I have already announced and informed you about the 3rd International Symposium on Tropical Wine to be held from 12. to 18. November in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Now the first draft program is out. Gosh there are so many interesting sessions, international and national speakers, and exciting field trips on offer that I might not know where to go. I cannot attend all for them.
Have a look and check it out.
By the way, you should register, I have already done it.
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culture, food and wine, history and culture, vines, vineyard management, Vineyard profile, vineyards, wine, wine regions, wineries | Tagged: 3. International Symposium on Tropical Wine, Chiang Mai, New Latitude Wines, Thai wine, Thailand, wine | 
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Posted by themanfrommoselriver
Welcome to my Saturday post. Behind me is a sign in Thai indicating that we are at the Mekong river.
Lunch at a “swimming restaurant” on the Mekong
Let me take you today to an exotic place on this majestic stream, where I had lunch with a couple of colleagues when I visited Udon Thani some time ago. I had to try some Isan cuisine which is not for everybody.
Come on to my boat
On the boat restaurant a large group of school children where having their lunch. They seemed to be on an outing together with their teachers.
The children were delightful
As I said before, 22 years living and working in Asia exposes you to interesting cuisines. I have eaten all kinds of food in my life but not one of the foremost delicacies of Thailand’s North-East: ants eggs.
In fact this cuisine tested my resilience.
An assortment of typical dishes
On the river you eat fish
Also soup is healthy
What would we do in Thailand without “som da,”?
So far so good
Almost all dishes contained the ants eggs sprinkled over them
They look well cooked, don’t they?
The ants eggs have a strong chitinous taste when you bite into them. It’s a strange feeling between the teeth too. In my body the chitinous inside of the eggs produced a tremendous amount of heat. I guess one has to be used to this kind of dish in order to fully enjoy it. My companions, almost all from the Udon Thani region, just loved the food.
By the way, we drank water with our meal, just clear water.
And the river flew.
Come to the Mekong.
Leave a Comment » | culture, food | Tagged: Thai cuisine, Thailand, Udon Thani | Permalink
Posted by themanfrommoselriver
No better place to go for a Sunday Easter family lunch than Ristorante Bacco, our favourite Italian restaurant in Thonglor, our old neighbourhood. We like real food with rustic charm and not the designer stuff, small bits of food looking like works of art on big plates.
Below you can see what we ate. First are the three antipasti we selected. Delicious.
Melanzane alla parmigiana
Carpaccio
Insalata caprese
All three antipasti on my plate
Our family consists of “traditionalists”. Three of us ordered gnocchi, the other main dish was tagliatelle with mushrooms in a creamy sauce.
Gnocchi
Tagliatelli delicata
How about the wine, you might ask. I love to order a simple ‘Primitivo’ (called “Zinfandel” in the USA) from Apulia. This time I selected a pricier wine than normal, a Primitivo made from 60 year old vines.
It turned out to be an excellent choice. The ‘2007 Primitivo di Manduria DOC’ by Feudi di San Marzano is a big wine (with 14.5% alcohol). The intense fruit aromas, plums mainly but also with earthy and spicy notes, had me forget that I was in the tropics.
Manduria is a town of about 30,000 inhabitant, about 30 km east of Taranto and about 14 km north from the Apulian coast. The place has a very warm climate.
The wine is made from 100% Primitivo grapes. One can sense that the vines are old, very old (sixty years, is what the label says). The bottles are also very heavy and old fashioned. I liked it, not wasting any thought about the carbon footprint.
2007 Primitivo di Manduria DOC
The back label of the Primitivo by Feudi di San Marzano
And after all this delicious food came the sweets or dolce as they are called in Italian.
Strawberries and cream
Pistaccio ice cream
Tirramisu
This was a very memorable Easter Sunday lunch. We had a great time with yummy food and delicious wine at Bacco. I will remember the wine and order it again.
If you need something special, and you do not want any more Thai food, have a break and eat Italian at Bacco. You will not regret it.
