As you work your way through the “Impossible Conversations” exhibit, now open through August 19, 2012, you can’t help but thinking lucky for us they became not just designers but iconic figures in the fashion world.  It seems hard to believe that Prada was, as she says, never influenced by Schiaparelli.  In the “Waist Up / Waist Down” section, the ornate Schiap jackets pair so well with the embellished Prada skirts that you have a hard time believing that they were made some 60 to 70 years apart.  They seem to be cut so to speak, from the same cloth.  And so it goes throughout the exhibit.

These two designers are both Italian, but generations apart, with Schiaparelli working in the 1930’s to 1950’s and Prada designing today.  They are very much alike but also very different.  The exhibit beautifully plays up these similarities and contrasts, in both the clothing on the mannequins and in the imagined dialogue between the two women.  There are seven film clips, each serving as a backdrop to different scenes in the exhibit.

In Schiaparelli’s day, ornamental hats were the big thing.  She’s famous for her shoe hat, a result of a collaboration with the Spanish artist Salvador Dali.  For Prada, ornamental shoes are her thing, and her latest collection is of shoes inspired by vintage cars.  Vintage Cadillacs with tail fins are re-imagined as shoes, complete with tail lights.

A sense of whimsy and art are recurring motifs in the two designers’ collections.  Yet in their impossible conversation the women disagree on calling fashion designers artists.  Prada dismisses that label; Schiap embraces it.

So it may be no surprise then that Prada was reportedly reluctant to participate in this project, a collaboration of the Met’s Costume Institute curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton with renown film director Baz Luhrmann.  She wasn’t too keen on being compared to another designer.  But she told reporters that now she likes the exhibit.  She posed for a photo op with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour at the press preview on Monday.  Apparently there was doubt about whether or not Prada would show up for that night’s Costume Institute gala, because she fell off her high platform shoes, but she was there.

Throughout the seven film clips in the galleries, Schiap and Prada rarely agree.  Schiap says she designed the fabulous and sometimes playful hats, necklaces and jackets to celebrate a woman’s beauty.  In her cafe society, women were seated and the lower half of the body was not seen.  Prada abhors frilliness and decorations near the face.

The two women talk about how they try to avoid clichés of women and conventional  beauty.  Schiap says her mother called her ugly; Prada fights beauty.  Some of Prada’s designs can be downright dowdy.  But Prada does manage to create something beautiful out of mismatched prints and fabrics, as seen in the “Ugly Chic” section of the exhibit.  Prada says if she’s done anything, “It is to make ugly appealing.”  Agreed.

You can’t help but notice that Prada is much more reserved, even to the point of being depressing, compared to Schiaparelli.  Prada says it’s impossible to shock the fashion world, as Schiap was able to do.  She can’t do evening gowns.

Schiap and Prada never come to any resound conclusion to their conversation at the end of the exhibit.  Schiap tries to get Prada to agree that fashion design is art.  “Never Schiap, Never.”

At the end, it’s not hard to imagine that Schiap and Prada would have a conversation and lively debate were they living at the same time.  And they do agree in the last film clip that they’d probably be friends.  You come away from the exhibit with the feeling that both women are extremely strong personalities who celebrate women through design in similar ways.  And I can’t help but wonder who might be in an impossible conversation with Prada in the latter part of the 21st century.

The man seated at that table is Alexandre Schmitt.  He’s not a winemaker or an enologist.  Instead, Alexandre is a perfumer.  He calls himself a Creator of Perfumes and an Expert of Wine Aromas.  His goal is to help people working in the wine industry find a common language to express what they smell when they stick their nose in a glass.  All the vials that he brought are full of essential oils and flavored oils.

“I use objective aromas that can be perceived,” he says.  ”It’s not a critical review in the journalistic approach where you have lyrical prose, which is subjective and not objective.”

Over the past several years Alexandre’s been traveling in the US to give workshops in Napa Valley, Paso Robles, the Central Valley and Washington’s Walla Walla wine country.  As demand for his services grows, he finds himself spending more and more time here.  I’m meeting him at the end of week one out of six weeks.

Alexandre’s path to becoming an expert of wine aromas started when he turned 15 years old.  Born in Bordeaux, France, he chose to study science, not wine, but he wanted a creative way to learn.  He applied and got into the prestigious Institut Supérieur International du Parfum (ISIP) in Versailles.

