Ono

Maui, a tropical paradise of beaches, jungles, mountains and plenty of sunshine, does not need to attract me through promises of flavors, but it certainly doesn’t fall short on that front, either. I just spent a week and a half with Mrs. Spectator basking in the wonders of Maui, and in this post I’ll try to summarize some of them.

Maui offers concentrated pleasures but is unpretentious, and allows one to surrender to the moment (and the sun), very naturally. When it comes to flavors, on a place like Maui one cannot ignore the role of context: after all, most of the produce on Maui can be found elsewhere (perhaps at higher prices) through the well-oiled machines of import/export. The point is that a Maui avocado purchased at a California supermarket just doesn’t taste the same as the ripe-picked avocado eaten under the shade of the tree on which it had grown – and the same applies to guavas, falling on you as you hike through lush tropical scenery, repeatedly demonstrating gravity as Newton’s apple did. Mrs. Spectator adds that cracking macadamia nuts on the spot can be compared to experiencing art on the original wall on which is was painted. As this blog constantly stresses, flavor experiences are holistic in nature.

Some flavor experiences are still not exportable even in their context-free form. The famous road to Hana provided us with at least two of those: oatmeal-macadamia-chocolate-chip homemade cookies sold at an unconspicuous roadstand, and Coconut Glen’s coconut-based icecream, which must be the best icecream in the world, as judged by an unbiased panel of two. Their complex yet delicate and balanced flavors made our purchase decision very hard, starting with the simple but delicious coconut with coconut candy and lilikoi (passionfruit) flavors, through banana-rum to the more complex pineapple-panang-curry, durian and chocolate-chili. A gong allows customers to pledge loyalty to the best icecream in the world, and needless to say, we gonged twice.

Speaking of lilikoi, this is the winner of the tropical fruit for us, and this says a lot coming from two omnivores who can put even fruitarians to shame when it comes to exotic fruit. Yellow, orange, purple, smooth-skinned or wrinkled (preferably wrinkled), their flavors vary along at least three axes of sweet vs tart, simple vs complex and a third axis we can best describe as “tropicality” as it is somewhat similar to a flavor property shared by other tropical fruit such as longan, rambutan, and even papaya.

One can spend an eternity gorging and glorifying the golden smell of pineapples, the tender smoothness of small apple bananas, or the unique sweetness of strawberry papayas, but for the true fruit-adventurous readers, Maui offers other, off-the-bitten-path delights. Eggfruit can be described as a sweet hybrid of avocados and hard-boiled egg yolks. Breadfruit, despite getting its name from the bland taste of its unripe version when cooked, can surprisingly taste and feel like tropical vanilla pudding when ripe, and can improve many ordinary smoothies with its creamy consistency and sweet yet interesting flavor. Butterscotch fruit is like caramel toffee which grows on trees. Once again, mother nature is one step ahead of man’s culinary inventions.

Wild guavas rained on us while hiking Iao Valley. Our gatherer instincts could not leave those precious tart gifts to rot on the ground and we came back, on the eve of our flight back, with around 50 yellow balls (and some smaller, soft, red gems otherwise known as strawberry guavas) in our bags. Having eaten a similar amount throughout the day (collecting vitamin C for the entire year), we looked for more original uses. Four guavas joined an apple banana and some milk and ice to make a heavenly smoothie, probably thanks, in part, to the high pectin levels present in guavas, but the real gem was the homemade jam we lovingly made of the rest.

After hours of cutting, spicing, mixing and cooking our jam, countless efforts to restore the stove to its original unsticky state and careful packing in several containers, our treasure was violently robbed from us at the airport as we had about a million times the allowed 3oz of gel-consistency substances allowed on board. I had to taste our baby goodbye into the trashcan next to soulless airport security employees; it was the best jam I ever tasted.

Of course, we had many more experiences of local flavor besides these fruit: avocados, macadamia nuts and coconuts, local fish (well-known mahi-mahi, fresh sashimi-grade ahi and fatty cream-colored walu), and locally-grown pineapple wine made in the island’s only winery (but don’t bother visiting if you expect Napa or Bordeaux), but one of the pleasant surprises was actually in the Maui Brewing Co brewpub in Kahana.

