elevation, elation

You know a wine is really good when it makes your dinner taste better than it really is.

Case in point: We opened a bottle of 2001 C.H. Berres Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Auslese with some China Dragon delivery Friday night. The food from this place is okay -- it's not bad -- but it's not knock-your-socks-off-you-no-longer-have-to-miss-San-Francisco good. (In fact, every time we've ordered something from the specials menu, we've ended up with a really bizarre dish that is hard to eat. The salt and pepper prawns are actually whole prawns -- shell, head, legs, eyes and all -- that look they've been slightly battered and then fried. Why would you batter the outside of the shrimp when it's still in its shell? Then there's the pork tenderloin, which is also battered and fried -- even though some of the meat is still on the bone but you can't tell until you bite into it. Anyway, you get the picture.)

Still, the pairing was absolutely perfect, with the slight sweetness of the Riesling nicely complementing the heat of the food.

Now I didn't research this Riesling before we chose it for dinner. This wine was something that had been in the wine refrigerator for awhile, and we also have another bottle downstairs in the garage (I hope). So we thought, Why not? After all, Rieslings typically go well with Asian food. And we were right, and the wine was beautiful. I tasted lots of peach and stone fruit, a teeny-tiny hint of petrol (not too much -- just a suggestion of it) and even some cardamom, believe it or not.

But as I was preparing to blog about the wine today and started to do a little background work, I discovered this was a really special bottle. Really special.

Here's a description from Garagiste (I bought the wine from them in 2005 for $19.99):

It would be one thing to find a new winery of significance -- it's another to find a non-interventionist, boutique producer like Berres that has managed to fashion a cache of the most pristinely stored and desireable bottles of crystalline German Riesling vintage after vintage -- all in near silence. This is a bastion of artisanal wine -- the clearest expression of the grape in each portion of soil. Only indigenous and native yeasts are used with a natural vinification process and the purest low-predikat results from each site. As a generalization, the wines are fresh as a breeze and light on their feet without the cloying, heavy sugar of their more famous neighbors such as Dr. Loosen.

Much of the quality stems from the vineyards around Ürzig, one of the only places in the Mosel without Phylloxera. As a result, the Berres vineyards are planted on their own rootstock without grafting to a disease resistant stock. This is extremely special as it is prohibited by law in other regions. There is much debate regarding natural "whole" vines vs. grafted examples of the same varietal but one cannot argue that the results of decades of vine age are in the bottle (Berres has 50+ year old vineyards – all on their own rootstock and they will not bottle wine from any vine younger than 15 years of age).

Indigenous yeasts? No Phylloxera? Old vines? Did I do something terribly sinful by drinking this wine with mediocre Chinese food while sitting in my pajamas and watching college football on TV?

Nah. I think it would've been worse if I hadn't opened the bottle!

old school

Seven years and you can barely remember east and west, up and down. So you drive around, slowly, until things begin to come back: First, that feeling in your stomach when you see the ocean on the horizon. Next, your old street, where you spent one Fourth of July lighting fireworks and trying not to wake the neighbors. Then, into the elevator -- which still smells like the catering company on the second floor -- and up to the office with its blue carpet and pale walls.

No one is there, but you remember a time when everyone was.

You spend all weekend driving, walking, making sure things are still in the old places.

There is the hill you hiked up and down so many times to get to the beach. The street where you crashed your car into a parked El Camino. The store with the salt water taffy. The Burger King you went to at least five times in two days because they were giving away free fries. The tattoo parlor where you paid the apprentice $30 to ink a bird that matched your boyfriend's. (Note to self: Apprentice + matching tattoo + only $30 = Not smart, on so many levels.)

There is the humanities building, the ferry, Del Taco. Tippecanoe's, Alta, Ring Road. The lifeguard tower, the Goat Hill Tavern, the wig shop.

Everything the same, everything different.

god bless the crock pot

Part of the reason we eat mostly vegetables and fish is because, well, we don't really know how to cook meat.

True, occasionally, we've had success with pork. Meatballs are always fun and not too difficult. And we spent a good portion of this past summer grilling up sausage in the backyard.

But we've never bought a steak or anything like that. I'm actually kind of terrified of cooking steak because I'm worried I'll spend lots of money on a nice cut and then totally screw it up and turn it into a piece of leather.

Still, I want to improve my cooking repertoire, so yesterday (my random day off), I attempted pot roast for the very first time. I figured I wouldn't be able to turn meat into leather if I used the slow cooker. So I went to the store and bought 3.49 pounds of bottom round (who names these cuts?) and plopped the entire thing in the crock pot. I covered it with Pinot, tomato sauce, Worcestershire, onions, garlic, tons of herbs and tapioca pearls (which apparently dissolve and thicken the gravy).

And then I left. Visited Todd at work. Helped out at the Kosta Browne sorting table. Tried to beg for my wine allocation (that's a story for another time). Went to the gym. Bought tickets to a bluegrass show.

And when I came home, the whole house smelled fantastic. I just stood in the kitchen and inhaled deeply.

And by 8 p.m., when we were ready for dinner, that meat just melted. I didn't even need a knife to pull it apart.

what the hell?

Sometimes, that is the question. Like when you turn around and realize: Hey, that's not a crock pot!

Or when you find yourself at the Halloween store looking for a crown and sceptre because Someone High Up at work wants to wear a costume for the annual grape stomp, which is Saturday.

And which is not a costume party.

"real tokyo style" in l.a.

In L.A. again and absolutely thrilled by last night's dining discovery: Sake House Miro. Susan and I went there for dinner -- it's a teeny-tiny restaurant on La Brea that's modeled after a Tokyo pub. (I wouldn't know if this is true since I was only 2 years old when I was in Tokyo and obviously not going to sake bars, but from what other people have said online, this place is pretty much dead-on.) The vibe is more neighborhoody than the usual L.A. see-and-be-seen. There are Japanese street signs on the walls, a pink vintage Japanese payphone and lots of Japanese magazines to read while you're waiting. The sake selection is awesome, you can get a huge (huge!) can of Asahi for only $4.50 and the food rocks.

We had some sushi (well, kind of -- I had tamago and she had a spicy tuna handroll, so we weren't that adventurous), the albacore sashimi carpaccio (you can see it in the photo above -- it came in a soy-garlic-sesame sauce of some kind -- delish), a plate of sizzling beef short ribs served over onions and a side of asparagus. And of course, a very nice, floral-ish sake to help it all go down.

I told Susan all she had to do was say the word and I would fly down from the Bay Area for this place any time.