Janowiec and Mięćmierz

Crossing the Vistula from Kazimierz to Janowiec entails taking a ferry; not cheap (14 złotys, or about £2.80 per person) each way for the ten-minute journey. The vessel can take up to eight cars plus foot passengers and cyclists. The traffic tends to be east-west in the mornings and west-east in the afternoons; the ferry sails between 08:00 and 18:00 in season.

Below: reminding me of the famous scene in  Fitzcarraldo. On the Kazimierz Dolny side – a riverboat, the Tina, stands motionless on the bank (online I read that the owners need to upgrade the mooring facilities before permission is given to resume sailing up and down the Vistula).

Across the river and up the hill; Janowiec castle (just like the castle in Kazimierz Dolny, destroyed by the Swedes). The castle and museum next door are covered by one ticket. Worth making the effort to come out to see.

A view from Janowiec castle's krużganki (cloisters) on the second floor of the castle ruins.

Polish viticulture is flourishing, not least because of climate change. The wines of Andrzej Dymek are available for sampling (and purchase) in the castle grounds. Having sampled his wares, I can heartily recommend his Chardonnay. Too far south for varietals such as Riesling or Hibernal, the climate around Kazimierz Dolny allows for more mainstream grapes. The Dymek vineyard is some 10km east of Kazimierz Dolny; Andrzej is the fifth generation to be making wine from the family. I was impressed by his professional approach (samples sent to lab to measure acidity; expert-level awareness of soil and climate, and to the knowledgeable client). 

At the other end of the scale are the local vineyards that produce a generic red and a generic white, who offer no possibility of sampling; this is aimed at the less-discerning tourist who merely requires a bottle of something local to take home after visiting.

Below: Dwór z Moniak (the manor house from Moniaki), an 18th century building that had been moved plank by plank in 1974 and rebuilt in the skansen (open-air folk museum) next to the castle in Janowiec. The ground floor is open to visitors as part of the museum; the first floor houses guest rooms that serve as hotel accommodation.

Below: time travel; like going back 50 or 60 years. Authenticity served here. The village of Mięćmierz lies less than 4km from the market square in Kazimierz, but the mainstream tourist does not get this far. People who buy property here are artists, pioneers, individualists. There is one karczma serving traditional food. A steep climb to a hilltop is rewarded by marvellous views over the Vistula gorge.

Below: view of Janowiec castle across the river, from the hill overlooking Mięćmierz.

If you're up for long walks, everything in and around Kazimierz Dolny and Janowiec is walking distance; over three days my health app shows 22k, 29k and 28k paces respectively; doable. 

This time last year:
Big Walk to Zalesie Górne

This time five years ago:
My return to central Warsaw after lockdown

This time six years ago:

From Peace of Mind to State of Elation

This time seven years ago
Last summer before S7 works begin

This time eight years ago
Nostalgia, ideology, aesthetics, emotions

This time nine years ago:
Civilisation and barbarism – how the former deals with the latter

This time 11 years ago:
Ahead of the opening of Jeziorki's Biedronka

This time 12 years ago:
New views of Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Motorway finally links (the outskirts of) Łódź and (the outskirts of) Warsaw

This time 16 years ago:
Kraków Air Museum

This time 17 years ago:
Quintessential Jeziorki

This time 18 years ago: 
Little boxes, Mysiadło 

Last word

When I looked at my father's desk the day after he died, I came upon a single yellow Post-It note. It was stuck to the desk between his computer keyboard and monitor. Here it is:

This referred to a bottle of wine I'd bought him from Lidl ten days earlier, one that I'd encountered in Poland this summer (and bought eight bottles of). It's clear that it appealed to him as much as it to me.

It looks like he was trying to recall the name of the wine, and did well trying (except he got 'Pouceta rather than 'Peuceta' for the producer and 'Poglio' rather than 'Puglia' for the region). Very good score for memory for a 96 year old! This would have been the last wine he drank (finishing the last third of the bottle with his carer Violetta just a few days before he died); it stuck in his memory, and there it is - if Citizen Kane's last word was 'Rosebud', my father's last written word was 'Primitivo'.

