January 2012 Newsletter

NEW YEAR-NEW ADVENTURES The South has so much to offer in the winter months. The trees may be dormant and our bears are taking their long nap, but the hotels, resorts, B&B’s, live stages, restaurants and trout streams are in fine form. The winter menus glow at the Capitol Grille in Nashville, Lemaire in Richmond, King’s Kitchen in Charlotte, Peninsula Grill in Charleston, and the Café at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead in Atlanta. This month Doc will be touring the restaurants of Chattanooga that are getting close looks from gourmets, The city’s dining scene will be reviewed with more than a little about the wines and cocktails served in the river city. The Civil War Sesquicentennial is the second year and attending the programs, re-enactments, lectures and the like will be even more fun as we introduce you the to parks, rivers, resorts, galleries, and wineries you will always be near. . Folk art remains a hot item in the South. Bill Traylor’s works are featured at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. And for those headed down to Florida, the lovely city of Winter Park has an exclusive exhibition of the works of Missionary Mary Proctor, a frequent visitor to Georgia. Join Doc Lawrence in Milledgeville at Georgia’s Old State Capitol. Now one of the country’s great museums. We’ll tour and even sit in the room where the Marquis de Lafayette spoke and where Georgia seceded from the Union in 1861. The Steffan Thomas Museum in Madison/Buckhead, Ga is one of the best curated art museums anywhere and we’ll have an entertaining story about this glorious collection located in the lovely area of the South. Marietta’s La Familgia restaurant with be reviewed by Doc Lawrence who will take readers for a performance by the renowned Atlanta Lyric Theatre at Marietta’s historic Strand Theatre Enjoy the story about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a wine tasting (on right) and don’t forget to prepare those crab cakes from Chef Jimmy Noble’s recipe, all expertly paired with a North Carolina wine selection. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Friend Us! Follow Us! Share Us! Dr. King's Historic Wine Tasting (Click to enjoy) JIMMY’S CRAB CAKE (from The King's Kitchen/Charlotte, NC) Jumbo lump crab meat, gently cleaned Salt and pepper to taste 2 eggs ½ cup mayonnaise ¼ cup Parmesan, grated fine ¼ cup chives ¾ cup crackers ½ cup shallots ½ cup celery ¼ pound butter Method: Sweat together the celery and shallots in butter.  Set aside to cool to room temperature.  Mix the rest of the ingredients (except the crab) together in a bowl, add cooled celery and shallots.  Fold in the crab meat carefully to keep the lumps whole and portion to 3 ½ oz.  Should Yield 12 – 13 cakes.  Garnish with herb or maitre d’hotel butter.   DOC'S WINE PAIRING Few wineries do Riesling better than Shelton Vineyards in North Carolina's Yadkin Valley. This wine from the nationally acclaimed winemaker fits Jimmy Noble's Crab Cakes nicely.

Copyright © 2011 Wines Down South, All rights reserved.

MY BOURBON JOURNEY

MAKING AN OLD FASHIONED

"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr.

By Doc Lawrence

LOUSIVILLE. Bourbon is all over the pages of newspapers and magazines, even featured on network television news. For a product that has been quintessentially American since the days of George Washington, in his own right a highly successful whiskey maker, one might think that intrepid investigative reporters had recently discovered this elixir.

 

No amount of sleuthing can uncover anything new except that Bourbon has returned to it’s place of prominence in a way that parallels the return of red wine over white to the casual enthusiast. Dark or brown drinks now threaten clear ones dominated still by vodka.

My Bourbon experiences are up close and personal, garnering wisdom and a better-educated palate by traveling to Kentucky to drop in places like Buffalo Trace, Maker’s Mark, Jim Beam, Woodford Reserve, Wild Turkey, Michter’s and more. After several Kentucky trips, I decided the most memorable moment was a recent afternoon tasting Wild Turkey in its various forms with the legendary Master Distiller Jimmy Russell. In the private bar outside his office in the distillery’s Lawrenceburg headquarters, he poured each of his products sold in the market, told how he made them while I, like an obedient student, dutifully sipped. This, I thought, must have been how the first person who tasted Dom Peringon’s bubbly felt after sampling the monk’s Champagne centuries ago.

The evening before, I had dinner with Kentucky’s heralded bartender, Joy Perrine in the Oak Room, a place frequented by the rich and famous in Louisville’s luxurious Seelbach Hotel,

For the record, the ebullient and eloquent Ms. Perrine, the best known and most acclaimed bartender in Louisville. rejects the  yuppyfied mixologist label.

Joy gave me a signed copy of her book, The Kentucky Bourbon Cocktail Book, co-authored with Susan Reigler, (The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), and ordered everyone an Old Fashioned, arguably America’s first cocktail, and told me how to make a great one.

Here is the one Bourbon cocktail that has been served since time immemorial. It’s an American classic and a splendid drink for the holidays.Joy Perrine’s Old-Fashioned

Ingredients:

1 orange slice

1 maraschino cherry

1/2-ounce simple syrup

5 dashes of Angostura bitters

2 ounces bourbon

Ice

In a rocks glass, muddle the orange slice and cherry with the Simple Syrup and bitters. Add the bourbon and a few ice cubes and stir well.

 HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Enjoy the story about Koinonia, the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity:

http://bytheseafuture.org/Southwind_12-16-11.html