“It was the only thing that I could see for myself when I was studying and so i developed my sense of smell by myself quite young by paying attention being very curious around me.”

Post-school Alexandre went to work for a large fragrance company in Paris.  I ask him what perfumes he created.  He says found himself developing fragrances for less glamorous products such as shampoo and cleaning supplies.  He hated it. ”After a few years of being a creator of perfumes in Paris I didn’t like the job as much.  It’s a very technical job, you are in a lab like a chemist and it’s not fun.  In the fragrance industry perfume 5% of their business is to create perfume and 95% of it is making scents for toiletries, shampoo, cosmetics and lipsticks.”

Frustrated by not being as creative as he’d like, he returned to Bordeaux, not to work in the wine industry, but to write books.  Then the wine industry came calling. “They asked me if we could do some work together because for doing your job as a creator of perfume you have to memorize a lot of smells, up to 1,500, when a winemaker has at the most 50 smells that they learn.

One of the winemakers calling was from Petrus, one of the most famous and highly regarded wineries in the Pomerol district of Bordeaux. “He said to me ‘I will teach you what I know and you will teach me what you know, but that’s the deal.  I don’t pay you, you will go back to your home with some bottles to taste when you are working at home’ and so we did it like that.”

Wow.  Not a bad place to learn about wine.

That was some 20 years ago.  Now Alexandre consults for clients around the globe, helping winemakers with blending wine.  “I tell them ‘I am not a winemaker I don’t plan to interfere with their work.’ We have some lots of wine, I evaluate them by smell and texture, and I immediately mix that like I was mixing for perfume.”

While his nose is usually behind the label, a Spanish winery thinks so much of Alexandre’s blending work that they put his name on their label.  The wine is the Ysios 2007 Esencia de Ysios made with Tempranillo the Rioja region of Spain.

I ask Alexandre if he finds wine to be like a perfume.  He says there are differences, like the grade of alcohol, which we know as ethanol.  “In perfume you have 95% alcohol of when you have only 12 14 16 18 percent in the wine. It’s easier to smell aromas in perfumes than in wine.  Trying to identify individual aromas in wine is like trying to isolate a single instrument in an orchestra.”

Alexandre says that there are also similarities in wine and perfume. “They evolve over time.  The wine evolves in the glass and the perfume evolves on your skin.”

Now getting back to those vials of liquid at Niner. Alexandre’s been at the winery all week leading olfactory workshops with winemakers.  Today his class is open to the public, and 27 of us signed up, eager to learn from this aroma expert.

Alexandre dips a handful of blotter strips into a vial and passes them out.  He asks us to write down all the scents we smell.  Then we go around the room, and everyone names what they smell.  I get cedar.  Some people get pencil shavings.  Turns out this is cedar, which he classifies as a woody aroma.  He divides scent into these categories:woody, resin, balsamic, floral and citrus.  It’s a language he’s teaching to help people have a common way to describe the aromas in wine.

We sniff our way through 14 aromas, everything from juniper to bergamot and mint. Alexandre tells us this is a starting point.  He hopes he has opened a world of fragrance for us and that we will now be more aware of aromas that we encounter every day, and can express what we smell in a common language.

By the way, Niner Wine Estates makes a Grenache Blanc, a wonderfully aromatic white wine that’s sold only in their tasting room.  If you visit Niner, an absolutely beautiful winery, do not miss this wine.

I expect Gaultier to be outrageous, a bad boy, the so called “enfant terrible” of fashion.  I did not expect him to be funny or endearing.  He is.

There is something completely personal about “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier:  From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” a show now open at the de Young museum in San Francisco.  This is the second stop in the United States, after Dallas and the premiere in Montreal.

On display, the expected cone bra corsets designed for Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour and the gender bending, street-influenced outfits.  What you don’t expect is to see Gaultier’s teddy bear from his childhood which he would dress up in lieu of a doll. “The first cone bra that I did,” he says, was on his teddy bear, “25 years before I did that for Madonna.”  Funny and intimate at the same time.  That teddy bear has seen better days.

Gaultier did not want a static show.  As a result, he’s the first fashion designer to use “animated” mannequins.  They look real.  They look at you.  They blink their eyes.  And they talk.  It’s kind of freaky at first, and then you can’t help but watch over and over.  The 30 faces are actually video projections.  The inspiration came from Gaultier, after seeing a play with what looked like live actors.  At the play’s end it is revealed the actors were really projections.  “I absolutely loved that.”

