Simple pleasures in food

I enjoy food, and by that I mean good quality food, made with decent ingredients which are well-prepared. And not too much of it at one time. But, despite the fact that my work is concerned with the workings of taste and particularly its applications to wine, I am definitely not what is known as a "foodie", that is to say someone totally obsessed with whatever goes into his mouth. I don't care a lot for fancy restaurants, for example. I prefer to eat in places that make me feel at ease. They must serve decent food for sure, but the atmosphere of these places, and the friendliness of the service is at least as important than what is in my plate. I happen to know a few famous chefs and appreciate very much, on occasion, eating their cuisine. But I would never make a thing of going to such places regularly, even if I had the means to do so. For instance, I simply cannot imagine booking ahead seats in a fashionable restaurant. If they can't take me when I show up or call that same morning (rare event) then I will just go someplace else or stay at home. So you can be sure that you will never find me standing in a queue (real or virtual) for any restaurant, unless of course I am truly starving. The rest is pure snobbery.

oeuf à la coque on the floor of my kitchen in Gascony

When one feels the need to get back to basics, like when strong feelings flow around you, during seasonal changes, when life is hard, intense, stressful, beautiful or otherwise powerful, the simplest foods are often the best. This morning, for me, it was a boiled egg.

Living in France and spending more than half my time speaking the French language, I am often struck by differences in the senses behind expressions or words that describe the same object, event or process between English and French. I have occasionally, on this blog, underlined the impoverishement of sense that prevails in the translations of film or book titles from English to French. But, in this instance, the impoverishement would seem to run in the other linguistic direction. The French term for "boiled egg" is "oeuf à la coque". This means "egg in its shell", and I like this far better than "boiled egg". Not sure why, but I do. The very definition provided in the inevitably useful Wikipedia is quite enough to put one off the English version, far too basic and flavourless in its expression.

"Boiled eggs are eggs (typically chicken eggs) cooked by immersion in boiling water with their shells unbroken. 
(Eggs cooked in water without their shells are known as poached eggs, while eggs cooked below the boiling temperature, either with or without the shell, are known as coddled eggs.) Hard-boiled eggs are either boiled long enough for the egg white and then theegg yolk to solidify, or they are left in hot water to cool down, which will gradually solidify them, while a soft-boiled egg yolk, and sometimes even the white, remains at least partially liquid."

 the same egg on the table, to show that we can be sophisticated down in the country!

There is something quintessential, amost primitive, about the egg in its shell. It doesn't matter whether it comes from the chicken or another bird. Just the size (and the flavour, to some extent) varies. The shape is strong yet refined with its variable taper on each end. I have heard that the strength of an egg-shell lies way beyond it thickness, signifying perfect design and strength/weight ratio.

A friend once told me that French table protocole stipulated that there were 7 forbidden practices to be avoided at all costs in refined society, when confronted with an "oeuf à la coque".

1). Do not place the egg sharp side down in the egg cup.

2). Never cut off the top of an oeuf à la coque with a knife. One can bash it with a spoon or cut it off with a spoon.

3). Never use a silver spoon to eat one (for the very good reason of undesirable chemical reactions affecting flavour).
4). Do not dip slices of bread or toast into the egg once opened.

This is the point at which I part company with these rules of good behaviour, so I will spare you the others, especially as I cannot remember them anyway! As you will notice from my photographs, I was not about to not obey rule 4 anyway. On the contrary, dipping a slice of fresh and firm bread (or toast) with its crunchy crust into a soft-boiled egg is one of the morning's great pleasures. Eminently sensual, of course. Rules 1, 2 and 3 are just plain common sense. 

The Barnes Collection in Philadelphia

I happened to be in the city of Philadelphia recently to do a job and managed to find the time to visit what has to be the most amazing collection of art of all descriptions that I have ever seen. I am of course referring to the Barnes collection, which is now harboured in a modern building right in the centre of Philadelphia.

