Comfort Food

It was a dark and rainy night when a lovely young lady, not completely unlike myself, was in the mood for soup. But not just any soup mind you, she wanted the soup that her momma used to make her when she was but a wee lass. As luck would have it, that soup happened to be little more than a simple concoction on miso broth with cabbage and carrots in it. Simple as it were, however, that darn soup had the magical power of making any ouchy feel better and any cold night seem just a little warmer. Anyhew, the girl was now all grown up, her momma was far away and she was all on her own for soup makin . So get down to makin it she did! She got some miso,some chicken broth, some carrots, some cabbage and a whole mess of fresh tomatoes that some good friends of hers had kindly given her from their veggie garden and she went to work.

She chopped, she sauteed, she simmered, seasoned, she sipped and, I am sorry to say, she sneezed a few time because of seasonal allergies. At last, she managed to warm her house this night, as well as her own heart, with the sumptious smells of her childhood. And once the soup was well on its way all she needed was a nice bottle of Luzon Verde (a sintalating Spanish Monastrell) and a sister. So she called said sister and said "hey, soup's on, you in?". And she was, and so they ate, and drank, and thus that cold and rainy night turned out to be a deliciously cozy trip down a culinary memory lane. The end.

Brian Wilson and the Hedonic Scale

My friend Bryan Wilson, head wine guy at Foris Winery in southern Oregon and renaissance man all around, once told me about something called the hedonic scale. It is a system used to measure the amount of physical and emotional pleasure the consumption of certain wines delivers to the imbiber. Those of you who have ever experienced a wine that inexplicably gives you butterflies in your stomach or brings tears to your eyes can relate to the concept. So anyhew, thinking about the scale got me headed down the long, long, long path of the wines of my past. A couple came quite vividly to mind that would rank right off the charts of my own hedonic scale that, for reference sake, lets just say ranks from 1-14. Here, in no particular order, are two of the most hodonistically pleasurable wines to have ever graced my palate - From my favorite Italian producer to date and by far one of the sexiest men alive, Giorgio Rivetti that is, a 1998 La Spinetta Barbaresco that I drank for my birthday with a very good friend of mine that I will give a scoring of 24 to, and an 01' Gaja Barbaresco that I tasted at around 11a.m. on a Tuesday morning not so long ago that ranks effortlessly at about a 23. This is not to say that I don't get some amount of pleasure from all of the wines I drink just that once in a while one comes along that takes my breath away.