Craig Camp

Kraft Parmesan tastes like grated salty wax, not cheese. It ruins the flavor a good pasta dish. Frankly, pre-grated Parmignano Reggiano doesn't taste that great either. Nobody, the Italians included, use top quality cheese to pre-grate.

Here's the website, which can be hard to find: http://www.thepaintedladyrestaurant.com

The atmosphere at The Painted Lady is quite elegant - at least in an Oregon wine country casual sort of way. Like the other places out here, you'll see winemakers in shorts and work boots next to those decked out in Ralph Lauren. Of course, coats and ties are nowhere to be found. The restaurant itself is in a lovely old restored Victorian farm house. The food is modern in presentation and conception and strictly based on local ingredients.

Fake, cow's-milk romano is less sharp than the sheep kind, as well as less nutty-tasting than parmesan. ← First of all, if it's called "parmesan" instead of Parmignano Reggiano it's not worth buying much less eating. If you want something that costs less, but still delivers flavor go for Grana Padano. The same for Pecorino, why in the world would anyone buy one not made from sheep's milk? After all that's where the name came from. DON'T BUY FAKE CHEESE. It's a waste of money. Take the time to buy the real thing if you want flavor. It's an absolute waste of chews and $ to buy anything less.

cow's milk cheeses (parmignano) and sheep's milk cheeses (percorino) are really different animals

No, but I have to admit that while I get tidbits here and there I'm not as consistently plugged into this type of information in the wine scene. From your writing, I guess Sanford has also been bought by a large conglomerate. As an aside, I went to Acacia's website and didn't find any information there in the published "history" of the winery to know about the acquisition... I guess it isn't something they are advertising. Looking at Bouchaine's website it looks like Mike Richmond has been there since 2002. I look forward to checking out Bouchaine again the next time I'm up in Carneros. Thanks again for the information! ← Yes, Sanford has been turned into a more marketable beverage too. If you were a beverage giant and gobbled up small wineries so you could look like you had serious labels to sell, would you advertise the fact that you had ingested them?

Wow, thanks for the updated information re: Acacia and Bouchaine... I guess it's been about ~ 3 years since I've been to Acacia. I think we have been to Bouchaine back then but did not have an extremely memorable experience. I hope Acacia doesn't continue down the road you described b/c it seems like thay have some nice grapes... (quote from Craig's blog linked above) ← Can you think of one top quality small producer that was purchased by a beverage conglomerate and continued to produce anything but industrial plonk? I can't and certainly don't hold any hope for the Acacia label.

Go see the reborn Bouchaine and don't forget Saintsbury.

The Painted Lady and Joel Palmer are both very good, but are VERY different!

When you're out in wine country don't miss The Painted Lady in Newberg. It's outstanding. Please also come visit us at the winery. In Portland I enjoy Nostrana and Blue Hour in addtition to most of the restaurants listed above.

Given how little aloe vera is probably actually in expensive lotions on the market . . . ← Sunburn is certainly an issue (see here) but, I think we'll stick to canopy management instead of rubbing sun block on each grape. Somehow using the leaves sounds more natural than aloe vera.

I get mine at the big Specs on Smith--it's cheaper and they know how to slice it. I prefer the San Daniele. ← Right you are. This is so often overlooked. I can't stand arriving home with a clump of proscuitto instead of slices. Why don't these high-end stores take the time to teach people how to handle such an expensive product. When you buy proscuitto in Italy they give it to you almost gift wrapped.

Go to PastaWorks on 21st. They're still concerned more concerned about flavor than the politically correct food police. They have several types of Italian Proscuitto in stock.

B is for Beaujolais , L’Ancien, Vielles Vignes It was haunting. Mysteriously darting here and there while all my senses reached hungrily out for each nuance, chasing them like glints of light radiating from a gem. A cloud of delicate sensations ran through my brain then lofted away. Nothing overwhelmed me, but its teasing, tempting and almost impish personality became addicting. I found myself coming back to it night after night as there was something so compelling about its vulnerable, yet soaring complexity. Like a seemingly weightless ballet dancer, every move floated through my senses. There’s a pretty good chance you’ll hate it, or won’t get it, but I find myself pulling the cork from a bottle of this wine several times a week because I have found few wines so satisfying at the dinner table. The wine: 2004 Beaujolais, L’Ancien, Vielles Vignes, Terres Dorees from Jean-Paul Brun. Just writing about this wine makes me salivate. It’s not big. It’s not powerful. It’s not pointy. It is simply delicious. No juicy-fruity Duboeuf here, but a wine with a strangely powerful delicacy. The bouquet entices not attacks and on the palate it dances, challenging your palate to follow its lead - if you have the time and inclination. Considering the under $15 price tag, a wine that can lead your senses in so many directions is a staggering bargain. Never passing 12% alcohol and produced without manipulation, the delicacy of such a wine is sure to disappoint palates trained on the hyper-extracted and manipulated wines of today, but if you are getting a little bored with indistinguishable wines from unidentifiable places, maybe, just maybe, you can open your palate and mind to something new. Actually, it’s not new; it’s very, very old. We all just forgot. Beaujolais , L’Ancien, Vielles Vignes, Terres Dorees is imported by Louis/Dressner (reprinted from my blog)

