Ljubljana During An Evening Stroll

Fair warning to those looking for our normal wine posts…the first couple are just vacation posts for friends or for Karen and I when we get senile and can’t remember what we did when we were here…

Danny finally graduated which means Italy here we come! We’ve been waiting to take this trip since he graduated from High School but schedules with Danny, Justin and now Justin’s wife, Allison and us just didn’t work out so we postponed it until he graduated from college. For those of you who don’t know, he graduated with two degrees, one in Biotechnology, and one in Chemistry with a math minor. He’s going to University of Michigan for his PhD in Bioinformatics so we are pretty proud of him (at least when he is not annoying the crap out of us). We don’t know where he got the brains. We think it might have been the dog.

We decided to start our trip in Slovenia, just east of Venice. Karen and Ken have been there before and the capital, Ljubljana is stunning. We wanted to show it to the kids before we got started in Italy. Justin and Allison were able to come over from London for a long weekend so they met us as well. First stop after they got in was the Bled area, a rather ominous sounding name for a beautiful area. Bled has three main attractions. Bled Lake, a stunning, azure blue glacial lake sets the stage for the other sites. The only place I’ve seen with similar color are lakes in the high Sierra. Bled cathedral sits on an island in Bled Lake and is reached by 99 steps. Tradition holds that if you get married there the groom has to carry the bride up those steps. Justin was glad he and Allison got married the year before.

Bled Cathedral on Lake Bled

After spending about an hour on the island, we headed to Bled Castle which was a defensive castle for hundreds of years, primarily against the invading Turks. It was here that we were obligated to try the local desert, a slightly sweet cream cake that was pretty good but the small portion that the guide mentioned ended up being a pretty big ass piece of cake (hey the guide told us we had to eat it and he was our ride back so who were we to argue?).

That evening we ate at a traditional Slovenian restaurant. Really good food and the weather was outstanding so we ate outside. We had about half of the next day in Ljubljana so we walked around the town and then went up to Ljubljana castle for the view of the town. Of course walking up 300 feet was an ordeal so we had to treat ourselves to drinks on the river. This is where Justin and Allison introduced us to the Aperol Spritz, a dangerous little drink because it’s made with Aperol Aperitif and Prosecco. They are pretty delicious…I get the feeling there are going to more of these on our trip. After drinks we wandered over to the local square where about 60 of the town’s restaurants put on a fair with food, wine and beer samples. It was great to get a cross section of various Slovenian and other ethnic foods, particularly some of those that we don’t usually see in the US.

We had originally planned on driving from Ljubljana to Venice but a 600 euro bill for a single day car rental wasn’t in our future so we took a bus instead. It’s a stunningly beautiful drive and all was going pretty well until we hit the Italian boarder and were stopped for a passport check. The border guard confiscated about 15 passports (including Ken’s) and escorted two passengers off the bus who’s travel documents apparently weren’t what the border guards wanted to see…and still we waited. Just about the time Ken really started to worry about the guards pulling out a rubber glove for a “thorough” check, they finally returned the aforementioned purloined passports and we left. This of course put us into Venice about an hour late which triggered a late check-in charge by the Airbnb host. They had disclosed that checking in after 8:00 would incur a charge but 50 euro was ridiculous. That however, was only the first of the charges specifically designed to snag money from gullible tourists…yep…that would be us.

The View of Venice from Outside of Our Airbnb Flat

The flat was OK but much of the floor has cracks in the inlaid concrete. You’d think that if you built a city in a swamp and then put buildings on top of it, you’d use materials that aren’t subject to major damage when the buildings start to settle. News flash…you built in a swamp! Buildings are going to shift significantly! One other point about the flat …it’s said that only a divine being can create life. We now beg to differ because our flat had the disturbing ability to spontaneously generate Mosquitoes out of thin air. We killed quite a number and no matter how much we searched the little bastards out, we still woke up in the middle of the night to the annoying buzz of their wings and itchy bites. Oh well, at least we are in Venice now!

