My brother Chris taught me many lessons, maybe my favorite is the concept of riding your bike and stopping in for a drink somewhere along the way. Just now at mile 18, it's time for a pit stop. The Hair of the Dog Brewery & Tasting Room. The sun is shining; the beer is tasty; it's only 76-degrees; I only have 1.2 miles to home. The only thing missing is Chris. Thanks for the lesson, bro. Wish you were here!
Anthony Garcia
One doesn’t see a lot of Alsatian Muscat on wine lists. That's too bad since it is a classic wine from a classic region. I was happy to pick up a bottle of Zind-Humbrecht Goldert from Vinopolis for $44.
The color’s a rich gold-orange with deep concentration and high viscosity. The nose has two worlds battling it out for your attention: flower versus fruit. Heavy gardenia and lilac with intense citrus oil, ripe tangerine, over-ripe strawberry, super-ripe peach and cantaloupe. This is accompanied by honey [think botrytis] and freshly dug out of the ground fennel.
The palate is slightly off-dry, medium-plus bodied, medium-minus acid with more nuances stacked onto the bouquet’s profile: a ripe mango, ripe red cherry, ripe red apple, and mint. The honey and fennel are two cherished attributes of the wine. The finish is long with a touch of minerality and citrus oil. The wine’s abv is 13.5%.
The lower acid of the wine, its intense fruit and floral qualities, plus the fennel aspect makes it a perfect match for dishes that have a vinaigrette component such as a salad of gathered greens with fresh fruit and nuts.Anthony Garcia
This is an easy to make and easy to appreciate cocktail. Its purpose is to enhance inexpensive Cava and a warm, sunny day.
5oz of Cava Brut
½ oz of Combier Roi René Rouge Cherry Liqueur
Lemon Twist
Add the liqueur to a Champagne flute, top with the Cava, and garnish with a twist. Simple. If you are one to enjoy bubbly-based cocktails extra cold, throw the bubbly into a freezer for 10 minutes before adding it to the room temp liqueur; or stir the liqueur with an ice cube or two and strain into a flute, then add the Cava.
I really like the Combier Cherry Liqueur; it tastes like cherries, imagine that. I enjoy Luxardo il Maraschino Liqueur because of its nuances of almonds and herbs, and Peter F. Heering Cherry Liqueur is tasty, but it’s reminiscent of Christmas spices. These aforementioned, venerable liqueurs are perfect for certain drinks. I wouldn’t use either of them as a substitute for this cocktail, though. Combier has a truer sense of purity as it tastes more like fresh cherries, which makes it an essential ingredient in this variation of the Kir Royale.
I dialed back the liqueur to a ½ ounce measure in this recipe to suit my palate; you might like it sweeter, so go the full ounce or more. If you were having a cheese course, a sweeter version of the cocktail should complement nicely. I purchased the Combier Roi René Rouge from Pearl Specialty Market and Spirits for $24.95. You can make a lot of these cocktails with one 750ml bottle!
Anthony Garcia
Anne’s boss suggested I bike to Sauvie Island. I just did. It was sublime and closer than I thought, a little over 11.5 miles from home to the bridge that takes you to the island. The main stretch after going through the Alphabet District is St. Helens Road [Hwy 30], which is flat-ish and has a wide shoulder with not very many glass shards. The island is filled with farms, orchards, parks, preserves and many beautiful smells wafting about. Nice.
SW Terwilliger Blvd. is my new favorite urban route; I just head south on Broadway to reach it. I like Terwilliger because its increased elevation [heading south] is just annoying enough to cause muscle burn, but pretty enough to be worth it. I will start a ride here then loop back to town on SW Barbur Blvd, hit the Hawthorne Bridge to destinations east. Sometimes up Mt. Tabor, then to 74th over to Tillamook and through the quaint Irvington District before catching the Broadway Bridge home.
I’ll confess; lately, it’s been hard to imagine what Portland looks like when it’s covered in clouds and rain.
I love this little shop of delectable chocolates, located at 140 NE 28th Ave. Anne and I stumbled upon the storefront quite by accident, after brunch a few doors down. Of course, I’ve come to find out that Portlanders are well acquainted with Sarah Hart and her craft, Alma Chocolate.
A little chocolate as part of a late night snack is always appropriate.
This is my first experience tasting Pelaverga Verduno, courtesy of Will Prouty at South Park Seafood, located on the other side of the park, down the street from home. I only know about the wine because I diligently cataloged the specs of the DOC on a Master Sommelier flashcard. Pelaverga is the grape. The DOC is for red wine production only, is located in Piedmont, and shares the northern half of the Barolo DOCG, including the communes of Roddi, Verduno, and the renowned La Morra.
