Blind Muscat's Cellarbook

Death By Quinoa

This post has very little to do with wine, but it does concern things Blind Muscat may or may not be putting in his mouth, so it's close enough for blogging.

I've just been through a stint in the hospital, one of the reasons for this blog going near-derelict in the last few weeks. The condition is question is a flare-up of a fairly rare auto-immune weirdness known as Wegener's Granulomatosis, named for a combination of the guy who first systematically described it and for the fact that it ends up forming nasty little granules. It's a flavor of a family of auto-immune conditions known as vasculitis, and the Wegener's variant attacks small blood vessels in the kidneys and lungs. Since I only have one kidney anyway, having lost the other years ago for unrelated reasons, this can be a bad thing.

The New, Bailed-Out Cellarbook

Blind Muscat is pleased to announce that he has reorganized and re-chartered his Cellarbook as a Bank Holding Company. Everybody else is doing it, every corporation that has anything to do with money—selling stuff. paying people—and Blind Muscat’s Cellarbook is no exception. Though we have no income, we do have expenses—several dollars every month for hosting, just for starters. Actually, that’s about it.

But now, we are eligible for some of the Paulson Billions, which I guarantee will be spent, not hoarded. In particular, a massive infusion of public funds could help me get my hands on a lot of over-priced wines, in cases where the producers and their PR folks refuse to send me samples. With Secretary Paulson’s help, I’m hoping to pas on my thoughts about a Screaming Eagle vertical. Watch this space.

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.

Walking / Drinking Tour of Portland

Once I heard that Portland, Oregon had become the epicenter of a resurgence in craft distilling, I had to check it out. I am fond of Portland (college daze) and, of course, fond of distilleries; better yet, I can usually find a way to get paid to check such things out. And so armed with a bunch of phone numbers and addresses, I flew up that way this past Thursday to spend the afternoon on Distillery Row.

The trip did not start auspiciously. My flight on Southwest was an hour and a half late taking off (those pesky mechanical problems, due no doubt to never doing inspections). This delay cost me my first appointment of the day, lunch with Steve McCarthy, founder of Clear Creek Distillery, Portland’s first, launched back in the 1980s. (Steve will get his own post, soon.) So I moved on to destination two. When my Former Eastern Bloc cabbie took me from the airport to what was supposed to be my destination, I quickly realized he had gotten the address wrong, despite many repetitions, so I ran after him, yelling and flailing till I got his attention, and finally reached the right address.

The Moleskine® Cult

At a recent lunch and tasting sponsored by an ambitious and well-heeled winery, the 20 or so writers in attendance were all presented with a personalized gift, a small, hardbound blank notebook, about 3-1/2” by 5-1/2”, embossed on the cover with the winery logo.  It didn’t register much with me, but all around me, people were giving off sounds of delight—“Oh, cool, a mole skin.”

“A what?” I asked. “A mole skin, you know, one of those great little notebooks—I use them all the time,” came several responses almost in unison. ”Uh, okay,” I said.

I knew immediately I had stumbled across a cult.

Potato Starch vs. Polysaccharides

Blind Muscat isn’t sure why he’s ending the year with a post about vodka. He doesn’t much life vodka and hardly ever drinks the stuff; he thinks the term “vodka Martini” is an oxymoron, and that the fashion for flavored vodkas is a sign of the decline of Western Civilization.

The goal of vodka-making is to create a flavorless distillate, legally defined as neutral spirits. It is the diametrical opposite of gin, whose goal in life is to cram in as many flavorful botanicals as possible. Vodka costs more than EverClear or, for that matter, ethanol, both of which are much more efficient at altering the consciousness of the drinker. Vodka is like a piece of writing with no ideas in it—which may be why it is so popular with the children of the Internet.

Gin and (Fever-Tree) Tonic

Blind Muscat has a lengthy and colorful medical history, including multiple surgeries and a number of obscure, hard-to-pronounce immune system disorders. But he’s never had malaria, and he owes it entirely to his love for gin and tonics.

Many converts to the joys of wine develop an aversion to, even a contempt for distilled spirits, or at least those not made from grapes. However much elegant, connoisseur-ish prose such prejudices are wrapped in, they remain juvenile. Grown-ups drink spirits, too, in the right time and place. And on a hot summer day on your back porch, a good, icy gin and tonic is worth a tankerful of Pinot Grigio.