Wine and Beer
More than anyone else I know, Mr. Dave seems to have a deep and intuitive sense of the values and morays mores of the Capital District. One of these days I’ll meet this man of mystery, who incidentally is now a father yet again (this time to a masculine child). Until then, I’ll just have to hang on his every word.
Recently he suggested why my wine posts weren’t getting their fair share of attention:
It seems you have kind of developed a regional appeal for your blog, and I just don’t think you have a wine culture here. You may have some wine enthusiasts, but for the rest wine posts are going to continue to be a big snore. If you truly enjoy writing them, isn’t the one guy who gets major jollies out of them worth it?
Naturally, I’m going to keep writing about wine because that’s just the kind of guy I am, and have always been. I’ll keep bashing my head into the same damn wall, hoping that the next one will make it through. I’ve mentioned before being a prisoner of hope.
And I recognize that we have a much stronger beer culture in the region. But wine isn’t fundamentally different from beer. Oh shit. Did I just write that? Now I’m going to have to defend it.
Tour de Donut 2011
The first Tour de Donut turned out to be a defining event for the FUSSYlittleBLOG. Well let me tell you, the second annual edition of this eating escapade is going to be even better.
Since that fateful day last fall, we have had the Tour de Hot Dog, the Tour de Soft Serve and the Tour de Fish Fry. With four of these events under my ever-expanding belt, I’ve learned a few things that promise to make this the best tour yet.
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, let me give you the short version. Periodically, I lead a group of intrepid eaters around the region to eat and evaluate some of the most beloved foodstuffs of the area. These things both have an inextricable sense of place and would also diminish in transit. So we cannot bring these delicacies to us. We must go to them.
At the end of the day, not only do all the participants have a better understanding of the item in question and the nuances of its component pieces, but they have also decided upon their favorite version. Whereas most people’s favorites stem from childhood memories or geographic proximity, those on the tour form their opinion based on empirical data.
Oh, and it’s a fun excuse to eat waaaay too many apple cider donuts. If you haven’t been on a tour with me before, you should come. What follows are the details of the second annual Tour de (Cider) Donut.
Brunch and Bagels
Sunday is inextricably linked to brunch for many people. So I’m going to try and switch things up a bit on the FLB and see what happens when I write about some classic brunch foods and related topics on Sunday.
I’ll find some other spot for wine in the weekly rotation. There is one wine post coming up that I’m very excited to write, but before I do I need to actually taste the wine that recently arrived from California. Despite my enthusiasm, I’ve been uncharacteristically restrained, since my stuffed nose would befoul the tasting.
Speaking of brunch, just yesterday Alan Ilagan posted a picture of a bagel he was about to enjoy in Boston. Now, I’m only singling him out because ordinarily he has good taste, and I know he can take a little constructive criticism.
But this bagel is wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
And if you are going to consider eating bagels for brunch either today or anytime in the future, it’s important that you understand exactly what is wrong with this picture.
On Bars
Before we begin, I need to briefly mention three pieces of business first. Only two of which relate to today’s post.
1) Make sure you have October 1, reserved for the Tour de Donut – more details Monday
2) Mrs. Fussy is traveling today, so all misspellings and grammatical failings are my own
3) I’ve been battling a head cold for the better part of this week and taking lots of medicine
Surely you will be surprised to hear that I’m a fairly cautious guy.
Given my predilection for not taking unnecessary risks, while I’m self medicating with over-the-counter painkillers and behind-the-counter antihistamines, I have been avoiding wine, beer and spirits. This put a bit of a damper on my weekly cocktail post, until I realized there is a part of drinking that we’ve never really discussed. And that’s bars.
The only problem is that this topic is immense. So like everything else on the FLB, I’ll break it down into bite sized chunks, hopefully you all will lend your voices, and together we’ll debate and celebrate what makes some bars great while others don’t quite rate.
Here’s something to ponder. Can I love a bar that cannot make a decent Manhattan?
Fall Tomatoes
Fall doesn’t abide by a date. It’s fall. It gets here when it gets here, and I challenge anyone to tell me that it’s not fall until tomorrow. Young Master Fussy would gladly take up that challenge. Like his mother, he’s into rules and order.
But dammit, the days are cooler, the nights have been actually chilly. Sweaters have been worn, leaves are turning and dropping, and people are picking apples and eating cider donuts. Which reminds me, don’t forget about October 1, when we will conduct the second annual Tour de (cider) Donut.
All the same, we are still getting plenty of tomatoes from our CSA. Despite the two floods and all the ruined crops, it’s amazing how much food they are still able to put into our shares every week. Last week we got two big containers filled with two types of tomatoes. But fall tomatoes aren’t like summer tomatoes.
Timing is Everything
Happy Monday. Please pardon a few moments of self reflection.
My colleagues at the 12 Bottle Bar just recently went through a massive overhaul of their blog. It was not without some pain on their end. But the reasoning behind the effort was likened to a stack of pancakes. On a blog, new content gets thrown on the top of the stack.
The concern is that even the third or fourth pancake from the top of the stack will never see the light of day. And pancakes are delicious, especially my father-in-law’s secret family recipe. Pancakes were meant to be eaten.
Now I have neither the technical skills nor the inclination to spend a lot of time revamping the FLB into a shinier sleeker version of itself. Yet at the same time, I too struggle with managing over 700 original posts that represent over two years of almost daily content.
So instead, I’m going to try an experiment.
Wine, Wine Everywhere…
…Now which one do I drink?
Wine tasting festivals can be an amazing learning experience or they can simply descend into a drunken bacchanal of carnal pleasures. There is a great temptation to try everything. But that won’t get you very far.
Wine is tricky, and in order to learn something, one must be careful. A wine can taste very different depending on what food or drink it follows. One of my favorite wineries once sampled their delicious Pinot Noir after a ripe, fruity and off-dry red. The result was that their better wine (the Pinot Noir) tasted flat and bitter. But these were not characteristics of the wine itself. Instead they were unfortunate side effects of following a sweeter wine.
There are also some people who will tell you that it is impossible to adequately taste a delicate white wine after sampling a big heavy red. And they have a point.
At the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival, I did see some trade professionals very carefully examining their programs and making specific stops at specific tables to try specific wines in a specific order. But you and I are not in the trade. The things we might be interested in learning are a bit broader.
So how can we make the most of our time at a festival like this? Well, I have some ideas.
Whiskey With What?
Part of me was expecting to write about last weekend’s Saratoga Wine & Food Festival all this week. But I’ve been largely silent on the matter. If you have been dying to hear about Chianti and their porchetta, you’ll just have to come back next week.
Because today is for cocktails, and I have to tell you the story about this spirit I discovered at the festival.
However, to say that I discovered it is a total mischaracterization. If it were up to me, I would have blithely walked right by it and not given it a second look. It was Doc Sconz who discovered it, told me about it, and compelled me to try it. He’s a man with exquisite tastes, and if he likes it, I would be a fool to not at least taste it.
But I have to tell you, even as the words came out of his mouth, I was left questioning his judgment. I mean, how could it be possible that at an event with a full line of Tuthilltown’s small batch Hudson whiskies the good doctor could recommend trying some other distillery’s adulterated bottling?
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