Pinot Noir Heaven

I thought I’d died and gone to Pinot Noir heaven! A few nights ago during the Wine Bloggers Conference, I got on a bus with 20 other bloggers for a journey to an unknown destination. 15 minutes later we were at the Melville Vineyards and Winery estate, for a few hours of Pinot Noir heaven.

pinot_melville
Melville Vineyards and Winery Estate

We started with a vineyard talk from Chad Melville, one of the two sons of the founder involved with the vineyard and winery. Interesting talk, from one of the top Pinot Noir producers in the Santa Rita Hills (SRH) AVA in Santa Barbara County. They use some different trellising, pruning and canopy management techniques. However, the primary factors influencing the grapes are the climate — the east-west running valleys that bring in the cool air from the ocean — and the soils.

pinot_sanford
Richard Sanford giving a toast after dinner

We finished with a great meal in the Melville tasting room, with halibut and pork paired with the great wines we had, and then walking out to a full moon over the vineyards.

In between, there was the tasting. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from eight different SRH wineries, with wines from 2007, 2009 and their current release, usually 2012. Here is the lineup of wineries and representatives:

• Alma Rosa Winery and Vineyards: Richard Sanford (owner/winemaker and the SRH pioneer grower and winermaker)
• ampelos cellars:
• Babcock Winery and Vineyards: Bryan Babcock (owner/winemaker and SRH pioneer grower)
• Brewer-Clifton Winery: Greg Brewer and Chrystal Clifton
• Carr Vineyards and Winery: Ryan and Jessica Carr
• Lafond Winery and Vineyards: Bruce McGuire (winemaker for Lafond and Santa Barbara Wineries since 1981)
• Melville Vineyards and Winery: Chad Melville (owner/evangelist)
• Zotovich Cellars:

What an incredible lineup of wines, and the people talking about them! Nothing against the Chardonnays, but if I was going to make it through the Pinot Noirs still standing (even sipping and spitting) I had to be focused. Some Pinot Noir highlights for me and my specific tastes:

2007 Alma Rosa, La Encatada Vineyard
2009 Babcock, Ocean’s Ghost Vineyard
2009 Melville, Estate Pinot Noir
2007 Brewer-Clifton, Mount Carmel Vineyard

Pinot Noir, well-made and aging, just beautiful and delicious and balanced. The 2012s were in general pretty good, but still young. Give them a few years.

pinot_carr
Jessica and Ryan Carr

A special mention should also go to the 2007 Carr Pinot Gris. Carr doesn’t make a Chardonnay, and so brought Pinot Gris instead, and there was a tuna tartare being passed right when I went to try the Pinot Gris. Delicious pairing! Who would have thought that Pinot Gris could last for 7 years?

What a night. Pinched myself a few times to make sure it wasn’t a dream.

L’Chaim,

Larry

Whirlwind Trip to the Central Coast

My head is still spinning! We are back in Dublin, getting back to our regular routine after having a whirlwind 5 day trip down to the Central Coast wine region. We left last Thursday morning and drove about 2 hours south and found our first winery in the Santa Lucia Highlands wine growing region of Monterey County. We stopped at Pessagno Winery in Gonzales just outside of Salinas. Then we drove about 10 minutes farther south to Hahn Estates in Soledad. Both of these tasting experiences will be written in a future blog. We stopped for lunch in Soledad and had a delicious Mexican meal.

We then hit the road for our destination of Buellton which is about 1/2 hour south of Santa Maria and about 45 minutes north of Santa Barbara, smack dab in the middle of the Santa Barbara Wine Country. We checked into the Marriott Courtyard and had just enough time to unpack and change into something nicer for our anniversary dinner we were about to venture on.

We went to Mirabelle Restaurant located at the Mirabelle Inn, just off the main highway in Solvang. Larry and I were celebrating our 34th wedding anniversary a couple days early due to the fact that we were going to be busy at the Wine Bloggers Conference on the actual day of our anniversary. We looked at the menu and decided to go with the Chef’s Tasting Menu with with the wine pairing. This turned out to be a very delicious meal, and however great the service was, it was a bit rushed and we found ourselves done with our 4-course meal in 1-1/2 hours!

