Cafes & Wineries

It seems like every major city has dozens of food and wine festivals every year. San Francisco, compared to many urban centers, tends to be more selective in what it puts on, however. And that’s a good thing, because I’ve certainly been to enough crappy food and wine events with lousy food and wine (and too little of either) to last my lifetime.

Honestly, the first time I attended FallFest in San Francisco, I expected it to be yet another mediocre attempt at a gourmet food and wine festival. But I was more than pleasantly surprised that first year, and have continued to be impressed every year since. It is a top notch event worthy of a city of foodies. The organizers (San Francisco Magazine, among others) have consistently produced an event with excellent food, fantastic wine, great logistics, and an excellent atmosphere.

You can see my coverage of 2005’s event to get an idea of what I’m talking about. If you enjoy food and wine, and have an afternoon to kill on Saturday, October 11th, FallFest is a nice way to spend a few hours, and certainly worth the $85* ticket, especially if you arrive early and hungry.

The event includes the typical wine and food fair setup — lots of booths handing out free wine and free food, along with cooking demonstrations. Some of the folks cooking at the event include The Ritz Carlton, Bocadillos, Fifth Floor, RNM, Spruce, and Sent Sovi. Those pouring will include JC Cellars, Fort Ross Vineyards, Medlock Ames, Saddleback Cellars, Yorkville Cellars, and more.

This year the event features the theme of Eat Local, which means that most of the food will be sourced within 3 hours of San Francisco, and that this will also be the theme of the demonstrations and lectures that take place throughout the event.

And like all good events of this type, the proceeds benefit charity. In this case, Meals on Wheels San Francisco.

San Francisco FallFest 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
12:00 Noon to 4:00 PM
Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero Center
Market Street @ The Embarcadero
San Francisco, CA

Tickets cost $95 in advance, $110 at the door; they can be ordered online at the event web site. The event will likely sell out, as it does every year.

*SPECIAL NOTE: Vinography readers can get $10 off the ticket price by using promotional code VNGRPHY at checkout.

Some advice for those attending: when it’s sunny it gets quite hot in the plaza. Bring sunscreen and a hat and drink lots of water. Or, of course, it could be foggy and cold as hell. But that has actually never happened at this event, so if we all cross our collective fingers….

Embarcadero Center can be easily reached by all Bay Area public transportation options, including Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Muni bus, underground Muni, ferry, cable car or the F-Line streetcar. For those who want to drive, underground garages are located in One, Two, Three, and Four Embarcadero Center.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Japan has given many things to the world that I cherish, but few of them have an unofficial holiday that gives me the excuse to celebrate them. But every October first, along with sake lovers all over Japan and around the world, I get to observe Nihonshu no Hi, also known as Sake Day.

Like wine, no one knows exactly when sake first made an appearance. In a similar fashion to grape wine, the knowledge that fermented rice eventually yields an alcoholic beverage was probably discovered in accidental and then later deliberate stages, as innovative and curious folks explored ways of getting drunk.

Sake production and demand is likely to have peaked in Japan the mid 19th century when a law was passed allowing anyone to become a brewer. As many as 30,000 breweries were opened in the year of the law’s passing, though that number dwindled as taxes on sake and its raw materials increased through the end of the century.

Despite ups and downs, and not being anywhere near its 19th century production levels, sake is seeing a bit of a renaissance around the world, and that is worth celebrating for any sake lover, at least as much as the stuff itself. More and more excellent sake is leaving Japan and making its way abroad.

All of which means that on October first, you’ll not only have something to celebrate but, some really good stuff to celebrate with, should you care to partake in the 3rd Annual Sake day celebration put on by San Francisco’s own True Sake store, and Sozai restaurant.

This is not the largest of tastings, but public sake events are so rare, that I am obligated to make not of it for those of my readers who are sake lovers or who are interested in learning more about it.

Held at Fort Mason, Sake Day is an opportunity to taste an assortment of sake, eat some good Japanese food, and listen to a little music in a casual atmosphere. Various tasting stations will be set up that will allow attendees to compare different styles of sake, blind taste some varieties, as well as explore flaws like heat damage.

If you’re looking for a way to learn about sake, you’d be hard pressed to find a better occasion to experience a number of them than this little event.

