Summer Sauvignon Blanc

One of the great things about living in Northern California is that, when summer comes, the days are long and hot, but the evenings cool down to the temperate seventies, allowing for all-evening-long, outdoor entertaining by the barbecue and fire pit.

Every Wednesday, here at Bubba's house, I do what I refer to fondly as the Wednesday Night Appreciation Dinner.  It's for an unknown quantity of guests, the usual four of us (my wife, daughter and a good friend) and an appreciating and appreciative group of my son's friends.  He's off in Montana in college, but his friends, male and female, like to come over for recollection's sake, some of my barbecue that they've enjoyed for years, and long conversations without the television on for company, and things that don't involve their iphone apps...at least for a while!

Grill Management at its finest!

Now that they're over twenty-one, for the most part, I usually invite them to bring some wine, and we elders pass on what wisdom we can about current events, wine, relationships and music.  With the temperatures soaring into the high nineties earlier in the week, I thought it was a good time to trot out some nicely chilled white wines and finally review the other bottle I received from John Boring at the California Wine Club, the Robledo, Seven Brothers, Lake County Sauvignon Blanc.

The warmth of the evening called for simple fare, so I served up barbecued chicken thighs (because I prefer the moistness of the dark meat), grilled indirect for an hour, seasoned with Chaka's MMM sauce and Grandville's Extra Spicy BBQ Jam, blended in a pot on the grill and basted liberally every ten minutes, or so; some Farmer John's Smoked Sausage, also grilled indirect so the skin doesn't blacken and blister; home style potato salad, garlic bread and mini bell peppers, lightly grilled in extra virgin olive oil with grilled, sliced mushrooms, using a barbecue tray, my daughter thoughtfully gave me after she saw me losing  shrooms through the grill top!  As you can see, with proper temperature control, there's nothing you can't put on the grill!  The stage was set and dinner for seven, and a wine review, for hungry stomachs and eager, young palates was in the offing!

Outstanding Medal Winner

It must be said, that when it comes to white wines, the taste in my mind runs to the German Kabinetts and Spatleses I grew up with in Europe, because I enjoyed the fruity crispness, and  I have great disdain for Chardonnay, mainly because I hate the hackneyed and cliched term buttery! (I once belonged to the Anything But Chardonnay Wine Club, until they, inexplicably, sent me a bottle of...Chardonnay! Go figure.

As my palate refined, Saunignon Blanc became the natural choice of warm weather wine.  Nicely chilled, but not shocked.  (As the Europeans will tell you, Americans tend to drink their reds too warm and their whites too cold, rascals that we are!)

I poured the Robledo into as many glasses as age and preference permitted, and held my glass up to the fading light of the sunset.  The color was crisp and clear, without the mildest hint of the bronze discoloration that sediment brings.  It showed great legs and a mildly sweet scented bouquet.  I was pleased with the friendly crispness of my first sip and delicately smooth finish.  No harsh after burn in the back of the throat, as with so many French whites.

I'm not one for flowery descriptions of oak and tannin, with hints of raspberry and pineapple as some are,  so, here's what the Robledo's themselves, say about it:

"This pale yellow wine is clear and bright, ready to wow you with zesty aromas of tropical fruits and green apple. Its fruit flavors are intense, highlighted by green tea and citrus notes. This mouthcoating wine ends with a crisp butripe finish. A terrific Sauvignon Blanc, even just by itself!"


Couldn't have said it better if I were a wine dude!  Anyway, the evening proceeded with comparisons to other  Sauvignon Blancs as they reached the table, some popular, some trendy and some from another boutique winery we like, and I have to say again, without even knowing that this is a $20 bottle that his club offers at a great value at $10.99 a bottle, John surprised me with another winner! 


Do yourselves a favor and contact John at the California Wine Club.  You're going to have to prove me wrong when I say that this family business of theirs is doing something special for boutique California wineries 

Historical Trivia and the Origins of Barbeque

One of my favorite words is  factoid.

