Dan Fredman PR

Schnitzel cookery lesson at Schloss Mühlback, Wienviertel, Austria

I like schnitzel. No, make that "I LOVE schnitzel". On my recent trip to Austria, I quite likely would have dined on it at every meal, but I was unable to find it at any of the breakfast buffets at the hotels in which we stayed.

My favorite schnitzel of the trip was the one pictured above, from Chef Martin Weiler of Gasthaus Weiler in Laa an der Thaya, about an hour outside of Vienna. His recommendation ("secret"?) was to fry the meat in lard. Real lard, not the namby pamby vegetably oil or butter or anything, just real old-fashioned lard. Oh, and use veal, not chicken, pork, or whatever else sort of meat you might want to use to save a few bucks. It makes a difference in the end result.

Pictured here are the OEWM's Susanne Staggl and Barbara Arbeithuber explaining the technique as Chef Weiler seemingly sweats out the details. Note that it's pound the paillards with the bottom of a frying pan, then you dip the veal into the flower, then the eggs, followed by breadcrumbs and ultimately into the frying pan containing the hot lard. Fry until nicely browned and serve immediately to the delight of anyone who happens to be in the area (and hungry). Here are the ingredients:

4 Veal cutlets

60g wheat flour

2 eggs

80g breadcrumbs

200g lard

salt

 

Place three bowls near each other, filling the first with flour, the second with the two eggs (beaten), and the third with fine bread crumbs. Japanese panko might work okay too if you want to be a little different (even more appropriate if you're not using veal).

Serve immediately after cooking, accompanied by potato salad, cucumbers, and maybe some tomato if in season.

Schnitzel is one of the easiest dishes to find a wine to match. The obvious call is Grüner Veltliner or Riesling, but Zweigelt or St Laurent work perfectly too.

Existential Ruminations on Cauliflower, Wine, and Fear

I’ve been pondering a cauliflower for the past week. I’m not a veggie-perv and I am not considering a move toward becoming a vegetarian, it’s just something I bought instead of broccoli, something that’s supposed to be “good for me”. Whether it is or not "good for me" is immaterial; what matters is that it makes me feel good for having bought a cauliflower, thereby raising me up from the ignominious doldrums of my usual diet of chicken fingers, instant soup, frozen pizza, and salami-and-cheese-on-crackers. With the purchase of this cauliflower I feel as if I’ve attained a mantel of moral superiority to my fellow man, nay, even a rosy-cheeked blush of healthitude simply by possessing this cauliflower. The difficulty lies in deciding what to do with it, and when to do it.

For all intents and purposes, I could easily enjoy this cauliflower just sitting here gazing at it, but then nobody would know that I did the right thing (ie: bought a vegetable). But what if I invited some people over and cooked the cauliflower (however one prepares such things) and it turned out that they don’t particularly fancy cauliflower, but if I’d only served them broccoli, we could have been BFFs? And what if the cauliflower I bought isn’t totally mature? Would my friends hold look at me with shame and derision in their eyes, castigating me for NOT KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE? So many opportunities to go astray, when before I thought it was “only” a vegetable. Wouldn’t my life be much better off if I just chucked the cauliflower in the trash bin and bought a bag of potato pom-poms instead? Probably, but that would do nothing to assuage my existential curiosity and search for answers.

It’s been said that a man’s character can be defined by how he reacts to such crises of confidence. If this is true, maybe my character might just turn out to be okay. Rather than get mired down in a morass of cauliflower angst, I began thinking of this brain-shaped vegetable as I might think of a bottle of wine. I went through a phase of vinous uncertainty a number of years ago, back when every wine decision was fraught with indecision, worry, and doubt. Fortunately, a wise and wizened winegeek noticed my dilemma and advised that, when in doubt about anything having to do with wine, JUST OPEN THE GODDAMN BOTTLE! He was right – there’s nothing better to instill confidence and wisdom in oneself than to experience things firsthand. And besides, it's not like I was charging my guests to drink with me - it's free education, and we're all learning together, right?

Reading about a wine (or a cauliflower)(or angst) is all well and good but nothing beats first-person familiarity with the topic at hand. Nine times out of ten, the people you’re afraid about doing the wrong thing in front of are just as fearful as you are when it comes to wine, cauliflower, rocket science, neurosurgery, or anything else not easily learned about while watching a TV reality show. There's a lot to be said for perspective - the longterm ramifications of screwing up by selecting the wrong wine with the wrong cauliflower recipe are not as dire as the ramifications of botching rocket science or neurosurgury, so take a chance. Open that Torbreck RunRig Shiraz with your fish 'n' chips, and let your imagination run wild and discover how and why (or why not) an Alsace Gewurztraminer works with a grilled ribeye. Hell, you might even find a wine that works with cauliflower.....

