MaxH

Yes. I'd go further, because she is not only a precursor but also one of those people read today. In my experience, most wine enthusiasts and professionals with a depth of interest in California wines (beyond the fad of the month, say) have a copy of Muscatine's Book of California Wine, which remains a useful reference. Just as US cooking enthusiasts continue to read Mary Frances Fisher and Richard Olney, whose books remain in print after the authors are gone. Outlasting fashion and marketing.

I should mention a flip side to this whole subject (because I haven't seen it surface in this thread although, lacking the aforementioned couple days to do so, I haven't read all the middle pages). I saw an eG thread a couple years back that accused a restaurant of plagiarizing an unusual appetizer dish. The details are extremely unimportant, what is important is that the discussion developed at length, among people who had not visited or talked to the accused restaurant, or otherwise "fact-checked," and therefore were unconscious that the place was known for crediting the source and paying homage to it. After this emerged, most of the people throwing the notions around apologized with grace; the subject died quickly, with no long searching discussion of ethics or fact checking, i.e., of how the problem arose. Again it's only a passing illustration, but that this particular Ockham's razor cuts both ways.

Thanks for posting, eje. I think it has to be said that we in the Bay Area have our butterscotch bacons too. That stuff is international.

Yeah, it's just down the street on Barber. Yes, Mayflower is part of the Ranch 99 complex that opened in 1997 if I remember, ABC is an upstairs restaurant in the nearby Ufferts Center, south of it, that opened later, about 1999. For the couple of years between, the area that became the Ufferts complex remained open fields (as the whole area used to be). Sometimes driving along Barber Lane you could see a hawk, stationary in the air overhead, riding the breeze gingerly, stalking a mouse hole among in the sagebrush below. Dining there now is less primal and more genteel. (Who knows where the hawk went.) Several midweek lunches at each of those large dim-sum places left most people that I ate with preferring the ABC, which among other things offers unique specialties. There were other factors too, we had some consistent problem of style about the service at Mayflower, pushy servers or long waits or something. That was some years ago and may not be current. Parking at both complexes at lunch times remains a "challenge," the Mayflower site more so. Both restaurants are big bustling hardworking dim-sum houses. Silicon Valley is getting a little afield from San Francisco but maybe this will serve as a regional thread. Dim Sum in SF proper has a very old history, predating the Earthquake, and likewise, a long history on food fora too.

Yes indeed Melissa, and she is at least as well known for her wine writing as food writing. Various articles came out over the years. Muscatine was a US food-wine writer of depth and standing, as few have been (MFK Fisher, Richard Olney come to mind). I have not read the linked article yet but I assume it mentioned this. She was senior editor (with professor Maynard Amerine and wine writer Bob Thompson) of the landmark University of California Book of California Wine, 1984 (ISBN 0520050851), a large volume, 44 authors and 53 chapters, from history to corkscrews. This book was talked up at the time in wine publications and columns, and printed in such quantity that it still crowds the used-book market. California wine saw notable overview books in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, etc., but none as large or authoritative as that one, a record that might still hold, though the industry itself has evolved further as always.

I argue that the "long" designation above depends on context. I believe that "cult" California wines are the core of this thread, and that these are mainly a phenomenon of the last decade or so. Anyway I saw little mention of them earlier. Even setting aside new wineries that announce full mailing lists (!), a cult winery a few years old can't have much of an aging track record, so the (rational) consumer doesn't buy it assured of brilliance a decade or two later (a traditional payoff with serious red wines). Many people online admit explicitly, I could quote, that they sit on those lists to "flip" the wines to the market (arbitrage). Meantime there are quiet old standards, here yesterday, here tomorrow. Ridge Monte Bello Cabernet (AVA Santa Cruz Mountains, California) is not a "cult" wine, but many think it a great one. Around for decades, longer than even many of the humans who clamor for hip wines, longer than any US wine publications. Lots of track record. (A recent large democratic reader poll on the Robert Parker site naming hundreds of US winemakers found that a small group of them stood out as widely respected and I believe Ridge's was #1.) Available to anyone who wants it, no "list." Just as it was 25 years ago and I am new to this wine, compared to some. It's not cheap, but compared to some of that stuff we're talking about it's a serious value, if you actually think in terms of serving it. There are other examples too, the Ridge is just an illustration.

