Sunday, October 31, 2010

Now Leasing!


I revisited the Live Oak plot that Cline Cellars has been using for years. It’s a real study in contrasts; I could not believe the turf on the return trip. Entire blocks of old vines ripped out willy-nilly, replanted with nothing.

Matt Cline hipped me to the location of the site, and directed me to the grapes. Here’s the deal: They ripped out some old vines to put in an apartment complex, and a public storage facility. Cline Cellars obviously thinks enough of the fruit to designate the vineyard on a label, but the romance ends in a really jarring juxtaposition of ancient and new: a boxy stucco cube stuck in the middle of old vines, right on Oakley’s main drag. It’s yet another example of old agricultural parcels being sold off like a crazy quilt.

I also talked to grape broker Mike Parker the other day. He’s the cat who will meet buyers at the Oakley ARCO gas station, then hook them up with local growers who want to sell any excess fruit they may have. Although harvest is over for this season around here, Mike has seen an uptick in the deals he’s been brokering with home winemakers. It seems that that we may have a lot of garagistes bringing their game to the local market. CoCo growers have the goods, some Napa and Sonoma growers messed up with the sun/heat gamble this year, and hobby winemakers seem to be getting extra access to some prime old-vine fruit.

And I’m sure that any winemaker would love to get their hands on some of that Live Oak Zinfandel. Part of the decision to revisit the vineyard was the discovery of a 2007 Cline Live Oak Zin in our stash. As noted in earlier posts, Cline Cellars was one of the first leads we had when beginning our local vineyard identification project. They’ve been a presence in town for decades, and many of their vineyard designations on their labels are named for the cross-street which they abut. Despite the fact that the Live Oak parcel has slimmed down to make way for storage and apartment buildings, its fruit, as handled by the Cline team, comes fully furnished with a deep garnet hue, and a plush nose of tar and molasses. Amazingly complex and rich, this Live Oak Zin hints at blueberry juice and spicy tobacco notes. It’s huge, and totally unlike anything I’ve tasted from an Oakley site. First month, last month, and deposit, indeed!

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Field Blend


Sometimes I just have to ask myself, “Dude, where the heck are we living?”

A stray kitty won’t leave our back yard, Black Widow spiders love our front porch, Lemon Lady gave me a verbal beatdown, and there was an arrest for public intoxication on, no joke, Merlot Lane. “Sideways,” indeed.

It’s mid-October, and only now is the weather starting to get a bit cooler here in Oakley, CA. Not furnace weather; more like Henley-instead-of-a-polo-shirt weather: longer sleeves for the shorter days.

Our local daily newspaper features a wonderful columnist, Gary Bogue, who writes about pets and wildlife found in our neck of the woods — Kathy once had to stop the car while a rafter of wild turkeys (Paul Hellweg’s “The Insomniac’s Dictionary,” Chapter VI, “Collective Nouns for Animals”) crossed a major arterial road — and receives notes from folks who routinely find tarantulas at home, then take them back to nearby Mount Diablo. (Sorry for another diversion, but I’ve been meaning awhile to comment on a local nutjob, fresh off his methadone and new to salvation, who wanted to rename the local historic peak “Mount Reagan,” citing that “Diablo” is (d)evil. Locals, municipalities, counties, and ultimately, the feds, decided that this dude needs a hobby.) In a recent column, Mr. Bogue stated that, given 30 minutes, he could find a Black Widow in any backyard. NIMBY, we thought.

But then! Kathy goes out last week to investigate a strange noise; it turned out to be nothing. But when she takes off her garden clogs to come into the house, she spies a spider with the unmistakable red hourglass mark, in a web on our front porch. We’ve since noticed another Black Widow (apparently not a male, since he’d have been brunch by now). These two now have the names “Audrey’ and “Constance.” Check out Kathy’s Blair Witch-style photo of Audrey, above. Not only did she just want to snap the photo and get off the front porch ASAP, Kath no longer leaves her garden clogs outside.

Our second Halloween in Oakley is a week away, and we are trying to get a handle on the number of trick-or-treaters. In our White Center ‘hood near Seattle, we had, maybe, seven kids total in 8+ years. In Oakley last year, we were bombarded with hundreds! (And, man, we were scrambling for candy after we ran out of our original stash; half the candy we gave out last year was year-old Seattle traif I found in a closet.)

Last year, Kathy and I carved pumpkins, watched “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” and then, as twilight loomed, sat outside in the front porch Adirondacks, cocktail in hand, to dispense treats. We were overwhelmed. Just when you think you’re done, another wave swells. And then there are the unavoidable teenagers, too old for this sort of thing, who don’t even attempt to dress up.

