Meg'sfoodandwinepage

Something Old, Somthing New (or how to make great risotto on a Monday)

One of the things that is most off-putting to someone just learning to cook is a recipe that includes ingredients that have to go through multiple steps (ie onions that need to be caramelized, squash that needs to be roasted, mushrooms that need to be soaked, dough that needs to be chilled, and so on).  It is a true and discouraging fact that much of the real work – or not even the work so much as the time – of great cooking is most often not in the final assembling of ingredients but rather the having to do the initial steps.

 

But it is also true that if you cook all the time a lot of this work happens incidentally, on the side and around the edges.  If you cook on an ongoing basis, there are always leftovers or byproducts or pieces of one dish that can be well used in another.

 

And so it was that the other night, which was a Monday, and a cold day on which I had schlepped seven bottles of wine up and down the length of Manhattan after a night of too-little sleep, I was happily able to assemble a delicious roasted acorn squash risotto with porcini broth.

 

When I arrived home, what was going to make everything good was the fact that despite feeling much like I’d been hit by a truck, I had the better half of a bottle of Dolcetto amongst the pile of bottles that I had been lugging around and trying to sell all day.  Not only that, but a bottle of the Dolcetto that is my current favorite wine for being delightfully fresh, with the balance of tartness and broadness on the palate, brightness and bitterness, that is to me the elusive quintessence of Dolcetto.  (And, at 12.5% alcohol, a deliciously quaffable wine that will make you happy without knocking you out, even on a rough Monday.)

 

So I had it in mind to make a good dinner, though no particular plan for what that dinner would be.  I did some reconnaissance and the contents of my fridge and freezer yielded the following:

• A packet of tin foil containing about half an acorn squash which had been sliced and roasted to go with a roast chicken on Saturday night.
• The bag of amazing limited-production organic Carnaroli risotto I brought back from Alba (lo, the land of Dolcetto) after being served an amazing risotto made from it at the Perrone estate. . .  and which I had yet to use!  Was storing in fridge based on reading something in a Ruth Reichl piece saying the stuff spoils quickly. . . which means it doesn’t come to eye when I’m thinking rice.  But now I was searching through the fridge with Alba on my mind and couldn’t miss it.  . . .
• A container of liquid that had been used to soak porcini mushrooms for another dish, lurking in the freezer for just such an evening.
• The last of my freezer stash of chicken stock (itself a byproduct made from sundry fridge-lurking vegetables and leftover bones from roasted birds.  Needing to make more of which is as good an excuse as I ever need to roast a chicken.)
• A container of my new favorite Prep-Time-Saving Product: Citterio Cubetti (pre-cubed pancetta in a nifty package for $1.99!)  I don’t know why I am so delighted by this. . . something about not having to stand in the deli line at Fairway?  Or not having to hack up frozen pancetta into bits?  But every time they have the pancetta cubetti in stock at Fairway, and it’s a rare occasion, I buy several and lob them into the freezer with delight.
• A near-finished rind of good parmigiano from Buon Italia.
• No white wine (rats, I dropped off all my white wine samples with customers.)  But a bit of Amontillado sherry.  That’d do.

Given these ingredients, Roasted Acorn Squash Risotto with Porcini Broth became inevitable.  With a burst of new energy, I threw Cheikh Lo on the stereo to dispel the mood of exhaustion and poured a glass of Dolcetto. Chopped an onion while the frozen porcini liquid and chicken stock thawed and heated in a saucepan.  Gently browned the onion with the cubetti (and with total glee at having cubetti; I am so easy to please!).  Threw in a cup of Carnaroli and stirred it up real good. The porcini/chicken stock smelled heavenly!  Threw a small hit of sherry into the pan with the rice (a little goes a long way), let it evaporate, and started stirring broth into the rice.  Turned it down to super-low, checked/sent some emails, stirred some more, hummed to Cheikh Lo, repeated.  Cut the skins off the roast acorn squash and cut/mushed it up (it was nicely roasted, caramelized on the bottom but not falling apart on top – not too mushy overall!).  When the risotto was almost done, stirred the squash in with a little dried sage (actually from LAST year’s garden; I never got around to drying any this year) and the last of the broth (I’d added a little water because I needed more liquid and it was quite intense).  Grated a little black pepper and microplaned as much cheese as I could over. . .

