White Merlot, White Cabernet Sauvignon

Hi Ian

hope you are having a great season...

Have you tried running Google on "rose de saignee" ? The first answer is our friend and occasional AFW poster Francis Boulard and his champagne. We tried this rose recently and it certainly was up to the quality of the rest of his wines. Rose can be exceptional...

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

Unfortunately the BBQ culture (despite the legendary weather) has taken hold in the UK big time, at least in the areas just outside London, where supermarkets are filled to the brim with dodgy BBQ-type "food products". The acrid smoke and the smell of meths and burning meat are all too common around where I live.

I suppose that the silent majority of people who don't really appreciate good food or good wine, follow fashionable food-fads and the path of least resistance as far as filling their stomachs is concerned is pretty much the same throughout the western world.

On the other hand the amount of people who do care about what they eat and drink and who have an eclectic, but equally international taste seems to rise as well. What does sadly seem to be squeezed out recently between the junk food addicts and the international food-afficionado crowd is the people who appreciate the "gut bürgerliche Küche" of the area they live in, leading to a rather unfortunate uniformity of eating habits all over the place.

• German phrase meaning good unassuming local fare.

Myself, I have no idea if the previous post was correct, that one is officially not supposed to press the skins when making a rosé by the saignée method. But I don't see any practical reason why you couldn't. After all, if the definition of saignée includes draining up to all the juice off, the skins will press themselves to a degree, the weight of skins on top pressing down on those below. A winemaker might well want employ a press for a rosé for the same reason they press other wines (red, white and in-between): to get more juice from the fruit. In the case of a rosé, I would think they might be motivated to press lightly, though, in order to avoid extracting too much tannin.

- Mark W.

Salut/Hi Markus,

Is this the first time you've posted? I don't recall having seen your name before. If it is, thanks for joining in.

le/on Sat, 31 Jul 2004 15:16:03 +0100, tu disais/you said:-

I suppose that in a sense it was going to be inevitable. As I left 15 years ago and now only go back in the autumn or winter, I haven't been subjected to these dubious delights there.

I still remember, however, with great pleasure the barbecues we had in Germany in the Sauerland in Brilon, when we accompanied some 40 or 50 german students from Jacquie's school (she was a language teacher). The butcher would produce great trays of bratwurst, and marinaded pork chops, and chicken for us to grill - all home made - that were quite delicious. The parents of the host families would bring their home made salads, and desserts and we had a feast, all washed down with some truly excellent local beer (for the adults only, of _course_ ;-))

I'm sure they do, Marcus. And while I may regret it for their sakes, because I truly believe that one can eat much better with remarkably little extra effort, and often at lower cost, it doesn't really impinge on me. However, what I've never found to any serious degree in any country _other_ than France, is the mix of arrogant chauvinism and ignorance about which I was holding forth.

I've been extraordinarily lucky in that I've travelled quite widely (though not as much as I'd like) in the world, and in most countries, they're delighted to give credit where it's due. In France, if I do a non French dish that delights my French guests, when I inform them that it was American (Cajun 15 bean soup or meatloaf or a chowder or.. or...) or English, (Chicken with sun dried tomatoes, or a hotpot, or syllabub or burn't cream, or.. or..) or Italian (Lasagne al Forno, as tonight), the reaction 4 times out of 5 is "ah yes, but one eats well in France" or "all the same, French cooking is the best in the world". As if a good dish from somewhere else in the world was somehow an affront to their country. And exactly the same applies to their attitude to wine.

Yes I'd say I've noticed this rise - especially in the UK, where people are now prepared to pay to eat well. (in some sectors).

and the international food-afficionado

they live in, leading to a rather unfortunate

Interesting point, and I'd say that to a large extent the same is happening here in France as well. I'm VERY lucky living in this area - the Correze, where "la bonne cuisine bourgeoise" (to translate your phrase) AND "la bonne cuisine paysanne" are both resisting valiantly.

But to be honest, I think it's slightly unfair to put these phenomena you mention as the cause of a loss of local eating habits in the UK. One of the consequences of the industrial revolution in the UK was the mass migration away from the countryside and the consequent loss of much of the local tradition in food, which still exists quite firmly in Italy, France and Germany. So although I agree that gut bürgerliche Küche has been squeezed out, I'd qualify that slightly by not applying it as much to areas in the UK, as it would elsewhere. However I _would_ agree that the homogeneity of food in the UK has continued and perhaps accelerated in recent years. One of the things that my visitors here always ask me is "What part of the UK do you come from?" and I can't really answer. People in the UK have had to be so much more mobile than in France and Germany that the concept is less meaningful. So equally the concept of "regional cooking" so important in France, Italy and Germany, is less relevant in the UK. Notwithstanding all that, I believe that in fact regional cooking is making something of a comeback in the UK, but at a high level, spearheaded by chefs such as Garry Rhodes, Rick Stein and (to a lesser extent) Gordon Ramsey. Though instead of Welsh cooking being confined to Wales as Poitevine cooking is more or less confined to the region around Poitier, it is now being promoted and tried out throughout the UK. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, except perhaps for visitors from abroad who go to Wales to eat Welsh food, the lake district for food from Lancashire etc.

