Year: 2004

Nearly a decade ago, in an endearingly inept campaign to counter his Entertainment Tonight anchorguy blandsomeness, John Tesh embellished a series of magazine articles with casual expletives and weird, crude asides. “Well, [fatherhood] hasn’t helped with the sex life,” he told GQ in August 1995. “I get no time on the breasts anymore, ’cause the baby’s always there.” That December he got even freakier in a People magazine interview, detailing a vivid fantasy that tickled his cortex during concerts, as he played bombastic background music for thousands of fans: “It is like I’ve taken my penis and laid it on the piano and there’s a big chopper right there…”

Now, however, Tesh hosts a radio show that’s marketed as an upbeat source of “intelligence for your life,” and public castration fantasies are decidedly not a part of the mix. Instead, he promises to make listeners “smarter, healthier, better at everything” they do by playing old Celine Dion ballads and making observations like “Getting your boss to see things your way can sometimes be tough.” For people who find the “For Dummies” books too literary, the John Tesh Radio Show is a winning blend of homiletic soundbites and hackneyed pop, and as an added bonus, it’s kid-friendly too. At the beginning of every show, the daughter who once stole breast-time from Tesh now robs him of airtime. “If a nine-year-old can’t listen to it,” she promises, “you won’t hear it on this radio program.”

Unfailingly upright, vigorously inoffensive, Tesh’s daily radio assault is part of a riptide of decency that threatens to drown us all. Broadcast and cable TV, slick magazines, radio, and, of course, the dangerously unregulated Internet have become unwitting handmaidens to legions of do-gooders intent on disseminating inspirational news items, fiery sermons, and poorly acted TV dramas in which cute kids and aged curmudgeons alike learn Important Life Lessons. But while grim crotch cops and shrill hand-wringers portend imminent cultural annihilation in every publicly aired fart joke, the decency explosion goes virtually unnoticed.

Take, for example, Pax-TV, which, according to founder Lowell Paxson, uses “storytelling and parables” to deliver the message “that there is a higher power intervening in our lives.” Launched six years ago, it now reaches ninety-five million American households, or eighty-nine percent of the viewing public. The Trinity Broadcasting Network, which bills itself as “the world’s largest religious network and America’s most watched faith channel,” is available in ninety million U.S. households. Along with faith-based networks like EWTN, CBN, the Word Network, the Church Channel, and numerous others, secular entities like the ABC Family Channel, the Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon provide hours upon hours of wholesome fare. 7th Heaven and Joan of Arcadia are current network hits; old favorite Touched by an Angel has achieved immortality in the afterlife of syndication. Money magazine reports that religious radio group Salem Communications is the nation’s third-largest major-market radio network. American Family Radio, founded in 1987 by professional vice-hunter Donald Wildmon, operates more than two hundred stations. According to radio consultant Bryan Farrish, who maintains an industry website called Radio-media.com, approximately 1,900 religious stations are currently broadcasting in the U.S.

At some point you have to ask: How much decency is too much? A small dose of Tesh is like aural Prozac. His soothing baritone refreshes; his sunny optimism uplifts; his easygoing rectitude inspires. But the John Tesh Radio Show goes on for a full five hours! And some radio stations actually air the show from 7 p.m. to midnight, then immediately repeat it from midnight until 5 a.m. Scientists have yet to subject lab monkeys (or children) to such massive quantities of Tesh, but when they do, you can be sure those lab monkeys (and children) are not going to get smarter, healthier, and better at everything they do. Instead, they’ll be chewing each others’ ears off and flinging feces at their captors. Surely, our lab monkeys (and our children) deserve a better fate than this—yet where are the efforts to regulate decency?