But, this year, Constance and Audrey are really going to figure in the front porch mix for us. We have more candy this time, but we have Black Widows, too. Just a heads-up, all you teenagers sans costume.

So, last Saturday morning, the scrub jays are squawking like crazy in our backyard redwood tree. Kathy goes out to investigate (sense a pattern here?), and up in the branches of the sequoia, is an adult tortoiseshell kitty. It’s talkative as heck, meowing at Kathy who is urging the little one to come down. Kitty’s not stuck in the tree at all: It works its way down the branches and follows Kath to the back door. Now, we have neighborhood cats that use our backyard as a shortcut, or to hang out staring up at our bird feeders. But they take off when a human approaches. This tortie meows at us, follows us around, then goes back to chill up in the tree!

Which is where Kitty was Sunday morning, after the first rain we’d had here in five months. Uh-oh. It wouldn’t leave our backyard. We gave it some kibble and water. Kathy posted a “Found” notice on Craigslist. And at evening feeding time for our two indoor cats, Kitty trotted right up to the screen door and meowed loudly and incessantly for food. As darkness fell, Kitty curled up on the broad arm of an Adirondack chair. It was heartbreaking.

Monday was more of the same. As Kathy got up in darkness to get ready for work, Kitty again raced from the tree to the door, yowling steadily through the glass. Later that morning, I phoned our vet for advice; Contra Costa County Animal Services could come out and take Kitty to their shelter. But they are closed Mondays. Kitty was still in our yard Tuesday, and, with no responses to our Craigslist post, Kathy and I spent all morning online trying to investigate “no-kill” animal organizations in our region. We finally agreed to give Animal Services a call after being assured that they work really hard to place adoptable animals, an adjective that fits this fluffball to a T. As long as Kitty gets a clean bill of health, there’s a great chance of finding that “forever home.” I kind of miss the little chatterbox already.

Hey remember Lemon Lady, the neighbor down the street with the huge, old lemon tree in her front yard? When I originally approached her months ago, offering to pay her for lemons, I actually thought she’d go all grandma on me and insist that I help myself for free. Instead her response was an immediate “$3 a bag, and don’t go haywire with the bag!”

Well, I guess I went haywire with the bag, because the last time I went to harvest, she lit into me for my plastic bag “splitting apart because it was too full.” As the saying goes, “If life hands you lemons, that’s a better deal than having to pick them yourself from the tree of a cranky neighbor.”

Harvest is in for this year, and our ancient Oakley-area vines are starting to shut down for the season. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no activity in the vineyard. The other day I was driving down Empire on my way to Target for a flu shot, when I spied a gent piloting a tractor by the side of the road in front of Rich Pato’s vines (which we’d just been talking about in the last couple of posts here). I took a flyer, parking the car on a side street and sprinting across four lanes of traffic, to chase down the tractor. I ended up exchanging pleasantries with Rich Pato himself. It’s always cool to match a vineyard with a wine label, and put a face to a name.

It’s also nice to match the cooler post-harvest nights with sweeter Late Harvest bottlings. We found a half-bottle of Cline’s 2006 Late Harvest Mourvèdre, made from a block of varietal fruit on their Big Break property here in our fair city. The Mourvèdre had an extra three weeks of hang time, to impart extra ripeness in the grapes. In the glass, it’s Port-like in its color, opacity and viscosity. There’s a deep nose of blueberry, with a hint of nuttiness. Unctuous but not cloying in the kisser, this LH balances an earthy sweetness with a bit of tannic grip, too.

Sunday, October 17, 2010


Funny how this “dirt detective” biz works. In our effort to, essentially, drink our way through our neighborhood, Kathy and I have been trying to identify who grows what grapes from the 100+-year old vines around here, and which winemakers they sell ‘em to. Sometimes, the leads double back on themselves, and you get confirmation that you’re indeed on the right track.

The Napa-based Orin Swift winery is one that has popped up on our CoCo County grape radar before, as recently as last month. Kath and I tasted their “Saldo” Zinfandel, sourced from various vineyards around the state, but showing some specific love to local plots such as Evangelho and Duarte. Then, when last week I chatted with local grower Rich Pato, and he told me that this year he’s selling his Zin and Mourvèdre to Orin Swift, I figured that lightning striking twice was something even I couldn’t ignore. You don’t have to tell me six times; five is plenty. (Fool me once, I’m a fool. Fool me twice … uh, screw it, I’m gonna clear some brush on my ranch.)

After a bit of telephone- and e-tag (during crush, no less), I was able to have a great, spirited chin-wag with Tom Traverso, marketing pooh-bah and O.G. (Original Grunt), one who was yelling “Push!” when Orin Swift was birthin’ its babies.

