Wineries

What I Learned About Africa the First Time Around (and Why We’re Going Back)

Posted on September 1, 2016May 24, 2017 by thepoelog

I uttered what I think might go down in history as the most bougie phrase ever known to mankind last week.

“Weeeeell, last time we were in Africa, we stayed at…..”

I said it not once, but TWICE while catching up with friends, both of whom probably immediately regretted asking me what big exciting trip we had coming up.

My manpanion/life-partner XFE and I have become known as “those people” in our own individual circles—the couple who are always planning their next big trip. Finagling airline partnerships and air miles to upgrade to first class and work in the longest possible layovers on a multi-stop ticket, cashing in hotel points and free resort nights to stay in ridiculously luxurious rooms, relentlessly researching destinations and options and meticulously planning where we’re going to spend our time and money.

Our next big trip is a bit different. It’s XFE’s 40^th birthday and there was only really one place he wanted to spend it, regardless of airline miles (we were able to use plenty of those), hotel points (nope, none of those being used this trip) or cost (yikes)—on safari in Africa.

This is not our first time in Africa. We actually went to South Africa for my birthday in March 2014, which is why I was able to say something as bougie as, “Well, the last time we were in Africa, we stayed at….”

Of course, with our next trip to Africa only three weeks away, I’ve been thinking a lot about that last trip.

South Africa was never really on my travel bucket list. As I’ve said before, I’m pretty risk adverse, and well, Africa seemed a bit risky, a bit unstable.

Speaking of risk, I do not recommend ingesting the priced-to-move ostrich bitong, unless you want other parts of your body to also move. (Not mine: I learned my lesson about cured meats from the Great Northern Italian Food Poisoning of 2011. XFE, however…..)

Sure, I’m a huge animal lover and intellectually, at least, I’d like to see animals in the wild, but again, being risk adverse, I always worry something bad might happen. I have a huge amount of respect for animals in the wild and would not want to do anything that might set them off. And who the hell knows what might set them off? I have a lunatic house cat who meows at walls, corners and sometimes electrical sockets. No idea why.

He is asleep, right? Like, really asleep, yes?

Plus, a lot of those animals in the wild look pretty dang skinny. I’ve been poor. I know what hunger feels like and when you’re hungry, you might just be willing to eat anything, including some stupid tourist distracted by their camera.

But it turns out, there was a whole lot I didn’t know about South Africa (shocker, I know).

Like, how much I would love beautiful, bustling, exciting Cape Town.

I also had no idea Cape Town had such a crazy good food scene. Like, really, really good.

The Old Biscuit Mill where we had a couple of great meals.

Including probably my favorite meal ever at Test Kitchen. No big deal, just the best restaurant in Africa. No, seriously. Other, fancier people have said so, too. They even made broccoli super cool and delicious. BROCCOLI, people.

I didn’t know about South Africa’s amazing wine country (we only made it to Stellenbosch, but there’s also Franschhoek, Constantia Valley and Helderberg, among others).

So much amazing wine.

And so many really gorgeous hotels, especially our villa at the Clouds Estate.

I didn’t know I’d be allowed to pet a cheetah (check that one off the life list).

That’s my pudgy little pale hand on an actual young cheetah. Right there. I died.

I didn’t know about Sabi Sands, a 65,000 hectare private reserve bordering Kruger National Park. It’s very unique in that it’s privately owned by individual land owners/families.

I didn’t know South Africa had places like the 5-star Savanna Lodge, where we stayed back in 2014.

I suspected–but didn’t know–that Africa had so many wonderful people like the staff at Savanna Lodge. We were treated like treasured family members (including a little post-game drive champagne party on the morning of my birthday).

Or like our ranger Patrick and his nice gun-toting tracker friends who pointed out all the cool, dangerous animals and would protect you from said animals if necessary.

The biggest revelation was the animals themselves, who aren’t really interested in eating stupid tourists at all when there are plenty of other, more tasty, less noisy food options available.

And actually would just really appreciate it if humans would leave them to their whole Circle of Life business.

In fact, they’d probably also appreciate it if humans would stop killing them into extinction.

Rhinos Collage — The African rhino (on the right) was our most elusive animal to find, mostly because they’ve been poached into near extinction. And we all know about elephant poaching.

So, we’re going back to South Africa. Sadly, we’re skipping Cape Town and Stellenbosch. And we weren’t able to book Savanna Lodge, despite planning this trip a year out (there is, understandably, quite the demand for their nine luxurious tent-suites).

We’re really excited to be staying five nights at Leopard Hills, another 5-star lodge in Sabi Sands.

Then we’re going on to another six nights of safari, this time in Tanzania, including stays in a glass-fronted tent suite at Lemala Kuria Hills and a bushtop tent at Serengeti Bushtops. We’ll finish up with four nights at the Manta Resort on Pemba Island, including a night in their underwater room. Yes, I said underwater room. The room is underwater.

It’s really an once-in-a-lifetime trip. But, for the second time.

Croatia: What Goes With Oysters? Pasta Cake of Course.

Posted on July 19, 2013June 29, 2017 by thepoelog

Meandering around medieval cities, popping into photography museums, and lying on pebble-y beaches is all well and good. But what I really like to do on vacation is drink wine during normal business hours while my fellow cubicle dwellers are in over-air-conditioned purgatory.