Part 2, Venice

Tasting Sauvignon Blanc

I hate Sauvignon Blanc. I’ve always hated Sauvignon Blanc. I didn’t like the taste and usually found that it was often served poorly as well…too cold…small glass…the litany goes on. There really wasn’t anything about Sauvignon Blanc that I liked. However, the sharper of you readers may have noticed the past tense in those last two sentences. I now have a new reason to hate Sauvignon Blanc because I’ve kind of grown to like it…or at least some of it, so now it’s turned me into a hypocrite as well. For those of you who have read our posts before, you might remember a blog post called the “Sauvignon Blanc Rant” where I compared it to “grass clippings in water” and called it a “waste of space in the refrigerator”. Given my newfound tolerance…even appreciation for some Sauvignon Blanc, this means I’ll be having a glass with a good portion of poultry, specifically crow.

Sauvignon Blanc is the core white wine grape from the Bordeaux region and has a history dating back hundreds of years in their famous, white Bordeaux blend wines. Along with Cabernet Franc, it’s also the one of the parents of Cabernet Sauvignon…notice the “Sauvignon” name in common, so at least it had that going for it – the only redeeming trait of a miserable wine (or so we thought).

Last April, Karen and I went on a wine cruise to Bordeaux and one of the wine experiences I was least looking forward to was having Sauvignon Blanc foisted upon me as part of those white Bordeaux wines. Karen shared my dislike. Well…a funny thing happened when we weren’t expecting it. We tried a white Bordeaux with lunch and kind of liked it after the first sip. Well hell…that can’t be right. We hate Sauvignon Blanc and the label said this wine was 90 percent Sauvignon Blanc and 10 percent Semillon, another wine for which I have few kind words. My first thought was that some smart ass must have switched my glass with something that was actually tasty, instead of the ultra-herbaceous, thin wine I was used to. I checked the bottle and sure enough, it was what was in my glass. Hmm…how to explain the difference besides being drunk, hung over or both from drinking so much French wine? Karen and I both commented that there was a roundness of flavor, and a viscosity that was lacking in the new world Sauvignon Blanc that we’ve had. We didn’t know the cause, but we knew that we liked what we had in our glass. Every day, a different white Bordeaux teased our senses with similar structure and complexity but different flavors. Clearly something was different with these wines when compared to the US and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

We remembered that there was one US Sauvignon Blanc based wine that we liked, Westbrook Wine Farm’s “Savvy”, which is primarily Sauvignon Blanc but also has Semillon and Muscadelle, the other allowable white wine grapes in white Bordeaux blends. “Savvy” has a similar flavor and mouth feel to the white Bordeaux wines we tried in France.

On our next trip to Westbrook Wine Farm to try their new Primitivo, we were looking forward to trying the “Savvy” again which is styled after white Bordeaux wines. We wanted to see if our recollections were accurate and if it was reminiscent of the wines that we had in France rather than the thin, single-note Sauvignon Blanc that we’ve had in the US. Not only was the “Savvy” just as we remembered, but we learned a few of the differences in winemaking techniques. First, in addition to Sauvignon Blanc, there is Semillon and Muscadelle in the “Savvy” making it more Bordeaux-like than pure new world Sauvignon Blanc. Not being the sharpest tool in the shed, I was still trying to get my head around how two wine grapes that I don’t care for and another that I have virtually no experience with (and is only used in small amounts) can make such a tasty wine. Ray Krause, the winemaker at Westbrook, likes to impart lots of information about the wine when you are wine tasting. The more you ask, the more he’ll tell. It’s a bit like drinking from a firehose but it was what we needed to get our heads around the Sauvignon Blanc conundrum. We had a couple of first time wine tasters in the group and Ray was happy to educate so we picked up a lot of information. For starters, “Savvy” uses different yeast than many other wines. Ray uses different yeasts for each of his wines but it really registered this time. Different yeasts produce different compounds in the wine. Some produce more ethyl alcohol, some produce more glycerol, and that is one of the keys. Glycerol has a slightly sweet flavor which accounts for what many perceive as residual sugar in wine even though it is completely dry (a dry wine has all of the sugar converted to CO2, alcohol and various other compounds). The yeast that Ray uses produces copious amounts of glycerol compared to most other strains and that is where both the hint of sweetness and the viscosity comes from. There may be a few other elements in his secret sauce but the glycerol was the smoking gun that I had been looking for. The “Savvy” and the good white Bordeaux had the mouthfeel produced by more glycerol in the wine. Most Sauvignon Blanc made in the new world don’t have that characteristic.

