iJamming.net

Apologies to anyone who has come here of late looking for update and not finding any. I would have put up a simple explanation – I am hard at work finishing my Smiths biography – but somewhere down the line we also switched over iJamming! hosts and things went a bit awry for a while and, as is my nature, I kept thinking I would put up posts about the Best of 2011, or my running schedule, or wine and beer, or some gig I’d been to – including those I’ve played with the Catskill 45s – but to be honest, every working hour has been going into what I believe will be a wonderful book. You can read more about my intentions with this projecthere. You can keep up with my activities and quick observations, should you care, via my Twitter account. And I hope to be back after delivering the book, which should be some time soon. Cheers.

A few weeks ago, we finally paid a visit to Hudson-Chatham Winery, one of many that have opened in recent years in the Hudson Valley, and apparently the first to do so in Columbia County. The proliferation of new wineries in our region is, essentially, a good thing: what could be wrong with more people growing grapes and producing wine from them? Well, as those who know the area know all too well, the Hudson Valley, with its bitter winters, is not an easy area in which to grow vinifera grapes – i.e. the “noble” grapes that qualify as “wine” in Europe. Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay can just about cope, given the right wine-makers and some decent terroir, but almost anything else is an uphill struggle. This is why far too many of the wineries serve up either quaintly-named wines made from the hybrid grapes that do just fine in the region but are not, to put it mildly, the stuff of greatness, or offer more recognizable wines (typically, Riesling, Pinot Gris, Merlot) sourced from vineyards in the far-flung Finger Lakes or Long Island.

Fortunately, few people in New York State know more about the region’s wineries that Hudson-Chatham’s own Carlo DeVito. The author of Wineries of the East Coast, DeVito has a background in wine publishing, and maintains the Hudson River Wine blog in his spare time – of which there can’t be much, given the number of different bottlings emerging from his five-year old winery. Hudson-Chatham serves up the typical Hudson Valley fare I reference up above: local Cayuga in sparkling form, DeChaunac and Baco Noir as a Dessert red, Riesling and Gewurztraminer from the Finger Lakes, and Merlot from Long Island, none of which, in theory, sets it apart from the rest of the tourist trail. However, DeVito has announced his arrival on the wine scene with a couple of distinctive contributions to the area’s fare. His Empire Reserve label, in both white and red form, combines three grapes in equal quantities from the Finger Lakes, Hudson Valley and Long Island regions, hoping to showcase a uniquely New York wine as a result. But perhaps more profoundly, DeVito is staking his claim on “quality hybrid” wines; specifically, he is treating both the white grape Seyval Blanc and the red Baco Noir as if he were in Burgundy and raising Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. At Hudson Chatham, both grapes are Estate Bottled, aged in oak, and labeled according to their individual vineyards. This is a ballsy move, and one that demands attention. Or at least a visit to the winery.

Like many wineries on the east coast, Hudson-Chatham makes more wine than it’s good for. This is not even the full range.

DeVito was at a local industry event for most of the time we visited; I’m pleased to report that his two young female servers were eminently pleasant and more so, pretty well educated on what they were pouring. We started with the 2010 Seyval Blanc, a grape that grows especially well in the Hudson Valley. This emitted some quite serious grapefruit/lemon/crème fraiche flavors with some additional Granny Smith apple. While bright and friendly, it was also a little light in texture and overly acidic, but still good value as a picnic style wine for $11. The Riesling (from the Finger Lakes) was bone dry with lots of green apples. A lovely little wine at $15 a bottle. I was excited and surprised to hear that the Gewurztraminer 2009 had some Hudson Valley grapes in there; I got all the necessary orange and lychee and passion fruit that you might hope for from this very particular grape. Promising for sure.

The entry-level red is the Hudson River Valley Red, a blend of 75% DeChaunac and 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, not an unusual blend for regions where a hybrid needs some weight and depth, added in the form of a noble grape that doesn’t grow well enough to be bottled on its own either. They call it “a light, fruit yet dry red” and that would be a fair description for a non-descript and inoffensive picnic red. By comparison, I was somewhat disappointed with the 2010 Cabernet Franc, grapes from Upstate, which was much lighter in body and color than it need be, considering how well it can be made in New York. We fared better with the Merlot from Long Island. The 2008 Merlot, aged for 18 months in French oak, had plenty of strong fruit, particularly plum, and was well-rounded and a solid food wine for $20; the 2008 Merlot Reserve, aged in French oak for an additional year, had too much wood for my particular palate and was too pricy at $24.

The friendly vibe at the tasting room.