It turned out to be alright since we still had quite the agenda ahead of us with registration and expo with wine tasting back at the hotel. We even had an excursion at 10:00 that evening to Standing Sun Wines where there was a wine tasting of that winery but also over a dozen other wineries were represented there from the Santa Ynez Valley Wine Country Association. They had a beautiful display of desserts of which I passed on since we had just had dessert with our meal. After we sampled wines for awhile we then sat outside around their fire pit and enjoyed meeting fellow wine bloggers.

The next two days were filled with wine tastings, both from the U.S. and from around the world; food pairings, seminars, workshops, keynote speaker, excursions to wineries, blog awards, etc. When Sunday morning came around and we finished the last 2-hour workshops we were ready to start heading back north. We only had to go one hour as we were heading to San Luis Obispo. We were going to be staying right in town at a very nice boutique hotel, the Granada Hotel and Bistro. Our room was ready and they let us check in at 1pm! We ordered in room service to our room and watched the final game of the World Cup. We enjoyed this very much as we had been watching a great deal of the games throughout the world cup series. After the game was over we walked around town, did some shopping and found a nice restaurant, Luna Red, where we ordered happy hour snacks and sangrias.

The next morning we left to head back to Dublin with stops at 3 wineries in Paso Robles, lunch and a massage. The wineries we stopped at were Niner Wine Estates, Sculpterra Winery and Sculpture Garden and Derby Wine Estates. Each of these were very different from each other and we really enjoyed our experience at each of them. We had lunch at Berry Hill Bistro in the square. We left Paso Robles around 4pm strategically planned so we would miss most of the work traffic up in San Jose. We got home around 7pm. All the animals were good and very happy to see us. We brought in all the literature and business cards that we acquired over the long weekend and now need to decipher through it all. That will take some time. Keep posted as I will be writing more details about the specific wineries, restaurants and highlights from the Wine Bloggers Conference, #WBC14.

Cheers,

Lori

Indian Food, Portuguese Wine

Just had brunch at the Wine Bloggers Conference, sponsored by the Wine of Portugal. They did a variety of pairings of Portuguese-influenced food — Portugal, India, Brazil, Japan — and Portuguese wine. My favorite was the pairing of Indian food with Portuguese white wine.

indian_egg_curry_potato

Specifically, the dish was called Mathunake Dudkiwale Aloo, which apparently means over easy egg served over a curry of potatoes, chick peas, onions and more. I had this with the Anselmo Mendes (that’s the winery/winemaker) 2013 Passaros Loureiro Vinho Verde. The food was rich, spicy, and wonderful, and the wine had the fruit and acid needed to cut through the flavors, and complement the flavors. A great pairing, and a great way to start off the day.

L’Chaim,

Larry

Movie and Wine with a Beer Chaser

Lori and I went and saw the movie “Chef” yesterday. Fun movie, and I’ll pass along the advice we received from everyone else: Don’t go hungry! The food in the movie looks great.

One interesting thing in the movie was the choice of wine. To set the scene, Dustin Hoffman is playing a restaurant owner, seemingly a relatively high end place. Oliver Platt is a reviewer, who has given the restaurant a lousy review, and is now back for a second review. Jon Favreau, who was the chef, has quit the restaurant after Dustin Hoffman made him cook the same old menu for the first review, instead of the innovate menu Favreau wants to cook. Dustin Hoffman offers the reviewer a glass of “2009 BV”, saying that this was a gift from the winery. I’m sure BV (Beaulieu Vineyards) paid for the product placement, but irrespective of which winery it was, a 2009 is a subtle choice. It’s a very good year for Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon wines like BV, and while it should taste good now, it will taste better in a few years. If Hoffman was a really good restauranteur, and wanted to impress the reviewer, he should have better (more drinkable) wines to offer. But Hoffman is not that good, just thinks he is, and the choice of wines subtly reinforces the point made in the movie. Nothing against BV, as their Tapestry blend is one of my go-to wines (can’t go wrong if you choose this wine) on restaurant wine lists, just making the point that this was an unusually perceptive choice of prop for a movie.

eight_bridges_sampler

After the movie, which we saw at the Vine in Livermore (great theater), we headed back home. Except that on the way home we saw a sign for a brewery, and it was a hot day, and we were thirsty, and that was about all the excuse we needed to follow the signs. Eventually they led us to Eight Bridges Brewing in Livermore. Their brewery and tasting room is located in an industrial park near the airport in Livermore. We found a nice crowd inside, drinking beer and playing bar games. We joined in on the beer drinking, trying everything except the stout. Lori’s favorite was the Golden Nektar, a Bavarian style pilsner. While I enjoyed the Red and the IPA, my favorite was the Fyrst RIPA. As explained by George, behind the bar, this was originally supposed to be a Red. However, by the time they got their permits, they couldn’t get all the original ingredients, and when it was done it seemed a cross between a Red and an IPA. Thus “RIPA”. Seriously good, nicely balanced beer. I’ll be coming back for more. Try it out for a break from wine tasting.

lori_eight_bridges_beer
First the samples, then the empties.