Sake Day Celebration
Wednesday, October 1
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
The Golden Gate Room
Fort Mason Center
San Francisco, CA (map)

Tickets are $85, which gets you a complimentary tasting glass, five different sake friendly dishes, free run of the tasting, and entry into various raffles and prize drawings. Tickets should be purchased in advance online, as the event may sell out.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Last week, I was joined by an adventurous group of diners and drinkers for a completely unique meal at Manresa Restaurant in Los Gatos, California. The result of months of discussions and planning between myself, Chef David Kinch, and Wine Director Jeff Bareilles, The Sake Dinner was an extraordinary experience.

To my knowledge, no non-Japanese, U.S. restaurant of the caliber of Manresa has ever done a tasting menu exclusively to be paired with world-class sake as we did last Wednesday night. Chef Kinch created a special eight-course meal that drew on his deep love of Japanese cuisine and its influence in his cooking, while I provided some of the best sakes available in the United States.

The result was a tremendous meal, made all the better by what was a great group of folks who chose to join us.

The menu and sake pairings were as follows:

Pike mackerel with New Zealand Spinach

Tempura fried Kisu (Japanese needlefish) wrapped in house cured pancetta and dipped in shiso clorophyll
Masuda Shuzo Masuizumi Junmai Daiginjo, Toyama Prefecture

Sea bream with caviar, seaweed ice, and lemon verbena oil
Takasago Shuzo Ginga Shizuku “Divine Droplets” Junmai Daiginjo, Hokkaido Prefecture

Pacific lobster barely poached with vegetables and basil flowers
Asahi-Shuzo Kubota Manju (Junmai Daiginjo)

Fresh Oregon Matsutake mushroom with littleneck and geoduck clams
Minogawa Shuzo “Koshi Omachi″ Daiginjo, Niigata Prefecture

Autumn “tidal pool” of abalone, uni, foie gras, seaweed, and mushrooms
Kamoizumi “Shusen” Junmai, Hiroshima Prefecture (served warm)

Country ham, delicate black cod,and a smoky red miso broth
Sato No Homare “Pride of The Village” Junmai Ginjo, Ibaraki Prefecture

Sweetbreads fried chestnuts, and soft cooked eggs over rice
Nishida Shuzoten “Denshu″ Tokubetsu Junmai (served warm)

Sweet red bean cake with pluots and coconut ice milk
Kamoizumi “KomeKome” Sweet Sake, Hiroshima Prefecture

I’ve eaten quite a few meals at Manresa, but this was certainly one of my favorites, irrespective of what I was drinking.

The sea bream and caviar dish was simply tremendous — one of the best things I′ve put in my mouth in months. The lobster dish had a remarkable little bit of young artichoke cooked in wood ash on it that was stunning. The autumn tidal pool (which sadly I forgot to take a photo of) was unbelievable, from the quality of the sea urchin to the rich smoky foie gras at the bottom of the dish.

Everyone who attended was interested in learning more about sake, so I started the evening with a brief explanation of how sake was made, and then answered questions throughout the evening after introducing each sake that was poured.

Large dinners like this are always different, and the nature of the experience rests quite squarely on the dynamic of the people who are attending. This was one of the best such dinners I have hosted at Manresa because of the conviviality and enthusiasm of those who attended.

I didn’t capture every dish, unfortunately, but I did manage to get a shot of most of them.

Perhaps you’ll join us for another of these dinners at some point in the future?

Original post by beatrice.russo

Some of the best meals of my life have been from the kitchen of chef David Kinch at Manresa Restaurant in Los Gatos. I’d take half a tasting menu from him over anything at the French Laundry, any day of the week. Which is why I’m humbled at his continued interest in collaborating with me to provide an unparalleled dining and drinking experience for a few adventurous diners every once in a while.

David and I both have an enduring love for Japanese cuisine. If you’ve ever eaten at Manresa you may have noticed this influence in Chef Kinch’s cooking. It’s one of my favorite aspects of his cooking — the guy knows how to deal with raw seafood better than almost any (non-Japanese) chef in this country.

All of which is why he and I are both giddy with excitement at the prospect of the Sake Dinner: an eight course meal that will be a little heavier on the Japanese influence than normal for David, accompanied by some of the best sakes I′ve ever tasted. The early drafts of the menu that I′ve seen make me extremely hungry (I′m currently traveling on business in upstate New York, and pretty much every restaurant in town is Italian — I′d kill for a decent plate of sushi).