We were very pleasantly surprised by the Blanc de Blanc, considering that it’s made from the typically unworthy Cayuga grape. This was very bready, and ever so lightly sweet. Really quite delightful, especially for $18. We also took a taste of the hard cider made from local, Germantown Northern Spy apples. It’s sold by the large bottle for $10 and while I don’t drink much cider, it seems to me that this is precisely what Hudson Valley wineries should be doing with the local fruit. To that note, while I sampled the fortified Dessert Wines, I wasn’t taken by them; I could taste the added Brandy in the Paperbirch Highlands Fine Ruby and Paperbirch Palladian White more than I could the various, predominantly hybrid grapes. And I’m not a fruit wine fan, so I let those two dessert wine offerings alone.

But now we get to the interesting stuff. I’ve written before at iJamming! about the Empire Reserve White Table Wine, a blend of equal parts Sauvignon Blanc, Seyval Blanc and Riesling, from Long Island, the Hudson Valley and Finger Lakes respectively. Now it was the opportunity to try the Empire Reserve Table Red, this one a blend of Merlot, Baco Noir and Cabernet Franc from the same three regions. Because I love the idea of this wine, I really wanted to love the taste of it (and I bought a bottle to taste properly at home), but I ended up having the same reservation about it as I did the white: that the two grapes from the lower New York regions (Baco Noir and Merlot) ended up overpowering the subtleties of the grape from the Finger Lakes (Cabernet Franc), producing a wine with notable heft and body but not enough delicacy or individuality. I hope DeVito persists with the idea of this blend, as it is, truly, a unique representation of New York State grapes; however, he might want to experiment more with the individual components, sacrificing the idea of equality for… true quality.

The Seyval Blanc vineyard at Hudson-Chatham (absent the grapes, which had already been picked…)

But fear not, because Hudson-Chatham’s boldest claim – to the quality of its hybdrids – turns out to hold true. The 2010 Seyval Blanc Block 1 North Creek Vineyard rewards its single vineyard bottling and (short) oak ageing quite magnificently. Rather than adding that familiar taste of vanilla, either the oak – or perhaps it’s the “Ghent terroir” – delivers some custard qualities that fill out the grape’s typically bright acidity and green citrus notes which, along with a floral texture that I hadn’t registered with the everyday Seyval Blanc at the bottom of the winery’s price chain, creates what is, without doubt, the best Seyval Blanc I have tasted. It’s to the wine’s additional credit that I don’t feel tempted to just compare it to a Sauvignon Blanc or some other cool climate white grape; this felt very much like its own creation. Truly delicious, with a refreshingly long finish, I suspect it might be too subtle for some tastes, but I will definitely be back for more.

To my great disappointment, the winery was entirely out of its various Baco Noir bottlings; once I got talking to DeVito, he explained that they typically sell out within 2-3 months of bottling. He also told me that shortly after opening the winery, he had been offered the opportunity to take over the 60-year old Baco Noir vines at Mason Place Vineyard and signed a lease that very same day. His enthusiasm appears to have been rewarded: I picked up a bottle of the 2009 Baco Noir Old Vines Mason Place Vineyards Pultney Farms at the ever-wonderful Partition Street Wine Shop in Saugerties the night of the Zombie Crawl, for $20, and was (highly) positively overwhelmed. Though on initial opening I got a big fat whiff of the French oak, that quickly wafted away; soon I was getting some cherry coming off the nose, the acidity of a cool climate grape mixed in with earth and spices. It opened up remarkably well to exhibit not just the forward fruit and the mid-palate body, but the kind of well-rounded finish one would expect of a true noble vinifera wine.

Two of the finer hybrid wines I’ve tasted.

My complaint about hybrids is often that they’re one-dimensional; at best, two; but that they never have that ethereal quality that makes great wine such a truly intangible experience. I hesitate to over-praise this Baco Noir, but it shared sufficient qualities to a good earthy Pinot Noir (most notably that dark cherry) that I can understand DeVito placing it in a Burgundian bottle – as he does with two other Single Vineyard reds, the Baco Noir Reserve Casscels Vineyards and, from the same vineyard, a Chelois grape that he considers the crown jewel of his line – and most redolent of a red Burgundy. I guess I will need to get to Hudson-Chatham again this winter to pick up the top-of-the-line 2010s as they come into bottle, but based on our tastings so far, it would appear that the winery is doing as much to showcase the quality possibilities of Hudson Valley hybrids as anyone else in the region. I look forward to tasting more.

