Hello!

Welcome to The Epic! I am launching this blog as a manifesto for and a guide to living well. The title and motto of the blog are taken from the Epicureans, at least some of whom believed in the notion that not one minute of the future was guaranteed to them and that as a result they had the duty to live life to its fullest every moment.

I believe in discovering fun and pleasurable things wherever I find myself each day and I am told I have a knack for unearthing them. My hope is that by sharing in my pleasures and some of my ways of finding them you will begin to collect all the riches that lie in the moments of your life. They are there. Take them! All our lives should be.....Epic.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Grimod de la Reyniere....A True Epic


Alexandre. Balthazar. Laurent. Grimod. De la Reyniere. The one quote I know from him endeared me forever and told me we were Epic brothers.

"Life is so brief that we should not glance either too far backwards or forwards...therefore study how to fix our happiness in our glass and in our plate."

Indeed.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Fathers' Day, The Best That I Could Do


This is him.  This is me.  I'm the shorter of the two. And I still am.  He has been gone thirteen years now.  My son, The Future Rock Star, is 19 and the glory of my life.

This is always a bittersweet day for me.

Here is a link to my best post about my dad.

And one to my best about my son.

And, why not, to another one about my son.

Because in the end Fathers' Day is about the sons and daughters. The children are the ripples of love and of honor and values and family that project from a parent's walk through life. If we were lucky enough to have great parents. And I was lucky.

Happy Fathers' Day to all!

Saturday, June 11, 2016

Tavel Day!


She was pretty and she was French.  The evening in question, three quarters of the way through a bottle of Tavel, I asked her back to my table.  Mainly to hear her accent again.  I had to think of a wine related question.  She was the sommelier after all.

"Tell me.....I think Tavel is the greatest rose' in the world.  What do you think"?

"Unquestionably.  It is the only rose' with its own appellation."

My hero A.J. Liebling introduced me to it in his marvelous book "Between Meals-An Appetite For Paris" and I have been drinking it ever since when I can get it.  Luminous in the bottle, its color alone foreshadows a wine of character.  A wine that should not be drunk too cold but at room temperature. A wine that perfectly compliments fruit, cheese, or much hardier fare such as steak tartare or trout amandine.  The only rose' that has this sort of backbone. In other words, a Rhone wine through and through.

Liebling said:

"Tavel has a rose-cerise robe, like a number of well-known racing silks, but its taste is not thin or acidulous, as that of most of its mimics is.  The taste is warm but dry, like an enthusiasm held under restraint, and there is a tantalizing suspicion of bitterness when the wine hits the top of the palate. With the second glass, the enthusiasm gains; with the third, it is overpowering. The effect is generous and calorific, stimulative of cerebration and the social instincts.  'An apparently light but treacherous rose', Root calls it, with a nuance of resentment that hints at some old misadventure."

This is National Rose wine day in the USA.  If you can find some Tavel I heartily recommend it as your companion over the oncoming months of summer.  Should you find yourself in my company we will share a bottle.