Nice. An Italian wine, bought from a German shop with branches in Britain and Poland.

UPDATE:
I found another Post-It note on my father's desk (behind the monitor). It bore just two words:

'QUANTUM SUPREMACY'.

Mind-blowing. To the very end of his life, my father displayed curiosity. He wanted to know more about the latest advances in quantum computing. I posit that it will have been this unquenchable thirst for knowledge that will have propelled his consciousness into another incarnation.

This time two years ago:
Kolej Grójecka

This time four years ago:
PIS, thinking wishfully about the village

This time six years ago:
An unseasonably warm autumn in Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
Shedding light on an unused road

This time eight years ago:
S2-S79 Elka from the air 

This time nine years ago:
Fish and chips in Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
Spirit of place - anomalous familiarity moments 

To Winnica Jakubów - for Poland's finest wine

A few weeks ago, Moni visited a Polish wine festival in Łódź. She'd tried a few wines - and came across one that really impressed her. To the extent that she spent 67 złotys of her student income on a single bottle - one she brought home to Jeziorki. Hibernal 2014, by Winnica Jakubów, a dry white. We tried it the same night after chilling it accordingly.

I must say this was among the best three wines I've tasted over the past decade (the other two being a Chilean Pinot Noir from Casillero del Diablo, the other being the first New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough region I tried, Oyster Bay).

So impressed was I that I wrote to the the owner of Winnica Jakubów, asking where I could buy this outstanding wine. He wrote back saying I should visit the winery - which I did. I rode 1,300km from Warsaw to Głogów and back on my motorbike, taking two days to get there and two days to get back, taking a back-roads route, passing Łowicz, Łęczyca, Sieradz, Krotoszyn, Rawicz and Kalisz on the way.

Three wines from Jakubów won medals. The semi-sweet Solaris won gold medal among the white wines, the Hibernal (related to Riesling) won bronze. Jakubów's rosé won gold in the rosé category.

Jakubów is in the west of Poland; if you draw a line from Wrocław to Poznań, it's to the west of that line. Near Głogów, near Polkowice - copper country, with lots of KGHM mines dotted around the landscape, which is hilly, not the flatlands of the Polish plains. This was Germany before WWII, but Polish for centuries before that. The Wzgórza Dałkowskie rise up to 230m above sea level between the Odra and Szprotawa rivers. And on these sunny uplands I find the south-facing slopes on which the Pajdosz family has planted three hectares of grapes, near the village of Jakubów.

The secret of the wines that come from Jakubów is partly the terroir - the vineyards are ringed by the woods of a nature reserve, haunted by birds of prey that keep the starlings off the grapes. There are three horse-riding stables nearby; manure from the horses is the only fertiliser used. It is also the intense dedication of the owners, hard-working perfectionists, determined to create the best wines possible. One grape plant produces but 300cl of the sweet wine.

Below: in the cool of the tasting cellar, out of the roasting heat outside. Nearly all of what Jakubów produces is snapped up by canny restaurateurs. I literally bought the last three bottles of last year's Hibernal; the gold medal-winning rosé has sold out. I tried several whites, all of which impressed, not a single dull taste. The climate ensures the right balance between acidity and sweetness. Too much sun = too sweet, not enough complexity. This is one of Planet Earth's more northerly vineyards, at 51 degrees, 36 minutes North.

As well as whites and rosés, Jakubów produces a fruity red using a Moldovan grape variety with red pulp and a characteristic cherry note. It is refreshing and fun. Production from last year was limited to just these three oak barrels (the oak makes a noticeable difference to the less-exclusive reds that mature in stainless steel vats).

