Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Odd Bins


Just a few random musings over the last couple of weeks of tasting and touring.

Several months ago, Kathy and I had a very civilized tasting up on Sage Canyon Road in St. Helena, with Tiffany Buchanan, hostess extraordinaire of Napa Valley’s Neyers Vineyards.

We always love when some fur-flung winery shouts out to our ‘hood via a vineyard designation on their label. Neyers’ winemaker Tadeo has previously called back to das roots: Zin from Pato; Mourvedre from Evangelho; and most tastily, a couple of years of Tommy Del Barba’s Zinfandel grown a few blocks from our old (circa 2009) homestead (see photo above).

Dig this: Eric Asimov, in The New York Times, rated this Zin in his selected top ten. Jon Bonné, wine dude for the San Fran Chronicle puts it in his top 100 wines of the year.

I call Tom (he’s in the slim Oakley phone book), and hang up upon no answer. Seven minutes later, I get a return call from Tom Del Barba. Daddy had no idea that his juice won such love. Imagine me being the one to tell him that.

We head south to Livermore last weekend, and the release event for La Rochelle, our Pinot Noir-centric winery pals, sharing real estate with Steven Kent Mirassou and his eponymous (minus the surname) concern. Always nice to taste and then pick up our selections without paying for shipping.

And Pinot winemaker Tom Stutz always brings it, sourcing Pinot fruit up and down the coast, this one from Santa Cruz.

OK, you’re no doubt fatigued from Das Oldee Ty-mee Sugar Mill stuff., but we can’t help that 3 Wine Co had a release party the other day; the other wine was a Spinelli Mourvedre (Matt Cline insists on calling it Mataro). And he’s pretty tight-lipped on the whole “Spinelli” vineyard-location-in-Oakley thang. Nonetheless, it’s outrageous juice, kickin’ it CoCo style.

And then we leave early, thinking that we might take an adventurous highway trip across a levee bridge to find Miner’s Leap winery, a Clarksburg joint that we’d never visited before.

Crossing a bridge did not have to happen; we just look for the patrons congregating on the civilized patio below the levee roadway, an entire 12 inches above sea level.

We’d endured a bit of a cold snap in our neck of the woods, but one would never know it this past Saturday afternoon. The sun was shining on the outdoor tasting bar, the fire pit was smoldering, and the pet friendly digs were awash in canines, cats and Cinsault (among other varietal bottlings). Check out Kath’s second photo: So, what were YOU doing mid-January, 2013?

The varietal Cinsault was crazy: lots of cherry stuff. And then, we find out, via the back label, that the label’s great-grandpa was a convicted bootlegger in WA state’s town of Bothell in the 1920s, before being granted a presidential pardon upon Repeal.

All in all, a sweet couple of weeks for this couple of Oakley wine-lovers: a smattering of good press, good Pinot and a good Prohibition story.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Transitioning to 2013: Balsamic, Bun Run & Black-eyed Peas

We rung out (wrung out?) 2012 as adults, finally.

It’s always sad to break with tradition, and New Year’s Eve 2012 was the first time in I don’t know how long that Kathy and I were not in our Nick & Noras snorting Zeds (Canadian Zees) by 10 p.m.

Shalom, tradition; this was fun.

But, gawd, you’d have that we had kids the number of precautions we set up for ourselves. Taxis and a hotel stay: I guess better safe than sorry, though Kath and I both concurred that 10:30 p.m. was probably not going to be Crash Cab.

We had a lot of fun, though. Kath’s biz had a cool rate on the Exec floor at the Concord Hilton, which allowed us a nice Snappy Hour with wine and snacks in their Concierge lounge while we played these crazy card games ( “Gloom” and “We Didn’t Playtest This at All”) that K got me for Christmas. WDPTaA was silly fun; Gloom’s rule pages glazed my eyes, and then it all made sense: very simple overall, very macabre. Can’t wait to play encore une fois.

We dressed across at the room and cabbed it to the Walnut Creek Yacht Club for our Dungeness Crab Party reserve seating. Fixed was the price, and family was the seating style.

Our “family” at table included United Airlines pilot Al and anesthesiologist Stephanie. Holy Crap! Here’s a Discovery Channel series if ever there was one.

Man, I don’t want to go all “Ice Loves Coco,” but Kathy does love calamari. The antipasti are hooked up with a reduced balsamic, rendering syrup a great forkful whenever you can snag some from the plate. A wonderfully filling meal of antipasti, Calimari and Dungeness crab with aioli. Lest we forget the Albacore confit salad kickin’ it on the iceberg lettuce tip. Crazy how these disparate pieces, introduced to a glass of Chablis (itself introduced by the importation prowess of Kermit Lynch), knit together.

Taxi back to the Hilton, where we actually stayed up till midnight. Shocked, I say! Shocked!

We grab a quick, early comped breakfast, then head home to brew some coffee, give extra food to the Baklava and Fritter kitties, ignite the Hoppin’ John in the slow-cooker (Black-eyed peas on Jan One is supposed to be good luck {here’s hoping}), then hit the bricks to Bethel Island and the annual Frozen Bun Run.

Check Kathy’s pic. Again, it’s a crazy tradition wherein everyone is welcome to sign in to jump into Delta freezing waters and ski/board/whatever behind the motor, all on January 1 of the new year. Clothing optional, of course.

It didn’t take more than two free-pour Irish Coffees to forget the chill that the Delta can bring on, even with clear skies. I can only imagine what semi-nude Bun Run participants, let alone Harley-esque spectators pulling on a cold beer, could possibly be thinking.

As usual, lots of laughs (Bun Run virgin Drew wiped out mere meters from the start), and bikers et al (again, check Kathy’s pic) proved to be the coolest cats on the turf. As Kath noted to me, these were not people who went to bed at dusk.

It’s the one time that I can wear gloves for more than 5 minutes, sport a polyester jacket that does not breathe, and consider wearing earmuffs. Back in the Lisa Marie, I couldn’t wait to doff the do.

Back home, John is Hoppin,” and downright delicious.

Wanna talk in 2013?