7 Amazing things ...

I like to write about amazing things, wondrous things, like the transformative powers of the god Dionysos and those found in Champagne’s “gas of life”, especially at this time of bounty and thanksgiving, the season of harvest and good cheer.

But also at this season it is perhaps the time to write about amazing things that are not so wondrous, things about which it is hard to write because they are so sad.  Like children who live not far from any of us who do not have enough to eat everyday.    Like “Rosie”.  

I have been looking for Rosie since I saw her, last Spring, on a Bill Moyers-Chef Tom Colicchio-Laura Silverbush program about the Colicchio film “A Place At the Table.”  In that film twelve-year old Rosie shines with intelligence and the promise within herself.   But she goes to school so hungry every day that she says she cannot concentrate; that instead of seeing her teacher she sees a “banana”; and, instead of seeing classmates, to console her hungry-self she pictures “apples and oranges.”  Rosie is not looking for cakes and junk food.  She is craving a banana.    

I emailed Bill Moyers to see what I could possibly do to help Rosie.   I have had no reply.

This morning I was planning to write more about Champagne; “Champagne Toujours” after all is what this blog is called.  But, hello, I turned on the CBS news and there was Rosie talking about her banana teacher.  The Colicchios were on with Charlie Rose and Norah and Gail.    Dionysos is sending this sign so I write about Rosie instead of him today.

How can I find Rosie; how can I do something so that the next time Rosie is on television perhaps she will be acting in a drama she wrote and directed, instead of wishing for a banana?  There should be bananas in every child’s home; and apples and oranges too.   Who can help me to do something? 

This is a time of harvests and of plenty; a time of remembering our country’s heritage of giving Thanks; of giving thanks while learning and celebrating the differences of those with whom we share.  I can write about Champagne and fois gras tomorrow.  But today I want to do more than know that many children, right here in America, are wishing and dreaming of dinners they will not have.   How can I make a difference?  While there is harvest and bounty all around us, while twenty-four hours a day The Food Channel has programs showing gargantuan meals being prepared, there is want and need in children around all of us.  How can I make any difference?   

If you have suggestions please send them. 

That includes you too, Caesar.   If you have suggestions, you pass them right along.

Madeleine de Jean

The Night Julius Caesar Invented Champagne.

6 For The God Dionysos I Am Thankful

6 For Dionysos let us be thankful.

For this god of civilization, rising from the east, traveling ever westward, rising with the sun, divining the moon, god of ecstasy, of poetic dreaming, of architecture and mysticism, of rest in times of need, of springing into resurrection , divinity of madness and of song, dance and flight and fantasy:  I am thankful for Dionysos.  Where would I be without him?; without the vineyards of the world?; without the millions of vines, hundreds of thousands of artists and artisans working, doing, fulfilling the promise of the god? 

At this time of year the harvest of the the god  must give great pleasure to the weary vineyardists, hearing the wild fermentation and smelling the divine aromas arising from their efforts, from fermenters and casks, from pithoi and jugs.  Dionysos is at work.  Dionysos is about to arrive.  In fact in those vineyards devoted to carbonic maceration vinification he is already here, the first wine of this year has arrived:  Nouveau wines, made by sealing the grapes without air, together with their yeasts, so the yeasts go mad with hunger for the grape sugars they smell profoundly in this captivity.  In their frenzy they cannot wait, they will not wait, they do not wait for this divine meal.  Boring into the grapes the miniscule ferments begin to eat within the grape the wonder summer has wrought within, sugar.   Being overwrought in their feeding wildness, the ferments belch while consuming their divine meal, belch carbon dioxide and alcohol, bursting open the grapes.  And thus does Dionysos’s magic transform these un-pressed grapes into a wondrous wine of fruity flavors and fragrances of roses and persimmons.  Nouveau Gamay is particularly, headily delicious.  I am thankful it is arriving as I write.   By tomorrow I surely will have found several to enjoy during this thankful week.

Once, in 1984, when I was the western US agent for Bouchard Pere et Fils wines from their estates in Burgundy (akin to being the Sorceress of the West) the Ahwahnee Hotel in California’s Yosemite National Park and I hosted Yosemite’s first Beaujolais Nouveau wine weekend.   The Ahwahnee already poured Bouchard Pere et Fils Burgundy by the glass, and they wanted to be the first National Park to have a Beaujolais Nouveau festivity.  Mindful that Yosemite is one of the grandeurs of California, I wanted this festival to include some California Nouveau wines too.  So I went to meet with my friends, Robert Pecota in Calistoga  and Charles Shaw outside of St. Helena to ask them to please join us in celebrating the first wine of the year.  Then both were alone in making the real “Beaujolais style” nouveau wines with the Gamay Noir au Jus Blanc grape in the US.  In fact for Chuck Shaw’s winery this 1984 nouveau would be the first of a long tradition.   We all met in Yosemite in July, with wine-writer Robert Lawrence Balzer, and planned the Beaujolais Nouveau event for the release of the new wines in November.  Mid-November Jean-Francois Bouchard, the fils of Bouchard Pere et Fils, flew in on the Concord to bring the first cases of his nouveau wines.   Charles Shaw and Bob Pecota brought their in by car up over the snowy passes into Yosemite Valley.  Joining us to discuss foods that accompany well these young fruity wines was America’s darling, Chef Jeremiah Tower from his Star’s restaurant in San Francisco.  Writing about it was James Suckling, newly elevated to staff writer at the Wine Spectator.   Writer-showman Robert Lawrence Balzer played the master of ceremonies.  And all the rest of us there in the exhilarating Ahwahnee hotel enjoying these new wines with delicious Thanksgiving dishes.    For this first wine of the year I bow to Dionysos.

No thanksgiving would be truly celebratory without Champagne.  I am thankful for Champagne.  Another Grande Dame of Champagne, Madame Lily Bollinger, should be thanked for her advice given while describing her pattern of life:   “I drink my Champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad.  Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone.  When I have company I consider it obligatory.   I trifle with it when I’m not hungry and drink it when I am.  Otherwise I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.” – Should we not be thankful for Madame Bollinger?

Thanksgiving is not quite here.   Maybe tomorrow I could find another small excuse to be thankful for Champagne?

Julius Caesar, be still.  Your time will come. 

Madeleine de Jean,

The Night Julius Caesar Invented Champagne.