 

And dinner was delicious!   There was the bass note of the porcini in the broth, the slight earthiness of the squash (and its slight sweetness, too, balanced with the nutty/sweet of the sherry), the bitter echo of dried sage, a hint of meatiness from the pancetta.  And the wonderful Carnaroli rice, whose flavor is subtle enough to be drowned out by all that, but whose texture is more perfectly wonderful than any other rice I’ve worked with for this type of dish (it turns out soft and toothsome at the same time no matter how many emails you might read and type in an attempt to overcook!).

 

And alongside the risotto the Dolcetto was of course delicious (how could it not be; it’s a delicious little wine!).  All light on its feet, earthy and sweet and bitter in measure to the dish and so happy to wash it down.

 

And now, at risk of belaboring the worn-out simile “how cooking is like life,” I have to admit that as I cooked and ate this risotto the phrase “something old and something new” kept running through my mind. . . thinking how that old saw for weddings applies not only to marriage but to cooking or really to any proper beginning. And for the first time in a while, my mind was able to go in that direction while specifically not dwelling on failure.  It seems that I’ve finally reached a point, in my life and in this waning year itself, where I am tired of dwelling on endings and am much more interested in beginnings and maybe most especially re-beginnings.  It’s a new phase, an optimistic one where regret and by extension waste have no place.  My mind has at the back of things been mulling over what good and useful things might have been stored or are lurking in the past and how those old things can be carried through to combine nicely with what is new or in the future.  And despite the inherent danger that lies in pressing inanimate objects into the service of an idea, in this case I’ll go on ahead. Because it was by far the best dinner I’ve made in a long time. 

Back from the land of plenty

I’m back from a super-long extended weekend in my dear-and-as-yet-unsold house in Columbia County.  This was supposed to be the last weekend of summer, but since summer had quietly yet quite suddenly disappeared at some point during the last rainy week, it felt more like the first weekend of an alternate Keatsian pre-fall “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.”

It was a 5-day weekend in which there were cucumbers that were so sweet in their over-ripeness that they tasted faintly of melon.  There was juicy peach pie made from the ripest of peaches.  There was corn and there were tomatoes and there was a tomato-corn gratin that expressed the quintessence of corn and tomatoes (this month Gourmet hit several nails on the head!).  There was grilled lamb that rewardingly became the entirely other dish that is cold grilled lamb the next day.  And with the cold lamb there was the Ultimate Farro Salad to cap my Farro salad season (an adaptation of that linked recipe that used farro, left out the zucchini, and was spicier).  There was a Pissaladiere with a perfectly thin flaky crust to serve to company.  And to use up the rest of the pastry there was a tiny tomato tart I made for myself with mustard and a little crème freche (an idea I got from here, but used the sliced and salted beefsteak tomatoes I use for my usual, less-fancy tomato tart instead of roasting plum tomatoes because the plum tomatoes just don’t want to ripen all at once this year). And despite the season’s desire to leave us with almost nothing but green tomatoes there were a few cans of tomatoes put up, and some sauce with garlic made and frozen for winter.   A few bags of chard and Italian bitter greens blanched and frozen too, waiting for winter soups and frittatas.

There were a couple of long runs in the Columbia County hills, and more than a couple of long afternoon naps.  Some friends thankfully came to share all that food and indulge my completely unfashionable taste in wines (and they brought their delightful dogs!  Who eat cucumbers!).  We had Mondeuse, from Savoie, which tastes like a willowy mountain love-child of Syrah and Gamay; we had the Mondeuse’s companion white, made from Jacquere, which tastes like what perfectly bracing and delicious mountain mineral water might taste like if it could be made from grapes.  We had my favorite Muscadet (the Clos de Briords), always deeply mineral and satisfying.  We had some Donnas, which is not a girl band but another delicious mountain wine from Italy, made (mostly) from Nebbiolo.  We had some bottles of the lip-smackingly delicious Julienas 2005 from Michel Tete (cf Joe’s comments on 2005 Beaujolais, all true). All wines that are a joy to drink:  light and fresh and perfect for washing down good food, conducive to good talk, followed by sweet sleep and pleasant mornings.  (And it is this final test that is the acid test that separates the truly good wines from all others.)

All in all, I ate so much that I skipped an entire meal today and didn’t even notice.  It was a beautiful time from which to emerge in order to plunge into the next 12 weeks, which mark my busiest and most stressful time of year . . . .

