So very busy busy busy busy Working like a slave Fearlessly avoiding the grave Many allegedly loving it God help taking a vacation best forfeit it like a true American Megacorp employee lest somebody leap into senior management view in your reckless absence but you have convinced yourself you will do everything you wanted when you retire but look around and listen to the countless stories of death and crippling disease shattering the Russian Roulette of life and living your dream but your phone is buzzing like a scream gotta answer that because it’s a big deal and your life it will steal
We were off to the island of Rab today but had a poor sleep because a stupid guy was snoring in the next room and so loud it sounded like thunder. Mom went to the door and pounded and I banged on the wall. It stopped or at least until we fell asleep. At 9 off we went to a small boat that was to take us to the island of Rab. It was a short 90-minute trip and we went to the tourist office and were sent to a pension to a filthy room and a reeking bathroom stinking of sewage. We tried again and found a room in a newly constructed pension. We went for lunch to a nearby restaurant and were charged an enormous price for a cutlet. I wanted to walk around the town and Mom went up for a sleep but upon returning I had to knock on the door to get in waking Mom up with good news as I found a shop selling English newspapers and magazines. She pleaded with me to get some reading material which I did. Then a hot shower. After a good dinner of fish and salad we met two fairies from California. They, like us, had amusing stories to tell about Yugoslavia. These are the first homosexuals I met and they were good guys. Prostitutes and homosexuals in Yugoslavia how educational! Who will we meet next?
Up early for a bus trip to our new destination Novalja on the northern tip of the island of Pag. Mom is not eating breakfast today as she says she is on a diet so she doesn’t look like a horse in Germany. We just hacked around for a bit and packed up for our bus trip to Novalja which is in the north of Pag. I picked up some mail which consisted of two letters from Fritz much to Mom’s delight. We got on the 2 o’clock bus and luckily got a seat although I had to push a surly guy over that was hogging two seats. The road is barren and rocky making for a bumpy and dusty ride. Novalja is considerably bigger than the town of Pag. It has running water! We went to the tourist office and found a really nice room but I fear it will be noisy as we are in front of the market and two restaurants. We don’t even have a key to our room in the house. We had a glorious hot shower the first one in days. We discovered where the bakery was and Mom bought a bottle of red wine which she later said was the best she ever had. Greasy spaghetti yet again and some very good goulash which really is a few chunks of meat in a sea of gravy. Good for mopping up with bread. A favourite low-cost meal of hippies because you can fill up with bread. Mom had a headache so she popped up a pill and headed up to bed while I people watched for half an hour and I came back to the room and woke Mom up and we went for a walk on the waterfront where we found a band playing music. Mom left at 9 and I stayed until 10 and came home and had another glorious hot shower. What a luxury! I drifted off to sleep to the clinking of cutlery below with lots of Ja Ja’s and Nein Nein’s at the restaurant below. We noticed many Germans here.
Mendoza for many is the home of some of the best Argentinian Malbecs but not really on the radar for Chardonnay. Mendoza keeping us on our toes!
We try a El Enemigo 2018 Chardonnay from Mendoza. The bottle is a heavy brute enough to give the carbon neutral crowd a mental hernia.
On the nose mucho oak amigo! And it is far from discrete so I will guess this is American as opposed to French. Put aside the oak for a moment and you’ll pick up pineapple, apricot, peach and warm pineapple upside down cake just out of the oven. As I am a child of the 1960’s where these upside-down cakes were about as popular as spoon burgers. I must ask do they still make these suburban dishes? The pineapple oozes on to the palate with some slateish minerality giving the wine some gumption and traction mixed in with Australian canned peach syrup. Do they still can peaches in Australia? By gosh is this a retro wine? El Enemigo also has a couple of Bonardas so to complete a retro trilogy should I try them with spoon burgers or a Montreal Beaconsfield classic Shipwreck made so well by my late Auntie Vie. Well she wasn’t really my aunt but her husband (Uncle Cy) and my father were pilots together flying submarine patrols in Lancasters over the English Chanel in WW2 so I suppose their children could call my parents Uncle and Aunt as well as in combat a deep brotherhood apart from bloodlines can be formed. Unfortunately, my Uncle Bill died after being shot down in France at 22 years of age. A toast to you Uncle Bill.
