Fancy Food Show highlights

Hot dogs made from wagyu ("Kobe") beef, coffee berry juice, spicy Thai-flavored shortbread -- must be the Fancy Food Show.

There's no way any one person could taste 5 percent of the foods offered at last week's show, a three-day extravaganza at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It's a foodie paradise, even if it is a little heavy on cheese and chocolates. But still -- you walk by a huge table offering hundreds of different cheeses, any of which you can just stick a knife into and sample. If only you could bring some home!

I started off looking specifically for wine-related food products, such as the fine savory cheddar shortbreads from Canada. (I don't actually recommend the spicy Thai, but the rosemary was nice.) That's how I found the Iron Chef wine. Irrashaimase!

Ahem. An interesting product for wine lovers was BBQ Bath, a brine concentrate from Texas that's used to marinate meat before grilling. It adds flavor and allows you to skip the barbecue sauce, a good thing because most BBQ sauces are wine-unfriendly (vinegary, spicy, sweet -- all problems.) I liked the Lime Jalapeno and Smoked Habanero flavors.

And about that "Kobe" beef hot dog -- yum! It's from Snake River Farms in Idaho, which raises the same breed of cattle, Wagyu, used in Japan to make Kobe beef. They also raise a breed of Japanese pig, Kurobuta, but I wasn't as impressed with the ham made from it.

But with so many great (and not-so-great) food products to sample, I soon lost my focus, instead just nibbling at things that looked yummy.

A few more goodies: green chile stew mix from New Mexico, coffee and Earl Grey flavored shortbread from Washington, juice made from coffee plant berries from Los Angeles. I loved these traditional Greek olive oil cookies sweetened with orange juice and this Bulgarian rose nectar drink.

I couldn't eat anywhere near enough chocolates to tell you which was best, but two I enjoyed for very different reasons were Valerie salt and pepper truffles and DeFranco's espresso secrets.

A few other tidbits of knowledge: Olives vary tremendously by quality. If you don't love the brand you use now, move on. I had sooooo much prosciutto and it varied from great to really great.

And a note to show promoters: If you're peddling a wine-friendly product, take care about the wine you pour. Some guy was trying to sell savory cookies that supposedly go with different specific varietals. I asked to try the one that goes with Cabernet, and he poured me Charles Shaw Cabernet. Mmm, delicious -- not. That's why there's no link here to his product.

Sorry for the delay in posting this. Wine rocks, but my home computer does not :(.

Pardon Barry Bonds

Baseball writers and political analysts have speculated that George W. Bush might pardon Roger Clemens for lying to Congress before leaving office.

That would be a mistake; Clemens asked for the Congressional hearing so if he lied at it he has nobody to blame but himself.

Instead, Bush should pardon Barry Bonds. By doing so, Bush would be correcting his own mistake as President.

The ongoing prosecution of Bonds has been a costly witch hunt at taxpayer expense, and it all came because the Bush administration made steroids in baseball one of its issues with which to divert the American people's attention from more serious problems.

The Bonds case has dragged on for more than five years. The real villains in the Balco case -- the people who ran the company and provided steroids to athletes -- are done with their sentences.

Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer, spent more time in prison -- more than a year -- for refusing to testify against Bonds than Victor Conte, founder of the company, did for all of his crimes. Conte was sentenced to four months in prison and four months of house arrest.

Here's what Bonds is charged with: lying to a grand jury about using steroids. He was subpoenaed to appear to testify in private, along with a mere handful of other players.

From what we now know, if every player in MLB had been required to appear, we would have learned of hundreds of steroids users. But Bonds was the big fish for the Bush administration -- the arrogant, media-hating asshole who was about to break the home-run record.

Last year -- more than four years after his alleged false testimony -- Bonds was a free agent, but with the indictment hanging over his head he got not one contract offer. Considering his success as a hitter, it seems clear that some team would have wanted him for the minimum salary -- $400,000. Maybe Tampa Bay would have won the World Series with Bonds instead of Cliff Floyd.

Anyway, the indictment has already cost Bonds at least $400,000, not counting incentive clauses, playoff money, a contract this year, etc. Is that worse than the 4-month prison sentence Victor Conte got? Ask yourself: Would you rather spend 4 months in prison or pay a $400,000 fine? Keep in mind that their offenses are not at all equal: Conte founded a company to create designer drugs for athletes and mask them from detection. Bonds was a client of that company.