Working with Jeff Barielles, the wine director at the restaurant, we’ve managed to get our hands on some sakes that are almost never seen in the United States (as well as some others that are also phenomenal, but easier to find in the event you fall in love with them).

The food and the sake will be accompanied as usual by stories from me about how and where they are made.

This will be a fantastic evening if you care to join us. There are still seats available, so call the restaurant to make reservations.

Manresa and Vinography present: The Sake Dinner
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
Seating begins at 6:30 PM
Manresa Restaurant
320 Village Lane (just off North Santa Cruz Avenue)
Los Gatos, CA 95030
408-354-4330

$325 per person gets you an eight course meal with sake pairings. You pay tax and gratuity.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

It’s a pretty good time to be alive. I don’t find myself often wishing that I had lived in earlier times. However, there are events in the past that I would give my right arm to have been able to experience first hand. One of my top choices for time-travel destinations would certainly be the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago. I’d love a week to explore the wares of the world amidst Olmstead’s gardens.

There may not ever be another event so grand as that, but when it comes to American food and wine, Slow Food Nation may very well be the equivalent for those who enjoy the pleasures of the palate. There’s so much stuff going on over the weekend of August 29th to September 1st all I can really do is point you to the web site and offer you good luck in drooling your way through artisan bread tastings, cooking demonstrations, speakers, films, farmer’s market, concerts, tours and field trips, hikes, and more.

What I will tell you is that the part of the weekend known as the Taste Pavilions will be a wonderland for bay area wine lovers, especially those interested in sustainable, organic, and Biodynamic^™ wines. More than 450 wines will be available for tasting, and perhaps a hundred of them will be from exotic places like Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, New York, and Texas. There will be hundreds more from well known places like California, Oregon, and Washington. All told it will likely be the single largest tasting of sustainable wines yet held in the U.S. Here’s a full list (PDF) of the producers who will be pouring and their wines.

The Taste Pavilions, which have both mid-day and afternoon sessions on Saturday August 30th and Sunday August 31st will also offer a huge variety of other foodstuffs and drinks, all from Slow Food friendly purveyors and producers.

Tickets for the mid-day sessions are already sold out, so if this smorgasbord of amazing food and drink appeals to you, you′d better plan on freeing up Saturday or Sunday evening over labor day to go check it out.

Slow Food Nation
August 29th - Sept 1st
Fort Mason Center (and other locations)
San Francisco

Tickets for the taste pavilions are $65 (or $45 if you’re under 21) and they must be purchased in advance online. This event will likely sell out in the next week or so.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

I know how you think. You’re sitting there, scratching your head, wondering, “now what on earth am I going to do here in the middle of the summer to exercise both my brain and my taste buds in a sophisticated way?” It’s a good thing I caught you early on in your musing, otherwise you might have frittered away the whole summer in frustration, trying to come up with something suitably intellectual and delicious to occupy your time.

So instead of sitting there updating your cellar list in Excel, or converting that old rolodex of recipes into a new digital form, you can head up to Napa and go to Tastϵ. I honestly don’t know whether the damn thing is called “Taste Three” or “Taste Cubed” but it’s a big taste with a little three after it, and it may well be the coolest food conference ever devised.

Those of you in the high tech industry can think of it as TED for food and wine. For those of you who have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, here’s (maybe) a more accessible explanation. Think about a conference where, instead of one cooking demonstration after another, some of the world’s foremost scientists, intellectuals, musicians, writers, chefs, and winemakers come together to discuss a wide range of issues having to do with everything from the aesthetics to the ethics of food and wine. There are lectures, demos, performances, and of course, some tastings. But it’s all highbrow, you know?

OK, so perhaps that didn’t quite capture it. The thing of it is, the conference is nearly impossible to describe well. It doesn’t quite fit the mold of anything else out there in the world of food and wine. So rather than resort to metaphor, let me just tell you how the conference works, and who’s involved. The whole thing is set up as a series of themed sections, each hosted by a moderator, and comprised of a series of short format presentations by some amazing people.

Here are a few examples from this year’s roster:

• Dan Barber, owner of Blue Hill &amp Blue Hill at Stone Barns talks about his restaurants, career, and his Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture

• Journalist Novella Carpenter talks about the current phenomenon of urban farming.

• Editor-in-Chief of Gastronomica, Darra Goldstein talks about food as a path to peace in the Middle East.