Yes: with any luck, you won't find any corked bottles for comparison. Were I nearer Seattle I'd gladly offer a sample of a wine opened a year or so ago that was corked up the wazoo -- that being a technical term -- a US Pinot Noir -- it was reclosed and has served as a demo bottle of extreme TCA contamination ever since. Here is one view: It means that the wine has crept up the side of the cork. That suggests leakage around the cork, such as from a dried cork at some point and/or thermal stress. Though not Good News, it doesn't automatically mean bad wine, or specifically oxidation (something you can tell from sampling the wine, as with TCA but different). Also, all of this is unrelated to "corked" wine (a particular aromatic and fruit-suppressing fault from pungent chemicals developing when certain organisms act on chemical precursors developed when corks are cleaned with chlorine). More info available by search under "trichloranisole" or in wine reference books or a brisk FAQ entry that would summarize this (and if it comes to that, I have one or two things to add to an FAQ list, like advice on the inconsistent meaning of "this side up" instructions printed on wine cartons, and what to do about it).

Actually, if you do an advance search for "corked" you will discover that the only lengthy discussions here are this one and the thread on closures ... Yes indeed, I think we're talking about the same thing, Mary. This is this particular forum's Inevitable Corked-Wines Thread. I hope it too ends up in the Classic Wine Threads index because new readers will continue to be interested. By the way, variation among tasters' sensitivity to cork defect is a truly long-term topic. George Sainstbury in his classic introductory book for wine consumers (Notes on a Cellar-Book), in 1920, described (in language of his own times and style) tasters who were sensitive to various things (in a few cases I think they weren't even wine enthusiasts, but had natural ability). Once he "equivocated," trying to be polite to a host who opened a corked Burgundy; the hostess though nailed it immediately and, finding no help from Saintsbury, insisted on another bottle.

This is why wine needs FAQ files by the way. Every wine forum online, large or small, experiences a version of this thread with many of the same points. Craig is absolutely right and this is old stuff too. One highly respected European food-wine journalist railed away about this a couple of years ago - "TCA figures [that] even the [wine] industry accepts run around 5 percent," reporting runs at tastings with far higher numbers. An infuriated European sommelier at a high-end restaurant wrote an article "10% cork defects is entirely unacceptable." Unscientifically I track 5-8% over last 100 or so blind tastings. Also it's an objective, measurable contaminant class (interestingly you can get "stat" professional lab work on wine specimens just as with medical specimens). Part of the issue is variable sensitivity to it, part of course is that not everyone even knows about it. I also agree that the situation calls for tact but that's pretty obvious. If a professional served the wine and you know what you are talking about then you can raise the issue discreetly with that person; if they know their stuff they'll confirm it, I've encountered this many times, in retail and at wineries as well as restaurants. If they don't know their stuff, then you have learned something about that professional or business. If it's not professional service, or a wine-fan group, or a group open to novel experience, then maybe it's best to stay fairly quiet. If they press you for why you don't enthuse over the wine, then you are given the option of raising the topic constructively. The ability to do which is, anyway, a human skill worth keeping in practice.

I don't know Oliver Styles's work and maybe I'm a little slow here, but on reading the short Decanter article linked above, I had the impression I'd seen most of those lines before. Note necessarily in that magazine, or here, but "around." Certainly, elements of it have been online in the last year or two. The whole subject has a rhetorical flavor. Many readers will roll their eyes ("What? Again?"). A few zealous fans will make wry comments and nod to each other about the "democratic point of view" part (because no matter how little they know of the US wine-criticism scene before RP's arrival, they "know" all about it). Maybe some people will even ask about a quotation where RP, who introduced a scoring system and became an influential writer, complains about these things. Who knows? It looks, especially with the final question, what here on the Internet has long been called a trolling piece, to hook some traffic. Not that the same thing would ever happen on a modern, genteel forum like eG. Or that any of us would ever bite! No. Cheers -- Max -- Below, end of a thread we had about absinthe on the Internet's public drinks forum in 1988. (It mostly dealt with wine.) After discussion of the liquor's impressively dangerous reputation, I commiserated with someone frustrated in getting the Real Stuff, then added: "However, Ouzo, Pernod, etc. are plenty toxic in their own right; don't overlook this. Just pretend they are illegal and stylish, and there you are."