The indictment was so poorly written that it had to be refiled. This case has already cost US taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, and taken investigators and prosecutors away from more serious crimes.

Bush has always been responsible for this. With one stroke of his pen he can end it.

I am NOT arguing that Barry Bonds is a good guy. But for what he's accused of doing, he has been punished enough. So have the American people.

Would you drink wine in your football team's colors?

I stumbled upon this video on the Internet today, in which a Baltimore Sun writer shows us how to turn beer Ravens purple.

The resulting beer looks very wine-like -- like sparkling Zinfandel, albeit with a bigger mousse than you'd expect. It actually looks more delicious to me than in its original yellow color, but that's because I'm a wine guy, not a beer guy.

So that begs the question: Would you drink wine in your team's colors while watching a big game?

Obviously it depends on the team. Oakland A's fans can have golden Chardonnay, perhaps with a stick of celery. But what about Raiders fans? Malbec served in a silver goblet?

How about San Francisco Giants fans? I've seen some orange wines, but generally they're flawed by oxidation. A few drops of red food coloring in your Sauvignon Blanc, then, with perhaps some olives on the side?

If you're a big enough Philadelphia Eagles fan to drink wine colored green and white -- stay away from my cellar with that stuff.

George W. Bush's greatest achievements

With President George W. Bush about to leave office, I thought I'd pause from commenting on wine to praise him for his greatest accomplishments while in office.

Here's my list, though I may have forgotten a few. Please feel free to supplement.

*) On perhaps the worst day in this nation's history, and certainly the nation's worst day of his administration, President Bush heroically calmed an entire classroom full of schoolchildren by listening to them read "The Pet Goat."

*) Subsequently, President Bush used his charm and political skills to prevent Dick Cheney from launching a costly invasion of his most hated enemy -- France.

*) President Bush helped Al Jazeera establish itself as a worldwide brand, particularly with his refusal to cancel one of that network's most important sources of exclusive content, Osama bin Laden.

*) By renaming fried potatoes as "Freedom Fries," President Bush stimulated the economy, particularly for businesses engaged in making plastic menu signs for small restaurants.

*) Even with Condoleezza Rice obviously available, President Bush did not engage in extramarital sex while in office. Or if he did, he was Presidential enough to not get caught.

*) President Bush stimulated scientific research for our allies in the European Union with his stance on stem-cell research.

*) Next to prostitution, torture is one of mankind's oldest professions, but the industry had really fallen on hard times until it was restored to respectability by President Bush. Now a whole new generation worldwide is taking the training they need to introduce new methods, perhaps to patriotic members of our own military!

*) President Bush stimulated the shoe industry worldwide by creating interest in a new model.

*) Without President Bush, we probably wouldn't have President-elect Obama.

*) Perhaps most important of all, eight years of President Bush proved that this great nation is strong enough to survive anything at all.

Franzia is Unforgiven

I'm a fan of Fred Franzia. The guy may lack in social graces, but he's a hero for recessionary times, putting usually palatable bottles of wine in stores for $2. Many, many Americans will enjoy the simple pleasure of a bottle of wine with their dinner this weekend solely because of Fred's "Two Buck Chuck."

However, I'm glad George W. Bush did not issue him a pardon for his 1993 federal conviction for conspiracy to defraud.

What Franzia pleaded guilty to was the wine equivalent of the Black Sox throwing the World Series -- because had he done so with regularity, he would have caused consumers to doubt the truth of what is actually in those precious bottles we spend so much money for.

Franzia admitted selling lesser grapes as Zinfandel. Though his Bronco Wine Co. now uses most of its grapes to make its own wines ("Two Buck Chuck" was still several years away), this news story implies that Bronco was selling these particular grapes to another winery.

Think about it: What assurance do you have that your bottle of $10 Zinfandel actually contains Zinfandel? If it were made from a mixture of Thompson Seedless and Alicante Bouschet, would you know?

You just would assume that Zinfandel wasn't particularly interesting, which means you'd be unlikely to want to spend $20 or more for a fine one from Seghesio or Scott Harvey or Outpost or any number of other great Zin makers. This is why what Franzia did back then is so bad: unchecked, it would have undermined trust throughout the industry, not just in his wines.