&bull Chateau Musar Winemaker Serge Hochar on the passion for wine that kept him from fleeing civil war in Lebanon.

• René Koster, director of the Dutch “Restaurant of the Future” project, talks about how we make food and drink choices.

&bull Artist Laura Letinsky shares her haunting photographic images that evoke unseen people and relationships using the detritus of a meal.

• Author Christopher McDougall talks about the health and nutrition secrets of Mexico’s legendary Tarahumara runners.

• Entrepreneur Barry Schuler shares his ideas for mapping the wine grape genome.

&bull Author of The Billionaires Vinegar, Benjamin Wallace talks about forgery and fakes in high stakes wine collecting.

As you can see, this isn’t your mother’s food event. I’ve never been to the event, but I hear nothing but rave reviews from everyone who’s gone.It’s apparently great brain food. Check out the whole program on the event web site.

Taste3
July 17th - 19th, 2008
Culinary Institute of America
Greystone Castle
2555 Main Street
St. Helena, CA 94574 (map)

Tickets are $1950, and discounts are available for those in the industry. Ticket price includes lunches, winemaker dinner, and gala dinner and reception. Tickets will likely sell out by early July so they should be purchased in advance online.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Day two of Aspen’s Food and Wine Classic was blessed with the same weather as the first. Crystalline blue skies, 75 degrees and sunny. I gave my second Napa’s Next Superstars seminar to a nearly full auditorium at the Given Institute, and after hanging around to chat with some of the attendees about the wines, I was free.

With all my seminars behind me I had the opportunity to finally explore the Classic as a spectator instead of a speaker. The first thing I did was head down to the Grand Tasting tent to get a few bites of food — a lunch constructed out of small samples of grilled rib eye rum cakes; brownies; grilled lamb and salad; crab cakes; roasted fingerling potatoes; fresh gazpacho; and bits of Spanish cheese. Plenty of other people had the same idea:

It’s a pretty astonishing sight this gathering of thousands of food and wine lovers under one huge canvas awning.

After this pastiche of a light lunch I headed over to one of the event venues to watch the second annual Sommelier Challenge — a panel session hosted by Lettie Teague, the Executive Wine Editor of Food & Wine magazine.

Not your usual panel session, this event pitted four of the country’s top sommeliers against each other in a sort of “sell-a-thon” where they are asked to speak to the audience about different wines, after which the audience votes on who they think did the best job.

This year’s lineup of sommeliers was a formidable cast of characters:

Each of the sommeliers, including the audience, had five glasses of wine in front of them:

2007 Santa Rita Floresta “Leyda″ Sauvignon Blanc, Chile
2006 Tablas Creek Esprit d′Beaucastel Blanc, Paso Robles, CA
2005 Vietti “Tre Vigne” Barbera d’Alba, Piemonte, Italy
2005 M. Chapoutier “Les Granits” Rouge Saint-Joseph, Rhone, France
2005 Celler Can Blau “Mas de Can Blau,” Montsant, Spain

When I saw this session’s listing in the program, I assumed this would be a blind tasting, but instead of putting each of these guys palate’s to the test, they were instead being evaluated on their schpiels. Each would be required to speak about one of the first four wines as if they were providing a recommendation of the wine to a restaurant patron. Then each would get a shot at performing the same task for the fifth and final wine.

After Teague’s introductory remarks, the serious looking Bobby Stuckey (last year’s champion) introduced the audience to the Chilean Sauvignon Blanc. Stuckey took an enthusiastic, if traditional, approach to the task, pleased that he had been assigned the wine that, in his view was a perfect match to the Summer day we all walked out of into this session. He praised Sauvignon Blanc’s qualities, and offered his tasting note for the wine, noting its low alcohol level and food friendliness.

I thought this was an excellent wine — one of the better Sauvignon Blanc’s I’ve had from Chile. Here are my tasting notes:

2007 Santa Rita Floresta “Leyda” Sauvignon Blanc, Chile
Pale green-gold in the glass, this wine has a vibrant nose of grassy, juicy gooseberry aromas. In the mouth it is crisp, lean, zingy with acidity, and explosive with lovely kiwifruit, lime, and starfruit flavors. Score: around 9. Cost: $23. Where to buy?