We ordered 1oz samples of 11 beers: Mrs. Spectator picked them and I tried to identify them (blind in the epistemic sense) on the menu while we both munched on some edamame and grilled shrimps. All beers were quite easy to identify by their names and one-line descriptions. Santa’s Little Helper (7.0% ABV), Island Hopper Red (6.0% ABV) and Westside ESB (5.6% ABV) were quite hoppy but I was not too impressed. The Smoked Hemp was very bitter and the smokey finish wasn’t enough to make it interesting. Bikini Blonde (5.2%) was too watery and weak for my tastes and the Mango Weizen (6.6%) only slightly better but lacked any noticeable mango flavors to bring it above average. The Hot Blonde (5.2%) felt more like drinking cold weakly-carbonated tabasco than a beer. I did enjoy the KGB Imperial Stout (9.6% ABV) and its strong dark chocolate flavors and the sweet, floral, feminine and balanced Hibiscus Trippel (7.5% ABV). The best of all was the famous Coconut Porter (5.7%), an excellent beer with slightly sweet and rich coconut flavors. This one is well-worth the extra effort required to find it outside of Hawaii.

On the airplane, 30 minutes before landing on the mainland, we’re saying goodbye from Maui, drinking lukewarm tea from paper cups, snacking on mediocre chocolate-macadamia candy fabricated in Mexico for Hawaiian airlines, holding on to our sunny memories where our guava jam can still be found.

Rosa d’Oro Barbera 2007

This one awaited review for quite a while now, but it was well worth the wait!

Beautiful dark red-violet, opaque with just enough transparency to have a beautiful bloody sunset appearance at the edges. At first, the nose is intense and dominated by dark ripe fruit, black plums and black currants, which became more concentrated, sweet and jammy after about one hour. On the palate, the first notes are of ripe fruit as well, but lighter, starting with red plums and blueberries, then, with some black pepper kicking in the mid-palate, making way for darker fruit with more tart notes, with the finish dominated by black plums and black currants. Medium body with well balanced acidity. Virtually no tannins, this is a straightforward fruit bomb at first, but after two hours, the wine developed strong mature flavors which demonstrated its complexity and aging potential.

Paired beautifully with a spinach salad with cranberries, goat cheese and artichoke hearts. This is a very good wine, both with and without food, and a real bargain for its price at $18. Check out Rosa d’Oro Winery for this one and more Italian-style wines.

Note: the wine was received as a sample for review.

SF Vintners Market review

The San Francisco Vintners Market was huge. It’s a good thing I came early since there were so many people in the last few hours of the event that it started looking like big Napa wineries on weekends. The real charm of the event, for me, was – as always – the opportunity to interact with the winery representatives and the winemakers themselves and discuss their wines and vision in great detail. Although it became harder to do as more and more people showed up, there were still plenty of opportunities to do this while tasting some excellent wines, and this was a very fun event.

Before getting to the wines, I should mention SanTasti, the palate cleansing beverage. While the drinking experience of their regular beverage is not too different than that of drinking good sparkling water (and the cucumber flavored beverage is, unsurprisingly, similar to drinking cucumber-flavored sparkling water), it really helps when tasting many wines in a row, especially in events like this where palate fatigue is the big enemy. One should not expect a magical solution and a complete “reset” button for one’s palate, since many aspects of the fatigue are mental (those neurons can only handle a certain amount of flavor information in a short time – of course, it goes without saying that one must spit in such events, too), but SanTasti helps stretch the period of time in which one can taste at one’s peak. I found it especially useful for going back from reds to whites.

Another interesting beverage was Cascal, which is a fermented natural soda with no added preservatives, sugar, artificial colors etc., no alcohol or caffeine, yet is actually fun to drink. The flavors are interesting and very different from each other. I’m usually not a big fan of sodas and I don’t believe the first E in “EENAB”, but this one is definitely a “EENAB” and I leave the first N to be inferred by the intelligent reader’s alcohol-free brain.

Now to the wines. With so many wineries pouring it was practically hopeless to cover anything more than a tiny portion of the huge wine potential in this event. Some of the highlights among the wineries I did get to taste with include Rubicon (Blancaneaux and the reds), Zahtila (Georges III), Bialla Vineyards (Cabernet Sauvignon), Simple Math Cellars (very affordable good Pinot Noirs), Patland Estate Vineyards (Cabernet Sauvignon), Renaissance (vertical tasting), Knights Bridge (Font de Chevalier and Dr Crane) and La Sirena (everything).

