France, Food, Scooters and More

CERTIFIED BLUES: IRA'S BLEND #90

MAURY WINE TASTING: AUGUST, 2017

The French region of Maury is notable for its scenic, rugged countryside as you approach the Pyrenees; for the Cathar castles of Peyrepertuse (above) and Queribus; and for its unique, natural or fortified sweet wines. We've visited the castles in years past. (Yes, I took the picture above. Every view is a postcard.) We've visited perhaps the most well-known of the Maury wineries - Mas Amiel. And for this trip, we decided to go into the town of Maury itself and see what the cooperative and wineries other than Mas Amiel had to offer.

We were not disappointed.

Every tasting was unique and enjoyable. Although we do not subscribe to theory that if you taste you must buy, we bought at each stop. Here's a quick summary of our purchases. Remember, I am by no means a connoisseur. I seldom drink red wine even with the reddest of red meat. In fact, I rarely stray from my favorite rosés regardless of the food on the plate. So when you read my opinions, you are reading the opinions of an avid though amateur drinker of wine who probably has no business offering an opinion at all.

LES VIGNERONS DE MAURY: CAVE COOPERATIF

Prominently placed on the main drag, folks bustled in and out of the cooperative the entire time. Two tasting tables stayed busy. As is typical, once staff realized that English was our first language, they switched to English although we persisted in French. We like to think that we can be understood in their language while well-schooled, customer-facing French actually do like to practice their English. Happens everywhere, all of the time. But I digress.

Eight or nine different wines were poured for us, ranging from 'simple' whites under 7€ to an aged, old-vine Grenache Noir natural (not fortified) sweet red for 38€. If you follow the link above, you can see their full line. Prices at the door are about 15% less than the prices listed on the website. Although one of our friends bought a bottle of the top end Maury Tuilé "Chabert de Barbera", we bought three bottles of each of the following whites, total bill under 45€.

'Maury Blanc', 100% Macabeu, 16%, clean and sweet, serve well chilled as an aperitif, with foie foie gras, or with dessert

'Nature de Schiste', 100% Grenache Gris, 14.5%, must be chilled to 10C for my taste because very minerally, listed as a possible aperitif but I think fish/shellfish would work best

Maury Tuilé "Chabert de Barbera" The real deal. Light up a cigar and pretend that you are Winston. But not at our house. We didn't buy any.

DOMAINE SEMPER

We dropped into the small tasting room across the side street from the cooperative with no expectations. Indeed, we interrupted the lone gent at his newspaper. But he dove in quickly enough, even breaking up some chocolate to demonstrate the proper accompaniment to his naturally sweet 'Viatge'. That convinced our friends to buy a couple of bottles. We bought two of the 'Maury Orange' labeled 'Ange d'Or' at 14.70€ for 500ml, old vine Grenache Blanc et Gris, 17%, fine as an aperitif or digestif and yes, it does have a citrus taste. Sorry, no website and the Facebook page is seldom updated.

DOMAINE DU DERNIER BASTION

And right across the main drag, another domaine. So much wine, so little time. A bit of hustling and bustling going on. The harvest is early this year. But always time for a tasting. Again, our friends bought a case and some. We settled for two bottles of 'Maury Grenat' at 12.00€ a bottle, 100% Grenache Noir, 15.5%, serve quite chilled, with the promise that it can be cellared for decades.

Thanks to various websites for allowing me - with or without their knowledge - to cadge pics. It's all in service to Bacchus...

IN MY FRENCH HOUSE LIVES A FRENCH CAT

Give Sylvie a basket to snooze in and she's happy, particularly if the basket had just held fresh-picked tomatoes and is surrounded by lemons, herbs from the garden, wine, and a cook book.

It's time to put up a bunch of our cat pics.

Our dear Chloe (l.) and Mimi came to France with us but it didn't work out for them.

When Mimi left, a neighbor said that Chloe needed a sister, hence Sylvie.

When Chloe passed, Sylvie was alone. But not for long.

Illiah is a purebred little Parisienne.

Maybe not sisters, but first cousins...

On the ramparts

The family that sleeps together...

The higher the perch, the better Sylvie likes it.

You can't see me. Can you?

HERE is one of a series of articles on the trials and tribulations of bringing Mimi and Chloe to France.

THE TOP OF QUARANTE

I often tell people that I live at the top of the village of Quarante. During my (almost daily) walk the other day, I realized that's an exact description. The church steeple is to the right. City hall is to the left partially covered by a tree. And that's us in the red circle in the middle. Always a bit of a breeze. The swifts keep the bugs under control. Nice view from my office window that directly faces the camera. Definitely at the top.

You can follow my walk as shown in a post from last spring HERE.

WINE PAIRINGS: OLD RULES - NEW RULES

Let me be clear from the beginning, I am not a connoisseur. Of anything. I have opinions. I provide them to you for free. You'll have to decide their worth.