A "tasting menu" at TJ this week included some courses seen in February, and reminders that even in a day of food fads, a skilled and tasteful chef can bring out potential. High points were again the delicate salad of small octopus, crisp heart-of-palm slices, and delicate herb vinaigrette, a game of fine contrasts. (Even if not everyone admires the look of octopus. It was tender and delicate. Try closing your eyes if you don't like its looks.) Sous-vide preparation of perfectly cooked rare beef with garnishes including a broth with hint of star anise and cinnamon, and piece of Chanterelle mushroom, flavors skillfully palying together. Vocabulary on the menu card (one journalist already balked at "declinasion of duck") is Chef Kostow's doing, he seems to like word play. Kostow's and his predecessor's (Joshua Skenes's) cooking demarcate, so to say, Chez TJ's kitchen from years under management including TJ himself (Tom McCombie, RIP 1994), Peggy Aoki, Andrew Trice (1995-2000), and Kirk Bruderer (early 00s). Those chefs liked to nod to the hearty. When the kitchen was "on," as it usually was, you'd see (as a friend puts it) rustic traditions sharpened up with creative sauces. Sauces were Andrew Trice's formal specialty by the way (he's now in Savannah, as Angel's BBQ and catering). Even Bruderer liked to make a big salad of fresh big Lima beans and a few wild mushrooms, or serve a meat course on a bed of lentils. The relaxed house interior and quiet service are unchanged. The kitchen now is more international, intellectual, more what readers of Internet fine-dining fora will expect. (Critics even raise the issue, though briefly, of compact portions, a sure sign of departure.) Impressive departure, with Kostow's experience and assurance. Not without nostalgia I look forward to more occasions to eat there.

See also recent SV Steakhouses Thread here, if you haven't already. But be aware, We're Not In Kansas Anymore. -- Max

Rebel Rose asked about Chez TJ experiences. (My own first online comments on food there, "Recent experiences with Chez TJ," were posted 15 years ago, and the Most Recent Note was last month, after new chef Christopher Kostow settled in; also posted fairly detailed history of the restaurant here and there, though evidently not this site. (Actually dining again there soon.) On the generic subject of tasting menus, if you identify a restaurant that seems good, and that's passionate about the food, often it works to ask for a tasting menu even if not advertised. If that doesn't connect for some reason, request that they "bring you some dishes" that are good. Capable chefs often resonate with this. I've seen it work in a remarkable range of locations. Finally, Irish Cream, abandon hope. No matter how conspicuously you answer Frequently Asked Questions, people will still ask them. On the other hand, the ability to search most of these fora for good material on the subject is powerful. (The most basic FAQ advice ever, on electronic fora, in my opinion anyway, is "Search, before you ask.") -- Max

-- And Marisol's chef (Pete Vasquez) has announced he's running for mayor. An HTML page with photo and slogans was sent to the mailing list (though I didn't find it on a quick check of Marisol's Web site linked above). Excerpts:

No, and it was well taken. Just trying to clear the air. (The air around absinthe is often obscure, indiscernible. Some seem to prefer it so.)

I don't know what you mean, "Snowy is dead." [bTW, a real name is helpful all around, if you're serious -- mine is Max Hauser -- postings on Internet fora used mainly real names for most of their history. Sorry for the long aside.] But I don't know what "the political climate" has to do with this if you really go into it. (Also I understand that it's not formally a question of new legislation but of administrative action by an existing competent body.) The immediate issues (writing as a casual observer of that part of it) are the expense of safety trials and the niche luxury status of the product -- unlike a new, non-niche medical drug that many will use, repaying deep investment for product trials. Also, absinthe as you mention fetches $100, as long as it retains in some circles a dangerous cachet and wicked overtones (for product of grotesquely varying quality, I can testify). These customers rarely buy on merit of flavor. Even today for perspective, $100 can get you some of the best wines in the world, if quality is what you seek (rather than, for instance, the hippest this week). Same with spirits. But as others have argued, without the forbidden status, without the hint of tiptoeing a line into danger, damnation, or death, would these varying products still fetch $100 the bottle? The New Yorker in an excellent broad essay on absinthe, did however omit key technical details that are not new, and that sharply alter the message. (Most of this is above.)

You may know the place well, or have seen discussion upthread on this point, but just in case: be careful about confusing Chez Panisse (which is downstairs and needs advance booking) with the also pleasant Chez Panisse Café (which is newer, casual, doesn't traditionally take booking, and is upstairs) -- "two completely different restaurants" as the downstairs chef once put it. Sorry if this is repetitive but it's the customary confusion point for out-of-town journalists (and even a few from closer in). When it was the hot Bay Area restaurant in the early 1980s and "nobody could get a table there" -- a role that lately moved north -- the Café was the welcome overflow bistro.The upstairs Café also has an excellent pasta/pizza/calzone cookbook in its own right (that's the sort of food in the Café) by Waters, Curtan, and Labro, 1984 (ISBN 0394530942), with a few inspired pasta dishes worth getting the whole book for, in my opinion. (That I guess is roughly the book-recommendation parallel to the Michelin's "vaut le voyage!")

Congratulations on the WSET by the way. If they are non-wine-geeks then I agree a simple, very casual structure is best. FYI, an old standard published US formula for parties in the form of casual wine tastings and receptions was a quarter bottle per person without a full meal served, half bottle with. I used that formula since the 1970s successfully. Note that it is more moderate than the 18th-century British standard of two bottles per diner at a full dinner -- more if intense -- and those people were smaller by the way, on average. In the 1934 classic movie Death Takes a Holiday, a gentleman at a dinner party (Henry Travers is my memory of the actor -- anyway, same actor who played the angel in It's a Wonderful Life) boasts to the character of Death, traveling incognito on earth (Fredric March), something like "I'm a three-bottle man myself!" and Death answers with a significant look "In my time I've known many three-bottle men." Serious blind wine tastings by wine geeks that I've seen routinely get 12 good tastes out of a bottle with some left in reserve; one group I know gets 16, but that's about the furthest I hear of bottles being stretched.

Supplemental information: Merck Index (Tenth edition), a standard reference source, lists modern toxicity data. Upshots of its detailed summaries are that natural thujone has a certain toxicity level, not simply comparable to for example alcohol's because the first lists injected dose and the second oral. But extrapolating the 50% rodent lethality dose of natural thujone to a human-sized (75kg) animal gives a rough estimate around 10 grams injected. This is thousands of times the thujone present in a serving of even hypothetical thujone-rich liquor (or, of one of those Italian-style stews with white wine and sage). In comparison, the 50% lethality dose of alcohol for the same animal is in 40-50 servings of commercial absinthe. Therefore (in this crude animal-lethality comparison anyway) there is no question of thujone approaching the toxic impact of the alcohol that comes with it in the liquor. (I don't know if this longstanding public information has appeared in recent journalism on the subject.) There's been authoritative online info on that point, some years ago anyway; not my subject, but offhand memory is that it was controlled in US not as a drug but in the unsafe food-additives category; that US-FDA in principle could reverse the policy if some manufacturer would undertake (expensive) modern safety trials; that being such a niche luxury good, the economics render this improbable (ironically, unlike a drug). For whatever that recollection is worth. Also: Matthew Baggott's 1997 compendium of absinthe history and pharmacology (mentioned much earlier upthread) is again accessible. This was a major online information and reference source on absinthe as of 2000, when I checked this subject online, before posting on amazon about Conrad's absinthe book. Baggott's collection preceded most online writing and the current US fashion for absinthe liquor (which Jack Turner's New Yorker article -- I read it Thursday -- connects to "Goth and frat-boy subcultures"). The document also should not be confused with Baggott's brief but more widely posted 1993 summary.

Thanks for the excellent brief, slkinsey. Ted Breaux has been prominently working in this area in the US for several years and advocating quality absinthes as a flavorful and safe spirit. Let me reiterate something that's not new at all, but is the germ of persistent demonstrable mythology: Good info. The mythology I mentioned concerns thujone itself and its mystique. Barnaby Conrad's 1989 US book Absinthe: History in a Bottle (which had a role in the modern repopularization of absinthe in the US) makes clear in an appendix that since 1963 thujone was known to be the material identified separately as salvanol, the principle of common garden sage (Salvia officinalis). I researched the history further, and learned that contrary to Conrad, this identity already was well known much earlier (1940s). Sage is an ancient cooking herb and "Generally Regarded As Safe." Many related decorative and flavoring herb plants with dusty green leaves (sages, wormwoods, mugworts) share highly overlapping chemistry in fact. (For some reason, despite long publicity of it, the sage-thujone connection doesn't always "take" among absinthe aficionados.) Upshot: many people have been consuming thujone routinely, unconsciously, without getting it from absinthe, and evidently without ill effect. If despite this they object to thujone, rational practice would focus first on avoiding sage.

