Real Food and vin

My blog zealous wife, (my lovely, wonderful wife) who is faster at a blog entry then Wyatt Earp was at drawing his gun, well she has already blogged about our dinner last night. "So what," you may ask. Well, she included this line....

Cherries and chocolate were the overwhelming winners in Zinfandel notes for Ridge and Paso Robles' maverick Zin Alley. Notes of Fennel and Star Anise interestingly made it into the nose of Zin Alley. I'll let my Omnivore detail the rest on his blog.

Well, there it is! See it? "I'll let my Omnivore detail the rest on his blog!" Now I HAVE TO blog! I'm slow, and dim witted! I'm lucky if I get one blog a month! OK, I'll quit whining.

Yes, it's true. I've been reading the Michael Pollen book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. An amazing, in depth chronicle of our food chain, especially corn. I'm still reading it, and have just gotten through the first part of corn..... f**king - f**k - fu*k! We ARE the children of the corn! The Mayan's got nuthin on us! We consume more corn than any culture, ever has, anywhere, anytime on this planet. The sheer amount of products created from corn is mind boggling. Citric acid, for instance. Citric acid, for Christ's sake!! Nope. Does not come from lemons, or oranges, or any citric fruit. It comes from corn. That's not even the tippity tip tip of the berg O' ice neither. Aarrgh, I can't even go into it. Just read the book. It will make you crazy for a bit, but just maybe, just maybe, all of us will become more enlightened eaters. Maybe we'll all start demanding that a meal is more than just food, and that, by god, we need more time than just a half hour for lunch! And maybe when I travel outside of San Francisco I can get a decent meal!!! A Real Food meal...... oh, god. I'm on my soap box again.




Well, we had real food. ME made some terrific moist braised beef short ribs. Toss in some mashers, and an arugula salad and you've got yummy goodness. Open a bottle of Zin Alley and you've got "only in California" yummy goodness.









We were also trying out some Zinfandel elements in preparation for my upcoming birthday party, this year a zinfandel tasting. So ME rounded up some black cherries, blackberries, and chocolate. If you swirl some zin in your mouth while you smell the chocolate, pow! You've got chocolate in your mouth ( and good 70% El Rey. Real chocolate)! But boy, the cherries. The cherries really come through. Also star anise in the nose. The blackberries were not too present, but it's also not really blackberry season. I purchased some zin from 6 of the great zinfandel growing regions in California. Then we'll do a blind tasting, see which ones have which of the classic zin character (white pepper, bramble berry, etc), see which one is the crowd favorite, and maybe learn some more about this wonderful grape. Lot's of Zin a' coming in the next post.


Oh, we also tried some Muscat from the Carneros
region. Uhm.. not so good with pear and Montbriac. The muscat is great on it's own, Montbriac and pear, great on their own. Together... not so much.