L’Chaim,

Larry Lapides

Wine Bloggers Conference 2014

We are getting ready for another road trip. This time we are heading down south to Buellton which is in Santa Barbara County. It’s about 1/2 hour north from Santa Barbara. We are heading there specifically to attend the Wine Bloggers Conference 2014, #wbc14. We went to the first and second wine bloggers conference when they were held up in Santa Rosa. The first year, 2009, they concentrated on the wines from Sonoma County and in 2010 they concentrated on the wines from Napa Valley. We had so much fun and met so many nice and interesting people. This year we are very much looking forward to learning more about the Santa Barbara County wines. We will be doing a lot of tasting wine, pairing wine with food, wine blogging, learning and networking with other wine bloggers.

We are leaving Dublin on Thursday and stopping along the way at two wineries in the Central Coast region. More on those in a later post. We are going to be staying at the Santa Ynez Valley Marriott and going out to dinner at Mirabelle Restaurant in Solvang. This restaurant was suggested highly to us by my brother-in-law. After 2-1/2 days at the conference we will end our stay in Buelleton by watching the final Wold Cup game. Once that game is over then we will be heading up to San Luis Obispo to the Granada Hotel. This is a small boutique hotel near the center of town. There we will be celebrating our 34th wedding anniversary. We will most likely have dinner in the bistro at the hotel. On Monday we will drive back up to Dublin stopping at one or two wineries along the way.

Cheers,

Lori

Zinfandel Can Improve With Age

July 4th yesterday, and instead of heading to Santa Cruz Lori and I were home with a sick cat.  Not what we had planned, but we had to make the best of it.  So we watched some World Cup games, some baseball, just generally relaxed, and planned our own little barbeque.  A rack of ribs, corn on the cob, homemade cole slaw.  Lori’s got a great recipe for the slaw, which involves garlic powder in the sauce.  (If you’re interested, you should ask her.)  For the ribs we used some plum BBQ sauce that we made a year ago.  The recipe for that is on the Food and Wine Pairing page of the main website, and it was great with the ribs.

2004_old_schoolhouse_zin

For wine, we pulled out a bottle of 2004 Peachy Canyon Winery Zinfandel, Old Schoolhouse Vineyard (Paso Robles).  Obviously, we decanted the bottle.  It took about 30 minutes to open up, then had everything:  great nose, fruit on entry, nice and chewy texture, good tannins on the finish.  Bite of ribs, sip of wine.  Rinse and repeat, to borrow from other instructions.

Good Zinfandel can age, and age well.  Maybe not the 20+ years for the high end reds, but this had everything I want in a wine, including the complexity and balance.  Better now than it was in the first few years after bottling.  Of course, you have to start with good zinfandel, and Peachy Canyon is a great winery to keep in mind for Zinfandel.  Always an enjoyable tasting experience too, if you get to Paso Robles.

I hope you all had a great holiday yourselves.

L’Chaim,

Larry

Berkeley Wine Tasting

If you knew that there are wineries in Berkeley, raise your hand.  OK, that was maybe one of you.

ewald_bday

We were invited to meet some friends at the Donkey and Goat Winery in Berkeley for a small, casual celebration of the friend’s birthday.  In the photo, we’re in the “courtyard” behind the winery.  Actually, the courtyard is just asphalt-paved open space, with a picnic table, a bocce court and empty barrel storage.  Doesn’t sound really exciting, except that this afternoon was just beautiful:  low 70s, blue sky, although as the afternoon wore on little wisps of fog starting streaming in.  And it was a birthday celebration, so we were sipping wine and catching up with old friends.  I can’t tell you much about their wines, other than that we really liked the 2013 Grenache, made from grapes from El Dorado County in the Sierra Foothills.