He’s never been one to use conventional models.  Gaultier has always championed the different, the interesting and the unusual, giving voice, if you will, to the unconventional, the taboo.  He eschews uniformity as boring.  “There is no one type of beauty,” he says.  “Beauty exists everywhere.”

This exhibit is a multimedia experience, with videos, lighting, photography, dance and music all contributing to the effect.  Gaultier even has a hair stylist for the mannequins.  While it’s all seamless, he has not left one detail out.  The designer himself is represented by one of the animated mannequins, early on in the show’s progression.

His role, as he sees it, is not of an artist, but as an interpreter of what is happening in the culture at the moment.  However, you can’t help but admire the vision and artistry in each of the 130 outfits.  Descriptions include how many hours it took to make the garment.  88 hours for one, 167 hours for another.  295 hours for the green “Calligraphie” gown and 312 hours for the “Dubar” gown, made of layers of tulle, worn by Sarah Jessica Parker at the MTV Music Awards in 2000.  That’s 13 days for one dress.

There are other gowns and costumes worn by performers, including Kylie Minogue and Dita Von Teese.  But there are also very wearable clothes too, from suits to cocktail dresses, some of which are displayed on a motorized runway. “Fashion is to be worn by everyone,” says Gaultier.

If there’s one common thread running throughout this show and Gaultier’s career as a designer, it’s acceptance. This is best illustrated in another intimate story.  Gaultier tells of the first time he saw the Folies Bergere on TV on a school night.  He was so inspired that he spent the next day in class sketching.  Keep in mind that he is not a popular kid and feels rejected by his schoolmates.  His teacher notices he’s not paying attention.  As Gaultier tells it, she made him stand up, pinned the drawing to the back of his shirt and made him walk around wearing it as punishment.  Instead, this had the opposite effect.  All the kids wanted him to make them sketches.  “It was like my passport,” says Gaultier.  “Through my drawing I could exist, I was not the one who was rejected.  Drawing could open the door for me.”  Indeed, we have that teacher to thank.  “Maybe because I was rejected, because I was different that may be why I am so accepting of everyone.”  A philosophy that goes beyond couture.

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier is on exhibit at the de Young Museum through August 19, 2012.  The next stop will be in Madrid.

It’s nice to have options that don’t always include wine.  You can only sample so much wine in a day, and it’s good to have a break.  If you don’t drink wine at all, you may feel left out.  Fortunately there’s more art in Napa Valley than even I knew was on view.

Next month “Arts in April” will showcase visual and performing arts with special exhibits, performances and experiences, all part of what’s being dubbed as “The Napa Valley Collection” at wineries throughout wine country.  Each week one or more geographic regions host special events, starting in Calistoga for the first week and moving south to Napa on the last week.

During a press preview, I learned that Markham Vineyards has a permanent collection of Rolling Stone magazine cover photos.  Wow.  Baron Wolman was the man behind the lens, from the first cover for three years, and he was there to give us a personal tour of his photos.  Every picture, as they say, tells a story, and Wolman recounted each photo session in great detail.  His photos are iconic, especially the one of Jimi Hendrix.

For me, he is a rock star too.

I love behind the scenes stories.  Wolman will be at Markham on April 14 from 11am to 1pm doing a slide show about his backstage access, with a Q & A session.  Tickets are $10 per person. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this.  I’m adding Markham to my list of recommendations.

We also went to Clos Pegase, owned by Jan Shrem.  The winery itself is a work of art, designed by architect Michael Graves.  In fact the winery is often referred to as a temple to wine and Shrem’s extensive art collection.

He took us on a tour, which started in his office.  Every room, every hallway has paintings, drawings and sculptures.  What a great place to work.  Shrem created a stage in winery’s caves, and he himself performs “Bacchus the Rascal” which he describes as a Bacchanalian history of wine seen through 4000 years of art.

If you can get to Clos Pegase on April 7 at 3 pm, again, this is not to be missed.  Shrem has a wicked sense of humor and a sparkle in his eye, as any rascal would. Tickets are $25 per person.

Of course there is the wine at these wineries, but art is the main attraction.  That the art pairs with the wine is a happy bonus.

You can find a complete listing of all Arts in April events here.