The color is light ruby with a medium-minus concentration and high viscosity. The nose is contemplative of raspberry, tart red cherry, white pepper, cedar, prosciutto and gravel. The palate is not contemplative, but rather fun, which is what you’d expect from a wine released a couple or so months ago: juicy, yet focused with light tannins, medium-plus acid, and 14% abv. If you took Côtes-du-Rhône and made it leaner and fresher, you’d have this wine. Thank you Will Prouty for turning me on to this, a real treat and a reminder: it is more enjoyable to drink the wine than to flip the flashcard about it.
Mr. Prouty also poured me a taste of this Uruguayan Tannat, Bouza from Montevideo. Nice. If I had to describe Will, I’d say his esoteric palate is more than balanced by his completely unpretentious service. He just wants you to try some cool new product. I heard he owns a wine shop, too. I can’t wait to visit it.
With Higgins across the street, South Park across the park and Kask a few blocks away, someone better offer me a job before I blow through our savings! View my résumé.
Anthony Garcia
Equal parts Armagnac, lemon juice & Crème de Pamplemousse Rose from COMBIER [coming soon to a distributor near you, hopefully. BUT if not, ask for it!] A lost cocktail reborn. I drank it before shooting a picture of the finished cocktail, sorry. He served it up.
When Tommy Klus speaks, shut up and listen, then enjoy what he just made. Follow him at http://www.twitter.com/tommytweed & follow Kask [Grüner's new coktail lounge, located eleven blocks from home, nice] at http://www.twitter.com/kaskpdx.
At 8:30 pm on the night before my Theory test, in my posh hotel room on the 39th floor of The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, it occurred to me that I didn’t have a chance to pass the Master Sommelier Examination. I was in the midst of flipping flashcards after several hours that day when the sinking feeling came, “Dude, candidates who are going to pass Theory tomorrow aren’t doing this right now.” My eyes were getting tired, I was feeling a little overwhelmed, and thought, “Take the elevator down to Vesper [Las Vegas’ most radical craft cocktail bar located directly below my room in the hotel] and have a couple cocktails, you ain’t passing.” I resisted the temptation. I took a stack of flashcards to bed and fell asleep mid-flip about two hours later.
Rule number one: if you are still trying to learn things the night before the test, you’re not prepared to take it. The next day I felt well-rested, walked the 12 minutes to where I needed to be at the Bellagio and waited to be called. The exam went horribly; I performed much better last year. At one point, I stopped to apologize for the train wreck my two inquisitors were witnessing. The test concluded; I was escorted out of the room, feeling better having it over with and knowing I would be cashing in that rain check on cocktails at Vesper, which I had denied myself the night before. So, for a candidate who started studying for Theory earlier than he did the year prior, what would bring him to this result? This year, I felt myself caught in the crosshairs of a paradigm shift for the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas.
Where it Began
I, like many professionals whose goal is to be a Master, read the blog post Matt Stamp wrote directly after passing the Master Sommelier Exam this year in February. In fact, I’ve read it several times. It’s difficult for me not to get choked up a little each time I read it. In his account, he poignantly and eloquently maps out his sacrifices and dedication to preparing for and finally passing the exam on his second attempt. He also gives the best advice for tackling the incredibly difficult Theory section.
Some say the test is harder, but none of us candidates really know. The paradigm shift isn’t an alleged higher difficulty level. The paradigm shift is the complete eradication of poor, outdated and incorrect information on the Guild of Sommeliers website. [If you’re studying for any level of Court of Master Sommelier examination, or any other wine-related certification for that matter, and haven’t joined, I highly recommend doing so immediately. It is also the only place you’ll be able to read Master Stamp’s aforementioned blog post. It’s a hundred dollars a year; offset the expense by canceling your Decanter Magazine subscription].
After reading Master Stamp’s post, I decided to track all the additions he made to the Guild’s wiki on the website [now officially called the Compendium]. I went back six months or so. In his blog post, he declared his commitment to helping others pass the exam, and I found he was true to his word. He seeks to help other MS hopefuls by creating new channels and updating old ones with the right information in the Compendium: from Spanish aging requirements, to Champagne 1er Cru Villages, to Elba Aleatico Passito specs, to DOP regulations for Lafões, and so on. I was more than impressed. As I started to cross-check the information on my own flashcards, I found a great number were incorrect, or that I didn’t have enough information on them. How many 1er Crus are really in Champagne? It’s been addressed on the site. How do I find the best information on the DOCs of Emilia-Romagna? It’s been addressed on the site. How do I pronounce Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh ? It’s been addressed on the site.
The Guild of Sommeliers’ website is a sort of revolution: the eradication of poor, outdated information replaced by the high velocity addition of brand new, correct data.It makes just about any reference source, except those with great maps, obsolete. The breadth of knowledge that is still being added amazes me. Ironically, the same day I found out in my exit interview that I had failed the exam, Master Sommelier Matt Stamp was adding a coffee and tea section to the Compendium. Coffee and tea questions on your sommelier exam? That’s right, if it’s in a glass you have to know it.
