Porrera, Priorat February 28, 2008

I have been back home for a month now and I’m still trying let my European excursion sink in. All the people, places, and regions still race through my head as if I just saw them yesterday!  The trip had its ups and downs, but most importantly it was an eye opening experience.  

 

Ezra and I had just finished an all night siesta in Barcelona and headed east towards Priorat.  We drove on a narrow windy road through mountains and hills, on a beautiful, sunny winter day.  The drive actually, reminded me of highway 1, just without the Pacific Ocean to our left.  We had driven about an hour and started to see vineyards. I knew we were close.  I came across a man on a tractor and decided to flag him down and asked, “Donde se encuentra Priorato?”  He replied, “Estas en Priorato!”  The smile on my face must have been classic!  He told me to head towards the second town named Porrera, and I would find some wine there. We complied and headed down the road.  Village, would be a better name for Porrera.  This village was small with narrow roads and tall buildings, and I mean NARROW ROADS!  Not much was going on as we drove carefully through the town. Reaching a small bridge I decided to turn around, not really “feeling” the vibe in the village.  I drove onto the bridge to turn around and get back onto the main highway, when I saw the emblem of a producer I recognized, Vall LLach !  Ecstatic would be an understatement for my feelings at that moment, as you can plainly see. 

   

Yes, that’s me acting all Humpty Dumpty on the bridge… 

 

 

I quickly reversed and parked the car and Ezra and I went looking for someone, anyone.  I knocked on the cellar door, no one answered.  We walked around the village and stumbled upon a small family restaurant and walked in on two older ladies having lunch together.  I walked in and the record player must have screeched…  They both stared at me like some being from another country!…..I mean another planet!   I quickly told her what we were doing in the area and we loved the Vall Llach wines, she wiped her mouth, put down her utensils and then walked us literally around a couple of corners to the winemaker’s home.  She buzzed the intercom and spoke to a women and told her in spanish that there were two guys from California interested in the Vall Llach wines.  Down came a dark spanish man named Salus.  We introduced ourselves and chit chatted a bit about why we knocked on his door, and he told us to come back in a couple of hours to do some tasting.

 

 

We continued blissfully on down the highway, winding through the impressivly steep and rolling Priorat region.  It couldn’t have been a more beautiful day.  It was a feeling of Deja Vu for me to see the region that I have only read about and seen pictures of.  We drove around for a couple of hours and took pictures of the soils, terraces, vines, etc…  then headed back to Salus’ home.  We buzzed the door once again and Salus and his 7yr old son Mark greeted us and we headed towards the winery.  We walked through the village and through all the extremely excited kids that were eagerly awaiting the 3 Kings holiday.  Salus started telling us about his winery as he opened up his cellar doors. The first room we entered was his processing room and the machinery was state of the art, not what I was expecting.  The next room we entered was his wine storage room, thousands of bottles resting here, Mags, six packs, and cases of great juice.  Salus was an extremely passionate and dedicated man, I was trying fiercely to process and translate to Ezra all the information that he was telling us!  Salus had three different stories of barrel rooms.  The building in which they reside is over 500 years old and all three stories are original architecture with cathedral style arches and pillars. The first floor of barrels were completely unblended, second story were blends, and the third were experimental blends, impressive.  

 

 

 

 

 

 The 2004 Vall Llach is the flagship wine of the estate. Produced from estate old-vine fruit consisting of 65% Carinena, 20% Merlot, and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon

The 2004 Idus is old-vine Carinena and Garnacha. The wine consists of 45% Carinena, 20% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Garnacha, and 10% Syrah.

The 2004 Embruix is composed of 35% Garnacha, 30% Carinena, 20% Syrah, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 5% Merlot  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 These were just a few that we tasted through with Salus, out of bottle!  Ezra and I looked like a couple of Purple People Eaters after tasting through a ridiculous amount of barrels!   His wines were lush yet delicate, big and bold and had great character and depth!  He has vines that are over 1oo years old throughout the Priorat region.