Bethenny plays off the success of her Skinnygirl Margarita, which clocks in at 100 calories per five ounce serving (with or without salt).  The average margarita at your favorite bar can be anywhere from 350 to 750 hefty calories, thanks to a premix or limeade, triple sec and tequila.  Skinnygirl comes premixed, alcohol included, so all you have to do is chill it, crack open the screw cap and pour. What’s not to like?  This pre-made margarita flew out the doors of retailers.

Bethenny continued to build the Skinnygirl brand, with a White Cranberry Cosmo at less than 100 calories and Skinnygirl Sangria, with 132 calories per five ounce serving. Her “new girls,” as she calls them, are a lineup of three wines, a Rosé of Syrah and Grenache, a white blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio and a Syrah-based red.  All have 100 calories per five ounce serving and 12 percent alcohol and will sell for $15 a bottle.

I understand why the Skinnygirl Margarita is so popular.  The calorie savings are enormous.  I bought a bottle and poured myself a cocktail, over ice.  The flavor is what you’d expect in a margarita, tart with lime and that kick from tequila.  While it is not a complex concoction, it is a fast cocktail.

But the thought of Skinnygirl wines drives me crazy.  Why?  Two reasons.  One, most five ounce pours of wine have about 128 calories, 25.6 25 calories per ounce, according to the USDA.  There’s no huge calorie savings here.

Wine’s calories come from the alcohol and sugar content.  Most wines are dry, which means there’s no sugar in them.  Sometimes wine tastes sweet, but that’s usually due to the ripe fruit flavors, which we perceive as sweetness.

There are also wines that are made to be sweet, like dessert wines and port.  These wines are concentrated, with about 50 calories per ounce.  But the standard serving of port or sweet wine is much smaller, at two to three ounces, which is about 100 to 150 calories or so.  That’s equivalent to or less than any dessert you’d eat.  So the Skinnygirl low calorie premise just doesn’t work.

The second reason is more serious for me, that this is yet another wine brand marketed to women, presumably because we all want a lower calorie beverage and that we want fun, not complex wines.

But I’m a wine drinker, not a “female” wine drinker. Would anyone make a Skinnyboy wine?  I don’t think so.  Why do we need a special wine brand, especially when the calorie savings are about 25 calories per glass?  According to most recommendations, women should not drink more than one glass of wine a day.

“I’m not  a wine snob,” Bethenny tells WineSpectator.com.  Neither am I.  What I don’t like are brands that approach selling wine to women differently from men.

Low calorie wines are not an original concept.  In 2005 wine giant Beringer launched a brand called White Lie.  The initial release, a Chardonnay, was billed as being lower in calories and alcohol.  According to this press release, White Lie has 97.4 calories per five ounces and 9.8% alcohol.  The wine was marketed as being what women want, something easy and simple with  fewer calories  At $10 per bottle it had a lower price point than Skinnygirl wines.  But I can’t seem to find any White Lie wine on the Beringer site or in a Google search for sale.  Hmmm.  Maybe that approach didn’t work out.

I wasn’t crazy about the White Lie wines either.  To me it felt like pandering to a stereotypical female audience.

That’s why I think Skinnygirl wines are a bad idea.  Wine is intimidating enough.  Women have fought hard to be considered equals when it comes to wine, whether professionally or in our private lives.  Many of us get handed the wine list at the restaurant, which is great.  Would we order a Skinnygirl wine?

Kudos to Bethenny  for creating the Skinnygirl Margarita and for it being wildly successful. Brilliant idea. I’m sure the wine will also fly off the shelves, as most things tied to a celebrity usually sell well.  But when it comes to wine, this is not a label that we need.  It just fuels the stereotype about women and wine, and it’s not a pretty one.

Now there’s a way to give the gift of fragrance that your recipient will like – because he or she creates it.  Instead of shopping for a fragrance at the mall, you can blend a perfume with your valentine and have a sweet smelling reminder of the day.

Sue Phillips says people are looking for an experience as a gift, especially when it comes to fragrance.  A perfume industry veteran, Sue launched a business called Scenterprises, creatiing fragrant adventures for events, parties and now for individuals at home.  ”I see that there’s more interest now than ever before in creating custom fragrance.”