Rather than address the obvious dangers of Tesh saturation, federal lawmakers remain hopelessly fixated on Janet Jackson’s weaponized nipple and Howard Stern’s sleazy radio banter. To protect America from such evils, they insist, stronger indecency laws are required. But indecency laws are already quite strong; indeed, both obscenity laws and indecency laws criminalize content that describes sexual or excretory organs or activities in a “patently offensive” manner. But a prosecutor who files an obscenity charge against you still has to convince a jury that you’re guilty—and you can appeal an obscenity conviction to a higher court. On the other hand, if the FCC charges you with indecency, that’s it—you’re guilty, no jury required. And you can only appeal an indecency violation to the FCC itself.

Luckily, the FCC’s power only extends so far. Broadcast radio and broadcast TV rely upon public airwaves to deliver their programming, and because of this fact, they fall under the FCC’s domain. As part of the deal for using the airwaves, broadcasters agree to forfeit some of the free-speech protections that more private mediums like books, newspapers, and DVDs enjoy. For decades, this gave the FCC a great degree of power over electronic media, but that power is diminishing with the increasing popularity of cable TV, the Internet, satellite TV, and satellite radio, none of which are currently under FCC control.

Thus, those few seconds of Super Bowl micro-nudity could not have come at a more opportune time; they gave the FCC its best chance in years to make a case for reinforcing its authority. Currently its allies in Congress are trying to strengthen the FCC via the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004, which would increase the maximum fine for a single act of indecency to a half-million dollars. Even more alarming are the FCC’s efforts to popularize the idea that cable and satellite broadcasting should also be under its thumb, because even though they’re subscription services delivered via privately maintained hardware, they do sometimes use the public spectrum in their delivery processes. This amounts to a pretty audacious land grab from an organization heading toward irrelevance, but if the FCC pulls its off, then MTV, Comedy Central, and perhaps even HBO and pay-per-view porn could become subject to the same regulations as broadcast radio and TV.

Then, of course, the FCC would really have some indecency to combat. Right now, it’s difficult to find objectionable material in the two mediums over which it presides. Yes, there’s Howard Stern, the favorite whipping boy of every family-values firebrand, but his show is currently carried by fewer than forty radio stations nationwide. (In contrast, Tesh can be heard on more than one hundred and fifty.) And beyond Stern and a handful of Stern imitators, several of whom have been fired in recent months, what else is out there?

Already it’s apparent how quickly an amplified FCC enforcement effort could devolve in scary farce. In March, before the Senate had even considered the Broadcasting Indecency Enforcement Act, radio stations were already flinching at the mere possibility of $500,000 fines. In Cleveland, WNCX pulled the Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner” from its rotation because it contained the lyric “funky shit goin’ down in the city.” In Los Angeles, public radio station KCRW took similar precautionary measures by firing longtime contributor Sandra Tsing Loh after she and her engineer forgot to bleep a single F-word out of a pre-recorded piece.

Some pundits maintain that WNCX and KCRW have wildly overreacted to a threat that isn’t there. The FCC itself, however, has enthusiastically legitimized their para
noia by declaring open season on “lone expletives,” which are now subject to “significant penalties.” That’s because in addition to indecency, the FCC also has the power to penalize “profanity,” which it defines, in part, as the “F-word” and those words (or variants thereof) that are as highly offensive as the “F-word.”

What’s the average citizen to make of all this? Prepare yourself for lots and lots of Tesh (unless he starts talking about amputating his penis again). And drop to your knees and pray that cable TV, satellite TV and radio, and the Internet remain free from FCC regulation. Because really, how much enforced propriety can one freedom-loving nation stand? Already, there’s a surfeit of decency. While Pax-TV is available in ninety-five million households, it has attracted more than three million actual viewers on only two occasions during its six-year history. To make ends meet, it airs infomercials for hours each day.

Meanwhile, by embracing nudity, sex, profanity, and violence—which is to say, everything the FCC aspires to eliminate—HBO has netted an estimated twenty-seven million paying subscribers. And that’s the beauty of our current media age: There’s decency for the pious, trash for coarser sorts, and plenty of squeaky-clean fare for the kids. Blessed with such abundance, we all should be celebrating. Instead, the FCC and its allies broadcast a clear, condescending, and cynical message: if allowed to make your own choices, they believe, you will invariably choose sleaze over rectitude, fart jokes over sermons, Stern over Tesh. And only by fining indecency out of existence can decency triumph.

