More shameless promotion for an old friend

  "Beginning To See The Light" Cover w/ Tom Lattanand on guitar by audioangel

Rashida Clendening, AKA Audio Angel, and I worked together for a short time many years ago at a newspaper. It was a place of semi-dysfunction that seemed very funny to both of us. Since then, she has used her voice in artistic and professional ways in San Francisco. Now she is trying to finance her first album using Kickstarter. The audio clip above shows off the expressive yet understated quality of her voice but does not necessarily reflect the music she plans to record. I don’t really know what she’s planning, other than what I have gathered in the promotional video below. I have pledged a modest sum to support her effort, and I am sharing information about her project at Kickstarter. If you want to pledge, do so soon …

http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/audioangel

No Grey Bear exists except as a winery, but for how long?

"People seek out wineries. We're a target market," says Marschall Fansler.

In a recent winery tour through central Missouri, we stopped at Grey Bear Winery in Stover, owned by David and Marschall Fansler.

Marschall said her husband, who studied viticulture and oenology at University of California at Davis, makes wine with a consumer-friendly goal: “soft and drinkable now.”

Their location in well off the main highways of U.S. 65 and U.S. 54 in Morgan County does not bother them, she said. "People seek out wineries. We're a target market."

The highlight of the tasting was Smoke Mountain, a Norton with a touch of Cabernet. It flashed the typical Norton spiciness that was slightly softened, perhaps due to the Cabernet.

The Fanslers moved the winery David started in 1993, Rocky Hill, from Montrose, Colo., to Stover, Mo., in 2003 and opened Grey Bear in 2005. They were looking for a more business-friendly environment for expansion, according to the Grey Bear website. There’s no such thing as a gray bear, Marschall acknowledged; the color in the winery’s name is just for fun. But the bear part of the name refers to the powerful force the animal represents in Navajo myth, she said.

The Fanslers still buy some grapes from Western regions and have just about run out of reserves from the Rocky Hill operation. On the four acres at Grey Bear, they grow Marechal Foch, Vignoles, Chambourcin, Concord, Seyval, and a Cabernet-native root stock hybrid.

Due to David’s recent health problems, the Fanslers want to sell the winery and retire. In addition to the vines and equipment, the property includes a residence and a winery-brewery-restaurant building in a distinctive round design, shown below. The structure consists of 20 panels each eight feet long, their website says. The structure is designed to withstand hurricane force winds, but the effect is to create a large open interior space.

Interested? Call the Fanslers at 573-377-4269 or gbv@windstream.net.

The days of wine and chord substitutions

As promised in my May 5 post, here is the bottle of 1999 Reichsrat von Buhl Pfalz Riesling halbtrocken that was part of the promotion for Maria Schneider’s album, Live at the Jazz Standard: Days of Wine and Roses. The back label states (proudly with dangling modifier):

Schneider helped select the grapes for this wonderful, medium-dry Riesling which tastes of peaches and minerals. She is one of the leading composers and arrangers in jazz today. A protegé of Gil Evans, both her CD’s were nominated for Grammies.

As I recall, it was a good Riesling that lived up to its back-label description. It was one of the first Rieslings I tasted that made me understand that this variety need not be sickly sweet. Even so, having a band leader help select grapes is kind of like having a winemaker help select the trumpet section.

The "Days of Wine and Roses" is a wonderful song, but it carries a gloomy connotation from its connection to the movie by the same name, which carries a scolding message about the evils of alky-haul. Wine drinkers, it goes without saying, are far too civilized to fall prey to such corruption.

I can’t find a video of Schneider’s band playing this song, but you can listen to an audio version provided by 4shared. Saxophonists Tim Ries on soprano and Rich Perry on tenor are featured.

Plus, Azusa Pacific University’s Jazz Ensemble performs her arrangement in the video below. 

News from Whispering Oaks — and a surprise encounter

Larry Green pours Vignoles at his tasting bar.

Larry and Miriam Green, owners of Whispering Oaks Vineyard and Winery just east of Seymour, let us taste their final formulation of their first Traminette vintage, which they plan to release next year. Traminette is a cross between Seyval and Gewürztraminer. Larry, who likes to experiment with different prototypes before selling a wine, tried different levels of sweetness, he said. First he went all the way dry, then maximally sweet, and settled on a median level with just enough sugar to bring out the fruit and floral essences.