Next in line was Richard Betts who spent a few minutes good naturedly suggesting that Sauvignon Blanc was perhaps a bit too pedestrian and simple a wine for a day as lovely as the one we were having (which prompted protests from Teague who admitted that she bought that particular Sav Blanc by the case). Betts suggested that as a sommelier his job was to be “an enabler” — an advocate whose sole goal was to turn you on to something you′d really like. Instead of Sauvignon Blanc, he suggested, the audience might prefer something more truly Summery, like the complex peach and floral qualities of the Tablas Creek white. He spoke about the wine like it was an old friend, referencing the history of the Perrin family behind it, and shared his own rambling tasting note.

I’ve had this wine several times, and always enjoy it, but I have to say, at the time, I preferred the Sav Blanc.

2006 Tablas Creek “Esprit d’Beaucastel″ Blanc, Paso Robles, CA
Pale gold in color, this wine truly does smell like a summer’s day — nectarines, white flowers, and other tropical fruits. In the mouth the wine is silky and weighty on the tongue with flavors of elderflowers, peaches, and orange blossoms that linger in a moderate finish. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $40. Where to buy?

Stuart Roy was up next, and began by suggesting that the lineup was truly unfair, but such was life, as he had clearly been given the best wine of the group. He went on to offer an explanation to the room of where the wine came from in Italy, and professed his love for the few Italian regions whose names included both the name of the grape as well as the place they came from, in this case, Barbera from the town of Alba. He waxed fanatical about the wine, making special note of its acidity and minute long finish, and suggested that it would be one of his favorite wines to recommend to any diner looking for a red wine with their food. Roy was articulate and knowledgeable, but came across as more formal than Stuckey and Betts. I certainly shared his appreciation for the wine however, which was excellent.

2005 Vietti “Tre Vigne” Barbera d’Alba, Piemonte, Italy
Dark ruby in color this wine had a gorgeously floral nose that slipped sideways between violets and lavender with undercurrents of leather and red fruits. In the mouth it was smooth, even polished on the palate, with dusty tannins, beautiful acid balance, and flavors of dried cherries, leather, and sweet flowers that lingered in the truly memorable finish. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: a steal at $24. Where to buy?

Finally, John Ragan got the chance to set the record straight about who really had the best wine on the table. He went on to speak about how Syrah was a trendy grape at the moment, but that its true home was in the Northern Rhone (he actually said that was the birthplace of Syrah, but I believe the Syrah grape’s origins have been traced back to the Middle East). He seemed quite familiar with the producer and this specific wine, describing the single vineyard it came from, and praising the degree to which, in his opinion, the wine personified the true essence of Syrah. Ragan was likeable and knowledgeable, but his pitch seemed to be missing the hook that might have won me over as a diner. The wine was, indeed, classic, however.

2005 M. Chapoutier “Les Granits″ Rouge Saint-Joseph, Rhone, France
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has the classic white pepper, black fruit, and wet earth aroma of Syrah. In the mouth it is frankly beautiful, perfectly balanced with great acidity and subtle dusty tannins. The flavors are deeply mineral in quality, encased in a blanket of dark blackberry and mulberry fruit, and dusted with white pepper. A long finish completes a picture perfect Rhone experience. Yum. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $60. Where to buy?

The most interesting part of the challenge involved the recommendation of the final wine, a brute of an old-vine Grenache from Spain that was heavily extracted, and heavily oaked. Stuckey and Roy both endorsed it as a big wine from a great region that would make folks looking for a major red very happy. Interestingly, and in my mind to their credit, both Betts and Ragan said that they couldn’t, in good faith, recommend the wine to us.

“Smell it,” said Betts.

“What do you smell? OAK!” He went on to suggest that the wine offered no real sense of the place it came from, and was more of a vanity piece than a wine of character.

Ragan agreed, saying “This wine has no fingerprint, no trace of its true identity. Wine has to take you someplace special, and this one doesn’t.”

The Montsant was indeed a heavily oaked concoction.

2005 Celler Can Blau “Mas de Can Blau,” Montsant, Spain
Dark purple in the glass, this wine smells of the sweet vanilla of French Oak wrapped around super-ripe cherries. In the mouth it is tight and angular, with flavors of sawdust, sweet oak, leather, and dried red fruit. The tannins are somewhat abrupt and chewy, and the finish not particularly striking. Score: around 8. Cost: $45. Where to buy?