“The notion of going to a department store to buy a special perfume has changed,” she says.  ”There are too many celebrity and designer perfumes that they’ve become a commodity.”  Her inspiration comes from helping people discover their own best scent.  ”Fragrance is so uplifting, people love how it makes them feel.  To create your own perfume is an experience that’s quite wonderful.”

As part of the perfume events she conducts, Sue developed a portfolio of 18 blended scents, which are collections of fragrance families such as citrus, fresh (think laundry), floral, spice and musk.  At these events she saw a growing interest in people wanting to blend their own personal perfume.  So she created the Design Your Own Fragrance kits, which are grouped into three categories of fragrances – Fresh, Floral and Oriental.  Each kit contains six vials of blends that on their own can be nice perfumes, but mixed together can be even better.  Sue says “they’ve been crafted to work together so you can actually take any of the six fragrances, a few drops of this one, one drop or two of that one and you’ve got your own perfume.”

What’s great about these mini perfumes is that you don’t have to know what makes a top, middle or base note.  There’s a chart that spells it all out for you.  You can choose one of each, but it’s ok to to make a fragrance out of just middle notes.  Another way to blend, Sue says, is by emotion.  Want to feel sexy and passionate?  A mix of the heady floral and floral floral blends may evoke those sensations for you.  ”There are no rules,” says Sue.  ”It’s whatever makes you feel and smell fabulous!”

Once you find a mix of the blends that you like, you can send the formula to Scenterprises where it will be registered into a data base.  That’s so that when you run out of your scent, you can order a refill.  In a way it’s a gift that keeps on giving.

I bought the Floral kit since I love anything with white flowers – tuberose, gardenia and jasmine.  As soon as it arrived I got together with friends to try it out.  They thought it was the coolest idea and had tons of fun playing around with the fragrances and creating their own blends.  In this kit, the six vials contain these floral elements:  aldehydic (notes that are also in Chanel No. 5), rose floral, floral floral, heady floral, balsamic and gentle floral.  You dip paper sticks, called blotters, into each vial.  Once you’ve smelled all of them you can decide what you like best.  Hold the blotters of your favorites together and smell to see if you like that combination.  Then the blending fun begins.  Using the pipettes from the kit you can extract a few drops of heady floral (jasmine and ylang ylang), mix it with balsamic (bergamot, jasmine and vanilla) and floral floral (jasmine, mandarin and violet).  Ok, that’s my fragrance.

You blend your formula in the larger glass vial that’s inside the atomizer – and then you can spray away.  There’s a feather in the kit too, a much more glamorous perfume blotter which you can spray and wave in the air to experience the perfume.  I can’t tell you how much fun my friends and I had sniffing each other’s concoctions, each one so different yet so wonderful.  One gal made a very interesting blend out of the gentle floral, with bergamot and sage notes, and floral floral scent.  It’s also fun to see how the perfumes that we created change over time.  My husband even likes my blend – so it’s a keeper.  This is my idea of a good time.

Apparantly Oprah agrees.  She put the Design Your Own Fragrance kit on “The O List” , calling it a “Singular Scent-sation.”  Sue says editors of the magazine were at a lifestyle and wellness event where she was creating custom fragrances for attendees.  ”They loved the idea of the kits.  Plus they loved the red atomizer that comes with the Oriental kit for a Valentine’s Day gift.”

I love the kits too.  They remind me of the wine tasting kits you can get from TastingRoom, which brings the winery tasting bar to you.  You can sample each wine from a mini bottle on its own, or blend it with the other wines and play winemaker for a day.  I think it’s super fun to play perfumer for a day.

What’s even better — if you get two or all three of the kits, they can be blended together in many combinations.  I’ve yet to try that – but it’s a good excuse for another scented night with friends.

The other thing I like about giving one of these kits for Valentine’s Day is that its got staying power.  Roses last a couple of days at best.  A bottle of Dom Pérignon Champagne lasts one night, or, in the rare case that you have any wine left over, it’s still ok the next night.  But that’s it.  Perfume lingers.  It evokes memories of special times you’ve shared with your valentine, whether you’ve still in that love affair, or even long after the romance is gone.

