Blind Muscat's Cellarbook

Douro Dreamin'

Port wine and Portugal are so closely intertwined in our imaginations that it’s almost impossible to think of one without immediately thinking of the other. The name for the wine comes from the town of Oporto, on the northern Atlantic coast at the mouth o the Douro River. Grapes from the Douro Valley have been made into fortified, sweet wine for centuries, then aged and blended in Oporto and shipped from there—hence the name—all over creation.

Here, in my thoroughly amateur photography, is Oporto proper in the background across the river, with the roofs of the Port lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia in the foreground. Oporto is beyond picturesque, and a heck of a tourist town. But up river, into the vineyard country, is another reality altogether.

My Dinner with Rachel Ray

I just got back from dinner with Rachel Ray. Now Blind Muscat makes up a lot of stuff, but not this: I really did just chow down with the franchise player for the Food Network, the author of several mega-seller cookbooks, the cutest thing on culinary television since pigs in a blanket.

It happened like this. Our pal Lachu Moorjani, chef/owner of Ajanta restaurant in Berkeley, home to authentic Indian regional food, complete with white tablecloths and a nice wine list, somehow got onto Rachel’s radar for a new series called something like “Rachel’s Vacations” or “Vacating Rachel” or some such. The advanced crew came into Ajanta last Thursday, scouted the place, interviewed a couple customers, planned the camera angles. Tonight, the 30-Minute Mealster herself arrived with her entourage for a few on-screen bites.

Berkeley Boy Hugs Naked Cork Tree

So there I was in Portugal last week, in the forests of the Alentejo region, watching two skilled workmen strip bark from the cork oaks. The trees need to be 43 years old, on average, before their bark is worth stripping to make corks for wine bottles (and for flooring, furniture, automobile engine gaskets, shuttle nose cones, Birkenstock sole liners and a lot of other stuff).

Down-Home Summer-Weight Wine

Here at subterranean cellars, we spent the Fourth of July bottling wine with a couple dozen friends. In this case, the wine in question was a Grenache-based red blend of Rhone grapes including some Syrah, some Mourvedre, some Petite Sirah, even a touch of Zinfandel, kind of an honorary California Rhone variety.

Modestly, I named the bottling Chateauneuf-du-Pat, in a double tribute: to the great wines of that charmed spot in the southern Rhone, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, “the new estate of the Pope,” the magically stony vineyard zone established in the 14^th centaury by a breakaway batch of Popes who took up residence in Avignon and left behind a winemaking powerhouse; and, of course, an homage to moi, incorporating part of my last name. It was remarkable how many of my friends didn’t get the reference.