY to much wine in my short life. BUT I HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED THIS….

 For starters- this is how the cork came out.  My husband pulled the larger part you see here, breaking it in two.  I then went in to recover the damage only to find the cork was LITERALLY in pieces.  Like it was completely dissolved or something.  Normally, when you split a cork you then have to push your cork screw in sideways and gently pull the rest out without having it fall into the wine.  As you can see here there was no way in hell I was going to get the cork out.  I tried and tired and tired.  The result….

Can you see the hole going THROUGH the cork?  It came out in such a weird way that I made a HOLE THROUGH THE CORK????  WHO DOES THAT?? Someone please explain to me how this happens?  I mean at this point I am a little out of options for getting this cork out and at the same time becoming widely fascinated with what is happening.  Now- remember I am in the mountains with very little resources… So what do you do next?  I mean now we HAVE to try this wine…

I managed to ‘decant’ the wine- slash pour the wine out through the hole in the cork.  However, since the cork was so destroyed we couldn’t even drink it without getting cork in our glass…

It was time to get creative.  It was time to let out the inner girl scout we all know and have nightmares from….  Fortunately for me, I married a very creative man.  Coffee filters.  Unfortunately for me, I married a man who wanted to pour the wine through the coffee machine.  Compromise.  Compromise in marriage is everything…

Enter the tea pot.  Now, I know what you are thinking… ‘Great idea, but you are going to kill the wine.’  This is the point where you have to get to know me because my response is always- “It’s just Chardonnay”.

Our 2006 Chassagne-Montrachet was nothing special to being with… It was a bottle we received from a large domaine in Bourgogne and decided to see how it would age.  Taste wise- just Chardonnay.  Oaky and butter forward with a crisp acidity to the back palate making it refreshing while still being heavy.  To be honest, opening it was more fun then drinking it…

And just like that… I’m back.

And on the 8th Day…. God created Poitiers…

When living in France you quickly learn that the French are attached to their roots.  That where each of them was born is the BEST place in France, the MOST beautiful place, and sometimes you get the feeling that if God where to flood the world again there is no way in hell he would take their hometown.   Ironically it is rare to find these people still living in those towns… oh, the French…

This weekend I had the chance to visit one of those amazing, majestic, even God wishes he lived their towns…

Poitiers.

Never heard of it?  What?  Never heard of Poitiers?  Well, if you have never heard of it you are clearly not living life to its fullest potential.  Bah ha ha.  You’ve probably never heard of Poitiers because you have probably never met Nico, Simon, Thierry or Momo.  These are the boys within my circle of friends that think Poitiers is God’s gift to everyone.  Really, Poitiers is just another small town with a lot of history about people dying and then monuments constructed to mark their death.  Ironically, not a lot of monuments marking people who lived…

What is in Poitiers however, is Nico’s father’s wine cave.  And IT is a thing of beauty!  An entire basement dedicated to wine.  Oh, mon rêve!  I had the pleasure of participating in a wine tasting with Patrick (Nico’s dad) last year and was SO impressed by his nose and ability to pull out all types of aromas from the glass.  I found myself by the end wanting to verify everything I smelled with him!  It was really fun!

Anyway, this weekend Patrick generously opened up his wine cave and gave us a tasting tour… Now, I don’t know about Poitiers as a town, but Poitiers as Patrick’s wine cave… Majestic.

Here’s what we drank day one…

Chateau Phélan Ségur 1994 Saint-Estèphe

Drank for the aperitif with charcuterie and smoked duck.

 Tasting Notes:   Unfortunately, this gem was a little past its time.  The color a brick ruby red.  The nose still very vibrant with hints of fresh red fruits and vanilla, a little bit of tobacco, but not as much as one would expect to find from a 1994.  The palate soft with little expression of Saint-Estèphe on the back of the throat.  Still pleasant and light of an aperitif, but definitely not the expression of what it was, or what it could have been.

Domaine d’Ardhuy Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru 2009

Now, my love for Chardonnay is limited, I’m not gonna lie to you I would actually rather eat my foot.  BUT when given a Grand Cru Corton-Charlemagne for lunch, my love for Chardonnay increases 10-fold.

Tasting Notes:  This little gem was creamy and smooth, but not aggressive.  These days Chardonnay is being so over chapatilized that the grape is dying and creamy, buttery, sugar bombs are whats left. This was in NO WAY like that.  It was complex on the palate.  Round and finished for a long time.  Very agreeable for a non-Chardonnay drinker.  Now, if I could only get my husband to buy some…

Oh- and for lunch we had rabbit.. LIKE the ENTIRE rabbit.  I like to think that I do well with French food and their sometimes funny and stomach turning combinations… BUT, nothing prepared me for what part of the rabbit Nico’s mother liked best….  I did try it.  I had some of the poor guys cheek (delicious by the way), but oh man… that’s a rabbit head.