Great news for this particular wine geek!

I am already salivating for 2005 Cru Beajolais and the containers haven't even been picked up yet from France.

Absentee Home Improvement Rules! And, the Elk Meatballs.

So, the elk meatballs turned out great!  I used what I guessed to be a pound of ground meat, two eggs – elk meat tends to be dry – a half cup plus a little more of fine baguette bread-crumbs, a half cup of grated romano cheese (ditto on the dryness, thought it could use some fat), one giant garlic clove, and a handful of freeze-dried parsley and chives plus some liberal pinches of home-dried oregano.  A dash of Worchestershire sauce, salt, pepper. . .  mushed up by hand, shaped into 30 balls, baked in oven for 20 mins.  Added roast tomato/garlic sauce to pan and heated while the pasta cooked.  The meatballs had a terrifically velvety texture.  They were delicious with the sharpness of the tomato sauce (made from tomatoes that ripened inside after the garden froze.  Kinda sharp, yeah).

They were also very, very filling.  So there was a healthy portion of leftovers.  Which I ate for dinner on Friday night.  Coincidentally, I had the end of a bottle of fabulously smoky/meaty but well-balanced Cornas left over from my work day (I tried to drop it off at my last stop, I really tried, but that customer wasn’t interested in Northern Rhone wines.  Ah, rats!).  The wine was the perfect match – being from a lighter vintage (2002) it has what I find to be a perfectly-drinkable (ie not too heavy, not too fruity) texture.  And being from old vines on the sharply pitched granite soil of Cornas, it has a wonderfully lively acidity that is balanced by the dark tar-n-spice notes that I so love in good Syrah.  The meatballs had gotten stronger over two days in the fridge, and they seemed to love that Cornas as much as I do. 

The elk meatballs also turned out to be unnecessary, strictly speaking.  I had thawed the meat in a panic of trying to empty the freezer in Taghkanic before it was unplugged for the floor project.  I don’t know why I thought the fridge couldn’t be plugged in in the mudroom, but it actually can.  So the fridge is running.  We have more time to empty that freezer than I thought!  Happy times.

And apparently the Home Improvement is going swimmingly. 

I wouldn’t know, because I have not had to witness any of it.  Which turns out to be totally fine by me!  Here I sit, albeit a little lonely, but in my relatively orderly and rather clean apartment (we finally bit the bullet and have hired someone to clean once a month!  Actually, our neighbors found someone to clean their place (the mother of a Slovakian friend of theirs) and suggested that she could also do ours. . . . she’s happy for the work, does a great job, and doesn’t charge a fortune either.)  I feel a little rich and over-privileged  having someone clean for me.  But, for example, this morning since I didn’t have to vacuum, dust, and mop the floors, I was finally able to wash down the greasy-grimy fronts of my cabinets, not to mention the top and sides of the fridge!  Next week I may even get to cleaning out the insides of them all!  You can see why I have been banned from participating in Home Improvement.  Dirt and disorder make me lose my mind. Clean apartment = happy me. (Jola, I feel for you!)

Reports from the Kitchen Project front are all positive:  the subfloor wasn’t in too-bad shape (just lots of old linoleum and lots and lots of mouse dirt under there!).  It was possible to do a bit of leveling without raising up the floor too much (as the last people had done) so the new floorboards will be closer to flush with the dining room floor but not noticeably crooked. We were afraid that there might be some real problems underneath judging from how they’d laid the floor.  Turns out that they just didn’t know what they were doing (which was also apparent, but you never know in our house.). 

The formica has been removed!  The one really-crooked counter has also been leveled!  Soon there will be tile (actually by the end of today it might be mostly laid!).  And this time our friend Steve can work during the week, so by next weekend (if I even go up then) there ought to be fully finished new counters and even possibly a floor laid.  Actually if the floor is laid we probably won’t go up, being as how it will not yet be sanded and finished and so not really great for walking on, y’know.  Also all the furniture from the dining room and kitchen is piled in the living room.  Making even hanging out by the fireplace just a little inconvenient, too.  P thought it was a great bachelor pad – for one night only!!  He’s making his way home tonight to join me in aforementioned neat, semi-orderly apartment.

In preparation, I’m making a leek pie from the penultimate pull of leeks.  We thought it was the last, but with all that rain last Friday the ground thawed again and P was able to pull out a few more we’d written off as goners.  Yay!

