I spent the better part of last week in New Orleans for the sixth annual Tales of the Cocktail. I was a newbie to Tales and to NOLA and I left both the city and the event feeling like I never wanted it to end. It was an episode in my career when I honestly felt like my job rocks. To discover a new city that has so much to offer and to be at an event that’s both a blast and educational to boot is the perfect trip for me.
Mixologists and bartenders have always revealed themselves to be a sturdy and rowdy lot with a wicked sense of humor. So can you imagine getting a couple thousand of the best bartenders from New York, San Francisco, Boston, London, Sydney and more into one hotel? It was a riot. Rumor was flying by Day Two about the two bartenders that got arrested the previous night and I think most averaged 6am bedtimes. I played the old lady and got myself off to sleep at a reasonable 1 to 2 am every night, while the following morning I’d attend morning seminars that were scanty and the afternoon seminars would be heaving with a hungover crowd catching a hair of the dog and sharing in spirits geek culture.
Seminars were taking place all day, everyday and many of them clashed. I had to pick and choose according to what I could possibly write about so I missed some fabulous seminars but my favorites among the ones I did make it to were: To Have and Have Not (Hemmingway and cocktails), Juniperlooza (a gin seminar run my Ryan Magarian, Simon Ford, Desmond Payne), Three Amigos (even though they did run out of cocktails and I felt stiffed) and finally the very brilliant punch seminar called The Flowing Bowl (presented by Allen Katz, Phil Ward of Death & Co. and my favorite spirits writer, David Wonderich). Punch is a great tradition and there are some truly delicious but potent classic recipes out there. For the purposes of Tales David chose an old recipe called the Bombay Government Punch – a heady mix of arrack, cognac, lime juice, simple syrup and black tea.
As for NOLA: I fell in love. Ok, I spent almost all my time in the French Quarter and saw very little of the city but what I did encounter made an impression. When you steer clear of Bourbon Street, the French Quarter has a lot of historical charm. I think it’s beautiful that they’ve managed to keep tradition intact. I did venture uptown to Magazine Street to check out the cool shops and boutiques and to have a very mediocre dessert at the overrated Sucre.
The food in NOLA is O.T.T. (over the top). It takes the most decadent rich French and Spanish roots cuisine and then multiplies the size and ingredients by ten. Case in point would be the dinner I had at the fabulous Arnaud’s, a classic New Orleans institution, where I had two whole quails stuffed with foie gras and wrapped in bacon. I dined with a fun LA-based writer who hit her wall halfway through the meal. I think I hit mine after the Bananas Foster – a sick dessert that can only send you over the edge. Having said all that I appreciate the NOLA mix of Cajun and Creole food. And the cocktails in the city can be great, as my French 75 (made with cognac) at Arnaud’s proved.
The very best meal had to be at Couchon where it was all about the pig. I shared bourdin noir, deep fried pig’s ears and whole roasted pig with a great group of writers and the editor of Cheers magazine. It was the first night and I thought, “goddamn I’m going to be all broken out and have an arse like the back of a bus by the time I leave.” Somehow that didn’t happen, I think the Louisiana heat does wonders. You somehow sweat all the bad stuff out and I came back to NYC looking better than I have in years. No wonder I want to go back to the Big Easy!
I actually have a travel assignment on New Orleans so I’m heading back to the city to explore more. This time I’m dragging JR with me. So he can eat all the beignets while I stare in remorse. We are also going to get a dose of reality by looking into the state of things in areas of New Orleans that remain devastated after Katrina. It’ll be a hard one to do but a necessity.
5lbs of foie gras, 5lbs of cheese and a couple of pounds each of Bresse chicken, Charolais beef and an obscene big-ass andouillette later, I find myself back in NYC feeling dazed, exhausted and nicely plumped up. The first night in Burgundy was the only opportunity I had to post while on the road. We had a crazy itinerary. One that caused practically everyone we visited to shake their heads in sympathy. I later discovered that it was BIVB’s first lifestyle trip, which after all the hiccups, miscommunication and sheer madness of the trip, made a lot of sense. Despite all that it was the best press trip EVER. Not so much for educational purposes (it was very Burgundy 101 which bored me silly for the most part) but because the women I traveled with were a hoot.
SOPEXA allowed me to hand pick the writers that would be with me on the voyage to Burgundy. The caveat was that they had to be lifestyle, opposed to straight wine writers. I ended up shin digging for the week with a smart and hilarious French Canadian who had her work cut out as our translator for the week. Next up was the most serene New Yorker who grew up in Rome, knows her food and made me wish she were my big sister (not that I don’t already have an amazing big sister but she’s all the waaay in London). Last but not least was the sassy Texan girl who boldly goes where no one else will. Well, at the very least, she’ll instigate it.
