Three Rivers Overflowing with Beer!

What do you get when you take a post-industrial city, fill it with students from six universities and give it a healthy dose of entrepreneurial drive?  Among many other things; a dramatic spike in craft brewing.  

There is a sense that Pittsburgh Pennsylvania is a strange bubble in which the normal laws of trends or progress do not necessarily apply.  The city was an industrial centre for over a hundred years, known for making steel, pushing the technological boundaries of production since the 1870’s but fast forward to the 1980’s and economic turmoil, Pittsburgh and other cities saw the mills close and ship off along with the jobs to Canada, Mexico and elsewhere.

Between the Allegheny and the Monongahela, forming the Ohio.

But fortunately for Pittsburgh, the spirit of enterprise remained and a new array of industries sprang up seemingly overnight as some of the best minds in the country set the city up as a centre of legal practice, advanced medicine and robotics (they designed the Mars rover thing, how cool is that?!).  And where do those high brow professionals turn for their end of day swill? Probably one of the many high quality craft brews from Pittsburgh (from here on I will use only local nicknames for the city).

Much like the tide of the steel industry; one skin sheds, a more suited skin emerges, the beer scene went the same way.  In 2009, as the local lager, Iron City picked up and left town for neighboring Latrobe (and tried to hide it, what gall!) the fiercely proud Yinzers of the Steel City were inspired to look closer to home.

As of September 2013 the brewing scene in the City of Bridges included a fair list of breweries producing some really exciting beers, filling every niche a beer lover could desire from classic Czech styled pilsner from Penn Brewery, to big dense IPA from Full Pint and Trappist styles from Draai Laag and hundreds others.  Here’s a look at some of the more established names in the ‘Burgh.

The Penn Brewery has been producing its eponymous Penn Pilsener for nearly 30 years out of the old E&O Brewery building in the the Deutschtown neighborhood and has become one of the go-to beers in the city.  Add to this a solid range including the top-notch Allegheny Pale Ale and the Kaiser Pils and this is the City of Champion’s answer to Samuel Adams: a craft brewery making great beer on a larger scale.

The Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville is perhaps the most recognizable brewery in the city.  Sited in a desanctified (did I invent this word?) Catholic Catholic church, this is a Pittsburgh institution and a religious experience for a beer-lover.  The altar is home to the tanks, the the bar is appropriately located at the confessional the pews are swapped for more sociable tables.  As this is more of a brew pub, it is a rare treat to find the beers in bottle, so this might require a visit to the Three River City.  A worthy pilgrimage!

Among the new upstarts are a selection of breweries quickly proving themselves.  Full Pint, Rivertowne and East End alongside the smaller operations of Hop-Farm, Copper Kettle and Roundabout ensure that there is always new beer to be had.  Forget your Sierra Nevadas, your Victory and your Brooklyn.  When your in the Burgh, you could have a different brew every day from one of a wide array of breweries.  Not even counting the Seasonals!

So the city between the Three Rivers is bursting it's banks with good beer.  It can only be so long before it flows into the world.

Much Love,

G

End of the River- The Douro Valley

Hey Everybody,

Tonight I've been packing for a trip to London and as I go I am enjoying a nice bottle of Portuguese red.  Specifically from the Douro Valley in the North of the country, along the same river known as the Duero in Spain.  Douro wine is mostly known on the international stage as the source of some of the world's most highly regarded wine: Port.  That fortified, sweet and long lived wine is the stuff of legend but in a valley so blessed with an abundance of old vines, a plethora of cultivars and prime vineyard space, it is ridiculous to assume that top quality table wine is not made there as well.

Fruit forward and full bodied, it is a wonder that Portuguese reds are not more widely known.  Perhaps they are suffering from some of the same malignancies that continuously frustrate German wine makers, with confusing terms, unfamiliar grape varieties and association with a stereotypical style.  Whereas Germany contends with the misconception that all wines are going to be sweet and sickly, it may be that Portugal has the ghost of sweet fortified Port wine looming over it.

Fortunately it does not take too long to get through the layers of retrograde pfaffery, and the winemakers are doing what they can to help.  I'm not saying that the wineries are doing what many of the Bordelaise producers have done and Parkerised (made their wines suitable for Robert Parker's palette), rather they have made an effort to be more engaging with modern style but unchanging class.  For example, Dirk Niepoort of the legendary Niepoort Port house has made a conscious effort to put more emphasis on table wines, rather than his easily respectable vintage ports.  He is putting forward excellent examples of dry table wines, such as his 'Redoma' range alongside the truly world class 'Batuta.'  Kitted out with classy but interesting labels and amazing quality it is a great first step to showing the world what Portugal is capable of.

Other Port houses are following suit with their own table wines, and really putting some good effort into what they are producing.  Quina do Portal, another well respected house is putting out an excellent dry red made from a blend of Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo), Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca that represents excellent value with a definite nod towards high quality.  Call it a sort of gateway wine into the world of excellent Douro.  Hopefully what this will lead to is the development of interest in other quality wines from the Douro.

Other producers like Quinta do Macedos are going so far as to adopt the practice of the second wine with their 'Lagar de Macedos' and in so doing they have developed a pair of excellent bottlings, both of which are remarkably capable of standing the test of time, developing into something exciting and providing us wine geeks with another means of enjoying old wine.  One of the greatest pleasures of wine is to track the development of a wine over the course of it's life.  I love Rhône wines, young or old, but truly they are different wines entirely.  The same bottle that was once deep, chunky and spicy, becomes leathery, briny and earthy.  These Douro wines are perfect for that as well.  They live for years and years and over time, the deep black fruit and intense body of youth becomes something different, refined and elegant.

So I borrowed this from Wikipedia.

Essentially, the Douro is one of those regions that stands at the top of wine.  Bordeaux, Rhône, Burgundy, Napa and Mosel are all known the world over for their ability to produce mind-blowingly delicious wine.  The Douro is right up there with the rest of them.  Hopefully soon enough the rest of the world will catch on.  Or hopefully they won't.  Just leaves more for us!

Much Love,
G