I first saw The Evil Dead when it came out, in 1981-82, round at a friend’s house in London, back when VHS tapes were relatively new and straight-to-video releases even newer. (Aye lad, and you try and tell the young folk today…) At the time, it was the scariest movie I had ever seen. It sent a new benchmark for gore – especially for gore on the cheap. If you’ve ever seen Dusk Till Dawn or, especially, the Blair Witch Project, you have to know that they would never have been what they are without Sam Raimi‘s The Evil Dead leading the way.

What I had forgotten over the years is how damn funny that film is. So my thanks to Sugartown Vintage Boutique in Saugerties for hosting a free screening of the movie last Saturday October 22, as part of the town’s second, hopefully annual Zombie Crawl. The Evil Dead is not for everyone, of course: if you can’t see the funny side of chopping up your zombie-fied girlfriend only to see her body parts twitching uncontrollably, well… you probably haven’t seen The Evil Dead. This shot of a blood-drenched Bruce Campbell, taken from the screening Sugartown, is one of the more age-appropriate images from what is arguably the bloodiest but funniest, most creative and absolutely most frightening horror move of all time.

PS: The 1980 haircuts are pretty cool too.

(Copied and pasted from the old iJamming!, written immediately after the great man’s demise, October 25 2004.)

As my generation hit its mid-teens, the only phrase more common at school than, When are you going to get a girlfriend? was Did you hear Peelie last night? The two were not entirely compatible. It was troublesome enough going to gigs with the knowledge that we were sacrificing two hours’ worth of brilliant new music on the Peel show. The prospect of spending an evening fruitlessly trying to get your hand inside some girl’s blouse in front of her TV set, or out at some crap movie, when you could be listening to John Peel playing new music was, for some of us, more than we could bear.

Part of our love for this man who was, remember, old enough to be our father, was because of his Peel sessions. At John’s request, artists went into the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios and recorded up to four songs in just eight hours; these recordings served not only to introduce many a fine new act to the general public, but were beloved of bigger bands too as opportunity to try out new songs in something of public demo form. Over the last fifteen years, many of the finest Peel sessions have been released on CD and vinyl, but at the time, to miss a great session was equivalent to missing your football team on Match of The Day. And those who stayed home and taped Peel’s shows on the finest quality cassette recorders found themselves in great demand. I remember spending far too much of my pocket money sending off blank tapes, Stamped Addressed Envelopes, or crisp pound notes to various addresses scattered round the United Kingdom, to complete my Joy Division or Fall or Scritti Politti Peel session collection.

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Everyone remembers a specific record that John Peel turned him or her onto. Mine is probably the most obvious, and excuse me some rose-tinted sentimentality if it makes me believe I had the fortune to be a Peel loyalist during his truly golden days – the period right after punk. There was so much wonderful music aired on his show, every single night, but The Undertones’ ‘Teenage Kicks’ seemed to soar above everything else. It was a brilliant record regardless of Peel’s obsession, but it was even better because of it, this 40-year old who could empathise with the teenage experience without patronizing those who were immersed in it. Peel probably played ‘Teenage Kicks’ every night for six months, from when it was released on Good Vibrations until it charted on Sire. But I particularly remember one night when he played it, let out a sigh of joy, and then said, in those dulcet tones of his, “That record is so good I have to hear it again,” picked up the needle and put it back on the start of the groove. These were the days when Abba and Boney M still ruled the play lists and charts, a period when not even The Clash, The Jam and The Buzzcocks were heard on Britain’s only pop music station during day time hours; to hear a DJ play a record twice in a row purely because he loved it… well, it gave us hope. Really.
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A list of all the bands Peel turned me onto would be overly long and inevitably incomplete. In those years immediately following the punk rock boom, when independent labels sprung up by the hundred and everyone seemed to be putting out records, every night’s show offered some new minor classic or another. There were usually a few dogs as well; no Peel show was complete without at least once wondering if you could get through the next three minutes without switching him off. (Likewise, few Peel shows were complete without him playing a record at the wrong speed – and how we loved him for it.) But that was part of Peel’s persona. He played the role of University Professor for us teens, widening our Universe at a time when prejudices and street cults dictated we keep it confined. There was no one else who played dub reggae alongside new wave, ska alongside hardcore American punk, and old-fashioned folk alongside Kraut rock. (As the years went by, Peel expanded his oeuvre to include techno, drum and bass, hardcore punk and God knows what else. It’s important to note that Orbital chose to play their last ever live show, just a few months back, from the Maida Vale studios for a Peel show.)

John Peel, then, taught us that good music is good music. He also taught us that snobbery is a crime. Peel was, remember, a devoted fan of both The Undertones and The Fall, two groups who had almost nothing else in common apart from their lead singer’s terrible taste in trousers. And while he filled his post-punk years with all manner of obscure DIY bands from up and down the country, I have a crystal clear memory of the night he decided to play the new Stranglers album from start to finish, simply because he believed they didn’t deserve their current backlash.

