The Cordial

The Swissness

2008-08-02T19:09:00.000-07:00

Was the August 2008 Swiss Cordial fun? Is a Swiss bank account anonymous?

For description, menu, wine list, and raison d'être of this event, see the official webpage. Also check out the photo gallery.

It was, of course, the coolest, dampest day for two weeks either direction. A couple of hours before opening, when we were mostly set up, it started to rain. We scrambled to get everything hidden away, chairs turned upside down, audio-video gear covered up, and we watched the sky. If the rain didn't let up, well, we really didn't have any options. (Plan for rain? In Oregon? The Cordial is very much a damn-the-torpedoes affair.)

The rain let up. Clearly the gods were in a Cordial mood.

Weeks earlier, I had woken up in the middle of the night with an idea. The real centerpiece of the Swiss National Holiday for me as a kid growing up in Switzerland was, frankly, the candlelit red-and-white Swiss-flag paper lanterns we kids would carry around. Getting such lanterns for the Cordial would have been difficult, expensive, and impractical at best, so we needed another solution. It came in the middle of the night, when I awoke with the image a milk carton, sides cut out and replaced with Swiss flags of crepe paper. Anna loved the dairy connection, and we started saving cartons. Then she and our dear friend Yvonne (Dutch, but deputized Swiss for the occasion) cut and pasted and bricolaged them into being, and Ashley strung them onto a length of xmas lights.

Thankfully, we hadn't strung the milklanterns, above, when the rain hit. All nine were safe and dry to illuminate the evening in charming DIY style, below.

When, after tablecloths and chairs had dried out, our Cordialistas arrived, they were relieved to discover that they were entering neutral territory:

They were met by Customs Official Anna, who stamped their Chocolate Visas (below) and gave them personalized wine tags entitling them to a soirée of amazing, obscure pours.

This Cordial, celebrating 717 years of Swissitude, took place at an urban farm within Portland city limits: City Garden Farms. A hearty thank-you to CGF co-founder Martin Barrett who entrusted his urban farm — and its produce — to our Cordiality, and to Dan & Jenny, also of CGF. The good vibes are mutual, as Martin's unsolicited testimonial shows.

It was an evening of great, celebratory nostalgia for me, having been a kid in Switzerland. Particularly fascinating to me is how obscure this little country remains for Americans. I'm often asked if I speak Swedish! Finding Swiss things (foods, wines, media and cultural items) proved a big challenge, to which we rose by a variety of tactics.

Below is a detail of a Swiss food & wine map we made for the event, so that people could follow the geography of the evening. The complete document is here.

Swiss wines are close to impossible to buy here. The problem is multi-part: the Swiss consume most of their own wines; their viticulture is steep and work-intensive, making the wines expensive (Swiss wealth contributes too); and few even know they exist, let alone what they're like. All of which adds up to pretty much no incentive for distributors and retailers to carry Swiss wines. Similar dynamics are at play with Swiss cheeses, chocolates, and other comestibles.

Well, we love a challenge. My dad was able to smuggle a trio of unusual, highly local Swiss wines out from Lausanne, and our man Ewald Moseler pledged a few bottles of outrageous Swiss wines from his own stash by cult winemakers Martha und Daniel Gantenbein. Of these wines, one reviewer writes:

Gantenbein makes small batch handcrafted smoky Pinot Noir of incredible quality. The simple, thin, sky blue label affixed to a heavy burgundy bottle can be found at Switzerland's finest hotels and restaurants, but only around 180 bottles makes it into the U.S. Consider yourself an insider to even hear about this wine and 'lottery winning lucky' to get your hands on a bottle.

What can we say? Everybody at The Swiss Cordial can consider themselves "lottery-winning lucky." Danke schön, Ewald!