Sorry to have gone on at length, but this is a subject that as dear to my heart!

Salut/Hi Mike Tommasi,

le/on Sat, 31 Jul 2004 09:29:57 +0200, tu disais/you said:-

Not really, although the period 14th July to 15th August is 100% full. VERY busy, though.

Nope, I haven't. I'm afraid I always try to answer without too many external references. Call it foolhardy or arrogant. I'd not argue.

Yes, I tried it a couple of times in the last year or two and always found it wonderful. Though it's the exception rather than the rule in Champagne afaik, and I can't say that I've found other top pink champagnes bad either.

Salut/Hi Vino,

le/on Sat, 31 Jul 2004 03:56:30 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

RvF describes the other main method(s) as "macération pélliculaire" and "pressurage" (with or without "directe" being added). I understand these to mean that in the case of MP the grapes are crushed and left to macerate with their skins for some time at low temperatures, which prevents fermentation. The mixture would then (surely?) be pressed.

In the case of pressurage, RvF says that the red grapes are pressed before fermentation so that the lightly coloured juice can then be fermented. They don't say what (if any) is the difference between pressurage and pressurage directe. I am guessing in saying that "directe" implies NO prior fermentation and "pressurage" would allow some crushing and fermentation (albeit very brief) before pressing.

To give an idea of how competitive Saignée can be, the Tavels from Ch de Trinquevel and Marcel Guigal are both produced by the Saignée method, and you can be almost certain that they will have extracted ALL the juice, (without pressing). But also in Tavel, the excellent Domaine de la Mordorée uses skin maceration, while the Domaines Bernard's Les Muretins uses pressurage directe.

Ian, I am sorry you took this to be a snide comment on your post, I did not mean this question to be read separately from the answer that follows. I just meant that it is pleasantly surprising that looking up such a generic subject would turn up our friend's web site.

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

Why do you say "unfortunately"? Is it that the locals don't know how to barbecue properly, or that you just don't like barbecue? If the former, it takes time to learn the art of grilling and not everyone is capable of it.

That sounds like some of the people I work with. One of them just returned from a 3 week vacation in France. He was surprised to find that the people there actually spend an hour or more preparing a delicious dinner for themselves _every_day_ - like it was a Big Thing! He, of course, eats his meals here out of the freezer section of the supermarket (when he feels like "cooking") or from a takeout place. >8^P

Ah, so you have your local version of the Ugly American over there too! Personally, I believe that attitude is rooted in fundamental insecurity (rather than innate provincialism). It would shatter some portion of their self esteem to face the fact that French is not the _only_ noble culture. Don't get me wrong; the French are justifiably proud of their Country. It's a beautiful place, the cuisines are among the best in the world, as are the wines - but they aren't the ONLY "game in town".

addicts and the international food-afficionado

area they live in, leading to a rather unfortunate

Interestingly, that does _not_ appear to be the case here in the USA. That could be because we don't actually _have_ any native regional cuisines, but have borrowed from all the other countries - depending on where the locals nominally immigrated from. IOW, although New Orleans is famous for Cajun cuisine e.g., you can get good Cajun food all over the Country if you know where to look. Same for Italian, French, Indian, etc. It's an advantage of living in the "melting pot". Unfortunately, the USA seem to have exported the _opposite_ phenomenon to the rest of the world, where a Big Mac and a diet Coke is pretty much the same thing as Le Big Mac and a Coca Cola Light... :^(

Tom S

Salut/Hi Mike Tommasi,

le/on Sun, 01 Aug 2004 13:27:29 +0200, tu disais/you said:-

I didn't take it as being in the least snide, Mike. I took it to be one of your usual positive comments :-))) I was simply answering a helpful comment in a slightly self deprecating way. I almost NEVER look anything up on line, mainly because when I'm answering here, I tend to be offline.

Couldn't agree more.

However, Tom, there is still quite distinctive regional variation in BBQ -- to bring this discussion full circle -- which BTW *is* a truly American innovation (if we include Mexico in the term to catch barbacoa), along with arguably chili con carne and the burrito. Try to find Carolina BBQ in Memphis or KC, or Texas brisket in the Deep South. For that matter, try to find New Mexico green chili anywhere else in the US. We certainly don't have as much regional variation in cuisine, which you rightly ascribe IMO to our immigrant nature and short history, but there is indeed some.

