January 26, 2005
Things My Father Taught Me
“The older I get, the smarter my father seems to get,” wrote Tim Russert of NBC’s “Meet the Press” in his most recent best seller, “Big Russ & Me.”
That line made me go and buy the book.
Ten years ago this week my father passed away at the vintage age of 86. Before a career as an aerospace engineer, he had been in the Army Corps of Engineers, mostly building defense facilities, helping to keep us “safe and sound” from the communist bloc and the old Soviet Union.
I suppose it’s typical, but my father and I had our share of acrimonious times, both being strong willed and opinionated people.
I share these biographical sketches now because I believe my father taught me some valuable lessons about wine and life.
My dad had always been a pretty accomplished cook, and took over most of the home cooking chores when my mother passed away when I was in high school.
One dish he would make he would rave about, and it was delicious too, and I still make it myself. His version of “Swiss steak” was to slow cook a cut like round steak in red wine with carrots, potatoes, onions and garlic. I think sometimes he would include parsnips too. It’s easy to do, and you use just one pan-definitely my style!
What my father taught me was that to cook with wine made the food taste better. This is an axiom I live by to this day. I seldom cook anything without using wine. Unfinished bottles end up next to the stove and get added when I cook. The one exception is when I make salad.
Most teenage guys drink beer. I had developed a taste for wine long before beer. Although not a wine drinker himself, when my mother died, my dad and I drank wine almost every night with dinner. “Our” wine was Paul Masson Rhine Castle. It was bottled in those tall, brown, “hock” German-style bottles and he would pick it up by the case at the Class Six store at the Naval Air Station near our neighborhood. The wine was quite sweet and really aromatic, but it was really delicious!
My dad thought it was important that I learn to “like” wine and to consume it in its appropriate context-with a meal.
My taste for beer has never been for that plebian “light” stuff in a can, but rather for gutsy, tasty, ambers and pilsners in glass bottles-beers like Firestone Double Barrel Ale, Red Tail Ale, Harp and Guinness.
I suppose a corollary to all this boils down to having the liquor cabinet open to me and my friends when I was in high school. While my father expected me to use constraint, he told me once, I remember, he wanted me and my friends to drink in the house and not out in somebody’s car, or out in public places. So my senior year of high school, the Friday night poker parties always included “experimenting,” with various cocktail concoctions. Mixing rum and gin and vodka sounds repulsive, but that’s how you learn, I guess!
OOPS!
I hate it when I do sloppy oversights like this!
Rick Longoria e-mailed me today:
Just read your column this week about the excellent Haeger book on Pinot Noir. It was nice of you to mention all the local producers that made it in the book except us! I guess you were just reading too fast and somehow missed our chapter! Anyway, after 22 years of making Pinot Noir including one that made it in the Top 100 wines of the year in The Wine Enthusiast I am pleased to have been part of Haeger's excellent book.Regards, Rick
Bob Senn, Times wine columnist, lives in the bucolic Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