 

High above the village of Porrera, Erza, Salus, his son, and I stood watching over the village with a breathtaking view of the valleys covered with vines.  He began to tell us about his role in Priorat.  ”I am the President of the Priorat D.O.Q., and I serve as the mayor of Porrera,” he mentioned humbly.  Ezra and I were taken off guard, I certainly did not expect this genuinely nice man who had shown us the visit of our lives to be what he had just mentioned to us!  ”Wow” Is all I could say to him. He sat and just smiled at his son, and at Ezra and I in a very proud manner.  We finished up the visit going back down to the village to his house as dusk had arrived, Mark his son was really excited now about the arrival of the 3 kings bringing gifts to all of the kids of the Porrera.  Ezra and I had already received an unbelievable gift, and a day I will never forget, thank you Salus!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unsung Hero February 28, 2008

Working at a successful restaurant, the publicity and the names behind the scenes are fun to read about. The obvious players are mentioned:

• The Chef of course, who has a concept he is devoted to, and maybe his staff that does his biddings to make dreams and ideas manifest into reality.
• The General Manager, who assures the restaurant runs smoothly and tends to all patrons with a firm handshake, courteous smile and a brief knowledge on family history and business to the most regular.
• And finally there is the owner who upon arrival through the doors requires a great deal of attention answering inquiries from the previously mentioned players, then finally reciprocated with the owner reviewing the establishment and its current matter of state.

Each of these individuals is responsible for working in unison to develop new ideas for maximizing profit and performance from employees and product. This effort is to provide not only a reliable workspace for employees but also an establishment in which patrons feel they are receiving adequate or more service for their dollar. Educating the staff on the ins and outs of the business as well as providing the knowledge on the product and idea being sold is another task bestowed upon them but is not always the easiest to keep fresh. Though if all of the above come together recognition by the press is seemingly inevitable in time.

Praise from the local paper to international periodicals goes to all the likely candidates commending the dedication to the concept and its execution. Snapshots are included with beautiful portraits of all with inserts of information on wine or spirits and a focus on the food.

However, one player is inevitably always forgotten and is probably the most underpaid and underappreciated of all. This employee is the one who endures the heat with the line cooks but does not cook although he may be called upon to do many of the time consuming tasks that line cooks do not have the attention span for. Peeling potatoes, shrimp, garlic, cleaning mussels, picking spinach, shucking oysters or peas, cleaning green beans and the list goes on. This employee’s job title is dishwasher. And though he or she is equipped with an industrial dishwashing machine that has a run cycle of about thirty seconds, he is still scrubbing pots and pans in the triple compartmented sink.

This employee is called upon, no… expected… to ensure that all the flatware, plates, glasses and pans are clean in such a timely manner as not to disturb the flow of service. A description of this speed cannot be captivated by the likes of this writer even though it is observed day in and day out, hour after punishing hour. This employee is a workhorse, a true unsung hero and the backbone of any successful restaurant and arguably one of the most important player amongst the team.  Without a great dishwasher, pans can’t cook food, food can’t go on plates, nor be eaten without silverware.

Sorting through half-eaten plates, organizing various shaped and sized plates and bowls passed through a window stacked aimlessly and precariously by servers and bussers in the bus tub, all the while prioritizing the order in which the restaurant needs them… this is just the tip of the iceberg.  If it wasn’t enough to wash them, now he must negotiate the return of all the newly cleaned items. This means navigating through a gang of extremely busy line cooks who are turning and spinning erratically to the untrained eye from cutting board to stove and back with either a hot pan or sharp knife in hand.  I imagine attempting this untrained is like a white boy joining in on a double dutch session somewhere on the lower east side of New York; unheard of and virtually impossible.

This guy may not own the place, can’t recommend a glass of wine to go with steak you just ordered, and might not know how to prepare a single dish on the menu or recognize the most regular of patrons but without this employee any restaurant would surely perish.

