Beer with subtitles

So, in addition to all drinking establishments closing at 2.30am, off-licenses now have to close at 10pm. I knew this, of course, but it’s pretty annoying to be reminded after walking over 3km to one of Dublin’s few decent off-licenses to discover it already shut for the night.

Worse, I’ve made this mistake before – more fool me, I suppose, but this is Ireland, after all, and it’s bright until 11pm these days so I didn’t think anything of heading out for a walk at 9.30pm on a nice night like last night.

A rare treat for a visitor to northern California: an opportunity to gatecrash a well-planned trip up to wine country, taking in some pretty fancy and hard-to-get-into wineries and finally live out all my “Sideways” fantasies for real (well, the wine tasting bits anyway).

So, we started at some ungodly never-before-heard-of hour on a Saturday morning in order to arrive in downtown San Francisco where a limo would pick us up and bring us to Napa. No designated driver for us!

It was a glorious morning and after some introductions – there were eight of us travelling and there were six Indian names to somehow memorise, so it took a while – we headed off, traversing the Golden Gate before passing through Sausalito and onwards up to Napa. I felt a bit guilty about crashing in on the trip but nobody seemed to mind, especially when it was revealed I was Irish. As an aside, sometimes it feels like a license to do as you like over here – jaywalk, crash parties, you name it!

Anyway, for future reference, here’s where we stopped:

• We stopped first in V. Sattui and this was, to my mind, perhaps the most enjoyable stop: $10 yielded eight tastings from their menu, none of which – interestingly – are available outside of the winery. I loved their off-dry Johannisberg riesling, did not love their Rosato and very much enjoyed their Zinfandel. Having something of a sweet tooth, I liked their Madeira enough to buy an entire bottle and create yet another massive packing problem for myself.
  
• Cakebread Cellars was undoubtedly the highlight of the tour. Cakebread are a small volume winery (100,000 cases per year) with such reknown that tastings are strictly by appointment only and whose appointments are not subject to adustment. I’m enternally grateful for the locals who stood aside to let me take their place. I won’t forget it: their Chardonnay was amazing, their Merlot nothing like a Merlot (richer, somehow than their Cabernet) and their Cabernet just stunning. I felt compelled to purchase a Cabernet for a Bordeaux-loving friend back home and a Pinot for a special occasion.
  
• Our last stop, Mumm Napa, allowed us sample something new: sparkling Pinot. These were a bit mixed than previous wineries but at least one worked very very well.

All in all, a wonderful day. It’s fascinating to see how every winery is setup for visiting, with some (like Sattui) even limiting their sales to just their winery. It seems to be a pretty common weekend activity over here and one that’s slowly being adopted in Europe where, for one example, I’ve heard of Bordeaux tours. However, I guess it’s not as established a pastime back home. California may be a young wine-producing region but they’re producing some amazing wines and, in this climate and with this scenery I simply can’t think of a better way to spend your Saturday.

As an “international”, transport will be interesting: Sattui offered a cardboard and polystyrene wine-carrying contraption that’s guaranteed against breakages of the precious contents within. We’ll see in a week’s time if British Airways allow me check in two big pieces of luggage and, if so, if it survove Heathrow.

There’s an old philosophical thought experiment concerning the multiplication of bacteria. It goes something like this:

A cell can divide itself in two, producing a new cell, every five minutes. In effect, the number of cells doubles every five minutes: two, four, eight, sixteen, etc. After one day at this rate of growth you already have 2^288 bacteria (lots) and, in fact, it’s easy to calculate that pretty soon the entire universe is full. Or maybe it already is. So, why isn’t the universe full of bacteria?

Well, it just doesn’t happen in practise. Or so they thought: there is one actual recorded case, from international globalised economics, of such sustained exponential growth: the Starbucks coffee chain, whose branches filled the entire known universe in late 2003 (although they still only have two outlets in Dublin).

Seattle is where it all began, way back when in 1971, in a little outlet – just like a hundred others – on the edge of Pike Market. Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, this particular branch eschews the normal green sans-serif livery in favour of what are presumably the branch’s original colours and slogans. It’s a tourist attraction of sorts, a landmark store whose queue is far too long to contemplate joining.

I’m glad the queue was too long: it gave me an excuse to wait for better, genuine coffee later in the day. In fact, I have great coffee karma in Seattle. Here are my finds for the two days, listed in the order in which I stumbled across them:

• Seattle Coffee Works
  Situated between the market and the Seattle Art Museum, this coffee house boasts a veritable cornucopia of local roasts. Did I know there’s over 80 independent coffee roasters in Seattle? No, I did not! The friendly barista asks me a rare question: what sort of coffee do I want? I say espresso but that’s not what she means; do I like it light, dark, spicy? She quickly assembles a special concoction of her very own to my exact specification (“eh, dark – but light!”) and whose merits I’m instructed to report back. Best of all, if I’m not happy then she’ll “keep doing it until I like it”. What an offer!
  
• Zeitgeist
  The Smashing Pumpkins play across the road for this fine cup of coffee in the historic Pioneer Square district. In another city this would be something to write home about.
• Vivace (off Broadway)
  There’s a long queue and it takes a long time to prepare but it’s the most amazing cup of coffee in the entire history of the world, ever. It’s deeply dark and unleashes upon the tongue that rarest of things, what I call the “coffee fruit hit”. This is my own term for a coffee taste that is so fresh and rich it goes far beyond bitter and almost into sweetness, as if someone had genetically engineered a coffee-flavoured banana and somehow mashed it into coffee-banana juice…no, paste.

