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GP 9 May 2007:
Better Than Best—Second: Terroir
Alignment of the Stars. While sipping the tail
end of a Pommard, a 2000 from Les Pezerolles, we mused where to set down two
new additions to the garden. The
Aichi-no-kagayaki, or Aching Tongue Iris, is a Japanese culivar, an
interesting cross of two other irises whose resulting yellow is delicate
enough that it does not jar the senses wherever it is put. It may well find
its way to a sandy spot. Somehow the
Yellow Pitcher Plant, or Sarracenia fava, seems to belong front and
center, where its coiled shape may lend interest and where it may gobble up
insects as is its wont. We are wondering whether it will compel us to join
the
International Carnivorous Plant Society, from which one can learn about
the aggressive personality of pitfall, flypaper, and snap traps.
It’s so important to get context right in working with
a new specimen. It’s no wonder that the larger-than-life detective
Nero Wolfe could spend so many hours upstairs amidst orchids and such,
affording his flowers contemplation and care. Without careful placement,
the beauty of each flower gets lost, and the garden takes on that clumped,
sterile look that landscaping services do so well. They always prove
themselves clever purveyors of banality.
Then too, in the wrong location, the flowers will
simply not grow well. In the same way, you cannot grow a Pommard away from
Pommard, and Hubert de Montille’s wines would be nothing but for the estate
he inherited in 1951, and the additions he made to it in the immediate
region. Everything—earth, sun, climate—must come together to make for
perfection. An alignment of the stars. We see that as well in the
better-than-bests we cite this week. This is our second installment of
these ultra bests, many of which you can find in our
Best of Class section:
-
Dawn Redwoods at the
Coker Arboretum. As we have made clear in
“Chapel Hill, 1795-1975,” by far the best spot on the campus of the
University of North Carolina—in fact, in Chapel Hill and perhaps Orange
County—is the
Coker Arboretum. It resonates with beauty and interest, much more
so than the
Botanical Garden, by which it is now administered. First off, it
was created by
Professor William Chambers Coker in 1903 at a time when the
university had a better sense of its communal and esthetic
responsibilities. Back then learning, contemplation, and a sense of
order were thought to be commingled. In fact, the Coker illustrates
that time as well as place is part of the context in which something
pleasing unfolds. Since the middle of the last century, the university
and the town have been eroding the attractiveness of their
neighborhoods, as each randomly adds to the jumble. A Coker would
simply never happen today.
Moreover, as one moves about North Carolina, one finds that most of the
buildings and other structures are humdrum; that its treasure lies in
its natural wonders—on farms, through the mountains, along certain parts
of the shore. There are other towns and cities, such as Asheville,
where the gardens far outshine the buildings and cottages they adjoin.
Coker, UNC’s first professor of botany, loved Asian species of trees—a
special feature of the Arboretum. They alone lend majesty to the
campus. Nature, in fact, is Carolina’s principal resource, along with
small towns, but Carolinians have turned their backs on it, victims of
feckless development.
- Offbeat Briefings. Britain’s
Economist, with half its readership in America, is a tale of two
countries. Now that the Empire is dead, it remains for this magazine to
cast a vicarious eye on all sorts of ports of call throughout the world,
with strong coverage of the United States and Britannia—and marginal
useful hits about other parts of the world. In all probability it
should be doing a stronger job in Asia. For sure it has put to shame
the American newsweeklies such as Time and Newsweek, which
are in terminal decline. The writing’s a whole lot better, and,
generally, the coverage does not lean towards random navel-gazing. It
is planted in an imperial point of view watered down with free-trade
liberalism and appropriate snatches of the politically correct. Its
long reports and opinion pages are not really authoritative, and one
should not wallow in their conclusions. The reports have a lot of
filler, and the staff is incapable of doing meaty long pieces. But the
short briefings—say 4 pages—on oblique topics are first rate, often
having a significance that reaches beyond the immediate article. They
are slightly eccentric, but they tell a lot. For instance, “The Big
Dry,” a write up of Australia’s water shortage, April 28, 2007, pp.
81-84, foreshadows the water crisis that will afflict a host of
countries throughout the world, including the U.S. There, as in the
U.S., that means better regional handling and distribution of water
supplies.
- The Promise of the West. Wags have long
said, “Dallas is where the East peters out, and Fort Worth is where the
West begins.” Curiously, Foat Wuth, taken to be a cowtown that is small
potatoes besides all the doings in Dallas, has a whole lot more to
offer. While the collections are spotty, Fort Worth has a number of
elegant museums, including Louis Kahn’s
Kimbell Museum, an eminently restful place to spend an
afternoon—when escaping from Dallas. The contrast is even starker
between the
Fort Worth Botanic Garden and the
Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden. The Botanic may have a more
modest name, but it makes Dallas look like a piker. It takes special
pride in its roses and the Japanese Garden. The koi are plentiful, and
often the Garden is under-used, making it especially peaceful. Somehow
the monied folk of Fort Worth have come to think that grandiosity is not
the sign of civic virtue.
Amon G. Carter, newspaperman, civic leader, and businessman of many
interests—was the catalyst who set 20th-century Fort Worth in motion.
His Fort Worth Star-Telegram, for a long while the most powerful
newspaper in Texas, was an energetic voice for growth and greatness.
Fittingly, his name lives on at the Amon Carter Museum, which itself
symbolizes the different kind of leadership he brought to the area.