Mark Lipton

Furthermore, Mark, there are international differences in defining BBQ.

Whereas, as I understand the term to mean, in the US, barbecue is a rocess - the long, slow cooking while basting with a seasoned sauce, here in New Zealand (and Australia too) to barbeque is to "throw" steak or lamb chops or chicken fillets or (to the dinky-di Australian) prawns onto a hotplate or other outdoor grill.

The steak or prawns may have been pre-marinated - but there is no such thing as basting during cooking - and it is certainly not a drawn out process.

Thus, downunder, one may have a barbeque or go to a barbeque (that is, invite a few friends around for some grilled food, usually accompanied by salad with copious quantities of beer and/or wine - but always in an outdoors setting).

And the apparatus used to cook upon (either charcoal or gas heated) is called a barbeque.

To cook a whole pig (hog) or sheep over charcoals, we would call the process "spit roasting"

Now, this is a long process, basting as the meat is slowly turned and cooked over constantly replenished embers.

I've been reading a.f.w for the last few years and have been posting, albeit rarely and very infrequently, but thanks for the warm welcome.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong about open air charcoal grilling of food, it's just the idea that people who would otherwise never even think about preparing a meal, blindly take up the packaged mockery of a tradition that isn't theirs because it's 'hot' and happily continue to make a complete pigs ear out of it. On the other hand if you see it as a neo-pagan sort of a ritual involving burnt offerings it might make some sense, although I can't really see the $deities$ involved getting much plasure out of it :-)

Yes. But calling this a barbeque (with all its culinary connotations) is a bit of a misnomer. It's just a "Grillfest". I am quite sure though that it won't be a long time before Germans do the "BBQ" thing as well, considering the slow marketing driven creep of "denglish".

Some of the most glorious meals and some of the worst meals I ever had were French meals in France. In some ways the stereotypical idea of France as the culinary heaven is just the same as the myths of German efficiency or British politeness. Probably a grain of thruth in all of them, but not suitable for generalisation, especially not by the people these stereotypes were applied to.

The selection of interesting things certainly has improved and the all too common walls of dodgy plasticky cheddar have diminished in many UK super markets. Also Borough market has recently been voted in as Londons premier attraction. By Londoners. So there are some good signs.

Good point, as a whole the UK (and espcecially England itself) is certainly more homogenous than France or Germany, although the big cities in Germany and their surrounding areas are getting that way as well. I for example can't really call myself a true Bavarian, even though I was born in Munich.

It certainly has got a lot of exposure lately and I am quite fond of Rick Stein's Food Heroes Series books.

Agreed. You can still get the famous local specialities or the ingredients neccessary to make them pretty much everywhere across the UK. However, most people (especially the younger ones) would never even think of eating a Cornish Pasty, Haggis, a Jugged hare or Jellied eels, and prefer to munch through any number of (incredibly unauthentic) Indian and Chinese takeaways or do the burger diet. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that 90% of people in the UK never have eaten vension in their life. People just don't know what they are missing.

My mistake.

About pink wines, I have found a nice Provence pink from a new young negociant, La Badiane. Also, I think Dupere Barrera are going to be introducing a new pink wine that deviates from the (often boring) Provencal standard

Cheers

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

I dunno, Mark. Doesn't barbecue pretty much date back to cave dwellers who roasted the catch du jour over an open fire?

As for regional styles, you have to come to Glendale, CA for the best in the USA! I have yet to find better 'cue _anywhere_ than Pecos Bill's, which is a family run operation that dates back to the 1940s.

Tom S

"Markus Dheus" in news:1ghsmpu.vuuv8o12acctwN% snipped-for-privacy@newsguy.com...

There I believe is one of the most insightful comments I have seen on this newsgroup (however slightly off-topic it may be, and it does tie into related issues with wine).

I'd argue that the phenomenon has developed for a long time, though it may be more visible lately. Horst Scharfenberg, for example, lamented a trend of restaurant patrons in Germany to turn from local folk classics perfected over the centuries toward the latest international Nouvelle fashion. That was in his _Cuisines of Germany,_ Simon and Schuster (Poseidon Press) 1989, the translation for English-speaking markets of his _Deutsche Küche,_ 1980, Hallwag AG, Bern. (Scharfenberg did what he could to present some traditional recipes.) Mimi Sheraton in her classic US book on German cooking (_The German Cookbook,_ 1965) dwells on the rich social customs around food and the exquisite nuances available from, for example, a good German sausage maker. (We happen to have one of those near me in California, Dittmer's, a multi-generation émigré enterprise.) These happen to be Germanic examples but that is not my point. Miriam Ungerer in her minor US classic _Good Cheap Food_ (Viking, 1973 -- maddeningly out of print soon after, but circulating enough on the used market to reward the diligent searcher) celebrated this theme from diverse origins; insightful food authors in the US going back at least five decades -- which is not to say all US food authors, of course -- argued it too. Elizabeth David and Richard Olney are known for it. Given time I could cite many others. The Hesses in their relevant book _The Taste of America_ have a line about the history of cooking being mainly the history of housewives making something interesting out of what was available (often what the gentry would not touch).

