Networked blogs, Amazon blog, Izis in Paris and Gadling.com

For a non-tech person I am accumulating an awful lot of blogs and links and Tweets and widgets and whatnot on Facebook, my website (www.davidddownie.com) and elsewhere.
After five years of trials and tribulations I finally fixed my Amazon.com blog. It's up to date, with a current photo. And I've joined Networked blogs, so that this blog connects, somehow, to my Facebook blog page.
The real news is, 1) spring has arrived in Paris and 2) I'm beginning what I hope will be a regular relationship with www.gadling.com. The two are related, and my first piece for Gadling is pegged to buds, accordions, merry-go-rounds and Izis, the "other" great humanist photographer. Alongside Cartier-Bresson, Brassai and Doisneau, Izis was one of the masters of B&W, with a flair for depicting the dark, moody magic of his beloved Paris. Read all about it, soon... in the next blog post, I hope.

Saving Europe's Largest Outdoor Gallery of Paleolithic Art

Duncan Caldwell writes me with the following clarifications, in his own words:

"Duncan Caldwell is a prehistorian, evolutionary theorist, and impassioned defender of prehistoric art. Fifteen years ago, he launched an international campaign to save the richest assemblage of Paleolithic art outside of caves in Europe - and perhaps the world - from being flooded behind a new Portuguese dam. The combined effect of such protests finally persuaded the Portuguese government to halt the construction, declare the threatened zone the country's first archaeological park, and even build a magnificent museum that's about to open. But there's a catch: every few months an editorial appears in the Portuguese press inveighing against the decision to halt the dam and local archaeologists have told Duncan that the dam's supporters are lying in wait - hoping that the museum won't attract many tourists so they can say "We told you so!" and resume flooding the valley.

Here is the beginning of Duncan's original impassioned plea. To read the rest - and an up-date on continuing efforts to celebrate - and save - the cornucopia of art at Foz Coa, visit his website using the link pasted below."

"I just got back from a pilgrimage to the Coa valley in Portugal, where I was given night tours of 22,000 year-old friezes and a preview of the museum that's about to open. As one drives up to a cliff overlooking the gorge, the museum is nowhere in sight, since one arrives on its roof, which is worked into a crest overlooking the valley. To make it even more fitting, the same slate that the art is engraved on in the valley was powdered into the cement, which was then held in place by huge slate slabs that lent their grain to the rock-colored walls. They're so suggestive that one can't help but look for Paleolithic engravings of animals even in the concrete!

The only thing that suggests that there is a building below is a fissure with a ramp down into the darkness. After descending it with trepidation, one finds oneself in a palace of halls lit by tall narrow slits. It's all state-of-the-art and flashy, but my favorite rooms are unfortunately the ones housing replicas of art panels that were found when the water dropped for a few days behind an existing dam. Hundreds of aurochs, deer, horses and ibex cover a single monumental slab that deserves to be made into a UNESCO World Heritage Site just for its own sake! Even though I knew much of the art that remains above water because of my clandestine survey of the valley while a 300-million-dollar dam was being built to create a second, higher reservoir 15 years ago, I was blown away. This was like flooding part of Lascaux!"

A male ibex with his head shown in two positions, as if he were turning to watch the female behind him. Quinta de Barca, opposite Penascosa. Côa Valley.

© 1995 on text, 2010 on photos, Duncan Caldwell

READ MORE

The Daily Sip and Bottlenotes on Food Wine Burgundy

Another great review of Food Wine Burgundy, this time on The Daily Sip, an informative, entertaining wine blog. Highly recommended!

Steak and Fries as told by food guru Dan Young

Dan Young, author of many fine cookbooks, and a true food lover, has a great site called youngandfoodish.com. One of his current articles is about steak and frites... I have yet to meet a meat-eater who does not enjoy steack-frites, as the classic is commonly called (and misspelled) in France.

Young is wild about the dish, and has tracked it from prehistory into the future. Don't miss this article.

France Today review of Food Wine Burgundy

I’m glad to report that Food Wine Burgundy is getting a fair amount of attention in the press and on line.

Anyone interested in reading a Big Wine definition of terroir should follow the ongoing debate stirred up by my blog post on Huffington Post about Pinot Noir and Terroir, and the Red Bicyclette wine scandal. Clearly the apologists for mediocre and false wines made by industrial-scale winemakers are determined to score their points. To paraphrase Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, such poseurs will be “hoist by their own petard.”

