Opening Day!

Though I’m not talking about baseball season, which started this past week. Nope, this weekend marked the first day of the season for the Brentwood Farmers’ Market, held every Saturday morning downtown. They close off a street for four hours, and dozens of vendors ply their wares, from organic fruits and vegetables to olive oils, jams and handmade soaps. There’s even a fishmonger a few stalls down from the ubiquitous Kettle Corn tent.

This past last week of March saw us in our neck of the CoCo woods enjoying temperatures in the low 80s; wouldn’t you know that Market opening day started off cloudy, cooler and threatening rain that, fortunately, never materialized.

Under initially hazy skies, the sun managed to peek out, not that its absence would have deterred anyone. In Brentwood, one gets the sense that the market is a big deal: The street was packed, kids’ faces were smeared with the remnants of freshly gobbled strawberries, and shopping bags were seen overflowing with leafy greens, earthy mushrooms and brightly colored citrus fruit as big as a puppy’s head.

As the market’s selection of produce changes with the seasons, Kath and I are excited to meld this weekend Farmers’ Market experience with another spring and summer of U-Pick excursions, in appreciation of all that our Oakley-Brentwood-Knightsen-and-Beyond ‘hood has to, literally, bring to the table.

Less about home plate than our dinner plate, this was the Opening Day boding especially well for the two of us. Batter up!

OK, so to “be-league-er” the baseball metaphor into the ground, on our home run back to the house after the market, we passed one of our local old vine vineyards and were surprised and excited to see these nonagenarians in glorious bud break. Those bright green shoots emerging from those gnarly limbs are a true rite of spring. It prompted Kath and me to dip into the cellar for an old vine CoCo wine. Fittingly, the Trinitas 2005 Old Vine Zinfandel from Contra Costa County just happens to be one of the two remaining wines in our “local” stash.

To the eye, it winks of a dusty plum color. The nose is very restrained, but does eventually reveal modest notes of glycerin and strawberries. The mouthfeel is earthy, with a certain tartness chillin’ with the modest fruit forwardness.