Michael McDermott and his family may have been the only people to move out of Seattle in the early 1990s, when that city’s high-tech grunge cachet was at its peak. The McDermotts moved to an abandoned dairy farm in Kelliher, Minnesota. The place was soon hopping with strange cattle—tall, hairy bovines with big horns, which arrived in a range of colors from specialty breeders all over the world.

There is something about these animals that have a hold on McDermott’s imagination, something that transports him back to his ancestors among the Highland clans of Scotland. “Can you imagine the ancient Scots going to war riding their Highland cattle, with their bodies painted blue … fighting alongside their Highland cattle?” McDermott asked me, by way of an unsolicited e-mail, a few months ago. “I am a bull tamer, and through my understanding of the form and function, I have recreated the ancient aurochs. You are invited to view our site and begin an adventure with the use of Highland genetics and its connections to ancient Highland culture.”

While driving hundreds of miles to his two-hundred-acre spread in northwestern Minnesota, it occurred to me that McDermott might have been inviting me to his website, not his actual farm. But I was practically there, and determined to see for myself what he was talking about.
According to McDermott, the Highland cattle and Highland crosses he breeds are well suited to the forests and bogs of northwestern Minnesota, able to survive outside and even give birth during harsh winters with no shelter. These are the cattle he envisions as the center of his Highland forefathers’ world, the ones clansmen rode into battle against the Romans. More tangibly, he says his bulls’ ability to graze on a wide range of rough forage helps create a natural balance of forests and their fauna, and keeps trees and shrubs in place, minimizing soil erosion. As if that weren’t enough, they provide jumbo-sized rib-eye steaks that are relatively low in cholesterol, which he sells by mail order.

When McDermott wrote to me about recreating the ancient auroch, I didn’t know what an auroch was—a monument à la Stonehenge? A Celtic symbol? A Bronze Age bagpipe? Turns out it’s a now-extinct breed of wild cattle, Bos primigenius, which is thought to be the ancestor of domestic cattle. The prehistoric cave paintings in Lascaux, France, featured aurochs prominently. Julius Caesar wrote about the animal he encountered in the Black Forest in the first century B.C., saying, “They are but a little less than elephants in size… Their strength is very great, and also their speed. They spare neither man nor beast that they see. They cannot endure the sight of men, nor be tamed.”

Aurochs were hunted throughout most of Europe during the Middle Ages until only a small number remained in a royal forest in what is now Poland. The last auroch died in 1627.

Through modern genetic methods and ancient breeding stock, McDermott claims to have recreated the auroch by accident when he bred his Highland cattle with Belgian Blue cattle. To my untrained eye, the hairy, muscular hybrid he has created does bear a striking resemblance to pictures of the wild cattle species of yore. Yet even at eight feet long and five feet high, the bulls are considerably smaller than some of the huge auroch skeletons unearthed in Europe, which have stood nearly six feet at the shoulder. But, hey, a miniature poodle is still a poodle, right?

Well, sort of. As close as McDermott appears to have gotten to an auroch look-alike, scientists say there is virtually no chance that he has reverse-engineered the original auroch’s genetic makeup. Still, it’s kind of a kick to see McDermott pet and calm a big animal that looks like the one Caesar declared untamable. I decide I’d be willing to ride one into battle alongside McDermott should the Canadians ever attack his farm from the north.—Dan Gilchrist

It started innocently enough, with a casual decision to gradually weed beige out of my wardrobe. What has beige done for me lately? What does it do for anyone, really? Have you ever received a compliment on a beige blouse or scarf? Later, while car shopping, I eagerly clicked on a web listing for a Plymouth Volare, an old favorite. I was crestfallen, then oddly annoyed to learn that the sedan was an indescribably innocuous shade of beige. You could compare it to the cream filling of a four-day-old bismarck. It made the car unbuyable. In the same way that tinted windows can impart a pimpish feel to certain automobiles, I realized that a beige Volare just immediately signifies “child molester.”

