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While everyone is celebrating Valentine's Day, I'd like to talk with those of you who are commemorating the end, rather than the beginning, of love. There is no holiday for you, no Hallmark card expressing scorn for the person who did this to you. The damned marketers, with their blood-red hearts and paper lace…they don't understand.
Leave the frivolity to the frivolous. Those of us who know the truth about love – that it lulls you to complacency before betraying you, leaving only pain and loneliness behind – will close the curtains on the Valentine's Day revelers so we don't have to witness their foolishness. We have serious thoughts to think, vengeance to plan, psychological baggage to pack so we can go on with our lives. We don't need…well, fill in the blank. We don't need him, the bastard, or her, the floozie. All we need is ourselves, a fire in the fireplace and a glass of the kind of wine that is more puzzle than palliative.
As there are wines for the first flush of love – soulless pinks and vacuously effervescent bubblies -- there are wines for brooding in the wake of love. Every wine-making region in the world makes at least one, because there are miserable people everywhere in need of solace. The wines are dark and challenging, asking more questions than they answer.
Hemingway understood loss and its relationship with powerful wine. In the inevitable let-down after witnessing the life-or-death struggle in the bull ring, or pondering the horrible beauty of war, or considering whether the world would ever accept a bearded man with an affinity for women's attire, he reached for wine as opaque as his black moods. He drank Rioja from the north of Spain, wines aged so long in wood that they retain no trace of brightness or joy. The old Riojas – the Reservas and Gran Reservas -- are leather and smoke and licorice. The Marqueses are where you start: Marques de Riscal ($18), Marques de Arienzo ($22), Marques de Murieta ($20). If you can find it and afford it, there is no more wretchedly beautiful Spaniard than Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia ($45).
Perhaps the Spaniards are too black for you. Perhaps even in your moment of bitterness you need some sliver of light sneaking under your closed door, the glow of coals dying in the fireplace. Perhaps a Pinot Noir – lighter, but just barely. There are Pinots that are cheerful and fruity. Forget those. They make Pinots along the fogbound California coast that are as whispy and smoky as the ashes remaining after you've burned your love letters. La Crema makes a decent bottle at $17 and Hook & Ladder for maybe $30, the grapes grown between the rocky Sonoma Coast and the wreckage of the San Andreas Fault. There is no joy in those bottles, but there is wisdom.
Finally, there is Amarone, a wine from Italy that is an allegory to the process of getting over Mr. or Ms. Right. Amarones are made with grapes dried to concentrate flavor. Almost figgy in their gooey opacity, Amarones are slow-drinking wines that change in the glass. They teach by the Socratic method, asking questions and patiently awaiting your answer. Luigi Righetti makes a cheap one, Capitel De' Roari, that runs about $30. Bolla makes a solid and generally available bottle for a few dollars more. Give an Amarone time and it will whisper to you that all of those celebrants of love clogging the restaurants and bars on Valentine's Day…every single one of them…will be miserable soon enough. They will be left, as you have been, broken and scarred, because that is what love does to people.
Tom Johnson writes about wine at LouisvilleJuice.com and is nowhere near as miserable as this piece makes him sound.
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PhayBay
wed feb 10 2010
at 10:58 am
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I think I just figure out what I'm doing to celebrate Single Awareness Day...I mean Valentine's Day!
Thank you! :-) And Happy S.A.D!! |
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The rumblings among Democrats are that they need to start over with healthcare. The netroots are convinced Republicans will obstruct even small changes. I'm taking all bets that if health care reform is broken into pieces of smaller legislation, the Republicans will let it pass, reclaiming the sensible center and fixing Democrats, in the public mind, as overreaching radicals.
For the last year, Republicans have used healthcare to kill the Obama Presidency. The goal, clearly and openly stated, was Carterization, painting the President as ineffective and feckless, while at the same time playing on racial and party stereotype to create an assumption of radicalism. Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership unleashed the crazies to create a drumbeat of horrific claims that have been both factually ridiculous and enormously effective at throwing the Democrats for loop after loop.
The Republican strategy has been modeled on the the ideas of John Boyd, a Korean War-era fighter pilot and military theorist. Boyd was all the rage with the Cheney wing of the party; the opening shots of the war in Iraq -- the shock and awe campaign -- were choreographed according to Boyd's theory.
Roughly stated, Boyd believed that victory in modern warfare came down to making quick, unpredictable maneuvers, "getting inside your enemy's decision loop," as the pilots say. If you can change course, then change course again, then change course again with such swiftness that your opponent is still reacting to one move when you've executed another, your opponent will eventually be rendered incapable of acting.
