Last Thursday night was the late night evening at the Museum of Modern Art here in San Francisco. What drew me there that night was a party on the roof top garden, hosted by meatpaper, my current favorite magazine. www.meatpaper.com. In their last issue, they  included a zine all about the sandwich, and this party was in honor of that. On the rooftop there were several varieties of sandwiches, including a green egg and spam version. Had the chef not been from Chez Painisse, I would not have had that sandwich, but the spam was homemade, so I went for it.  It was good, not great, but good.  Spam

If you do go to the MOMA, check out the exhibit on wine that is there. While I wished there was more about the environmental issues associated with wine, what was there was very interesting, including a wall of different wines you could smell, and a room of the different types of soil wine grows in. I have been exploring wine a little more recently, and this show gave me much to think about. For example, there was an article written in the 1970′s about how french wine experts either could not discern California wines from French, or they chose California wines over the French. These were experts, and they couldn’t tell the difference.  I have to wonder, how much about wine tasting and wine culture is a lot of smoke and mirrors?

That still remains romantic and interesting to me is the history of wine, the land and the season the wine reflects.  When I was in Italy recently, I went to Aosta, which is in the Alps. There, many grapes are grown on slopes of 30 degrees or more. Everything is done by hand. Not all wine is like that, and in fact, many additives can be added to wines and not required to be labeled.There is a movement called the Natural Wine Movement that I am beginning to learn about. Here is a link to an article about this:   http://wineenabler.com/natural-wine-and-the-search-for-identity/