Above: The elegantly understated bottle in the middle is the remarkable Martha und Daniel Gantenbein Pinot Noir from Fläsch, Bündner Herrschaft, Graubünden, Switzerland. Ewald brought both 2000 and 2001 vintages. Over a glass of this good stuff, he told me more about the illustrious Gantenbeins and their wines. Unfortunately, my German is rusty enough, and I'd had enough wine, that all I recall is something about the son of the reigning prince of neighboring Liechtenstein being an avid collector of these wines. I'll have to look into that. Or just let it develop as a myth...

The rest of the wines, my dad brought back from Lutry, on the advice of our consulting sommelier in the Lausanne office, Heidi Diggelmann (merci, vous deux!). The leftmost bottle was actually an empty (of a wine from a vineyard held by the city of Lausanne) which we used as a water carafe for the night. The second — La Viticole de Lutry Plan-Joyeux Rouge 2005 comes from the small town just east of Lausanne where I went to preschool. (I didn't know the wines back then.) The other two — Cave Duboux Villette 2006 and Domaine Bovy Saint-Saphorin 2005, both the quintessential Swiss white varietal, Chasselas — come from a few minutes east of Lutry, also on Lac Léman.

Swiss food was almost as challenging as the wines. We found some extraordinary Swiss cheeses at Steve's Cheese, and Steve went so far as to loan us his bona fide raclette grill. We also brought a recipe for Vaudois-style saucissons to Viande, who made them to order for The Cordial. They were a great success.

And Chef Cyndy brought my mom's recipe for the quichelike gâteau au fromage to life (below, with sous-chef Jessica). I was quite overcome when I tasted it (all the Swiss wines may have been a factor) and ran into the kitchen to accost Cyndy with un gros bisou.

Every Cordial, it seems, has its quietly revelatory little pairing moment. This time it was during the primo course, in which Anna's sautéed CGF frisée, beet greens and onions, topped with an astounding Krummenschwiler cheese, quite sang with the lightly chilled Jura red from Domaine Tissot, the Montigny-Les-Arsures 2005 Arbois “Sans Souffre” (Poulsard). This wine, coming from the French Jura just over the Swiss border, is available in the States. In Portland it's distributed by Triage, the distributor for all the non-Swiss wines we served this time. A big merci to Dana of Triage for recommending the "Sans-Souffre". The Krummenschwiler is more obscure. Ask Steve. (See what else we served on the event menu.)

Then, there's the question of Swiss media. I spent many an hour over several weeks researching, listening, and generally becoming something of an amateur of yodeling, alpenhorn and other, more obscure, Swiss sounds. What had begun a bit tongue in cheek turned into a compelling exploration. And of course, we had a good complement of Montreux jazz, including Les McCann and Eddie Harris's compelling 1969 record, Swiss Movement. In the end, we had enough music of Swiss persuasion to fill a week of Cordials. Need some?

Swiss film/video was less forthcoming. I did a montage of stunning alpen travel footage with some '20s silent film. Switzerland, as you know, was the birthplace of Dada. Searches for footage from the actual Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich turned up short, so we went to France for René Clair's seminal Entr'acte, 1924, starring the likes of Duchamp, Satie, Man Ray, Milhaud, and Picabia. With that, we mixed in La glace à trois faces, 1927, by French director Jean Epstein who, it turns out, was also a kid in Switzerland. Good enough for us! (And the film is merveilleux.)

Of course, we couldn't resist throwing in some scenes from Shirley Temple's 1937 Heidi. Quite charming, actually, though Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia are nowhere in evidence.

Finally, we did find a bona fide Swiss moving picture in the form of Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss's remarkable "Der Lauf der Dinge":

The look of the video is very funky and gritty, but under the hood, what makes it all tick but good old Swiss precision!

For the evening's madness overall, we hewed to the recipe of too many interesting, ingredient-driven courses, far too many unusual, astounding wines, and several sleeves full of surprises such as the CGF raffle in which we raffled off a box of our host City Garden Farms' produce, CSA-style. In the end it was Martin Overstreet who claimed the prize from farmer Martin Barrett, and there were some allegations of inter-Martin rigging. However, absent conclusive evidence, we just remained neutral and let Martin O. keep the greens.

Of course, the real secret to The Cordial's success is that we bring together so many interesting, friendly people from completely different milieux. It's a refrain we hear time and again from our guests, that they've never met so many varied, fascinating people from worlds they don't otherwise have contact with, and that they're all such fun. We love that.

Come to think of it, The Cordial is a bit like Switzerland. Bunch of people hanging out in this fertile crossroads of cultures, taking note of the fact that they all speak different languages — Schweizerdeutsch, français, italiano, rumantsch (or art, science, wine, law, business, farming, what-have-you) — and by all rights have no business forming a confederation. One day (August 1, 1291, apparently), they say to each other, Hey, let's put aside our differences and grill up some raclette.

We'll drink (Chasselas) to that.

Opascetic: The Hellenistic Country Solstice

2008-06-20T23:59:00.000-07:00

The June 2008 Hellenistic Country Solstice Cordial was a smashing, barn-raising success! See also the official webpage and the photo gallery, with excellent pix by Jeff Forbes, Bob Martin, and Carole Zoom.

Some thirty intrepid revelers joined us about twenty minutes west of Portland along the Columbia, in a super-rustic, semi-enclosed barn. Word, apparently, has gotten out about The Cordial. People came all the way from Texas! OK, bit of spin there, but it was great to have Kevin Tuerff of Austin-based Enviromedia with us. In fact, Kevin later told me this Cordial was "the most fun I've had all year!" Then, after a pause, he said, "Well, after Bali." We can handle playing second fiddle to the entire island of Bali.

The Cordial theme this time was Greek (an appeal to the solstice sun). We started off with a retsina flight in the llama/alpaca meadow, along with what we called tapas a la griega, to distinguish it from the sit-down meze course that followed. (Tapas and meze both mean, basically, appetizers.)

Inside the barn, our Cordialistas were treated to a white-tablecloth, candlelight dinner of four more courses and a slew of phenomenal Greek wines. One of our goals was to put Greece on at least a few people's wine maps. By our guests' own acknowledgment, we succeeded. It's a good thing. There's nothing like a sharp, distinguished Assyrtiko or an earthy, aromatic, expressive Xynomavro.

Meanwhile Anna pulled off some serious magic in the Ping Pong kitchen — a few ornery electric burners on a ping-pong table — with thetireless culinary teamwork of Krissy Martin and Cyndy Chan. Also holding the floor down was my dedicated co-pourer Bob Martin. Props to all three of these folks for putting in multiple full days of help before and after.

For dessert, guest star Joanna Miller brought out her inspired homemade lemon olive oil ice cream with pepper-and-salt-seasoned corn tuiles. Joanna had appropriately sought out Cypriot sea salt, but the place for it had closed early. (Joanna told a quintessentially Portland tale of biking, carbon-free, to her local purveyor of artisanal Slow Foods.) She therefore looked eastward and found a Sicilian sea salt which did the trick beautifully. (The Greece-to-Sicily move, we Daidaloi are familiar with it.)

We set the dessert off very nicely with two distinct vintages of Samos Cooperative Muscat Grand Cru (2002/2005).

As the sun set on the longest day of the year, the sheet we had draped glowed ever stronger with a rear-projected montage of video from our own recon and provisioning missions, an over-the-top Greek tourist video, and Mihalis Kakogiannis's stunning 1962 film Electra.

For the weeks leading up to this Cordial, Anna and I listened Greek music. Lots and lots of Greek music. Our soundtrack for the evening — when it could be heard above the revelry — was an extensive playlist of Greek music ranging from '30s rembetiko to Vassilis Tsitsanis, from Smithsonian Folkways' Cretan folk recordings to the best of Glykeria, to Christos Zotos and Ionna Anghélou's Musique de la Grèce Continentale, a richly mysterious performance on the great Al Sur label (thanks to David A. for that!).

Thanks to everyone on the Cordial team — including our dedicated wine consultant-suppliers: Joseph Busch of Domaine Selections, Leif Sundstrom of Vin de Garde, and Dana Pickell of Triage Wines — (see the official site for acknowledgments) and on the guestlist. Also on the official site, see the complete menu, wine list, and other materials.

The Retsina Flight

When I picked up the wines at Domaine Selections, Greek owner Constantinos "Dino" Ariston gave me a "Καὶ σὺ τέκνον" look: "Why so much retsina?" As Joseph had observed to us the previous week, winewise Greece is where Spain was ten years ago, or Italy twenty years ago. Today the Greeks — and everyone who believes in their wines — have to be all-hands-on-deck to achieve a much-deserved upgrade to their wine image. With all the other phenomenal wines I had ordered, why undermine everything with a bunch of retsina?

A fortnight earlier Leif had ribbed me that the reason Vin de Garde — Portland's other distributor of Greek wines — has no retsina is that they carry only real wines.

I told Leif he was spoiling for fisticuffs, and I assured Dino my purpose was noble: "People want retsina. We'll start them out on their expectations, then blow them away with the good stuff!" True as a general principle. But as for wanting retsina, well, let's just say many were skeptical at best. Americans think of Pine-Sol® accompanying soggy calamari fritters in greasy blue-and-white diners about as truly Greek as lutefisk. So I was getting it from all sides.

Which was perfect. I do love a challenge. Pouring retsina at a sophisticated wine affair, with a sense of exploration and humor, but without irony, and inviting people to really taste, consider, and enjoy it for what it is (it's retsina!) — that's my kind of challenge.

Myself, I've never had a problem with retsina. It's a context thing, to be sure. Hot day, olives and dolmathes — what do you want, a big Meursault? Parakalo! I also connect it to my Finnish ancestors' love of all things pine. They use pine and especially pine pitch in soaps, candles, remedies, etc. It's refreshing and salubrious. It'll cure what ails you.

It's also storied. Couple millennia ago resin was a practical matter, a way to keep amphorae airtight for longer storage of wines. As these things happen, the Greeks developed a taste for the resin and continued adding it even after they had airtight barrels. Retsina conveys a taste of antiquity.

Our like-spirited man at Domaine Selections, Joseph Busch, brought us a sample of a new generation of retsina. The Gaia Estate Ritinitis Nobilis, he explained, is the result of scrupulous winemakers Yiannis Paraskevopoulos and Leon Karatsolas's determination to take the retsina problem — "the 800-lb gorilla of Greek wine" — head on. Their objective is to make the best wine they can with resin. The result is "a varietal from low yield Aigalia Roditis, stainless steel-fermented with a quiet dose of resin from the Pinus halepensis pine tree" (greekwinemakers.com).

That was all we needed. We kicked off the Hellenistic Country Solstice Cordial with a retsina flight out in a meadow, complete with llama and alpaca, next to the open-air barn that would serve as dining hall.

We started with the very mild, apparently most popular Malamatina in the 500-ml crown caps. A good retsina for the dubious. It's simple and friendly, like a piney cooler. We love the label. Is the key in the guy's stomach there to unlock his hangover, his malamatina? Unless it's a perverse reverse-psych campaign, it would seem to be selling itself as a hair of the dog.

Next up was the Patraiki from the Patra Union of Farming Cooperatives in Patras, in the Peloponesian prefecture of Achaia. Established in 1918, they strive for quality while producing a wide range of wines. Their strong, pine-bright retsina is the anti-Malamatina. Serve it with a firm pat on the back and a robust cheer. We love the old-school label.

Third we poured the good stuff, the aforementioned Gaia Estate Ritinitis Nobilis. First impression is that the Gaia is milder, less pine-forward than the Patraiki. We came to agree with David A., however, who observed that the pine is really no less present. It may be softer (think of the various characters of tannin) but the point is that the Gaia is a dimensional wine, with so much more going on that the resin just finds its balance rather than being the whole story. (Note to Gaia: best retsina, worst label. You need help there.)

Not going to get all rive-droite/rive-gauche on this. It's retsina. But out in the sun, with the skordaliá, the olives, and the herb-marinated feta — not to mention the cut straw, the solstice light, and the company of camelids — I'm here to tell you the retsina went quickly and enthusiastically. Some had never had it, and thought it was great. Everyone got into the spirit of the flight, earnestly comparing the three. We had a right good time. For retsina — hey, really, for wine in general — that is mission accomplished.

The "Real Wines"

See the official site for the full menu and wine list. Quick shout out, though, to the brilliant Gaia Estate Θαλασσίτης 2007 (Thalassitis Santorini), the focused, articulate Assyrtiko that paired so well with the meze. And to the stupendous Καρυδάς Νάουσα 2004 (Karydas Naoussa) that went with the secondo. This is a great, generous wine that's all about Greece.

Also of particular note was the Kir Yianni Akakies Rosé (thanks to Dana for recommending it!). This imposing, tannic Xynomavro was a great polarizer. (An "imposing" rosé is bound to be.) People loved it or hated it. I loved it, and loved that it inspired such passions.

Στην υγειά σας!

Cordial 1 photo gallery up

2008-06-10T13:38:00.000-07:00

We've put the first of our photos from the Inaugural Cordial up in this gallery. The gallery includes photos by guest paparazza Carole Zoom.

The Cordial Launches!

2008-04-25T23:59:00.000-07:00

Our inaugural Cordial dinner/salon/experience achieved liftoff on Friday, April 25. See also the photos from the event.

The greatest proof of success, as superstar Cordialista Caitlin Moore noted, is that people remained at table for upwards of 6 hours. (Caitlin qualifies for the superstar rating because she stayed even longer, helping us break down until well into the wee hours.)

April 25 was (as everyone knows) Portuguese Freedom Day. We celebrated with fantastic Portuguese wines selected by our consultant Mimi Martin of the Wine & Spirit Archive. We also feted Ludwig Wittgenstein’s birthday (the 26th), with phenomenal wines provided by Portland’s German and Austrian wine importer Ewald Moseler, who went so far as to donate a pair of stunning Beerenauslese dessert wines.

Thanks especially to Paul Middendorf, director of Portland’s Gallery Homeland, and Administrative Director Caitlin Moore (also of PDX Contemporary Art gallery, for generously making the space available to us — and for joining us in the revelry along with the charming and mysterious Meg.

Composer and lusophile John Berendzen put in a 16-hour day as our Man Friday and served as our would-be Rude Portuguese Waiter for the evening. We’re especially thankful for John’s participation since in June he’ll be heading first to New York to study with La Monte Young, then to Brazil to get himself into unknown trouble.

Freelance writer Claire Sykes demonstrated that the pan is mightier than the sword, baking exquisite carrot and German chocolate cakes as our guest pâtissière for the evening.

The unstoppable Carole Zoom, photographer, artist and activist, and her husband Brett Campbell, freelance writer on music and other arts, had to take the bus that evening as they had loaned us their van, without which we would simply have perished in a logistical black hole.

Writer, poet, performer and man-about-everything David Abel also loaned us a vehicle, but above all he contributed to the ambient cultural infrastructure. Besides adding to our Portuguese and Austrian soundtrack for the evening, David provided us with the video projector from which we rear-projected a 2-hour loop we’d shot of ourselves going around Portland to farmers’ markets and such, procuring the very ingredients of the evening’s repast.

Carlton Cellars owner-winemakers Robin Russell and Dave Grooters threw a welcome left hook to our Austro-Portuguese wine list with a few bottles of their brand new 2007 Agate Beach Oregon Pinot Noir Rosé, which proved very popular. It couldn’t have hurt that the bottles sported hot-off-the-press labels by your humble hosts, in our professional Helsinqi hats.

But the real heavy lifting was done by all our other guests: Stoller Vineyards‘ own Mich Nelson and her s.o. Matt Stein, whose startup Northwest WindWorks rebuilds and resurrects decommissioned wind turbines; illustrious and elusive artist-writer duo Nita & Lindsay Hill; wine aficionado Bob Martin, who divides his time between Chiang Mai and Portland; and la más encantadora Maria Gonzalez and her muy fluxus hombre Mark Owens. All did yeoman service in the department of eating, drinking, and being merry — the alpha and the omega of The Cordial.

Menu & Wine List

We began at 7:00 with sliced speck and coppa and some excellent cheeses from Pastaworks: an earthy Idiazabál, a ludicrous Délice de Bourgogne, and a runny-ripe Alsacian munster géromé (not to be confused with monstrous American muenster). With these we offered a downright frizzante Aliança Vinho Verde 2007 which made a big, cheerful splash even among Those Who Think They Don’t Like White Wines.

At table, we started with a red currant-dressed salad paired with an Austrian summer party staple, Thomas Leithner Grüner Veltliner NV in the rock-me-Amadeus 1-liter crown caps. Great with one of those bouncy Schubert tunes from the first part of Die schöne Müllerin.

We got serious when Anna (& John) brought out the thyme-garnished crème de maitake/shiitake soup. It was the pairing of the day, with a magnificent Portuguese white, the Quinta dos Roques Encruzado 2004, a brilliant find by Mimi Martin. Nutty, honeycomby, charry, rich and long, it seemed to have been made with that very soup in mind

Cooking the main course — chicken in marsala with black cherries on spring greens, with a compote of rhubarb from our garden — Anna blew the room’s single circuit several times, having fired up all burners. We moved some burners to another room, went entirely to candlelight, did a little song and dance, and it all turned out beautifully.

Shifting red, we started out lighter with a couple of Austrians: the Peter Schandl Pinot Noir 2005 (the utter antithesis of a giant Oregon Pinot like Dave & Robin’s Roads End) and the slightly structurier Peter Schandl Blaufränkisch 2005 (a notable hit with Mich, who was happy that most of the rest of the table just watched that more obscure grape from a distance).

For our Portuguese red, Mimi had steered us back to the same quinta for the phenomenal Quinta dos Roques Reserva Dão 2000. This is a Portuguese gentlemen’s club wine, all leather, cigar, and well-worn escudos. Dave Grooters called it enormous, and everyone else just drank and oohed and ahed. I found Mark Owens off by himself just savoring it in silence. We had been worried this big Dão might trounce the chicken (Mimi having offhand suggested it be paired with wild boar) but in fact the two played well together. It’s a gentlemen’s club, after all, not a fútbol club.

Nearing the finish line, we brought out Claire’s gorgeous cakes, which we didn’t have the presence of mind to photograph, and a motley assortment of mismatched dessert wine glasses. The dilemma of how to pair our cakes and sweet wines was, in the end, ignored. We just cut into the cake, and started pouring.

First on the list was Ewald Moseler’s magnificent Cordial-launch gift, the Bründlmayer Grüner Veltliner Käferberg Beerenauslese 2004. (Ewald would have joined us in a toast, but he was in Deutschland.) A bit of a hush took the table when this honey-gold wine came out.

Finally — because we don’t believe in doing things halfway, or even three-halves-way — we let the Portuguese have the last word with the Ramos Pinto Quinta da Ervamoira 10-Year Tawny. Made from Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca, and Touriga Francesa grapes from their self-described “experimental,” vertically-planted Quinta da Ervamoira vineyard, this is a very fine, spicy tawny. Even after the Beerenauslese and far too much of too deliriously decadent cakes (don’t try this at home), it gave us something to think about.

And that — in debriefings with our intrepid inaugural Cordialistas — has been the refrain: something to think about. People are using words like “resonating,” “reverberating,” “ripple effect,” and just “unforgettable” to describe the evening. “Magical,” too.

We’re proud to have set the stage, but this is one of those whole-greater-than-sum stories. An enormous, reverberating dankshen & obrigado to everyone who joined us and set the bar magnificently high for all the Cordials to come.