Address:
Bacco Osteria da Sergio
Sukhumvit Soi 53, Bangkok,
Thailand
Tel.: +66-2-662-4538
http://bacco-bkk.com
1 Comment | food, food and wine, Restaurant Review, wine | Tagged: Apulia, Bacco, Bangkok, Feudi di San Marzano, Italian wine, Primitivo, Primitivo di Manduria, Ristorante Bacco, Taranto, Thailand, Zinfandel | Permalink
Posted by themanfrommoselriver
I returned from Germany to our new flat in Ekamai, Bangkok. Our family had moved in my absence; wife and children did all the hard work, I had just to get back.
I was still shocked somehow.
It takes a while to get used to new quarters. My rule of thumb is the following: if you can freely walk through your house in complete darkness and without knocking things over and bloody toes, feet and knees, you’ve made it. I know from experience, that it takes about one year to get to that stage.
Empty balkony
Well, the first night was a nightmare. The sounds were complete foreign to me and very strange indeed. The wind howled around the bedroom corner; dogs kept barking through the night, it seemed.
I did not expect that moving from the third to the tenth floor would bring such inconvenience. I felt completely unsettled, slept badly for days.
But as an optimist by nature, I know that I will get over it.
Just give yourself some time, I said to myself to calm me down.
Welcome to Bangkok.
View over Ekamai, the blue highrise opposite, houses my office
PS: Needless to say that I could not find the inner balance to write anything for this blog. My blogging is in disarray. I have no place yet where to put my computer. I need a place to do my blogging stuff with my small wine library on hand, some old bottles of wine, brochures and information materials. I will work on it.
4 Comments | culture, general | Tagged: Bangkok, Thailand | Permalink
Posted by themanfrommoselriver
I am very excited. Recently, I was invited to the above event. From November 14 to 16, 2011 the Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna (RMUTL) in Chiang Mai, Thailand will host the 3rd International Symposium on Tropical Wine.
It will be the most significant gathering of wine experts, scientists, vintners and wine drinkers here in tropical Asia. Thailand is maybe the best developed producer of new latitude wines. Although the Thai wine industry enjoys some protection from outside competition, it’s technological progress is remarkable, many of it’s wines are outstanding.
Wineries such as GranMonte Family Vineyard and PB-Valley Khaoyai Winery have become household names. Many new latitude wines have won major awards at international wine competitions. Chiang Mai and it’s surroundings will be a wonderful location for the event.
Needless to say there is a facebook group to promote the event. I suggest you better join this exciting group to always be up to date about the progress we make.
See you in Chiang Mai in November.
Leave a Comment » | wine, wine regions | Tagged: Chiang Mai, New Latitude Wines, Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna, Thailand, Tropical wine, wine | Permalink
Posted by themanfrommoselriver
The entry of di Vino wine bar in Thonglor
If you walk through the Thonglor-Ekkamai neighbourhood in Bangkok you might come to the conclusions that wine bars are like mushrooms, sprouting everywhere.
A good place to hang out, enjoy a glass of wine and have some Italian cuisine, is di Vino, a small and cosy wine bar in Thonglor, Bangkok. The play on words is funny too, is it “divine” or “of wine”? Both I suggest.
Roberto, the manager-owner, is a very sociable guy and a pleasure to talk to. He loves quality in wine and food and he is also a good cook. For my wife he made a fegato dish (liver), very difficult to make indeed, which was just superb. And he offers some great wine choices.
For instance the ‘2003 Il Lemos Negroamaro’ by Leone di Castris. The wine is not displayed on the website of Leone de Castris any more. You will fnid there only younger vintages. But the company has a wide selection of different wines on offer.
Leone de Castris was established in 1925 and the winery was the first in Italy which bottled rose wines. Many of its products are made from indigeneous grape varieties such as Negroamara, Primitivo and Aleatico.
2003 Il Lemos by Leone de Castris
This Negroamaro from Puglia produced in the Salento region, the heel of Italy, is just wonderful. It is a very earthy wine, rustic in character. Often it is blended with the highly scented Malvasia Negra as in the case of Salice Salentino. The grape produces some of the best wines of southern Italy.
Roberto has still some bottles left of the 2003 vintage, but you have to hurry to taste it before it is gone.
