MaxH

Taking these in reverse order -- Touché! Game, set, match, and tournament. A famously skilled wine merchant in the SF Bay Area where I come from remarked to me once about trouble interesting customers in an outstanding white-wine value with little US name recognition. "But I sell 800 bottles of -------- Chardonnay a week." I read the posting above, recalled 15 years of seeking and finding, and buying sometimes in quantity, flavorful red Burgundies priced US $10-$20 and at the same time, reading people online dismissing that region because As Everyone Knows, all its wines all cost $50-$100. What do you feel precipitated the change?I can't presume to do more than speculate. Could be that the precise, authoritative look of two-digit numbers wooed the market; they seem to imply less ambiguity than zero to three stars plus words. This, the biggest change in the US wine retailing scene in fifty years, was so conspicuous to people who saw it as to render strange the fact that so few wine books really examine it. One thing it did was bifurcate the wine-geek world into one group that boasts of the point scores in its wine inventory, and another that heads in the opposite direction from a new wine people say scored highly.

As a point of history, menon, that also was the standard model for most US wine newsletters until about 20 years ago. (I have many of them on file.)

I agree, Doc, but with one emphatic reservation. (Like many wine geeks, I spent much time reading wine critics, and wine books for longer-term information, when learning wine and forming my tastes. All of that, incidentally -- all! -- motivated by noticing that my enjoyment of a wine, and that of other wine drinkers I knew, correlated poorly with retail price. Therefore knowledge was the obvious path to value.)The striking exception, acknowledged by many in the trade at least privately, is that the arrival of popular score-driven buying in the US caused more people to seek wines once they were highly scored. This departed from US wine-buying habits I observed (in four states) before that. Here's one industry-informed 1988 Internet wine-forum comment that I read and saved: John Haeger later documented this effect more concretely in his 1998 article about it. The problem is not really anyone's "fault:" it's inherent with simple, widely-read guidance. Which, ironically, can increase the price a customer pays for a wine, compared to finding it by other routes. (But again validating that Knowledge leads to value.)

General background on Panisse. Some of this used to be common knowledge locally but has been been diluted by newer residents and newcomer journalists posting on the subject. (I was around when the place opened in 1971, knew senior people there, recently reviewed details with a very authoritative source.) - Restaurant (downstairs, and older) and Café (upstairs, originally a coffee lounge and some occasional private rooms) are almost independent businesses. Separate personnel and decisions, sharing mainly some ingredient sources and the fact that Café personnel use some downstairs space for prep work, mornings and afternoons. - When food historians or knowledgeable journalists cite "Chez Panisse" -- its impact, its many spin-offs, origins of "California Cuisine" -- they mean the restaurant. (That writing began before the Café existed.) When it had a status like French Laundry today -- "Impossible to get into," people camping on phones -- that was the restaurant. If you want to find out what the name is about, you want to visit the restaurant. (However, both venues are appealing, and frankly I can't imagine only knowing one of them.) Just don't go to the Café exclusively, then post lengthily about "Chez Panisse" -- that looks naive to longtime locals and customers. (As does mischaracterizing Alice Waters as "Chef" -- a longtime faux-pas by journalists who didn't actually know the place.) - Restaurant and Café each have had two chefs for some time. Alternating on three-day schedules upstairs, six-month schedules in the restaurant. - Downstairs "fireplace" does grilling and rotisserie. Upstairs Café has a wood grill and the wood-fired oven, always used for pizza, sometimes other things. Café menu might include two grillades and a couple sauté dishes. Though menus vary over time, Café was built around higher-temperature cooking and à-la-carte, day and night brasserie-type fare, originally walk-in dining only. Restaurant was more formal, dinner only, single menu for everyone, showcasing ingredients in often more "exposed" form. Also, lately Mondays the restaurant offers lower-priced menus and can be easier to get into on short notice. (More on the Web site.) Edited to add: This is too long already (I apologize) but SF restaurant-critic-laureate Patricia Unterman put it this way in her book 20 years ago: There are two restaurants at that address. Chez Panisse and Chez Panisse Café.

