Deerfield - Shiraz Cuvée

Producer: Deerfield
Name: Shiraz Cuvée
Varietal: Shiraz, Petit Verdot, Malbec, Merlot, Petit Sirah
Vintage: 2004
Region: Sonoma, United States
Price: ~ $26
Alcohol: 16.1%

I’m not entirely sure why Deerfield decided create a 16.1% alcohol Shiraz Cuvée. I mean, that’s pretty much Amarone alcohol from a Californian wine. This poured like thick syrup that coated the wine glass. The kind of wine that stains your lips and teeth and really makes you look like a wino. I tried to include a picture of the colour and clarity but the blackberry has a shitty camera.

The bouquet smells intensely sweet (alcohol naturally smells sweet) and hot. It’s complimented by a strong toasted spice smell with a slight nutty aroma. The wine itself tastes (and feels) like molasses or brown sugar. Even though the alcohol content is high it’s still fairly smooth. Toasted spice, heavy black cherries and a finish that’s long and almost tacky. For how sweet it is the finish is somewhat dry.

Personally, I thought it was too sweet. I mean, it could’ve been balanced with a little more acidity to tone it down. I woke up with a slight headache from two glasses of this stuff. That’s like eight-TEEN glasses!

C-ya!

J

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With my Blood

What can wash away my sins?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

The song continues for eternity.
I cringe.

try to stop my ears
try to keep the words from entering.
try to keep my subconscious clear

implied messages
broken
sin
dirty
unwhole
unholy
female
feMALE

but the messages are already there
drilled in by patriarchy
and
my southern Baptist Upbringing
excuse me
my Independent Baptist Upbringing

What can wash away my sins?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

I can’t sing this song.
My desire to repair my relationship with Father God remains
but
I can’t sing this song.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Blood of Jesus
in a cup
His body,
the bread

I want to partake
I want this ritual
I tell myself I’ll make it my own
secretly whisper
pagan words
May you never hunger.
May you never thirst.
May you always know pleasure.

but there is no chocolate
just coffee

and I’m holding the cracker and juice
conflicted

so
I pray

Mother/Father/God
please
the only coherent thoughts
but
I want them to
give me communion
as my sisters did

Quickly–
put the cracker in
hearing
May you always be satiated
by the fullest expression of life:
vibrancy
there is a smile in this
many voiced Voice
he/she/it is humoring me

Now
the blood
I mean juice
and I want to turn it back
into water
harmless
innocent
clean
the Voice(s) speaks
I freeze
afraid to swallow
These waters ARE my blood.
Your blood.
HEAL. she/he/it commands.

images of Earth
waters flowing
moon flow
menstruation
mother’s blood
life blood
Christ’s blood
in my mouth.
HEAL.
Swallow.
Release.

Heal this chasm between yourself and Father God.
Heal your wounds from Patriarchy.
Heal your relationship with your Earthly father, Dad.
Heal yourself.
Heal your blood, your hatred of your female body.
Heal with your blood, your feminine, your feMALE.
Heal with Christ’s blood, accept his offering.
Heal the world.

I swallow
this blood/juice/wine/water/rain/tears
this prayer in a cup
this acceptance and commitment and salvation
rolled into one

I return my blood to the Earth
Anoint your feet
with my blood
wash your fatigue
with my blood
cleanse your world weary brow
with my blood

Reach between my legs and
sip the nectar of
the Female Divine
residing in me

with my blood
I’ll heal the world
with my blood
I’ll remember my wholeness
and
that I AM.

Edition Fourteen 27 September to 3 October 2009 (Wine by Cush)

 

Edition 14 has a few articles with my comments and the first two parts of my essay on standards. The standards essay had a tendency to become long so I broke it to five pieces. They still are long. A 2000 word blog post scrolls down forever. That is about as succint as I could get. The essays are hard to read because the topic is a hybird of hospitality and other fields. Most hospitality writing seem as forced writing. They are not worth reading. The better writing examples are culinary or from magazines. Those writings have a different readership than hospitality professionals. This essay gravitates toward hospitality readers in focus and mixture of social sciences makes it unusual to read. I did my best by splitting into pieces and posting one each week. That is my ethical obligation to the readers and ends there. The essays are meant to be disturbing. They make much more sense later on. The level of ambigiutiy drops from essay 1 to essay 5. Essay four is the last of the arguments and is much more readable than essay one and basically some hope exists there.

Chilling red wine is a very important topic or bugged me and I included it. Hosts in San Francisco don’t have a standard system for better service for tips, as they do in Las Vegas, etc. Health benefits topic will not go away. San Francisco passes unfairest regulations sometimes and this is the business lobbies retaliation. Hold the benefits hostage and make the staff cry to fight the City Hall. The problem is San Francisco has a San Francisco style City Hall. Beer is doing better and better in all culinary areas. Airlines are getting better in food, etc. My essays took most of my time, though written a week earlier, and I am glad. A good possibility exists America will return to All American lifestyle. McDonald’s and other chain restaurants will be king again. My essays had to be written.