Welcome to today's Democratic Party, still in possession of big majorities but curled up in a fetal position incapable of deciding what to do next, shocked and awed. Just when they figure out how to counter one attack, another is inbound. That the attacks are nonsensical matters not at all in today's media culture. Accuse the President of being un-American because of the mustard he puts on his hamburger and it's three days of coverage of the "controversy." Just when it seems like the stupidity of it all is going to soak in, another volley of attack rolls in.
As capable as Republicans have been of moving President Obama's poll numbers down, they haven't moved their own support up. While the conventional wisdom is that they will continue to obstruct, I'd bet my John Boyd decoder ring that Mitch McConnell is about to become a pussycat. I bet, in smaller bites, Republicans are going to pass just about everything that's in the Senate health care bill.
Nate Silver has a chart showing that the individual components of health care reform are quite popular. By cooperating and helping to pass those components in smaller legislative bites, Republicans co-opt Democratic policies as their own. They re-establish their responsible governance bona fides and move their own poll numbers up. The Democrats, focused on policy, will go right along, thrilled that they're doing right for people and oblivious to the fact that they're confirming every Republican slander of the last year. Yes, they're saying, there really were Death Panels. We really did want the government to take over health care. We tried to ram the bill through Congress without seeking bipartisan compromise and we really were spending ridiculous amounts of money.
The public will conclude: Thank God the Republicans pulled us back from the abyss.
It's an amazing thing to watch, one party so politically shrewd and one party so helpless, one party empowered by its utter willingness to sacrifice the public good for political gain and one party crippled by it's desire to actually accomplish things.
The result, perhaps ironically, may be pretty good policy. It will also be a Republican Party rescued from ruin and a Democratic Party wondering why people don't like them, even though they were right all along.
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Bulldog
sat jan 30 2010
at 5:47 pm
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It's really nice to see that are two party system really does balance itself! Otherwise one party could pass legislation that really was not for the good of the people. Maybe someday the political parties will realize that our country is truly run by the people and that they are only there to implement the will of the people. No matter which party you support you have to appreciate this reality. |
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Wine's not included so you'll have to make-do by ordering off the best list in town. On the other hand, maybe you should donate the money you would have spent on wine to the cause.
The the line-up of contributing chefs is first rate: Anthony Lamas from Seviche, Bruce Uca'n from Mayan Cafe, Marcos Lorenzo from Havana Rumba, Matt Durham and Bobbie Benjamin from The Seelbach, and Jim Gerhardt of The Oakroom and Limestone.
The dinner is Thursday, Jan. 28, in The Oakroom. A reception starts at 6:30 PM followed by the five-course dinner at 7. Tickets are $75, and reservations can be had by calling 502/807-3463. If you feel like kicking in a few extra bucks, no one will stop you.
UPDATE: Anne Shadle, co-owner of Mayan Cafe, informs me that the proceeds of the dinner will benefit Partners in Health, an entirely reputable organization that has been working to improve health care in Haiti for more than 20 years. The website has regular updates on the flow of medical supplies and personnel into Port au Prince and the surrounding areas.
Tom Johnson is thinking about changing the name of Louisville Juice, his local wine blog, because it seems to be generating a broader audience than expected -- which really says more about Mr. Johnson's low expectations than anything else.
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Tom Johnson
tue jan 19 2010
at 3:28 pm
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I believe they are. The bad wording is mine and has been fixed. |
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The Salvation Army runs a culinary training program for poor and homeless people that prepares them to work in commercial kitchens. On February 6, there will be a fund-raising wine dinner at Park Place in Slugger Field featuring a six-course dinner cooked by six of the top chefs in Louisville.
Menu and wine-pairing details have yet to be announced, but here's the Who's Who:
- The host is Anoosh Shariat, Chef/Owner at Brownings and the late, lamented Shariat's
- Kathy Cary, Chef/Owner of Lilly's and LaPeche
- Dean Corbett, Chef/Owner of Corbett's, Equus and Jack's Lounge
- Jim Gerhardt, Chef/Owner of Limestone, and Executive Chef at The Seelbach
- Laurent Geroli, Executive Chef of The Brown Hotel
- Daniel Stage, Executive Chef of Louisville Country Club, formerly of Les Relais
Wine pairings will be provided by Brown Foreman.
The fund-raising dinner is February 6 beginning at 7 PM. The cost, including dinner, wine, tax and tips, is $225 per person.
For reservations, please call Stacy at (502) 896-0464.
I'll post food and wine pairings as soon as I get them.
Tom Johnson writes LouisvilleJuice.com, a Louisville wine blog.
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