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 Outside of portfolio investments, my #1 concentration today is wine, specifically red Burgundy of Burgundy, France. Debbie and I will spend three weeks in France this fall, highlighted by four days of Burgundy research in Beaune and Gevrey-Chambertin.
Three books I have concentrated on in recent years are The Great Domaines of Burgundy, Professional Wine Reference, and Secrets of the Sommeliers
by Rajat Parr and Jordan Mackay. The study of French Burgundy wines is an extremely complex subject, and the more I study the further behind the eight ball I feel. Without the help of the three references sited here, I would be hopelessly lost. Here is a short list of some of the findings by Rajat and Jordan that I have found to be especially useful.
 “My favorite wine, my obsession for many years is Burgundy. And I am not alone. The fixation of the Burgundy lover is easily explained: at their best, the reds and whites of Burgundy are perhaps the greatest wines in the world.”
Regarding Chambolle:
“Chambolle may well be the favorite of wine sommeliers. It has a rich, velvety grace that rivals the finesse of Vosne-Romanee and the power of Gevery-Chambertin.”
“You are better off buying a village Chambolle than any other village in the Cote d’Or as the quality is the highest among all communes.”
Regarding Vosne-Romanee:
 “The main competition to Chambolle-Musigny for the world’s most ideal rendering of Pinot Noir (the red grape for all French Burgundy) comes from Vosne-Romanee, its near neighbor to the south. Vosne-Romanee, with its eight Grand Crus, is perhaps the greatest collection of vineyards in one place in France. You can barely take a step out of this village without tripping over some legendary vines that go into making the planet’s most prized and expensive wines.”
In Part III, I will bring you more red Burgundy intelligence from Rajat and Jordan.
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Sodom and Gomorrah motif from the Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel, 1493. Note Lot’s wife, already transformed into a salt pillar, in the center. Looking back, perhaps Lot’s wife would disagree, but new studies have found that salt is probably not going to kill us. Several related papers from the New England Journal of Medicine cast doubt on the USDA and Food and Drug Administration’s guidelines that limiting the consumption of salt will reduce the risks of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and stroke.
The WSJ points out in Review & Outlook how the illusion of government regulation, particularly in medicine, often provides erroneous guidelines that apply to everyone—from how much salt you should eat, to how often you need to be screened for cancer, to should you be treated with cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Many theories of food and health are no more than superstition, so any nutrition advice that is more specific than moderation and more vegetables ought to be taken with a grain of—well, you know.
Read here about the growing evidence that sodium is harmful is flimsy at best and pseudo-science at worst.
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American Conservative co-founder, journalist and leading Paleo-conservative Taki offers unique perspective on anti-neocon thought and decentralization of government. To label Taki controversial is a serious understatement.
I look forward to Taki’s “Under The Black Flag” feature in every issue of the Paleo-conservative journal Chronicles published by the Rockford Institute. In the September issue, Taki’s headline was “Achtung, Spooks!” (subscription required) aiming at CIA spying on Germany, and suggesting that the CIA’s top man in Germany would be better served concentrating on weeding out Israeli spies in Washington. Taki comments, “It would make more sense, as Israel does spy on her benefactor, protector, and major ally, whereas Germany does not.” Taki reasons, “They (Germany) are law abiders with no desire to play dirty games now that the Cold War is truly over, and they definitely do not want to be Washington’s patsies in the war against radical Islam. In fact Uncle Sam could learn a trick or two from Uncle Heinrich in keeping above the fray. But with AIPAC busy stirring up trouble. I’m just whistling Dixie.” In a concluding positive note on today’s Germany, Taki tells readers, “There is no better and more pleasant place to live than in Germany, as long as one keeps away from busy ports like Hamburg and Muslim-infested cities like Frankfurt.”
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 AOC, or Appellation d’Origine Controlee, is a designation given to agricultural products in France whose character is dependent on the place where they are made. AOC is the ultimate meaning of terroir and environmentally sound farming.
In France, there are more than 300 wines, for example, with an AOC designation on their labels. Over 40 cheeses have the AOC designation (Roquefort was the first in 1925). Other products with AOC status include poultry from Bresse, salt marsh lamb from the Bay of the Somme, eight different varietals of honey from the island of Corsica, and lentils from Le Puy-en-Velay. Then, of course, there is French butter with five recognized AOC regions.
  In
My Paris Kitchen
, David Lebovitz’s latest cookbook, he writes, “There are two kinds of butter in France: the good kind, and the great kind.” Several years ago, I read an article on David’s tracking down Pascal Beillevaire butter (read here). The official name of this butter is beurre cru baratté à l’ancienne, and, as David explains, it is “riddled with lots of little flecks of salt from Nourmotier.” David was told not to refrigerate the butter or it would lose its buttery aroma, and, mon Dieu, who would want that? You won’t find it sold here in the States because Pascal Beillevaire butter is made from raw milk and not allowed into the U.S.
So what is the difference between French butter and American butter? American butter must contain at least 80 percent butterfat. French butter is usually 82 percent. And as an article in the NYT points out, a two percentage point difference may sound measly, but butter is about flavor, texture and workability (especially in baking), and two percent more butterfat counts a lot.
