Tony just lost a post that he spent hours writing so he is refusing to come near the computer. I don’t consider myself a writer, but a wine drinker’s gotta do what a wine drinker’s gotta do.
We get our share of Groupon deals (Manicures! House cleaning! Spa treatments!), but an e-mail came through for the Santa Cruz Vintner’s Festival that we could not resist. It had been nearly 13 years since we had been tasting in the area, so we bought our tickets (more than 50% off) and planned our trip.
It figures that we departed on a day with torrential rains. So much so that there were times on the freeway that we could not see. Add in windy mountain passes and it makes for a white knuckle adventure. Luckily, the skies cleared once we made our way into Santa Cruz.
Unfortunately, although the brochure advertised tasting from 11:00 – 5:00 most of the tasting rooms did not open until noon. That turned out to be okay when we found ourselves lost in Soquel until 11:45. Sigh.
I chose the next locations with care — lots of wineries in one location with no driving. Pfewf. We had planned on stopping in our Contra Costa fave, Bonny Doon. I knew that they had a new blend, the 2009 Cuvee ET, from our neck of the woods. We met a great couple during our tasting at Bonny Doon. They had lunch reservations and found us later at another tasting room to rave about the food. We made our reservations for dinner at Bonny Doon's Cellar Door immediately.
Dinner began with Smoked Fingerling Potatoes with aioli. You would have thought that the potatoes were supplied by the crack pusher on the corner. Tony and I kept repeating, "Oh my God!" We didn't get the chance to taste the smoked cauliflower soup.
Tony here. Props to Kathy for keeping it level while I am still SO PISSED that 3.5 hours of a post, almost complete, disappeared and could not be retrieved.
Man, I opened with the CoCo crime blotter: stolen property recovered at the corner of Matisse and Michelangelo drives! (Velvet paintings?) Then the grandma who came up to nearby Knightsen to abduct her 4-month-old granddaughter, taking a waiting taxi to Los Angeles County. Not to mention the final sentencing of the Antioch couple who kidnapped Jaycee Dugard and held her captive in a makeshift labyrinth of tarpaulins and outbuildings for 18 years. Hammer time!
But I’m still pissed.
As Kath noted above, dinner at Bonny Doon turned out to be a saving grace; typically Randall.
He eschews a state-of-the-art (circa 1995) winery for an industrial park hosting 4 or 5 other incubating wineries. Then the gob smack: He hires Michelin star chefs to open an open kitchen onsite, but then declines to offer tastes as part of the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association “Vintners’ Festival” weekends.
And all of that goes out the window when one has the Smoked Fingerling Potatoes referenced by Kath above. As her fictional “crack pusher on the corner” might say, “I gots your hook-up; the first one’s free.”
But I’m still pissed.
Bonny Doon is a trip, man. It flaunts RG’s I love you/I hate you/Now change relationship with CoCo County grape growing, at the same time offering a limited release of an old-vine Rhone blend of shiite from the ‘hood. Once upon a time, Homes riffed on a Rhone blend, “Vieux Telegraph,” for his “Old Telegram.” Grahm’s “Cigare Volante” upheld a French province’s alleged sighting of a “flying saucer.”
His “Cuvee ET” takes the piss out of all of that. First off, the Magritte-ish label on the bottle states, en francais, that this is not “un Cigare Volante.” OK, dude; this is not a pipe; this is not a Rhone blend. If you say so.
But this IS a glass-filling mix of raspberry, with crushed flowers, dried blueberry and violet on the nose, and a spicy earth quality on a tart finish.
And the restaurant price is a mere $10 more than the bottle price from the tasting room.
Now, to get the Big Chief smoker fired up and get some potatoes going.
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