Jakubów itself is certainly worth a visit. With five buildings listed in the national heritage register, including the 14th Century church with a holy well (below). The church of St James bears the symbol of the scallop shell, for it is on the pilgrims' route from Głogów to Santiago de Compostela. The church itself looks quite English, does it not? The brick-built 19th C. bell-tower (not in shot) is more Germanic in character. German viticulture existed around Zielona Góra (then Grünberg in Schlesien), and even in communist-era Poland, white wine was produced around here. The Jakubów vineyard, however, is a very much 21st-Century venture, making the most of what nature brings to this region.

Below: the palace ruins at Jakubów, mindlessly devastated by the Red Army in February 1945. Three months later, the village was under Polish administration. There's a wealth of historical information about the village, the church and the place here (in Polish and German). Horse-riding is another attraction that Jakubów offers. However, as of now, there's no bed-and-breakfast (agroturystyka) facilities in the village, but nearby Głogów does have a couple of hotels.

I bought as much wine as I could - just three bottles of Hibernal. Production of the 2014 vintage was limited to 270 bottles - so I have over 1% of the total! Not one to be stowed away for any length of time, as it will begin to go off in two-three years' time. But - fingers crossed - this season will be a good one, with plenty of sun right into October. "A week's sunshine in October is worth a month's sunshine in summer," is the saying. And the Pajdosz family have bought three more hectares on an adjacent plot, and will be preparing to plant grapes there next season.

Given that the very first Polish wine I tried was so utterly excellent, I must try to hunt down some more. Because production is small-scale, there are no cooperatives bulk-buying second- and third-rate grapes to mix together to make cheap plonk. And because the climate is colder, with late frosts into May, and early frosts from October, the fruit imparts unique qualities to the wine. The best Polish wines are made by people who care intensely about the quality of their produce. It is neither cheap, nor easy to get hold of. But it is definitely worth exploring further.

The more I dig deeper into Poland there more I find there is to be discovered. This is partly because there's so much off the beaten track (Warsaw-Kraków/Zakopane-Sopot), so much of it takes ages to get too, so little is available in English-language guidebooks, and so few Poles themselves know their own country well.

But this is changing. Infrastructure investments are opening up Poland and shortening journey times. What used to take four-and-half hours now takes two hours. The internet offers access to new information that otherwise would not see the light of day. And Most importantly, Poles are seizing the opportunities that a free-market democracy offers. Find a business opportunity - and tourism is a huge one - work hard at it and pass on a growing family firm, confident that it won't get expropriated by the State.

All over rural Poland the miracle is taking hold. In years to come, Poland as a tourist destination will offer varied and fascinating offerings for enthusiasts seeking to discover something truly new and original.

This time last year:
Eat Polish apples, drink Polish cider

This time two years ago:
Hottest week ever (37C likely to be beaten this week)

This time three years ago:
Progress along the second line of the Warsaw Metro (now a normal part of city life)

This time four years ago:
Doric arches, ul. Targowa

This time five years ago:
A place in the country, everyone's ideal

This time eight years ago:
I must go down to the sea again

Weekend cookery

Today's lunch turned out so perfect I thought I'd share it with my readers. I'm a great fan of fresh prawns - true, they need peeling which is a bit of a faff, but they taste so much better compared to the ready-peeled sort. If you've not done it before, each one takes about 20-30 seconds to shell - remove the head (easy), then pull the tail off carefully so as not to leave any meat inside it; then, taking the legs and carapace off one side proceed round to the other in one swift, decisive action; the entire prawn minus shell then pops free. Finally, use your thumbnail to check if there's any carapace remaining around the prawn's spine. There! Then repeat around 25 times, which will produce a goodly portion for one person, and 25 times per person thereafter. Half a kilo is about 50 medium prawns (give or take a few). Auchan has a delivery of fresh seafood several times a week; sometimes the hypermarket is out of them.

Anyway, now you have your peeled prawns, we can begin...

First clarify a knob of butter on a medium to large-sized non-stick frying pan. Now, chop finely some garlic - one large or two small cloves per person - and cut a red hot chilli pepper (about half per person should do, though this may be fiery for some palates) into fine strips. Put garlic and chilli into the clarified butter, then add a generous splosh of dry white wine (any will do). Now, put in your prawns; keep stirring.