 

 

The Barnes Foundation building in Philadelphia

 

The story of Albert Barnes is a remarkable example of an American success story. He was born into a working-class family in 1872 and grew up in Philadelphia. He obtained a medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania before pursuing his studies in Germany. Back in the USofA, Barnes, togther with Herman Hille, discovered an antiseptic silver compound called Argyrol that was used to prevent infant blindness. Having gone into the pharmaceutical business in 1908, the Barnes Company made a fortune thanks to the success of Agryrol. Barnes had already begun collecting and went on to buy extensively art of many kinds and periods, with an emphasis on French impressionists and post-impressionists. He created the Barnes Foundation back in 1922, whose stated aim was to «promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of fine arts ». He died in 1961, aged 79, leaving a testament that I will mention later on.

 

 

Dr Barnes

Many things are remarkable about this collection: its size, its eclecticism, the depth it shows in the collections of the works of numerous artists, and the way it is set out and hung. Dr. Barnes left his collection, via a Foundation, to his city, stipulating that it should neither be moved from his town house nor the works altered in their positions on the walls. The problem was that his house, although quite large, did not have the facilities to accomodate an increasing flow of visitors and was situated (it still is, and it harbours another part of the Barnes Foudnation: that devoted to his wife's botanical collection) some way out of the city centre of Philadelphia, and with very little parking space and inadequate public transport. So it was decided to move the collection into a modern building situated in the centre of town. This created some conservative furore, but I think they made the right decision. To respect at least part of Barnes' wishes, the shapes and proportions of the original rooms have been reproduced within this modern building, along with the very idiosyncratic hanging set-up devised by Barnes himself.

 

The original Barnes home, from which the collection has now moved

 

 

 

The central ground-floor gallery in the new building, which also reproduces the lighting of the old Barnes house. One can just see part of the Matisse triptych high on the left, fitting into the arches. And another strange feature of this hanging are the hundreds of old door fittings, which Barnes also collected, on the walls in between the paintings like so many punctuation marks. 

 

 

Now about the paintings and other works to be seen here. First of all you need to book your ticket ahead if you hope to get in, as they wisely limit the numbers of people allowed in at one time. Luckily I had my press card with me! Second you had better allow yourself at least two hours, and better still three. There are more Renoirs, Cézannes and Matisses here than anywhere alse I can think of. And there is much, much more besides.

 

I have to admit to disliking the paintings of Renoir. I know this is not a widely-held point of view, but I consider him to be a bad painter: all that sloppy softness and women who look like they are made of Spam (anyone remember Spam?). I think Renoir is the David Hamilton of painting, although his women must outweigh the Hamiltonian nymphette models by about three to one apiece. There is no getting away from Renoir in this place though, as there are usually several on each wall. They just pop up all over the galleries, like bad pennies. This is partly due to the fact that Barnes clearly had a big thing for Renoir, and partly due to his practise of hanging paintings from different styles and periods together, and often in rows three or more high on densely cluttered walls.

 

Once one gets used to this clutter, the hanging becomes legible and often very interesting. The anachronism in particular can be most illuminating. In one gallery I saw, surrounding the inevitable blotch of Renoirs, a Titian next to a fantastic (and anonymous) 15th century German portrait of a woman, followed by some fabulous Chinese painting on what seemed to be silk. Barnes clearly not only had a sincere and profound love of art, but also a very good eye. Or there is a Milton Avery next to a Puvis de Chavannes, and that works really well too. And so on. I found the hanging and its surprises one of the joys of visiting the Barnes collection, after an initial recoil that we can call the Renoir-repulsion syndrome.