All the Single Ladies

Put your hands up…and make your reservation now for a winemaker dinner featuring none other than The Bachelor himself, Ben Flajnik, who created the Envolve wine label with friends Michael Benziger (whose family owns Benziger Family Winery) and Danny Fay.  Ramekins Culinary School in Sonoma is teaming up with the trio to host a VIP reception and a sit down dinner created by Ramekins chef Doug MacFarland for Friday, February 10.  There are only 25 VIP tickets where you get to meet Ben – and maybe vie for a red rose from him.  But if you can’t get into the VIP meet and greet, there are 120 spaces at the dinner table, where you’ll be served a four course meal paired with Envolve wines.

Tastebud Training

Today the New York Times announced it is offering an online course about California wine via the Times’ ”Knowledge Network”.  For $65 you get a four-part course about California wine with a focus on Cabernet Sauvignon.  It’s one of those self-study programs, with instructors Eric Asimov who is the Times wine critic, winemaker Cathy Corison and Master of Wine Chris Cree.  They’ll also lead a video wine tasting of six wines that you can follow.

Lucky Wine

What does wine have to do with the Chinese Year of the Dragon?  About 1000 cases if you are Iron Horse Vineyards and you make bubbly.  Joy says her family’s winery created the Iron Horse Chinese Cuveé to celebrate this luckiest of years in the Chinese astrological calendar.  She presented San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee with a bottle at City Hall on Tuesday.  ”As luck would have it, the Mayor, San Francisco’s first Chinese American mayor, was born in the Year of the Dragon,” says Joy.

The color red, which is also considered lucky, is in the yellow and red wine label.  What makes this sparkling wine special is that is a vintage wine, from  2007, so this has been in the works for five years.  According to Joy, 880 cases were shipped to Bejing for the beginning of this Chinese New Year.  That leaves 120 cases for us here in the US to get a hold of. But there’s always the next vintage.  Joy says, “We are really looking forward to the Year of the Horse in 2014.”

Rewined

Missed seeing the head honcho of Kendall-Jackson Winery on CBS’s Undercover Boss?  I have been watching this series for some time.  The stories are always tear jerkers (this episode is no exception and starts early on).  You see a direct impact on the boss and the company which is admirable. I do wonder what happens a year or so later, once the cameras are gone.  I think W. Blake Gray did an excellent write up of the show on his blog The Gray Report.  Pour yourself a glass of wine and watch it here.

Haute Wine

If you are an avid Chanel fan you probably know Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s long time designer, is launching a a namesake collection with online retailer Net-A-Porter today. The build up to this collaboration has been nothing short of frenzied, with looks leaking out to the press, a Karl look-a-like contest and a find Karl mobile app search for the elusive designer. It’s all tongue-in-cheek good fun.

But what you may not know is that Lagerfeld’s signature will don more than clothing and sunglasses.  The fashion house best known for bottling Chanel No. 5, not wine, owns three wineries in the Bordeaux region of France, according to a Wine Spectator report.  One of these, Chåteau Rauzan-Ségla, a grand cru classé winery in the Margaux region, is celebrating its 350th anniversary by releasing its 2009 Bordeaux with a label designed and signed by Karl Lagerfeld himself.  According to a spokesperson for Chanel, Lagerfeld calls this a “one-off, a one time only” happening. It makes sense, as Chanel is very quiet when it comes to its winery holdings. Lagerfeld re-interprets Rauzan-Segla’s label, which features the chåteau on the winery’s estate.  His signature on the label is your only clue to the wine’s Chanel pedigree; there are no interlocking Cs to be found.  The wine should be available beginning March 2012 (priced $86 to $119 online) and hopefully with release parties as befit a Chanel creation.

Heard it on the Grapevine (I mean e-book line)

Getting ready to launch a wine on Facebook or Twitter?  That’s so yesterday.  In this digital age you also need an e-book.  Rusack Vineyards, a Santa Barbara area winery, announces its inaugural bottling of Island Wines from Catalina Island.  Indeed, it’s news that anyone is growing grapes and making wine on Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California.  Rusack introduces us to this with a beautiful e-book about it.  While video stories from wineries are important, this is a new item in the tool box.  Well done.

 Pillow Talk

The most highly anticpated wine book of the year 2012 will be Margrit Mondavi’s memoirs, at least in the wine world.  Along with her husband, wine giant Robert Mondavi, Margrit created America’s wine culture, establishing California and the United States as industry leaders.  Robert passed away in May 2008, and Margrit carries on the Mondavi legacy.  She gives writer Janet Fletcher a rare, open and frank view of her life with Robert.  Janet says “it’s a beautiful book.”  We all await with baited breath until the book is released in summer 2012.