Now I have to actually shower and leave the apartment (staying in until it gets dark being the danger of these wintry Saturdays at home) to pour wine for a few hours. But, lucky me, this time at the wine store that is just at the end of my block!! Yay for having at least one client I don’t have to drive to get to. Or, for that matter, schlep a bag of wine up and down the subway stairs to get to, either  (lest I forget what a pain in the ass THAT was.)

PS.  OF COURSE we forgot to take any before pictures of the kitchen.  And OF COURSE there are no during pictures, because the camera is right here, not up there.  So all I will have to dazzle you with are the pictures of a gleamingly renewed kitchen.  Oh well.

It's Non Ultra!

I have to admit that when purchasing dishwashing liquid, I am drawn to one in particular:  Non-Ultra Joy.  Because, let's face it, there is just something charming about a product that comes right out and declares that it it NOT the tops!  Not super-concentrated, not extra-strong, not to-the-max. 

I'll admit that it isn't the best dishwashing liquid out there.  You have to use a lot to get the job done.  But, hey, it's darned cheap, and at least you know going in that it's non-ultra!

And aren't we all, from time to time?  You hear this from a non-ultra winesalesperson who sometimes makes non-ultra dinners and is definitely a non-ultra housekeeper. . . . .

Except for tonight's dinner, which was an ultra good salad (crabmeat with shredded carrots and cucumbers served over boston lettuce and hothouse beefsteak tomatoes).  Loosely inspired by Clotilde's crab and cucumber salad, which was coincindental because I read her recipe just when we had purchased cucumbers and I am addicted to Trader Joe's canned crabmeat (ultra-cheap, pretty darned good) so there was some of that needing to be creatively used.  Combined that idea with one of our summer classics, which is shredded carrot salad.  I decided that in this salad everything should be shredded, to match the crab texture, so I broke out the Cuisinart and used its beautiful shredding attachment to speedily shred 4 peeled kirby cukes and 3 peeled carrots. Set the cukes over the sink to drain for a bit, chopped some shallot (our shallots are all trying to sprout, which is fine for the ones who have been planted and are thriving in the garden but not as good for the ones we're still eating!), threw in 2 cans of crab, dressed with a "modified remoulade" dressing (one tsp mayonaisse, one tsp french mustard, whisked with wine vinegar and a little walnut oil, a mere dash of curry powder for panache), salted, and let rest in the fridge for a while.  Served over sliced big-giant-semi-tasteless-but-really-ripe hothouse beefsteaks, which were on top of some boston lettuce, which was dressed with more of the same dressing minus curry but with lots of pepper.  It hasn't gotten hot yet (far from!) but, darn-it, we can EAT like it's summer.  Washed this down with a Sylvaner from Alsace that seemed a little neutral on its own but was more than perfectly accomodating with food.  Delicious, in fact.  Yet again proving that sometimes the wines that are most delicious with food are not the ones that are most impressive without it.  Actually, this is almost always the case.

Incidentally, the thunderstorms this past weekend played havoc with our grilling schedule, in that on Friday night in the midst of a particularly impressive one we thought it wouldn't stop raining in time for steaks so I roasted the Cornish Hens inside instead of brining and smoking them.  Cold-smoking will have to wait.  And for a little while, no doubt, because the next two three weekends are AT LEAST half-filled with Work Stuff.

Which I will no doubt go about doing with -- you guessed it -- Non-Ultra joy!

Spring is in the air!

How do I know?

1. there are daffodils in bloom all over Westchester County!

2. this afternoon I was actually feeling warmish, if not even hot, in a light jacket which I then took off and felt fine even when the breeze blew.

3. I just made a date with my husband for sometime next month that consists of him, me, a bottle of Boulay Sancerre Clos de Beaujeu 2002 (if I can manage to buy some for myself before selling it all) and 3 pounds of fresh Columbia County Asparagus (which we'll steam and serve with nothin' but butter, lemon juice, and salt).  Up until this moment, when spring seems to be here to stay, I could not even permit my mind to register the memory of that fresh homegrown asparagus (we get it from our favorite local nursery/farmstand, which just opened for the season this week!  yay!).  I just remembered about it.  And realized that it is not so far off in my future. 

Wonders never cease.

On Buying Wine

This is in response to MC's comment on my last post. . . . wondering what is the best option when one is trying to buy a bottle of wine along with groceries, after work, and so on.

