Steven Page goodness ...
Dec. 16th, 2002 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hiddenmusethis is for those of you that are on sabbatical from the barenaked.net board - or even for those of you that have permanently estranged yourselves. Because I love you, I go to the board intermittently and bring back this bit of goodness.
Steven's Page
Steven's Holiday Wish List
When I was a kid, this was the time when I would lie on the floor and pore over the pages of the Christmas catalogs that would find themselves thrown onto our front porch. While visions of slot cars danced in my head, the executives at Eaton's and Simpsons-Sears licked their chops, safe in the knowledge that kids like me all over Canada were dreaming the same dream for their holiday gifts. As a grown-up, I try to avoid such outright displays of avarice, but it's hard to help it at the holidays, isn't it? Especially when people keep asking what I want, and I can only say "a bucket of chicken" so many times before it a) stops being funny or b) gives me a tummy ache. So, for those of you asking, or maybe looking for a gift for someone else who likes wine and food, here you go:
SCREWPULL This is one of the greatest inventions of all time. They come in several models and price ranges (from $45 to $400). The classic table model is great, but the lever version is incredible. Push down the lever, in goes the worm. Pull up, and the cork is out. Since I got one, I no longer have to fish out bits of floating cork, nor have I had to deal with a broken cork, stuck halfway up the neck. Even the oldest, crumbliest corks come out clean and with no effort. Sure, those Laguiole waiter's friends from France are beautiful and classic, but the Screwpull is a must have. And they'll make great conversation pieces when my grandkids' generation opens their screw-top bottles of Opus One and Chateau Latour. I know I already have one, but is it so wrong to want one for the cottage too?
RIEDEL GLASSES Riedel, an Austrian crystal company, makes glasses designed for specific wines. They have four different glasses for Tempranillo alone, depending on your price bracket, and the age and style of the wine. Sounds like a load of pretentious hooey right? Until you try them, that is. I am a total believer. Riedel has taken painstaking measures, pseudo-science, and copious amounts of tasting experience to create glassware that direct wine to the perfect part of your tongue in order to make wine drinking as pleasurable as possible. Their Pinot Noir or Burgundy glasses downplay Pinot's acidity, while accentuating the fruit, richness and balance in the wine. Their Bordeaux glasses downplay the tannins without making the wines flabby. It's freaky how good this makes the wines taste. The glasses do nothing to the makeup of the wines themselves, but they are designed to accentuate the positives, and these aren't the kind of glasses that make good wines better and bad wines worse, it just makes them all taste better. (No silk purses out of sow's ears here- I'm hoping that in 2003 we can all avoid the quaffing of sow's ears). Try this at home: pour a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon into a regular wineglass and a glass into a Riedel Bourdeaux glass (up to the waist of the glass). Swirl both. You'll notice that the Riedel glass gives the wine a much greater surface area to meet the air. In my kitchen and dining room, the Riedel has consistently given up much more aroma and a much more pleasurable drink. I've got a bunch, but as I get sucked deeper into the cult, I feel that I need to have every glass in the collection. I mean, what if I need to know all the nuances of a Riesling from the Rheingau and from the Mosel in one night? I can't survive with just the Rheingua glass, can I? PS - their "gourmet glass", which has the same bowl as their Sangiovese glass, makes a great all-purpose, and it's short stem means it fits in the dishwasher, too!
BREATHEASY WINE FUNNEL This gadget is totally uncouth and totally cool. It's a funnel with a mesh screen at the top for catching sediment (some will argue that disturbing the sediment can add off flavours to the wine, but I imagine the screen just for catching the little bits that signal the beginning of a sedimentary avalanche, not the avalanche itself). The real charm, however, is at the bottom, where the edges of the funnel are perforated, allowing the wine to spray out of the funnel, along the walls of your decanter or glass. Perfect for mouth-scraping Cabs and Syrahs, and to help you get a sense of some young, age-worthy wines behind their mysterious wall of tannins. It's also a lot gentler than the more aggressive pour with which we sometimes decant our drinks in the name of aeration. I found these at William Ashley in Toronto, but I know you can get them online at a bunch of gifty-type websites, too.
CLEANING BRUSH How to clean all this glassware? It always makes me very nervous, especially with my porky paws and butterfingers. First assess your wine intake. If it's the holiday season and you've shared several bottles of cheer, make sure your guests took a cab or slept on the couch, then fill your glasses with water and leave them until tomorrow. Might be an ugly sight in the morning, but a fair bit prettier than a sink full of broken glass and some cut-up fingers. In the morning, use a brush to clean the finer pieces of glassware you have, and don't twist the stems away from the bowls, which, for some reason seems to be our instinct. Lee Valley sells brushes under the name "Vase Brushes", but I think they're just trying to deflect my guilt over calling them "Champagne Flute Brushes", as that's what they're really for, aren't they?
A SUBSCRIPTION TO VINES Okay, so I already have one, but I felt it necessary to remind you what a great stocking stuffer/Hanukkah gift/office pool gift/New Year's Resolution that Vines can be. I hope that however you and your family celebrate the holiday season, a happy and healthy one is yours. See you in 2003.