None of this is a bad thing, by the way. No candidate or serious wine and service professional needs wrong information or to be flipping flashcards and memorizing details that are obsolete. So after discovering this feature, I set to the task of examining my hundreds of flashcards and remedying bad information by using the Guild’s Compendium one card at a time, throwing away bad cards and making many new cards. I found that I made more new flashcards between my first attempt at passing the Masters and my second than I had in five years. More time making flashcards, less time flipping them, one can see the dilemma. Last year, I just flipped. I felt at ease, I wasn’t trying to remember new things. This year, new things were all I seemed to be concentrating on in the mad dash to the exam. Obviously, I fell short. The newly added knowledge in my head was like a shotgun blast; I needed a little more time to narrow it down and fine-tune it into a target-hitting laser. Let’s focus on the good news. The correct information is located in one centralized place now, and there’s no more guessing whether or not I have the proper reference books in my collection.
Ironically, my strategy for this year was to focus on passing Theory and striving hardest to this end. As some folks know, this year my wife Anne and I relocated to Portland, OR and made sacrifices to make the move an easy one, working multiple jobs, saving a tremendous amount of money in a short time span. We visited PDX last autumn, were blown away at the culinary scene and its beauty, and said, “Let’s move there!” So, in addition to my goal of passing the Master Sommelier Examination, moving to Portland to join the culinary scene became our shared goal. I did not plan to jeopardize our mutual objective by sinking a vast sum of money on wines for blind tasting analysis. I spent one-third less on wines than I usually do and ended up performing poorly on tasting analysis. As for service [i.e. Practical], I just ran out of time, too busy concentrating on Theory, not enough time practicing service and memorizing the possible answers to the possible questions which are hurled at you while serving tableside.
Talent and Experience versus Preparation
I’ve had folks reach out to me after reading my accounts of training and finally passing the Advanced Sommelier Examination and reading about the preparation and not passing my first attempt at the Master level. Some are encouraged by my story, others admit they’re second-guessing their pursuit. I find this unsettling because, first, don’t take my account as an indicator of how things will play out for you. I’ve never claimed to be a “super-somm,” and I have no special talent, unless getting knocked down and back up counts as a talent. I like knowledge, wine and most of all serving guests. I pursue a Master Sommelier Diploma to learn more, enjoy more and serve better. Secondly, the exam is not about how talented you are, although being blessed with a great palate, a gift of hospitality or a robust memory no doubt will help. The test is not about how much experience you have either. Yet, working at a great place with a deep wine program and serving guests at all levels of discernment should assist you to an extent. Keep in mind that some have passed the exam without ever being on a restaurant’s payroll. This brings me to the only true factor to earning you the title of Master Sommelier, PREPARATION.
A candidate must show up thoroughly prepared. Candidates should have tasted all wines that might be submitted for blind analysis over and over, memorized the classic and as well as not-so classic vintages of Burgundy as if having personally worked each harvest, spent hours flipping flashcards to the point where information can be pulled from head sans index card. That’s the preparedness before showing up for day one of the exam. The second type of preparedness addresses the event itself: remaining calm, confident and humble at the same time. Do not blank or miss the easy points [as few as these are]. As any chef will tell you, all the best mise-en-place in the world is for naught if you end up going down in flames during a night of service. Don’t lose hope. Move forward. Be prepared. This is the advice I give to any aspiring student including myself.
Dedicated to Andrew Pollard and his team at Vesper. Your consolation cocktails were sublime [and necessary]. Thank you.
The color is reminiscent of unfiltered apple cider with a thin, sticky head. This is one Double IPA, which keeps its cereal-ness intact while delivering a full range of nuances to provide complexity and bite. A very quaffable beer of contemplation. Nice.
Its fruit nuances are muted and run the gamut from apricot skin, tart cherry, lemon pith, orange oil, almost ripe raspberry. Analyzing the non-fruit spectrum, the beer displays pollen, brown sugar, beeswax and pine. Blue Dot finishes with a bite: clean with lemon pith, light pine and apricot pit. Pure, raw, bite-y, complex with 7% abv.
Tasted at the Hair of the Dog Tasting Room and Brewery, just across the river from my home.
Anne introduced me to The Meadow on Mississippi Ave., a store devoted to salt, chocolate bars, cocktail bitters, fresh flowers and an ancillary offering of wine. The store is owned by Mark and Jennifer Bitterman and visiting their store is sort of a laidback religious experience. This Spring, Mark’s book, Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral, won the James Beard Foundation Award for the Reference and Scholarship category. Nice. When you have a Farmers’ Market every day of the week, it’s important to have a little finishing salt around. Heck, I’m not afraid to say I put some saffron salt on a cheese pizza last night.
It’s also nice to have a little chocolate bar after dinner. The Raleigh Bars from Xocolatl de David made here in Portland are my favorite. Pecan, nougat, bacon, caramel, are you kidding me? The salt caramels are pretty tasty, too.