So, we went to the Peljesac peninsula for a day.

One of the surprising things about Croatia is how fantastic their wines are. But honestly, it shouldn’t be, considering how similar Croatia is to Italy, and well, we all know how Italian wines have turned out. (It’s also apparently quite good in the northern part of Croatia — Istria — according to this knowledgeable lady who was also JUST there.)

Other than some traffic in and around Dubrovnik, the drive up the peninsula was lovely. Lots of slate colored rocks pushing up into mountains and dotted with greenery and grape vines. Oh, and ocean views pretty much everywhere you looked.

Croatian countryside

There’s only one main road going up the 40 mile peninsula, but the drive takes about 2 hours due to the terrain. We ended up going about three-fourths of the way up the peninsula, stopping at a tiny little picturesque cove of Trstenik where we watched the goats beat up against the small docks and just viewed the sleepy little town from across the cove.

Trstenik cove, Croatia

After that peaceful little time out, which involved me waiting patiently while my Ansel Adams boyfriend XFE took numerous pictures with his fancy new camera, it was time to backtrack and hit some wineries. (Literally, the town was so still and quiet I thought it’d had been taken over by alien-ghost-zombies. I stayed close to the car, ready to leave XFE to the apocalypse, if it came down to it. Sorry, i’m not sorry. I totally would. I have a cat to raise.)

I had done a ton of research and identified about a dozen wineries that we might be able to visit, but like so much of the Peljesac peninsula, things were a bit sleepy on the informational front, meaning that many of the wineries did not have websites and those that did, did not have hours of operation. They’re very much along the lines of, “just stop by and flag someone down and they’ll give you some wine.”

Our first stop was a disappointing bust. We tried to stop at Grgich. Grgich is quite famous. Apparently the wine maker, Miljenko (Mike) Grgich came to the United States as a young man and met a very rich person who set him up with his own winery. That’s not at all what it says in his bio for his Napa Valley winery, but that’s what our waiter at lunch told us. When he found out we were from Washington D.C., he ran and got a bottle of Grgich Chardonnay and told us it was the White House white wine.

That would be the only Grgich wine we would see that day. The Grgich winery, which was in a very simple stucco building, was closed on the weekends. Which, to me, makes absolutely no sense. What winery isn’t opened on a Saturday? Isn’t that a busy day for visitors?

Vinarija Matusko in Potomje worked out a bit better, in that, at least it was open. We had a very nice young lady take us through the various wines, of which there were plenty, including Dingac, Posip (not to be confused with Prosip, which was a sweet wine), and Plavac Mali. The Dingac was, not surprisingly considering the rocky terrain, far too mineral-ly for my taste, but we did like the Plavac Mali and ended up buying a bottle.

Vinarija Matusko in Potomje

The wine wench (?is that appropriate?) told us a bit about the peninsula, which apparently is as subdued as we suspected. To be frank, she said it was quite boring. And you need a car. She also taught me how to say “dog” (there was a large wine dog watching us with big bloodshot eyes nearby) in Croatian and “cheers.”

After tasting some wines, we went down the road a short bit to Vinarija Milos. This time, there were quite a few other people there for tastings, including an American family with about 4 kids. Because you know what I love to see at a winery, besides pregnant women? Loads of children.

Vinarija Milos winery in Croatia

It was also a very homegrown operation, with the wine maker on hand pouring and his wife hand washing wine glasses just on the other side of the tasting bar. I don’t know if it was the scent of dish-washing detergent or the children, but I just wasn’t into Milos’ wines. What can I say? You win some, you lose some. I’m sure the wine was fine, but we just weren’t feeling it. Plus, it was time to go to lunch.

We were ridiculously excited about lunch. The Peljesac peninsula is known for two things: wine and oysters. Very special oysters that you can’t get anywhere else.

Right where the peninsula meets the mainland is Ston and Mali Ston. Ston’s natural lake-like bay has been the site of mussels and oyster farms since Roman times. We even saw fishermen selling oysters by the road. The area is also known for it’s salt flats, but I wasn’t interested in salt so much, unless it was sprinkled on some oysters.

We had lunch reservations at Bota Sare in Mali Ston, an 800-year-old stone building that had been used for salt storage in ye olden tymes.

Oyster boat for Bota Sare in Mali Ston — Our restaurants boat.

The oysters are a variety called Ostrea Edulis and only 2 million are produced each year, solely for domestic consumption. The oysters are smaller than others we’ve had, and the shells are very fat. The meat was rich and firm and wonderful.

We ended up ordering about 4.5 dozen oysters — raw, grilled and fried. They. Were. Amazing.

Ostrea Edulis oysters in Ston, Croatia

I’m also pretty sure that our fellow diners were quite impressed at how many oysters we put away, but since we knew we couldn’t get these anywhere else (and they were delicious), we gorged.

Ostrea Edulis oysters in Ston, Croatia

However, I still found room to take home some dessert. I overheard our waiter explaining Ston cake to another table and was intrigued. A cake made with leftover pasta? How’s that? Yes. Yes, I want some.

Pasta cake at Bota Sare, Ston, Croatia

It was weird, and cinnamon-ey, and lemon-y and just…..odd. It wasn’t pretty, really. It was very odd looking. And the texture was….interesting.

Just like the Peljesac peninsula — totally distinct but in a good way.