Whence all the beige in our world? I began to wonder. The more you look, the more there is. And the more you see, the more perplexing it becomes. Two years ago, you may recall, astronomers declared the universe to be a turquoise shade—the New York Times even ran a little Pantone-ish square of the shade on its front page—but weeks later they said sorry, we got it wrong. The real color of the universe is beige. Somehow that seems only fitting, and foreboding: Beige is as infinitely mysterious and ever-present as the universe itself. Beige is the universe.

Red is supposed to stimulate the appetite, while yellow is agitating. Certain shades of blue promote tranquility. What affect does beige have? Color theory tells us simply that beige represents practicality, conservatism, and neutrality. In other words, it has earned a reputation as the ultimate no-nonsense color. This explains how it has come to dominate in millions of square feet of corporate and institutional workspaces: copy rooms and kitchens, waiting rooms and lobbies, walls, halls, bathroom stalls… In its sheer abundance, beige collapses on itself to become stasis, obsolescence, mountains of computer monitors exported to Chinese junkyards.

Even now, despite the inroads white, gray, and black have made in the computer-equipment color palette, beige stubbornly holds sway in the average office (the sliver of candy-colored Macs is so small as to be insignificant). Post-it notes provide a small bit of solace—they’re not only useful, but yellow. But overall it’s a losing battle. Think about it. Did you ever get file folders in any other color than “manila” without specifically asking? A friend of mine just started a new job in a one-hundred-percent beige cubicle. Looking up at the white ceiling is his only form of relief, he says. No wonder half the workforce is on antidepressants and the other half hates its job. That’s the effect of an economy fueled by business-like beige.

Both in and outside the workplace, beige does dress up and try to disguise itself in more evocatively named colors—puce, taupe, cream, buff, oatmeal, biscuit, ecru, mushroom—but these many guises only reinforce its ubiquity. Tan and khaki are excluded from beige classification, however. They, like those food-oriented agents of beige, have other associations that give them some dimension. Beige, however, can only be a color. Or rather, it—not white—is the true non-color.

Beige creeps in when nobody is around to make a choice otherwise. Beige is absence: of care, of taste, of opinion. It is a void or vacuum (which further supports its recent scientific designation as the color of nothingness). Beige as “neutrality”? It’s more like beige as the intersection of mediocrity and apathy. This is why beige is simply everywhere, once you start looking, the visual residue of some weird, dull-minded neurosis, hiding in plain sight.

If you had to write the most boring book in the world, it would be hard to top the so-called Beige Book. This tome is published not once, but eight times a year by the Federal Reserve Bank—one of those all-powerful agencies that we really ought to know more about. (I, for one, simply can’t summon the interest. Maybe that’s the point.) The Beige Book itself is off-putting enough; purporting to gather “anecdotal information” from each of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks, its title is probably more effective that any form of obvious censorship could be. Then there’s Minneapolis’ own Federal Reserve Bank, whose designers seem to have made a point of choosing the beige-est possible shade of Kasota limestone (a favorite among institutional architects in the upper Midwest). Standing aloofly beside the Mississippi, the layers and textures of the complex deflect curiosity by radiating a willful blandness, such that a passerby’s natural impulse is to direct her attention toward the river—which is probably just the way the Fed wants it.

Often you notice beige only in the presence of some other more assertive color. The Déjà Vu Showgirls club, just down Washington Avenue, provides a welcome contrast. One could argue that it’s intentionally garish and tasteless, given what the building’s tenant is up to, and it’s certainly no architectural wonder. However, let’s all be thankful for the pink paint on its frosted-stucco façade. It could’ve been beige. After all, beige was good enough for the multitudes of upscale lofts and townhouses that have sprung up all around it in recent years, importing a suburban, monochromatic, tract-house-style atmosphere into the downtown area.

