Or not. But by any name the delicate, luscious Muscat Canelli from Birichino is an enlightened way to end a meal, holiday or any day.Think honeysuckle, clementines, and perhaps a hint of apricot. Mostly a captivating dessert wine that far exceeds that description.
Thirteen percent alcohol, eighteen dollars. Available at Soif, and other fine wine retailers.
Third generation winemaker Andre Beauregard has hit his stride with a new 2012 bottling called Monarch. A blend of grenache, syrah, and cabernet sauvignon, the appealing medium-body red wine weighs in at an easy access 13.9% alcohol, and a very appealing $14.99 pricetag.
Perfectly made to partner with food, Monarch offers up an abundance of raspberry and spice, on a firm yet pliant backbone of light tannins. If you’re looking for holiday table wine, your search might just be over. Even better the second day—yes it IS true that letting wines breathe is key to unlocking fuller flavors and nuances—Monarch is the latest wine to bear the feisty red and gold West Cliff Wines label. Available at Shoppers, of course.
How might it look and feel to have lost all personal freedom? To be completely at the mercy, and whim, of another human being? This question forms the cinematic subject of 12 Years a Slave. The answer is not pretty. It’s not even bearable. British art film director Steve McQueen takes it on nonetheless.
And to be sure the film succeeds in offering up horrific scenes of how it—slavery in the American south circa 1850— very likely was. Hollywood’s down-home stereotypes of the happy dark folk and the benevolent massah are blown to smithereens. The film fails however, despite its insistently right-minded efforts. The repeated scenes of brutality inflicted upon the helpless slaves ultimately deaden the very consciences they are intended to arouse (recall your response to the scenes of Christ at the hands of the Romans in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ).
12 Years a Slave rests almost entirely on the sturdy shoulders and despairing face of Chiwetel Ejiofor, an actor of clear gifts and appealing presence who simply isn’t (more…)
In the title role of Captain Phillips,Tom Hanks has one of his finest parts in many years. Intense and gripping, the film poses all the questions that matter about the imploding globalization of the 21st century.
In 2009 a cargo ship called the Maersk Alabama set out to deliver freight to Mombasa, a route that led the ship straight through waters frequented by Somali pirates. Directed by Bourne Identity action master Paul Greengrass, and written by Billy Ray from Richard Phillips’ memoir A Captain’s Duty, the film would be worth watching simply for its white-knuckle pacing, cinematography that veers between poetry and chaos, and its breathtaking build-up of tension. But Captain Phillips gradually, and relentlessly becomes something very different (more…)
Designer/artist Louise Leong unveils her first show as part of the Printmakers at the Tannery group – in Tannery Studio 107, this Friday, Nov. 1 – reception 6-8:30pm.
Perhaps this was the “there” that Gertrude Stein claimed was missing from the “other” city by the Bay. Haven is the sister Oakland dining room to Daniel Patterson’s celebrated Plum. Smart, vibrant and pulsing with exhibition kitchen vibes, Haven offers labor-intensive dishes that create genuine excitement for eye and palate. And most of the intriguing dishes I sampled last Sunday night worked brilliantly.
The kitchen is packed with guys in black engaged in some invisible choreography surrounding each plate. Attractive stoneware plates and platters add to the eye candy. The menus are tantalizing, and so is the bar menu of eccentric cocktails and designer liquors, including a very long list of top flight single malts. Let me put it this way, Haven makes its own house Cynar.
We started with shared plates of roasted cauliflower in brown butter with a thin pool of salty garum on the bottom. This house likes to use salt as a condiment I discovered—sometimes this was welcome. Sometimes it overwhelmed.
A second shared salad of shredded chicories (shown above) was flat out sensational. (more…)
A book of sensory adventure: The rituals, passions and discoveries of an engaged life.