donkey_and_goat

Before meeting our friends, we went to Urbano Cellars, also in Berkeley.  Fred Dick, one of the owners and winemakers, was behind the bar, such as it is.  It turned out that the previous night was a wine club pick up party, and so almost all their wines were open and available for tasting.  So Lori and I took advantage of that, and tasted just about everything.  Urbano gets a lot of their grapes from the Clement Hills area of Lodi, and these were some of the wines we liked best.  But they also get grapes from Sonoma and Solano counties, and we liked those too.  Urbano produces about 1,000 cases per year, ranging from some crisp whites (Sauvignon Blanc-Chenin Blanc blend and straight Chenin Blanc) to some pretty nice reds like Zinfandel, Barbera and Sangiovese.  The 2009 Zinfandel was our favorite, with grapes from the Green Valley in Solano county.  Best of all though was the nice discussion with Fred and the other folks working at or hanging out in the winery.

urbano_cellars

So if you don’t have the time for the drive to Napa, Sonoma, Santa Cruz or even Livermore for wine tasting, think about Berkeley.

L’Chaim,

Larry

 

Food, Wine, Friends

We’ve been getting together regularly with a group of friends for about 4 years now, meeting at someone’s house to share food and wine.  Each couple is responsible for a course, and a bottle of wine to go with that course, with the host couple responsible for the theme for the evening and the main course.

The most recent of these had a theme of comfort food made better with wine in the dish.  For the main course Lori made chicken cacciatore, with a healthy dose of red wine added to the sauce.  This was a dish her mother made when she was growing up.  While the recipe is basically Italian in derivation, I’m not sure that you would find it served with mashed potatoes, as it was in Lori’s house.  But the potatoes work well to soak up the sauce!  We served this with a bottle of 2009 Sanglier Cellars, Kick Ranch Vineyard, Boar’s Camp Cuvee, which is a blend of 65% Syrah, 21% Grenache and 14% Cinsault.  Great together.

Sanglier Cellars

Just to be complete, one couple brought a 2013 Tamber Bey Vineyards Napa Valley Sauvignon Blance to go with the starter course, while the other couple brought a 2009 Jericho Canyon Vineyard Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.  The Cab was supposed to be a wine for dessert, but they decided that they wanted to share this nice bottle with us, and so we had this one also with dinner.

L’Chaim,

Larry

Yomiuri Giants Game in Japan

Be forewarned: 
this post has nothing to do with wine.  Maybe a little bit with beer though.  Actually, that’s a good way to
start. 

 


Beer girl pouring in the stands.  She is carrying beer in a backpack, and pouring from the tap for fans.  

 

Lori and I were in Japan, Kyoto and Tokyo, last week.  Aside from the typical, and great,
sightseeing – cherry blossoms, shrines and temples, Mt. Fuji, castles – we went
to a baseball game.  The game,
which took place in Tokyo, had the visiting Yomiuri Giants playing the Yakult Swallows.  The Giants wear
orange and black, like our San Francisco Giants.  We were able to get seats on the visitor side of the stadium,
and wore SF Giants shirts. 

 


Lori and I at the game.  


Some of the differences between going to a game I’ve already
mentioned:  beer served from a keg
carried by a beer girl in the stands, and visitor and home sides of the
stadium.  The other major
difference is the cheering of the fans. 
There were significant cheering groups in the outfield bleachers,
thousands of fans for each team. 
When their team was at bat, the cheering was loud and non-stop.  Also, each group of fans has their own
totem to wave when their team scores. 
For the Giants, it was orange and black hand towels.  (Anyone remember the initial Terrible
Towels from the Pittsburgh Steelers?) 
For the Swallows it was red and blue umbrellas.  I wonder how many people have been
injured with those?  Also, with
respect to cheering, the home team has cheerleaders that come out between
innings.  Last thing to mention
with respect to cheering:  No doing
the wave!    

 


First pitch!


