Wine before beer you’re in the clear.

One of the main reasons I joined Kermit Lynch’s Adventure’s wine club was the diversity it offered, well diversity between France and Italy. For $39 a month, I get two completely different wines. When I go to a wine shop I will, for the most part, only buy French stuff, as close minded as that might be I really don’t care. The only Italian wine I buy voluntarily is Prosecco….so since half the wine in the club is from that little boot of a country, I figured why not broaden my horizons.

Where I’m leading with all this dithering is the wine we had on Saturday. A fine little number from the region of Langhe in the north western Piedmonte bit of Italy. Made by Silvio Giamello the wine is called Villa Gentiana, it’s a 2011Nebbiolo ($19.95 a bottle).
Nebbiolo (which derives from nebbia, fog in Italian) is named such apparently because of the “thick natural bloom that covers the ripe
berries₁”, and to some is considered Italy’s answer to Pinot Noir. Nebbiolo like PN has the amazing ability to take up the flavors from which it has been grown.  This Nebbiolo had densely rich cherry flavors, loads of licorice, some violet and roses as well. In fact, the wine might have been a year or two too young as it was only after some vigorous swirling in the glass that it mellowed out a bit. We had it with some lovely risotto alla diavola a particularly spicy risotto cooked with fresh tomatoes and some chestnut mushrooms. A splendid fusion of rich tannic wine with a creamy flavorful dish.

2011 Silvio Giamello, Nebbiolo, Langhe from Kermit Lynch @ $19.95

Another little pairing from this weekend was a spicy homemade chicken broth, with the very thin Dongguan rice vermicelli and some pak choi, on the side are fried pork rolls we got from Cordon Bleu, just down the block. For the bevvie here we were in luck as our local corner shop Le Beau just received some Pliny the Elder, need I say more? This would be a good time to remind y’all beer goes great with Asian foods, like you needed to know. This was more of a Eurasian meal but it still did the job! Oh and I’ve recently learned that I am way more into these extra hoppy beers…..and that they get way worse after about 30 days in….so if you get a bottle…drink it quick and bottoms up!!!

Pliny the Elder from Russian Brewing Company, Le Beau Market for $4.50ish

¹Robinson, et al. Wine Grapes, New York, Ecco, 2012, pg 702

The art of picking ripe fruit and veg

For the longest time the only way I knew how to check a fruit or vegetable’s ripeness was by calling my grandmother. She would explain in great detail all the checks and balances that needed to be performed before I made my purchase. For the most part this included firmness and odor of the skin. Once in a while she would add a ‘balance it on your palm while putting it up to the closest light source’ a technique, I am sure, added for her own amusement.

Well the days of calling up nanny (so she can make a fool of me in the veg section) are all but over, for now I have Harvest. Harvest is your guide to selecting the freshest and ripest produce. Whether it’s knocking on watermelons or squeezing tomatoes, you’ll soon be an expert. Sure in avocado rich Santa Barbara pretty much everyone knows which hass is prime, but what about okra or lychees? Very simple to use with a complete guide, plus seasonal setting for regions and a handy little bar guide showing how much pesticide residue could be left on the surface. Great app that’ll get you sniffing and squeezing right away.

On iTunes for $2.99

Food & Home Santa Barbara – Summer Wine Issue

I’m very fortunate to have three articles in the current issue of Food & Home Santa Barbara.

Click on the pictures below to go to the stories.

 

 

A quick break-down of what is happening in Santa Barbara’s wine country. With some listings on some of the best places to visit.

Including Dragonette Cellars, Tercero Wines, Daniel Gehrs, Curtis Winery and De Su Propia Cosecha.
Plus my alma maters – Fess Parker Winery and Rusack Vineyards

I interviewed five of the top winemakers in Santa Barbara: Bob Lindquist, Jim Clendenen, Doug Margerum, Justin Willet, and Sashi Moorman (pictured above)

An in depth look at the Urban Wine Trail down in the Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone.
This is a go to guide to some of the best wine made in Santa Barbara proper.

Places like Whitcraft, Carr, Municipal Winemakers, Jaffurs and Anacapa Vintners (who have since changed their name to AVA)

Don’t Judge a Rosé by its Color – The Pics!!!

It’s August, Summer is almost over, but there’s still plenty of time to down as much rosé as humanly poss!!! (responsibly, of course)

I tasted through some 40 odd pinks to come up with my top 17 (yeah it’s a weird number) for the Big Rosé Review on ZesterDaily….

for all the tasting notes and buying info, go to this Zester page below.

Below are bottle shots.