Years ago, he and OS winemaker Dave Phinney, a couple of Cali dudes, were college roommates at U of F.

I’m talkin’ University of Florence. Italy. No kidding. After class, Tom and Dave would visit a local wine shop around the corner, asking about what’s good, and bringing that day’s selection back to the crib to drink on the courtyard overlooking the local soccer field. Wine fever took hold: Gooooooooooooaaaaaaaaal!

Stateside, they both embarked on a series of internships, from wine retail to cellar rat. Tom landed on the sales and marketing side of the biz with a gig at Gallo; Dave Phinney worked an apprenticeship everywhere from Mondavi to Whitehall Lane. Wine fever was rising: It wasn’t too long before Dave got the itch for his own label. Through winery contacts, he scored baby’s first batch of Zin, Cabernet and Charbono. A generous gift of a Goya etching provided the inspiration for the nomenclature and label design of Dave’s “The Prisoner,” a funky-fresh Zin-Cab blend, currently comprising mostly Napa fruit.

“Saldo” exists to showcase their great Zinfandel contacts. Vineyard sources vary year to year, but CoCo fruit seems to always be a nice bit of the mix.

“Sourcing is key,” Tom Traverso insists. And others seem to have noticed: Both “Saldo” and “The Prisoner” were acquired earlier this year by ultra-premium “Quintessa,” a $pendy, heretofore-Bordeaux-blend concern. Dave Phinney still makes the new portfolio wines (no name change) for the new bosses, though it seems that Tom Traverso’s cubicle is now on the Quintessa side of the carpet.

And Orin Swift — the name, BTW, a cool mash-up of Dave’s mom’s maiden name and his dad’s middle name, not necessarily in that order — continues to look to CoCo for taste-tay fruit.

We dip a toe this week into the Hot Tub Time Machine in order to taste a past Rosenblum bottling made from Pato Vineyard varietal fruit that is, this year at least, all being sold to Orin Swift. Check out the photo above depicting the Pato property post-2010-harvest. In 2007, Rosenblum Cellars made a Pato Mourvèdre, and it’s another stunner from this grower/vintner team. In the glass, it trades in the inkiness of the 2007 Pato Petite for a lighter, plummy, garnet hue. In the nose it’s all clove, dusty smoke and tar, with a mouth-feel that’s smoothly weighty and unctuous. It’s not an overly fruit-forward wine, but the medium-long finish gives up just a hint of raspberry sweetness. There’s some real old-vine elegance and complexity at play here.

Sunday, October 10, 2010


The other day, I finally had a chance to chat by phone with Rich Pato, a local grower whose grapes have been made into wines Kathy and I have enjoyed for years. And now it turns out that we live about a mile and a half from Pato Vineyards here in Oakley.

Originally planted in 1896, back in the days when Oakley was a convenient railhead for shipping grapes back east, Rich’s plot comprises 26 acres planted to old-vine Petite Sirah, Zinfandel and Mourvèdre. Located directly across busy Empire Avenue from Stan and Gertie Planchon’s vineyard, it’s also a textbook study in Oakley’s past and present: Directly adjacent to majestic vines looking forward to their 115th birthday, there’s an ongoing engineering-and-asphalt development designed to widen Empire to double its traffic capacity. From “railhead” to “Road work ahead. Fines double in work zones” in a scant hundred years. As someone who makes his livelihood farming this single plot of vineyard acreage, Rich Pato describes the seemingly never-ending Empire-building as “a pain in the neck.”

Over the years that Kath and I recognized the vineyard designation, we were most familiar with “Pato Vineyard” appearing on specific Rosenblum bottlings. When founder Dr. Kent cashed out his Rosenblum chips several years ago, selling to drinks doge Diageo, the new owners continued the love. Grape contracts come and go, ebb and flow, and sometimes the big boys, instead of putting the hammer down on the grower, can see the fruit for what it is: exceptional.

Rich Pato (BTW: pronounced “PAW-toe”) tells me that, currently, he’s contracted out his Petite to Diageo, his Zin and Mourvèdre to Napa-based Orin Swift (we talked about their “Saldo” bottling a couple of posts ago), and one little block o’Zinfandel to Turley Cellars, who, I’m discovering, have their fingerprints on a lot of Oakley Zin. Hmmm.

Don’t know how she did it, but Kath got her mitts on a 2007 Rosenblum Pato Vineyard Petite Sirah. It’s a wondrously inky-black, opaque pour into the glass. There’s pronounced cocoa, earth, tar and spice on the nose. In the mouth, it’s all elegant raciness of blueberry and integrated acidity on a long, long finish. Great stuff.