Moment to pause while you stare at the picture contemplating how someone would go about eating that… and right, we aren’t done yet…

Jacques Girardin Pommard Tête de Cuvée 2008

The wine with cheese… the cheese was green.  Literally.  Green.

Tasting Notes:  Pommard and I have an amazing relationship.  I love it and it loves me.  Something about the velvet cherry of Pinot Noir with the strong tastes of goat cheese make for a harmony on the palate.  The nose slightly hidden, strawberries and cherries with a hint of herbs behind.  Smooth on the palate.  Coating the entire mouth in harmony while presenting with a complexity that begs for another glass.  In general, Pommard is a stronger Pinot that needs time in the bottle to settle and round out.  Only 6 years old, this wine is just going to become more and more developed.  Yummy!

That was just day one too… Sunday lunch to come… I can still taste some of these wines as I write this.

Putain, c’était bon.  Merci Poitiers.

Some success…

Last Wednesday I wrote a rather depressing post about not feeling so great about my success at the moment.  Well, I am happy to report that by Friday things had turned around a bit.  I had two tasting in one day and a handful of email requests!!!!!

I welcomed my first group to a bubbles tasting- three guys super interested in wine and more specifically the sparkling wines of the Rhone Alps region.

 Bubbles Flight – From Vine to Wine

We drank together a Crémant de Bourgogne Rosé Demi-Sec, a Crémant de Bourgogne Brut, and a Clairette de Die.  I was somewhat nervous at the beginning because Clairette de Die is not a part of my daily drinking spectrum.  But in the end it was the favorite in the group.  Surprising was how the sparkling wines changed with food.  The group had an overwhelming dislike for the  Crémant de Bourgogne Brut, but when we added cheese to it and retasted… wow.  It is so fun to watch how perceptions of wine and the taste of wine can change so drastically with food.

Later that evening I welcomed two more people to a What the French Tasting

What the French? Tasting – From Vine to Wine

We went to Alsace and the Loire Valley for our whites and then to Bourgogne, Northern Rhone and Bordeaux for the red.  This tastings is always fun in terms of the broad spectrum of wines used, but to explain all the regions of France and how they operate… it is sometimes a daunting task and I can watch peoples brain turn to mush before my eyes.  I had a small amount of fear when I started talking to these two- hoping that their confusion would be settled in the end I served some larger tastes than maybe I normally would have- for educational reasons of course!  Good thing too, because at the end of two hours we had not only gone through the five regions and the french system, but we sent one of them home with a homework assignment and a blind tasting list.

I really love teaching people about French wines.  It gives me a natural high.  These two tastings were completely different- the people, the wine, the conversation.   Sometimes the people coming to taste with me are new to wine, or returning to wine.  Others are so passionate about wine even I get intimidated.  But that is the beauty of it.  Like the terroir changes the wine ever so slightly sometimes, the people and where they come from can also change the way the wine is perceived… sometimes it changes how even I perceive the wine.  An amazing way to end my rather down week.  I look forward to this week and where the wine will take me!

  

Here is the new tasting room!  Just missing the maps, but I love it!

Top 10 Failures before Success

This whole facebook craze where everyone and their mom is posting “Top 10 Ways to blah blah”, “Top 7 Ways to blah blah something else”, and my personal favorites “Top 14 Ways you are more pathetic than others” or “Top 3 Ways to be less pathetic”.  It’s starting to drive me crazy, but I read it anyway…  The other day I read a couple of them about being a small business owner- Top things small business owners do before noon, top things mentally strong people do, top things that make people succeed in business, etc. I figured maybe it wouldn’t hurt, maybe I would get something out of it, maybe it would jumpstart something.  Boy was I wrong!  I went through a couple of them and the only thing I felt at the end was shitty.  I came to the conclusion that I do not do the right things before noon, I am not mentally strong, and I will never succeed as a small business owner (and my husband wonders why I have a bottle open before he gets home…).