Then, transfer your talents to the tomatoes. Small cherry tomatoes (the best are from PGO, an organic tomato grower from Białystok, on the vine preferably) cut into quarters. About six tomatoes per person should yield 24 quarters, around a quarter of a cherry tomato per prawn.

Now, the couscous. Not only is it easier to prepare than rice, its texture goes together better with prawns, and the way it adheres to them gives a better visual impact.

To make couscous simply put about a quarter of a cupful per person into a... er... cup, and cover with freshly boiled water, and give a dash more for good measure. And just let it stand for five minutes! (Should there be no water visible on the surface after two minutes, add a dash more boiling water.)

Once the prawns have cooked through, put in the couscous and mix in. That's nearly it - warm it all through and just garnish at the last minute with freshly cut coriander (I love the stuff!) and serve into a pre-heated bowl.

Drink-wise, a super Portuguese dry white has just appeared in the local Biedronka (owned by Portuguese Jeronimo Martins Distribution), called Barbeitos. At last, five months after opening its store in Jeziorki, Biedronka offers a decent Portuguese wine. To go with this shellfish meal - excellent.

Click on the photo below, of the finished meal; bring your face close to your screen and smell it...

Note the way the couscous clings to the prawns - I used to make this meal with rice, but couscous is a far superior accompaniment, even compared to the fineft Basmati rice. Other than peeling the prawns, very quick to prepare and phenomenally tasty.

Wine connoisseurs or wine snobs?

Looking over Saturday's Financial Times, with its manifold sections, I came across a four-page wine pull-out. The next day, I spot a 200-złoty bottle of wine for sale at Lidl. That's £40, €45, $65 - a not-inconsiderable sum for London, let alone Jeziorki. How a 200zł bottle differs from one just along the rack and up a bit for 13zł (£2.60) bottle of Western Cape Pinotage which I'm sipping right now, puzzles me.

I consult Wikipedia's page about wine tasting descriptors. The kind of vocabulary used by Jancis Robinson in her FT articles, describing posh Premier Crus costing several hundreds of euros. A world shrouded in its own self-serving mystique, with mega-rich people spending at wine auctions the kind of money on a few cases of wine that would buy a family house in much of the world. Like fine art, investing in wine has become an alternative to the stock exchange; if supply is limited and demand is constrained only by the wallets and egos of buyers, prices should continue to be buoyant.

But will drinking a fine wine, of the right vintage, from the right vineyard, deliver an experience that is tens, or hundreds, or thousands of times more fabulous than drinking something more modest?

Worth 16 zlotys (£3.20)? Chateau Gros Chene, a Bordeaux from Auchan, as recommended by reader Wilkbury.

Three times (and only three times) in my life did I experience something sublime and transcendental while sipping a wine. The first was at a friend's wedding when a bottle of Hungarian Tokaj, a present given at his father's christening, was cracked open. It was over 50 years old. The second, vintage Bordeaux left to a friend by her late father, struck me as exceptional. The third was a bottle of Chilean Casillero del Diabolo Pinot Noir knocked back with a fellow-blogger in Warsaw a few years ago. (I've bought two more bottles of this Pinot Noir since, but neither had the same memorable magnificence - different vintages.)

Otherwise, wines are either foul (mercifully rare nowadays), drinkable, decent, or OH, YES! On a scale of one to four, which allows no middling grade, the Western Cape Pinotage (drunk right now in the company of wholemeal chleb drwalski bread with Gran Padano cheese and olives stuffed with almonds), ranks a solid three. A four would be a wine that delivers a greater gradation (complexity or depth) of flavours. So why pay 15 times more for a wine which may deliver a four?

There are two approaches. One is to submerge oneself into the mystique of wine connoisseurship. Read, taste, learn - about grape varietals, terroirs, regions, vintages, methods. The other - to consider the science - indeed the neuroscience. What bits of the brain light up (and by how much) when a wine is sipped.