Hi cnspriggs, I don't know your background are how familiar you are with Burgundy and its wine scene today, but the query refers to "cellars in Burgundy" and "contact information for the wineries there" and does not specify the objective; here is a one-shot attempt to answer.As you may know, Burgundy is a complex and shifting patchwork of ancient winemaking families and a few large firms such as the négociant firms. The average successful producer however is small and lean, has few full-time employees and no "marketing" or "visitor" staff (these being peculiar to larger operations or those on a tourist circuit). Nevertheless this producer is deluged by requests for visits, tours, and various indulgences by people for whom it may or may not be in his/her interest to do so, even given the time. I know of some of them who are in demand and are physically unable to answer most of the written (postal) queries they get, and who discourage online contact for the same reason. People fortunate enough actually to be received personally by these producers either are peers or major journalists or have a longstanding relationship of some kind. If the interest though (again, the query doesn't make clear) is to find some producers who can be contacted for information or visits, searching for general information about the Burgundy region online will show it. There are some major wine-promotion bodies there such as the venerable Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin which has a HQ in Vougeot and multilingual Web sites. In the event that you are new to Burgundy and want to learn more about the wine scene (for example, preparatory to a visit), it will be extremely worth your while to first obtain general orientation from such a source as Kermit Lynch's light Adventures book full of anecdotes (I can testify that they are typical!) or Yoxall's popular English-language paperback on Burgundy (1968 and 1978, exact producer details obsolete but the bulk of the book is not, which concerns history, geography, and grapes) or the Burgundy chapter in Stevenson's one-volume wine encyclopedia or, for more producer detail, standard in-depth books in English that every serious Burgophile reads, by Clive Coates and Remington Norman. For a newcomer who's seriously interested it's vital to do homework with solid printed sources like these, Web searches are no substitute. Hope this is helpful -- Max

Yes indeed, as another poster already mentioned. I believe it has been posted here before. Overload the alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver. (Q: Is that the same enzyme that interacts with the alpha-amanitin in one phase of Amanita mushroom poisoning?) I've had some very good moonshine from the Southeastern US. Sold in Mason jars and a true "artisanal" product. (This was before some of the recent posters who disdain mere $30 commodity Cognacs like Remy Martin were born, BTW.) I imagine it doesn't do to poison the customers, if you do know what you're doing -- they won't return -- and whoever made that stuff knew what they were doing.) Some absinthes are more toxic than others. The stuff from colonial Macao way back when was more toxic than others.

(I haven't read the article yet. But if you posit the existence of hypothetical individuals for whom that characterization is excellent -- i.e., most observers would agree -- do you suppose that the individuals would perceive it themselves, or accept it?)Wine online has a rich history, it's true. The original public Internet wine forum turned 24 years old this week for instance. I still consult unique material from its early days. What's rarely mentioned in today's journalism is just how thoroughly the range of people's online behavior patterns was established by the early 1980s or so. It was even written down and has been available, as guidance, for those who bother to seek it. That's old news. But (maybe this is in the nature of guidance!) most people like to repeat history rather than read about it.

I don't have recent data, but not long ago I saw info on Louisiana importing crawfish from such places as the Sacramento River Delta in California. Louisiana may produce quantities of them, but also has consumed quantities of them, becoming an importer. (Just as France has been known as the largest wine importer in Europe.)

One of the more unique and interesting restaurants I knew in New Orleans (or for that matter North America), run by the Vasquez family. Newsletter in the warm weather before the storm proposed nude nights, that's how eclectic. During the disaster, the Vasquezes were busy feeding refugees and sending emergency messages on their still-up online services across the river. Announced Monday they cannot re-open their building and are "put out of business by our insurance company." One off-site event scheduled for March 5. Story on Marisol Web site. -- Max