But then I got to thinking a little more and there is just this one tiny little thing I forgot to factor in before my depression into a bottle…. I actually AM doing the right things before noon, I actually AM mentally strong, and I actually AM a small business owner.  What I struggle with is not feeling successful.  What I would like to know, is how many times to I have to feel like I have failed (not brought home a paycheck, not had a client all week, not even a contact)… How many of these kinds of failures must I go through before I start calling it success???  Before I start feeling the success of what I have done…

I haven’t blogged in a LONG time, like 3 months I think… why?  What do I have to blog about?  The truth is that these days I count the failures more than the successes.  Yes, this is my small pity party / rant on life at the moment… but I had to start back somewhere.  I would just really like a

“TOP 10 Ways Failures become Success”

Sunday Dinner – Grenache Noir

Man what a day… I mean seriously, an entire day of sitting on the couch watching House of Cards.  If that doesn’t merit a good dinner and a beautiful bottle of wine than I don’t know what does ;).  Yes, thats right… ALL DAY, ALL DAY watching House of Cards.  Lyon has turned from cold to freezing… this California girl is FREEZING.  So we stayed indoors all day, caught up on our good American TV series, and then rewarded ourselves with a wonderful meal.  What was our wonderful meal… Porterhouse Steak with a smoked paprika mayonnaise accompanied by Domaine Ogier Côtes du Rhône Le Temps est Venu.  This wine is a base of grenache noir and syrah.  Let’s talk grenache noir a little bit…

Grenache Noir is a grape with a sugar content… HIGH sugar contact equals HIGH alcohol content.  Therefore it often ends up having high alcohol content and less fruit taste.  The winemaker has a difficult job of keeping the alcohol level down, while simultaneously converting all the sugar to alcohol.  Not easy.  Most often it is blended with other grapes of a lower sugar content and therefore a lower alcohol content.  When made as a single varietal, often times, because of the high sugar content it is a wine that works very well as a late harvest or sweet wine.

Le Temps est Venu is a bright fruit, strawberries and tart cherries with higher alcohol and mild tannins.  For me it is difficult to drink all by itself, but explodes with the right food.  For Sunday dinner, I choose to pair this wine with a very flavorful piece of steak as well as a mild fat sauce in the smoked paprika mayonnaise.  What I did, was cut a little bit the hot alcohol of the grenache noir and made it mild with the addition of the fat.  Together, they made for a wonderful winter dinner!!

French wine and food… a match made in heaven!

Often times the dinner I make is based SOLEY on the bottle of wine I want to drink… Last nights dinner was exactly that.  Here was the wine…Domaine Coste-Caumartin 2009 Pommard 1er Cru Le Clos des Boucherottes

This is a wine that my husband and I bought about 2 years ago and you can see that since being in our cave, the ticket has started to mold off.  Fortunately, however, the wine had not spoiled at all!  It smelled like a barnyard in my glass- and I LOVE THAT (like really love that)!  The nose was dirty, dirty, dirty!  After about 5 minutes with my nose in dirt- I moved past that dirt- hints of violet, cherry, black cherry, even blueberry.  Again I have to mention my nose is being worked on.  Like everything else, if you don’t practice it fades.   My apologies- I’ll keep on practicing!  On palate it was round, light tannins, tickled my throat, but finished a little short :(.  Unfortunately… we drank it too soon.  It needed another year in the cellar before really being amazing.  But its okay- we have another bottle for next year.

So, what did we eat with it?  Well, I wanted something basic, easy to make, and wintery.  It is currently SNOWING in Lyon, so warm plates are a MUST these days.  I decided to go with my favorite food of the moment- butternut squash.  I know what you are thinking… NO!  not with a Pinot, but let me finish…Butternut squash and sage pasta with grilled chicken.  Now, with the Pommard- you all are right… not the match made in heaven as I had expected, but there was a little something that made it quite interesting.  With the acidity level in the wine and the sage in the pasta the match was in competition, yet brought out the flavors of each.  I actually really enjoyed the pairing.  It was untraditional and you had to give it a sip or two to confirm it worked, but it worked!  I was very happy :).

Sometimes we focus to much on the HAVE TO and SHOULD DO and loose the ideas of just TRYING.  I live of life where I try and I fail, I get back up, I try again and succeed, then try something new.  IF you can’t branch out and try something new or risk something… You’re never really going to GAIN anything.  Am I right?

Also.. I bought a fish to keep me company during the day.  Meet Maximus.  He is named by my husband after the film Gladiator because he is a warrior and will fight for what he wants- and wins!  Welcome to the family Maximus!

Edelzwicker in all her glory

Edelzwicker… ever heard of it?  No worries if you haven’t, its like the two buck chuck of Alsace- only given the grapes start at a better quality in the beginning it might be more like four buck chuck.  Tonight, however, I made sweet and sour chicken thighs to go with it… not exceptional, but a fun pairing.Anyway, Edelzwicker is not a very well know wine in anywhere but Alsace.  I found it when I was recently at the Salon des Vins des Independents.  Domaine Gerard Metz is always are first stop when we go to the salon.  He makes really bright vibrant wines that hold up to time and are really great expressions of the grapes.  Normally, I go specifically for the Pinot Gris, but this year it was a little too sweet for my taste- normally I drink it with a little bit spicy food or when I want a fresh wine with a heavy dish.  This year I took a bottle of the Edelzwicker instead of the Pinot Gris.

