Blog

April 20, 2004

This week’s edition must begin with a report from last Friday night’s gala Napa Spring Wine Fling, presented by The Rake and sponsored by Excelsior Vintage. The party, held in the lovely atrium of the Doubletree Park Place Hotel, was attended by about 60, and featured almost 70 wines from Napa Valley. Those from the local wine industry remarked that there had never been as varied and fine assembly of Napa wines here in the Twin Cities. Those accolades this might be eclipsed by the Napa Valley Vintner’s Association tasting, coming up on May 6—we’ll have to see.

The wines shown last Friday night included certain labels available here in Minnesota, names like Jarvis and Vine Cliff (this chardonnay was stunning!), Chateau Montelena and Shafer. But most of the excitement arose around one particular table, which showcased some special wines not yet distributed in Minnesota. Standouts in this group included: Luddite ’01 Carignane, L’Ecosse ’96 Cabernet Franc, Atalon ’98 Merlot, Atlas Peak ’97 Cabernet, Prager ’97 Cabernet, and a few stunning meritage wines like Barlow ’01 Red, Elodian (Tom Eddy) ’00 Napa Cuvee, Beaucanon ’00 “Trifecta”, High Rocks ’01 “Wrangler Rouge”, Delectus ’00 Argentum, & Orin Swift’s amazing ’02 “The Prisoner.”

It should be noted that all those wines not yet available here in the “Paris on the Prairie”—wines that wowed industry palates as well as those of the general public—sell for under $30 a bottle. “The Prisoner” quite an impact, as well it was expected to. Dan Dawson, owner of Back Room Wines in Napa, offered this tasting note: “Orin Swift owner/winemaker Dave Phinney brought me a barrel sample of this ’02 “The Prisoner” last summer, and for those familiar with the ’01, it’s all that and more. The recipe is about the same: just over half zinfandel, and about a fifth each cabernet, sirah, and charbono. Perhaps the best compliment I can give it is that Dave is accomplishing his goal of consistency. He wants the same sweet, spicy, jammy, exceptionally smooth, faintly toasty, hedonistically delicious red wine every year. …It is off the charts on the Yummy scale. It is unique as a wine itself, for I have heard over and over again since the 2001 disappeared, “This is good, but it’s no Prisoner.”

The great thing is that you, dear reader, can pick up the telephone, call Dan at his shop (707-226-3560), and have him put together a mixed case of wines like “The Prisoner.” Whether he has any of this gem remaining I cannot predict, but I do know someone else in Napa who had six cases when I was visiting (three weeks ago). And this was my main excitement Friday night, to witness Greg Varner, owner of Excelsior Vintage, Andre Peters of Surdyks, and Mikael Thollander, of The Wine Doctor, gush about these remarkable wines.

The point is this: For every great wine you encounter on a retail shelf here in town, there are ten more just as good at perhaps half the price gathering dust in California. There truly is a glut of great wines available to us; we simply have to learn the ropes when it comes to acquiring them. Delectus is a label, for example, that I deeply want to expose around town. Its owner/winemaker, Gerhard, makes amazing wines (his “Argentum” was Mikael Thollander’s top pick, and it sells at the winery for $20 a bottle, less 20% if you are a “friend of Louie’s.” Pick up the phone and give Gerhard a call(707-255-1252).

Remember that every penny you spend on shipping, you save by not paying sales tax (nine percent here in Minnesota). I was concerned about shipping at first, until I saw the Styrofoam shipping containers Dan Dawson uses. He has never had a case of wine not reach its destination safely.

My deepest wish is to educate wine lovers and expose them to these “insider secrets,” so that they can fully enjoy the incredible quality that comes out of Napa Valley and other west coast wine regions —without spending a small fortune. Remember the May 6 tasting event. It will cost you $75, but in the end it could save you hundreds.

Louie the Wine Guy will next be offering a few of the above-mentioned gems at a benefit tasting for the Twin West Chamber of Commerce, Thursday April 29, at the Colonnade Building in Golden Valley. (952-540-0234 for reservations)

Also coming up: my “Introduction to the World of Wine” seminar series, with the focus on the first of three sessions being California, Oregon, & Washington. This seminar takes place Wednesday May 5, 6-9pm, at the Doubletree Park Place Hotel. ($40/$35 club members, includes light dinner. 763-476-0699 for reservations, which are required).

As for other newsworthy events about town, Haskell’s and Byerly’s & Lunds continue their big sales through the end of April. Most of the outlets have a variety of free tastings in conjunction with the sales. France 44, for example, offers customers a tasting each week, Saturdays from 2-5pm, with five to eight wines available. Call store for details: 612-925-3252). South Lyndale Liquors, one of my favorite shops, offers the Grapevine
Wine Club tasting series. Go to: http://www.southlyndaleliquors.com/grapevine_main.htm for details.

Here’s a bistro that’s just what it should be, though we would have liked bigger crab cakes for eleven bucks. The spanking new Amsterdam, with its brick-and-wood interior, tin ceiling and little corner-shaped bar looking out onto the Third Street terminus, seems destined to become a favorite jumping-off spot for a night on the town. One could finish up here, too, given the good sized wine selection and great entrees like maple-bourbon glazed salmon, not to mention the best French onion soup around. The homemade gelato merits a separate blessing.