 

 

one of the many and admirably musical (think Bach) Cézanne still-life works in this collection

 

 

Manet, for instance, of whom there are just a few stellar paintings in this collection, is an infinitely better painter than Renoir, even when he is at his most spontaneous and loose, in terms of composition and technique. But the next most important collection here, in terms of numbers of works by a single artist, must be that of Cézanne. Apples, pears and oranges everywhere! This must be the biggest collection of Cézanne still-lifes anywhere in the world. And there is much more, including some stupendous landscapes and a great portrait of his mother. But Cézanne, like Matisse but unlike Renoir, is a truly great painter. He had to struggle a bit at the beginning, but when it started to click for him...wow! Cézanne builds his paintings, shaping them like a craftsman. You can see it just as much in his watercolurs, of which there are several, as in his oils, of which there are many here. His paintings are usually architectural, often constructed like written music. They do not seem spontaneous, yet they breathe life, through the vibrations, the constant conversations between shapes and colours. His use of perspective is dynamic, offset from a central viewpoint and so never static, as in the work below...

 

 

 

 

Another strong point in Cézanne's work is that most subsidiary parts of his paintings hold up on their own, such is the architectural quality of their overall composition. Next time that you look at one, just try blocking off the vision of half or a third of it with your hand and see for yourself. 

 

What else is to be seen here? You name it: a few Gauguins, some good early Picassos, a fabulous series of Henri "Douanier" Rousseau, the odd Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat, and a mass of Matisses, from the very good to the indifferent (Matisse, like Cézanne and Van Gogh, was not a "natural" draughtsman, unlike Picasso). Oh, and a very good Frans Hals, etc, etc. I will have to do another article on this place as there is just too much to say!

 

Meanwhile here are a few more images of some of those I mentioned....a bit like the Barnes hanging, all mixed up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now do you want to go to Philly? Here's the main place to go.....

 

 

 

 

And you can try this restaurant (actually they have several, I understand, but I tried Barbuzzo's for lunch) when you are there. There wine and beer list is is good, the place is simple and friendly and the food is ok:

 

http://www.barbuzzo.com/

 





Turner and Monet in the sky

 

Ever felt that Turner (or Monet, for that matter) exaggerated?  These were taken from the window of an airplane recently, on a flight from Philadelphia to Atlanta, and they have not been retouched in any way.

 

 

 

 

 

Strange Image 1

I occasionaly take pictures of images that strike me as interesting or strange, without any particular intention or purpose. Not quite knowing what to do with these, as I come across one or another from time to time when sifting through pictures to find something else, I have decided to publish a series of them as posts on this blog. Any ideas as to what they might represent are welcome....I will tell you the story behind the image later, I promise!

Strange image 1

Philip Roth and the Human Stain

I have been skirting around reading Philip Roth for some years now. Many have told me how great a writer he is, and I have, in recent years, bought a couple of his books with the firm intention of starting one day. But I had shirked before the task, rather like one hesitates before leaping off the high diving board into a swimming pool. Such hesitation can be fatal, especially when prolonged, so I have finally taken the plunge. I did so a week ago, with his novel entitled "The Human Stain", which was first published in 2001.

The opportunity of considerable reading hours was provided by a transatlantic air journey, from Paris to Philadelphia, with its inevitable cohort of queues, hanging around for connections, and quite a few solid hours sitting above the Atlantic. Having started it in the waiting zone before leaving, without so intending I finished the book at the precise moment at which my plane touched down at Paris CdG on my return journey. I felt that, in a way, I had been totally immersed in the world Roth creates in this book for my whole trip.

All I can say (at least to start with) is that Roth easily lives up to his reputation. The Human Stain is one of the most remarkable and gripping books that I have read for a long time.

I hesitate to list the vital topics that he touches upon in this book as they are so numerous: friendship, betrayal, race, pretention, frustrated love, jealousy, admiration, sexual passion, violence, the lasting effects of war, family relationships, forgiving, forgetting, not forgetting, concealing the truth...the list goes on. And he tells a story, with all its twists and turns, handled as a suspense, with his characters taking shape clearly at times and then changing, moving out of focus for a while, ever shifting in the kaleidoscope of their lives.