Too much chill will bring out the oak and a more harmonious oak and fruit balance will be achieved with a cool as opposed to a cold wine here. I think it also needs a couple of years to calm down a bit so if you have a cellar a few years of ageing not exceeding 2026 will reward you.
The wine is suited for a drinker that likes a good dollop of oak in their wine but will make happy those who aren’t necessarily oak mad but realize an oaked Chardonnay might not please them as a sipping wine but has an esteemed place matching with certain foods like chicken in a tarragon cream sauce or a pasta tossed with basil and Mascarpone. Check out Alexa Weibel’s recipe for One Pot Zucchini Basil Pesto in the New York Times.
You often hear about wine and food matching or even wine and music or cannabis pairings but this wine suits a few memories I have. Wine and memory matchings are something they don’t teach you at WSET courses as I think it comes from the heart or a confused tangled mass in our heads called our brains. Have a glass and what memories does this wine irrationally spark?
(El Enemigo 2018 Chardonnay, Mendoza, Argentina, Piedemonte, Vista Flores, Mendoza Argentina, $24.95, 750 mL, 13.5%, Robert K. Stephen A Little Birdie Told Me So Rating 89/100).
James Suckling gave this a 97 and as a critic he and I are usually a couple of points apart but not this time. Whose rating is more reflective of your taste?
Photo: Left John Earnest Stephen and my Uncle Cy Walker in England during WWII
Mayhem’s 2019 Cabernet Franc was brilliant with a 72% Merlot/28% Cabernet Franc blend. The 2020 version is 89% Merlot/11% Cabernet Franc. The 2020 was aged into 100% French oak barrels that were second fill and aged for 5 months at which time the final blend was assembled and transferred back into the barrel for an additional 6 months. The 2019 was aged in French oak barrels but 40% new and 60% seasoned for 11 months. I could add a few more differences but let’s stay with these. I would expect the 2019 to be a bit “flashier” due to the 40% new French oak. The 2020 has no new oak but a higher percentage of Merlot which might make it a bit lusher than the 2019.
On the nose the 2020 is indeed lusher than the 2019. There is cassis, blackberry black cherry and hints of dark chocolate. Is it flashy? I do not think so as it is so self absorbed with its Dean Martin personality it has no time to be flashy. Think of the 2020 as a convertible zipping along the Okanagan back roads with topless men with waxed chests and girls in bikinis listening to top 40 and the 2019 as slightly older couples in a Volvo listening to 60’s Sinatra.
On the palate the 2020’s fruit hits you like the film “Vulture City 2” on the edge of extreme. The 2019 is more restrained like “Vulture City”. Both good films of the same urban crime genre but different like these two wines. There is some blackberry, date, dark chocolate and spearmint in the 2020. The 2020 is muscular and a bit too young to drink. But the fundamentals are there and it will be more subdued in a couple of years. The 2020 would be a great wine at the VIP tent at the Calgary Stampede and the 2019 at a Bonnie Henry private dinner party provided she is wearing suitable footwear!
Don’t listen to me dissecting these two different wines. You’ll be happy as a pig in mud with the 19 now but in two years look out 19 as 20 (the young buck) is hot on your heels.
The 19 and 20 are the same price at $21.74 but the 20 is not quite ready for release yet.
(Mayhem 2020 Cabernet Merlot Okanagan Valley, BC VQA, Mayhem Wines, Okanagan Falls, British Columbia, $ 21.74,750 mL, 13.6%, Robert K. Stephen A Little Birdie Told Me So Rating 91/100).
With so much political and military turmoil in the world the number of refugees looking for refuge has mushroomed. It is at the point that I think there is now a genre of documentary films called the “refugee genre”. But we should be careful to distinguish between “refugee” and “economic migrants”. Refugees are those fleeing for the safety of their lives due to a political regime that views them as dangerous or threatening the legitimacy of that regime. Economic migrants are those seeking a higher standard of living. Many countries give preferential treatment to refugees. Many economic migrants claim to be refugees. Just because one says they are a refugee does not make it so. So many countries have a refugee screening process to determine the validity of a refugee claim. There are only so many new potential citizens a country can absorb.
In 2021 I saw a Swiss/French documentary “Wake up on Mars” about a family from Kosovo seeking refugee status in Sweden. If I recall they had been deported from Sweden but reappeared and strangely their two daughters apparently developed “resignation syndrome” rendering them in an almost vegetative state. There is some medical recognition that some children facing deportation back to their country of origin develop this syndrome. Was this a clever ruse?
