In my last post, I erroneously stated the kind of wine that I was raised on. In fact, I was raised on excellent wine, barring the obligatory Manischewitz at Passover, and it’s the last 10 years of boxed-wine-induced mental fog that caused me to write otherwise. I regret the error.
The complete letter to the editor follows, including the art.
Dear Daughter:
Grapes at the Jackson-Trigg Vineyard in Ontario, Canada
The Madison Forager is an excellent blog. However, in the spirit of full disclosure to your fans, your should consider the following parental pique for at least 5 or 10 seconds.Raised on box wines? Raised on supermarket brand wine grapes?
In Montpelier: Did you forget the ’71 Morey St. Dennis? How about the Grgich Hills Chardonnay? The Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon? What about the ‘69 and ‘71 Piesporter Goldtropfchen? What was the point of serving ’66 Chateua Leoville-Las Cases to you? Were you not paying attention?
More recently, did you think that the widow-woman, the Veuve Cliquot made ginger ale? Was the ’71 Volnay Santenots that we served with your mother’s lamb roast (with rosemary and inserted garlic) a ‘box wine’? Maybe when you say ‘box wine’ you are thinking of the wooden wine crates in which you put your toys as a toddler until I built a larger crate and painted it bright red!
At Thanksgiving, would you rather have the Grgich Hills Chardonnay or 3-buck Chuck? For desert, we can serve something with high fructose corn syrup instead of the planned fine, delicious (and expensive) icewine from the Niagara escarpment if you prefer.
Your disparagement of your culinary upbringing is not appreciated. Remember, per our family history, on the second date, your mother cooked a meal for me from her favorite cookbook, the Larousse Gastronomique. Your Gout de la Cuisine may have changed, but we doubt it is of the ‘box wine’ sort, and certainly, it was not your upbringing!!
We add in further consideration that we did recently enjoy 3-buck Chuck Sauvignon Blanc with simply sautéed large sea scallops, and a $10 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir made a casual meal of grilled lamb chops an ‘out of the park’ homerun, so it is not that we don’t appreciate the many fine bargain wines. However, we’ve had no good luck with ‘box wines’. If you have recommendations, we’d be glad to try one or two.
Love, dad
Madison Forager 