I was a fan of MH's (chocolate?) desserts book that came out 25? years ago and anticipated (or furthered) a US fashion for dense little cakes containing lots of ground-up nuts and chocolate and eggs, and a tablespoon of flour. It was one of those definitive US reference cookbooks, like Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cooking and More Classic Italian Cooking, and others. But this thread raises a larger social question. Are we entering the era of people cooking their way through popular cookbooks and writing about it? There was that recent example from Julia Child's book. There are probably others. Will history remember that as a distinctive feature of this particular time, and will people tire of it? As, for instance, English-speaking people buying up old farmhouses in Latin Europe and fixing them up and writing books about it became a cliché in the 1990s, after Peter Mayle's best-selling example? -- Max -------- One of the most gratifying things about stews is the obstinacy with which they resist elegant trappings and endure past the life span of all food fads. They belong to that category of dishes A. J. Liebling called the "I-beam of cooking"; the kind that will never let down those whose only criterion for judging food is how good it tastes. -- Marcella Hazan (1978)

What about the consumer who tastes a wide range of wines as they come onto market* and makes his or her own decisions about what is good and buys according to his or her own assessment of value, based on experience and maybe even spanning a range of prices from cheap to dear? I don't know if this is partly self-selection by affinity, but the description above fits most of the experienced wine consumers I know and taste with, Mary. * Greatly facilitated by tasting regularly with others, sharing costs and duties. Edited to add: Tasting the new wines blind, need I add? (That used to be taken for granted.)

Maybe not so hard, if the autoconvection provides enough circulation, as those comments imply. (A core issue here: Much of this recent discussion has implicitly been about whether or not an explicit circulation system is needed.) I didn't know all crock pots heated from sides, but they don't fundamentally need to, and anyway I have an east-Asian rice cooker and a kettle-type corn popper, both pots with heating elements below. All these simple appliances sell for circa $20. The accurate lab temperature-regulating power-control module I was shown was around $90 (including an accurate sensor on a cord, and a presumably microcontroller-driven servo control algorithm). By my arithmetic this makes $110 retail. Presumably one of these firms could integrate the components. That also assumes a moderate size for home use, and that autoconvective circulation together with the water properties and control algorithm maintain food temperature stable enough for sous-vide cooking (or that adding a circulation impeller of some kind is inexpensive.) My point is that arithmetic-intensive algorithms inconceivable in consumer products 15-20 years ago are now routine. It's is what digital hardware does best, with decreasing cost. Computations inside a CDMA cell phone or a modern TV with 2-D digital filtering would have challenged NASA in 1985. Tell me about it. (I dealt with that same havoc in a different application area.)Fundamentally, and conveniently, controlling temp of a water pool has the inherent format the control engineer classically seeks in any regulator. The dominant pole [time-delay element] is at the output [i.e., the water thermal mass.] So the water itself provides a local reservoir of heat, available directly and intimately to the food. Unless the time constants in the food are long compared to that of the water, or the cooking time is short, the whole configuration, including food, tends to settle naturally toward whatever temperature the water is regulated to. Convection (natural or with a circulation motore) merely helps this along.

For any who didn't see Lillian Huang's May-16 letter with caution and further source referrals (following the Tara Duggan sous-vide article in SF Chronicle), it's on the letters page linked below. (I just pass it on, I won't presume to second-guess it.) SFgate Link