Sunday, October 3, 2010


While Kathy and I have written a fair bit about Erin and Matt Cline’s Three Wine Company and their bottlings sourced from fruit near our ‘hood, it was nevertheless pretty cool to receive Erin’s oh-so-gracious invitation to join them at the winery for their Paella Party in celebration of their newest CoCo County releases.

The Three facility joins four other boutique producers situated in The Old Sugar Mill, a gorgeously restored, uh, sugar mill, located about 70 miles east and north of our burg of Oakley, in Clarksburg, CA. Serving as a sort of incubator for smaller-production vintners, the Mill offers space for crush, barrel storage, tasting rooms and special event facilities, all under one capacious, stylish roof.

Motoring east toward the Central Valley is always less of a hassle than journeying toward Ess Eff, and, despite still not being able to escape one of NoCal’s ubiquitous toll bridges, we found ourselves tooling along the delta levee highway through thickets of corn, hay and acres upon acres of wine grapevines.

A few miles from the Mill, we passed signage for Bogle Vineyards, about whom we’ve written a while back. Bogle sources lots of fruit from Oakley’s Continente vineyard, but turning off the highway to drive what seemed like 10 miles on a narrow road snaking through nothing but rows of vines, I’m kinda hard-pressed to see how they have to buy anything. And yet, Bogle is a fairly big producer, so, in retrospect, it makes sense to contract out, especially since the tasting room was pouring some nice stuff that you’ll never see at Safeway. Nice prices, too; glad we stopped in.

Then it was on to Three, and the Duck Paella bacchanal! We had a blast: The paella catered by Sonoma’s Hidden Oak B&B was delicious, and Matt’s wines were as tasty as we’d all come to expect from our previous posts. The CoCo connection was reinforced that day, as well; Matt had been in Oakley that morning, and a truck full of Oakley Carignane was just working its way into the de-stemmer. (See Kath’s photo: I think it “augers” well for CoCo Carignane.)

We also ran into Aldo Ghiozzi of the Contra Costa Wine, Grape and Olive Growers Association, who’d invited me to my first meeting a mere couple of weeks ago. Erin Cline then introduced us to Becky Robinson and Shanin Ybarrondao of ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates & Producers), a nonprofit org dedicated to engendering knowledge and appreciation of the varietal. ZAP holds a monster Zin-centric gangbang tasting in San Fran every year; Kathy and I last attended in 1998, when we lived in the city, and had a teeth-staining good time (or so I was told the next day).

As it happens, the two wines released at Three’s release clambake hail from CoCo: a Lucchesi Vyd Carignane; and an old vine Field Blend — that beautiful old-skool harvest amalgam of grapes from assorted vines stuck indifferently into the ground by OGs (Original Growahs) more than a century ago.

We ended up joining Three’s wine club; the local connection to the wine releases was purely coincidental. On a personal note, Kath and I have, at various times, belonged to dozens of wine clubs over the years, in Cali, Washington state and Oregon. We suffered a bit of a financial hit a few months ago, and it became obvious that a quick amelioration of some of the pain was to cancel all the “surprise” charges on the credit card. Oh sure, it was always a pleasure to meet UPS guy Wayne once a week — who hates Christmas in June? — but that VISA dude once a month? Not so much. We dropped all of our wine club subscriptions: One in Sonoma we had just joined in February of this year; one in WA of which we’d been members since we’d moved back to Seattle in 1999. Then there was the Napa sparkling wine club with which we lived an on-again/off-again affair: Every time we joined, our work sitch turned to shi-ite; we’d quit, and things improved for us. We always believed that North Americans don’t drink enough bubbly, but toss me a frickin’ bone people!

But, things are indeed looking better these days, and Saturday of last week, we joined the Three Wine Company wine club. Two bottles every quarter, and prices are good. Kathy even signed up for the “will call” option, a great excuse to gas up the “Lisa Marie” and pick up our wine in person at The Old Sugar Mill.

As Kath has been singing the past few days, “Take the last train to Clarksburg … .”

Three Wine Company’s 2008 Old Vines Field Blend Contra Costa County is a funky-fresh one-stop-shop mix of 34% Zin, 21% Carignane, 19% Mataro (aka Mourvèdre) 16% Petite Sirah, 8% Alicante Bouschet and 2% Black Malvoisie (an old-skool California synonym for Cinsault). I’m always amazed that a “field blend” — essentially a wine that’s made from grapes harvested from a vineyard’s multi-varietal vines planted in possibly random fashion — could even be parsed by varietal percentages. Greater minds than mine …

This CoCo blend has a nice garnet look reminiscent of fizzless Mr. Pibb. There’s a brambly rusticity on the nose: dusty baking spices (clove, cinnamon). The earthy cocoa tannins balance nicely with some acidity on a decently lengthy finish.