In Germany and in many other long-inhabited regions, you can drop into the neighborhood tavern (often a local family-owned business) and order the inexpensive daily special and it can be glorious, honest, insightful cooking. Lacking a better name I call that a "food culture": when people are accustomed to paying attention to food, where the locals appreciate and expect good and interesting food, day to day. That attitude infuses local habits in many ways.

In the US we have had and continue to get quiet, independent, principled local restaurants, diners, inns, bar-and-grills, etc. They struggle against a couple of particular factors, in comparison with the older regions I just mentioned. They do not have thousands of years (literally) of local tradition, taken for granted by their customer base; and they feel the squeeze of competition from fast-food chains or from what Boston's leading restaurant critic (for many years) called the "Corporate Concept" restaurants run from an office in a distant big city. (I believe that the phenomenon of US fast-food chains is familiar enough even to readers in distant countries, of course.)

"Tom S" in news:WoaPc.3170$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com...

I broadly support Tom's comments on this thread but would love to nit-pick that one -- some US cooking derives from Native traditions, technically immigrant too but less so -- and some of it developed locally and separately in recent centuries. Lots of specifics in the Hesses' book that I mentioned above (I also commented on it a few years ago on amazon.com, that information is available under the book's listing there.) Time permits only that much nit-picking, alas.

(By the way as a footnote -- this comes up occasionally -- do not be misled by my name, I am from the US and have little connection to Germany. The family name came from Switzerland some five generations back.)

-- Max

Max, at the risk of taking this thread entirely off-topic, I will add that you seem to me to refer to a very broad cultural trend: the homogenization of culture, linked to nationalism vs. the preservation of local sub-cultures, linked to the various forces working against nationalsm: religious factionalism, linguistic identity and historical antecedents. Through most of the 20th Century, the nation-state was on the rise and with it, nationalism and the loss of cultural diversity. This was certainly true in E. Europe, but also in sub-Saharan Africa and SE Asia. However, the last 10 years have seen a reversal of this trend, with the splintering of the USSR, the Balkanization of the Balkans and the seccessionist movements within other, multicultural nations.

Given the short history of Germany as a nation, I wonder how long it has been since Hessians or Saxons started thinking of themselves as German, first and foremost. The loss of "local" cuisine could possibly be linked to the growing national identity of Germans, just as the proliferation of Philly Cheesesteaks and Boston Clam Chowder (albeit hideous renditions thereof) in every shopping mall could be considered the result of increasing cultural homogenization of the US.

Just my $0.02, Mark Lipton

...

I believe the key word is "shopping mall". Like mice in a threadmill running without really getting anywhere, modern man gears himself to consuming as much as possible without realizing the emptiness of consumerism. Enjoying life's pleasures is a slow business - you need time to set your mind, time to prepare good food (and drink :-), time to contemplate and understand the mysteries of life... If you run about trying to get as many thrills as possible it is understandable that feeding is reduced to wolfing down whatever standard concoctions of salt, fat and proteins is quickly available. My mental image is of laboratory mice with electrodes into their brains rapidly and unstoppably pushing a button stimulating pleasure centers...

Anders

The freshness of the ingredients is also a big part of the picture. While in Northeast Italy, I couldn't tell you how many times I was amazed with things as simple as a sandwich. At a tiny shop in Montfalcone, we ordered a simple sandwich (I forget the name they used for this type of sandwich). I believe that it consisted of radicchio, mushrooms, artichokes, and truffle oil. Everything was so fresh.

Fast food places here in Chicago, I believe, make finding such freshness nearly impossible in most of the neighborhoods. The yuppie areas, with their organic shops, may attempt something like this, but they are so pretentious in their attempt to market "gourmet" as a premium concept compared to the simplicity we experience in Italy.

pretentious

That's a bit supercilious IMO.

I made a point of shopping in Italy and preparing a dish (Osso Buco) I have done many times here in the USA, expecting a noticeable difference because of the supposedly *superior* groceries available in Europe. However, I could find _no_ discernable difference between what I'd made in Italy and what I'd previously made at home here in California. Furthermore, I'll bet I could fix that same dish just as well anywhere in either this Country or Europe or Australia etc. - assuming I could find all the ingredients.

BTW, I take no credit for the deliciosity (is that a word?) of said dish; it was straight out of Marcella Hazen's excellent cookbook. I merely followed her recipe and didn't screw it up!

Tom S