Ahhh, Spring!

Hey guys, it would not be the turn of the new season without the churn.

Kathy and I did the do: U-Pick cherries (ours, see photo) a week before the hoards descend upon the orchards.

We also hit the bossy U-Pick strawberry patch: These guys are hardcore. I think that they make more dough on the 25-cent toll for the cardboard box than they do on the fruit.

But here we are, kickin’ it on the fresh fruit tip. Kathy snips off a couple of artichokes that have taken over the joint; we ate them dipped in dressing. Very fun. And, as I like to call them, “Home- made,” as opposed to “homegrown.” The Ltter is correct, but the former is more fun,.

It’s the time of year when Kathy changes up the raised garden beds, but deducts many sleeping hours to shine a torch on same beds to trap an earwig or 30.

It’s summertime, and the livin’ is cheesy. All that it means is that all the early ripening tomatoes will get eaten by pests earlier than the others.

Worm bin: Abracabra! Compost box: Alakazam!

It is so wrong.

So how is it so right, when Kath and I go to Nunn Better Farms to pick cherries the week before the crowds are supposed to hit?

I want to say “Sweet!” but that would put the boots to the texture of this fruit.

We have cherries. We picked strawberries. We hoist a glass of wine made from local grapes.

CoCo-CaChoo.

Shuckin’ and Jivin;’ at le Cheval de Fer

OK, now check this out: That Kathy and I have a raw oyster jones is no secret, but when The Oyster Girls pulled in to Sonoma County’s Iron Horse winery we were on board.

I’ve posted before about how Lot 18’s winery card helped us navigate (i.e. “avoid”) Napa’s bloated tasting fees, but they have several Sonoma and Central Coast joints, too.

Welcome to Iron Horse, a Sonoma sparkling house waaaaay up in the hills west of the 101. Back in the day, Iron Horse Pooh-Bah Joy Sterling led a tasting dinner at a downtown Seattle restaurant, when Kathy and I were once young, foolish and burgeoning wine consultants (redundant?).

So we finally make the trek following Google and MapQuest (Hell, the only Garman I trust is Ralph, the co-host of “Hollywood Babble On,” though I think he is inordinately harsh on Chelsea Handler), and eventually get to Iron Horse.

Could not believe the number of people already there; how’d these mofos navigate this non-navigable road? Kathy and I always admire a huge and beautiful compound built in the hillside, and then we crack up when we think of who forgot to add milk to the shopping list, or who has to return the disc to Redbox. $4.39 a gallon? D’oh!

It took a while, and then we made our way up the hill to das event. Iron Horse has their tasting “room” outside, a basic lumber overhang over another lumber standup bar. Perfect on a Northern Cali Sunday afternoon.

Our Lot 18 Card? No prob. Two flights, no waiting. Between sparkling and still wines, we savored, in the picnic gazebo, the best that le cheval de fer had to offer us. Much to our surprise, it became clear that at least two generations of Iron Horse were sitting at the adjacent table. I had gone to get our next selections, waiting for an elderly couple to ascend the steps as I returned. They apologized for making me wait; I can only hope that I was gracious enough. Turns out that they were founders Audrey and Barry Sterling; they still live in their house on the property.

CEO daughter Joy turned out to be at the next picnic table, picking up broken stemware behind us; we engaged in convo about erstwhile Seattle tasting dinners, and then, while I picked up our final wine flight selections, found out that Kathy and Joy had a nice chat. As Kath would say, “Class act, man, class all the way.”

But wait! We haven’t even talked about The Oyster Girls:

www.theoystergirls.com

These classy pearls brought in the freshest bounty from Tomales Bay Oyster Company. I talked today with co-owner Aluxa Lalicker, who told me that the 4-year-old concern began with her and co-owner Jaz leading kayak tours past the bay. As I was ordering our first (and only; they quickly sold out, despite the difficulty finding the winery) dozen, I overheard an ad hoc biz plan reinforced on the business card: “A Traveling Oyster Bar.”

If you are keeping score, Aluxa: newbie Liz is a keeper; Odessa is a veritable dream.