Clearly, the more you learn about wine, the more you realize you really don’t know squat which really sucks. If you learn more about a topic, you should become an expert. The more I learn about wine, the more I realize that I am a babe in the woods. If you are like us and consider Sauvignon Blanc repellant (or even worse), try either a white Bordeaux or get hold of Westbrook’s “Savvy” (available only from the winery) and see if you change your opinion. If you like the typical new world style of Sauvignon Blanc, well that’s great for you…just keep it away from Karen and me.

The City of Bruges, Belgium

Well…we’re now in the aforementioned Bruges… “The land of many hangovers” and this place is stunning.  More old buildings than Ghent, at least in the center section and probably the biggest collection of bars and restaurants we’ve seen in years.

We met up with our friends, Steve and Allison from the UK and our foreign exchange student from Germany of five years back, Tammo and his girlfriend Melina and our long time Belgian customers that have become good friends, Peter and Johan and their wives, Caroline and Natalie.  It sounds like the beginning of a joke.  Four Belgians, two Germans, two Brits and two Americans walk into a bar…The United Nations has nothing on us.

The weather was cool to downright cold but other than an occasional drizzle, it didn’t really rain.  We all met up (minus the Belgians who sadly had to work) in the Zots Brewery.  Nice place but food was pretty mediocre.  Steve and I took off to go see our friends at work and talk a little business with the hope that Karen, Allison and the two Germans wouldn’t get arrested without being chaperoned.  I think it’s 50/50 if they actually did and just made bail before we reconnected.  We all reconnected after a couple of hours and Peter and Johan took us out of Bruges to a quaint little country town towards the coast in an area they call the Poulders.  We had a great dinner (after somewhere between 5 and 20 drinks apiece…Peter just kept bringing them out).  Belgium has roughly 11 million people and I’m convinced that Peter knows at least 10 million of them.  We must have been 15 miles from Peter and Caroline’s place but it seems like he knew everyone that came in.  After, dinner, it was off to the Kroon, their favorite local pub.  We finally left about 1:00AM.  Apparently Peter and Caroline didn’t get out until about 2:30 AM.

The next day we walked around the town while trying to wake up, thankful that we weren’t hung over (except for Allison who was feeling distinctly off her game).  Off to Peter and Caroline’s house for lunch.  They managed to pull together a stunning meal despite having less than 4 minutes of sleep (or so I guess).   Several good bottles of wine later and we waddled out of their house barely able to fit through the door to get back to old town Bruges to take a boat tour of its canals.  It’s a good thing that the boat operators don’t charge for excess baggage if you’ve eaten too much.  Bruges was originally a port and has a number of canals, many of which run through downtown with buildings built right up to them similar to Venice.  We’ve heard that it’s often called “the Venice of the North”.

Central Bruges

The rest of Saturday and Sunday were spent walking around Bruges, enjoying various sites and or establishments.  Karen at last got her Belgian waffles, something that she’d been waiting a few days for.  She was really disappointed that she couldn’t get them at breakfast.  The Belgian waiter looked at us like we were nuts when she wanted them before lunch because apparently they are a dessert in Belgium.  He thought it was so funny that he had to go back and tell his other coworkers about the crazy Americans that eat waffles and pancakes for breakfast…such idiots, those Americans.