Due to the very hectic nature of the event my notes are only partial and I am sure there are more excellent wineries I tasted with and failed to mention above – my apologies.

Overall, that was a highly enjoyable event that should have satisfied (and more) all wine lovers.

SF Vintners Market tomorrow

Looks like a great wine event.

If you’re tired of going to wine tasting events, discovering great new wines and then never being able to find them again, San Francisco Vintners Market is for you. Similar to farmers markets, our event allows consumers to sample the wines on display and buy them on the spot. San Francisco Vintners Market is the first of its kind wine tasting and buying experience where wine enthusiasts can try and buy wines from over 200 wineries.

Check it out!

Should sperm write wine notes?

Generally, women have a better sense of smell than men. But now, researchers have found a molecule that men can detect with better sensitivity than women: it is called bourgeonal, and apparently smells like Lily of the Valley. What’s funny is that this compound is a strong attractor for sperm, and sperm cells express the receptor for it.

So, here we are with the first example of something that men smell better than women (from the paper abstract: “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study ever to find a human male superiority in olfactory sensitivity.”), and it turns out that it’s what attracts our sperm to the egg. Maybe it means that reviewers should smell the wine not only with their noses.

Another study that came out recently found a class of proteins, called Mups (not a misprint) which are secreted by predators and account for the inborn fear responses of mice. Could we attach an evolutionary story to every aroma we can smell?

WineGavel does it again

Three months ago I wrote about the WineGavel pre-auction tasting of fine and rare wines we attended in San Francisco. After that spectacular tasting, I knew that I could not give up the opportunity to attend the next one. This time Mrs. Spectator did not accompany me, so unfortunately there are no new photos (the photos I did add here are actually from the previous tasting).

Once again, this was a wonderful evening and I had my wine socks completely knocked off by some truly majestic wines. As with the previous tasting, I looked up the prices of the wines only after the tasting, so the notes were all written with no price bias.

I started with three whites:

• 1997 Verget, Puligny-Montrachet Les Enseigneres 1er Cru (around $50). Light golden, with fine strong mature tart and sweet citrus flavors that continue to a long finish, this was nevertheless the least impressive wine of the evening.
• 2001 Boyer-Martenot, Puligny-Montrachet Les Caillerets 1er Cru. Pale golden, floral and perfumed, sweet with some tartness, hints of figs and flowers, sweet long finish. Very good.
• 2004 Peter Michael Chardonnay La Carriere (around $90). The most impressive of the whites, and certainly the biggest and most complex. Light golden, somewhat opaque. A wonderful chardonnay, rich, complex, balanced and developing. As a fan of complex wines, this is one of the best whites I can remember.

On to the reds, sorted by age. All of them were excellent, so I didn’t bother adding superlatives to the notes.

• 1964 Leroy, Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru. Lovely balance between age and concentrated fruit, it is almost jammy. Lots of spice for its age, medium tannins, notes of red currants, very balanced. The finish is long with tart fruit.
• 1967 Chateau Cheval Blanc Saint Emillion 1er Cru ($200). Super elegant, combining bright fruit, red cherries and even raspberries, with lots of maturity, light tannins, complex, good harmony between age and fruit.
• 1969 Charles Krug Cabernet Sauvignon ($100). Rather transparent red, mature and delicate flavors, gentle tartness and sweetness, excellent body with a long finish. A very elegant wine, complex and delightful, extremely well balanced.
• 1970 Robert Mondavi, Cabernet Sauvignon, unfiltered ($100). Blood-red, tart and aged nose, concentrated red fruit on the palate, some strawberry jam, tannins and some spice, good body, lovely finish.
• 1970 Robert Mondavi, Cabernet Sauvignon. Lovely dark red, incredible mature and sweet nose. On the palate, rich, sweet, mature, dark fruit with lovely body and tannins. A balanced, delightful wine, very mature with presence but not overly dominant.
• 1970 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, Pauillac ($300). Dark red. Rich and mature flavors of concentrated black currants combine beautifully with age.
• 1971 Bruno Giacosa Barbaresco (about $150). Very striking opaque and sedimented pink. Flavors are highly mature, fruity and acidic. Big and tannic, complex, amazing balance between old and young characteristics. Shares the spot for my favorite wine of the evening with the 1995 Caymus.
• 1980 Chappellet Cabernet Sauvignon ($50). Dark red-violet, slightly transparent. Intoxicating dark fruit combine with age. Big, tannic, spicy and astringent, some tobacco, developing. This was the biggest wine of the evening, in my opinion.
• 1995 Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon ($190). Beautiful violet. Unbelievable nose, fruity and intoxicating. I thought I could smell it all day long and then I tasted it. Intoxicating black currants shout out of every sip, strongly spiced with perfect dark fruit, long, rich and complex finish. My favorite wine of the evening along with the 1971 Bruno Giacosa Barbaresco.
• 2000 Chateau Calon Segur, Saint Estephe (around $80). Dark red, rich flavors of currants and black cherries, balanced spice and tannins with a long finish.
• 2004 Gaja Ca’Marcanda Promis ($30). Dark and fairly opaque. Huge flavors of dark fruit and some jam, developing some astringency. Strong spice with good body and tannins living in harmony with black currants. Long finish of dark berries and balanced tannins. Excellent value, surprise of the evening for me.