They don’t do retail, but The Oyster Girls certainly hooked us up with a nice mix of bivalves and Brut.

The Merryvale the Merrier. Peju, Wouldn’t You?

I could not resist it. We were armed with our Lot 18 “Wine Country Pass” card that assuages the Napa Valley tasting room fee creep.

Lot 18 opened many a door that had been closed to us for a while. Wineries that we would steer into promiscuously now charge upwards of $30 for a tasting. Our Lot 18 card steered us to the $35 tasting, plus some back shelf stuff at Cosentino on Highway 29. The label is different, but I remember, from our days in San Fran, the specific nomenclature: “The Poet,” The Novelist.”

We had a great tasting with Steve chez Cosentino, then headed north on 29 to Peju. I had to ask our Peju host, Don Holm, about the winery nomenclature: Peju Province? Peju? Peju Winery?

Apparently it’s “Peju.” As any score in Spectator will attest. And, as Kathy’s photos of the Peju sculpture garden will verify, we were kept up.

Lead taster Don took us through a nice amalgam of varietal bottlings from the Peju stash, culminating in a funky-fresh Cab Franc straight-outta-decanter. A very civilized tasting, joined in progress after touring the sculpture garden (see Kathy’s photo). Dude beside us was totally pissed that they had no Chardonnay to taste; sold out. I watched as glass after glass of red blends went into his spit bucket.

We ended up at Mumm Napa for a flute of sparkling before heading back home to Contra Costa County. Always a nice way to end any day, but another sun-drenched afternoon on the Silverado Trail (honestly, is there any other kind?) is the way to bid a hearty “Shalom” to the Valley. OK, it turns out that vis-à-vis our last post, we were not entitled to carte blanche on the menu; we got freebies that we should not have had. A toast to our previous server: may he still have his job. Mumm’s the word from our camp. End

No Keeping Mumm About This Lot 18 Deal

It had been a while since we’d heard from Internet wine site Lot 18. In the past, we had scored some screaming free-shipping deals on artisan Pinots from Oregon and Cremant from France, among other Old World and New World gems. But lately, Kath and I seem to have dropped off their radar; our inbox had been suspiciously barren of Lot 18 e-mail.

Ah, but it’s great to be back, and with such a “welcome back” flourish: The Lot 18 “Wine Country Pass 2012,” a VIP card entitling the bearer to free tastings and a one-time 20 percent discount at dozens of Cali wineries up and down the coast.

We were particularly interested in the Napa Valley participants, primarily because, as I’ve written ad nauseum previously, Kath and I are scared to death to just pop in randomly to any of the dozens upon dozens of inviting tasting rooms forming a continuous ribbon along Highway 29 or the parallel Silverado Trail. I mean, just because a sandwich board at the winery entrance exclaims “Wine Tasting Today!” does not mean that they won’t try to jack you with exorbitant tasting fees. Maybe 10 bucks, maybe 20, maybe $30 per person: Who can take a chance that it’ll even be refundable with purchase?

The Wine Country Pass smoothed our feathers, enabling us to enjoy a Napa tasting jaunt without us having to pack a crowbar to insert into our wallets in order to sample five 1-oz pours.

I’ve posted before about our recent baby-steps ventures back to Napa. And the only reason that we did return, after years of Napa-voidance, was Kathy’s online discovery of several Valley tasting promotions. Internet sites such as Groupon and livingsocial got us back on the block, though we were careful to limit our winery visits to participants of their particular promotions. We actually even joined the Hess Collection wine club to, as well as dig the permanent art collection on display in the adjacent galleries, motivate us to pick up our club selections in person and avail ourselves of members’ complimentary tasting privileges anytime.

Turns out that this past weekend, our Hess juice was ready for p/u, and the Lot 18 Pass promotion came our way. Suddenly, our Sunday was booked up!

But first, a slight diversion. For months, Kathy and I have held onto a 2-for-1 printed Internet coupon for a winery called Reata, located at the south end of the Valley. Kathy and I are always heading north, and even though Reata is the first facility we see as we motor toward 29, we invariably drive by the winery prior to their being open for tasting.

