With all deference surfer documentaries manipulate a tired plot of a determined surfer looking for the perfect wave and slather it with good cinematography. In this case don’t expect a novel plotline but be prepared for the stunning cinematography Rick Rifici has handed us here. In fact watch the huge curling monsters and Rifici will take you on magic carpet ride to the surfing world of Australian surfer Kerby Brown.
The monsters faced by Kirby are numerous and you’ll conclude that it is not only waves that can be a monster but mental unease and uncertainty about the future both of which he muses about through the documentary.
OK so not a soul-searching documentary but a bloody good relaxing documentary chock full of some of the nastiest waves you may have seen. As Kerby opines it is not the size of the waves that is key but rather the thickness in them. Rest assured in the Southern Ocean there are some exceedingly thick looking waves and at times one may wonder is this Kerby Brown a kamikaze or a brazen surfer. Probably a bit of both.
“Facing Monsters” is directed by Bentley Dean and it opened in the United States on September 22. On October 15th it will be available on various VOD outlets.
A nice little detour into Greece for three weeks this month had helped me cleanse the rancour of American politics inflamed by a series of events and personalities and despite a Democratic President being elected the bitterness and hostility continues unabated despite the Trumpster falling from the sky. It was simply too much to endure for someone like me that strictly limits of late any exposure to US news programmes. Instead in Greece it was watching the BBC for “the death of our Canadian queen”. GAG! But at least no orange toad to look at on the telly or for that matter senile Republican rants.
The first documentary film up for review by me was “From the Hood to the Holler” a moniker wanabee Democratic Senator, Charles Booker, coined during his 2020 primary battle with Amy McGrath for the position of Democratic Party candidate to run against Republican senator Mitch McConnell who has a habit of shooting down progressive political agenda as anti-American. Aren’t we getting sick of that line!
Booker was brought up clean but very poor by a single mother who was also assistant pastor of a local church. I mean at one point in the film Booker and his campaign staff hold arms and pray to the Lord. A fundamentalist Democrat?
Best as a non-American to escape the detailed nature of Booker’s campaign in Virginia and look for generalities.
Virginia politics is dirty with drastically reduced polling stations for the primary. Who made that decision?
Booker is a relatively laid-back politician who has an ability to extend his popularity amongst a broad class of Virginians. There is an absence of vitriol emanating from Booker but no lack of passion.
Coming from nowhere and sadly out funded by McGrath he narrowly loses to her managing to cobble together a progressive alliance of voters. Quite remarkable in the Republican state of Virginia. Booker is now running against Republican Rand Paul for a Senate seat in the upcoming general US election.
So you see a decent man coming from the hood hollering in politics. Hillbillies in Virginia holler when they are displeased and Booker hopes to holler for Virginians in the US Senate.
“From the Hood to the Holler” was directed by Pat McGee and runs for 102 minutes. It has won 7 awards on the documentary film circuit and on September 23 it was released on certain digital platforms.
Produced by the tank method. On the nose loads of strawberry, raspberry with BC cherry. On the palate a nice acidic bite but more than a bite it also has fruit with a strong undercurrent, brief as it may be, of Niagara cherries that bring a tiny hit of sweetness before it snaps back into a dry mode with a barely discernible wave of freshly squeezed Orri tangerine juice. This may match a Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey. However as fall is here this would suit stuffed field tomatoes and red peppers as well.
Drink by the end of 2023.
(Konzleman Méthod Cuve Close Sparkling Rosé, VQA Ontario, $19.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 184176, 750 mL,12%, RKS Wine Rating 89/100).
Nomad Sparkling Firefly II 2019 Rosé
From Hinterbrook Estate Winery in Niagara we have this wine which is produced by the tank method and has a blend of 90% Cabernet Franc and 10% late harvest Cabernet Sauvignon.
On the nose cherry, watermelon and a touch of banana. On the palate there is some gentle acidity and fizz. So many sparkling wines are so dry and acidic they burn which many wine writers call “palate cleansing”. The addition of the late harvest Cabernet Sauvignon hustles this from a brut to a demi-sec. You’ll pick up a bit of residual sugar here. Notes of apricot, peach and mango. A good sipper as opposed to a rip snorter palate cleanser. Again a great match with turkey and also with a roast ham and mashed potatoes and carrots. Keep it simple.
(Nomad Firefly II Sparkling 2019, VQA Ontario, Hinterbrook Estate Winery, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, $17.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 20377. 750 mL, 12.5%, RKS Wine Rating 88/100).
Trius Brut (NV)
Made by the traditional method, just like Champagne, from Ontario we have a Trius Brut.
Light gold in color with a very slight greenish hue.
A lively and frisky nose. Big updraft of muskmelon, pear, apple and mango. On the palate a cutting sharpness with a tangy boundary of tartness. Loads of wet stone and a tad of grapefruit. A blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Oysters with this one!
