WITH COVID CASES NEXT TO ZERO,
PERHAPS IT'S TIME TO VISIT ICELAND
By John Mariani

        I have often wondered what my last words on earth would be. And a few years ago, after my SUV started sinking into a raging river on the far side of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull (left) that carved Iceland several new ones when it blew,  it turned out to be something unprintable.
         My guide, whose name was Ingy, had crisscrossed this territory a thousand times, but this was a new river, flanked by thousands of acres of muddy tundra onto which the great god Eyjafjallajökull had tossed rocks that ranged from the size of basketballs to haystacks.  Ingy managed to dodge them all, then decided to ford this new river, telling me not to worry because the truck had 46-inch wheels.
         Down the edge of the river we went, into the icy water, only to find ourselves carried along, sinking fast, in the flow.  Then, a few long seconds after I shouted my last words, the tires caught hold of the river bottom and dragged us to safety.  Ingy shook his head and said, “Well, I’ve been through vorse.”
         “Oh yeah? When?”
         “Oh, maybe fifteen years ago.”
         I screamed at him, “You mean this is the second worst river crossing you’ve ever been through?”       
          “Well, maybe this vas just as bad. You just never can tell with these new cracks in the earth.”
         Ingy then set about testing the depth of the water at different points by throwing big rocks in the center of the river. “If they make a big splash, or if you can count to three before hearing them hit bottom, it’s too deep to cross. If black sand comes up, it could be quick sand.”  After tossing about ten rocks into the river, he gave up. “I think we take another route.”
     Back in Reykjavik, steadying my nerves with a drink of the local cumin-flavored liquor called Brenbin (which means “black death”), I had time to think about my near demise, but it was nudged out of my mind by the memories of seeing that day the terrible, strange beauty that Eyjafjallajökull had wrought after blowing a new crater in its side, causing new rivers gushing down blue-green glacial ice, creating electrical storms, and spewing so much ash into the sky that air travel was disrupted in Europe for nearly a week.  That fall, farmers around the volcano had their best crops ever, owing to the rich mineral ash that covered their land.
         I had climbed one of those glaciers (above) earlier in the day, with cleats on my feet and a spiked walking pole in my hand, with a harness tied around me so that, as Ingy said, “If you fall in a crater, we can pull you out.”  After an hour, I’d had it with crunching my feet into the sheer ice and we headed back—over that dark, raging river.
      Nevertheless, and with no imminent eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull due, I would happily return to Iceland. After tackling Covid head-on early last spring, the country’s cases of the disease are near zero week after week. Good time to think about going back.  
     While that may be my most vivid memory of Iceland, all others were of astounding beauty amidst endless desolation, which included 250 miles of black sand beach, which was like stepping into cold, poured concrete.  The cloud patterns seem ferocious and shadows move furiously over the hilly land on which run woolly wild horses.  Then come the sunsets, whose own beauty is but a prelude to the mystical Northern Lights that play across a jet black sky.
         Iceland has only a few towns that rise to the name city, and the capital of Reykjavik, founded in the 10th century, never seems bustling. The whole country has only 300,000 people, and two-thirds of them live around Reykjavik. Little traffic means little noise, and wherever you are, you sleep in windy silence. It is a city with few true tourist sights, but it is as handsome as its people, who come from Norwegian and Celtic stock.
        There are art museums, natural history museums, a Viking Village, opera, theater and year-round music festivals. The Laugar Spa is rightly one of the most popular attractions, constantly filled with locals who come for a work-out and then steam in a series of shadowy, echoing rooms.  The Blue Lagoon is where, with stamina, you can go for a cold dunk, splash around and feel your bones shrink.
         You’ll find every kind of restaurant in the city—even Indian kebab houses and sushi—while its native cuisine is largely built around reindeer, venison, lamb, and seafood, including lusciously sweet langoustines.  A local favorite—well, actually not all that many Icelanders crave the stuff—is called “stinky shark,” which is fermented by having a group of men urinate on the dead fish, then bury it to acquire a taste that Ingy described as “like very strong cheese.” I passed.
         But everything about Iceland—which had so little snow recently that the ski resort was closed—draws you outside the towns, for what looks virginal and primordial is also brand new, with hillsides and mountains, glaciers and seashore, continually being molded by Nature, sometimes softly, sometimes by volcanic eruption, so that any drive or any trek from one year to another can reveal a new world, one that reminds you how transient even the oldest things on earth can be, like clouds moving over the yawning hills and quiet little seaside towns.
       Spring and summer are ideal times to visit Iceland, when it is green and blooming, though I found the starkness and play of light and dark immensely fascinating in autumn.  Winter is not much fun, since Iceland then labors under depressingly long, dark days.
    Reykjavik has plenty of small hotels. One of the best is the modern 101 Hotel (left) in the center of town and convenient to everything. The grandest in town is the Hotel Borg, with 56 rooms.
       As noted, if you’re up for Indian kebabs or pizza, Reykjavik has it. More traditional, and very good, is the popular Fiskfélagiồ (Fish Company; right), whose owner and master chef, Lárus Gunnar Jónasson does a wide diversity of seafood taken from local waters. The building dates back to 1884, originally set elsewhere but now on its present location at Grófartorg. The heritage of the building is incorporated into “The Tides,” a  work of art by Hjörleifur Stefánsson; the restaurant was designed by Leif Welding  with window panes from the Hafnarfjörður Free Lutheran Church backlit behind the bar; signature china is from Figgijo in Norway, and many of the items used in the restaurant, china and kitchenware alike, are on display and for sale in the outer hall.There's also a wall of food photos and on the way out Post-Its and notes from fans who love Fish Company's happy atmosphere and good food.