Sunday, however, we got a later start to our adventure, and, armed with said coupon, stopped in to Reata. And we were so glad that we did. Spanish for “Ranch,” the name “Reata” lives up to its legacy, as exemplified by the towering equine sculpture that greats you upon arrival (see Kathy’s photo). The tasting room is a spacious log facility reminiscent of the Great Northern hotel from “Twin Peaks.” Tasting room associate Mike Arens led us through Reata’s vinous gamut and, not only did he not charge us the “1” of the “2-for-1,” he gave us a 10% discount on the bottles we purchased. A class act, and a great way to start the morning.

OK, back to our Lot 18 Wine Country Pass adventure. We were delighted to see that Mumm Napa, the sparkling wine producer that began as the California outpost of French Champagne giant G.H. Mumm & Companie, was on the list of participating wineries! We have such fond memories of Mumm Napa, having been wine club members, on and off, from our days in San Francisco 14 years ago, to a decade in Seattle, to our current CoCo days. Unfortunately, Kath and I have fallen victim to what we dub “The Curse of the Mumm.” We have joined, and quit, their wine club some 3 or 4 times; it seems that every time we sign up, one of us loses our job. Then, prospects brighten, so we re-up. Then, unemployment strikes again. Rinse, repeat.

We have the most wonderful memories of capping a day of Napa Valley wine tasting by sitting out on the patio at Mumm, a flute of sparkling in hand, watching the sun slink down the other side of the Mayacamas mountains. The Wine Country Pass allowed us to relive those memories. And, I didn’t realize the extent of the card’s VIP component until our server, Jose, informed us that anything on the sparkling menu was comped for cardholders. Kathy and I opted for a pair of side-by-side tasting flights, selections for which even wine club members would have to pay, though at a discount. The kicker: The member price for these two wine flights totaled the price for one of our two Passes! One winery in, and we’ve already paid off half the investment! Plus, we can continue to revisit until the end of 2012.

Kathy and I have always maintained that North Americans do not drink enough sparkling wine, reserving it for weddings and New Year’s Eve. Believe us when we say that this past first Sunday in May, approximately 1 p.m., was a true cause for celebration.

K and I continued to press our luck, continuing along Silverado Trail to the cross street that would lead us up Mt. Veeder to pick up our club elections at Hess. Just so happens that the Trail is home to a few more Pass participants, so we made pittance stops at Clos du Val and, even though Judd’s Hill is appointment only, associate Max Clancey welcomed us and led us through a special tasting for Lot 18 customers in their barrel room, complete with Tiki bar.

Picked up our wine at Hess, our last stop before continuing south and home to Contra Costa County. Kathy later did some research online to determine tasting fees of some of the other Napa Valley wineries participating in the Wine Country Pass program; there was no shortage of $25+ tolls listed.

We look forward to visiting these tasting rooms, foregoing the fees, and finally fearless.

CoCo “Fore!” Clarksburg 3

Man, we have got to hit that Prohibition-era Ryde Hotel on the Delta levees on our way to Clarksburg. How else to escape with our 3 Wine Company allotment of Contra Costa County-grown Zinfandel and Petite Sirah, done a few miles up the road in Clarksburg at das Old Sugar Mill? And one more really young CoCo Zin released at source.

Kathy and I restrained ourselves: We tasted only our selections at 3, located at the Mill. Winemaker Matt Cline gets cagey with his sources sometimes, but his tasting notes that connote Delhi Sandy Loam soil and grape variety Alicante Bouschet along with the usual Zin, Mourvedre and “Kerrigan” lead us to the vineyards. That’s our neck of the woods. OK, there’s nothing labeled “Oakley.” Frankly, I’m getting tired of the non-appellation. And OK, if one wanted to really wanted to buy into the whole federal AVA thang, there is no such thing as Contra Costa County; only a San Francisco Bay appellation. Props, I guess, to the folks who want to focus the viticulture to CoCo. And here’s what Matt’s contacts brought us: An Old Vines Zin and an Old Vines Petite. Delicious, from old ‘hood vines. http://www.threewinecompany.com/

So, we’re on our way to the semi-annual tasting back toward home at the Discovery Bay Country Club. But first, we stop at the major highway junction; we break for a “Wine Tasting Today” sign at our major intersection of SR 160 and Highway 12. We pick up a couple of bottles of CA Malbec. The Scotto Family 2008 Lodi Malbec exhibits a light cherry effervescence in the pour and the light, but a nice medium weight on the tongue.