Keep cool!
(unless you’re in SF, then grab a light-sweater)

2012 Lieu Dit, Rosé, Santa Ynez Valley – Available at The Winehound and K& L Wines

2009 Inman Family, Endless Crush, Brut Rosé Nature $65 – Available at winery website

2012 Curtis Heritage Rosé, $22 – Available at the winery’s site

2012 Idlewild, Grenache Gris, Gibson Ranch – $28- Available at the winery, also at Little Vine in San Francisco

NV Croft Pink – Porto –Widely available across the US

2012 Vallin, Rosé, Santa Ynez Valley $30 – Available at The Winehound and K& L Wines

2012 Mounts Family Winery, Grenache Rosé, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County $16 –Available at the winery

NV Blason de Bourgogne, Crémant de Bourgogne, about $8.99 Trader Joe’s

2012 Clendenen Family Vineyards, Mondeuse Rosé, Bien Nacido Estate Plantings, Santa Maria Valley
$15 – Available online and at the Au Bon Climat tasting room in Santa Barbara, 805-963-7999

2012 Broc Cellars, Santa Ynez Valley, $20 Available online, also at the Village Market in Oakland and many restaurants throughout the Bay Area.

2012 Cameron Hughes Lot 349, Napa Valley, $9.99 available in most SoCal CostCo

2012 Campovida – Rosé di Grenache Riserva , $34.00 Available at Campovida Tasting Room in Hopland (707) 744-8797, or at the Campovida Tasting Room in Oakland, 510-550-7273

2012 Gioia, Castello di Amorosa – $24 Available at the winery’s site

2012 Brooks – Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, $20 –Widely Available

2012 Bonny Doon, Vin Gris de Cigare $16.00 – Widely available

2012 Miraval, Côtes de Provence, around $23 – Widely available

Nice to meet Hugh

One of my favorite chefs Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall, of River Cottage fame, happened to be in town, so we poddled along to [the best ever] foodie bookshop, Omnivore, to hear what he had to say.

Hugh (yeah i call him Hugh, we’re best mates as you can see in the pic) was here to promote his newish book River Cottage Veg.

As many of you might know, Hugh was once the T-Rex equivalent of chef/carnivore. However, he recently made a switch to eating mostly vegetables….the guy is super nice and although he didnt chat for too long had a few interesting things to say.

Like “Meat can make you lazy about cooking food from the ground.” Basically, he was saying it’s too simple to cook up a steak or whatever, because they are full of flavor already, rather than the sometimes involved process of getting flavors from veg.

Regardless, his book has taught me (or rather the in-house chef @mariannehumble) a lot about cooking with vegetables and is worth a look. He has a an especially nice flat bread dough recipe that can be ready in minutes.

Oh and I asked him about that very imformative and thought-provoking documentary Hugh’s Chicken Run, apparently he’s trying to bring it to these shores. The link there only works in the UK but it must be on the webosphere somewherewhich if you haven’t seen you should watch!

Also at the event was the winery Scribe pouring their 2011 Carnerors Chardonnay – a very crisp wine, with flavors of apricot and golden delicious apples.
If you like zippy/fresh chards this one is a go!

Thanks again to Omnivore books for an awesome guest!

They have signed copies available for $35 – http://www.omnivorebooks.com/signed_books.html

Poujol’s Rockin’ Rosé

I first tried Domaine du Poujol’s rosé some 10 years ago…..it was then, as it is now, one of the best coming out of the Languedoc and could definitely be considered one of the best produced around. Robert and Kim Cripps have been living and making wine at this site, since the mid-90’s.

A blend of Cinsault, Grenache and Carignan, what sets it apart is the deep concentration of fresh red berry fruit and the tons and tons of watermelon.  I grabbed it yesterday afternoon at Kermit Lynch’s shop for $16, repeat SIXTEEN DOLLARS most of the California sweet bombs, masquerading as dry rosé are above the 20 buck mark.

Had it with some steamed, marinated mahi mahi with pickled carrot, mint & cucumber salad on the side.
Find this wine, it’s worth the search.

2012 Domain du Poujol Rosé, Pay de L’Hérault, Coteaux du Languedoc – $16

Santa Barbara’s wine future starts now.

Printed in the Santa Barbara News-Press, May 6th, 2013. 

**UPDATE**

Brian McClintic has sent me this note, explaining there will be a postponement to the futures tasting.

Louis,

First of all, I wanted to thank you for the amazing support you’ve shown us.  The response has been overwhelming.  
With that, it has become apparent that our license will not cover an event of that size, taking into account the current state of construction.

For this reason we’re forced to postpone the tasting until August 10th.