The “coffee fruit hit” I first experienced with a clown-sized double espresso from Peaches in Dublin – never since, incidentally – and, in my innocence, momentarily mistook my angel espresso for a fruit drink and/or portal into another dimension. A very strange and rare delight indeed.

Not bad for one weekend.

I chanced upon some of this today in, of all places, Onuma.

I dunno how to review beer: it’s nice. Not as nice perhaps as something like Orchel but about 1,000,000,000 times better than a Heino. Closer to the former and as far away from the latter as is possible.

There’s a few different varieties. I plumped for the darkest, at 8%.

I have to say I didn’t expect to find American micro-brewery beer in Tokyo but I’d never turn down the opportunity…

A hot tip from the Rough Guide for a western-style restaurant in Roppongi Hills (“Roti”) worked out pretty well.

This was a lightish beer and not very strong but…very tasty (as I’ve said before, I don’t know how to review beer apart from light/dark, weak/strong and nice/manky). Went very well with my burger and chips; the highest compliment I can pay a beer.

Wish I’d kept the bottle cap now – this review is even crapper without a picture of it. Anyway, something to seek out next time I’m in San Francisco.

A new discovery in McCarvills on Camden Street: it’s Belgian it’s very very strong and it’s very tasty.

This wonderful three minute review tells you just that, but in a far more entertaining way…needless to say, buy this beer.

Heston Blumenthal has a weekly programme on BBC2 at the moment where he attempts the ultimate, definitive – perfect, even – version of a favourite dish. A bold claim, although as a three Michelin-starred chef and owner of what has been awarded the title “Best Restaurant in the World” he may just pull it off.

Boldest of all, perhaps, the recipes are intended to be executed by the viewers at home.

I was familiar with Blumenthal only through some articles in the Observer Food Monthly magazine. It was something about chunky chips cooked in fresh straw. Consequently, I wasn’t surprised to see perfectionist tendencies rise straight to the surface; when researching the dish – black forest gateau – he not only tries some English varieties (notably from a supermarket – “white stuff on top, not cream”) but goes straight to its home, Baden-Baden. Later in the programme he returns to the home of kirsch, apparently the key to the dish, not chocolate as we may have thought, to sample the taste.

To compare him with an established British TV chef, Gordon Ramsey, Blumenthal is quite different in manner – politely spoken – and in appearance more of a cookery nerd (especially when he starts talking about the bubbles trapped in chocolate – more on that later) than the ex-footballer Ramsey. However, he has similar cookery credentials and a similar passion for food. Upon realising the six layers of black forest gateau may be his biggest challenge, he clearly relishes the challenge…like Ramsey, he cares. Most people can’t see that past Ramsey’s blunt manner; with a similar passion, Blumenthal may turn prove an equally talented presenter, only perhaps more palatable than the already-established Ramsey (not that swearing has done him any harm, admittedly).

Back in kitchen, one epiphany arrives after another. An example: the chocolate should be aerated. Not a surprise, perhaps, from the man who favours a scientific approach to cooking. His vacuum pump is soon replaced by a perforated Tupperware container sitting inside a particular brand of vacuum bag (with a valve, crucially!) attached to a Dyson vacuum cleaner – a concession necessary because he understands that few viewers will have a real vacuum pump.

The rest of the dish is treated similarly lavishly and you think he’s done…but then – in order to shape the various layers now accumulated – of which the vacuum-powered chocolate is only one – into a proper block, he suggests freezing the block of gateau in the freezer. Suitably shaped, it’s only a small leap of the imagination to load a paint sprayer with chocolate and apply a pepple-dashed exterior.

After this, it’s relatively straightforward to adapt the biscuit base into “edible wood” by patterning the base with some painter’s tools dipped in chocolate. A few vanilla stalks with a knot tied in the top and inserted into the sour cherries inserted into eight holes in the top fashioned with a melon baller….and we have the perfect black forest gateau!

Can’t wait to try it!

The Porterhouse is quickly becoming my favourite pub in Dublin. Much to the bemusement of my friend I had somehow classed this place as just another Dublin pub (not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course). Having been introduced to their beer menu, however, I am now singing a different tune.

Last night’s pick was Rochford 8, a Trappist beer from Belgium. It was expensive, strong (9.2% – the 8 refers to an older measurement system) and described as possessing a very strong flavour. Already a fan of another Trappist brew, Chimay, I didn’t have to be asked twice.

I really don’t know what ingredients the monks use, nor are my tastebuds senstive enough to guess. Whatever’s in there, this beer ends up like a soup. A very pleasant soup, at that. If I had to pick a word, I’d say it was fruity. But, like I say, I can’t really tell.

I think mainstream beers have ruined my ability to distinguish one from another – and then when something like this comes along I’m just so delighted to have any taste at all that I’m not fussy!

However, my ignorance notwithstanding it’s genuinely hard to imagine a better beer…except perhaps Rochford 10.

Or maybe just anything else from the Porterhouse menu.