One of my most-ever hated buildings was the Vision Loss Resources rehabilitation center on Franklin and Lyndale. For years I passed it almost every day, an overwhelming monolith of windowless beige. The people using the building may be blind, but why does it follow that VLR should pretend to make this hulking monstrosity disappear for the rest of us by making it beige? Finally someone saw the light and painted it brick red. Not that it stemmed the tide. There’s a strikingly similar monument to blank beigeness at 28th Street and Nicollet, which I am told is a meatpacking plant (further evidence that beige is a perfect foil for mysterious goings-on); a tour of this particular neighborhood would be incomplete without noting the amazingly full-on beige McDonald’s, right down to the crushed-rock landscaping, a few blocks away. (McDonald’s brief flirtation with repainting its restaurants their original fire-engine red must have died out before they got to this one.)

Beige is a cover-up. In a mass-produced environment, one governed by efficiency and not aesthetics, it is the default choice to offend no one, and so it is imposed on everyone. Unlike white, it is said not to show dirt; thus the beige linoleum, carpet, blinds, walls, and appliances in apartments owned by real estate management companies. But what does the bounty of beige say about us as a nation? Political pundits yammer on about red states and blue states. (Republicans apparently having forgotten about the Red Scares, which could mean it’s now okay to call moderate conservatives pinkos.) However, given all the trouble that simmers just below the surface of our economic fantasies and melting-pot mediocrity, it seems depressingly likely that the true color of the USA is, like the universe itself, beige.

Annie Neeley is a former Rochester courtroom sketcher and police composite artist now living in Florida. She’s been working on this one guy for quite some time. When she met him, he was attractive enough, but hardly dream man material… more of a fixer-upper, really. At first sight, Annie knew she was up to the task. A few short months later, he’s romantic, sexy, and almost the spitting image of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. And now that she’s got him just as she wants him, she’ll do the same thing she did to all her dream men before: Auction him off on eBay for around $1,500.

“Jack the Pirate” is fifteen glorious inches of fashion-doll makeover, and Annie Neeley is one of a growing number of doll artists making a healthy income selling One of a Kind (OOAK) repainted dolls.

OOAK repaints are commercially purchased dolls—Barbie, Bratz, Gene, and so on—that get stripped of their original paint and costuming and completely made over. While she was working in the Rochester transit system, Neeley was a collector of regular dolls when she stumbled into the world of artful reconstruction. “I saw the repaints for sale on eBay and I thought ‘I can do this, and I can do it better,’” she told me.

It’s something like cosmetic surgery for dolls. The procedure may include erasing the doll’s facial features with nail-polish remover and repainting her face; taking her head off and removing her hair in order to re-root a different ’do; straightening bent arms or bending straight ones by making an incision in the arm with a razor blade, boiling the arm in water to soften the plastic, arranging the limb to the desired position, and then filling in the cut with putty; or using putty to augment facial features. Perhaps the most disturbing of the makeover processes is the “boil perm,” in which a doll’s hair is set by boiling her head.

DIY plastic surgeons find help and solace in the work of Jim Faraone. He is the co-chair of the International Fashion Doll Convention, an organization that sponsors a contest and maintains an email list dedicated to repainting techniques. Do you need to know how to rethread Barbie’s hair? Detach her head, and use a piece of wire as a needle. If the wire gets lost in there, you can use a crochet hook to retrieve it. “The wire held up well and it only took me about three Star Trek episodes to reroot the whole head,” wrote Laurie Samford. Several books have also been published that compile this wealth of information.

There is a brisk market for remade dolls. “I’d venture to say there are twenty-five to thirty repaint artists on eBay who do this,” Neeley explained. “And there are probably ten of us that do the best and have the top sales. There’s a little niche of very wealthy ladies who collect these dolls, and they will fight each other tooth-and-nail for them. Sometimes I think it’s a gambling thing.”