Thanks,
Brian

The Santa Barbara wine futures program made famous by the Wine Cask, in El Paseo, is making its way back to our city. This time however you’ll be heading to the Funk Zone to taste some of Santa Barbara County’s best pre-release wines. Sommeliers Eric Railsback, 28 and Brian McClintic MS, 37, are restarting the program that will give you the opportunity to try and purchase over 50 different producers’ wines, before they are bottled, at the opening of their new wine bar and shop, Caveau, on the corner of Anacapa and Yanonali streets.

This will be a return to Santa Barbara for Railsback who graduated from Westmont College in 2007. While attending, he worked at the Wine Cask where he developed a taste for European wines. Since then, he has made quite a name for himself as a sommelier. Railsback has been up and down the state working for the likes of Chef Gordon Ramsay in Los Angeles and most recently heading up the wine program, for the Mina Group restaurant, RN74 in San Francisco. He’s also managed to stick in a few harvests in France, most notably at Domaine Dujac the famous Burgundian wine producer in Morey-Saint-Denis.

Eric Railsback (left) and Brian McClintic MS (right) – looking studious

You might recognize his business partner McClintic, as he was one of the sommeliers featured in the film SOMM that played at this year’s Santa Barbara Independent Film Festival. The film followed a group of sommeliers for a few years whilst they studied for the Master Sommelier exams, a qualification with a notoriously low pass rate (spoiler alert, McClintic passed). He will be the only Master Sommelier in Santa Barbara County.

The two are both very excited about their new venture and especially about the wines from the county.

“Santa Barbara wine country is way more exciting than Sonoma or Napa or any of those other places, just the potential, the terroir and everything, it’s pretty epic.” Says Railsback, who has been visiting the region off and on over the past few years and is making a wine under the label Lieu Dit, with local winemaker Justin Hewitt of Tyler Winery, since 2010.

McClintic too, really believes in the wines from the area. “Eric and I feel the same way about the wine from Santa Barbara, this is no joke and not a line, we without a question believe this is one of the most underrated terroirs in the country, if not the world. With the soil, the climate, the typography, everything included, Santa Barbara is incredibly underrated and it is an incredibly dynamic area, he says, “We are proud of the area and everything about our business serves to promote Santa Barbara County wine.”

Railsback and McClintic met in San Francisco a few years ago, McClintic was looking for a place to live and through a mutual friend, another sommelier Rajat Parr, was introduced to Railsback.

“What was supposed to be one week staying at his tiny studio flat, ended-up being nine weeks.” Recalls McClintic, it was somewhere in this time that the idea of Caveau was born.

The pair are modeling Caveau, which is being built in the new development that used to be Santa Barbara’s original fish market, on the Parisian wine bar. A place where you can have a glass of wine, a plate of charcuterie and cheese but also where you can purchase a bottle to take home. McClintic will also be teaching a wide variety of wine courses at the location, everything from beginners appreciation to how to blind taste. Wines sold will be from Santa Barbara County with a wide variety of European wine as well.

Doug Margerum, who started the original futures program in 1987, when his family owned the Wine Cask is happy the torch is being relit. “I am thrilled someone is re-championing it again, it’s really good for the wine community and really promotes the wines of this area to a broader audience. Eric is a superstar in the wine business as is his partner, Brian; I think they’ll do a great job. Santa Barbara County needs some advocates and these are the perfect guys to do it.”

Caveau’s Futures tasting will include: Alma Rosa, Alta Maria, Anacapa Vintners, Au Bon Climat, Barden, Barrack, Bien Nacido, Estate, Beckman, Bonaccorsi, Buoni Anni, Brewer-Clifton, Carlson, Cebada, Chanin, Clendenen Family Vineyards, Curtis, Goodland, Grassini, Habit, Happy Canyon Vineyards, Jaffurs, Kunin, La Fenetre, Lieu Dit, Margerum, Melville, Municipal Winemakers, My Essential Red, Native 9, The Ojai Vineyard, Palmina, Piedrasassi, Piocho, Qupé, Roark, Sandhi, Samsara, Sillix,, Stolpman, Storm, Tatomer, Tyler, Vallin, Verdad, Wenzlau, Zotovich Cellars

“We wanted a good balance of the old guard who started Santa Barbara County, like Adam Tolmach, Bob Lindquist and Jim Clendenen who have been doing it forever. And new smaller, up and coming wines that no one knows about.” Explains Railsback.

The Santa Barbara County Wine Futures Tasting will be on Saturday May 18^th August 10^th at Caveau Wine Bar & Merchant.

