I love this funny little book I'm reading right now - Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicure. It's a real foodie's memoir of growing up in Europe in the first half of the Twentieth Century, and it traces his life events through, fantastically enough, his meals.

Joseph Wechsberg is the author who published the book for the first time in 1953. Apparently the bulk of the book is dedicated to the vineyards and restaurants of France, and I'm sure I'll love that part when I get there, but 88 pages in I'm loving his personal and hilarious accounts of the dining culture in Western and Central Europe.

Such as, as the title of this post alludes, "The Sausage Millennium" chapter, in which the foodie recounts the passion with which pre-WWII Czech citizens devoured little sausages called vursty.

Here's an excerpt: "The quality of the vursty was tested by sticking in the fork. If the vursty were fresh and properly made, the juice would spout into the eater's face. Vursty-eaters recognized one another by the fat-stains on their ties and lapels. They wore them proudly, like campaign ribbons."

The book delights with its faux serious take on all things epicurean. The author is at once deeply passionate about food and able to poke fun of people's obsessions with it. But because he's a foodie himself, he's not laughing at them, he's laughing with them.

The book also fascinates with references to the two world wars that ravaged Europe, both of which are treated in a semi-lighthearted manner, as if they really just served to get in the way of everyone's eating well.

But coming from a generation in which those monumental events seem light years away, it's nice to hear about them from a personal perspective, especially one with no political agenda (like I said, he's mostly concerned about where his next meal's coming from).

Also tickling me thus far: the foodie's account of Vienna's famed boiled beef, his first time at a restaurant, his sojourn in Paris as a 19-year-old. Absolutely perfect: his telling of arriving in Paris for a stint at the Sorbonne, and the taxi driver taking him to Montmartre rather than Montparnasse, and his taking a room for a month on the Place Pigalle (the underbelly of Paris: this is where the Moulin Rouge is), only to realize that night when the neighborhood came to life that he had taken up residence in Paris's equivalent of Sin City.

Unable to get his money back, he makes a go of it, takes a position playing violin for the Folies Bergere, forgets about the Sorbonne, and has a generally fabulous time until his rich relative discovers him living amidst drug pushers and hookers and sends him away.

Ahh, The Peregrinations of an Epicure.

Posted by Courtney at 08:52 AM • Comments (0)

Well, well, it seems that body art does indeed last longer than love. Love of a woman, that is. Uber famous and much tattooed actor Johnny Depp recently confessed to having his "Winona Forever" tattoo abbreviated (via laser) to read "Wino Forever."

No joke. Apparently the rebellious actor known in the past for trashing hotel rooms and dating some of Hollywood's hottest women (such as, obviously, Winona Ryder) has a serious crush on top Bordeaux. Decanter.com reports that in an interview with Madame Figaro magazine the actor announced that Chateau Calon-Segur, a Saint-Estephe third-growth, is his favorite wine.

Now hold your horses, or maybe I should say your needles. At first blush it seems like a terrific juxtaposition that this dude would know not just a touch but, seemingly, quite a bit about Bordeaux.

In addition to pegging Calon-Segur as his fav because it's both delicious and a great value, he's admitted to admiring grand estates Petrus and Chateau Cheval-Blanc, in addition to Burgundy's Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, purveyor of the most expensive wine in the world.

Alrighty. I say that Depp is exactly the kind of Wino we need. He's no spectacle-wearing, auction-attending paisley tie-adorned dilettante: he's just a real guy. That his body art itself proclaims his love of the good stuff is the best part.

I'd personally pay a lot of money to sip some great Bordeaux with a dreadlock-laden and much tattooed Depp in between takes of Pirates of the Caribbean. I'd probably learn a thing or two from the guy, and I know the memory would last at least as long as his body art.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art9306.asp

Posted by Courtney at 12:30 AM • Comments (0)

Why Not? This Aussie import aims to solve the spoilage problem afflicting about one in every ten bottles of wine closed with traditional cork closures. Problem always was, folks just like to hear a cork pop when opening a bottle. I completely understand: it's tradition.

But for pete's sake, all the spoilage has got to stop. I've certainly become more intimately acquainted with just how prevalent cork taint is since I dramatically upped the number of wines I taste as a result of my wine studies. I know: you feel really sorry for me.

TCA, or trichloroanisole, is a foul-smelling compound responsible for most apparent wine faults. It occurs when a bottle's cork has become tainted with TCA during the cork harvesting and treatment process. Cork taint is not a fault of the winemaker but rather a chance occurrence resulting from cork's natural susceptibility to TCA.

The high incidence of cork taint in the late 90s was a major catalyst for the switch to alternatives such as synthetic corks and screw caps. But with screw caps - favored by increasing numbers of adventurous producers mostly making wine in New World regions like Australia, New Zealand and California - there was always something more to be desired. More flourish. More pomp. More pop.

Enter the Zork. Developed by Aussie John Brooks, the Zork "seals like a screwcap and pops like a cork." Right. To open, you pull on a synthetic tear tab on the bottleneck, pull on the Zork and - pop- out it comes. It's made in three parts, mostly polyethylene, and is recyclable. How very business savvy of them.

But now I'm starting to sound like a wine Zork. I mean dork.

www.zork.com.au/

Posted by Courtney at 10:55 PM • Comments (0)