In “Flee” Amin has successfully escaped Afghanistan. His father had been arrested by the then communist regime in power and “disappeared”. The family escaped to Russia and after their tourist visa expired were hunted down for bribes by a lawless and corrupt Russian police force. His sisters left Russia in a perilous journey locked inside a ship container paid for by Amin’s older brother in Sweden. They survived the journey. Next Amin, his brother and mother hired traffickers to get them to Sweden but were eventually intercepted and sent to Estonia and locked in a filthy hovel there for six months before being returned to Russia and arrested. This time the brother paid a huge sum to smuggle out Amin to Denmark by highly sophisticated Russian traffickers who told him before boarding an Istanbul to Copenhagen flight to lie to Danish immigration officials and say that his entire family had been killed in Afghanistan. Is such a lie justified? They also instructed him to destroy his forged passport before entering Denmark which he did.
Amin goes on to become a successful academic but keeping the lie a secret or rather not telling anyone about his family being alive and scattered throughout Europe. And it is difficult to maintain such a lie and it caused him great grief. He even kept it secret from his gay boyfriend Kasper. Finally after some 20 years he reveals that his family (except for his father) did not die in Afghanistan.
The documentary makes no judgements as to whether a lie to immigration officials is justified. I suppose that is up to you viewer! There is a very personal element to the documentary about what it is like to flee your country and the pain that can be added on to that by living a big lie. Now can we believe this as a true story told by a self admitted liar? And how different is this from the NGO’s in Greece and Spain “counseling” migrants on how to build their case to obtain refugee status?
Yes we’d like to believe Amin but is it on a fabricated story from a less than credible “refugee”? The documentary weaves a good story but how much is “nice to hear” as opposed to reality?
Interesting use of quasi-Japanese animation in the documentary.
There are over 10 countries involved in this documentary which is directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen. It’s a winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for a documentary. Opens at Toronto Hot Docs Ted Rogers Theatre on February 11 and streaming on demand at Hot Docs at Home on February 15 for devices located in Canada only. See HotDocs.ca for more details.
Mom was up at 10 and me at 11:30. She came in the room bubbling with excitement as she was at the post office and there as a letter from FRITZ…..and Barbara. It looks like Germany is a go and we are looking forward to seeing Heidi and Fritz. I think Mom is so excited about seeing Fritz she forgot to pick up some breakfast. We arrive at the beach at noon and by 12:30 my stomach is screaming with hunger so I pop into town for a plate of spaghetti. At 4 we were home and played some cards until 5 at which time I paid our bill to our crafty landlady. Another mail check on our way to dinner. Our local restaurant had run out of food so we went to a deserted restaurant for “a pork chop with potatoes”. The sauce was pure grease and the mashed potatoes lumpy. Glad there was no gagging! Lumpy mashed potatoes can do that to me. The meal was $1.75 and not even worth that. Generally speaking restaurant fare so far on the islands has been gross.
Letter from Margaret Mary Stephen to Diane and Gerald Frank: This place is a far cry from Spain-in every way-But everyone goes to Spain and I have to be different. We have been away a long time. Every once and awhile I long to be back. We will be in Germany soon. Already I have had 10 letters from Fritz-he fell like a ton of bricks. In early August he will met us at the airport in Munich and proceed to show us Germany. Take us to West Berlin to meet Heidi. We are doing the islands moving from one to the other moving toward Trieste. The islands are quite similar all fairly primitive. The food is grim and monotonous with lots of bread and potato and little meat or vegetables. No wonder they are fat but not me. I dare not as I don’t want to look like a horse when we meet Fritz. The people are very poor. I don’t know how they can stand this monotonous life. Here they only have water once a day although they have full bathrooms. The bathtubs are full of water which they use to flush toilets. They carry water from the village to their homes. This is a real underdeveloped place. No one has a fridge so they shop every day and line up for food. Like yesterday I lined up to buy a scarf then had to line up again to pay for it. I’d go stark raving mad if I had to do that every day. Robert has been at the nightclub every nite. I sat there for 3 nights and finally gave up. Rob finally got the courage to ask a girl for a dance but it was a slow number which he does not know how to dance. Robert is good company and I would have not lasted this long without him. No one but no one speaks English and we have run out of books There is nothing in the stores that I would buy or wear. Very shoddy and expensive. We go from island to island on boats and travel deck class. I am very dark, almost black and feel like a hippie. The main thing is THAT I AM NOT FAT.
