OK, so tonight I celebrated just a bit -- finished a two-day cardiac testing regimen that included taking an IV shot of radioactive isotope and brisk (shall we say) ambling on a treadmill until my heart rate topped 144. All of this coming after two months of almost-daily exercise, almost-daily salads for lunch and other forms of denial and ascetisism following a scan that found "mild to moderate" plaque buildup in my coronary arteries.
So I splurged. Opened a bottle of better-than-jug wine. Grilled some chops and made a (whole-wheat) pasta dish with tomatoes, broccoli, sheep's milk romano and more than a little olive oil and garlic. Listened to one of my iPod playlists as I finsihed off the wine after dinner, and decided to start playing around with a diary series.
The idea here is definitely not to come off as some kind of expert, but rather to stimulate discussion and sharing on some pretty-much (but not entirely) non-poilitical topics. If you want to play along, follow to the jump.
Wine, women and song? Are you kidding me? Well, like I said, not claiming to be an expert on any of these. Just starting a conversation.
Wine: Tonight's selection was the 2006 Cline "Ancient Vines" Mourvedre. Cline is a California winery in a group well-known to wine geeks as the "Rhone Rangers" -- new world winemakers who believe that California's climate and terroir are much more suited to the grapes of France's Rhone region (the source of great wines such as Hermitage, Cote Rotie and Chateau Neuf-du-Pape) than to the classic Bordeaux varieties of Cabernet and Merlot.
Cline's "ancient vines" series includes a Zinfandel and a Carignane, as well as the Mourvedre, and is made from grapes harvested from some of the oldest vines in California, planted long before the wine boom that started in the 1980s. (Why do "old vines" matter? Low yield. To over-simplify, older vines aren't as fertile as younger ones. They produce fewer grapes per acre. And all of the flavor that sun and soil would have placed in more grapes in younger vines are concentrated in fewer grapes on older vines.)
In terms of wines in the under-$20 category, these are consistently stellar. The Mourvedre is fruity and accessible, meaning you don't have to salt it away in the cellar for 5 to 10 years to appreciate it; it's delicious right now, with rich, concentrated flavors of plum, chocolate and a hint of smoke. Yum.
Women: My daughter and Eve Ensler. My daughter was one of four producers of a run of Ensler's "Vagina Monologues" at her small liberal arts college in southern Wisconsin. My wife and I drove up last weekend to see the performance. I was familiar with Ensler's work -- how could you not be, unless you're living in a cave -- but had never seen an actual performance until then.
Let me tell you, unless you are the 51-year-old father of a wonderful and impressive young woman, watching her stand on a stage yelling out the word "cunt" to hundreds of people, you have no clue what "mixed emotions" really means.
Kidding aside, the work is powerful, liberating, touching and harrowing; the performance by these terrific young undergrads was impressive. My Angela performed the monologue based on the experiences of a young Bosnian refugee, alternating between the joy of awakening and discovery and the horror of rape and war (talk about mixed emotions). I was so very proud of her.
(If you haven't seen "Monologues" lately, Ensler has added a coda that describes New Orleans as the "vagina of America." Very powerful. Don't miss it if you get a chance.)
Song: The Beatles, "Octopuses' Garden" -- OK, now you're really kidding, right?
No. This is one of those vastly underappreciated songs, because of the richness that lies beneath its throwaway-ditty surface. What made the Beatles the first supergroup of the rock era was the way they eschewed showy "look at me, I'm a superstar" antics and focused on making each song as good as it could be. "Garden" is a classic case in point -- Lennon and McCartney content to add solid backing harmonies, Paul laying down a complex bass line, and George Harrison supplying what I think is some of his best guitar work ever with the band -- fills and bridges that add essential sweetener, reminiscent of the impact that Jerry Garcia's pedal-steel work had on Crosby, Stills & Nash's "Teach Your Children" -- not epic, not dominant, just pure and professional and just what it needed to be, when it was needed.
OK, talk among yourselves . . .