The ability to describe sensations is an extremely important talent. It serves one well, when having to describe, for example, to a doctor, how something feels. Those who can't do it well are at a disadvantage when it comes to being treated. We describe by analogy, by metaphor, by reaching for common shared experiences. When it comes to wine tasting, we compare the aroma, the complex spectrum of flavours and other sensations that flood our senses using terms that will resonate with the reader or listener. So 'smoky', 'herbal', 'acidic' or 'yeasty' we can imagine. But what does 'big', 'modern', 'elegant', or 'round' suggest? These are bullshit phrases. "I wasn't lying... only bullshitting." We move into the realms of the bla-bla-bla.

One famous experiment was conducted in 2008 on students from Caltech. With their head wired to sensors scanning brainwaves (fMRI) to show how much pleasure they were experiencing, they were given various wines to sample, and told how much the bottle cost. Drinking wine from a bottle they were told cost $90 (300zł) was indeed scientifically proven to give more pleasure than drinking wine from a $10 (32zł) bottle. Except... it was the same wine.

More proof is here, that top-notch wine critics can be fooled when they have no cues to go on other than their experience and expertise. Do spend 10 minutes watching this video (below) - a group of experts blind-test 11 wines costing between €14.90 and €1,531 (!!!) a bottle. The cheapest wine came second out of the 11 tasted, the most expensive came 8th, six places below a bottle that cost more than 100 times less. However, credit is due to the wine-tasters - several of them managed to identify the estate the wine came from on the basis of taste and bouquet alone.



And indeed, if you want to have a laugh at the expense of those who overdo the terminology when describing wines, take a look at this paper by Richard E. Quandt of Princeton's economics department.

An increasing body of science is suggesting that wine connoisseurship is little more than snobbery, based on knowing a bit of jargon and geography, but not really linking price to experience. The current snobbery targeting those (who like me) adore the taste of New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs from the Marlborough region, by using terms like 'perfumed' or 'fragrant'... There was, I recall, a similar snobby backlash in England against Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio varietals and those who professed to like them.

Once upon a time, the rule was simple. The more expensive the wine, the greater the chance of experiencing something wonderful. Nowadays, with the New World producers focused on consistency at a lower price point, you can be pretty sure that a bottle of Jacobs Creek or Sutter Home will not disappoint. But the supermarkets, with their mega purchasing power, are bringing quality wines down to an even lower price. The South African Pinotage from Lidl is an excellent example (although my father prefers Lidl's South African Cabernet Sauvignon).

So, then. There comes a point where all those extra euros fail to buy any extra pleasure from the drinking. This is my rule of 'the shoulder'; the graph plotting quality against price. It is as true of cameras as it is of wines. You need to consider where that optimal point is. A €1 (4zł) bottle of wine will be rubbish. At €3 (13zł), you will be able to find wines that are acceptable. At €5-€15 (21-65zł), you'll find the optimal price-quality balance. At higher prices, any extra spent will buy only marginal - indeed debatable) improvements in quality.

Foodies - even those who can enthuse about seasonal asparagus, fleur de sel, artichoke hearts, salt-marsh lamb, fillet steak grilled medium-rare, baked beetroot with goats cheese, avocado wrapped in Breton ham, the merits and demerits of unstoned black olives - can feel daunted by the world of wine connoisseurship. Here, the distinctions far more subtle than those between a Bleu d'Auvergne and a Bleu de Bresse - and how does one describe them without using adjectives like cogent, rotund, bloated, flinty or munificent?

Once again, we come to the life in balance. Not to obsess about minute differences between wines, but to sample, enjoy - and remember not to be over-charged for the privilege.

This is not to rein in my enthusiasm for discovering new wines, new tastes, new experiences, new sensations, new pleasures. It's just that my expectations for finding something outstanding will not be limited by knowing its price.

This time last year:
Poland's golden autumn

This time two years ago:
Visceral and permanent - a short story

This time three years ago:
Crushed Velvet Dusk in my City of Dreams II