After some closing remarks by Teague the audience was polled and the winner was…

Bobby Stuckey for a second year in a row, by a rather wide margin. Personally, after all was said and done, I was pulling for Betts, but the crowd clearly seemed to favor Stuckey. Stuckey and Betts are best friends, and after receiving his prize of the precious champions airbrushed t-shirt, Stuckey offered to let Betts wear it for the second half of their usual joint morning run tomorrow.

The session was a lot of fun, and a good reminder that some of the country’s best sommeliers are quite young, personable, and incredibly approachable. They inspire confidence and curiosity in wine drinkers, and that is a very good thing.

Original post by Arthur Krea

I just finished my first day at the Aspen Food and Wine Classic, and my second day back in my home town for the first time in 14 years. It’s been quite an honor to be asked to speak at this year’s classic, but so far it has been an incredible pleasure and a deeply nostalgic experience.

Returning to the little town where I grew up (most people don’t think of Aspen as so small, but in my day there were about 9,000 permanent residents — my high school class had 72 people in it) is a very surreal experience. The geography of the place is ingrained in me — I know the streets, the buildings, the location of the mountain peaks, but in a purely intuitive way I couldn’t tell you how to get most places, but I could walk there myself. A lot has changed, as Aspen continues to go through a development boom, but so much remains the same. This is still the place I remember and occasionally dream about.

Oddly, however, everything seems….smaller. The buildings are smaller than I remember them, the distance between landmarks much shorter, even the interior spaces of some favorite shops and restaurants have a diminutive quality that even as they provoke pleasures of memory also add a bit of unease.

As I walk around the town, I seem to think I recognize so many people. In some of the younger ones, I wonder if I’m seeing the grown-up versions of the elementary school kids I saw on the bus when I was in High School. Others, I’m sure are probably longtime locals that I’ve seen a million times before.

Aspen is in the full bloom of a gorgeously green spring, today there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the temperature hung around 70 all day long — classic summer weather for Aspen — nothing unusual there. What was unusual, however, was the sight of people carrying their skis and boots towards the Gondola for a day of skiing. Yes, that’s right, skiing on June 13th. Call it lucky Friday the 13th.

Yesterday it snowed briefly in town, but more importantly a look at the socked-in tops of the mountains showed that it was blizzarding up there. And this on top of the still-heavy snowpack that remains at the highest elevations. No one can ever remember skiing this late into the season before.

Of course, most people in Aspen this weekend aren’t thinking about fresh tracks, they’re thinking about fresh chefs, new dishes, and fabulous wines. For those who aren’t familiar with the Food and Wine Classic, it is two and a half days of food and wine seminars, cooking demonstrations, parties, and a “grand tasting” tent where hundreds of wineries, food purveyors and other companies offer samples, tastes, and other informational tidbits to attendees. It is widely regarded as the premier wine and food event in the country.

This morning I gave three seminars, one entitled Napa’s Next Superstars, and one entitled Sake For Wine Lovers (which I gave twice) to festival attendees.

The first seminar, Napa’s Next Superstars was my attempt to introduce people to several wines from Napa that were either brand new to the market and destined to be great or were flying under the radar of most consumers. I distinguished superstars from “cult wines” by virtue of the fact that these were wines that the attendees could actually get a hold of with a little bit of effort on their part (provided their home states didn’t prevent them from doing so).

The wines I poured for the attendees were:

2005 Blackbird Vineyards “Proprietary Red Wine,” Napa Valley

2005 Meteor Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley

and then I threw in a ringer wine, that I thought stylistically fit with the grouping above, but was made far from Napa:

2005 Star Lane Vineyard “Astral” Cabernet Sauvignon, Santa Ynez Valley

My review of this wine will be forthcoming shortly

I was particularly happy to be able to offer the very first tasting of any kind for members of the public for both the Meteor and the Star Lane, as both are just now being released. The seminar was attended by nearly 90 people and I was very happy with how it went. I’ll be giving the same seminar again tomorrow (Saturday) morning.

My second (and third) seminars of the day were my Sake For Wine Lovers seminars, which were designed to be introductions to sake, as well as an opportunity to taste some of what I (and some others) think are some of the best sakes in the world.

I poured the following sakes as part of the seminar:

Asahi Shuzo Dassai “Niwari Sanbu″ Junmai Daiginjo, Yamaguchi Prefecture

Ohyama Tokubetsu Junmai Nigori, Yamagata Prefecture

Reviews on the Ohyama and the Kamotsuru will be forthcoming shortly.