131 Anacapa Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
From 11am – 5pm

Tickets can be purchased for $70 at www.caveau.eventbrite.com
For more info contact either Eric Railsback or Brian McClintic at info@caveausb.com

Or call 1-503-314-4318

Curry + Wine Challenge

So we had a little tasting at Spiltwine towers recently with a Halter Ranch rosé and and skin contact white (AKA orange wine) from Piedrasassi.

The food was Indian ‘beans on toast’ – a homemade chickpea curry on a garlic flat bread with a dollop of yoghurt, few sprigs of coriander, couple mint leaves and a squirt of lime. (expertly made by the in-house chef @mariannehumble)

2011 Piedrassi Central Coast White Wine ($42) is a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Albariño – the wine is very fresh and citrussy, it’s so grippy I am sure if tasted with a blindfold lots would mistake it for a Beaujolais.

While the 2012 Halter Ranch rosé ($19) is a Grenache dominated blend that also has some Syrah, Mourvedre, and the rarely seen, Picpoul Blanc. The wine is not sweet but has lots of candied fruit, almost like a watermelon Jolly Rancher.

Orange wine is a white made like a red, rosé is very much a red masquerading as a white. While the Halter Ranch was made in a traditional style, destemmed and left on the skins for 24 hours then pressed and left to ferment in a tank.

The orange wine was picked and destemmed by hand and each grape was placed (berry by berry) in a puncheon, The grapes stay one year in puncheon, before pressing. After pressing, four months in barrel and 2 months in tank. Bottled with no fining or filtration and minimal SO2.

Curry is one of the more challenging foods to match wine with, and the text-books tend to lean towards the sweet side for pairing.
This curry wasn’t vindaloo hot, but it had some kick and both Piedrassasi and the Halter Ranch added a refreshing fruit quality to the meal.
Just think about these types of wines next time you are ordering a take-away!

Halter Ranch is located in Paso Robles

8910 Adelaida Rd Paso Robles, CA 93446
(888) 367-9977

Piedrasassi is located at the Wine Ghetto in Lompoc

1501 E. Chestnut Ave.
Lompoc, CA
805-736-6784

Sweet! The 2010 Longoria Vino Dulce

It’s Spring, but damn is it cold…so I’m breaking out the port!

Rick Longoria makes his fortified wine just about every other year.
Lucky for us 2013 is when the new batch got bottled.

He sent me a tank sample before bottling….and it was a great little tipple.

The 2010 Vino Dulce is made out of Syrah – you get sweet cigar smoke, chocolate, coffee bean, cocoa and fresh black and blueberries, there’s vanilla ice cream and hint of spice on the finish.
Went great with jam donuts and chocolate torte.

Pretend it says 2010 on the label

Randall Grahm: Unfined and Unfiltered

The first time I met Randall Grahm we were quite literally running all over the place. It was January 2007 the ’06 wines had just finished fermenting and he hadn’t tasted them yet.  We went from barrel to tank back to barrel, then tank again. He was figuring out what would go in to his top blend Le Cigare Volant.

The guy was twice my age, towered over me like Herman Munster….and I could barely keep up.

I use the word passion very sparingly, it’s written on the back label of far too many bottles, but that was what I was witnessing. Randall Grahm was one of the most focused, intense and passionate winemakers I had ever met and I was completely awestruck.

However one of his best traits is the fact that he gets back to you. In today’s world of fast emails and quick texts people tend to forget about how communication works.  When I first reached out to Randall he didn’t know me from Adam, but still responded insightfully, I only mention this because in the last month alone, I’ve contacted several PR’s to get information for random stories….to no response. What gives?!?
I’ve interviewed Grahm several times now over the years and he is always willing to get back to me, no matter how busy or where he is in the world.  Most importantly, there’s no BS, he’ll give it to me straight.

Below is our latest correspondence.

How do you feel about being awarded the first ever Rhone Ranger, life-time achievement award?
(I wrote about it here for Decanter.com)

I am very touched by the acknowledgment, but being slightly neurotic, it is of course impossible for me to feel that I’ve truly accomplished much. I sometimes say that if were to die anytime soon, people would say, “What a great marketer he was!” and that, of course, would be utterly unsatisfactory (even if I’m dead).  The biggest challenge I have right now is to persuade people that I am more than an interesting historical figure, that the work that I’m doing now , or aspiring to do, is what is really interesting and potentially capable of making a real contribution.

Since you started making Rhônes, how do you think the grapes and styles have progressed in California?