Do sous-vide cooks (I'm not one) routinely use the circulating type? Bob Wright at Lab-Pro remarked (just now when I phoned him) that he sells two types of complete temperature regulating equipment suitable for water. The thermal circulating units (maybe including that Lauda?) are very precise, but more expensive, starting around $700-800 depending on size. The other type is a regulated water reservoir without circulation, starting around $350. Sam and also jackal10, that may or may not be relevant (do you have data?)Everyone please keep in mind that almost every feedback-regulated temperature controller in daily life employs an on-off ("bang-bang") heating or cooling element. I know a little about these things. The magnitude of residual temperature ripple reflects several factors including dynamics (time-lag effects etc.) that are outside the controller module, and how cleverly the controller compensates for them. Comments earlier proceeded from assumption of +/- 5 deg C (+/- 9 deg F) fluctuation -- bad for cooking, I'd guess too. But I've no idea if that's typical of the practical system I described, whose controller module could, nowadays, be sophisticated (even adaptive or nonlinear optimal control). I'm not even sure the module is a bang-bang controller, but I assumed as much for the usual reasons (economy, efficiency). It would be worthwhile for someone who wants actually to test the idea to try it or at least research it further. Yes, the module that I saw briefly is similarly "plug and play," meant for the same people who use lab water baths. The difference would be that you must place, or install, the probe inside the crock-pot.Some context and another caution: This idea arose after I showed the lab supply dealer (who gladly sells lab water baths too, I hope that was clear) -- Tara Duggan's SF Chronicle article cited upthread. The dealer's response was that he thought you might get similar regulation for much less money than a new water bath. The caution that appeared in a subsequent Chronicle food section, which I hope was cited here too, came from a working scientist (and amateur cook). She strongly advised prospective sous-vide cooks never to employ a used laboratory water bath for cooking, since it may have carried unknown and (she said) dangerous contents in laboratory service, with no allowance for later use for food. To clarify, it's not a friend but the head of a well-known silicon-valley laboratory equipment dealer, Lab-Pro Incorporated. I'm just a customer. You can as easily ask Robert Wright that question as I can. (I don't remember the extra features, he did mention some at the time, back in May). I did phone him and speak briefly today, as summarized in first pph. Remember, this gentleman is in the business of selling lab water baths too, it was just his suggestion to save customers money if it still gave adequate regulation. (The firm is like that, by the way). Summary: Take an existing, inexpensive heater unit with the right range and a different original purpose, and instead of relying on its own cheap thermostatic control, supplement it with an outboard, accurate high-tech one -- the combination potentially being far cheaper than any kind of lab water bath, all things being equal.

An equipment tip, and a caution. This thread is so vast, I haven't been able to read it all. But here are two pieces of information that have circulated elsewhere. I'd guess the "caution" part is already familiar here, so I'll mention it first and briefly. Caution: In discussing the situation below, a friend, (high-profile) academic biologist who is familiar with sous-vide in practice, reminded us that sous-vide inherently cooks foods slightly above the temperature where anaerobic pathogens multiply, and that these are among the very worst food health hazards. They include the infamous C. botulinum (mentioned here) but others too. Therefore, keeping correct uniform temperature regulation can be a matter of life and death. The tip: Professionals that I know use laboratory water baths for temperature regulation in sous-vide in their restaurants. A much cheaper route to the same kind of regulation was suggested by Robert Wright of a reputable and eclectic silicon-valley laboratory-equipment dealer I deal with Lab-Pro Inc. (Reliable source of many temperature instruments including longterm min-max monitors, compact temperature data loggers -- both good for wine storage and transport -- and infrared non-contact temperature meters.) I told Robert he might get inquiries about water baths for sous-vide. Sure, he said, I can sell them a lab water bath if they want one, with lots of features not used in sous-vide. But for this temperature range, he said, you can assemble a well-regulated water bath far more cheaply. He then showed me a modern electronic temperature-control module, hand-held. It has a power cord on one end, and a sensor at the end of a wire. You plug the controller into the wall, plug a heater of your choice into the module (up to its rated power limit), program the module, and put the temperature probe at the point whose temperature you want to regulate. Price something like $90. "A crock pot would be ideal, to build a water bath for this temperature range." They're cheap, too. This compares to a new laboratory water bath starting around $1000. I haven't tried this, but it makes sense, especially if a lab water bath uses a similar temperature sensor. Any temperature regulation system has three basic elements. A powered heater or cooler, a temperature sensor and controller that cycles the power on and off, and a thermal mass that's heated or cooled. If the thermal mass is large and thermally conductive (like a pot of water), and you keep it covered and relatively insulated from outside temperatures, its own thermal inertia aids in keeping temperature steady, and its conductivity aids in keeping the temperature spatially uniform. Again the suggestion was from Robert Wright, President, Lab-Pro Inc., Sunnyvale, California. www.labproinc.com

John S., if anything, even understates the situation. The south bay and lower peninsula areas include many hundreds of independent, often Asian, ethnic restaurants, reflecting the large diverse Asian immigrant population. Asian in the full sense: Indian, Persian, Nepalese, Afghan, as well as east-Asian. (To say nothing of Vietnamese: one of the largest Vietnamese expat communities in the world centers on San José.) They include outstanding, special-occasion restaurants. Many have been cited here and on other online fora over the years. Afghani House, its cousin Kabul up the street, Chelokababi, several Muslim-Chinese restaurants such as the popular and recently moved Fatima, and the few expert, fiercely independent Japanese-run ramen* houses -- each boasting of its special, trademark broth and noodles made fresh hourly -- are non-Indian examples. I can't add much about leading Indian restaurants not posted here already (now that the Empress of India is gone -- it had strong local online following for a good 15 years) except that Sue's in MV did do beef vindaloo, and it was dangerous to ask Sue Sista to lighten it up if it was too hot for you (I did so once around 1992 and instead she added extra hot peppers and later came by and asked cheerfully, but with a gleam in her eye, "is the vindaloo mild enough for you?"). *Not to be confused with the unrelated packaged convenience noodles (for anyone who does not know real ramen houses).