Truth be told- Edelzwicker is a blend of different grapes and really nothing to write a blog about.. ;).  In terms of AOC, it is a basic Appellation Alsace Controlée and can be a blend of any of the authorized grapes in Alsace.  In this case, it is 50% Sylvaner and 50% noble grapes, aka. Riesling, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Muscat.

Tasting Notes:  Simple wine, light fruit notes, lots of citrus- green apple and lime rind.  Nice and refreshing when served at the right temperature- too warm and it is very flat on the palate.  Short finish, not a thinking wine.  Just sipping.  With sweet and sour it was a nice refreshing touch- didn’t add and didn’t take anything away from the plate.Dinner tonight- Sweet and sour chicken thighs with  carrots, onion and garlic topped with cilantro.  So good! And pretty easy.  Generally, I rubbed the chicken thighs with paprika and cinnamon, pan fried 5 minutes (they were small thighs) and set to the side.  Added the carrots and onions to the chicken juice and sauteed about 5 minutes.  Added garlic to mix.  Re-introduced the chicken thighs, turned heat to medium-low, added 1/2 water, 1/4 lemon juice and 1/4 honey to mix and simmered till I was so hungry I had to eat it.  Topped it with cilantro and…viola!

Dinner tonight took less than 30 minutes, was the first time I attempted this recipe AND  I didn’t get in a fight with my husband!!!  Woot woot!

Happy Thursday!

New French Word Today- angine blanche

aka. strep throat, aka. what?!?, aka. seriously France can I just be normal please, hashtag SUCK, sidenote- not a twitter fan, my life takes more than 140 characters…

I mean seriously?!? I have my share of medical quirks, but normally big stuff, life altering stuff- not this piddly ass stuff. For that stuff I married someone with allergies. At least I don’t have THAT. So today I woke up, well last night really, but this morning I noticed these white dots on my tonsils. So I went online with coffee and juice in hand to research it. What I found was that it was just a really bad sore throat- hashtag never using that website again. Called my mom and my mother-in-law because it was getting pretty painful and they both have the same diagnosis- strep / angine blanche. So I called the doctor and found out that I can’t actually understand my doctor on the phone, but I needed a rendez vous fast.

Oh- did I mention that the glass of juice this morning also spilled onto my computer? Right. That also happened this morning. F.

So my computer spent the day like this….

Then my husband came home and started doing this….

Finishing like this….

Thank goodness he has magic powers!

Yet the best part of my day- talking to a group of MBA students about my business and how I got to be a small business owner is France! Made me feel fancy… and after a day like today I NEEDED that- hashtag ego boost!!

Tonights drink after all that…. Beer.

Community….

Where would we be without it and holy hell can it get annoying!

Tomorrow starts a wine tasting series with the French Wine Society– where I am currently studying for my French Wine Scholar- and I am looking at buying six bottles of wine to drink all alone.  Now, I LOVE the concept of doing a tasting through the Wine Society, but I am having this deep sadness due to the absence of a community.  Today I went to a tasting at Sofitel near Bellecour in Lyon and met an American girl working in the marketing department as well as getting her WSET training.  She and I talked for almost an hour about wine, French wine, American wine, all wines!  It was an hour that I loved because I was simply in community- sharing, exchanging, learning from each other.  I am sorta bummed to sit tomorrow behind my computer all alone for this tasting :(.  I hope tomorrow, being the first one, will be something of a surprise and hopefully create opportunities to come into community with fellow students.

Now, there is this concept of TOO much community, I mean too much of people’s opinions and statements.  I do not think wine should be shared with people in order to get them to understand what is good and bad.  Wine is an art.  And everchanging art at that!  It takes education and community to help people find their personal palates and preferences.  We don’t taste wines to say they are wrong or bad, we taste wines for the pleasure of it.  Equally today I was tasting with my friend’s father who had an amazing nose- I mean really spectacular!!  It was in that moment I wanted him to tell me everything and I mean everything he was smelling.  I wanted to attach words the way he did to the smells I was smelling.  He and I didn’t share the same palate or preference for wine, but could equally learn from each other.  He didn’t force his opinion on me or mine on him, we just shared.

I want, I hope to, build a community with From Vine to Wine… Talk about a dream come true!