Sunday night was another great meal, this time with Johan and his wife Natalie.  Before dinner, they took us out to the edge of town to see the windmills in the area where they got married.  They call one of them “their” windmill because of that, but they graciously allowed us to borrow it for a couple of pictures.  After dinner Natalie, who was finally over a bad cold, was ready to party and wanted another drink so we had a last one at the hotel while our last three liver cells desperately tried to hide from yet one more infusion.

The next day, we jumped on a couple of trains from Bruges to Brussels to Paris to visit with our long time family friends, the Selosse’s.  No problems leaving Belgium but unfortunately, as I’m sure everyone has heard, there was a tragic terrorist attack less than a day later in Brussels.   We were safe in Paris with friends at that time but it was really sad seeing the carnage.  We had originally considered spending a couple of days in Brussels but our friends in Europe convinced us that it wasn’t a good idea.  Clearly they were right.

Beautiful Downtown Ghent

Welcome to Ghent, Belgium. Oh wait…your not here…we are. Well, that sucks for you because this place is great. It was pretty uneventful getting here other than just a really long travel day – San Francisco to Frankfurt to Brussels and then a train to Ghent. Most of the Belgians speak English but they do like to mess with us by not putting many signs in English so we were pretty sure we were on the right train to get here but didn’t get confirmation until we were way the hell out of Brussels.

We met with our friend Johan’s son, Thomas, who went to college here and then stayed to work. He was a great tour guide and really good company. The only disturbing thing is he looks a lot like my middle brother Steve, albeit 30 years ago but has the same mannerisms as our exchange student from Germany of a few years past, Tammo, who we’ll be seeing tomorrow in Bruges. Thomas says that the Belgians are not terribly patriotic about the county but there are three things that you just don’t do here:
1) Don’t drink crappy imported beer when you are in Belgium. If you do, they will throw you out of the country with handcuffs made of empty Bud Light cans.
2) Don’t bad mouth the French Fries. Belgium has the best French Fries (not sure why we call them French Fries if the Belgians say they have the best but who am I to question a thousand years worth of wisdom). They are pretty good but apparently, I’m not discriminating enough to be a French Fry connoisseur.  By the way, the Belgians call them Pom Frites.
3) Don’t bad mouth their chocolate. I’m not sure what happens if you do but we did walk by a meat market and not everything hanging from the ceiling looked like it came from a pig or a cow…

The downtown area is great for walking but the cobblestones can play havoc with your balance if you drink too much, (gleaned from watching other people, not doing it ourselves – we’ve actually been remarkably restrained so far). A sense of direction is required because not a single street is straight or level and then there are two winding rivers thrown in with various bridges to really mess with you. We had one full day in Ghent so we walked the downtown Centrum district which dates back past the middle ages. Usually my sense of direction is great but a couple of times I got turned around and Karen…yes that Karen…the one who can get lost in her own closet, knew where we were. She was dead on. I was torn between being proud and a little freaked out wondering if someone had switched my wife with a body snatcher.

Downtown Ghent has three large towers; two from cathedrals and another that is a bell tower. It was a market town going back for centuries so there are a few areas that still retain the atmosphere of what they used to sell, particularly the fish market area.

The Spires of Ghent from St. Michael’s Bridge

We hiked up all 255 steps of the Belfrey (a bell tower) to get a view of the city and early the next day before heading to Bruge, went though Gravensteen castle which was founded in the eleven hundreds. It’s a smaller scale replica of a massive crusader castle that was built in the Middle East.

Tomorrow, off to Bruges. also called the Venice of the North.  If the stories from my brother, Dennis or Steve H. (a friend from the UK), are correct, Bruges translates to “the land of many hangovers”.  This could be fun!