In other words, this can be not only a spendy habit, but a highly addictive one. Neeley slyly confides that she has one repeat client who has sixty of her dolls stashed in her bedroom closet, while a special doll showroom is being added on to her house.—Sarah Sawyer

May 11, 2004

“To a wine grape, it’s Eden.” That’s a trademark of the Napa Valley Vintner’s Association. For this wine guy, the Napa Valley Vintner’s Association tasting this past Thursday was heaven on earth. About eighty Napa Valley wineries showcased their best products, filling The Depot in Minneapolis.

Being that the afternoon tasting for the trade industry was only two hours long, I should have made up a better plan of attack. As it was, I only got around to about fifteen of the eighty wineries, getting delayed by great conversation as well as great wine. Many of these wineries are looking for distribution in Minnesota, so I was quite excited about introducing a few of these hot commodities to The Wine Doctor, one smaller distributor looking for some new labels.
One of my personal goals with the smaller Napa Valley producers, those yet to have distribution here in our fair city, is to introduce their wines myself to the public, through a variety of tasting events. It’s a pleasure to show people who love these wines how easy it is to pick up a cell phone and place an order directly to California. Shipping is “free” when you consider the savings on sales tax.
Anyway, back to the wine tasting, which also showcased many familiar names, such as Shafer, Duckhorn, Terra Valentine, Raymond, Burgess, Clos du Val, Freemark Abbey, Phelps, Heitz, and Schramsberg. Many great wines were offered at their tables, but I found myself giving most of my attention to names like Frias Family, Gargiulo, Long Meadow Ranch, Howell Mountain Vineyards, Von Strasser, and Atalon.
For instance, I spent some time talking with April Gargiulo, the daughter of the vineyard owner—turns out he’s the CEO of Sunkist, and the Napa vineyard is his “hobby”. Well, he may be a mere hobbyist, but the product is amazing! That was the only word I found apt to describe the cabernet, the merlot, and the “Aprile” super Tuscan blend of sangiovese & cabernet.

A whole different story is unfolding at Fife Vineyards, whose owner, Dennis Fife, had been working in the industry forever, for the likes of Inglenook, BV, and Stag’s Leap. His 1999 Reserve Cabernet “Spring Mountain” evoked a similar one-word description in my wine notes: WOW! The experience of Fife only strengthened my devotion to mountain-grown wines, especially those from Spring Mountain. (Remember that the current reigning “champion,” The Wine Spectator’s “best in the world,” is the Paloma merlot from Spring Mountain.)
My pick for best wine at the tasting has to go to the Frias Family (from Spring Mountain, naturally). Fernando Frias was generously showing his ’95, ’99, ’00, & ’01 cabernet (the only wine they make), each vintage a polished gem. Jon Sevigny of JV Wines & Spirits in Napa considers this cabernet the only one worth cellaring for a number of years; it’s very Bordeaux-styled, with great structure and great fruit. I will be showing the ’91, ’95, ’97, ’98 & ’99 at a tasting event coming soon. Stay tuned.

A few other top picks to share: Bell Wine Cellars merlot & cabernet; Freemark Abbey ’99 “Sycamore” and “Bosche” cabernets; Howell Mountain Vineyards’ ’01 “Beatty Ranch” and “Black Sears” Zinfandel; and Turnbull ’01 cabernet “Oakville.” A few others I would be raving about, but had no time to taste (though I have in the past), are Shafer’s “Hillside Select” cabernet, anything from Viader, cabs from Schweiger and Von Strasser, and Reverie’s ’99 Special Reserve.

What did some of the other local pros enjoy? Mikael Thollander of The Wine Doctor reports that his favorite winery was also Frias Family, followed by Gargiulo (do great wine minds think alike, or what?), and Peju. Mikael will be doing all he can to become the distributor for Frias Family wines. Another colleague, Tim Nordland, longtime manager of Lunds/Byerlys wine shops, concurred on the Frias and loved the Viader, though he commented that the latter wasn’t as good as past vintages. He added that the Volker Eisele wines were “killer stuff.”