I was 12 in 1971 when I escaped a cloistered suburban setting in Montreal with an adventurous mother on the Auntie Mame level. Riding scooters to the Acropolis of Lindos on Rhodes, taking a fishing boat to the next village chased by leaping dolphins, being invited to parties and weddings by Greek islanders and seeing very closely a world that no longer exists in Greece except perhaps in isolated mountain regions or on a sparsely populated island.
Bravo to the Sweet Home Boutique Hotel in Athens for offering loose leaf tea which made me feel very at home. Super friendly staff at breakfast as if they were welcoming you into their home for breakfast. Photo: Robert K. Stephen
As a young man in those days long ago I was a food eating machine. Growing like a bad weed attending a private boy’s school in Montreal that had you playing sports so as to drive impure thoughts from your head. And I was a hungry and voracious creature burning up with a breakfast desire to fuel myself up with bacon, eggs, milk, waffles, pancakes, cinnamon buns all of course home made! Ooooh a Western Omelette Sandwich Montreal style! And put this poor eating machine in Greece in 1971 facing a nightmare of a lack of a proper breakfast!
Sparkling white wine at Daios Luxury Living Hotel breakfast. You will often encounter sparkling wine at 5 star breakfast buffets in Europe. Photo; Robert K. Stephen
OK then chuckle away and say what a little porker! I was not a porker but a legitimate starving pre-teen. How could Greeks be the founding block of civilization be eating Feta Cheese, olives, rusks and a Greek coffee for breakfast! Sounds Spartan to me! And I did not then eat Feta cheese or drink coffee. In no way the fault of the Greeks but not my fault for requiring a calorie boost.
I survived on Greek bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Greek bread is awesome when it was fresh but give it a day and it was a rock. Probably safe to call it “natural”. So, find a good baker and strike early in the morning while the product is super fresh. Buy local fruit and slather bread with Greek jam and honey and hope for the salvation of a Greek dinner with “bizarre” foods like stuffed vegetables, fried octopus and squid, lamb, goat, mezze with tomatoes, cucumber, pickled octopus with a shot of ouzo. Lunch was more bread with some cheese and a huge serving of “karpussi” (watermelon). Thank the Gods on Mount Olympus for an always satisfying Greek Dinner however different it was from Canadian suburban fare!
This photo and the one above are from the buffet breakfast at Athens Inn: Photo Robert K. Stephen
So after a visit or two to Greece in the 1970’s it wasn’t until I was in Greece again in the late 1980’s that the Greek breakfast had evolved to a North American buffet in the hotel framework. Here were eggs, (boiled, omeletized and fried), high fat and decadent Greek yogurt coming in at 12% fat and some pastries!
Many years later back in Greece I reflect on my famine and have no shame on my early teen behaviour! Yet I am not the voracious teen monster who in a good mood you want to refer to as Forest Gump on Adderall. So in September it was off to Greece. Number 8 visit to Greece.
I booked some 5 star rated properties and a couple of lesser starred properties. The hotel breakfasts have undergone a revolution. If they were in 1971 what they are today I would have saved myself from a Biafran nightmare! Slap me in the head but French Toast in a breakfast in Athens with Norwegian maple syrup available for a pour over (with a big Canadian Maple Leaf on it), eggs galore, cheese and so much watermelon.
I could be property specific on 4 hotels/resorts I stayed at but the end of the traditional Greek breakfast imposed on tourists best suited for monastic types seems well deceased. As a North American or a Central European you will not suffer. I love a couple of slabs of Norwegian smoked salmon (wild caught) draped over a Koolorakia in Thessaloniki’s “Daios Luxury Living” hotel.
Houston there is a bit of a problem and that is my appetite today is not that of a ravenous and deserving young man. I want a simple piece of bread, a bowl of high fat yogurt with some honey dripped over it. I can relive my past and pork out if need be but breakfast of yesteryear I could eat at home in 1971 is nothing today but a liability to process hours later.
So to sum up it all as a tourist in the Greece of today you may be subject to a post 1970’s enhanced hotel Greek breakfast. You may be absolutely delighted with it as there is often an attempt to add local pastries and dishes to a breakfast buffet giving it regional character. It would seem the Greek hoteliers appear to enjoy adding local delicacies, condiments and dishes to hotel breakfast buffets. The bizarre fact is that what may have satisfied me 35 years ago for breakfast has lost almost all historical relevance.
What are the common elements of these 4 different hotel breakfasts I had in Greece this September? Firstly a good selection of local fruit in season which in September includes watermelon, oranges and grapefruit. A selection of fruit juices particularly orange juice. High fat Greek yogurt with toppings such as Greek honey and cherry preserves. Eggs and Feta cheese. Usually a few sweets and lots of good fresh local bread. Expect sliced meats too. Breakfast ordinarily will run from 07:30-10:30.
So expect this “new” modernized breakfast should you be staying in a hotel in Greece. Some 50 years too late for me! And I’d be just as happy with an old-fashioned Greek breakfast. I suppose I have travelled full circle.
