Round III

Round III starts Monday.  I can't get enough of those sticky grapes and earwigs.  Although the vintage is looking ifey, my duties remain the same.  It is just as laborious to make crappy wine as it is to make great wine, as far as I am concerned.

I bought a new pair of Bean boots. Screw those Blunstones that all the real wine geeks wear.  Too much time  on the vineyards rob you of your sense of fashion. Duck boots are where it's at. Ask Madeline Weeks.

“It’s definitely a good look,” said Madeline Weeks, the fashion director of GQ. “But the proportion of the boot and the pants has to be right. You don’t want to the boots to be too short or too tall — say, four to six inches above the ankle, or up to eight if you’re really going to go there.”

Before I dive into the juice I need to crank out one more project from my pathetic manufacturing facility.  Pa from Little House on the Prairie had a better set up than me.  It continues to rain in my factory long after the rain outside has stopped.  The only power is run through extension cords coming from my back yard and the cords sizzle in the Oregon mud puddles.  I can't believe this structure even passes for a garage.  Drive in there and you can't open the doors to the car, it's so friggin' small.  You could crawl out the sunroof but you would mush your head on the soggy broken rafters. You can't light a cigarette in there on a balmy day, it is so drafty.   I am starting to embrace the idea that my design career is doomed and that chocolate will be my savior.  It kind of kills me that I can't succeed in design but what are you going to do? Make chocolate. 


Drove down to Eugene to pick up a 70 kilo sack of Ocumare beans last night.  On the way down it was Slayer, Sepultura and High On Fire.  Coming back: Dolly Pardon and Bjork. 


Where were my handlers?  Why didn't I just get a job with UPS back in '86?  
Did you read this?  Hello? Echo!  

Maker or Works?

If I was going to start a Bean to Bar chocolate factory with my wife, we would have to name it.  Pretend that every name in the universe was already taken with the exception of the following two, which one do you like better?

PORTLAND CHOCOLATE MAKER
PORTLAND CHOCOLATE WORKS

Note: A chocolate maker is someone who roasts cocao beans and grinds them into chocolate. A chocolatier is someone who uses chocolate to make truffles and bon bons and whatnot.

There are but a handful of bean to bar houses in the US.  I am new to the scene but I have to say that chocolate is way more complex and dynamic than Hershy's would have you think.  I am loving the research.

My favorite bar, right this second, is the Amano Dos Rios bar.  Beans from the Dominican republic.  I can't f#$king believe that this bar is only beans and sugar.  It is so dynamic and the flavors are so distinctive.  I like to eat it in front of my spice rack and point to what I am tasting as the complex flavors eel through the canyons of my pallet.  The best way for me to describe it is to ask you to substitute the word CHOCOLATE wherever you see the word GUM, in the exchange below.  Except for the very first GUM.

Willy Wonka: Don't you know what this is?
Violet Beauregarde: By gum, it's gum.
Willy Wonka: [happily, but sarcastically] Wrong! It's the most amazing, fabulous, sensational gum in the whole world.
Violet Beauregarde: What's so fab about it?
Willy Wonka: This little piece of gum is a three-course dinner.
Mr. Salt: Bull.
Willy Wonka: No, roast beef. But I haven't got it quite right yet.