Travelling shoes on at 6:30 a.m. to a new island called Pag. We were to go to Karlovac then by boat to Pag. The bus ride to Karlovac was dicey. Very narrow roads with a bus driver with a passion for passing and a skill of narrowly missing oncoming traffic. Up the mountains we climbed causing Mom to get very nervous but a spectacular view of the coast. The bus driver stopped for a snack break up in the mountains. By 11 we were in Karlovac catching some chow, goulash, before getting on the ferry to Pag. We arrived around 1 in Pag and what a dumpy room. Off to a beautiful pebbly beach and home to the dump at 4:30 with no water. We noticed they were digging up the town and laying down new pipes. Is this why the locals are lining up filling jugs of water at the town fountain? Like the locals we went and bought a jug so we had drinking water. For $2.50 we had a delicious clam and fish dinner and then went to watch people taking an evening stroll on the waterfront. Diary Entry of Margaret Mary Stephen: There are rows of women in black sitting on tiny stools in front of their homes making lace. When we moved in here we wondered why the tub was full of water and none in the tap. No one understood English so the plastic jug we bought came in handy. I met an old man sitting on a bench and I asked him the way to the post office and I was so surprised he spoke English. I asked him about the lack of water and he said Pag only has water one hour a day. He said they have a bathtub but have not had a bath in 5 years. He thought they would finally have running water in two weeks. This is why the streets are dug up.
Cais da Ribeira means a wharf by the riverside and that is the name of a Douro Red we are trying. Porto is the main city of the Douro wine region. On the Porto side the Ribeira is on The Douro River and there are restaurants and shops tucked away but there are some grand homes on the river too. And unfortunately there are too many cruise passengers cramming the streets just like Lisbon. Sadly, seeing its transformation over the years leaves no great desire to visit it other than it being a jump off point into the Douro Valley. Really the only reason I will venture into the eye of the cruise ship storm is to visit a friend Alexandre who owns a restaurant called Postigo do Carvão a street up from the river specializing, in my opinion, the best and the freshest simply prepared seafood in Porto. The sardines and sea bass are from heaven and there are shellfish as well but my heart rests with the grilled sardines! And there are meat dishes as well and a well picked selection of Douro Red wines. And if you are hungry an extensive aperitif selection.
To digress a bit I recall dropping in to see him in 2013 for dinner while I was with a journalist writing for The Globe & Mail. I had a Franceschina for lunch unknown to me to be the richest sandwich known to man drenched in slow cooked beer-based gravy. 7 hours later it was a dinner with my journalist colleague with Alexandre laying out a feast for a man with a distended belly. That was rough and I have learnt this type of sandwich must be treated with respect!
Postigo’s Alentejano Pork with Clams
Getting back to the Cais da Ribeira 2019. The bulk of the blend is Touriga Franca and Touriga Nacional both indigenous Portuguese grapes. In colour black cherry with a purplish tinge. As for aroma blackberry, black cherry, blueberry with a twist of licorice. On the palate it is a wine with subtle and restrained power with moderate tannins. It is full of dark fruits but the wine has an immature character to it. Yes it should sit in the bottle until 2024 and its fruit may stick out its head like a turtle’s from its shell. If I was sitting in Postigo now this wine would suit Cabrito Assada no Forno (grilled baby goat) or Carne de Porco a Alentejana (Fried Pork from the Alentejano with Clams).
Postigo beef dish would suit the wine reviewed here!
Wine drinker profile: A person who likes a robust red wine in its younger years willing to get to know what an excellent wine is in its infancy or for a collector willing to cellar 3-5 years and try periodically to see how it matures. Good for the wine with food type.
My heart remains true to Postigo’s sardines!
(Cais da Ribeira Reserva 2019, DOC Douro Reserva, Barão, Villa Nova de Gaia, Portugal, $13.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 523639, 750 mL, 13.5%, Robert K. Stephen a Little Birdie Told Me So Rating 89/100).
Very Happy Diners at Postigo!
Postigo do Carvão, R. da Fonte Taurina 24 (postigodocarvao.com)
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