This pretty well sums up the powerhouse cabernets, merlots and blends from Napa Valley. Killer stuff indeed, and to many minds, surely to my own, worth the high price tags many bottles command. Again, my recent trip to Napa Valley convinced me that this is so. “For a wine grape, it’s Eden.” To a wine lover, this region is truly paradise.

OK, back to the lovely reality that is springtime in Minnesota. What else is happening around town, as pertains to all things vino? Spring wine sales, like our gardens, abound. As a new wave of flowers replaces the last wave as it’s fading, so with wine sales. Following up on Haskell’s, Byerly’s, and Surdyk’s sales, now two fine shops, France 44 and South Lyndale are in full bloom!

Scanning the extensive list from South Lyndale’s website (www.southlyndaleliquors.com) in preparation for a tasting I am hosting for the Northwoods Humane Society in early June, a couple of great wines jump out: Murphy-Goode “Wild Card” (sale price $11.99) and Steele “Pacini” Zinfandel (also $11.99). This is a good time to consider a perfect spring wine, Bonny Dune’s Cigare Volant: big, Rhone-style, as good as a forty-dollar Chateauneuf-du-Pape—at only $22.99. For the imports, try the wider selection at France 44—check out details about their sale at www.france44.com.

Enjoy this most precious springtime ever, with food and friends, and, of course, with wine. And please email me via The Rake or via my website at www.louiethewineguy.com with your picks for the best al fresco dining and best wines-by-the-glass lists in town. I will report on these in a couple of weeks.

And please stop in and visit me at the “Art-a-Whirl” in Northeast this weekend. I will be pouring some “Two Buck Chuck” merlot and a few other esoteric offerings at Old Science, right next door to Dusty’s Dago Bar, 1317 Marshall St. NE, on both Friday and Saturday nights. If you haven’t yet been a part of this art crawl, check it out!

May 3, 2004

There is a lot going on in town right now, with some big sales ending and another in full swing. Byerly’s/Lunds’ sale is done, and the Haskell’s Nickel Sale goes through May 8. Surdyk’s is back on the scene with its “20/20” Sale through May 8,, during which they are featuring twenty percent off all wines in the store that “normally” sell for twenty dollars or more. This is another case where I should make my “consumer alert” about inflated “normal” prices. One small example: Surdyk’s lists Conundrum (a must-try this summer season!) at $26.99 regular price; with twenty percent off, it would be $21.59. By comparison, Wayzata Wine & Spirits (not known for its good values) lists Conundrum at $23.99, and if you attend the “Sipping by the Bay” tasting/fundraising event (more on this later), you get a fifteen percent discount for a sale price of $20.40.

Another brief plug for Sam’s Club & Costco. They feature great prices for low-end wines, but are of special note in the high-end category, which you would not expect. For instance, Sam’s carries Viader regularly. This fabulous product, a Cabernet, Merlot & Cabernet Franc blend, retails at most places for around $90 a bottle. At Sam’s they sell the 750ml for about $55, and the 375ml for $29.99. If you want to have something very special for a Mother’s Day toast, pick up the 375ml bottle. It is a treat.

The big news this week is a tasting report from three events last week. The first was a tasting and fundraiser for the Twin West Chamber of Commerce, where some twenty wines were shown. Among the whites, where a regional comparison of chardonnay was the focus, the entries from Napa (Burgess) and Sonoma (Clos du Bois) showed best over the central coast offerings from Concannon and Castle Rock. The fifth entry in this group was from Pedroncelli of Dry Creek region of Sonoma, and this was picked last.