So how about that game?  The visiting Giants go down in order in the top of the 1st
inning, then the Swallows leadoff hitter jumps on the first pitch and hits a
home run to right.  There’s some
back and forth from there, pretty entertaining back and forth with a few home
runs hit, until we get to the bottom of the 8th inning with the
Giants up 5-3.  They bring in a
relief pitcher, and the ball starts flying around the yard.  Tie game before getting the first out
of the inning, and by the time it was over, the Swallows had scored 4, and had
a 7-5 lead going into the 9th inning.  So the Swallows brought in their closer.  He was only marginally better than the
Giants reliever from the previous inning, in that he only gave up 3 runs, not
4.  But that was enough to
surrender the lead.  So Giants are
up 8-7 going into the bottom of the 9th.  And their closer comes in, and gets the first 2 outs pretty
easily.  Then, with the count 2
balls and 2 strikes, and the Giants fans thinking about the post-game beer, the
Swallows cleanup hitter takes it deep, near the top of the left field
bleachers.  Silence from the Giants
side of the field, jubilation from the Swallows side.  And on the field, words were exchanged between pitcher and
batter, resulting in both benches emptying.  No punches thrown though.  The next batter up gets a hit, but finally the Giants get
the last out of the 9th, so on to extra innings.  (Don’t these people know I have to be
out of the hotel before 6am the next morning to take the bullet train down to
Nagoya?  I can’t stay for a late
game, which is now at about 4 hours, but we can’t leave, that just wouldn’t be
right.)  In the top of the 10th,
the Giant’s catcher, Abe, hits his second home run of the game, a no-doubter
well up the bleachers in right field. 
The right fielder almost hurt his neck turning and watching it fly over
his head, while not moving his feet. 
Fortunately for my business schedule, the Giant’s pitcher for the bottom
of the 10th was able to get the Swallows out in order, and we were
able to head off into the night happy, as the Giants had won.  Side note:  the San Francisco Giants beat the LA Dodgers in extra
innings the “day before”.  With
time differences, the SF Giants won their game only a couple of hours before
first pitch the next day for the Yomiuri Giants game. 

 


Different food at the baseball game.  


The food at the game was also different.  There were hot dogs and hamburgers, but also Japanese food, and then other things, like this vendor serving Vietnamese Banh Mi baguette sandwiches.  Actually, these were pretty darn good!  


I hope you enjoyed this vacation interlude.  Back to wine in the next post!

 

L’Chaim,

 

Larry

 

 

Risotto Palooza

We were in Southern California a couple of weeks ago.  My sister turned 50, and that was
sufficient motivation to get in the car and make the trek down I-5.  More on her birthday dinner in the next
post.  This post is about the
risotto palooza at my brother’s house the night before the birthday
dinner. 

 

Apparently my brother really likes to make risotto.  Who knew?  Not me, or Lori, that’s for sure.  Since we had an evening available, we connected for dinner,
and he decided to make risotto. 
Not just one recipe, but two different risottos.  I’m a bit new to this, having just made
my first risotto only a month ago. 
(See my blog post on risotto and pinot noir.)  But I
like risotto.  It’s like a blank
canvas, and the cook can do whatever he/she wants with the meal.  Different meats, vegetables, flavors,
styles; it’s all available to the cook/artist.  The other nice thing about risotto, and the different meals,
is that wine pairing isn’t really formal. 
Just go into the cellar and choose something good, and it will work just
fine. 

 

My brother went with a seafood risotto with shrimp and
scallops and some vegetables, and some nice lemon accents, and a balsamic
risotto with chicken.  The seafood
risotto was wonderful, with lots of different layers of flavor and texture.  The balsamic risotto was very good, but
a bit one-note on the flavors, and needed some vegetables or something else for
more texture.  Next time. 

 

For wines we went with a 2007 Matanzas Creek Merlot, Sonoma County, and a
2006 Brian Benson Syrah, Paso Robles.  I
wouldn’t say that I’m not a fan of Merlot, but I don’t drink a lot of Merlot,
mainly because most Merlots are sort of washed out wines without much going
on.  There are a few producers in
California, though, that know what they’re doing with Merlot, and Matanzas
Creek has consistently been in that group.  And this bottle didn’t disappoint.  It also worked great with the risotto.  The other interesting point about this
bottle was that it was purchased at the winery, when Lori and my sister in law
were up there wine tasting.  So it
had come full circle, from Lori recommending the winery and wine, to them
purchasing it, to having it available when we came over a few years later.  Must be good karma. 

 

We had never had a bottle of Brian Benson wine before, but
we knew of him.  His parents are the proprietors of Dark Star Cellars, and were friends with Winemaker B when he was living in Paso
Robles.  So we were excited to open
this bottle, and see what he had done. 
We’re assuming that this was one of his first vintages, and it was
great.  We’ll have to stop by on
our next trip to Paso Robles and taste more. 

 

L’Chaim,

 

Larry