Happily the reviews of the book so far are positive. Here are a few excerpts from a new review just out in the March issue of France Today. Information on ordering or subscribing to the magazine is on the website. The review is not—not yet.



France Today www.francetoday.com
Pure Burgundy
Food Wine Burgundy, reviewed by Vivian Thomas

For years now, The Little Bookroom has been publishing out-of-the-ordinary travel guides—books that encourage travelers to slow down, to appreciate details, to focus in a thoughtful way on what makes each destination unique. The publisher’s new series, the Terroir Guides, applies these concepts to food and wine… The result is a real celebration of the sense of place, and the first volume on France, David Downie’s Food Wine Burgundy, proves that the concept works beautifully... a feast of hearty Burgundian food and luscious wines, starting with a section on local specialties… Downie takes us behind the scenes, stripping away myths and clichés and showing unexpected aspects of this “heartland of ancient Gaul.” … Downie’s passion lies in promoting the smaller, more easily overlooked gems hidden throughout the region. And when well-known places don’t meet his standards, he doesn’t waste much space on them… The book is packed with insider’s addresses, including small, family-run bistrots, country inns, cheese shops and bakeries that seldom make it into other guidebooks. And the descriptions, often enlivened by Downie’s wry sense of humor, are a delight to read… invaluable information on wineries… establishments that offer some of the region’s most underrated and affordable wines… The volume is lavishly illustrated with Alison Harris’s gorgeous color photographs… I wish I’d had Downie’s guide with me on my past trips to Burgundy. And judging from the many margin marks, underlinings and stars that I penciled throughout the volume, it will certainly accompany me on the next.

Reign of Terroir review of Food Wine Burgundy

Intrepid blogger Ken Payton of Reign of Terroir understands what the Terroir Guides are all about, and has written an informative, spirited and intelligent review of them, focused on Food Wine Burgundy. I encourage you to take the time to read his piece and comment.
The first few paragraphs are pasted below as a teaser, with Ken's permission, followed by a link to his site.
Ken also took a fine photo (above, left) of the three Terroir Guides I authored, with remarkable photography by Alison Harris, and a wonderful design provided by the publisher, The Little Bookroom.

"I am an an avid collector of travel guides. And the Baedeker series occupies pride of place on my crowded shelves. Begun in the early 18th century by Karl Baedeker, by 1900 this little red book could be found in the knapsacks of poets and statesmen, artists and perpetual tourists. Virtually all of Europe, her countries, regions and major cities, as well as Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Canada and the United States were covered by frequently updated individuated editions. Written by hundreds of pens, the guides were quite democratic in nature, providing precise info on everything from thrifty to expensive lodgings, museum entrance fees, front row theater and balcony prices, and train fares in first class or coach. Capturing the spirit of Nietzsche’s notion of the ‘Good European’, even if rather bourgeois, the Baedeker guides offered dignified commentary on the Western World’s shared history and culture, a common language for understanding monumental architectural forms and art, all for the ennoblement of the traveler wishing to learn as much about distant peoples and places as about themselves.

Then the world lost its mind. Two world wars made many a European Baedeker guide into an instrument of espionage and invasion, and transformed the excursion of a living city into a tour of ruins. But to this reader more than a half century later, this is also Baedekers great strength, what gives the guides their enduring value. They offer once living testimony of a vanished world.

Now this may seem an odd way to introduce David Downie’s Terroir Guides, but I am convinced that his work, the patient, herculean task he has successfully completed in three healthy volumes, Rome, The Italian Riviera and Genoa, and most recently Burgundy, is deserving of a similar admiration. And this is why. Focussing on food and wine, his Terroir Guides are generous and rich acts of resistance to globalization and homogenization." READ MORE

Burgundy Terroir Pinot Noir

My post on Huffington Post has stirred up considerable interest. Predictably there are those who will defend their vague notion of "terroir", and frankly it is surprising that more lobbyists for big wine are not writing vicious comments. Read the article for yourself and please comment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-downie/burgundy-of-pinot-noir-an_b_491472.html

Food Wine Burgundy on Indagare.com

One of the most active travel websites on the Internet is Indagare.com. This Q&A with me about Food Wine Burgundy has just been published.
In case you have not seen this:
http://www.indagare.com/passions/4/department
The most gratifying thing so far about the reception of this book is how many interviewers, reviewers and readers respond to the bedrock themes of sustainable, organic, small-scale, high-quality, authentic, regional food and wine. Clearly these issues resonate for millions of concerned citizens around the world, whether or not they are connoisseurs of Burgundy's bounty.