RKS Literature: Zorba the Greek and Russia

“Everything’s in abundance out there near the Caucasus. Boss; everything’s loose, in bulk. You just choose and take. And not just cantaloupes or watermelons like you may think, but also fish, butter-and women. You’re in the area, you see a watermelon, you take it; you see a woman, you take her. Not like here in the wretched Greek state where, if you pinch as much as a leaf off someone’s watermelon plant, the grower brings you to court and where, if you touch a woman, out comes her brother’s butcher knife to make mincemeat of you. Meanness, money grubbing, what’s yours and what’s mine. Damn it, get lost you scabby dogs! If a person wants to see nobility, let him go to Russia! “

Nikos Kazantzakis “Zorba the Greek” 1952

RKS 2023 Films: “Woman Meets Girl”: The Hooker and the Horny Sex Starved Bookkeeper!

“Woman Meets Girl” will be premiering on the opening night of the Vancouver Short Film Festival on June 2, 2023 at the VIFF Centre.

In these overly politically correct times we live in I will be prevented from disembarking from my flight to Vancouver from Toronto to watch the film by gangs of angry mobs hating my description of the film as a hooker meeting the horny bookkeeper. A lack of sensitivity the crowd roars! Queer hater! Old geezer!

Should I change my slant and say 42-year-old bookkeeper Anabelle (Enuka Okuma) discovers her sensuality in a caring and dignified fashion to an 18-year-old sex worker Tessie (Chelsea Russel) and everything is just copasetic with the world. You see the word “hooker” is misogynist right? And is it right to say a bookkeeper is a horny repressed type?

Should I make it through the hostile Vancouver crowd calling me a Pat Brown resurrection and throwing “Hey Doll” refrains at me I might face the microphones and say this is a tight, suspenseful sexually charged drama about two emotionally damaged women seeking some Marvin Gaye sexual healing! And if you give me the opportunity to say I really like this short for its high tension and sensitivity I may just win an award as a film critic realizing in a generous humanistic fashion he requires gender sensitivity training. Until then and before I am sent to a re-education camp I really do love this short. Despite the cheap booze, nail extensions, cut off shorts with butt cheeks hanging out and a bookkeeper that looks like a nun! Okuma and Russel gel marvellously on-screen!

Stay tuned for my press conference at an undisclosed White Spot location where Uncle Ben’s Beer and gooseberry pie will be served!

Directed by Murry Peters.

RKS Film Rating 93/100.

RKS 2023 Wine: Massive Portuguese Producer José Maria da Fonseca’s Periquita 2020 Reserva

JMF was founded in 1834 and still sails on. The Periquita 2020 Reserva is 54% Castellan, 28% Touriga Nacional and 18% Touriga Franca. It is produced in the Setúbal Peninsula. Close to 1,000,000 bottles were produced. That’s a lot of wine. Can quality survive this volume?

Aged 8 months in French and American oak.

Grown in sandy soil.

Aroma: Black cherry, raspberry, blueberry and mature strawberry.

Palate: Serious, a bit stiff and formal. No lose or sloppy edges. Blackberry, cassis and blueberry with moderate tannins and a medium length finish.

Personality: I come from a big family with huge production volumes but I maintain my own identity.

Cellarbility: The wine will marginally improve up to the end of 2025 and cruise until 2027.

Food Match: Peppercorn steak or mushroom bourguignon.

Price: $18.95 (Ontario).

RKS 2023 Wine Rating: 89/100. Roger Voss The Wine Enthusiast 90/100.

(Periquita 2020 Reserva, Vinho Regional Península de Setúbal, José Maria da Fonseca, Setúbal, Portugal, 750 mL, 13%, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 488007).

RKS Wine 2023: KISSING Montepulciano D’Abruzzo

A good Montepulciano D’Abruzzo is simple and satisfying. Perhaps like this commentary. Oh, I should add while in the corporate world one of the slogans I encountered (or better said was battered over my head for a particular year) was Keep It Simply Simple (KISS). You might wish to observe that everything could be kept simple except for the calculation of the bonuses of the “Senior Management Team” that defied all logic. Greed can lose itself in “complications”.

Aroma: Grape, plum and slate.

Palate: Not many tannins here. Can we say COSTCO generic? Unassuming therefore unoffending? It hits the throat in a tidal wave bashing its way around the mouth and just lingers refusing to leave.