If you're like most people out there, and you just go along to get along, I'm gonna bet that you think the definition is something like a little-known, interesting fact or tidbit.  Well, I by no means, consider myself a scholar, but I remember my Daddy comin' home from work, sometime in the mid-seventies, talkin' about some yahoo, name of Ted Turner, who did a piece on a show and used factoid as a tid-bit of information.  "Ruination of the English language", I can remember him muttering!  So, I went and looked it up.  I do that...a lot.  Got a whole library, now!

Just so's you know, a factoid is a piece of erroneous or incorrect information, that gets spread and repeated so often, that people believe it to be true!  Thus, a factoid about the word factoid is, itself, a factoid!  Ain't that something?

So, ever since then, I've tried to be kinda careful about how I use words.  English teacher of mine, when I was in grammar school, came up with a pretty saying I remember, too.  He said, "Bobby, words are the tools and language is a skill.  But communication...that's an art."   I kinda' liked that.

Anyway, what's that got to do with barbecue?  Well, seems all kind of folk want to know where the word comes from, 'cuz it's not as easy as grill.

The word barbecue sounds funny, so it must be foreign.  If it's foreign, it must be French.  Plus we associate it with the Southern states, like Louisiana, which, as I recall from my fifth grade history, used to be sort of French.  But we like to blur the lines  just a little more, like that friend of a friend that told you he heard someone who said that thing you can't quite remember...so the story goes somethin' like this.

Way back when, French sailors in the Caribbean saw a pig being cooked whole in a pit and reportedly described the method of cooking as barbe à queue, meaning from beard to tail. More likely, it was just part of the description, because they were somehow awed that anyone might eat more than the hams with their oeuvres! The French, being clever and all, use the same word for barbecue as we do now, so I guess Steve Martin was wrong when he said "those French have a different word for everything!" .   But word historians, etymologists, they're called, say that beard to tail tale, just ain't so.   Just because it sounds close, don't necessarily make it so…it's just a common thread in folk-etymology explanations.  Almost as bad as explanations for cuss words that say they're acronyms...guess again or look it up. I did!

Now, on account of us Americans likin' barbecue so well and kinda takin' it as our own, another claim is that the word barbecue comes from the acronym BBQ,  supposedly from roadhouses and beer joints with pool tables that advertised "Bar, Beer and Cues".

Dumbest thing I ever heard!  What kinda' bar needs to advertise that it has beer?  And I've never been to one that had a swimmin' pool inside, so I don't even know why you'd say "cues" instead of "pool". "Think I'll ride my hog on down to the no-beer-servin' roadhouse for a nice cool lemonade and a game of cues, tonight.  You comin'?" According to this fairy tale, the phrase was shortened over time to BBCue, then BBQ, using IFFY (pronounced "iffy") - Inaccurate False and Foolish Yammering. Maybe that'll catch on...but I doubt it!

So, all you can get out of the above is the correct spelling of the word, barbecue, (and yes, I know what the title of my blog is, and that's 'cuz so many people misspell it!) and some cool stuff to tell your friends and neighbors, while you're standing around the barbecue pit, burnin' somethin'!

The actual origins of both the activity of barbecue cooking and the word itself are, as you guessed, not so clear cut.  Most etymologists believe that barbecue derives ultimately from the word barabicu found in the language of both the Timucua of Florida and the Taíno people of the Caribbean, which then entered European languages in the form barbacoa.  The word translates as sacred fire pit, and describes a grill for cooking meat, consisting of a wooden platform resting on sticks.

So, now that you understand that what you been doin' in the name of barbecue, is actually the desecration of the sacred fire pit, maybe you’re ready to learn how to barbecue and earn the admiration of your friends and neighbors and maybe even win back your wife’s love, by not messin' up another get-together and learnin' how to barbecue the right way...the Bubba Q way!