As with the previous tasting, a huge thanks to WineGavel for an evening of sheer hedonistic pleasure that reminded me why I love wine.

Scientific cooking

Anyone who doubted that cooking can be scientific should watch this lecture by Nathan Myhrvold. Inspiring and humbling. I will no longer refer to my pathetic playing around in the kitchen as “cooking”.

Blind tasting with your eyes open

It is hard to do a blind tasting without a partner (it’s also a bit sad, but that’s an unrelated point), since you need to hide information from yourself but at the same time not lose this information. For instance, if you want to rate several wines without knowing which is which, you might cover them with numbered brown bags, but then how do you prevent yourself from remembering which number you put on which wine? One solution – doing it the old-fashioned way – would be to cover them with unlabeled brown bags, then shuffle them until you completely lose track of which is which, and only then number them.

There’s probably nothing wrong with the solution described above, but the reason for this post is to write about a cooler and more technological solution I saw on Lifehacker: use QR codes. This way you can have all the information right in front of your eyes but you’ll need to use an appropriate gadget to decipher it.

A foray into Sake

While I certainly don’t feel that I need to seek out even more alcohol-related hobbies, the other day we had dinner at a sushi restaurant and decided to try a “3-pour sake sampler”. The waiter explained that they are sorted by sweetness (from left to right: sweetest to driest).

I wanted to test this claim and so tasted them blind and ranked them by sweetness. The task seemed trivial: clearly one of them was extremely sweet, one fairly sweet, and one was obviously the driest (although still sweet). I was surprised to have been wrong! The one I declared as obviously driest was indeed the rightmost, but I mixed the two sweet sakes. After repeated tasting I stood behind my original opinion, though: the middle one was simply the sweetest.

The flavors were interesting. Both the aroma and the taste was quite rich for all three. The leftmost had a lot of plum going on and the rightmost had some citrus. I definitely got the impression that there is a whole world of complex flavors there waiting to be discovered, and that I am in no particular rush to conquer it.

Fast food promotes impatience

A recent paper in Psychological Science (also described in Smart Economy) explores how fast food affects the way we think, and specifically, impatience-related behaviors.

They describe three experiments:

• Subliminal exposure (for 12ms with pattern masks presented for 80ms) to fast food logos made subjects read the same text faster than control subjects exposed for blank squared.
• Priming thoughts of fast food by asking subjects to recall the last time they had a meal at a fast-food establishment (or, for the control condition, grocery shopping) made them prefer “time-saving” versions of products (determined as such by the authors and a questionnaire presented to an independent sample of 54 participants) over the regular versions (e.g. four-slice toaster vs. single-slice toaster).
• Exposure to fast-food logos vs. those of inexpensive diners made the subjects prefer an immediate payment over a delayed larger payment.

According to this paper, the fast-food culture is not limited only to the time spent eating. If the fast-food lifestyle promotes impulsive behavior over planning, maybe we should use our skills of planning and thinking ahead to avoid fast-food in the first place – while we still have them.

The paper’s conclusions are not surprising, of course. I would be curious to see a comparison of impatient behavior between groups that clearly differ in their eating habits, for example: Americans vs. French, vegetarians vs. meat-eaters, people who eat few big meals vs. grazers. While the conclusions would not be as strong as those of the randomized trials described in the paper, they could be interesting in their own right.