We motor to the Discovery Bay Country Club for their semi-annual tasting. As befits a golf club community, it’s "tee-time." We tasted a couple of varietally designated Touriga and Tempranillo wines, and several of the usual faves from the many distributors’ international portfolii. We dug that “T” time. It was cool to revisit a few selections from Washington state, whence we moved two-point-five years ago, that were featured on assorted distributors’ tables. The Indian Wells vineyard Chard from Chateau Ste. Michelle was as crisp as we remembered it, and the Columbia Crest “H3” (Horse Heaven Hills, I’m thinking, named for a WA vineyard, and now, AVA) Merlot brought Kath and me back to a drizzly 1998 afternoon in San Francisco, wherein the only thing that could save us was to step into a now-defunct Hayes Valley wine bar off Market Street for a bottle of the grape that initially put Washington state on the wine map.

“Twas a beautiful, sunny day in Contra Costa and adjacent Sacramento counties. 3 Wine Company, with its CoCo selections, as usual, hit it onto the fairway. The Disco Bay CC, hosting another vinous mingler, was, and I mean this golf-talk, not vox populi, sub-par. A good thing, y’all. Oh, and I’ll talk about my broaching an “Oakley Wine Country” idea, in person, at a city forum, in a future post.

But enough about me and Kath here in CoCo: What Zinfandels are youse drinking? And do you know whence they came? Keep swinging.

Nouvelle Rochelle

So we get an e-mail invitation, as did everyone on their mailing list, to join Livermore winemakers Steve Mirassou (Steven Kent Winery) and Tom Stutz (La Rochelle) for a sit-down tasting/discussion of their new premium program, the Grand Cru Collection. It’s a small portfolio of vineyard-designated Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from much-sought-after sites that they had to schmooze for, wait for, and otherwise finagle fruit from. The photo above indicates how civilized the event was, held in the tiny tasting chez Rochelle’s elegant cabin. Having RSVP’d, our host consulted the list and led Kath and me to our table. Notwithstanding my last couple of paragraphs, this thang was not stuffy at all! It was casual all the way: shorts, open-toed shoes, shirts unbuttoned low. And that was the dudes. It was great. Winemakers Steve and Tom expounded on the vagaries of forming relationships with growers up and down the Cali coast, trying to secure even a row, never mind a block, of prime fruit. It’s the total antithesis of what we see here in CoCo, specifically our city of Oakley. Oakley has growers/farmers sometimes desperate to sell their wonderful old-vine Zin, Mourvèdre and “Kerrigan.” And other parts of Cali have growers with a waiting list. Sometimes, one waits behind the velvet rope to get in to the club. And sometimes, that rope ain’t velvet; it’s made of trellised vines stalk. Tons of great insight from these two winemakers/foragers/adventurers/pioneers/salesmen trying to create, successfully Kathy and, I might add another high-end brand. Kath even mentioned that this inaugural Grand Cru program tasting had the whiff of “Time Share Presentation,” although she loved all the wines, as did I. But, truthfully, there was no hard sell at all. There was no “limited availability” mentioned. There was no “already allocated to high-end restaurants” stuff. Sure, like a crack pusher on the street, the Grand Cru program was trying to hook you up: “Baby, the first one is free; I gots what you need later.” Three Chardonnays from up and down Cali: 2010 Ferrington Vineyard, outside of Boonville in Anderson Valley (where the Roederer sparkling iconoclasts decided to bivouac) Down south to Rosella’s Vineyard in the Santa Lucia Highlands And then sumpen-sumpen from the Russian River Valley And one Pinot Noir, which was outrageous. Kathy noted mint in the nose; I got some eucalyptus in addition. I was the one to raise my hand, and my query basically took credit for everything. Tom says to me, the loudmouth, that “Well, you win the prize,” I’m guessing for the punch line. Apparently Tom and Steve admitting that they smelled the same stuff, but at different times. And, bordering the old Buena Vista site, their source has no eucalyptus, nor crazy mint presence. It comes and it goes. As Christopher Guest says in “Best in Show” when asking if he knows a particular dog trainer: “Well, I do and I don’t.” For Tom Stutz and Steven Morasses. Well, I do. Kath do, too.