First off, I have to come right out here and admit that I have little real-world experience off of which to base my advice.  My first job after college (besides the restaurant jobs that saw me through college and the first summer after) was as a shop assistant in a branch of a national wine chain in London.  Then I came back and worked in a wine bar, some stores, and as a restaurant buyer in Boston.  Then I've been a wine salesperson in New York for the rest of the time.  In short?  I've NEVER HAD TO BUY ALL MY WINE RETAIL.  While I spend most of my time thinking about wine, hanging around in wine stores, and selling people wine, buying wine retail is something I get to do for fun for my wine classes.  So y'know, this is professional advice, but it should be taken with a grain of salt.

First off, I firmly believe that one should avoid having to select from the supermarket shelves' commercial offerings at all costs.  This, however, requires premeditation, a modicum of storage (and if you get paid monthly, a credit card will help.  Just think of all the airmiles you'll get!).  Because, yes, the best way to NOT have to buy yellowtail at the supermarket is to figure out about how much wine you are likely to drink on a monthly basis (and this in itself can be humbling, but ADMIT that you are going to spend that money anyhow, and be honest). 

Then what you should do is go to whatever decent local winemerchant you frequent (and if you drink wine regularly, you know where that is!).  Buy a case, or (better still) a couple of cases, to get your stash started.  This way?  you get a discount (10-15%, which given the paltry markups most wine retailers can charge is not bad!) and you get to have a selection of wines on hand in your Very Own Basement.  No more last-minute supermarket wine shopping! The ideal mixed case should contain 2-3 bottles each of 4-6 different wines.  Red and White according to your preference or general seasonal drinking habits (about now I'd say more red than white, but not all red -- never that!).  Mix in a few things you've had before, and liked, and ask the wine merchant to recommend new things based on those preferences, in your price range.  A case of decent everyday wine should run around $110 with tax and discount -- actually maybe less if you don't live in heavily-priced-and-taxed NY. 

As you try new and different things, you'll find you start liking some things more and some things less.  So you'll start changing what you buy.  But? because you're a bonafide case-buying regular customer, your wine merchant will start paying more attention to your likes and dislikes.  If they're worth their salt, they'll start recommending new and different things.  They'll start thinking of your (that may be a collective "your," if it's a big store, but still) regular-customer palate when they make buying decisions.  Because when you work in a wine store, you appreciate the regular customers who are interested in wine.  You work there because YOU are interested in learning about wine and because you get a great discount (the pay, not great, but the discount is usually good) and the other people who are interested about wine make the job fun. 

So, that's my general recommendation.  Buy by the case.  If, however, you are out of wine and at the supermarket?  Here, again, I am speaking out of turn.  You see, we can't buy wine at supermarkets in New York State, so I don't know what the average supermarket has on offer.  What I can say is this:  stay away from Australia, California and Dubouef if possible.  If there are offerings from Chile, Argentina, Southern Italy, or obscure French regions -- these (while still remaining cheap) often have a shot at being interesting.  I've found that Los Vascos Cabernet (Chile) is remarkably good for the price.  There are plenty of little Nero d'Avolas and Primitivos and Montepulcianos from Italy that have a rustic but characterful appeal.

And in a pinch, when you've had a bad day?  Some wine is probably better than no wine at all.

Break on Through!

Some weeks, the craziness kills you.  Other weeks, you realize that the craziness that exhausts you and makes you (well, duh) crazy is Just Worth It Even Though It Costs.  This week I think I have mangaged to break on through the exhaustion into a feeling that what I do is worth it.

Thanks for all the supportive comments on my last post.  Leah  especially hit it on the head with the question she asked herself: "Well, who wants to spend their whole life sitting around on their ass anyway? Time to do that once you're dead, so to speak."   This is a precise echo of my college advisor (whose death, almost exactly a year ago, I mourn all the more for not having kept closer to him in the last several years).  He said to me (a wild-eyed crazy 17-year-old with high expectations of myself and no sense of the world. . . gee, not much has changed in 15 years!) "But are you HAPPY in what you are doing?  Because if you are not happy in the moment, what else is there?"  This from Clark Rodewald, the most intellectually vigorous and physically present man you can imagine, who was confined to a wheelchair.  The hardest, best professor a selfdemanding, smart, but intellectually sloppy 17-yr-old could ever wish for.  The professor who changed my life, but with whom I never kept in proper touch with, because as much as he gave, he was a little scary (you felt you were interrupting a life that was more vigorous, more connected, and deeper than your own could ever be).  The professor who convinced me not to go to graduate school and got me to read what is still my FAVORITE NOVEL EVER. (Howard's End by EM Forster).