In  addition, Roth occasionally lets go in a couple major rants about the contemporary (he was writing this in the late 1990's) social, political and media scene and what it reveals about his country, the USA. He does this through the first person figure in the book, who is named as the writer, Zuckerman, a recurrent character in his books and, I imagine, himself. I will give you an extract from one of these in a minute.

But let's start with the beginning, which is the quotation that Roth inserts in the fly-leaf of his book. This is from Sophocles' play Oedipus the King:

Oedipus: What is the rite of purification? How shall it be done?
Creon: By banishing a man, or expiation of blood on blood...

This sets the main theme of the book and enlightens the chosen title: The Human Stain.

The first chapter of The Human Stain is entitled "Everyone knows". It immediately made me think of the Leonard Cohen song, "Everybody knows". The link, through title and words, is quite appropriate, although perhaps fortuitous.

http://youtu.be/GUfS8LyeUyM

In this first chapter, the literary fireworks start pretty soon, with the author's diatribe against the hypocrisy and self-righteousness that washed over America during the Clinton/Lewinsky episide in 1998. Here is a slice for you:

"It was the summer in America when the nausea returned, when the joking didn't stop, when the specualtion and the theorizing and the hyperbole didn't stop, when the moral obligation to explain to one's children about adult life was abrogated in favor of maintaining in them every illusion about adult life, when the smallness of people was simply crushing, when some kind of demon had been unleashed in the nation and, on both sides, people wondered "Why are we so crazy?", when men and women alike, upon awakening in the morning, discovered that during the night, in a state of sleep that transported them beyond envy or loathing, they had dreamed of a mammoth banner, draped dadaistically like a Christo wrapping from one end of the White House to the other and bearing a legend A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE. It was the summer when - for the billionth time- the jumble, the mayhem, the mess proved itself more subtle than this one's ideology and that one's morality. It was the summer when a president's penis was on everyone's mind, and life, in all its shameless impirity, once again confounded America."  

The intricacies of the themes, the subtlety of the characters, the power of the writing and the plot of The Human Stain should perhaps not be recounted in articles like this. It is far, far more than a succession of passages of brilliant writing like the above. The Human Stain is a deeply moving and questioning book, often funny, often sad: like a mirror held up to life. I will be reading more of Philip Roth's work very soon. I heard that Roth has recently declared that he is now finished with writing. Perhaps understandable. At least I have a lot of catching-up to do as there must be another 25 novels by him that I have yet to read.

Read on ......

Bags for travel

I seem to about the only person travelling these days who actually carries their bags, rather then wheeling them around like trolleys. Am I plain stupid or am I the only one still to have arms? I know that airport corridors are getting longer and longer these days, but is it really necessary for small carry-on bags to be kitted out with wheels like they were the back end of a semi-trailor?

Anyway, this little bit of a rant in the way of an introduction was actually kicked off by a charming young lady from Bulgaria who gazed in admiration at my bag while we were standing one behind another in an airport check-in line recently. She said how much she liked it, and then mentioned some major international baggage brand (can't remember which one) and I said no, this bag is made by a craftsman called Alan Mackenzie who works out of the Isle of Arran in Scotland (I actually shun major brands for their banalisation of everything they touch, added to severe overpricing to cover their advertising expenditure).

This is not some form of reverse snobbery on my part. The bags (I have a large one and a small one) were a gift from my mother, who is a good supporter of fine craftsmen, and I use them a lot since they are practical, strong and simple. They are of the Gladstone bag type, being made of canvas with leather reiniforcements in all the right places. They have lasted very well, apart from the linings which tend to tear away from the main body.