I was fortunate enough to meet John Peel on several occasions. The first was in late 1978, after he was interviewed for Jamming! 5 by Ray Hoyle, an older kid at our secondary school Tenison’s. After cornering him for the interview – an exercise in simplistic questioning – Hoyle somehow convinced Peel to let us come up to Broadcasting House one night and sit quietly in the background while he presented his show. I can only assume we had to leave halfway through for the last bus home, and likewise I can only assume we didn’t piss him off too much, because I remember going back a second time, being equally reverent and equally quiet as he went about his nightly business. I felt a little embarrassed to be there; his show carried greater resonance delivered through the airwaves to your front room, rather than sitting in on it with him. What I do remember, though, was being invited into his office and seeing all the session tapes piled up in the corner like so many out-of-date newspapers. Peel assured us that it was actually for protection: if he didn’t hoard the tapes, he insisted, the BBC bureaucrats would just throw them out, and though that may have been overstating the case, it was typical of Peelie that he would take it upon himself to keep so many priceless recording sessions safe from harm – and close at hand.

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John Peel traded on self-deprecation, the notion that for all his influence (something he would never admit to anyway), his life was actually quite boring. And to be honest, for a while there it was. If Peel’s hours – broadcasting from 10pm to midnight, Monday to Friday – put his listeners in a quandary when they wanted to go out to a gig, imagine what it did for the DJ. For years, he almost never got to see the bands he so loved perform live. And he didn’t meet them in the studio either: the Maida Vale sessions took place miles away from Broadcasting House, during the day. For the most part during those peak years, Peel would drive down from his home in East Anglia, shuffle into the studio, prepare his show, pick up a bite to eat on his own, broadcast for two hours and drive home again.

It was during that period that Paul and I started Jamming! Records. Our first signing, Rudi, were already Peel favourites: their ‘Big Time’ had been the first record on Belfast label Good Vibrations. (‘Teenage Kicks’ was the fourth.) Peel played Rudi’s ‘When I Was Dead’ as many times as we had hoped, and brought the group in for a couple more sessions. But with Rudi’s follow-up, ‘Crimson,’ he seemed to cool in his enthusiasm.

Jamming! Records used The Jam’s radio plugger, Nigel Sweeney. He was great at his job, and a nice person too. But Peel distrusted pluggers for all the obvious, right reasons, and when I asked Nigel how to keep Peel on our side, he said that he certainly couldn’t intervene. He suggested, instead, I take Peel out for dinner.

I was 18 at the time. Maybe. I’d only had my first Indian meal a few months before. I didn’t know how to order food, let alone wine. But Sweeney insisted. You’ve heard Peel complain how he never meets anyone, he told me. Give John a call, offer to take him out for a curry. Bet you a tenner he says yes.

I had nothing to lose. (Except a tenner.) I got Peel on the phone – it wasn’t hard in those days, I’d done it a few times before – and asked if he fancied sharing a curry some weeknight before his show. I cringed as I made the offer. But John was immediate in his response.

“How very kind of you,” he said. “I’d love to.” A few days later, we met up in the early evening at Broadcasting House, had a quick pint round the corner, and then Peel took me to his favorite local curry house and I picked up the tab.

What did we talk about? Damned if I remember. Hopefully, just about music – and maybe a little bit about his life out in the country, with the mysterious “pig,” as his long-suffering wife Sheila was referred to for so many years. I only remember being perfectly nervous, and John being perfectly charming. He may possibly have found me as much of a pain as when we blagged our way into his studio all those years earlier, but if that was the case, he was far too nice to say so. And looking back on it, I’m sure he enjoyed himself. Not because of my company, but because he always took pleasure in talking about music with anyone who loved it even half as much as himself, and because he would have been happy to share his enthusiasm and encouragement for anyone willing to make a career of that love. You may have heard people say over these last few days that John Peel was one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. Guess what? It was true.
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Our meal out didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to his on-air support for our records. Nor should it have done. Peel only ever played what he liked. But it was the fact that he liked so damn much of it – with a passion – that makes us so sad to lose him.

Saugerties came alive – I mean, dead – for the second annual Zombie Crawl on Saturday night. You gotta love a town full of dead people, especially Zombie Blues Brothers. Kudos too to the three generations of Zombies that I met afterwards at the Dutch Ale House – or four, if you count their (fake, I think) babies. Well done to Saugerties Town for encouraging such madness, and all to the stores, bars and restaurants that participated. Click on any of the images below to see them in Flickr; this is a new process I’m trying out here.