Rioja Part Two: Do Great Architects Make Good Wine?

Posted on December 7, 2012July 5, 2017 by thepoelog

“This Gehry guy really seems to know what he’s doing,” I said out loud, albeit, a bit breathlessly. I’m pretty sure the bellhop heard me on that one.

The swirling riot of metallic ribbons of fuschia, gold and silver that make up the roof of the Hotel Marques de Riscal will do that to a girl.

You would think after seeing Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, I’d have been a bit more jaded, a bit more prepared for the impact of a Gehry-designed building. I mean, how many times can one swoon at the site of some curved titanium?

Apparently, in my case at least, there is no cap on being awe-stricken by a building. And as the Spanish sun reflected the colors of the roof onto the ground beneath my feet, I was again amazed by architecture.

Marques de Riscal hotel and winery

The Hotel Marques de Riscal was the whole crazy origins of this trip to Spain. As a Starwood Luxury Property, we would stumble across pictures of it on Starwood’s website. It seemed incongruous to see this crazy modern property nestled in the center of a tiny old Spanish town.

It went into the “maybe someday” file.

But as we started talking about our trip to Spain, we decided we wanted to go somewhere off the beaten path. Someplace neither of us had been and that we would see together for the first time.

And then, of course, there was the wine.

Continue reading Rioja Part Two: Do Great Architects Make Good Wine?

Rioja: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Winemaking (and a teeny bit of actual drinking)

Posted on December 3, 2012July 5, 2017 by thepoelog

Our three-day visit to the Rioja wine route in Spain has made us experts at making wine.

Spain's Rioja wine region

Prior to this trip, my personal sommelier XFE and I felt fully confident that after watching two seasons of Moonshiners, several tours of distilleries (including Jameson in Ireland) and quite a few breweries (mostly in Colorado), and probably a total of a hundred wineries on three continents, we were conversant in the basics of turning a grain or fruit into a fermented adult beverage.

When planning our trip to the Rioja region, we ran into a wrinkle that we’ve actually run into before. Spain (like other parts of Europe) requires advance bookings for visits to their wineries. Fine. But in most cases, you can’t just go in for a tasting. You have to do a tour of the facilities.

Now, as I mentioned, we go on a lot of winery visits. We go out to Virginia wineries twice a year to taste the latest vintages and stock our wine closet. We’ve been to Napa and Sonoma. We’ve been to Northern Italy. We’ve been to the Barossa region of Australia. We’ve done many, many tours. This is not our first wine rodeo.

So being required to go on tour after tour after tour where there’s actually only a tiny bit of variance in the process (hmmm, you use American oak barrels instead of French oak? Wow.) just so we can have a tiny taste of two of your least popular wines? It’s excessive. In no instance were the wines served as good as wines we subsequently bought and tasted.

My suggestion? I’d rather hear more about the wine itself. What notes should I look for? Which specific ones are available for sale in the US (since the wineries won’t ship)? How long should we store it if we buy it? How is this one different from this one? That kind of stuff.

Nevertheless, we made reservations for tours at four facilities: Bodega Lopez de Heredia in Haro; Bodega Baigorri in Samaniego; Marques de Riscal in Elciego; and Bodega Ysios in Laguardia. Our mid-November trip was around two-to-six weeks after harvest and bottling (depending on the facility), so things were definitely quiet and reservations were easy to arrange.

We started our trip with a pleasant morning drive to Haro, about an hour and a half south of Bilbao. The countryside was beautiful, with steep cliffs of iron on each side of the road and early morning fog burning off.

Spain's Rioja wine region

Haro is one of those small old Spanish towns that has one road entering it, and Lopez de Heredia was one of the first spots right off the road. You couldn’t miss it. Well, and the modern decanter shaped tasting room building also gave it away.

Lopez de Heredia in Haro, Spain — Tasting room at Lopez de Heredia

You see, the big thing in the Rioja region is to have some fancy-schmancy architect build your facility or tasting room. In the case of Lopez de Heredia, the tasting room was designed by an Iraqui-British architect, Zaha Hadid.

The tasting room is the only nod to modernity at Lopez de Heredia. They are extremely proud of their adherence to the old ways of doing things, using many of the traditional methods they’ve honed over the last 130-plus years to make their Vina Tondonia. They make their own barrels and have an onsite cooperage, a source of great pride for our lovely young tour guide. And, in case you were wondering, they use American oak.

Barrel making at Lopez de Heredia in Haro, Spain

We also got a peek at some of their very creepy underground storage vaults where bottles of wine were just coated with cobwebs and dust. You could not make out a single label. In many cases, you couldn’t even tell that they were bottles. Our tour guide explained that killing the spiders would be environmentally insensitive since they provide a necessary service of eating other pests. The amount of post-harvest wine gnats floating in the air would seem to suggest—to me at least—that the spiders were not holding up their end of the deal, and just maybe, we could break out a feather duster and tidy up a bit.

Wine storage at Lopez de Heredia

At Heredia, we tasted crianzas, reservas and gran reservas – terms which refer to how long the wines have been aged. They were all very, very good and were bargain priced, although that did us no good since they don’t ship to the U.S. Heredia, like other wineries in Rioja, uses a U.S. distributor, which means you can’t get all of their wines, and the staff at the wineries don’t know which ones you can get. Quite frustrating. We ended up buying a bottle to drink, and a small dessert wine to take home.