Here is a picture of the two of them, taken, at my feet, in another airport queue recently:

The small one is known as an "overnight" size, and the big one a "weekend" size. I guess it depends how light you travel. I use the small one for a weekend and the big one for a week's journey, unless I have to carry a camera and a portable computer as well as personal stuff. They are nice and flexible too and are really easy to spot on any baggage delivery system (the big one I tend to check in as I hate people cluttering up planes with huge suitcases) since nobody has anything resembling them. But just don't expect them to come with any wheels. They will save your arms a session at the gym instead! You may get a shoulder strap which can be unbuckled when needed, as on my smaller on the right. I lost the other strap.

If you want more information on these bags, here is an official picture and a link to Mackenzie's web site. They make them in leather also, but I go for these, and they are cheaper as well.

  

http://www.mackenzieleather.co.uk/gladstones/canvasgladstone.htm

The joys of flying

I really like looking at the ground from the air. At the time you may read this (if you read it on October 7th), I will be in the air again, moving west over the Atlantic from Paris to New York and then on to Philadelphia do do a job. These pictures were taken on another flight, earlier this summer, in Europe. They were taken with my telephone and are nothing special but I find the shapes, colours and textures, as well as the gradually shifting distances as one takes off or approaches landing, very interesting and plan to do a series of paintings using them some time in the not-too-distant future. I guess they will need to be quite big paintings. We live and we hope...

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then we're on the ground....

 

 

The beauty of old motorcycles and some examples

When we talk about age, and indeed about beauty, relativity must be our companion. What is considered to be "old", "very old" or whatever is often related to the age of the person talking. As for beauty, well, we know just how subjective that one is.

If we enter the field of mechanics, and particulary that form that evolves around the internal combustion engine, then our time frame narrows down to less than 150 years. The frst motorcycle with a petrol-fuelled engine is credited to the German engineer Gottfried Daimler (of future Daimler-Benz fame), associated with Maybach. Here is a picture of the beast, which dates from 1885:

 

1885 Daimler-Maybach

Moving on in time, and given the growing application of electronics, not to mention the fickle finger of fashion and its often heavy hand in design, many motorcycles from the 1980's may now seem to be "old" to a younger rider. But, for the purpose of this article, I want to talk about bikes from, or which clearly refer to, the period between WWI and WW2.

The beauty of old Harleys, modified, reinvented, or whatever

I have occasionally made disparaging remarks on this blog about Harley Davidsons, despite the fact that I did, a number of years ago, own a couple of Harleys myself, one of which dated from 1943. My problem with this brand is that I feel is has gotten fatter and fatter over the years (very literally for most of its machines, and see for yourself below!). With the result that their machines usually appear soft and unfocused these days. I am not convinced either by its way of playing on a kind of phony nostalgia without really reinventing itself. Just noise is not enough to make a good motorcycle, even if it may be enough to get non-bikers buy the things for a while.

 

A bike, or a car on 2 wheels? Harley Electra-Glide in full dress

There was, not so long ago, a very good attempt made to produce a modern Harley that would actually turn corners, brake and accelerate. This was the Buell episode, to which I will perhaps return in a future article. The people at Harley were so smart that they put an end to it last year!

When one looks into the many modified versions of these machines that practically invented the rapidly expanding category of “specials” with the advent of choppers back in the 1960’s, many of these seem so repetitive, and often garish as well, that they do not turn me on either.

 

But there are exceptions to any form of generalization, and I would like to show you a couple of them. The Harley in the pictures above and below was built by a German called Bernhard Elflein and who went on a mechanics course to be able to realize his dream bike. I found him thanks to the almost daily specialist site Bike Exif, which is based in New Zealand (bravo to the All Blacks for their convincing win in the southern hemisphere championship). I also note that my colleague, Von Sontag, posted images of this machine on his excellent blog (in French), Le Dépassionné.  Elflein was clearly inspired by the Harley racers of various descriptions from the 1920’s and 1930’s. This was perhaps the golden age for this brand. And, believe it or not, he used as a base for this bike an Electra-Glide (ie something that started out looking like the ugly fat thing in the previous picture).