      Lækjarbrekka is a charming, multi-room restaurant with Old Master prints and lace curtains, and an excellent lamb dinner. It is  s a very different kind of restaurant, old-fashioned in the loveliest sense, set within a house that dates to 1834 as the house of  Danish ship owner and merchant P.C Knudtzon, who also ran a bakery  there. The baker in turn bought the house in 1845 and prospered as the only baker in town for years. The building was used as a dwelling until 1961, and a small shop and then turned  into the restaurant in 1979,now a national historic landmark.
     It is now very beautiful, evocative of an older time, done in antique furnishings and artwork, quiet, civilized but unpretentious. I recommend either the "Icelandic Langoustine Feast"  or the "Icelandic Lamb Feast," both very popular here (there is also à la carte). The first menu features langoustine soup with a taste of cognac and lightly whipped cream; langoustines (left) in three ways, grilled in garlic butter, deep fried in tempura and pan fried with saffron cream; and for dessert, a three-color parfait with crunchy praline base.    

 Vox Hotel has a Gourmet Restaurant and a more casual Bistro (right), where I dined one afternoon. It was a buffet, not my favorite way to eat, but it did give me a sense of the exceptional range of the kitchen under chef de cuisine  Stefán Viðarsson, from Nordic-style sushi and sashimi of unstinting freshness to some well-wrought pastas.  There was asmørrebrød of fried plaice on rye bread with  rémoulade and pickled cucumbers, and an array of Nordic tapas, including shrimp, smoked salmon, herring, caviar and bread.  Among the myriad desserts offered, the one not to miss is the whipped sky, an Icelandic cheese, with  meringue, cherries, toffee ice cream.

                            Steven Spurrier, International Wine Legend, Dies At 79
                                                                                        By John Mariani

         It would be difficult to come up with any name in the international wine market as well known as Steven Spurrier, who died last week at the age of 79. Declared by Decanter magazine “the great man of wine” and “Man of the Year” for 2017, and “a pillar of opinion who everyone respects” by the eminent wine writer Hugh Johnson, Spurrier was best known for his historic 1976 blind wine tasting called the “Judgement of Paris,” at which top Bordeaux labels were pitted against California Cabernet Sauvignons. The results astounded connoisseurs and flabbergasted the French when they showed the Californians to be in the same class as the far more illustrious Bordeaux. From that moment on, California wines had bragging rights, and the reaction caused even French winemakers like Baron Philippe de Rothschild and Joseph Drouhin to begin investing in America vineyards.
        The Judgement of Paris was even the basis for a 2008 movie called Bottle Shock, in which Spurrier was played as an haute snob Englishman by Alan Rickman. In real life Spurrier couldn’t be more different: Handsome, slender, impeccably dressed, Spurrier had an engaging British wit and, though he took the marketing of wine seriously, he never cared for the folderol that accompanied it.
         He began his career in 1964 at London’s oldest wine merchant, Christopher and Company, as a trainee, which he parlayed into a wine shop of his own in Paris in 1971 called Les Caves de la Madeleine–a rather gutsy thing for a Brit to attempt in France. Furthermore, he established France’s first wine school open to the public,  L’Academie du Vin. As a teacher he was a great raconteur and ever patient with anyone seeking answers to the mysteries (and follies) of wine. He became a consultant and director of the Christie’s Wine Course in 1988. He also co-founded with Simon McMurtrie the Académie du Vin Library in 2019, publishing articles and books on wines both historic and contemporary. 
        Among his numerous awards Spurrier won Le Prix de Champagne Lanson for wine writing, and was honored as Le Personalité de l’Année for services to the French wine world in 1988. He and his wife, Annabella,  founded their own winery in Bride Valley, in Dorset, with the first vintage in 2014.
        Everybody in the wine trade and media knew Spurrier, and I met and was fortunate to dine with him a few times over the past four decades. I always found him a refreshing break from the navel-gazing connoisseurs and squinting Masters of Wine for whom wine was more a science of forensics than a pleasure. Like so many well-educated Brits—he, via the Rugby School and London School of Economics—could converse on all manner of subjects, and his wit, while never cutting, was always aimed squarely at pretensions. Spurrier was the kind of jolly fellow who made wine tantalizing and never off-putting. He was the kind of companion who would agree with Victor Hugo when he said, “God made only water, but man made wine.”