Wine storage at Lopez de Heredia

Haro has 19 or so wineries, but we had only made reservations at Heredia, which had been recommended by the guy at our favorite local wine store. There was, however, a tasting room right next door to Heredia that we had read about during our research – Bodegas Roda. As promised, it was small and to the point. You could taste Roda wines and even their olive oil, which we did.

Bodegas Roda in Spain

We then headed down the street to Bodegas Torre Muga, which is a very large and modern operation that, quite wisely, has a wine bar where you can sit and try a flight of wines without going through the tour business. It was here that we made a very odd discovery: although the Rioja region is deservedly known for its wonderful reds, the whites were just as good, if not sometimes better. This was true at Muga, which had a wonderful blanco that we fell in love with.(They also had some of the best buttery crackers there, which I. Tore. Up.)

Torre Muga, Rioja, Spain — Didn’t like anything. Anything at all.

Tomorrow: Wine bankruptcies, the role of gravity in winemaking, and why you should not choose a winery based on a cool, architecturally interesting building.

The Gas Man Cometh (and Yet, We Still Have No Working Stove)

Posted on September 25, 2012September 24, 2012 by thepoelog

This weekend was a weekend of promise. The promise of a completion of our sweet abode. The weekend where everything remaining on the new homestead punch list was going to be checked off with a satisfying finality. Alas, when homeowners make plans, the Contractor Gods laugh.

general-contractor — Yep, this dude is laughing at us.

There wasn’t much left, really. We needed speakers installed, walls painted, and a gas line put in for our stove.

We finally had an electrician come and install speakers throughout the lower level (which, of course, took longer than promised and involved much more damage to our walls than described). But, by Thursday evening, we had the television and speakers up on the wall, a speaker installed in the kitchen ceiling and an outdoor speaker. It was, despite the holes in our walls, a very beautiful thing. Because it meant we could paint the lower level and be done.

The world’s cutest non-professional contractor XFE spent the next couple of days patching the holes in the walls and prepping for paint. In the meantime, I went and ran a race. The Clarendon 10k, which is a very nice race, mostly downhill. Really, it’s downhill and they give you a metro pass to get back up the hill to the start line. Brilliant.

We looked pretty fast before the race started.

The amazingly awesome pacer that I am, I started off way too fast and almost died. So I ended up walking way more than I wanted to. Particularly the last two miles. It was truly pathetic. Especially since I had run 6.25 miles earlier that week without stopping at all and felt great.

This is Taylor. She decided to bring the sexy back to running. It was her first 10K and she totally kicked my ass. Probably because of that aerodynamic shirt. Less wind resistance.

Here are my splits, which really tell the story:

Mile 1: 9:24
Mile 2: 9:08
Mile 3: 10:03
Mile 4: 10:54
Mile 5: 11:36
Mile 6: 11:56

I really pulled it out for the last quarter mile at 11:48. My total pace of 10:34. Not horrible, but not what I had been hoping for. Luckily, there was beer. Lots and lots of beer.

Look at the triumphant yet sweaty faces. Good times

(You can’t tell, but I have blue tape over the Nike swoosh as I continue my one woman protest against the company that hired back Michael Vick. I couldn’t bear to throw out my UT shirt, which is literally, the last Nike item I now own.)

I moseyed home at around 3 pm and saw this going on outside my house.

That’s right! After 2 months of living here, we were finally getting our gas line for our stove. We applied for the line right after we moved in, but the gas department around here is slower than Sunday’s Emmy’s broadcast, so they were just getting around to putting it in.

But, of course, after tearing up the road and trampling my flowers, they realized they didn’t have a welder on duty and could not complete the task (XFE saved most of the flowers and replanted them, for which I’m very grateful. But my geraniums look pretty trod upon).

On Sunday, we needed to get out of the house so our real-non-XFE contractor could come in and paint our walls. XFE really, really wanted to paint the place himself, but I convinced that we didn’t want to leave such an important task to our inexperienced paint rollers and it was worth the money to get it done right. So we bought two cans of paint, moved the furniture to the center of the room, and headed out to our favorite winery for lunch and some wine shopping.

We returned home about 8 hours later and our contractor told us that things had gone just so doggone well that he hadn’t even needed to get into the second can of paint. This caused our collective eyebrows to rise in disbelief. Sure enough, a few hours later, after everything had dried, we started noticing spots that weren’t quite completely covered. The morning sunlight revealed even more uneven coverage areas.

So let’s go through the items we expected to be done with by this point:

Speakers – Check. Done and check.
Painted walls – Nope. Need to be redone.
Gas for stove – Nope. Still waiting.

We did, however, find a use for all that heavy-duty construction gear parked outside our house. This is what happens when you leave your large moving equipment unattended.

(BTW, there are no pictures of the walls nor the speakers because XFE wants to save some surprises for the big unveil at Porktober. Yes, you read right: Porktober is happening again.)

Weekend in Pictures

Posted on May 14, 2012May 13, 2012 by thepoelog

Very good weekend. We were waaaay social. Like we actually talked to other people. And hung out with them! I’m sure they’ll never call us again.