 

 

Elflein has, for me, managed to capture something quintessential about motorcyles in this machine, which I will not hesitate to call a work of art. The bike is both sleek, functional-looking and somewhat brutal it its brazen bareness. Naked power, some degree of engineering complexity, and a bit of fantasy all seem to exude from each of its pores. Take a look at some detail pictures...

 

View of the tank, taken from a pre-war NSU, and the cockpit, clearly hand-made

 

Seat and oil tank detail

 

 

primary chain-guard: do NOT wear laced shoes while riding this bike!

 

Elflein has started a workshop, called Herzbube Motrocycles, where he does things to US bikes. I took a look at it and must say that I didn't like most of the machines I saw: ape-bar Harleys (who can ride those things further than the end of the high street anyway?). But one bike really caught my eye, a pre-war Indian that is so pure and pared down that it really captures the "board-track" spirit with a perfectionist touch, not to mention lovely and subtle use of colour. The bike doesn't look quite finished, but she is so beautiful that I couldn't resist.

 

 

 

Here are the links to the sites I have mentioned in this article

www.bikeexif.com/

http://www.ledepassionne.com/

And, naturally, Bernhard Elflein's own site

www.herzbube-motorcycles.de/

 

 



Try Croatia and its wines

I should first apologise to any regular readers for not having posted on ths blog for over a month. It has been a busy and intense time, but there is plenty of stuff in reserve over the coming weeks. Patience is all!

Recently, I was fortunate enough to go on a far-too-short trip to Croatia, to sample some of its wines, see some of the places where they are grown, and meet some of the producers. It was a journey of discovery, memorable on many levels, and I will attempt to take you through just a few of them.

The port that serves the spectacular, and often crowded, walled city of Dubrovnik, which has to be one of the most beautiful towns in the world if only one can visit it away from peak times of year, when the cruise ship hordes flood the main street. (photo David Cobbold)

view from the fortress of Dubrovnik (photo David Cobbold)

I suppose the image most people have of Croatia is the Dalmatian coast between Dubrovnik, at the southern extremity of the country, and Split, together with the many islands and peninsulas that escort this often spectacular coastline like so many small boats around a cruiser. The heavily indented coastline at times forms large fjord-like areas which shelter boats and vines alike, the vines flowing down to the water as if to meet it and draw much needed freshness.

On the peninsula of Peljesac, north of Dubrovnik (photo David Cobbold)

 

But Croatia is much more than this very mediterranean paradise for tourists and those who are lucky enough to live there. The country is clearly divided into two parts, with various sub-sections, and this goes for geography as well as wines (of course the two are connected). The coastline, that stretches from Bosnia in the south to Slovenia in the north (and almost to Italy) is separated from the greater part of the country by high mountains. Moving inland, past Zagreb the capital, Croatia follows the southern border of Slovenia, going eastwards to that of Hungary, before moving south along the Danube, encountering Serbia, against which it fought a fierce defensive war in the early 1990's. Dubrovnik has been rebuilt, after its shameful bombardment, but the traces of this war are surely there, in the hearts and minds of its inhabitants. Yet Croatia is clearly looking to the future, and this shows in its wines.

 

Its vineyards cover some 33,000 hectares, which is precisely the size of France's Champagne vineyards. They are divided amongst the 2 main regions, coastal and inland, with 12 sub-regions and a surprisingly high number of 71 appellations. This fragmentation is surely the heritage of a mainly peasant economy, as well as some fairly tortuous topography that make large expanses of vines a rarity in Croatia. As a corollary of this, and the fact that this is also a very old wine-producing area, there are a large number of indigenous or regional grape varieties. 

 

Plavac Mali grapes at harvest time. This cousin of the zinfandel (which originated in Croatia anyway) is the most planted red variety along the coastline (photo David Cobbold)

 

In the modern world where Cabernet, Merlot, Syrah, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc amount to the sum of most consumers' wine vocabulary, this natural diversity can be construed either as an advantage: being different and standing out; or as a drawback: having grapes that nobody has heard of and whose names few can pronounce. I welcome you to try to pronounce Grk (a fine white variety from the island of Korcula) or Crljenak (which is the same variety as Zinfandel), for example, if you are not a Croatian speaker.