“Then, for the first time, realizing that for every man, and himself too, there was nothing ahead but suffering, death, eternal oblivion, he had decided that to live under such conditions was impossible – he must either find an explanation to the problem of existence which would make life seem other than the cruel irony of a malevolent spirit or he must shoot himself”.
In the interests of furthering my scant knowledge about Romanian wines and of hoping for rewards in a search for Romanian winners I paid $42.95 for a Cabernet Sauvignon from the Terroir de Dobrogea. Most Romanian wines in the Ontario market cost under $20.
On the nose a very rich wine almost Portish and at 14.5% nor far from their alcohol level? Extreme blackberry shines with lesser notes of black cherry.
No doubt we are facing a big brute here. Will it be on the edge of over ripeness or a tamed lush beauty or in line with some other wine writer description?
On the palate very cutting bombasts of blackberry leaving a long peppery tinged finish. Obviously this wine wants to remind you of its presence.
A right at you wine complicated like Romanian politics yet rewarding like a visit to this wonderful country. It would go well with a Greek lamb or goat stifado.
The wine is maturing nicely and will improve over the next 5 years.
Yes I am leaning onto the shine side and you’ll hear no wine whining from me with this wine.
I purchased bottle # 2788 out of 3,300.
(Nikolaos Cramahistria Wild Yeast 2018, IGP Colinele Dobrogei, S.C. Vitcola SA Cogealac Constanta, Romania, $42.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 27575, 750mL, 124.5%, RKS Wine Rating 94/100).
“In her eyes Vronsky, with all his habits, ideas, desire – his whole spiritual and physical temperament could be summed up in one thing – love for women – and this love, which she felt ought to be wholly concentrated on her was diminishing. Therefore she reasoned, he must have transferred part of it to other woman, or to another woman, and she was jealous. She was not jealous of any particular woman but of his love. Not having as of yet an object for her jealously she was on the look-out for one. At the slightest provocation she transferred her jealously from one object to another. Now she was jealous of the low amours he might so easily enter into through his bachelor connexion; now it was society women he might meet: now she was jealous of some imaginary girl whom he might want to marry and for whose sake he would break from her.”
“Vronsky’s life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what should and should not be done. This code of principles covered only a very small circle of contingencies, but in return the principles were never obscure, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment’s hesitation about doing what he ought to do. This code categorically ordained that gambling debts must be paid, the tailor need not be: that one must not lie to a man but might to a woman: that one must ever cheat anyone but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult but may insult others oneself, and so on. These principles might be irrational and not good, but they were absolute and in complying with them Vronsky felt at ease and could hold his head high”.
As far as red wine flows in Ontario Gamay is often a winner. What does Thomas Bachelder do with a Gamay?
As for aromas amidst the smoky overlay expect black cherry, cherry and rhubarb crumble and a tad of cloves. A lightweight wine very smooth but a seam of complexity rests in the palate with a hit of spice, pepper, raspberry jam all in a gentle silky envelope. A surprising long and gentle finish. As for food matches why not Thanksgiving turkey? Although you can comfortably sit and sip and watch the leaves in their splendour. Although the label states “long aged in largely neural oak barrels” the smokiness here suggests a bit of new oak. Pardon me I can almost call this wine a “rustic Pinot Noir”.
In 3 years I have been somewhat housebound as far as international travel goes. Paris in October of 2019. How great it was.
Time to spread the wings so off to Greece for a real vacation. Very smooth car ride to Toronto’s Pearson Airport. Expecting pandemonium, we left some 4 hours of cushion. But believe it or not we were through security in a flash with too much time to kill.
Stopped in at Plaza Premium Lounge braving a line-up of close to an hour for food and beverages of low quality. The Guinness Tap not functional and the only other beer was Molson Canadian (enough said). They kept running out of food. Better value and quality at the in-terminal restaurants. Weird music almost hypnotic probably subliminally ordering you to buy a Caesar at $6.99. As we were leaving a special tune over the sound system “Deck the Halls”! Christmas in September!
The gate was jammed with people waiting to board and like all good Canadians that obey their federal government all were wearing masks! A very funny passenger agent announced you could check in your carry-on baggage. This set off a roar of laughter amongst the passengers. A disorderly boarding and what a great seat I get on the Air Canada plane. Right at the rear of the plane right by the toilets where you are continually victimized by an explosive flushing noise and the galley. Gee there used to be about four inches between the seat ahead and my knees. Now there is none.
The Air Canada mantra is, “We have chicken or pasta but we are out of chicken”. It never fails. My pasta looks and tastes decent but the cheese appears to be synthetic. And the usual stale roll with frozen butter. Low quality French wines which should be an offence as there is a “Canada” to Air Canada. The fun continues with “breakfast” of a stale croissant and a yogurt. High culinary standards. Oh on the return trip the “out of chicken” Air Canada retort was heard. The food was slightly better on the return trip with an appetizer of Greek Salad and chicken ratatouille which was fine but the chunk of 40% dark chocolate had been placed under the hot dish leaving a molten pool of melted chocolate.
I could continue but perhaps best to say welcome back to international travel.
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 