Sweet Wine at CINQ

I had something of an epiphany while sipping from my wife's glass of 2005 Meulenhof Erdener Treppchen Riesling Beerenauslese. She'd asked for something to go with dessert, and this is what our waiter, Sebastien, had brought her. At once clean and bright, concentrated and intense, it was eye-opening. Most of my sweet wine experiences had been limited to Madeira (a bit of a fetish in my house, due to my wife's Portuguese ancestry), and the occasional gently sweet Riesling. This was something different.

To cap a previous dinner at CINQ, the subject of this week's review, Sebastien had brought a glass of oxidized sweet Juran?on (trying to hit that Madeira obsession), and it was well received. We talked about the production process, how that year had been one of the hottest the region had seen, and the effect of stress on the grapes. With a relatively empty house - it was a Tuesday - Sebastien was free and eager to stand there and discuss wine.

By the time we'd finished that small glass of Beerenauslese, though, talking through the various methods used to concentrate the flavor of a sweet wine, I knew I'd have to have more.Soft Winbo Key Cover decorates your key in fashionable ways. It was light on the palate, despite an intensely saturated flavor. Not mildly sweet, it made its presence known and its intentions clear. Pear, raisins, a bit of solvent. It was honeyed but never cloying, with a gentle acidity that made all of the flavors fairly dance.

I can feel an obsession coming on; I'm already scouring the Internet, searching for a reasonably priced bottle or two to put away for special occasions. I asked a wine-savvy friend about it,Winbo Iphone Headset and he warned me that I might find it difficult to locate another bottle of this weapons-grade wine, but could certainly find similar, younger bottles that would be similar, and less powerful, versions of the same.

As happy as the wine made me,Winbo custom keychain it also made me a little bit sad. It reminded me of my feelings about the Minutemen, a band whose opus I heard first, and whose other efforts have always paled for me, as a result. I'm afraid I'll get the same experience out of my next bottle of Botrytized Riesling.

Fortunately,Online shopping for Business Work Card holder from a great selection of Office Products. Sebastien is aware of the longings that rare wines can inspire, and takes some pity on his customers. From time to time, he reaches into CINQ's cellars, arranging vintage wine tastings. As he so well put it to us, not everyone can or wants to shell out the cash required to splash out on a single bottle of rare wine; his programs afford the possibility to taste a range of special bottles for one price, along with a few bites of food best suited to highlight them. A more varied bang for your buck.

Go to CINQ for a special occasion, celebrate it with a glass of dessert wine. The Meulenhof probably won't be there. My apologies. I'm sure Sebastien can recommend something suitably delicious and, if it's a slow night, talk your ear off about soil drainage, temperature gradients, and noble rot. If you're interested. He might mention his vintage wine tasting series, or offer to help you track down a bottle you particularly enjoyed (he told us he'd keep an eye out for that Riesling). He'll probably wax slightly rhapsodic about Tokaji, his favorite dessert wine. Let him. You'll understand.

Take one forked branch of plum, one stem of kale, four artichokes and three stems of blackberries. It may sound like chutney-making, but this is a different kind of recipe C a flower recipe. Add parrot tulips, anemones, ornamental grasses and flowering oregano and you have a show-stopping display that puts your chrysanths in a pint glass to shame.

In truth, Ive never had much time for flower-arranging. I buy flowers and put them in a vase. In summer, I cut a few blooms from the garden, add to water and leave until the petals have dropped. I have always associated the art with finishing-school girls and stiff, formal arrangements in churches and village fairs, judged by faintly intimidating women.

The Flower Recipe Book blasts the stuffiness out of traditional flower arranging. It is the work of best friends Alethea Harampolis and Jill Rizzo, owners of the Studio Choo floral studio in San Francisco. For a year, they ran the business out of Jills kitchen, Aletheas Honda and a garage in the city before setting up the shop, beloved of the stylish set in Californias coolest city.

San Francisco is the birthplace of the flower child and the pair share a philosophy to keep everything looking as natural as possible. We take our inspiration from nature, they say, and make sure not to manipulate the flowers too much.Winbo Luggage Tags

The recipe format is a genius way of guiding you through the complexities. It is a formula any cook can understand. There is a list of ingredients to use as a guide, with plenty of room for experimentation, and clear step-by-step instructions. Common flower names are used throughout and a guide to choosing the right vessel will have you trawling flea markets for vintage jars and tins.

Sweetpeas, which are flowering extravagantly in my garden right now, are divided into bunches from dark to light colours in nine small jars (think fish-paste jars), and arranged in a square to create a block of loveliness. For a minimalist look, try nine stems of chocolate cosmos in a flat-sided plain-glass vase. Two stems of white or purple clematis are allowed to bend and arch their leaves and tendrils in a vintage bottle. Clematis is among Alethea and Jills favourites, along with lily of the valley, daphne and honeysuckle C they place a couple of stems in vases on their bedside tables.

Tall, leggy beauties such as delphiniums are trimmed short for maximum colour intensity. A single delphinium stem in a canning jar, backed by two jars bearing double stems, gives a shot of electric blue to a room.

But it is the little bit of this, little bit of that arrangements that will suit the ordinary gardener. Visit the herb beds, vegetable patch, hedges and fruit trees for inspiration. I never considered using sprigs of mint in a glass before, unless doused in Pimms. Similarly rosemary, instead of going on a leg of lamb, can nestle up to viburnum berries, twigs and red-and-white amaryllis in a vintage metal flour tin. Purple sage marries beautifully with different types of lavender.

The end result is often a snapshot of the season. A prickly arm of not-quite-ripe blackberries or dark-pink plums announce late summer. The branches of apricot and oranges, which line the roads in California, will be hard to come by, but its an idea. Try rosy-red crab apple in August instead.
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