Twenty Acres and a Merlot

Guys, you have got to check out this brilliant site:

www.1BlackGirl20BlackWines.com

April Richmond is a former colleague of Kathy’s, and April (her, not the month) has set in motion a whirlwind of shindigs, parties, special events and, I wouldn’t be surprised, TempranilloWare parties. It’s everything that I hoped we could do; she did it.

Kinda gave us a flashback to Cali’s Vision Cellars, one of the, perhaps the first, African-American vintners to showcase their wares. Kathy and I first encountered Vision when the owner was pouring at McMinnville, Oregon’s International Pinot Noir Celebration. The Sunday tasting, outdoors, at IPNC was crazy; they had to take a break to bring the second squad onto the field. Nothing based on merit: they just had a big lineup.

Ms. Richmond ushered us into the San Francisco Vintner’s Market the other day. Motto? “Try it. Buy it.”

So, we motor to San Francisco’s Fort Mason, a decommissioned naval-slash-commercial base, that has become the home to many, many small biz. It’s also a facility to which Kath and I took the bus to attend the ZAP Zinfandel bacchanal when we lived there, several lives ago.

FYI, City of SF: Stop having your parking lots spout tix if there are no spots available. Nice revenue stream, but it reinforces why folks live in the burbs.
But enough about CoCo’s Oakley ‘hood.

April treated us to a wonderful afternoon of artisan producers (we heard, repeatedly, the phrase “we do 300 cases”), bad fashion amongst the patrons and amazingly unique wines. A vineyard manager who wanted to grab a few blocks and maybe see if he could possibly go into biz for himself. Some one who lived abroad, fell in love with the native grape, and wanted to do it her way. And the folks who do an outrageous Fume Blanc, neutral oak, but a sop to the people who visit their tasting room in Murphys Gold County. Small production, nicely done.

Here’s what we bought: a Frog’s Tooth Fume Blanc, barrel fermented because their clientele wanted a Chard (with oak). Their riff is “If wine has legs, frogs have teeth.” It’s homage to Mark Twain’s Calaveras story, and their price point is akin to what Mr. Clemens’ juice would have sold for.

We scooped up a couple of Pinot Noirs from vineyard managers who have the hook up. Kathy and I love this groove: Dude knows the blocks, oversees what to prune and crop. Who better to approach the owner and offer to buy a ton when the market tightens? Sweetness. Encanto from Carneros fruit, and farther north, Fogline with stuffing from Russian River, really do the do.

And then we get to chat with Allison at Edelweiss. Her Riesling, based on a single block at Napa/Carneros is luscious. I may say, again, “sweet,” but it is dry, with layers of stone and fig. Suddenly, I know why 1) Winemakers abandoned the Riesling grape, and 2) Winemakers had to add “Dry” to the Riesling label.

Dude, it’s like Chardonnay: Belly up to the bar and get a by-the-glass pour that has you chewing on lumber, or an unoaked thang that people send back.

One stop is Simple Math, a tiny producer who sources grapes up and down the West Coast, including Cabernet from Washington state. He was overwhelmed, props to Ms. April Richmond.

Our final stop is a sparkling label, BHLV. It stands for Beverly Hills Las Vegas, and the reps behind the stick could not tell us what the grapes in the blend were. Lindsay Lohan, welcome back: Your reps are calling. Assuming that you have any reps. Guys, this was so wrong; obviously a brand without anybody to tell us what was in the blend.

Marketing v. Making. You tell me.