The fifth character of the week was of course Bourgogne and no matter how hauling a press trip it is, if you’re in Burgundy, everything will be fine because the countryside is stunning and the villages are quaint.
Highlights of the trip were:
-The aforementioned first night
-A tasting at Domaine Lafouge’s Auxey Duresses over lunch with a bunch of other producers. Here’s an interesting little piece on Lafouge from the Chambers Street Wine website: http://www.chambersstwines.com/Article.asp?id=55
-Dinner at Château de Bellecroix. A gorgeous hotel and old school restaurant housed in a 17th century building. Check out the website: http://www.chateau-bellecroix.com/
-Lunch and tasting at Domaine Eric de Suremain, a husband and wife duo that practice biodynamic viticulture and vinification in Rully. Plus they use a minimal SO2. I loved the expression on everyone’s face when they took the first sip. You don’t have to know much about wine but you can know a damn amazing wine when you taste one. Beautiful, beautiful Chalonnais wines, which are sadly not available in the States. Importers – listen up….
- A visit and tasting with the brilliant Domaine Guillot-Broux, a natural wine producer in Cruzille brought in by Jenny & Francois. His wines were so good we purchased his white Macon Cruzille ‘06 and his Macon Cruzille ’07 (Gamay), which was still super young but oh so mineral, to BYOB for dinner that night.
-As cheesy as it may sound. The BIVB had us walk through the vineyards in Vergisson with two donkeys. A naff, touristy thing to do that turned out to be fun and adorable until disaster struck and one of them trod on Chantal’s pinkie toe. Even worse yet, we later discovered that the French word for toe is “foot finger.”
-A cooking class where we learned to fillet a fish, especially after we were all knackered and starving because we skipped breakfast in favor of a little more zzzzzzz.
-Our taxi driver, Olivier Spellat, the kindest, sweet driver I’ve ever known on a press trip. We all fast became friends with him. He took genuine care of us during the many hours when we left to our own devices. Bless his cotton socks.
-Not to mention all the times when the group wasn’t at “work” and we spent the time pissing ourselves laughing.
There you have it – the best of Burg in a nutshell.
Tomorrow I head to New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail. I’m half excited and half terrified…..we’re talking bartenders here. How will I ever keep up?
I’m on a Burgundy press trip for SOPEXA. Watching weird morning French TV and reclining in bed at one of the classiest B&Bs I’ve stayed at. Think old (well by American standards anyway) and rustic outer shell and fairly modern and luxurious inside. And they have wi-fi. Can’t tell you how many time I’ve either had sketchy connectivity or just daylight robbery charges at the nicest of hotels in Europe and here I am at the most unlikely of places getting it for free.
So we arrived on a coach class flight at 9am yesterday. Fresh from the plane, we cramped into a small economy taxi cab, which took us down to Chablis. Grubby, dirty, jet-lagged, tired and generally spaced, we dived straight into our first visit. It was a property that makes wine, owns a tasting room and restaurant. Hotel was lovely but wines were lacked soul and I had one of the most ridiculously bad Chablis I’ve ever had — a 1er Cru 2006 that was all fat and round with Mmmm seventy percent new oak!
I was cheered up when our B&B later offered us a degustation that wasn’t offensive. Based in the Beaune AC, the winner was definitely a Beaune 1er cru 05, which was still young and all mineral with a little earthy-animal hint.
Afterwards we headed to a restaurant called Deaux Pieces in Beaune. Lucky for us we were unchaperoned, which allowed us to make crude jokes and, even better, order off the wine list for ourselves. The list was small. I honed in on an Aligote from the ’06 vintage and it was brilliant. All lean and mean and austere — enough to slap the palate about and give it a wake up call. We later moved into a, ’02 Prince Florent de Merode Pommard Clos de la Platière. It was great. I mean, really G-R-E-A-T.
Really owned by a prince, the family have owned the vineyards since the 1700s and it wasn’t fragmented during the revolution. They use new oak but only about 10% and though the wine was definitely on the richer side, it was nevertheless beautifully done. Funny enough this wine doesn’t have any cru status — it’s basically a village Pommard but according to Polaner Selection’s website (the US importers), half the vines are grown in premier cru status plots.
The food at Deaux Pieces was brilliant. The chef was a young, hot, cool chick who cooks and prepares everything on her own in a small kitchen. I don’t want to give much more away as I’m really hoping to sell a story on the wine. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