Franzia did not pay a heavy price for his involvement in the scheme. Others went to prison, but he did not. His company paid a $2.5 million fine and he had to temporarily step down as Bronco's president, a punishment that I'm sure was just as effective in changing leadership as in baseball when an ejected manager is ordered out of the dugout. You think they don't have phone lines in Ceres?

The biggest penalty Franzia paid, apparently, was shame. Otherwise, he wouldn't have applied for a Presidential pardon in the first place. Sorry, Fred, but you need to bear that shame. It's appropriate.

Apparently Franzia also wants to own a gun, something federal convicts cannot. Maybe he thinks, like Will Munny, "I'm just a fella now. I ain't no different than anyone else no more."

But he's still Unforgiven.

Wine and chocolate do not go together!

Right now, most major food and wine publications are preparing their annual wine-and-chocolate article for Valentine's Day.

But it's all a scam. Wine and chocolate do not go together.

I sat in on a tasting once of about 75 different wines and maybe 20 kinds of chocolate. The best we could come up with were a few pairings that didn't suck.

The reason is very simple: Chocolate is sweet. It makes wines that aren't sweet taste sour.

The only way to avoid this is to drink an even sweeter wine -- vin santo, or Port, or something like that. In which case you have to ask yourself, why do you need the chocolate?

I'm going to say this again as the commercial candy fest that commemorates the mob massacre in Chicago gets closer. But I wanted to get this out there before your February issues of food and wine magazines arrive with ludicrous wine and chocolate pairing propaganda.

Drink wine with your sweetie. Clear your palates with a kiss. Then share a chocolate. Or do this in the opposite order.

But don't believe that Merlot, or Cab, or Zin, or any other red wine goes well with chocolate. They do not. And there's no reason they should have to.

Drinking and blathering on about it at the New York Times

Have you seen the New York Times' "Proof" blog? It's a collection of writers posting about drinking -- not the drinks, but the experience of drunkenness.

This fills a niche. There are scores of wine writers and at least a few dozen people aspiring to be spirits or cocktail writers. But all of us concentrate on the flavors we experience, not the feeling we get after imbibing.

I've always found this dichotomy strange, and have been annoyed more than once by an editor prudishly snipping out a reference to being schnockered at the end of a long tasting of Zinfandels, for example. It's the polite secret of the wine industry: Yes, Virginia, professional wine tasters do get tipsy. We just don't admit it.

In fact, it's important in the industry to be able to drink bottle after bottle of wine and not show really obvious signs of drunkenness. If you jump in a fountain or give a technicolor yawn in public, people will still talk about it years later with disdain, perhaps while opening the 6th bottle of the night.

Thus I think there's a good spot in American wine writing for what the Times is doing. The actual results are, so far, hit and miss.

What the blog seems to spotlight mostly are regretful essays from binge drinkers. This is definitely a way many Americans relate to alcohol, and it's a shame that it is.

But I for one would like to see more essays about why people like drinking in the first place. There's a great line very early in the movie "Trainspotting" about heroin: "People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid."

I really liked David Kramer's essay "Buybacks" about his feeling of being special at his neighborhood bar in Manhattan: it managed to convey both the reasons people like to while away their lives in bars, and the reasons they probably shouldn't.

He writes: "McManus is one of those rare New York bars that still understands and holds dear the concept of the buyback — a drink on the house for every few you buy. And depending on the bartender and the length of my drinking session, the buybacks could be plentiful. Every now and then, the cadence of the buybacks would increase and I would find myself going one-for-one with the bartender, which made it difficult to slip out in a moment of polite one-upmanship.

I thought this was just great. I knew that buybacks didn’t go to just anybody. They were a perk of the inner circle, the handful of patrons who were genuinely liked and trusted by the staff. So a buyback didn’t just mean free beer — a great concept on its own. It meant acceptance. It meant I was on one of the rings of the inner circle."

... but later ...

"I told her about that split-second, how I was frozen on my bar stool and didn’t know what to do. But then every free drink that I had ever had, and the potential of that ending — forever — flashed before my eyes. No more special treatment. No more buybacks … The thought was staggering. I just had to do something."

Good stuff. Read the whole post.

That said, after Kramer, there's work to do: too much grimacing, not enough winking. Hopefully the Times will find more writers to highlight interesting things about drinking, because otherwise "Proof" will deteriorate into an unending elegy of eloquent regret, alleviated by occasional glitters of bright celebration. Sound like any activities you know?