We actually went out Friday night for dinner, Saturday afternoon for drinks and cornhole, and Sunday we went to a vineyard for the afternoon, just the two of us. We also battled squirrels and planted our THIRD tomato plant of the season. At this rate, we’ll have tomatoes by August. And, we now have the trashiest, most metally front yard ever.

Great French bistro, amazing foie gras with figs.

Cornhole at the Rock n Roll Hotel. Man, I suck at that game. I think the score was like 102 to 16

Hefweizzen at the wonderfully named Star of Shamrock (Jewish – Irish place).

Tomahawk steak for dinner (brontosaurus size)

Since it was a large 2-pounder, we could cook it nice and slow and get a really good crust on it. Probably the best steak ever.

Winery humor. Bought a couple of bottles of white, including a bottle we sat on the winery patio and enjoyed. The weather was PERFECT.

So, we’re still having problems with tomato vandalism. We’re sure it’s squirrels. I wanted to give up, but XFE is personally peeved, so this is how we’re dealing with it. We planted some more items today and then created these metal thunderdomes. Bring it, stupid squirrels.

Pink Mink and Rubber Duckies: Wine Tasting in the Barossa

Posted on March 21, 2012July 5, 2017 by thepoelog

After escaping death’s watery clutches, mastering the art of koala whispering, and rubbing elbows with popstars, there really was only one thing left to do: Drink a bunch of wine.

Wine of Australia's Barossa Valley

We headed to the Barossa Valley, a wine region in southern Australia. It’s kinda like Napa but without the crowds or the tasting fees.

Barossa is an hour drive from Adelaide and was settled in the mid-1800s by Europeans, mostly Germans and the British. Almost immediately, it seems, they began producing wine. Some of the vines at one winery (Langmeil, which also happened to be our favorite) are 169 years old, which is pretty crazy when you consider that after 20 years, vines start to produce smaller and smaller yields (something I learned during a tasting at our second favorite winery Turkey Flat – where our extremely attractive hostess claimed that they had the oldest vines. This would become a common theme throughout our visit).

Turkey Flat, Barossa Valley

The region is made up primarily of three communities – Angaston, Tanunda, and Nuriootpa (which is the Aboriginal word for “getting your swerve on with good wine.” Actually, that’s not a literal translation. It really means “meeting place.” All three towns are relatively close together (within miles of each other) and there are tons of little communities dotted in between, including Bethany, which was one of the oldest settlements and had a lovely winery built into a rock quarry. It also claims to have the oldest vines in the region. Shocker.

The Barossa is visually stunning – lots of rolling hills and expansive vistas. It wasn’t at all crowded when we were there – generally there were a few other people at any particular tasting room, but nothing crazy.

Almost all of the tastings were fully inclusive, meaning you could try absolutely anything they had. Anything. It was crazy. A wine free-for-all. My wine-for-life-partner XFE and I shared tastings to keep the tipsy at bay, but the generosity of the pours overall made this a challenge.

The tastings were free almost everywhere, or $5, reimbursable with a purchase. And in the couple of cases where there was supposed to be a fee (for example, the wonderful Seppeltsfield Winery – which ALSO claims the oldest grapes!), the shopkeepers even waived that small fee because we were American and couldn’t really buy much to take with us.

Seppeltsfield Winery

(Seppeltsfield was very interesting because they specialize in fortified wine, which are things like sherry, port and tawny. What makes it fortified is the addition of a liquor, in this case brandy. I’ll tell you, I was learning stuff all over that valley.)

Even the big guys like Penfolds and Peter Lehmann didn’t have fees. These were the two largest, most commercial wineries we went to, and we actually bought a very, very nice bottle of wine at Penfolds to have with dinner that night, but we generally like to seek out the smaller, lesser-known wineries. Needless to say, we avoided Jacob’s Creek and Wolf Blass.

Penfolds Shiraz, Australia

But the Barossa specialty is the Shiraz and I swear, we didn’t have a bad Shiraz the whole time we were there, including the sparkling Shiraz, which was wonderful. They also have a popular blend GMS, which is Grenache, Mataro or Mouvedre, and Shiraz that I liked.

On the white front, they had some very interesting Rieslings, which were for the most part very dry. Not sweet, like the German versions. And, surprisingly (since it’s so popular here in Virginia) we tasted a few Viogniers. We also had some great, great roses, including the above mentioned Turkey Flat, and at a small winery called Rockford.

We went to 14 wineries over the course of two days, which seems like a lot, in retrospect. But we were generally out the door at 10 am and back by 5 pm, so they were pretty spread out. And, like I said, we did share tastings and we didn’t go through the whole list at each winery, instead, picking and choosing a few that we wanted to try.

Plus, we had nice long lunches each day, including lunch in Angaston twice at a place called Wanera Wine Bar. They had this octopus and chorizo dish that was to die for. XFE and I both shared a tapas sized portion the first day we went and then two days later, went back for the larger portions. Just thinking about it right now is making me crave it.

Octopus at Wanera Wine Bar

Mostly we stood around talking to the shopkeepers and winemakers, who were a very gracious and helpful bunch. I really did learn a lot. For example, at Whistler Wines, I learned that kangaroos like apples. That’s because the owner keeps kangaroos and gave us some sliced apples to take out there.

Winery kangaroos

We bought a few wines, including a couple of wonderful Tawnys, one of which, Mr. Pickwick’s Particular Tawny from Saltram Wine Estates, which we had had during my birthday dinner at Ochre. We also bought a small bottle of Tawny from Langmeil.