A special bottle, not available in our market but worth ordering directly from Napa, was the Husch sauvignon blanc. Very clean and smooth, it’s a great wine for summer fish dinners. Topping the list in the white wine department was Bonny Dune’s Muscat Vin de Glaciere dessert wine. Wow! At eighteen percent residual sugar, this luscious treat would be the perfect finish to that special evening which you began with Viader. The “ice wine” sells for $18.99 for the 375ml bottle.

On to the reds! My collection here offered a wide range, from the “good value”of Penfolds “Rawson Retreat” merlot ($6 at Sam’s) to the wildly eclectic and very over-priced ($45) Blockheadia Zinfandel. Nevertheless, this Rhone-style wine was by far the hit of the evening, though the ’99 Burgess Zinfandel showed very well, as did the ’99 Mt. Veeder Cabernet (my favorite, but then I am a fool for Napa mountain-grown cabernet!).

Other reds of note: Laurier Pinot Noir, Charles Shaw (of “2-buck Chuck” fame) Merlot, River Oaks Cabernet, and Purple Moon Shiraz, all direct from California entries and all worth checking out if you travel anywhere Trader Joe’s has a store. (There are rumors about TJ coming to Minnesota. If anyone has inside information about this development, please let me know.)

A very special finale for the red wine enthusiasts at this event was a port from Shafer Vineyards of Napa Valley fame. Absolutely spectacular! Worth $30 for a half bottle? Most definitely.

The second tasting event was the aforementioned “Sipping by the Bay” fundraiser put on at the Wayzata Country Club by the local Lions. This was your more typical tasting event with around seventy wines offered, with perhaps one-third of those worth tasting. I guess that they want to offer something for everyone, but really—Yellow Tail Shiraz?

To give the French a break, I did try the Louis Jadot Pouilly Fuisse, and it was pleasant, but was it worth $21.69? Perhaps my palate has become dulled by the over-fruity and sometimes over-oaked California chardonnays. The French white Burgundies just don’t do it for me like they used to. Perhaps this would not be true if I were tasting a $50 Mersault or Puligny Montrachet, but, then again, how great are the high-end California chards, like Ferrari Carano and Newton? At the lower end of the spectrum, I’ll take California any time. And the Australian chards? They do etter, in my opinion, with the reds. Among the better chardonnays shown were Fess Parker, Kunde, Clos Pegase, and Toasted Head (very oaky!). And, of course, the Conundrum, which unfortunately still gets listed as a Caymus product, which it isn’t. Conundrum is a blend of chardonnay with several other grapes…a touch sweet, but very smooth. A truly perfect picnic wine.

The other “Burgundy” grape, pinot noir, was well represented by David Bruce, La Crema, Kenwood, and Morgan. All very nice to my taste, and even more to my nose. There isn’t a better wine bouquet than pinot noir. (A word of note about Tin Roof’s rose of pinot noir—there are more and better dry rose wines appearing on the market all the time. Check them out. They are great summer wines, and many, like Tin Roof and Bonny Dune, are available with screw caps, which only makes them easier to sneak into parks and other places you are not supposed to bring alcohol.)

The bigger reds like merlot and cabernet and zinfandel were topped by the Terra Valentine Cabernet from Spring Mountain. Don’t get me started on how great the Spring Mountain appellation truly is! Terra Valentine may not be the best producer on Spring Mountain (they have some amazing competition with the likes of Pride Mountain, Frias Family, Guilliams, and Paloma, to name a few), but their product is very good and they are owned by the Minnesota Wurtele’s. Gotta support our friends and neighbors. Clos du Val showed very well (if that is news), and the Trefethen Cab was solid. A bit disappointing to my taste were the cabs from Alexander Valley, like Geyser Peak and Frei Brothers.

In my next report I will share my experience at the Napa Valley Vintner’s Association event on May 6. And we will also look further into what is happening on the local wine scene during May. As we Minnesotans can all agree, everything begins looking lovely in May, when the season opens on outdoor grilling, picnics, boating, cabins, and al fresco dining in the city. What a great time to share exciting new wines or old favorites. Enjoy this fabulous month!