Personality: You’ll love me. I will love you. Woodstock again! I’ll be your…what do those Americans say…”house wine”. Buy lots of me!

Food Match: Almost any food will do except for plainly, not tomato sauce, versions of fish. Grilled squid and octopus will be well rewarded with this wine!

Cellarbility: Enjoy in 2023! This wine will be back soon!

Price:  $17.95(Ontario).

RKS 2023 Wine Rating; 87/100. If there was such category as a versality and affable score 97/100! KISS this this wine!

(Niro Di Citra 2018 Montepulciano DOC, Citra Vina, Ortona, Italy, 750 mL, 13.5%, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 278150).

RKS 2023 Wine: Sick and Tired of Argentinian Malbec! Canaries in a Coal Mine?

In the past week alone I have heard two friends say they are sick and tired of Argentinian Malbec. Is this how the winemakers of Argentina are rewarded for a never-ending stream of excellent Malbec! Yes wine is a fickle business. The cure for Malbec fatigue is simply to drink it occasionally. These Malbec veterans serve as a canary in the coal mine. What canary will flutter in wine country next? New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc? California Chardonnay? Italian Pinot Grigio?

Skirting any further debate on to an Alta-Yarí Reserva Malbec from the Uco Valley.

Aroma: Thank goodness after 10 minutes the funk has disappeared. Malbec can do no wrong. Lush and plush to describe Malbec? Are my descriptors becoming a bit redundant and God forbid tiresome?  OK then plum, lavender, red currant and black cherry.

Palate: Smooth lush and plush etc. etc. etc. Quite a big dollop of blueberry with lesser notes of blackberry. I sense raging acidity but thank goodness it is in check but its presence is worrying. Is it volatile and ready to bust out of its polite structural prison? Short finish.

Personality: Those nice humans who grew me did so at over 1,300 metres so I am quite tight but I am still a bit young and wrapped up in a tight structure.

Cellarbility: If the acidity remains in check and that is difficult to predict the wine will open up by 2025 and coast into 2028.The acidity makes me nervous as it could easily ruin the wine. Caveat Emptor!

Food pairing: Argentinian asado. I do need to visit Argentina to widen my gastronomical experience. There must be more than meat and chimichurri!

Price: $21 (Ontario).

RKS 2023 Wine Rating: 90/100. Patricio Tapia 94.

(Alta-Yarí Reserva 2020 Malbec, Gualtallary, Uco Valley, Mendoza, Bodegas Fabre, Mendoza, Argentina, 750 mL, 14.5%, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 28086).

P.S. All Malbec and no play makes Malbec a dull boy! Don’t cry for me Argentinian Malbec!

RKS Tea Meister: Hysson Green Tea from Gorreana in the Portuguese Azores

I attended “Wine and Travel Week” in Porto, Portugal in February. The takeaway was that wine is only a gateway into tourism. Yes wine and wineries are a great attraction for many but broaden that experience to include, gastronomy and local cultural sights and you have “wine tourism”. This is the reason so many wineries have their own restaurants where wine and food are the stars. And after some press trips to Italy and Portugal some of these winery restaurants are spectacular.

So I have strayed into food tourism outside the realm of a restaurant and brought back to Canada some tea, jams, honey, canned tuna, cheese and sardines. Gastronomic products perhaps!

Green tea in Portugal? No not green tea from outside Portugal but Portuguese green tea! In this case it is from Gorreana in S. Miguel in the Portuguese Azores. Gorreana is the only tea plantation in Europe. It produces 40 tons of tea annually.

Aroma: Green apple, bitter Azorean orange marmalade, apricots and asparagus.

Palate: Pear, mango, apricot are smoothly and delicately intertwined for a perfect mid weight afternoon tea. Long but a gentle finish with low tannins.

Personality: I am a Portuguese tea grown in the verdant Azores rather out there in the Atlantic Ocean. I am a serious green tea grown without pesticides, preservatives fungicides or herbicides. Gorreana has been growing me since 1883.

Food Match: Zucchini bread.

RKS 2023 Tea Meister Rating: 89/100.

RKS 2023 Film: Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival: “B-Side: For Taylor”: A Trail of Rejection and Misery

The 2021 American film “B-Side: For Taylor” is a trail of rejection and misery. The solution or a possible attempt at obtaining it lies on the B-side of a cassette tape. Do you remember those 45 records years ago. The hit was on side A and the filler was on side B.