You Get PAID to work here?

So I had an interesting encounter yesterday with a worker at a liquor store. Yes, I do like a good glass of wine, and in our state, the only place to buy it is in a liquor store.  Ridiculous, yes, I know. We should be able to buy in the grocery stores like so many other states, but that’s a different story altogether.

My husband and I are planning a trip to Napa in a couple of weeks, and in doing my research of our destination, I’ve found that there is a winery there that if you visit during harvest, which we are, and they are pressing grapes, you may have the option of stomping grapes, ala Lucy.  Really?  Oh my gosh, how fun would that be?  Now my husband isn’t too keen on the thought, but I think it will be a ball, even if I’m the only one doing it.  He can take pictures.

I thought it might be nice to try some wine from this vintner before we go.  My husband found it at one local liquor store for $45 a bottle.  That’s a little steep for us, so maybe we’ll just wait until we get there.  I was passing a liquor store close to our old house and decided to stop in and see if they had it. 

I was meandering through the wine aisles when a little old lady with a horrible bleach-job asked if she could help me.  I told her the name of the vineyard, Grgich.  Odd name for sure.  She proceeded to tell me that not every wine makes it into our state.  Yes, I’m well aware of that fact.  I informed her that my husband had indeed found it at a local store and I was just checking to see if they carried it.  when I told her the name, she said she had never heard of it.  Then she tells me, ‘well, it’s not going to say that on the label.’  Um, yeeeessss, it will.  It’s the name of the vineyard where it’s produced.  Again, ‘It’s not going to be on the label.’  What the hell does she think the label is?  how else are we supposed to tell Rutherford from Far Niente from Beringer or Grgich?  It would all say ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ or ‘Merlot’.  She made some other comment like she was going to go and ask someone, but decided she was really too busy with straightening her register to ask.  When I left, she didn’t make any kind of eye contact.  Big shock.  They actually pay her to be there and tell people that the name of the vineyard won’t be on the label. What a nutcase!

{wine} seeing red

Each time I visit someone and am offered an exotic white wine, i feel guilty for saying yes. That’s because we are being inundated with the “drink red wine, prevent dementia/heart disease/stroke/cancer/boredom mantra.
So red wine is the elixir of the gods then, since it keeps everyone from your brain, heart, digestive system to your stomach and spouse in prime condition. That’s provided you don’t binge on it of course. Women they say should stick to one glass, and naturally it’s double of that for men.
Are we kidding here? No, look at the French. They hardly exercise, eat fair amounts of saturated fats, smoke their fancy cigarettes, and still boast healthy hearts. So the trick lies in that bottle of wine on your dinner table then?
Some trivia:
*French Wine is labeled after the region not the grape.
*Most people buy wine to share a good time and enjoy themselves.
*Only a very tiny minority buy wine for speculation.
*Wine is still the best way to link people together!

The Vineyard Nightlife

Vineyard Night Life

Jogging down the vineyard row at 11 at night I keep hoping I don’t catch my toe on some dirt clod hidden in the dark and I wish that I spent a little more time at the gym so I wouldn’t feel like this light jog was about to kill me.  The closer I get to the beast rolling along over the top of the vineyard rows the easier it gets to see.  When I reach the ladder I grab onto to steps, swing up and enjoy the rush of warm air that blows from the tractor into my face.
I climbed to the top of the tractor and enjoy the contrast of the tractor’s warm air flowing up my legs and the Paso cold night air on my face; this would be relaxing if it didn’t feel like I was riding a jack-hammer.  I look out across the vineyard and its fellow grape planted neighbors at the eerie harvester lights floating across the dark.

Post-Harvest Grapes

Machine harvesting grapes actually takes two tractors. The most notable is the massive harvester, it carefully crawls through the vineyard, perfectly straddling the rows.  This beast has a high center where the tall vine rows to pass through the middle; reaching into the middle, are large paddles that beat the trunks of the vines causing the whole row to shake and the jack-hammer sensation from above.  As the vine quivers just the grapes, naked stems left behind, drop down to the conveyor belt. The belt then whisks the grapes up the machine, out the long arm and drops into the massive harvester’s partner.  The partner is a bin called a gondola (slightly different from the romantic boat rides of Venice), it travels alongside the harvester two rows over, pulled along in unison by the kind of tractor we most often see.

I ride the harvester and enjoy the vineyard’s new night life.  After a few rows of dancing a forced boogie, thanks to the shaking of the harvester, I climb back down and will my now jello-legs to walk back to the car.  The harvest party has just begun for the vineyard but I’m afraid it is bedtime for me.

Arm

Gino's show was a success!

The more we see his art, the more we fall in love with it.  Gino Perez is one of our favorite up and coming artists in Los Angeles.  His current show will be at Royal-T in culver city for about another week, with a giant solo show to follow before the end of the year.  If you get a chance, go check it out…you might want to buy something, we did.

The after party was at Bardot, where BJ PANDA BEAR spun as the glitterati danced the night away.  It was a great night…Dinner was at father’s office, stay tuned for all the deets.