Tupac, thanks for mentioning the tomato modernista, I'd forgotten the theme. I'm interested, as I said by email. As well as commiserating with Carolyn about allergy to tomatoes of all things. (I wonder if there's a preventative medicine. I've dealt with that before, as I posted some time ago. Happily the three meds are now down to one, a simple antihistamine.) But even then, a whole menu of incompatible food might be an uphill battle. These special theme dinners often bring out various diners who read eG, or are local regulars, or even not-so-local regulars, all convivial. (One event brought people from far and wide, many of whom turned out to know each other -- there was much visiting from table to table).

FYI, comments on those titles in another, related thread Here. More on the Internet-history connection in that thread: This excerpt from the official history of that original food forum mentions that it Marcella Hazan had recommended those Atlas hand-crank pasta machines in her original book, prompting many people to get them at the time.

In case anyone is unaware of it -- and I assume it appeared earlier in this long thread (it appears perennially on all food sites that mention the Laundry much, as well as print-media stories) -- the Sandersens' independent Web site with French-Laundry reservation tips, for years, remains active Here.

Very sorry to read of your experience at the Boonville Hotel. That is not typical of the impression I and others have received in recent years (I've been there three times in recent months, more in the last two years). I believe that many experienced people would dispute those comments as general characterizations of the establishment. Also, if you are unfamiliar with Lauren's Café, a local favorite in recent years, it's not something to miss. Creative, offbeat, and/or comfort-foody specialties, moderate prices. I believe most people would find both places well worthwhile. A strength of the Boonville area is that it is not the tourist zoo that the coastal town of Mendocino became, years ago. (If Carmel can successfully pass a moratorium on new art galleries, then why can't Mendocino?)

Parker's regular printed disclaimers -- that his preferences may not match the reader's, that the tasting notes are essential to his evaluations -- are well taken and deserve emphasis. My own postings here are very focused and except as otherwise noted, they're about the specific 100-point scoring format and its history. (Also, I don't presume to second-guess other posters' motivations or otherwise read their minds.) I can show you some principal discussion about critics' rankings in pre-100-point days (or you can find it yourself in standard sources if you'll do some research) but its printed record was never as extensive as the controversies over the 100-point system. Actually it is industry sources who say that and have been doing so since the 1980s; I'll quote. (Assumptions?! I've heard the point only from professionals in the business whose income depends on knowing their customers! Who is making assumptions here?) Since the subject has been raised, here's one of several testimonials in John Winthrop Haeger's 1998 article (cited here before) reporting research on exactly this question: Back to the reader's own taste. When I see modern wine enthusiasts (apparently intelligent adults) obsess over comparing number scores for a wine among different critics, or the exact order in which one critic preferred several wines, I'm amazed. What happened to learning which wines YOU like, and developing YOUR palate?

I understand, hemingway. In my observation, many thoughtful consumers use wine critics' judgements that way, since long before the particular "100-point" scoring system surfaced. The issue in this thread (and linked references) is not the use of quality rankings by critics, but that particular way of expressing them.A typical example the older format is Vintage magazine's March 1981 review of recent California Cabernets on the market. I used this at the time, much as you describe. It grouped tasting notes on recommended wines into ranks: Outstanding (11 wines), Well above average (14), Above average (13), Average / solid (25), and "Good but non-varietal, or varietal but weak" (17). Most wine newsletters that I have on file that preceded the popularity of "100-points" used systems like that.

-- might appreciate this discussion on the Internet's public wine forum, May 1988 (two different posters):

That last is exactly the de-facto type of quality ranking common to US wine newsletters and articles in the period preceding introduction of the 100-point system (as I keep pointing out) and also, incidentally, it is the system used by many critics for movies, hotels, etc. Mr. Parker's reply to Florida Jim argued for objective categories, but does not seem to have said anything about 100 points. (Why thr particular choice of metric gets lumped together offhand with the distinct issue of "objectivity" is itself an interesting question that many people do not ask.)