Ken – Brief Bio
I am somewhere approaching middle age (which is everyone’s way of saying older than I want to be but I’m not dead yet). Isn’t it ironic that when some one claims to be middle aged, that would typically mean they plan on living to be 110? I can claim to be in my 40’s as long as the blog post gets published relatively quickly. I was born and raised in Northern California, and developed a passion for wine in my late 30s. I am married to Karen, the other principal in KG Web Publications, the partnership that publishes Winery-Sage.com. Our last name starts with “G”, hence the name “KG “ works for both of us – no top billing. Marriage is all about compromises.

When/if things slow down at work, I would like to get my certificate as a certified wine professional.

Karen – Brief Bio
Karen is slightly older than Ken (a point that never gets old – not hard to tell which of us wrote the biographies, is it?). She was born in Southern California but moved to Northern California in the mid 80’s. Ken claims it’s because she was looking for him. She ignores him, something at which she has become quite adept. She was a retail manager for a number of years and continued to work through our older child’s school years but became a stay at home mom for the 2nd one. To avoid going nuts, she volunteered at both kid’s schools. Now that the younger one has moved on to college and doesn’t want his parents within a three hour drive of the place, she has moved onto administering the web site and allowing the 90 pound Black Lab to take her for walks. She graciously allows Ken to think that they have compromised on a number of things even though she’s usually had the end game figured out from the beginning.

Joint Bio (Updated in late 2017)

Karen and Ken have now been married for almost 25 years and to date have still not had a fight since being married, probably because Karen has the patience of a saint.  They live in the Silicon Valley area but have had a cabin just south of Yosemite (in the Bass lake area) for roughly 13 years and spend as much time up there as they can.  The first 10 years was just relaxation.  The last three has been lots of work recovering from damage caused by the Courtney Fire and then continuing on with a remodel.  In 2018, they hope to spend as much as a third of their time up at the cabin.

They are now empty-nesters with with older soon being married and living in London with his new wife for the next two years and the younger one living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, getting his PHD in Bioinformatics.  From where he got the brains is a complete mystery but the best guess is the dog.  They are not sure what they did to drive their kids so far away but the only consolation is that both sons claim to want to move back to the Bay Area in the future.

How Winery Sage As Born and Evolved

Frankly, it’s too long of a story to post to include in here but we have attached a link if you are interested.

Blogger Ken – Wine Tastes

If I could use one word to describe my tastes in wine, it would be “balance”. Give me a great combination of tannin, fruit and acid, and I’m a happy guy. Put a glass filled with most of the mass produced new world wines and I’ll likely find it to be too fruity. However, give me a typical old world wine and I’ll also probably find it a bit overly dry. I also don’t like heavily extracted wines. To me they are way too “one note” which overwhelms any other characteristics of the wine.

I also strongly prefer red wines to white wines although as I learn more and try various white wines, I’m learning to appreciate more of them. If drinking a Chardonnay (the dominant US white wine), hints of oak are great but don’t hit me over the head with an oak two by four in a glass. I don’t like the newer trend of Chards where it never sees oak and is only kept in stainless – it strips the wine of character unless it is kept on the lees (sediments) for a while which impart of different type of fullness. If I want a white wine without character, I’ll drink a Sauvignon Blanc (not to hard to fathom how I feel about that one is it?).

Give me a cross with old world technique and subtlety and dryness but just a hint of new world fruit and I’ll likely find it appealing.

Blogger Karen – Wine Tastes

Karen is equally at home with red or white wines but usually prefers whites on warmer days, reds on cooler ones. For Reds, her tastes run closer to a typical new world style of wines meaning that a touch more fruit than the older world styles but doesn’t much care for the over the top California fruit bomb either. Balance is also a good way to describe her tastes, just leaning a little more to the fruit and a little away from the dry. For Chardonnay she likes a little oak. If she wants something a little crisper and more refreshing, she’ll usually drink a Pinot Grigio or Albarino. She usually finds Sauvignon Blancs somewhere between unappealing and repellant.