So the next time you sit down at your favorite restaurant reflect upon the sparkling silverware and spotless glasses, admire what’s beneath the food you are about to consume: a clean and sanitary plate.  And when you finish indulging and signed your check, take a peak in the kitchen and tip your hat to the super hero who is doing the job that is so far from glamorous, it isn’t even mentioned in the credits at the end of the show.

Pop Tarts, Tainted Meat and Idol Chefs February 21, 2008

Where to begin?

They serve Pop Tarts at schools. Did you know that? They serve them at schools in seemingly progressive areas in California. In the same zip code that organic farmers and Grass fed beef ranchers barely break even on a yearly basis doing the things they believe to be right, the School district has the unmitigated gall to serve “pop tarts” at the student run snack bar. Without a toaster. What is a Pop Tart? It certainly can’t be food. Is it a toaster candy bar that nods its head toward the fruits and vegetable block of the food pyramid? Or is it just another way we can further utilize the surplus corn that is grown in our fertile land in Middle America, to destroy the health of our youth.

I can’t tell which is more appalling to me; the way we underpay our teachers and overpay our politicians or the way we worship our Celebrity Chefs and yet pay no attention to the true heroes of the food industry, the farmers. Both are equally insipid, both equally damaging to our future and day to day life. But one seems obvious while the other is still cloaked in a perception of integrity. We can all agree that the crime of overpaying fat cats on the hill, whilst the mentors of our youth live in respective squalor is atrocious, and that it is so bogged down in the mire of bureaucracy and unions that we may never really find national solution. But do we really understand the idolatry involved in raising chefs to a level of god-like celebrity, and not really praise those who live on little or no profit to tip at windmills against the great corporate farming giants (seemingly in bed with the chemical companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies. I like to call this the evil empire just to tip my hat to George Lucas).
We should be making TV shows about the Spencers of Windrose Farm or the Proprietors of T & D Willey. We should laude and write songs about the three visionary women who started Veritable Vegetable in the Bay area. Where are the parades and awards shows for sentries like Frank Lamacchia of PL Bar Ranch beef who raises smaller cattle on grass right up until they are respectfully loaded on trucks 6 at a time to go to slaughter at a local meat house. Or the Hearst corporation who funds the Hearst Ranch beef project that does the same thing, utilizing natural genetics to create tender beef not genetically modified corn slurries created by and funded by the evil empire. For that matter we could talk about even smaller ranchers Coco from Fair Oaks Beef who has gotten together with a rancher from New Zealand (a place much more spatially challenged than us) who together have been working on genetics and pasture management to create a more efficient use of land and resources to create their beef. Why are we not giving congressional medals to them? They seem to be more interested in our future than either the politicians, teachers unions or chefs. And these are only the farmers in my neck of the woods.

I don’t want you to get the impression that I am unaware of the relative handful of celebrity chefs that do speak about their farmers and are advocates for a better food system. But why are we not as outraged about the sneaky pop tart as we are the dairy cattle that are being abused (Again not to undermine the ethical treatment of livestock, I will be ranting on that next week). Because we are entirely too enamoured with ourselves. The media makes gods of lesser men and denies deity to those who truly are heroes. Because we can look to those who create tasty treats with things like corn syrup and pectin powder, bleached and enriched flour with such doe-eyed respect that we lose sight of what is real. That is how we justify pop tarts that say things like “real Fruit” and “all natural”. We are putting our respect and trust in the wrong people. Go to Your farmer ask him where and what you should eat. Or better yet ask him what your children should eat at school. Ask him why abused cattle are getting into the school food system and ask him how we as a nation of small communities can change what we are doing to our future. He will tell you what chefs are doing the right thing. She will tell you where and what to buy, and in my experience they tend to be less self-serving than the media chefs.

When you stray from what is real, when you no longer respect those who provide for your needs, you inevitably run the risk of allowing questionable slaughter practices and the sneaky pop tart into your life and your children’s schools.

Meet Your Meat February 18, 2008

One of many reasons why we care so much about where your food comes from:

USDA Recalls 143 Million Pounds of Beef

More on this later…