Interesting! But I thought that was what the wine bar "Just A Taste" was doing (informally, of course) in downtown Ithaca since 1989. (That was also where I had a memorable conversation with Hermann J. Wiemer which I may have mentioned on this forum.)

... And follow-up in today's SF Chronicle, Here.

This topic is so perennial in wine writing. 35 years ago in a popular introductory US wine book, Alexis Bespaloff complained about people waxing poetic instead of descriptive. He quoted a critic's description of a good Burgundy that cited many glorious things in life that the wine brought to mind. Yet the critic didn't bother with basics -- was the wine red or white? But as the posted comments said, people always struggle to express smells and tastes in words, and even when they are down to earth about it, this sounds strange to readers unused to taste language. Amazing what explanations continue to arise for point scores, especially among people who don't remember their arrival. Before 100-point scales, wine criticism in US newsletters looked much like today's, but instead of points it used gradings like excellent / good / fair / poor, or zero, one, two, three stars. These equally gave you something to hold on to, and without pretense of extreme precision or objectivity. (I could show many examples, and one of the drawbacks of knowing them is that I can't, alas, indulge in the notion-of-the-month about why 100-point ratings proved popular.)

1. Inflation! From my notes at the time, I paid $5.85 for the 1980 Digoine when it was new (which is about what basic Bourgognes Rouges cost in the US for many years, by the way) and $19 for the 1995 Montots (on recommendation of a wine-tasting buddy, Claude Kolm). 2. Note emphasis on the Côte Challonnaise, which has a reputation as a source of good values. 3. Thanks for the excellent notes, Jim!

Good answers already. I don't have a handy picture of it, but a liquid appeared a few years ago and surprisingly became popular in parts of the US -- it was a mixed, fruit-flavored cordial, blue, smelled to me like Hawaiian Punch, and came in a frosted bottle with scattered characters around (and an allusion somewhere to Russia) and a name that if, you took the letters as Roman, spelled something like "Hypnotic" but if you took them as Cyrillic -- and I don't know if this was a clever joke or just a coincidence -- was more like "Nurotic." I would call this less annoying, the more you know about the word "liqueur."A youngish crowd of spirits hobbyists and bartenders has taken this word lately to mean only what it has usually, but not always, meant in North America, namely a sweetened flavored spirit, or cordial. (That narrow sense was reflected in Wikipedia, for instance, last time I looked -- one of many examples of Wikipedia offering a confident, incomplete explanation.) More traditionally there was a wider sense of the word: a spirit, usually with strong flavor. For decades I've seen, for instance, recipes suggesting you flavor a dessert with "rum or other liqueur." "Absinthe," explains a standard medical reference (illustrating uses of the Compositae herbs), "is a liqueur containing angelica, anise, marjoram, and wormwood oils." This wider sense of "liqueur," in other words, has long and respectable history. While it's not the way I usually use the word, a little more awareness of this wider sense might aid understanding.

So that's public now (it's been brewing for many months). I talked to Johnny there a few weeks back (not about that) during the Pinot Noir conference. Lauren's Café (yellow frontage, 100 yards east of the hotel and across the road) is doing fine, continuing to serve inventive satisfying food and sometimes local live music. (Lauren's has complementary closing days to the hotel's restaurant -- if I remember, Lauren's closes Sundays and Mondays, the hotel kitchen Tuesdays and Wednesdays.) Some months ago a pub opened opposite the hotel, the "Highpockety Ox," in the former brewery site (and still called by locals "the brewery"). In my visits late last year the new place was still finding its stride. The Boonville-Philo area continues to resemble the old wine-producing areas before they were tourist meccas with Gift Shops and mudbaths. The land is now as expensive as elsewhere in the Bay Area and "wine country." The region remains unavoidably isolated ("three hours from anywhere" is a local phrase) and folks there grumble about things -- limited economy, not ideal area for raising children. Still, the valley's grapes produce remarkable, serious Pinots Noirs and other wines, and in increasing numbers. (The local crusty veterinarian who formerly complained in the hotel's bar Friday nights, loudly, about clueless out-of-towners buying vineyard land and screwing it up has lately decamped for remoter territory, maybe from exasperation.)