Will Durst, to paraphrase the old country radio music billboard, was doing political satire before it was hip, and he’s still going strong. Part of the San Francisco contingent of comics who didn’t sell out to Hollywood for sitcoms and potato chip commercials, Durst displays the thoughtfulness of Mort Sahl without Sahl’s patina of Ward Cleaver weeniedom; he also summons the righteous anger of Lenny Bruce before he was driven cuckoo. If you don’t attribute when you rip off his insights, quoting Durst will make you sound very smart around the water cooler the next day.
708 N. 1st St., Minneapolis; (612) 338-6393; www.acmecomedycompany.com

You’ve seen him hobnobbing with Bill Clinton, partying (and attending IMF meetings) with Bono, and doing other cool and prestigious things that world-class playwrights-cum-presidents do. But have you actually seen a play by Vaclav Havel? (We won’t ask about the political essays.) Now’s your chance. Known as Havel’s most “successful” (read: accessible) work, the three autobiographical one-acts comprising The Vanek Trilogy were written in the late ’60s after the Soviet clampdown in Czechoslovakia. Don’t let the idea of Eastern European absurdism put you off: The Ministry of Cultural Warfare likes serious drama, but that doesn’t mean they take it—or themselves—too seriously.
810 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; (612) 825-3737; blb.ciceron.com

A simple but powerfully chilling idea ripe with dramatic possibility: What would you do if you were sentenced to die for a crime you didn’t commit? Husband-and-wife writing team Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen (a 1988 Apple Valley High School grad) interviewed forty wrongfully convicted death-row prisoners and boiled their stories down to six. Exonerated’s pared-down approach—a script, a music stand, an actor wearing reading glasses—has netted enthusiastic praise in New York theater circles. This touring production, directed by Gosford Park actor Bob Balaban, includes Lynn Redgrave and Brian Dennehy, the latter of whom, perhaps ironically, is pro-death penalty. But then the point of the play isn’t to convince you of a point so much as simply to make you think. 805 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; (612) 339-7007; www.hennepintheatredistrict.com

Photographer Justin Newhall takes on the myths of the American West, tracing their subtle but inescapable residue in contemporary junkscapes of parking lots, stores, parks, monuments, and suburban tracts. He picks out the sculptural abstractions in a lakeside picnic area in South Dakota, and documents a shaggy heap of invasive Russian olive trees sprawling dumbly along an Oregon highway. The results are poignant, pungent, and absurd, sometimes all at once. An image of a display window in Idaho, where family shoes commingle with plastic eggs, could be an oblique allusion to countless westward marches by folks who followed Lewis and Clark in search of something better. Fans of Robert Adams, Joel Sternfeld, and William Eggleston will recognize a keen affinity here. 711 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; (612) 824-5500; www.mncp.org

Remember when you could snuggle up with the newspaper rather than read it online? When you could get your information from the phone book rather than from Google? Those were the days. A group of 50 photographers and one installation artist remind us of our love for the tangible as they turn their camera lenses on the printed word. Whether using the book as a medium for their art, capturing its simple beauty, or documenting the reader’s relationship with it, these photographers keep our attention cover to cover. 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis; (612) 870-3131; www.artsmia.org

In France, Mary Beach has a place in the pantheon of major living Surrealists, and frequently collaborated with the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Robert Mapplethorpe. However, she’s not so well known here, in the land of her birth; in fact, Speedboat’s putting on her first-ever Twin Cities show. Her fascinating life includes a stint in a Nazi prison camp, a glass-ceiling breakthrough in the 1950s art world, and later still, prime spots in the beatnik scenes surrounding City Lights and the Chelsea Hotel. Paris Working collects sixty-four of her latest collages—at eighty-five, she’s still producing vibrant work. 566 N. Snelling Ave., St. Paul; (651) 641-0538; www.thespeedboatgallery.com

A night of wide-ranging new choreography and structured improv from one of our state’s most venerable dance troupes. Artistic director Heidi Hauser Jasmin loves to mix things up, and the kinetic pyrotechnics on display will be as varied in mood as the accompanying music. The movement piece “Tongues” jerks with the wild swagger of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, while modernist composer George Crumb provides a chilly aural backdrop for the solo “Framed.” Jasmin also memorializes her late friend Charlie Byrd, the great jazz guitarist, with a work set to three of his silky-smooth songs. 1940 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; (612) 871-9077

Minnesota’s own Frances Gumm practically wrote the book on a particular strain of tragic Hollywood irony, living (and dying) unhappily in private, but bringing joy and inspiration to millions as Judy Garland. One of those she changed forever was iconoclastic local choreographer Danny Buraczeski of Jazzdance, whose 2003 debut of this Garland celebration produced some great and powerful aaahs. This month, he brings Happy back in an expanded form, and you can be sure that this labor of love won’t lack for brains, heart, or courage. 1420 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; (612) 340-1725; southerntheater.org