233 European tastes and then a brewery in Denver
From
MICHAEL LOO@1:123/140 to
ALL on Friday, April 12, 2019 10:00:20
Valor 70% cacao sugar-free chocolate (made with maltitol)
- raisiny, a little musty-tasting, some chocolate aroma
and taste behind the cardboardiness, not thrilling in any
way. Do you wonder what the effect of eating a serving
of food that is 30% maltitol? Yah, you guessed it.
Odfjell Padre Hurtado Lontue Valley, Ribera del Rio Claro
(Maipo) 12 - I picked this up at what my friend Hans-Erich
characterizes as one of the best wine shops in Berlin,
Wein u. Glas - the first time I recall paying $20 for a
Chilean Malbec, but it was arguably better than anything
I could have gotten at my usual price point (Norton at $9
is my regular, and its reserva at $13 or 14 the splurge).
This was a flavorful wine, just making the transition from
fruity raspberry youth to a soft darker maturity. Still
bright acid, though, and nice with fatty snacks. The winery
is a hobby project by a Norwegian shipbuilder, using low-
impact engineering and certified organic growing.
Meyer-Nakel Spatburgunder 09 and 12 and 14 - I was lucky
to taste these bottles, even though they were the basic
offerings of this woman-run winery that has other wines
that can run into the three digits. There was a large
amount of Pinot Noir meaty plummy commonality among
them, no surprise, but I liked the middle one best by
far, with the dark fruit beginning to lighten and a
pleasant herbality coming forward. The 09 was a little
over the hill and a bit, I don't know, regression to the
meanish, the 14 still underripe with sour (people say
cherries, but I don't get that) notes and a bit much
tannin for the style (though not enough for the classic
old-style Burgundy). One of the best-known German producers,
in an unlikely sort of location, way from the equator
compared to the normal wine-growing regions.[My
recollections of these wines, though, are especially dim.]
Montana Pinot Noir reserve (Marlborough) 07 - beginning
to thin out and go pink on the edges but still with
aromas of plums and flowers (people say violets, but I
think more beach roses). Good balance still, a surprise,
because this started out as a quite cheap wine.
O'Hara's Irish stout - nice and thick, black, a tad
bitterer than Guinness but by appearance could just as
well have been. One of my fellow partygoers, whose
great-uncle or grandfather had been chief brewmaster
at St. James's Gate in the mid-20th century, commented
approvingly on my drink choice, and I didn't have the
heart to disabuse her of the notion. I found this a
bit more robust and also a bit more coarse than the
real thing, but it seems on the whole to be a bit of
a tastealike.
Wynkoop Brewery - Many moons ago, before the echo even,
I used to go to the new Coors Field with Annie and Billy
(we referred to it by its working name Rockies Stadium
because of how much we loved Coors); before the games,
we would get our fix of real beer down the street at
Wynkoop Brewery, which has beverages that are generally
more real than at the park - Annie and Billy would get
lightish lagers and I'd have hoppier or richer ales. On
this first visit in over a decade, I got samplers of
seven brews, the first 5 in a house selection at a
discounted price, so how could I resist? I forget the
silly names, but they were all clean. pretty typical
examples of blonde ale, Belgian-style wheat beer, IPA,
stout, and winter warmer. This last was the only one
with any notable character, and that character was bad -
heavy mulling spices that nearly made me choke. The lack
of character was especially welcome in the Belgian, as
there was much less of that clove-nutmeg mishmosh that
one so often gets in Belgians; this tasted like a
slightly better version of Blue Moon, which it obviously
is designed to compete with. My two facultative choices
were Doppelbock - sweeter than a real Bavarian but of a
similar weight, maltiness, and aroma; and a strong brown
ale, English-style, high in alcohol and low in hops. The
food looked and smelled appetizing, but we'd made the
mistake of eating too much breakfast (about which the
less said the better).
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