That's hilarious, the most industrial Italian Proscuitto di Parma is better than any North American (or anywhere else) version I have ever tasted.

Indeed that's a wine of a different color. No hurry to drink that.

Pinot nut that I am, I still see this as the best idea. An Einaudi would be excellent.

Why would you want to do that? A regular Pio Cesare Barbera could be past its prime at this point. They certainly don't make it with aging in mind. This kind of barbera is all about the fruit - not about bottle age.

You just made every Italian reading this cringe. I'd have to disagree on that. A good pecorino is too pungent. Of course, the industrial version is almost flavorless so that would not be a problem.

Right you are! Of course, as a pinot noir producer I love it with almost everything!

Second word: oak and alcohol are a bad match for rice.

First pecorino in a risotto? I don't think so. Too intense for the delicate rice and too sharp for the sweet beets. Matching a wine is not a problem. The sweetness of the beets requires a dry wine of with intense fruit sweetness. A modern styled Dolcetto is just the ticket. I would recommend the most current vintage available of Marcarini Dolcetto or another gem like that. You can find my risotto method here

Bulls-eye. Mary's perfect crop level and ours have nothing in common. One vineyards best yield in a particular vintage has nothing to do with another's. Every varietal in every region has its own "best" crop level, which changes vintage by vintage. Over-pruning and over-thinned vineyards create syrup - not wine. Mary correctly points out how complex this equation really is. It is not the simplistic less-is-better presented by many journalists.

There are many reasons to drop yields. All you have to do to see the difference is taste two wines from the same area from vineyards with different yields. However, the issues are far more varied than intensity. In fact, if you lower yields too much the wines become overly intense and alcoholic. In our vineyards we reduce crop in certain vintages not only to assure intensity of flavor (which is a clear issue), but to be sure our grapes ripen in time. In our pinot noir vineyards we favor old clones like Pommard and Wadenswil that tend to ripen later. By reducing yields from 3.5 tons to 2 tons per acre, these vineyards ripen several weeks earlier than they would at higher yields. This is very important as we need to get our harvest in before the rainy season and migratory birds arrive. Another issue is general vine health. A vine that overproduces tends not to produce a good crop the next year and they don't live as long. Not a good thing if your goal is to have old vine vineyards, which ,by the way, naturally produce lower yields. It is not low yields in itself which create more complexity in wines, but the right yields for that vine in that vineyard in that climate in that vintage. For example, in many warm weather pinot noir vineyards it is a better idea to carry higher yields than we do so as to lower the alcohol levels and slow down the ripening to enhance aromatics and elegance. In our own case, the 2003 vintage was very warm and we would have been better off keeping our yields higher for the same reason. However, not having a crystal ball, we did not know the weather would stay that warm and we farmed our vineyards like a normal year and the resulting wines were higher in alcohol than we would prefer. This varies a lot from vintage to vintage. In 2003 we dropped too much. In 2004 and 2005, because of bad flowering, there was no fruit to drop as Mother Nature lowered our yields to under 2 tons an acre on her own. In 2006, we had a great fruit set and needed to drop over one ton per acre. Ultra low yields can create over concentrated wines with both high alcohol and high Parker and Wine Spectator points. The commercial realities of this made low yields quite the fashion. However, like so many things these ultra low yields are just too much of a good thing and, in my opinion, make wines that are boring to drink and too heavy to match well with food.

This 96 Cavallotto is an outstanding wine that is superior to the 98 and far better than the 97. Most producers consider 1996 the greatest of a string of great vintages only challenged by 2001. This is a classic Barolo from a classic vintage so you need to be in no hurry to drink it as most 96's are just now started to show their best. If these were my bottles I would start to drink them at about 15 years old. This all of course assumes excellent storage conditions. ← Thanks for the reply Craig--it's really tempting to try one of the bottles!!! I may drink the '97 or '98 first. ← I would go ahead and start drinking the 97's (no rush though) followed by the 98's (which is a better vintage, very nice and generally overlooked) before the 96's, which might last forever.