I know that the title says Tennessee whiskey but I wanted to start my talk today with bourbon. Now, I love bourbon. I also happen to really like college basketball. My young, impressionable years were spent in the State of Connecticut and that means that I have a penchant for both men’s and women’s basketball. In case anyone doesn’t follow, both the University of Connecticut’s men's and women's teams are pretty good. I diligently follow them through the regular season but come Tournament time, that’s when things heat up.

Because of my love for these two things, I treat the men’s NCAA college basketball tournament very special, especially that first weekend of games. I take those first four days, clear my calendar of everything including work, and bask in the nice warm glow of my large screen TV with nothing but bourbon to drink and basketball on the tube. People who know me have found this to be a delightful tradition and have started to join me in my basketball and bourbon frenzy.

Now the reason that I mention this is because I love bourbon so much that I can’t bring myself to use it in this recipe. You see, one of the things that makes bourbon a bourbon is that it can only be called a bourbon if it was made in the State of Kentucky. Otherwise, it is just a whiskey. There are also some other restrictions, not the least of which is the ageing process. Altogether, these rules make bourbon a far more refined drink than just a whiskey.

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This last week has been just spectacular here in Virginia. Every day has been in the mid seventies with bright, beautiful sunshine. It was wonderful enough for Ms Cocktail and I to be cruising around in the Vette with the top down and wind blowing through our hair. It’s that time of the year when the nights are crisp and the pumpkins appear at the road side stands. Days like these just beg for a trip out to Shenandoah.

One of the gateways to Shenandoah National Park lies just outside the bustling community of Front Royal, Virginia. Now when I say bustling, I mean bustling in a sleepy Virginia hamlet sort of way, not a big city, run around at breakneck speed trying not to crash into things, sort of way. Also, not far outside this energetic little town is a favorite fall destination of Ms Cocktail and I, Rappahannock Cellars.

Ms Cocktail and I stopped by late last Wednesday after an afternoon of leaf peeping to do a tasting. Just a small aside here, Ms Cocktail and I both hail from New England. There are some beautiful places here in Virginia where one can find some very vibrant colors on the mountainsides in the Fall. It is not quite the same as the explosion of color that you get in New England though. However, if you ever wanted to surprise your “significant other” with a romantic getaway, you could do a lot worse than to schedule a weekend in Skyland Resort or Big Meadows Lodge in Shenandoah National Park.

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I was in the Snooth forums  a while back discussing the merits of the Norton grape. For those of you that don’t know, Norton is a grape native to North America and it was first cultivated here in Virginia. Actually, let me rephrase that. While some people think it is native to North America, it has pretty much been determined that it is a hybrid of one or more Vitis aestivalis grapes (those native to Eastern North America) and one Vitis vinifera (native to the Mediterranean, central Europe and southwestern Asia) grape. Which specific ones are not and may never be, determined. It is also the official grape of the State of Missouri.

It was from this fact that our discussion began. It seems that a wine made from the Norton grape won a gold medal in the 1873 Vienna World Exposition. It was supposed to be the next big thing in the wine world back then. One thing I am most definitely not certain of is whether the wines of that time were judged by the same criteria as we judge them today. It is quite possible that we would judge a wine of similar character today as swill, immediately to be poured out or let go to vinegar. In any case, the Norton grape never seemed to catch on in popularity back then.

Fast forward to the new millennium. Currently, the single largest planting of Norton is at Chrysalis Vineyards in Northern Virginia. An astounding number of Virginia and Missouri wineries make wines from this grape. It grows exceptionally well in the Eastern US and produces a grape that is similar to Concord but slightly less sweet. It can also produce a wine without a characteristic known as “foxyness”, something that native American grapes are known for.

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I have several friends that live in California and knowing my penchant for wine, they are always telling me I should come visit. When I casually mention to them that I’d like to go and visit the Lodi Appellation, their eyes kind of cloud over and drift away, their voice becomes very suspicious and I can tell that their dreams of visiting Napa or Sonoma with friends has just been dashed.

That’s because even living in California, they aren’t aware that the Lodi Appellation has some of the most exceptional wines being made in the state. The climate in the Lodi region very much resembles the Mediterranean, something that was not lost of the early growers of this area. Cooling breezes from the San Francisco Bay area in the afternoon and evening temper what can be a warm dry summer. A cool and usually moderate winter helps to not stress the plants during the off season.

It was discovered early on that the Zinfandel grapes thrives in this environment. It was one of the first grapes planted commercially in the state of California, having been first planted in the Lodi region in the mid 1800’s by Agoston Haraszthy (considered the grandfather of California viticulture). For this reason, vintners in this region have access to some of the oldest grape vines in America with some being well over 80 years old. This combination of climate and old vines often produces grapes with very ripe and forward fruit flavors and markedly soft tannins.

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I have to admit, I'm only now becoming aware of Spanish wines. Spain is a country that has a long and rich tradition of winemaking, but they always seem to play second fiddle to their neighbors to the north and east. For the geographically challenged of you, that would be France and Italy respectively.

Like it's neighbors, Spain also has specific wine regions within its broders. The region we're looking at today is DO Montsant (the DO stands for Denominación de Origen) which is located slightly west of the well known Spanish city of Barcelona. Even though it has only recently acieved DO recognition it was part of and adjacent to DOCa Priorat. DOCa stands for Denominación de Origen Calificada a designation with more stringent requirements than DO. Priorat is only the second DOCa in Spain besides Rioja. This mountainous area of Spain is principally covered with terraced vineyard on steep hillsides. The climate produces low yields which leads to intense, full flavored, and full bodied wines.