I also had a chance to wander through the main tent to check out what was on offer, and was surprised that it was heavily dominated by wineries, which the thousands of milling attendees and their glasses seemed thrilled about. I didn’t have much time to stop and taste, but I noted with pleasure the presence of some really top wineries, such as Massolino from Italy’s Piemonte Region, Movia from Slovenia, Hofstatter from Italy’s Alto Adige, and more. The Washington Wine commission also had a table there with some excellent Washington state wines, and the country of Spain had their own little private tent, which I put on my list for tomorrow’s exploration.

This evening American Express Publishing (the parent company of Food & Wine Magazine) threw a spectacular party at the top of Aspen Mountain (yes, the same mountain they were skiing on today). Invited attendees rode to the top of the mountain in the Silver Queen gondola as the sun was setting, and emerged at the top to be greeted by a fire juggler, a belly dancer, and a Moroccan style feast of epic proportions.

All in all, it was quite a day. I spent most of it working to prepare for, and then giving my seminars so I haven’t had much of a chance to taste any wine or really generate anything that you might enjoy reading, other than this recap. The evening before the event however I did have a chance to taste some extraordinary wines out of magnums at the much anticipated Magnum party. I’ll likely review some of those later, but one of the treats I’ll share with you now was an unusual California antiquity:

1973 Freemark Abbey “Cabernet Bosché” Cabernet Sauvignon, St. Helena, Napa
Light ruby in the glass and sprinkled with sediment, you′d never know this wine was 35 years old simply by looking at it as the color, while light, was pure and free from the brownish tinges that mark older wines. The nose offered gorgeous aromas of juniper, sawdust, and redcurrant that could only have come from slow, beautiful development over time. In the mouth the wine is delicate and dry on the tongue, with flavors of eucalyptus cedar, leather, and tart cherry fruit that remarkably still has some juice to it. The wines pretty aromas were only outdone by its long, languid finish. This was never, and will never be a world class wine, but I tell yaw, it emphasized my growing belief that some of the best undiscovered values of the wine world are the relatively ordinary Napa Cabernets from the Seventies and Early Eighties. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: about $40 if you can find it.

More to come…

Original post by Arthur Krea

Every year on the third Thursday in November, the French have a tradition of celebrating the harvest by drinking Beaujolais Nouveau, the very young wine made from the first pressings of Gamay grapes picked only a month or two earlier. These “traditional” celebrations often tend to be drunk-fests of the first order, made all the worse by the fact that they involve wine that is quite close to undrinkable in my personal opinion.

This year, there’s may be more or less to celebrate depending on your point of view. The harvest in France seemed to only barely recover after a spate of bad weather and mildew this summer. But recover it did, and there will be wine, though its quality will be extremely variable.

And here in San Francisco, the harvest celebration for Beaujolais Nouveau takes on a much more civilized aspect when thrown by the French American Chamber of Commerce, as they have been doing for decades. However, it’s not on the third Thursday (it’s on a Saturday), and perhaps best of all, they pour more than just Beaujolais Nouveau wine.

Every year, the Nouveau release date is used as an excuse to celebrate the wine, the harvest, and in fact, all things French. Something certainly worth doing, especially as memories of freedom fries linger in our collective unconscious.

Held at the Hyatt Regency in downtown San Francisco, “La Soiree” as it is called, will be an evening of wine tasting, food, and music. The tasting is the highlight of the evening, but the event begins earlier in the day. From 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM there is a marketplace of holiday goods with a French flair to browse through; a silent auction of various prizes; and a special sparkling wine tasting from 2:30 to 4:30 which they say is only open to “professionals” though I′m not sure exactly what that means.

The main wine and food tasting event gets started around 5:30 and goes until 9:30 or until the DJ stops spinning. There aren′t a huge number of wines on offer, so this isn′t one of those events to attend in order to educate your palate, but I have received reports from readers that it’s a relatively good party, and so may be worth going to on those grounds, rather than with wine tasting notebook in hand.

26th Annual Beaujolais and Beyond Festival
Saturday, November 17th
5:30 PM to 9:30 PM
The Hyatt Regency Embarcadero
5 Embarcadero Center
San Francisco, CA 94111

Tickets are $60 for most folks (who don’t happen to be members of the French American Chamber of Commerce) if purchased in advance online. Tickets will also be sold at the door for $70.

Original post by Arthur Krea