This year’s Catawba represents another chapter in the refinement of the wine over several years — less sugar (4 percent, down from 5-6 percent last year), and less alcohol (10.9 percent from 12.4 percent). Last year’s Catawba was a real breakthrough in smoothing out the strong fruit, achieved by taking the wine off the skins earlier.

As we departed, we chatted with a couple on the deck. The woman said she was from Lake County, Illinois, which is where I grew up — north of Chicago. Her hometown is Round Lake Beach, and she went to Carmel High School, a Catholic institution in Mundelein, which is my hometown. We discussed the suburban and exurban sprawl in that area, once populated with prosperous farms, which we now find unrecognizably tangled in streets, highways, strip malls, apartments, condos, big box stores and McMansions. I hadn’t thought much lately about Lake County, except for the fact that I now get lost whenever I go there. However my newfound homey clearly had urgent thoughts simmering and seeking an outlet.

“They took farmland more fertile that any place other than the Nile River Valley — and paved it,” she said.

“Paved it!”

I reminded her that neither of us lives there anymore.

She swept her arm in the direction of the vines and said, “That’s why we live in the Ozarks.”

Visit Whispering Oaks on Facebook.

Four Missouri wineries under one roof

417 Magazine celebrated its 10th anniversary with a bash at 319 on Friday night. I learned that Les Bourgeois was going to be pouring there and thoroughly enjoyed the surprise of finding three more wineries on hand. Highlights:

Les Bourgeois 2010 Labelle, a Vignoles with 2 percent residual sugar: Really well balanced with intense fruit. I thought their Chambourcin was overly smoothed out, its typical spicy nature tamed.

7C's Stagecoach, a dry Vidal — a spirited varietal. 

Crown Valley 2004 Off-Dry Chardonnel, aged in French and American oak. This is the first oaked white wine I've ever liked. Not just tolerated, but actively enjoyed. I suppose I responded to the smooth nature of the oak effect. 

St. James winery: Their varietal Chardonnel was typically crisp with a little citrus. On a different note, I can't overlook the Norton — this massively oaked wine delivered a devastating lumber-yard effect. Bring your chainsaw.

The jazz-wine nexus

After blogging about jazz based on the excuse of the Smithsonian's Jazz Appreciation Month, I am returning this month to wine and viticulture, mixing these subjects with jazz.

Jazz and wine go together, up to a point. Wineries program jazz as long as it doesn't upset the gentile vibe of the audience: upscale, relaxed sophisticates. Quiet piano trios are typical. Would a winery ever book Muhal Richard Abrams and Anthony Braxton to play on the lawn against a backdrop of vines and sherbet sunset colors? If so, what wine would you pair with such outbound tangles and skronks? 

In my experience, any wine I like will pair perfectly with any music I like. I remember listening to John Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard with my college roommate, a 3-liter bottle of Almaden Rhine wine between us. Now I would go for an unoaked chardonnay or dry riesling — or anything else on hand.

I know of one jazz recording that intersects with wine in a literal way: Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra, Live at the Jazz Standard: Days of Wine and Roses. The album was promoted in a package that included a bottle of 1999 Reichsrat von Buhl Pfalz Riesling halbtrocken, with grapes that Schneider helped select at the vineyard in Germany.

I will update this post with images of the Schneider's wine-jazz package. Right now, I'm installing a new version of iPhoto and will have to wait until that's done to post photos.

Wolfgang's Vault

The rewards of wretched excess


Listen to more Mahavishnu Orchestra at Wolfgang's Vault.

Rock impresario Bill Graham's work endures at Wolfgang's Vault, where hundreds of the concerts he produced are available for purchase or free embedding. For jazz listeners, there are many choices for Miles Davis, one for John Coltrane, and a slew of concerts by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. 

Mahavishnu had three Miles Davis alumni — guitarist and mastermind John McLaughlin, powerhouse drummer Billy Cobham, and keyboardist Jan Hammer — which accounts for the group being among the few fusion bands that preserved a feeling of jazz among the temptations of noodling, volume, and posturing that came with the 1970s in general and fusion in particular. The other band members are violinist Jerry Goodman and bassist Rick Laird.

Listen to the intense interaction and trading among McLaughlin, Goodman, and Hammer on this tune from Wolfgang's Vault.

I loved Mahavishnu, still do. It was sort of a cult then, and now probably moreso. I will concede that the speed and energy amounts to wretched edcess. And I'm sure many people hate this sound, which is so firmly installed in the fusion category: widely considered the cancer, the excrescence of jazz. But I don't care.