My main mission was to discover the best type of wine to pair with truffles, but with the 60 Minutes report on truffles airing just before the festival, it seems there’s a heightened interest to know more about truffles.  There are some facts and some myths to debunk regarding these ugly, knobby but intoxicating balls.  Will American truffles take root? We’ll have to wait about five years to find out.

1.  Truffles are not chocolates.  Truffles are edible, but they are not the dome shaped confections with flavored fillings.

2. Truffles are mushrooms.  I thought they weren’t mushrooms but tubers or spores.  I was wrong.  Don’t tell my husband.  He has an aversion to mushrooms.  I think it’s a texture thing, and truffles don’t have that typical mushroom texture. So any time we get a dish with truffles in or on it, I have to reassure him that I’m not trying to get him to eat mushrooms.  He’s still not a fan.

I understand his reluctance.  The first restaurant dish I tried with truffles was a white bean soup with truffle oil.  I almost spit out my first taste.  To me it had a rank, dirty off-puttiing aroma.  I sent it back, explaining I thought it was spoiled or something like that.  I am sure the kitchen had a good laugh over the clueless woman who wouldn’t eat the soup.  Since then I’ve been seduced by that pungent, earthy aroma.  I have a developed a serious truffle habit, which can be more expensive than my shoe habit.

3. Truffles grow on trees…on the roots that is. Whoever said ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’ surely didn’t know about truffles.

Truffles grow underground, about one to four inches below, on the roots of certain varieties of oak and hazelnut trees.

For eons the only way you could harvest truffles was — and still is today — with the help of pigs or dogs. Thanks to their heightened sense of smell, they can find the ripe truffles growing underground.  Pigs would not only find these gnarly things, they would eat them before the truffle hunter could get to it.  Now dogs are mostly used, trained to just find the truffles and not to eat them.

4. Truffles grow wild, but some varieties can be cultivated.  The two most well known truffles in the world are the black Perigord of France and the white winter truffle of Italy.  In good years, the harvest is plentiful, but still small compared to other crops.  In not so good years, when the summer weather is dry, there aren’t as many truffles to harvest.  Truffles need summer rain to grow.  It’s the unpredictable growing seasons that add to the scarceness of truffles and is one reason why truffle prices are so high, upwards of $850 per pound or more.

White winter truffles, also known as truffles from Alba, Italy cannot be cultivated.  Which is why the are of the charts expensive, costing $2500 per pound or more.  Perhaps Robert Chang and his team can unlock the key to that holiest grail of all truffles.

5. Many truffles grown in France are cultivated, not wild.  Say adieu to the romantic myth of  the elusive truffle growing wild in the forest.  Why?  The roots of oak or hazelnut saplings (baby trees) can be inoculated with truffles that grow once the tree is planted.  It about five years until the first crop can be harvested, but then after that, truffle farms are the gifts that keep giving, producing  for 40 to 80 years.

6. Truffles are best eaten as fresh as possible.  Think of truffles like you would any produce, from corn to peaches to heirloom tomatoes.  These are always more flavorful the fresher they are, especially if just picked.  Truffles are the same.  Their aroma and flavors diminish by half within four to five days.  If the only place you can get fresh truffles is from the harvests in Europe, and these truffles have to be shipped to the United States, it’s a safe bet more than five days have passed since the truffles were plucked from the ground.

This is one reason why Robert Chang wants to grow truffles closer to or in the U.S.  Chefs here are asking for fresher truffles, so he sees a market with an unmet need.  However, don’t expect to see the price of truffles come down any time soon, even those farmed on American soil.  Chang says truffles grown in Australia command an even higher price in that country because they’re fresher for chefs and consumers.

7. Truffles are the most profitable (legal) crop you can grow.  Robert said this several times during the weekend.  He estimates you can get up to $30,000 to $40,000 in profit per acre, once the farm starts producing truffles.

8. Truffles not only taste sublime, but they’re good for you.  Some say truffles are an aphrodisiac, and that can be a good thing.  But you can enjoy your guilty pleasure knowing there are antioxidants and even fiber (small amounts) in truffles.  I wanted to know how many calories are in truffles, but no one could answer that.

