Home > Articles > Unfiltered > Unfiltered

Unfiltered

The new face of the resistance in Chicago's foie gras ban, a diamond-studded bottle, red Chardonnay and a sacred wine bar

Posted: Wednesday, January 17, 2007

• Earlier this month Unfiltered offered our predictions for the year ahead. As fully anticipated, they are already coming true. We prognosticated that Chicago restaurantgoers would soon be able to order foie gras if they knew the right person. Apparently, now they can. One restaurant in town is rumored to serve foie gras to patrons who request the "special lobster" (wink, wink). But other restaurateurs are more brazen: Doug Sohn of Hot Doug's, Chicago's "sausage superstore and encased-meat emporium," uses foie gras in a variety of sausages and has even used it to make gourmet mustard sauces. When Sohn received the city's cease-and-desist letter, he treated it like a badge of honor--he framed it. As to what wine goes best with a foie gras dog, Sohn offers some sage advice that Unfiltered can't argue with: "Drink what you like."

• Brooklyn was once called the City of Churches because of all the steeples dotting the skyline of New York's most populous borough, but it's also home to plenty of mosques and temples too. One old synagogue is getting a new life as a temple for wine, however. Local businessman Caio Dunson is busy working to transform the old Talmud Torah Beth Jacob Joseph on Atlantic Avenue in the Boerum Hill neighborhood into a wine bar, according to the New York Sun. Dunson is redesigning the interior into a modern lounge, but restoring stained-glass windows and the old 19th-century brick exterior. He told the Sun he saw nothing sacrilegious in opening a wine bar in a temple--in recent years it was being used as an antique store. And local legend says that before the synagogue opened in 1917, German immigrants used the space for a beer hall. However, we only have one word for Dunson if he strictly serves kosher wine: Oy!

De Beers? I thought it's de wines?

• Long ago, Victoria's Secret learned it could attract attention by outfitting models with diamond-encrusted bras. Granted, those garments probably generated interest more for what was underneath them, but Austrian vintner Johann Kattus is trying something similar anyway. On January 22, the winery will auction off a diamond-studded bottle of 2004 Kattus Hochriegl sparkling wine for charity. The bejeweled bottle features 49 diamonds and is worth about $13,200. The creation reportedly took a Vienna jeweler 38 hours to finish, and has already inspired knock-offs, including a limited-edition Swarovksi crystal-covered bottle of the same wine. Austrian sparklers can be good, sure, but for once we can forgive someone for buying a wine for what the bottle looks like rather than what's on the inside.

• New Orleans' top chefs may soon be serving some very famous customers. Angelina Jolie recently told Us Weekly that she and Brad Pitt have relocated with their three children to a six-bedroom mansion in the Crescent City's French Quarter. There are few better cities to eat and drink in, so Unfiltered prepared some helpful tips for Brangelina:

• "Where y'at?" means "How are you this fine day?"
• "Pinch the tail, suck the head," means, "Let me demonstrate how to eat that crawfish."
• "You want that po'boy dressed?" means, "Would you like lettuce, mayonnaise and pickles on your sandwich?"
• Remember: Breakfast at Brennan's, lunch at Galatoire's and dinner anyplace you can still fit through the door.

• A winery in North Carolina has taken the idea of mixing white wine with red wine a bit literally. Instead of drinking the two over the course of a night, Green Creek winery in Polk County is producing a red Chardonnay. "It's very red," said winery cofounder Alvin Pack of his inaugural 2006 Chardonnay Rosso. "And it's very fruity." Green Creek, a newcomer to the wine world, was looking to come up with a "different kind of wine," not unlike a white Zinfandel or white Merlot … only in reverse. In the case of Chardonnay Rosso, the Chardonnay juice gets tinted with the skins of Chamborcin, a hybrid red grape. Pack chose Chamborcin after "a lot of research" and said the grape, when made as a single-varietal red, is "heavily colored." Therefore, a little of the skins go a long way for changing the color of the Chardonnay. While the Chamborcin influence is muted, it's definitely still there, Pack said of the pioneering 2006 vintage, which has a few more weeks to rest in Hungarian oak before it's bottled. However, the wine is already proving popular with some visitors to the winery, who are buying futures at around $22 a bottle, to Pack's surprise. Ours, too.

Back to top

Currently on Wine Spectator Online:

• Wine Talk: K.D. Lang
  This Canadian chanteuse indulges her love of wine and food through world travel
• Tasting Highlights: California Rhône
  Nine exceptional new Syrahs and Grenaches from Santa Barbara and Paso Robles
• Unfiltered: Napa's Copia Shuts Its Doors, for Now at Least
  Plus: Drinking wine to feed hungry children and an Elvis sighting in Paso Robles
• Health Research Looks to Grapes
  Scientists hope to unlock the potential of compounds found in grapes and wine
• Wine Shipping Restrictions in Massachusetts Ruled Unconstitutional
  Both in- and out-of-state wineries may now ship directly to Massachusetts residents; volume caps struck down