Address:
Di Vino
Penny’s Balcony, Thong Lo Soi 55,
Sukhumvit Road, Watthana, Bangkok, 10110
1 Comment | food, wine, wine bars | Tagged: Aleatico, Bangkok, di Vino, Italian wine, Italy, Leone de Castris, Malvasia Negra, Negroamaro, Puglia, Salento, Thailand, wine, wine bar | Permalink
Posted by themanfrommoselriver
I took a time out from blogging. While just watching from the sidelines I had a record number of visitors to my entry on the Johanna Budwig diet which I wrote as tribute to my friend, the late Peter Ryan. But since then, I had declining numbers of visitors to my blog. Well, let’s resume.
Every Chinese New Year we have a family at a Chinese restaurant in our neighbourhood Thonglor called Royal Kitchen.
The restaurant is just a side street away from where we live.
Happy New Year and good wishes from the Adam family
So what did we eat? Well, it was bit of a mix. We started with some dumplings, had lots of prawns, some tofu, a steamed fish and some sweet and sour soup.
Fried dumplings
Prawns in orange
Prawns Shanghai style
Sichuan style tofu
Hmm, was delicious on rice
Sea bass steamed sorry, I came to late for the photo
Sweet and sour soup
Needless to say that the meal was delicious and we had a great time on the first day of the year of the rabbit.
PS: We drank beer and we did not eat rabbit, honestly.
Address:
Royal Kitchen Restaurant
912/6 Sukhumvit 55, Bangkok, Thailand 10110
Tel.: +66-2391 9634, and 2714 8548
e-mail: info@royalkitchengroup.com
www.Royalkitchengroup.com
Leave a Comment » | culture, food, Restaurant Review | Tagged: Bangkok, Chinese food, Chinese New Year, Royal Kitchen Restaurant, Thailand, Thonglor | Permalink
Posted by themanfrommoselriver
While Europe is going under in snow, Bangkok is enjoying coolish winter days, some of them nice and sunny with temperatures in the mid twenties. Then a light lunch is what we need.
Grilled vegetables and some cold cuts are just the right food. And what do you drink with it?
Well, a ‘2007 Sauvignon Blanc’ by Mount Nelson from New Zealand is just the right wine. Apart from Riesling and Silvaner (only from Franconia), Sauvignon Blanc is my favourite white. Moreover, it goes well with light summer lunches, I think.
Grilled ‘veggies’
Cold cuts
Golden Sauvignon Blanc
16 Comments | food, wine | Tagged: Bangkok, Mount Nelson, New Zealand wine, Sauvignon Blanc, Thailand | Permalink
Posted by themanfrommoselriver
Right now it’s winter time in Thailand. Temperatures are between 24 and 28 during the night and up to 32 Celsius in the daytime in Bangkok. A nice time of the year. This is why so many tourist are now arriving here in Thailand.
These days my terrace garden is in full bloom. Some of the beauty I will share with you. Just fill you glass with a delicious and crisp Chardonnay, a Sauvignon Blanc or a Riesling and scroll down at your leisure.
Season’s greetings from the Happy Gardener
Leave a Comment » | general | Tagged: Chardonnay, New Latitude Wines, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Thailand | Permalink
Posted by themanfrommoselriver
What do you do if there is a curfew at night? You celebrate in the daytime and this is what we did. We invited two families with their children and the 13 of us had a great time last Saturday. Starting at 1 pm gives you plenty of time, and we love it if our table can be put to good use.
We can easily sit 12 persons, and I just sneaked in on the corner. As it is Australian custom, the man has to operate the barbecue, and that’s what I did. My Weber is doing a great job. The recipes came from Italy though. I had a large piece of pork which we prepared the Italian way as “majale al rosto”. Moreover, we had, Italian “spiedini”, skewers consisting of spicy sausages, beef, bacon and sage leaves between them. All delicious stuff.
Seven teenagers and six adults around one table
And what comes at the end of an Australian barbecue? Right a pavlova, the wonderful and delicious, classical Australian dessert, especially if it has 40 Celsius outside.
Pavlova
We drank mostly beer but had also a couple of bottles of ‘2008 Yering Chardonnay’ from the oldest vineyard in the Yarra Valley, which they “flog” in our local supermarket at the moment (but which still costs about 12 EURO/bottle).
What a jolly good time we had.
1 Comment | food, wine | Tagged: Australian wine, Bangkok, Pavlova, Thailand, Yarra Valley, Yering Station | Permalink
Posted by themanfrommoselriver
The Man from Mosel River
The Man from Mosel River 