Copyright Steven Page/ Vines Magazine November 2002
I've said it once, I'll say it for the eleventy billionth time. Steven Page rocks me. Hard. :^)
Steven's Page
Steven's Holiday Wish List
When I was a kid, this was the time when I would lie on the floor and pore over the pages of the Christmas catalogs that would find themselves thrown onto our front porch. While visions of slot cars danced in my head, the executives at Eaton's and Simpsons-Sears licked their chops, safe in the knowledge that kids like me all over Canada were dreaming the same dream for their holiday gifts. As a grown-up, I try to avoid such outright displays of avarice, but it's hard to help it at the holidays, isn't it? Especially when people keep asking what I want, and I can only say "a bucket of chicken" so many times before it a) stops being funny or b) gives me a tummy ache. So, for those of you asking, or maybe looking for a gift for someone else who likes wine and food, here you go:
SCREWPULL This is one of the greatest inventions of all time. They come in several models and price ranges (from $45 to $400). The classic table model is great, but the lever version is incredible. Push down the lever, in goes the worm. Pull up, and the cork is out. Since I got one, I no longer have to fish out bits of floating cork, nor have I had to deal with a broken cork, stuck halfway up the neck. Even the oldest, crumbliest corks come out clean and with no effort. Sure, those Laguiole waiter's friends from France are beautiful and classic, but the Screwpull is a must have. And they'll make great conversation pieces when my grandkids' generation opens their screw-top bottles of Opus One and Chateau Latour. I know I already have one, but is it so wrong to want one for the cottage too?
RIEDEL GLASSES Riedel, an Austrian crystal company, makes glasses designed for specific wines. They have four different glasses for Tempranillo alone, depending on your price bracket, and the age and style of the wine. Sounds like a load of pretentious hooey right? Until you try them, that is. I am a total believer. Riedel has taken painstaking measures, pseudo-science, and copious amounts of tasting experience to create glassware that direct wine to the perfect part of your tongue in order to make wine drinking as pleasurable as possible. Their Pinot Noir or Burgundy glasses downplay Pinot's acidity, while accentuating the fruit, richness and balance in the wine. Their Bordeaux glasses downplay the tannins without making the wines flabby. It's freaky how good this makes the wines taste. The glasses do nothing to the makeup of the wines themselves, but they are designed to accentuate the positives, and these aren't the kind of glasses that make good wines better and bad wines worse, it just makes them all taste better. (No silk purses out of sow's ears here- I'm hoping that in 2003 we can all avoid the quaffing of sow's ears). Try this at home: pour a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon into a regular wineglass and a glass into a Riedel Bourdeaux glass (up to the waist of the glass). Swirl both. You'll notice that the Riedel glass gives the wine a much greater surface area to meet the air. In my kitchen and dining room, the Riedel has consistently given up much more aroma and a much more pleasurable drink. I've got a bunch, but as I get sucked deeper into the cult, I feel that I need to have every glass in the collection. I mean, what if I need to know all the nuances of a Riesling from the Rheingau and from the Mosel in one night? I can't survive with just the Rheingua glass, can I? PS - their "gourmet glass", which has the same bowl as their Sangiovese glass, makes a great all-purpose, and it's short stem means it fits in the dishwasher, too!
BREATHEASY WINE FUNNEL This gadget is totally uncouth and totally cool. It's a funnel with a mesh screen at the top for catching sediment (some will argue that disturbing the sediment can add off flavours to the wine, but I imagine the screen just for catching the little bits that signal the beginning of a sedimentary avalanche, not the avalanche itself). The real charm, however, is at the bottom, where the edges of the funnel are perforated, allowing the wine to spray out of the funnel, along the walls of your decanter or glass. Perfect for mouth-scraping Cabs and Syrahs, and to help you get a sense of some young, age-worthy wines behind their mysterious wall of tannins. It's also a lot gentler than the more aggressive pour with which we sometimes decant our drinks in the name of aeration. I found these at William Ashley in Toronto, but I know you can get them online at a bunch of gifty-type websites, too.
CLEANING BRUSH How to clean all this glassware? It always makes me very nervous, especially with my porky paws and butterfingers. First assess your wine intake. If it's the holiday season and you've shared several bottles of cheer, make sure your guests took a cab or slept on the couch, then fill your glasses with water and leave them until tomorrow. Might be an ugly sight in the morning, but a fair bit prettier than a sink full of broken glass and some cut-up fingers. In the morning, use a brush to clean the finer pieces of glassware you have, and don't twist the stems away from the bowls, which, for some reason seems to be our instinct. Lee Valley sells brushes under the name "Vase Brushes", but I think they're just trying to deflect my guilt over calling them "Champagne Flute Brushes", as that's what they're really for, aren't they?
A SUBSCRIPTION TO VINES Okay, so I already have one, but I felt it necessary to remind you what a great stocking stuffer/Hanukkah gift/office pool gift/New Year's Resolution that Vines can be. I hope that however you and your family celebrate the holiday season, a happy and healthy one is yours. See you in 2003.
Copyright Steven Page/ Vines Magazine November 2002
I've said it once, I'll say it for the eleventy billionth time. Steven Page rocks me. Hard. :^)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-12-16 08:33 pm (UTC)He said it, not me! But, I do love a man with a bit of a self-deprecating sense of humor. :)