Linkin’ logs: 7-12-16
Food for thought from the InterTubes:
• I loves me some gummy bears, and I loves me some Whispering Angel rosé, so this product is made for me.
• It was hard to nail a theme for my take on the current state of Twin Cities wine bars: basically better than ever but still semi-inadequate.
• One milliliter per hour isn’t much, but something that continuously makes wine is still pretty cool.
• I’m trying to figure out the “jingle” that this truck should play: Maybe this or this.
• Among the many highlights in this swell interview of my friend Ron is this spot-on assessment: “the simple truths about wine—its history, its resonance with the human spirit, its simple joys, not the least of which is altering our state of consciousness.”
• Finally, every wine lover’s home should have one of these:
“I drink to the general joy of the whole table” — “Macbeth”
“If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to [wine].” — Falstaff (left) in “Henry IV”
• For those even remotely interested in the pricing of fine wines, 
• Bevan was largely self-taught, but he did have mentors and role models. “Greg La Follette [left] helped me with my first vintage; he and I had been friends for a long time. He’s a mad scientist, a genius. … If my life depended on one person making a perfect wine, it would be Helen Turley or Greg La Follette. They are the two wine gods. And Phillip Togni. His wines are never perfect, but they’re perfect for where they came from and what his intent is. Phillip and Greg were easily my two biggest influences.”
the large gay community there makes that city. Because if you had this large population of Northern Europeans without the flamboyant soul to the city, you’d be in trouble. The restaurants, theater, the arts, all those things are empowered by this fabulous gay community. It is one of the great cities.”
‘The Lord provided carcasses of dinosaurs to Noah, and that’s what the animals on the ark ate and they threw away the bones and that’s where the fossils come from.
• He’s a neat freak. “I was born in Ukiah, California, which implies a certain level of white trash. My parents sent me to a military prep school for a year. I still set my clothes out every night. I have to be very intoxicated not to set my clothes out every night. … Our winery smells like a production facility. It’s scrubbed every week. Look at how clean that drain is. I don’t allow people to come and spit in my drains.”
• He has a knack for dealing with unusual vintages, such as cooler 2011 and hot-hot-hot 2013. “In ’11 we did better than everybody because I read a report based on a lunar pattern and an eclipse pattern saying we were gonna have a really early, wet year. So at every vineyard, I took half the vineyard and opened up the canopy for both the morning and afternoon side, so I got tons of pre-veraison UV sun exposure. We lost several grapes on the afternoon side to sunburn, but we had 20 people at the sorting table pulling the raisins, and everything that was left had an amazing purity to it.
As for 2013: “There’s this guy called Doc Weather [left], and he’s got a 
sorter. … Everything is fermented in small batches. We’re 100-percent French oak. … We don’t rack our wines, so the wines get a little reductive because I don’t want to lose the verve. … I focus on textural balance, because I know that aromatically and flavor-wise, special sites are going to speak. … None of these wines are tannic. We’re not chewing on the back of our mouths right now. … I blend at night, and no one else is here. I like it when it’s me and my barrels.”
is standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard.”
• We were dining and quaffing one recent night, and enjoying some older wines that my friends Larry and Molly had brought over. While lamenting that we don’t have enough older wines in our cellars, Larry offered up a sagacious thought: “Just think of all the great wines we didn’t get to drink because we drank them.”
of the best bargains I’ve tasted is the 2015 
first sniff, never mind sip. The nose is expressive, fresh and focused, a portent for the purity, harmony and utter deliciousness to come. This is a fruit cocktail of a wine, with a fun and fulfilling interplay of citrus, tropical and melon notes. The finish is surprisingly dry and persistent. This is the kind of wine that shows how well pinot gris and salmon can play together, and most any preparation of freshwater fish or fruits of the sea should prove swell. The pure, pristine vocals of Austin thrush 
• Am I blue? Are you too? We might be after consuming some 
of us left behind.
bonds of Earth a month or so ago. I was told by a friend that Jim “idolized” me (it should have been the other way around), and it about killed me that I had not nurtured our friendship more fully.
I so SO wish I could have met Kristin for lunch, brunch or dinner at St. Genevieve. It’s completely her kind of place: very French, fabulous Champagne list and the embodiment of one of her very favorite phrases: mise en scène. Like the restaurant’s favored tipple, Kristin was lively, acerbic/acidic (but not too) and, yes, effervescent.
• All in the family, or not: Gary Eberle’s wife, Marcy (with Gary at left), told me she recently came up with what has proved a seriously successful idea: selling parts of their barrels, and burnished vines, at the