9. Older wines pair really well with truffles.  Vintner Rob Sinskey, of Robert Sinskey Vineyards, has actually planted a truffle orchard next to one of his vineyards in the Carneros region.  He says truffles work best with wines that have a “patina” to them.  After tasting a 2003 Chardonnay from Miner Family Vineyards, and Rob’s own 2000 Pinot Noir with truffles, I have to agree.

10. Many truffle oils and truffle salts are not made with real truffles.  Chefs have strong opinions about this saying truffle products are made with chemicals that replicate the truffle aroma and flavor.  When most of us buy a bottle of truffle oil, we think we’re getting the real thing because these are expensive products.  But most likely the flavors come from chemicals, not actual truffles.  There is even truffle vodka.  I don’t know about that.  Sounds like garlic wine, which is something in my opinion that shouldn’t be made.

Is using synthetic truffle flavors a culinary crime?  If you can’t get the real thing, and like the truffle flavor, why not use the oils or salts?  Just know what you are getting, and you can decide.

1.  Why don’t you stop buying wine based on points.  Did you know some wineries (and very good ones at that)  just don’t submit their wines for reviews.  That doesn’t mean they’re not good.  You don’t need an almighty critic to tell you what to drink. Buying independent of scores can yield delicious and inexpensive surprises.

2,  Why don’t you order the least expensive bottle on the restaurant wine list.  They won’t put plonk on that list, and often the less expensive bottles are favorites of the wine director or sommelier.  No one at the table needs to know, but you can share the price once everyone has tried the wine and loves it.

3.  Why don’t you buy a wine just because you like the label.  I certainly do.  Wineries spend a lot of time and money coming up with clever names and images on the label.  For some time “critter” labels were all the rage.  Now it’s what I call “dessert” labels – wines like Layer Cake, Cupcake, Coffee Cake, etc. – all there to tempt you. Usually you discover the wine inside is pretty decent  too.

4.  Why don’t you drink local for at least a month.  Wine is made in all 50 states.  If you live in Missouri and haven’t tried the state’s wines, you are missing out.  Yes this is harder to do in Hawaii or Alaska.  If you live in a state where it is a challenge to find the local wines, or in a state with very few wineries, then check out wine from neighboring states.  If you travel internationally you’ll find that the restaurants, especially the mom and pop places only serve local wines.

5.  Why don’t you proudly buy boxed wine.  The quality of wine in a box is improving and you can now find very drinkable wines.  The bag-in-box technology keeps the wine fresh much longer after opening, up to a month (although I’ve never gotten past two weeks).  You get the equivalent of 4 bottles in one box for a lot less money.  Great for parties or your every day house wine.

6.  Why don’t you explore a new wine region.  Instead of Napa Valley, head to Livermore Valley or Lake County in northern California.  In New York visit the Finger Lakes region.  You’ll find less crowded tasting rooms (if there even is one) and most likely you’ll get to spend time with the winemaker.  If traveling there isn’t an option, you can still pick up bottles from these regions in your local wine shop.

7. Why don’t you pop the cork on sparkling wine more often.  Why reserve bubbles for special occasions?  While Champagne is pricey, the sparkling wines Cava and Prosecco are very affordable, as are American sparklers.  Cava (from Spain) and sparkling wines from the U.S.are made by the same traditional method that is behind the great Champagnes of the world.  Prosecco (from Italy) is made by another method called Charmat, where the second fermentation that produces the bubbles takes place in large tanks, versus in the bottle as in the case of Champagne, Cava and American sparkling wines.  Seek out these bubbles as every day wines, and not just for celebrations.

8. Why don’t you have a good laugh over a wine blog.  Even wine bloggers take themselves too seriously at times.  But not the Hosemaster of Wine .  You’ve got to read Parkenstein Parts 1 and 11.  This is definitely rated R but totally funny.

9.  Why don’t you stop saying you don’t know anything about wine (especially around me).  If you drink wine and like it that’s all you need to know to enjoy what’s in your glass.  I promise I won’t quiz you about it.

10.  And if you are a wine professional…why don’t you stop making people feel intimidated by wine.  Many people in the wine biz, from winemakers to retailers and restauranteurs are much more laid back in regards to wine.  Blue jeans have replaced the more formal suit and tie uniform.  But why are drinkers, from beginners to more experienced ones still intimidated by wine?  Why don’t you make it your mission to help at least one person feel great about buying and drinking wine this year.