I still disregard his advice.  But from time to time it rings true, and I grasp what he was saying.  This week has been C-R-A-Z-Y.  Being an ambassador for true wines in a world populated with aggressive salespeople, mega-mergers among liquor companies (the Titan Southern just moved in, and they have muscle.  Money, and muscle.  They are very, very ugly.) is not easy. 

But, you know what?  I finally think I have learned to embrace that and say "EFF-IT".  They are they.  I am I.  Give me the wine that is hard to sell because people don't know that they should want it.  I will make them want to want it (and then it will be sold out and they'll have to wait for the next vintage -- HA!)>

12-hour days.  Lots of driving.  Never being caught up.  Haven't cooked dinner all week.  Well, it's a good cause.  I hope I can keep saying BRING IT ON.

My current awards for keeping the spirit up:  retail website of the year (until Hudson Wine Merchants gets online) vote goes to Laurent at the Princeton Corkscrew Wineshop.  They are uncompromising.  Would that we all could be so. Restaurant I Most Want to Sell Wine To goes to Chiboust  in Tarrytown for just Getting It in a county that for the most part is perfectly content Not To Get It.  They made my day today for being open, and cool.  (THANK YOU.)

And, thanks to my husband:  For liking the wines I have a hard time selling and reminding me that they are often the best.  Folks, "light" is not a bad word.  Wines should be a pleasure to drink.  Being drunk is not (always) a pleaure. (And the aftermath is never pleasant, be the drunk ever so necessary).  But drinking a wine that tastes good without hitting you over the head?  Always a pleasure.  It's like the difference between junk food and wholesome food.  Wines I had this experience with, just this week?  Here and Here. (besides my favorite, LaPierre Morgon, which shouldn't even count anymore).

So, I'll try to keep learning all these thing, try to forget them less, and keep on plugging.  All this work will pay off, someday.  Right? 

And I get to don safety glasses and chip pepto-bismol pink tiling off my bathroom walls this weekend.  I'll pretend each one is a bottle of yellow-tail shiraz or something and sing a little song as I go.  My husband has promised to take me to dinner at Swoon in Hudson tomorrow, too. (Number 2 on the list of Restaurants I Wish Would Buy Wine From Me.)  How bad could life be? 

Tra-la, I'm off for a few hours of sleep now.  Bets are that I won't make it to the gym tomorrow.  Can I promise to go for a long walk outdoors on the weekend to make up for that?  Please?  Can I?

NY Times on Natural Wines

What was it that I was saying, yesterday, about little French wine producers who are 'doing it right?' 

I must have been receiving a vibration from the New York Times, where the wine article today is about just that.

They didn't mention many specific wines, but the "importer" plugs are a shout-out to many of my favorites, not to mention people I know and work for/with!Mentioned were Louis/Dressner <congrats Joe and Denyse!> , Rosenthal, Kermit Lynch<happiness for my husband and neighbor!> and Polaner <yay team!>.  Links to their websites (for those who have them, or a little Google for KL) can lead you to a list of producers to look for. 

Bottoms up!

French Wine Makers in the Morning

Just now, while blearily listening to the Marketplace Morning Report (need human voices to reattach me to reality, non-morning-person that I am) over my first cup of coffee, I heard something interesting.

The French government is devoting a rather large chunk of money (how much?  well, that was too much information for my brain to retain; I'll have to check the site later to see) to aid winemakers.  2004 marked a year of high production, just as American imports are flagging (that euro!), the domestic consumption is continuing to sink, and competition from cheap "new world" brands is putting a damper on sales.

I wonder if this all might mean concentration on lowering yields and reducing the total area under vine (pull up those big commercial vineyards!). Either that, or subsidies that can help lower prices. Because my customers chant (almost like a mantra) that no one is really buying French wine anymore.  And as much as I enjoy the Spanish wines, what I really love are the French ones.  And what I love most of all are the small-production, hand-crafted ones among them. Any help appreciated . . . thank you French Government, for understanding.