The 2007 Can Blau Cellars Can Blau (hey, I don't make up the names) is typical of a wine from this region. It is a blend of 40% Mazuelo, 40% Syrah and 20% Garnacha (Grenache). It is a full bodied wine with a luxiorious dark ruby color that gives you a strong nose of plum and blackberry. There is a great depth to the flavor with the plum and blackberry up front and a hint of spice and a nice mineral finish. When it's all said and done, there is just a touch of blackberry that lingers teasingly. This wine is ready to drink now but a little time out of the bottle won't hurt it. A really nice value at around $20 per bottle.

There are a couple of trends that I find somewhat disturbing showing up in the craft brewing industry lately. The first is a tendency for brewers to want to make everything bigger. Almost every brewery seems to put out a big beer, heavy, sweet, hoppy and high in alcohol. This really strikes me as a chicken and the egg scenario. The brewers will tell you that these are the types of beers that are selling and that they are only giving in to the demands of the marketplace. However, I suspect that these are the beers that are selling because those are the ones being made and marketed.

The second trend that I find disturbing is the marketing of beers with names that are reminiscent of our childhood. While not exactly tradmark infringements, these names certainly skirt right around the edge of the issue, attempting to cash in on the popularity of something currently in the public eye. For example, Bear Republic Brewing has an India Pale Ale that is called Racer 5. The label and font is designed to draw a very close reference to the cartoon Speed Racer that was recently redone as a full length feature movie by Warner Bros. Pictures. The thing I find most troubling is not the brazenness of these companies attempting to piggy back on another item's popularity but the parallel that will soon be drawn to what happend in the tobacco industry. Someone soon will come up with the idea that these companies are attempting to market beer to children because of these oblique references to cartoons. Then the witch hunt will begin in earnest.

Today's beer is one that is following both of these trends. It is called Hoptimus Prime and it is from the Legacy Brewing Company in Reading, PA. I'm sure most of you caught the reference to the lead robot in the Transformers movie. I mean I get it, it's a hoppy beer with a catchy title, but my Spidey Sense is tingling if you know what I mean. So now that we're done with marketing, let's talk about the beer.

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For those of you that don't know it, today is Ms Cocktail's birthday. I though that I would do something special for her and do the whole breakfast in bed thing. Well, if you know Ms Cocktail you would realize by the time I finished that sentence I had come to the conclusion that was impossible. You see, she is like a cat with an insatiable curiosity. There is no way that I would be able to get up before her (something I NEVER do) and do anything in the kitchen without her poking her nose in to find out what I was up to. So I decided to just get up early, wish her a Happy Birthday and tell her to go back to sleep, knowing full well what a useless exercise it was.

So off to the kitchen I headed. I scrubbed and diced some potatoes for home fries (1 hour in the oven at 350 F, a touch of salt, pepper and garlic) and then I began work on the omelet. The beauty of this omelet is that it is super simple to make yet tastes like a million bucks. I learned how to make these during hung over Sunday brunches at a little place in Willimantic, CT called the Victorian Lady. They would make an omelet station on the bar and this was their signature omelet. It was outrageously expensive to go there on a college student's budget, but I would schlep myself down there as often as I could afford it because it was a cut above the rest of the places available for breakfast.

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I love to go to wineries. It is a really enjoyable pastime for Ms Cocktail and myself. Especially here in Northern Virginia where the daily pace of life can be hectic on the best of days. Trips to the wineries are like little mini vacations where we can go out to the countryside and escape the insanity that is the greater metropolitan Washington D.C. area.

The other nice thing about the wineries are the little gems that you come across every once in a while. Personally, I never would have given the 2006 Tannat from Chrysalis Vineyards a second look had I come across the bottle in a store. Having visited previously, I was well aware that they were a young vineyard and that they were still getting their legs underneath them. They had a couple of fun selections, you know, easy drinking on the back deck on a hot afternoon kind of wines, but nothing serious. That all changed during my last visit there. That is when I tasted this Tannat.

First, let me say that I was totally unaware of the Tannat grape. It is a grape from Southwestern France, principally the Madiran AOC that has also found an enthusiastic audience in Uruguay. There are small plantings in California and Virginia in the United States, but it is not a very widely grown or used grape here yet. This is yet another reason that I wouldn't have thought twice about this wine, I just didn't know anything about it. I'm just as big a creature of habit as anyone else and I tend towards things I already know. I'd be willing to bet that you're the same way, gravitating towards the known and safe choice versus the unknown and potentially bad.

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Paul Prudhomme is going to be the death of me. Not because of his recipes, mind you. He is without a doubt the master of finding a way to sneak additional fat into a recipe. You can almost feel your arteries clogging just by reading the damn thing, never mind actually eating it. No, the reason he is going to be the death of me is because of his cooking techniques. He has this thing about cooking just about everything over insanely high amounts of heat. This leaves these incredible thick and gooey compounds bubbling like mad on my stove, spitting blobs searing pain through the air at me. There is no doubt a very good reason that he calls his roux "cajun napalm". I'm sure that incidents in his kitchen have been well documented.

That all being said, he does have a penchant for coming up with some amazingly tasty recipes. A while back, I made his seafood stuffed flounder from his Lousiana Kitchen cook book. Ms Cocktail has a couple of family members that are fishermen by trade and every once in a while we get some amazing delights. Well, we had been given some rockfish (otherwise known as striped bass) filets and I thought that I could substitute this fish for the flounder in Chef Paul's recipe. It did work out OK, except that I had left over stuffing I needed to figure out what to do with. As my grill is always the first place I look for inspiration, I thought about filling some portobello mushroom caps with the the left over stuffing and grilling them. Let me tell you, it was one of the better ideas I've ever had. I think that this combination is even better than Chef Paul's original and that's saying a lot.

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