- Bears Feasting. Even before we went to the
Anan Bear and Wildlife Observatory, we had the scene set for us, at
a rogue Starbucks no less. There a barista named Steve had done crayon
drawings on a blackboard (actually a whiteboard) of bears in the wild
feasting on salmon. He and the blackboard are long gone. We have given
an account of our own summer visit in
“Best Bear Viewing in Alaska’s Inside Passage.” When we worked our
way inland from our boat, we tingled a bit—along the boarded
trail—wondering if the bears would be looking for a lunch of tourist
flesh. We needn’t have worried. When we reached the bear viewing
pavilion, we discovered the bears scooping the water, rich in salmon,
then eating just the roe out of the fish, throwing the rest of the
carcass back down on the bank. Clearly they did not have to bother with
anything quite as mundane as visitors from the Lower 48. Perhaps a day
later, we ate onboard, sushi style, a handsome salmon that had been
caught by a young lad in our party. For sure, then, we knew why the
bears only had eyes for morsels offered up in the clear icy waters of
Alaska.
- Hearty, Caffeine Laden, Big Cup Coffee from the
Right Pot. When times were simpler,
Corning was a glass company that made cookware in which you hatched
substantial meals and designed fine objects (Steuben) that you gave at
weddings and diplomatic exchanges. Now it’s a telecommunications
company, and glass, as we knew it, is history. So you have to rummage
around in the junk stores for its 9-Cup Flameware Pyrex Coffee Maker,
which is about the only way you should prepare boiled country coffee or
hi-test Try Me chicory from New Orleans. It hails from an era where
form and function came together in rugged but handsome design objects,
some of which have been memorialized by the
Industrial Designers of America. Not only has this Flameware line
been discontinued (1979), but get-you-going coffee seems headed towards
extinction.
-
The Yale Cellos. Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and other
major universities have in the last few years largely turned into banks
(i.e, endowments) with some academic window dressing. But each harbors
some extraordinary sanctuaries where the life of the mind still
flourishes, and the funds can be said to have been put to good use.
Such is the
Yale School of Music: some extraordinary musicians have passed
through its portals. In such a setting, cellists have come to
flourish. It is altogether fitting that the towering
Mstislav Rostoprovich should have performed there, since he was an
extraordinary cellist and conductor. Indeed, if you want cello, you
have to visit Yale. The Brazilian
Aldo Parisot makes his home there, a teacher at the School since
1958. The Yale Cellos, an ensemble formed from Parisot’s students, has
played widely about the world to universal acclaim.
Terroir.
Terroir, a favorite term of wine fanciers, is often much too narrowly
understood. It implies a sense of place, most often referring to the soil
and natural elements that impart distinct flavor to local vintages. For
some it may include local influences—such as the distilling methods peculiar
to one region. But, as we can see above, perfection and distinction come
not just from a few chemical oddities of an area, but from its history, from
folks such as Amon Carter who create better rounded cities than Dallas, from
a global outlook that even today distinguishes Great Britain from both
Europe and the United States, and from small Burgundy growers who pass on
their vines to the next generation who also feel a special devotion to the
hallowed ground. Hubert de Montille now manages his parcels in Volnay and
Pommard with the aid of son Etienne and daughter Alix. Surely his children
will inherit the vines. Terroir, then, is a combination of the good earth
with the cultural capital knowing people bring to it. It is a refutation of
architecture’s International Style and any other tendency that obliterates
our sense of place and time.
P.S. The Economist, founded in 1843, has
been led on occasion by men of affairs, rather than mere bystanders. Famed
Walter Bagehot was an editor as well as a constitutional expert. An
interesting colonial, Rupert Pennant-Lea, after his stint as editor, became
vice chairman of the Bank of England, where he stayed until an extramarital
affair upset his applecart. This magazine likes to call itself a
“newspaper,” which accounts perhaps for the fact that its short articles
work out much better than its over-long essays. Great publications have to
have people around like
Richard Harding Davis, journalists who are a little bit larger than
life.
P.P.S. The
breadth of museums in Fort Worth is startling for a city that numbered
625,000 or so in 2005. And there are many other attractions: a substantial
zoo, for instance, and the Fort Worth Water Garden, done by Philip Johnson
who also designed the Amon Carter. We wonder if Fort Worth has more museums
per capita than any other large town in the U.S. There’s a raft of building
going on now, bringing in more architectural superstars such as Renzo
Piano. Our Fort Worth correspondents remind us that the town was put
together by cowpunchers and ranchers, quite a different crowd than the
Dallas wheeler dealers. There has been a lot of intermarriage of its
leading families, creating a communal fabric that is more tightly woven than
in other parts of the compass.
P.P.P.S. For years it was worth skipping French
wines, since so many nations offered superior bargains that made the prices
of Bordeauxs and Burgundies look horrendous. But now California and many
other locales have vastly inflated their prices, so one might as well poke
around Burgundy.
P.P.P.P.S.
Try Me Coffee is still around. The flooding from Katrina was pretty
bad, and it took quite a while to get back in business. But the
old-fashioned roasters are still working, and it is still a family
enterprise. You can read a bit more about it at
“Fire and Darkness.”
P.P.P.P.P.S. Near as we can tell, Fort Worth
even has a more active poetry scene than Dallas, though a number of Dallas
business leaders are closet poets. On
“Mike Guinn and the Fort Worth Slams,” one uncovers a whole lot of
versifying. Here, it claims the Dallas Poetry Slams are “on hiatus,” though
we find readings are still afoot there as well.
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