On a recent visit to Newport’s Le Petit Gourmet (Bellevue Ave), purveyor of domestic and imported cheeses and prepared foods to be eaten in shop or taken home, it was a treat to come upon an AOC butter that is the gold standard of French butters. Beurre d’Echire is produced from milk that comes from cows grazing on land that is “open to the spray from the sea.” These farms are 19 miles or less from the small village of Echire, between Poitiers and La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast. Not only is it the best butter Dick and I have ever tasted, but it also is loaded with Vitamin A. I’ve bought goats-milk butter and an imported Italian butter from Parma, both of which had 13% V-A, but Beurre d’Echire, with its incomparable rich taste and 19% Vitamin A, is a hands-down winner.
David Lebovitz, former pastry chef for Alice Water at Chez Pannise in Berkeley, is a fan of butter laced with gros cristaux de sel—big crystals of salt. Even in baking, David doesn’t get too worked up about using salted or unsalted butter (My Paris Kitchen, pg, 16). Just use a little less salt than called for in the recipe.
Butter does not do well in high heat—roasting and frying break down butter’s best qualities. But do slather Beurre d’Echire on your morning baguette, use it to make a beurre blanc sauce, or infuse it with herbs and allow it to slowly melt on fish, poultry or meat. At any rate, look for more butterfat and certainly more vitamin A.
Bon appetit,
Debbie
Editor-in-Chief
Richardcyoung.com
Related video:
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In Reason, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Chris Preble takes proponents of intervention in Syria like Hillary Clinton to task. Clinton criticizes Obama’s failure to intervene more in Syria as the catalyst for bringing ISIS to power in the Eastern regions of the country. Preble wonders who Clinton would have allied with.
And who, exactly, we were supposed to arm was never clear. When former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford praised recent gains by Syrian moderates, he mentioned only one group by name: “the Army of Islam, led by an ambitious Islamist commander named Zahran Alloush.” But the University of Oklahoma’s Joshua Landis has shown that Alloush might not be so moderate after all.
The debate over what we should have done with the Syrian rebels back in 2012 also largely ignores the fact that the United States and its allies apparently did offer a good bit of training, resources, and weapons to purportedly moderate Syrian fighters who were vetted for their supposed democratic leanings.
But, somewhere along the line, the screening process failed. “Washington and its allies,” concludes Souad Mekhennet in The Washington Post, “empowered groups whose members had either begun with anti-American or anti-Western views or found themselves lured to those ideas in the process of fighting.”
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The advocates for U.S. military intervention have an additional hurdle to clear. Having shown that the threat merits attention, they must also show that it can not be handled by others, or by non-military means. As David Boaz explains in his seminal book, Libertarianism: A Primer, “War cannot be avoided at all costs, but it should be avoided wherever possible,” thus, “Proposals to involve the United States—or any government—in foreign conflict should be treated with great skepticism.”
Sadly, such skepticism is not much in evidence in Washington. Beltway insiders continue to call for more intervention, dismiss evidence that might undermine their case, and condemn those who advocate prudence and restraint. So long as the interventionists continue to dictate the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, we can be certain that we will remain embroiled in costly and counterproductive wars. And we will consistently miss opportunities to advance U.S. security through other means.
Perhaps even the small amount of support given to the Syrian rebels was too much. Remember the first photos of ISIS’s advance on Iraq? As they rolled down the highway, ISIS fighters were being carried by what appeared to be the Toyota trucks given to the Syrian rebels by the State Department.
ISIS convoy invading Iraq. |
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Americans are rightly sick of war. Iraq has been a disaster, the wrong war. As Peggy Noonan points out in the WSJ, no weapons of mass destruction there. And Saddam Hussein? Saddam, Ms. Noonan writes, was “the garbage-pail lid who kept the garbage of his nation from spilling out.”
Now there is a serious threat coming in the form of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and il-Sham). Even by terrorists’ standards, ISIS’ brutality is staggering. But after two recent botched and failed wars, America is war wary and weary. Wolf has been cried too often, but now there is a wolf and it certainly is not in sheep’s clothing. It is front and center.
British Prime Minister David Cameron writes in the Telegraph (London): “The creation of an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and extending into Syria is not a problem miles away from home. Nor is it a problem that should be defined by a war 10 years ago. It is our concern here and now. Because if we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain. We already know that it has the murderous intent.”
The recent bombings are helping. The ISIS was forced to give up the dam it had seized in Mosul, which shows that it is not infallible. Read here from Peggy Noonan steps that can be taken—from Obama going to Congress for authorization of force (and a show of unity) to helping the Kurds every way we can, to forging new bonds with allies and potential allies.
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Michael Scheuer explains to readers that “Obama, McCain, Graham, Hillary Clinton and much of the media continue to talk the absolute rot of building an ‘inclusive government’ in Iraq in place of Maliki’s regime.”
Scheuer continues:
This is not going to happen in the lifespan of any of our leaders, nor even in the lifespan of their children. Despite impressive educations, these men and women seemed to have missed the class where the teacher described the intense, violent, evergreen, and millennium-plus-long hatred of Sunnis for Shias, and vice versa. The current bout of this sectarian war is occurring because George W. Bush sought to make Iraq safe for democracy and instead opened the doors there to slaughter, anarchy, sectarian civil war, and regional destabilization. The current IS offensive is only the most recent and bloody episode of a civil war that began in March, 2003. The post-Maliki government and the Kurds may extort more money and weapons from the United States and its equally brain-dead allies, but there will be no peace and no inclusive government. When the West pulls the plug on another lost war in Iraq — and it will — the Sunnis will have more reason than ever to kill Shias who begged for help from the hated and perceived-to-be-Christian Americans and Europeans to kill Sunnis.
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