But our best purchase had to be a lovely sparkling concoction we bought on our way home one night at a winery that was just down the street from where we were staying in Lyndoch.

Kellermeister Wines has quite a distinguished billboard – very understated and regal – that proclaims that its wines have received a whole bunch of stars from renowned Australian wine critic James Halliday. This is apparently quite the big deal, according to the very posh young man who was serving us that day. And, according to the Kellermeister website:

We’ve been quietly handcrafting Kellermeister wines in small batches at our boutique winery in the beautiful Barossa Valley for a long time now. But in true Aussie fashion, we’ve managed to keep just how exceptional the wines are pretty quiet. Well, until recently that is, when Australia’s leading authority on all things wine, James Halliday, spilled the beans in his definitive Australian Wine Companion.

James classified our winery with the highest possible winery rating – five bright red stars. This prestigious designation is only bestowed upon a handful of wineries across Australia in recognition of the consistent production of wines of “exemplary quality and typicity” – just the sort of wines that we’ve been making for over 30 years.

We tried a few of the Kellermeister wines, including, of course, the Shiraz, nodding and murmuring our appreciation, when two intriguingly named Moscatos caught our eye. “Could we try the Black Fire and the Pink Mink?” we asked.

Pink Mink Moscato

It may not be from the oldest vines in the Barossa (although the label hasn’t changed since the 1970s), but that Pink Mink sure did taste good after dinner while we gazed out over the dark hills and impossibly starry skies from our uber large Jacuzzi bathtub, pink rubber ducky included.

Australian duck

Woops. I Forgot to Title This. Let’s Call it “Fall Complaints”

Posted on November 8, 2011November 8, 2011 by thepoelog

Welcome to Daylight Saving Time, also known as Poe Hell, aka: Five-Month Hibernation Period.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Twisty country road out in Northern Virginia. Best enjoyed from one's car.

Even though I left work at my normal time, I felt like I got home soooo late tonight. I rushed home and then didn’t want to go back out. And that will be the pattern for the next five months. I’ll skip happy hours. I’ll avoid running errands. I won’t even be tempted by shop windows. I’ll come directly home from work and change into comfy house clothes and eat and sleep my way through the winter. Preferably on fluffy clouds of macaroni and cheese.

I know it’s incredibly original to say, but I DETEST DST. And fall. And winter.

I want to seriously punch people who say, “But we gained an hour!” No. No we didn’t. We took an hour of sunlight from the end of the day and shifted it to the beginning. That’s it. Still the same number of hours.

You see, thePoeLog is a cold-blooded creature who needs to bask in the sun to warm up and increase her
metabolism, much like our little tortoise pal, Yertle. Here are just a few reasons I hate this time of year:

I do not get the concept of layering. I try. I really do. And as a consequence, I almost continuously find myself in a situation where my torso is excrutiatingly warm, and my hands and exposed face are frozen. This especially happens on the walk to and from the metro. I can feel sweat running down my back and trapping itself in the layers of lightweight wool and cotton I’m wearing, while my hands are so cold they can barely hold on to my purse handle and my nose is running and pooling on my upper lip, requiring a mad dig (with frozen fingers) into said purse for a wad of Kleenex. I loathe layering.
Speaking of which, can we just talk about tights for a minute? I know I need them, to keep my legs warm. And, I do have quite the collection of knee high boots (seriously, I have, at least 10 pairs of knee high boots). But tights get twisted and are very uncomfortable. They require hopping about on one foot in the morning and jamming ones foot into a wafting piece of fabric floating freely in the air. They leave marks and they’re a pain to get in and out of, making every trip to the bathroom a sweaty wrestling match (again, because I’m wearing layers, and any physical activity causes profuse layer-induced sweating).
Since there are now all these layers, and sweat, at play, there is, of course, a serious uptick in the amount of laundry required on a daily basis. And we all know how I feel about laundry.
Coats. Holy Wool Overload. I moved to Washington DC with one winter coat. I have now amassed a ridiculous number of coats. They all are made of different materials, have different weights, and serve different purposes. There are fall coats for every day, fall coats for going out, rain coats that are ok with pants, rain coats that are ok with skirts and dresses, rain coats that are too casual for work and therefore are for weekends, leather jackets, winter coats for when it’s snowing, winter coats for when it’s not snowing, vests for when I only need my torso to be warm, but apparently, not my arms. We won’t even begin to address the various footwear required to make it through fall and winter.
But speaking of footwear: Now that it gets dark earlier, I have to change my walking route home from the metro. My normal, preferred walking route is through a nice neighborhood, with very little traffic or need to stop at intersections and smooth, continuous cement sidewalks. But this route isn’t very well lit. So now that it gets dark at 5 pm, I instead have to walk down King Street, which is very well lit indeed, but the sidewalks of King Street are made of brick. Do you have any idea what brick sidewalks do to high heels? Even lovely knee high boots? It eats them. That quaint brick sidewalk running through historic Old Town is a death trap on many levels, but especially, for heels that slip between the bricks. My cobbler, incidentally, probably loves fall and winter. Also: King Street? Tourist megahighway. So instead of meandering along in my lovely neighborhood, I have to dodge masses of enchanted tourists looking at all the old timey fun buildings, while dislodging my heel from shifting bricks every few feet. Somebody ought to make a video game out of this scenario. Something like, “Urban Obstacle Courses,” or something.
Quaint, but quite ankle-twisting.

