September 2007 Archives

For a Sunday evening dinner party with a bunch of wine-obsessed friends, I threw caution to the winds and gambled on:

1970 Charles Krug Winery (Peter Mondavi Family) Cabernet Sauvignon Vintage Selection - USA, California, Napa Valley (9/23/2007)
This bottle is a time-machine taking us back to another wine making epoch. It had a orange banner across the label proclaiming "Vintage Select" and sporting the signature of Cesare Mondavi. The back label informs us that Vintage Select wines were from exceptional lots that received special treatment, including aging in oak barrels and bottle aging before release! Fill was to the bottom of the neck. Though soft, the cork came out almost whole with only a small piece at the bottom breaking off. The cork showed stain marks almost to the top. Color was dark reddish orange and opaque with only light bricking at the edge. The wine had a pronounced nose of sweet chocolate. With 12% claimed alcohol. the wine showed a medium-light body, a fairly simple taste profile, and a short finish with tannins completely resolved. We followed development in the glass for 90 minutes. There was some fading of fruit, but the wine did not fall apart. This was probably an average wine in its youth. It's most impressive current characteristic is that it is still very much alive. Not bad for a $4-6 bottle of wine (release price). (84 pts.)

California cabernets from the 60s and 70s were remarkably consistent. I've had far more dead ~1990s CA Pinot Noirs, than I have had dead CA cabs from the 70s.

So you do a little surfing. And you find out that Alex Ross, the music critic of The New Yorker magazine is back from vacation and is blogging again. One of his posts about Tikhon Khrennikov makes one wonder if maybe he wasn't such an evil person after all, but the interesting thing about the post is that it's entitled: "Mithridates, he died old."

Now, where have I heard THAT before? Oh, yes! That poem by Housman. Quite good, but not the best known of the poems from A Shropshire Lad. Just like music, the best poetry is stylistically unique, you can recognize it immediately, which also makes it easy to parody. Which, of course, Sir Owen Seaman, future editor of Punch Magazine, couldn't resist doing which led to these memorable and very funny lines:(*)

What, still alive at twenty-two,
  A clean upstanding chap like you?
Why, if your throat is hard to slit,
  Slit your girl's and swing for it!
Like enough you won't be glad
  When they come to hang you, lad,
But bacon's not the only thing
  That's cured by hanging from a string.
When the blotting pad of night
  Sucks the latest drop of light,
Lads whose job is still to do
  Shall whet their knives and think of you.

And that is how the world-wide-web works. But you knew that already, didn't you.

(*) This is probably funny only if you are familiar with Housman's work. If you are not, I'm sorry I ruined the joke for you.

Located in the northeast corner of the Ferry Building, The Slanted Door is an incredibly popular restaurant with a super fantastic view of San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge.  I think the space is more like an office park than a restaurant, but when you've got that great view outside, floor to ceiling windows and an open floor plan make a whole lot of sense.

The Slanted Door has been tremendously successful, and provides San Francisco with its own Horatio Alger story, as Charles Phan and his family left Vietnam as part of the exodus of boat-people in 1975. The original restaurant opened in the Mission in 1995, moved to larger quarters in SoMA in 2002, and moved into the Ferry Building when its restoration was completed in 2004. Slanted Door is now number 61 on the list of the Top 100 Independent Restaurants, serving over 275,000 meals per year and taking in more than $12 million.

Surprisingly, in San Francisco food circles, The Slanted Door is somewhat controversial (see below). I've never regarded Charlie Phan as the Vietnamese Thomas Keller, but I've always enjoyed my meals at his restaurant including visits to the Brannan and Embarcadero location as well as the current incarnation. I was there Saturday evening in a party of four and we tried: