Tag: palate

Sour Grapes

I’m not a fan of French wines. Er, let me rephrase – I don’t appreciate French wines. My palate for bottles of the red and the white has traveled as far as Napa (Chardonnay and Cabernet) and California’s Central Coast (red blends) but nowhere further unless I count the occasional bottle of Chianti from a college year in Italy. I can’t even name a French wine, other than a sparkler like Dom Pérignon. But maybe it’s time for a change, my friends. I’ve taken a sudden interest in a new Viognier… you know, the wine from the vineyards of Grey Poupon?

But does it “pass muster”?

You read that right.  Grey Poupon, the maker of Dijon mustard, wants to be a maker of fine wine as well.  Described as “bright hints of spice and pronounced citrus” and “floral characteristics”, a bottle of Grey Poupon white “pairs ideally with charcuterie boards and sandwiches”.  Of course it does, because there’s an infusion of crushed mustard seeds in every glass.

Mustard-flavored wine.  Sounds like sour grapes, doesn’t it?  Mustard wine sounds as appealing as the scoop of Goat Cheese Beet Swirl ice cream I can get right up the road in Denver.  And if you think the name on the Grey Poupon bottle sounds fancy – La Moutarde Vin – think again.  Translation: mustard wine.

I don’t expect to stock my wine cellar with bottles of La Moutarde Vin (once I have a wine cellar, that is) but I do stock my frig with mustard.  Despite endless baloney-and-mustard-on-white sandwiches in my grade school days, I bounced back as an adult and reembraced mustard.  The yellowest of condiments is delicious in potato salad.  It’s ideal on bratwurst or a hot dog.  And mustard wins out over mayonnaise any day on a ham-and-cheese.

For all the attention ketchup gets (for some reason Batman and Robin come to mind here), mustard has been around longer and comes in more varieties.  In typical fashion, Americans first flocked to its most basic version, “yellow mustard”, before maturing to the spicy brown varieties of Europe.  Mustard was created in Dijon (France) in the 1800s.  Anyone who knows the taste of Dijon knows it’s a wholly different animal than the yellow.  Why so different?  Dijon mustard is made with white wine.  And there’s the role reversal in a nutshell.  Now we have white wine made with Dijon mustard.

[Trivia break: A popular brand of mustard in America is French’s.  Where in France did it come from?  No, no, no, back up the truck.  It’s just yellow mustard.  It has nothing to do with France. But it has everything to do with the guy who invented it: Robert Timothy French.]

We Americans adore mustard so much we built a shrine in its honor.  The National Mustard Museum in Middleton, WI proudly boasts the world’s largest collection of mustards and mustard memorabilia.  I have no plans to visit, but I do wonder if they’ve added a bottle of La Moutarde Vin to their display.

As long as I’m grappling with American vs. Dijon or mild vs. spicy, let’s address another challenge with mustard.  It’s a branded color, as in mustard yellow.  Sure, I get it – the yellow evokes the bright blooms of mustard plants.  You’ll even find mustard yellow in a box of Crayola crayons.  But what if you’re a kid in France?  How does a French mom explain to her kid why his mustard yellow crayon looks like bright sunshine instead of Grey Poupon?

Grey Poupon’s La Moutarde Vin is a limited-edition product, sort of a “cheers” to the wine used in the mustard.  At $30 a bottle, it’s reaching the high end of what I typically spend on wine.  But with every bottle you also get a free jar of Grey Poupon.  Okay, so maybe I have a taste for mustard wine after all.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Grey Poupon wine now exists”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

What’s ‘appening with Dining Out?

After moving our daughter into her college apartment last Saturday, we offered to take a group of her friends out to a local restaurant to celebrate the beginning of the school year.  The place we chose did not allow for table reservations but did offer call-ahead seating.  Thus did our party of ten arrive during the busy dinner hour and was seated less than ten minutes later.  It’s fair to say this call-ahead experience was entirely pleasing to the palate.

58 - palate

Call-ahead seating is an interesting concept to me.  It’s somewhere between a full-on reservation and simply showing up for dinner.  The restaurant puts you on a list when you call ahead, and then you’re given the next available table after you arrive.  In essence, call-ahead mitigates the restaurant’s risk of the no-show reservation.

Call-ahead feels entirely dated if you use OpenTable, of course  With OT you’re limited to the restaurants supported by the app, but you’re also given the convenience of choosing cuisine, location, menu, and time; right up to the moment you walk through the door.  OT’s website boasts “seating more than 20 million diners per month… across more than 38,000 restaurants”.  Clearly the new-age approach to restaurant reservations has arrived.

But is OpenTable also dated?  With a little research I was amazed to discover several other companies changing our approach to dining out.  Consider the following:

NoWait allows you to add yourself to the wait list of a restaurant that doesn’t take reservations.  NoWait is like having someone stand in line for you, with the convenience of knowing when that person gets to the front of the line.  Hence you can shop or have a drink nearby instead enduring the crowding and impatience of the restaurant’s waiting area.

Rezhound and TableSweep are boosters for OpenTable.  They scan OT for newly-released (cancelled) reservations, then notify you by text or email with what they find.  You have to jump over to OT to actually book the reservation (be quick!), but it’s a great concept if you’re in the habit of waiting for last-minute seats at popular restaurants.

Table8 is designed for the more upscale dining experience.  Table8’s restaurants set aside a fixed number of peak-time tables every night.  You can reserve any available table at a Table8’s restaurant for free, or reserve one of the “set-aside” tables for a fee if there are no other tables.  Again, last-minute seats at popular restaurants, as long as you’re willing to pay a little extra.

Settle allows you to book a table, pre-order your food, and pay for your meal on your phone.  I’m not a fan of Settle’s time-saving tactics.  I think the moments perusing and discussing the menu is part of the fun of dining out, not to mention the brief relationship with your waiter.  If saving time is your objective, just get your food to-go.

Shout borders on the absurd.  Shout is the ticket-scalper’s approach to restaurant reservations.  For a fee negotiated with the “seller”, you the “buyer” can purchase a hard-to-get restaurant reservation, or pay the seller to wait at a given restaurant until your name is called.  Really?  Is the restaurant that good and your time that important?

To end on a humorous or horrifying note (take your pick), Happy is marketed as the do-it-yourself happy-hour app.  Walk into a bar, cue the Happy app, and a timer starts a 60-minute countdown: to enjoy whatever 2-for-1’s or other specials the bar has to offer.  So now you can get extra drinks any time of day.  Just remember, you only have an hour.  On your marks… get set… DRINK!