The one good thing about this time of year, however, is Fall Fun Day. I’ve mentioned Fall Fun Day before. It’s my favorite day after Super Spring Spectacular, which is celebrated in the same manner. It’s sorta like Treat Yo Self Day.

Fall Fun Day celebrates and recreates one of the first dates that my life partner/spousal equivalent XFE and I ever went on. It involves driving out into the lovely twisty country roads in the wilds of Northern Virginia. Which, all cynicism aside, really is beautiful this time of the year. From the comfort of one’s car.

Anyway, we take in all the beautiful changing foliage, stop at a few wineries, do some serious people watching/judging, and chit chat about the humongous houses sitting on acres of property out in the middle of Virginia horse country.

Mostly, we speculate about ways to do away with Daylight Saving Time. Or, at least I do. XFE loves fall and winter. He’s so weird.

Does anyone else hate this time of year? Or are you all hypnotized by the beauty of the colorful leaves (which, by the way, signal death and decay. Just so you know)? Any survival strategies that don’t involve eating and sleeping?

Dooking It Out For Molly Dooker Wine: Where Everyone’s a Winner

Posted on September 17, 2011September 18, 2011 by thepoelog

Anybody out there like wine? Yeah, I thought so. Us, too. My sommelier-for-eternity XFE and I love wine and have really gotten into good wines over the last couple of years. We even invested in a wine fridge.

So when Kimpton Hotels tweeted that they would be holding a winemaker’s dinner, XFE looked into it. Turns out, the dinner was being held by an Australian winery called Molly Dooker . WHAT? We’re going to Australia! And we like Australian wines! In fact, we’re trying to plan a few days of winery tours in our Australian trip, but there are so many great wine regions, we’re still trying to decide which one makes sense for us – Barossa, Clare, Hunter, we’re just not sure.

To top it off, Molly Dooker was holding a contest to name their next wine. AND the winner of the contest would be named at the DC wine dinner at the Hotel Palomar. The prize was awesome – a trip to Australia and a stay at the winery! Destiny had spoken.

We began brainstorming names for the new wine, which is a sparkling shiraz (We’d each have 10 opportunities to enter). We began researching Molly Dooker, which we found out was Australian slang for “left handed,” since the two owners, Sparky and Sarah, are both left handed. Pretty freaking adorable, huh? Yeah, we thought so too. All in all, it seems like a very fun winery, doing some pretty fun things, but how’s the wine?

Well, we had plenty of opportunity to find out at last week’s wine dinner. It started with a little appetizers – crab cakes and satay skewers, and their white wine, the Violinist. The Violinist is a verdelho, which I have never heard of, but it was very delicious. And well, we do love crab cakes.

We moved to the main event. When we got into the room, there was TON of wine and lots of glasses waiting for the wine. Each setting had five or so glasses. So, we took a deep breath, pulled on our big girl pants and settled in to get an education on Molly Dooker wines.

Sparky (and like his name suggests, he’s a real live wire) started off explaining how the wines are made with nitrogen to protect the wine from sulphites. But nitrogen isn’t too yummy in young wines. And if you want to drink the wine instead of having to store it forever (and believe me, you do want to drink it), you need to release the nitrogen gas by shaking up the bottle and letting it settle for a few minutes. We actually tasted two wines – one shaken, one not – and let me tell you, it’s better shaken.

We tasted several reds – including (up to that point at least) my favorite, which was—surprisingly for me—a cabernet sauvignon called Gigglepot. We then tried the Scooter (a merlot), the Boxer (a shiraz), and the Maitre D’ (a cabernet sauvignon). Building on our new expertise, we did a fun little experiment where we mixed the three to try to come up with our own blend similar to their shiraz/cabernet/merlot blend, Two Left Feet. We mixed enough to share with the entire table in our mad scientist plastic beakers. XFE was taking this quite seriously, by the way. We voted on which of the four groups at our table had the best blend. Then we drank it.

After that, we were all feeling pretty good, listening to Sparky regale us with tales of winemaking, explaining the meaning and features behind all the wine labels (check out their website for details. It’s really well done), and proud Papa stories about his (and his children’s) illustrious go-cart careers. Apparently, that’s a thing.

Well, the tastings weren’t over yet. We then turn over our placemats and there are spots and notes for FIVE more wine tastings! Whoa. Thankfully our food came out, a (slightly) overcooked beef dish with wine sauce and some veggies, and a yummy chocolate/caramel dense mousse thing. I’m not really sure what it was, but it hit the tipsy spot.

For our second round of tastings, we tried Molly Dooker’s Enchanted Path, a shiraz/cabernet blend, Carnival of Love, a shiraz, Blue Eyed Boy, another shiraz, and the piece-de-resistance, the Velvet Glove. It’s also a shiraz, but it was unbelievable. So, so good. I can’t describe it other than to say velvety. Interesting story – a forklift recently dropped about $1 million of Velvet Glove headed to the U.S. That was about 1/3 of the year’s production, so the 2010 quantities of this $200 a bottle wine are going to be quite limited. Which is very, very sad indeed.