Being a reviewer of films, I don’t always accept the obvious premise so why don’t I take a leap and say perhaps the B-side applies to the quality of life to almost all the characters in the film. All are rejected by life and circumstances. Taylor, a 14-year-old Korean American living in small town Virginia, feels rejected by her birth parents. Other characters feel rejected by their parents, by the death of their spouses, by the desertion of their fathers, by their family, by the death of their parents, their failures and by their past. Their life is not an A-side hit but a B-side filler with multiple scratches on the B-side of the record.

Although Taylor is appreciative of the wonderful home and life her adoptive parents have given her she is “curious” about locating her birth parents. With the help of newly moved in Korean immigrants across the street, all suffering from rejection, an abortive attempt to locate her parents in Seoul reveals hidden secrets. Taylor finds that all that glitters in gold is fool’s gold until the B-side offers her the opportunity to step into the unknown and move from rejection into reality. The B-side and its quest grant almost all characters another lease on life. As one of the character’s mother puts it, “If we keep wanting the life we lose we might lose the life we have now.”

This 2021 100-minute film is directed by Christina YR Lim will be screening in Los Angeles at Regal L.A. Live and will be streaming on May 15th on VC online.

RKS 2023 Film 88/100.

RKS 2023 Film: Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival: “Dinner is Ready”

Korean-American Julie was to visit her mother Yeonhee in another U.S. city for a meal. A very special occasion but due to a rescheduled business meeting Julie can’t make the dinner with her mother and calls her to tell she will be arriving the next day. The brutality of fate shows its ugly face with Yeonhee dying all alone in her kitchen. Do the spirits offer Julie a second chance for a good-bye? Will her Korean meals have a special meaning in the future? It is impossible to avoid fate but a spirit can mitigate if not partially defeat fate and alter regrets.

This 15-minute short is directed by Eleanor Cho. It shows at Regal L.A. Live on 13May with “Parenthood”.

RKS Literature: Madame Hortense’s Mini Cretan Hotel (Zorba the Greek)

“Madame Hortense’s miniature hotel consisted of a row of age-old bathing cabins glued together one behind the other. The first cabin was a store; it sold candy, cigarettes, Arabian peanuts, lamp wicks, kindergarten alphabet books and frankincense. Four other cabins in succession were the sleeping quarters. Behind them, in the courtyard, were the kitchen, laundry, hen coop and rabbit hutches. Reeds and prickly pear cacti were thickly planted in the fine sand all around the perimeter. The entire complex smelled of the sea, animal droppings, and pungent urine. Only occasionally, when Madame Hortense passed by, did the air change its odor, as if a barbershop’s slop bucket had been emptied in front of you.”

Nikos Kazantzakis, “Zorba the Greek”, 1952

RKS 2023 Wine: Valpolicella Rarely Disappoints

We try a Brigaldara Valpolicella Ripasso from Italy of course. Valpolicella rarely disappoints with an easy drinking personality. Mellow, smooth and warm perhaps is a good way of describing it. And to continue in non-technical terms choco cherry!

50% Corvina, 25% Corvinone and 25% Rondinella.

What does this Ripasso mean? It derives from the verb ripassare meaning “passover” or “do something again”. Amarone pomace is added to the fermented Valpolicella for a couple of weeks during which time the wine picks up extra color, tannin and flavour from the Amarone pomace. Amarone wine is made from both “regular grapes” and some grapes that have been left to dry hence their juice is sweeter making the Amarone wine richer and more concentrated.

Aroma: Fresh picked Washington cherries intertwined with cherry syrup and milk chocolate. Compelling simplicity.

Palate: Earthy cherry centric with hints of chocolate covered raisins but not sweet. Valpolicella on steroids.

Personality: Fun loving not bothered by the small annoyances of life. A kind of Zorba the Greek wine!

Food Match: Seared duck breast with cherry and Port sauce.

Cellarbility: This will hold nicely until the end of 2024.

Price: $23 (Ontario).

RKS 2023 Wine Rating: 89/100. Monica Larmer Wine Spectator 90.

(Brigaldara Valpolicella Ripasso Superiore 2019, Az. Agr. Brigaldara Soc. Agr., San Pietro in Cariano, Italia, 750 mL, 14.5%, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 16090).