 

These four photographs could act as a visual summary of my first tasting of the wines of this part of southern Dalmatia. From top to bottom we have the vineyard (or one of them, on a very steep site facing the sea), my favourite wines from the tasting, the producers who were there, and the sign outside the place where the tasting was held, in the village of Donja Banda, on the peninsula of Peljesac. This shop /wine-bar www.peninsula.hr is a very pleasant place with a good selection of local wines. It also sells via internet and, if you can make it there, has good food too. It belongs to the lady in the centre of the photograph, Marija Mrgudic, who also produces some of the best wines from here.

The 18 wines we tasted in this session were all from Peljesac or the island of Korcula that prolongs and overlaps the peninsula. The majority use the Palac Mali red grape, but there were also 2 whites, one each from Grk and Posip varieties. It is impossible to give a fair idea of a variety when you have just tasted one sample, but we did taste several other wines made with Posip during the trip. It is a grape that produces high natural sugar levels and hence has considerable alcohol. This can make the wines seem a little clumsy and lacking in the freshness required by the very good local seafood. But the one on the left of the bottle picture above, Toreta Posip 2011, from the producer Frano Branicevic, I found to be pleasantly vivacious, with a vibration that made it feel more intense, fruity and light than any others I had tried.

Coming to Plavac Mali, we tasted at least two levels of wines. Simple and fruity ones made as entry-point wines for everyday drinking, and more ambitious wines for, perhaps, winter consumption (given their considerable power) or drinking with strongly-flavoured food. Of the first category, I enjoyed the bottle on the left, with the white and blue label: Bura Plavac 2011, from Niko Bura. The Miolos Plavac 2008 from Frano Milos was also good, despite slightly dry tannins on the finish. Moving up the quality scale, I found the Zikada Postup 2008, from Kangjera Baldo, strongly reminsicent of a good zinfandel (which is after all a cousin of Plavac Mali). Postup is a specific, steep and historical vineyard, and, as with some others, appears alone on the label without mention of the Plavac grape variety. This is a clear example of the "cru" approach that constitutes the upper level (price-wise and, hopefully, quality-wise) in Croatian wine production. Of course the quality always finally depends on the producer, but we are talking, as in Burgundy, about theory and potential. From what I tasted here, it is true as well!

 

Marija Mrgudic, like the mermaid of Copenhagen, says goodbye to us in the port of Trpanj

The best two wines in this tasting were also from the Plavac grape and single vineyards. Another wine from the Postup vineyard was the Mare Postup 2009 from Marija Mrgudic. This had a gloriously rich and fruity nose, and was equally intense and juicy on the palate. Superb quality of grapes, pure pleasure! Then came another great wine with a different profile that showed at its best with the grilled meat we ate afterwards. Bora Dinjac 2010, by Niko Bura is from a single vineyard called Dinjac, and Niko happens to be Marija's brother. This is perhaps more in the register of finesse with even a touch of austerity. Both tannins and acidity show more, and the wine has terrific length. A different style, but both wines rate 17/20 for me. We also tasted a glorious sweet wine made with the Plavac grape. It is not on sale yet, but it shows another, and very promising facette of this variety. Quite possibly it has been used in this style in past years, like the Reciotto style which preceded Amarone in the Valpolicalla region of Veneto. The flavours bring one very close to those found in the grapes I tasting from the bowl (see above).

As we sailed away from Peljesac, to the next stage in this fascinating trip, I was thinking Croatia rules, right? And thanks to Plavac Mali.

(to be continued, naturally.....)

all photos by David Cobbold, although Marc Sibard pressed the button on the flag picture!