Despite our extremely excellent 20 name suggestions, we did not win the Label Our Lefty contest. Someone with the wholly unoriginal name of Miss Molly won. Yes, I’m bitter grapes about that. But Molly Dooker can probably make some excellent wine even out of bitter grapes.

And now our decision on which wine region to go to when we go to Australia in March has been further complicated by the fact that Molly Dooker is in McLaren Vale, which was not an area we were even considering originally. So, we’ll see. First World Problems here, people.

Food Porn: Palladio at Barboursville Vineyards

Posted on September 4, 2011July 10, 2017 by thepoelog

My opposite-sex-partner-for-life XFE and I don’t really celebrate an anniversary per se. We met, we started dating, but I never really remember exactly when, and I don’t know which date we should commemorate: when we met, or when we had our first date, or when we had our first kiss? I know we met in October, fairly close to Halloween. But we’re not a stickler for the “love” holidays – we don’t really do Valentine’s Day, or even New Year’s Eve (which, to me at least, seems like a “couples” kinda holiday as well), and we don’t do anniversaries.

What we do every year, however, is celebrate Fall Fun Day. It’s in honor of one of our first dates, which was a drive out to a couple of Virginia wineries. Again, I don’t remember the exact date or the names of the wineries we visited that particular year, but I do remember it was a beautiful fall day and my stomach was full of butterflies I was so excited to be sitting next to this amazing person on our way out to a day of who-knows-what.

So we replicate that day every year. Usually in the fall. But this year, since our fall is getting pretty busy, we kinda did Fall Fun Day a bit early. And, we focused on just one place instead of the 3-4 we usually go to.

We first went to Barboursville Vineyards in January on our way to an amazing restaurant in Chilhowie, Virginia, which turns out, is a hell of a long way from DC. So we broke up the trip and stayed a night in Charlottesville. And we went to a few wineries along the way.

Barboursville blew us away. It’s a gorgeous setting, but lots of wineries have that. Since it was January and there was a ton of snow on the ground, we were pretty much the only folks in the place which meant we got a lot of individual attention. And the tastings were very generous. There must have been about 15 wines and the tasting price was only $5. Most importantly, the wines were amazing. We bought a ton.

And, we got the low down on their Italian owners, Zonin Wines. That lead to a visit to the Zonin headquarters and museum when we went to northern Italy this past March, and for me at least, it was one of the highlights of the trip. We were treated like rock stars by the folks at Zonin. So we definitely have a soft spot for Barboursville at this point.

This trip to Barboursville was a bit different because we were going for a tasting (which was much more crowded and less personal), sure, but we were also going for lunch at their restaurant, Palladio. We had heard great things about the restaurant, but on our first visit, we were still full from an earlier meal, so we had to skip it. This time, we made sure we’d be hungry for our 12:30 lunch reservation for a four course tasting menu and wine flight.

The dining room at Palladio is a bit old fashioned, not much to look at. The service was great, very friendly and attentive without being overbearing or pretentious. The chef, Melissa Close Hart, has been named one of the 25 best chefs in the mid-Atlantic region by the James Beard Foundation, so we had pretty high expectations and were not disappointed.

The wine flight was 3 of Barboursville’s Reserve wines – Nebbiolo 2008, Cabernet Franc 2008 and Octagon 2006, which the winery is justifiably famous for. This is a wine that was served at the president’s inauguration lunch. And it is really, really good.

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XFE started with a house-made charcuterie plate that had duck prosciutto, bresaola with an olive tapenade, and a house-made salami with cheese. I started with a warm goat cheese flan with a beet puree and golden beets. I go back and forth on beets – sometimes they’re just too earthy for my taste. Both starters were very good, the flan was just the right texture, the duck prosciutto was very gamey but delicious.

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA For the next course, XFE had gnocchi with peaches, speck, a bourbon reduction and basil. It the dish I had my eye on, but considering our main course choices (he went with veal and I had fish), it made the most sense that he take the lighter second course. I went big and heavy with a risotto with braised rabbit, rosemary, tomatoes, and cipollini onions. It was amazing. Both dishes were great and we ended up swapping plates a number of times.

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As I said, XFE had the veal chop for his main and it was awesome. It came with fingerling potatoes, Swiss chard, mushrooms and most awesome of all – house-made bacon lardons. That’s big chunks of smoky delicious bacon for those uninitiated into this bacon greatness. My fish dish was lovely, if not quite the showstopper of XFE’s veal. I had cobia and polenta. I’d never heard of cobia, but it was great. It’s a firm flesh white fish, very buttery. It stood up well to the herbed polenta (perfect crispy nuttiness) and the pickled fennel salad, which I was less in love with. I just don’t eat fennel enough to know if it was great or not.

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For dessert, XFE was again the winner with his trio of chocolate – a warm tart with dark chocolate sauce, white and chocolate Bavarese (basically, semi-soft discs) with a raspberry sauce and chocolate-almond “salami” that was pretty fun and very delicious. My tiramisu was very good, but it’s hard to beat chocolate-almond salami!

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It was a great meal, very pleasurable, no real misses. The pacing was perfect, the service smooth. The price was fantastic – four-course lunch was $52. We upgraded to the reserve wine flight for another $20.

Which left us plenty of money to buy a case of Barboursville’s wine, including an entirely unnecessary magnum of Octagon 2005. Petunia would have preferred a case of Whisker Lickins.