There have been a number of positive developments as well as a few false steps.  As far as the false steps, because our industry is so “hot,” many folks tend to be a bit over-anticipatory, i.e. eager to jump to the “next thing” before the “next thing” is really properly understood.  We were a bit irrationally exuberant about a number of Rhône grape varieties – Viognier was imagined to be the next great white variety.  It’s an interesting grape, but really a fairly specialized one.  Syrah (see comments below) has largely been a great missed opportunity, with so many plantings going in in inappropriate areas.  In a very real sense, the great recent success of the wine industry has also created a number of big problems.  I think the biggest has been the new level of competition and the enormous financial pressure that wineries now experience.  This has tended to largely discourage risk-taking and experimentation, and (with a few notable exceptions) results in a startling sameness of wine styles.  I am not a great lover of the over-extracted, over-ripe, over-oaked International Style, but many producers feel this is crucial to achieve notice in the wine press, and that without high point scores they will be unable to sell their wine. (They’re probably right.)  While there may have been a macro-trend toward the consolidation of wine styles, this has also engendered a (healthy) micro-trend of some distinctive wines being made.  There are now some truly fabulous Rhône style wines made in California that did not exist before.

Pace pinot noir, American winemakers are still mostly looking for big, blockbuster styles and want to make wines that “make a statement.”  (We seek imminence on the palate.)  But not only do many winemakers seek powerful wines, they are also seeking wines that have great economic viability, i.e. can be grown at very high yields/acre.  The problem is that many wineries don’t quite understand that these dual objectives are generally speaking, somewhat mutually exclusive; you have to choose one horse or the other.  As a result, some anemic wines end up artificially enhanced with the various tricks at a winemaker’s disposal, and you get a bit of an anonymous wine at best, a gloopy mess, at worst.  On the other hand, people are now planting Grenache for the first time in years, which is enormously heartening. Go figure!  (Might the Mayan Calendar be correct after all?)  (What I would really love to see is the proliferation of low-tech, low-input, low-yielding, dry-farmed, head-trained vyds., but that might be a while to come.)

2008 Bonny Doon Cigare Volant “En Foudre”

Although it is a life-time achievement do you feel you still have more up your sleeve, so to speak?

I think that I really have a great contribution yet to make, if I can live long enough and can find the financial wherewithal to make some of these projects happen. The basic tragic flaw of the American Rhône Ranger movement is that in a very real sense, we are utterly derivative.  We are would-be/could be Rhône clones, and generally the best thing we can say about ourselves is how Hermitage or Côte-Rôtie-like are our efforts.  This, of course, is utterly absurd, but begs the question of how we in the New World might ultimately arrive at creating our own unique style that speaks to our place rather than is so hopelessly referential.  If we can achieve that, we have then truly grown up.

You are known for going off the normal grid with your viticulture/winemaking practices and the grapes you use.

What sites or grapes are you working with now that you find particularly interesting?

I’m working to develop a beautiful piece of property in San Juan Bautista, and hoping to do so with a unique approach of de-emphasizing varietal characteristics, so that a different aspect – the soil characteristics – might therefore emerge.  This would be/might be (no one knows!) accomplished by creating a highly diverse population of genetically distinctive grapes, planted from seeds rather than from cuttings.  Honestly, if I could somehow contrive to produce a wine in the New World that evinced a real sense of place, that would be a true accomplishment of a far greater magnitude than popularizing a particular grape variety or wine style (or making the world safe for screwcaps).  A vin de terroir is something that is capable of nourishing and enriching people’s lives in a way that far transcends the most artful wine of effort.  I’m not yet certain which grapes I will use to create these new varieties, but certainly Mediterranean grapes that have significant drought resistance will play a role.  The real question for me is how to grow grapes in a fairly dry climate (dry-farming is absolutely an imperative) while still producing a wine of some real finesse.  This is my morning meditation.

What do you think is the current state of Rhone in California, particularly Syrah? (last time I asked you that, you felt there was a divide…is that still the case?)

There is still a great divide between people who chase point scores with massive wines and those who make quieter wines of elegance and finesse (and have to sell every single bottle themselves, one by one).  The fact that one can now find some beautiful California Syrahs that are under 14% alcohol, some even under 13% (or 12%) is enormously heartening.

What inspires you?

I am inspired by the great classic wines made by traditional winemakers, who work  diligently without a lot of pretense to produce wines expressive of their unique terroir.  Our culture is somewhat addicted to the “new” and “progressive,” but greatness is greatness, and to experience that is always thrilling to me.

 Bonny Doon Winery is in Santa Cruz – you can find more information and their wine on their website https://www.bonnydoonvineyard.com/