We live in the south of France, once Languedoc-Roussillon, now Occitanie. A friend calls our region the largest vineyard in the world. It is precisely that, the largest single wine-producing region in the known universe. Seven times Napa Valley. Three times Bordeaux. More wine produced than in the entire USofA. So even if you are a friend of Bill, it's hard not to absorb a modicum of knowledge concerning the ancient art of vinification, if only through osmosis.

(For those not familiar with the term, being a friend of Bill means that you have forsworn alcoholic beverage in the manner of Bill W., a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.)

Anyone can drink wine, of course. The trick would seem to be to pair wine appropriately with the food being served. Articles and websites and books that discuss the rules for pairing wine with food abound. In the end, I have discovered that there are really only two overarching rules.

RULE #1 Conventional Wisdom. Proper pairings have been determined by general consensus over many years. Check out the chart below courtesy of Food & Wine through Wine Folly.

And you thought that the rule was simply Red = Meat, White = Fish. No, my friend. Life is too short and the wine trade is too lucrative. There are rules. You must follow the rules.

RULE #2 There Are No Rules. What sharp eyes you have. Yes, Rule #2 directly contradicts Rule #1. If a vintner can age rosé in oak to give it the kick of a light red, rules no longer apply. Drink what you like with foods that you like. Wear stripes with plaid. It's a new world.

Speaking of New Worlds, have you been to California recently? If you like charts like the one above, check out this one compliments of Leafly:

OK. Pick your jaw up off the floor. Yes, recreational marijuana is now legal in California. In a state known for both its wine and its pot (even before legalization), should we be surprised that Wine/Weed tastings are now a thing in the Golden State? How about starting the day at a pot dispensary stocking up on smoke (at your own expense), then taking a bus to two different wineries to try out wine/weed combinations, then finishing up back at the dispensary just in case you didn't choose wisely the first time? All for under $200...plus the pot.

I am old. Acapulco Gold is not on the pairings list. Too retro even for California.

Should this be archived on my FOOD AND RESTAURANT REVIEW PAGE or my FRANCE PAGE? I'll decide later.

PRIVACY OR SECURITY: MUST WE CHOOSE?

I try not to get caught up in the hurly-burly of the 24 hour news cycle. I don't subscribe to the English-language television and radio options that are available to me here in France. Instead, I depend on the written word - on paper and online - giving me the ability to step back a bit and see if I can detect a bigger picture. So I skip over the latest Trump silliness. (No, we didn't meet with the Russians. Wait a minute. We did meet with the Russians but not about Clinton. Wait a minute. The Russians said that the meeting would be about Clinton, but it really wasn't.) I skip over the latest missteps by Theresa May and her gang of Brexiteers. (If you're an English-speaking expat in Europe, you know what I'm talking about.) And I only take passing notice of the latest Tour de France updates. (Is it me or are there more disabling crashes involving favorites this year than previous?)

If I don't worry about the latest political dustup that has everybody else on tenterhooks, what is it that causes me to pause and wonder about the fate of mankind? Trophy hunting? GMOs? Rogue ice shelves in the South Atlantic?

No. I'm worried about cyber security.

I'm not concerned about my bank account. It's simply too small to be noticed. And I've done what I can to prevent viruses and hijacking. I worry that the predictions of the sci-fi authors are coming true. If it is online, it's hackable. Therefore, it's public. And since everything is online, everything can be hacked. And everything is therefore public. Period. Our government has discovered that it can't keep secrets. WikiLeaks has become a fashionable social media hero. Folks applaud. Shine a light, they said.

That's when I began to worry. Not because my nude photos might be published. (Because there aren't any.) I began to worry because documents aren't the only things that are online. Ask Iran's nuclear scientists about Stuxnet. Better yet, ask the folks who run our own nuclear power plants. In case you missed it, they've been hacked. They're safe, we're told. Special technology. You can hack the company headquarters but you can't effect operations. Yeah, the Russians hacked us. But they couldn't get anywhere.

Yet...

And it's not just nuclear power. It's the entire power grid that I worry about. And the financial markets. And traffic lights. And flight controllers. And the machines that pack my toothpaste tubes. Once hacking became acceptable, even noble in certain circumstances, all bets were off.

That's why I am not a fan of WikiLeaks. And that's why I think Snowden is no role model. And that's why I want my NSA back. That's right. I want a well-funded, high-tech, black as a black hole government agency at my cyber back, protecting me against well-funded and well-fed North Korean hackers. Against Putin's former KGB buddies and their cyber-fluent successors. Against the neighbor's kid in his onesie in the basement. I want Tommy Lee Jones or Helen Mirren taking charge. I want the equivalent of a Sean Connery or Jason Bourne cyber-agent unleashed.

We are always fighting the last war. We had to build a modern armed forces from scratch to face the Japanese and the Germans 75 years ago because we thought that two oceans protected us. And now, we are spending $400 billion to build jet fighters that we won't be able to deploy if our Command and Control is hacked and useless.

I don't demand accountability. I demand safety. That means stepping on some Constitutional toes. And you know what? If it saves the world from planes falling out of the sky or lye getting injected into my toothpaste tube or the whole world getting a look at my naked selfies, I'm all for it.

For more of my political opinions, I keep a dedicated page HERE.