A Pork pie is not just a hat....

"Awe-inspiring in its awesomeness" is an apt description for this ninth entry in the pêche's Month of Pie series. The Pork Confit Pie with Creme Fraiche Potatoes and Puff Pastry recipe comes from the fantastic "Pork & Sons" cookbook by French swinemaster Stéphane Reynaud.  

 

The pêche blog post goes into extensive detail (with beautiful photos) as to how to prepare and then assemble the components of this incredible dish. Requiring three days to complete, this is anything but fast food. I'm now inspired to attempt this cardiologist's nightmare some time when I've got three days to spend.

This would be an interesting dish to pair with wine. My mind automatically goes toward a Gewurztraminer or Pinot Gris from Alsace. The oiliness in the wine's texture would go along with the richness of the dish. So too would an Austrian Grüner Veltliner Smaragd with a little age on it. If my guests demanded a red wine, I'd maybe go with something on the fruity side, say a young Cru Beaujolais (2009 would work well) from Brouilly, Côte-de-Brouilly, or Morgon so there would be an undercurrent of dirt beneath the strawberry fruit aromas. A Sancerre Rouge would also be an interesting choice, as its flavor profile wouldn't mesh with the pork pie as much as it would surround (and enhance) the elements of the dish. I'm looking forward to experimenting with these combos sometime in the near future. 

Anyhow, go to the pêche blog, read their report, drool a little bit and if you don't already own the Pork & Sons cookbook, order it on Amazon.com via their website (maybe they make some money off of it and will be able to create more great pies).

Queensland Relief Fundraiser @ Eveleigh this Sunday, 23 January

Torbreck, Martian Ranch Vineyard & Winery, and Dan Fredman PR are all pleased to be providing wine to help raise money for flood relief after last week's disaster in Queensland, Australia. If you missed the news coverage, there's some truly horifying videos on the Aussie news websites that'll reinstill your awe of Mother Nature's power. Let's just say that the drought is over, but at a horrendous cost of human life and property.

The event commences at 3PM and goes until 6PM. There will be a silent auction to raise even more money. It will all take place at Eveleigh (recently reviewed to great fanfare in the Los Angeles Times) will be open afterwards and they're donating a portion of the rest of the evening's proceeds to the Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal.

Note the discrepancy in the admission donation - must be an Aussie thing....hope to see you there!

Fred Brander's Wine Spectator Top 100 Tasting

For the last couple of years I've had the honor of being invited to Fred Brander's party in Santa Barbara where he pours as many of the Wine Spectator's Top-100 Wines as he can locate. This usually occurs a couple of weeks after the list is released; this year's early publication of the list gave him a little more time to round up some wines. Fred had about 60 wines on hand this year, enough to give a pretty good overview of what's capturing the interest of American consumers (or WS critics) these days.

The wines were laid out in numerical order, as as the table holding the upper end of the spectrum was rather crowded with attendees (probably about 100 people this year), I began at the bottom of the list and worked my way upward through the hierarchy.

I'm not sure whether it's just that I'm pretty jaded and that it takes a lot more to picque my interest these days, but there were a lot of wines I felt were well made and worthy of notice but there's no way in hell that I'd spend my hard-earned money to obtain them for my cellar. "Bigger is better" might work in the porn industry but I don't believe that it's got any place in the wine world. There were wines with lots of fruit and no acidity and wines that had a lot of upfront fruit and dropped off the edge of the earth on the back end. So it goes in the world of picking "greatest hits" for a wine magazine that serves as the one-stop "something for everything" journal of the wine firmament.

There were wines that I'd be proud to add to the cellar. The 2009 Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé was sleek and beautiful, as appropriate on this rainy day as it would be on a summer afternoon in Provence. Strawberry and dry cherry fruit predominated but the wine is beautifully balanced and has a structure that will enable it to be really interesting to drink in another decade (or tomorrow if you're short of patience).

The 2009 Chateau des Jacques Moulin-à-Vent from Louis Jadot was definitely tops in the Miss Congeniality category. Soft and approachable, this poster child for the 2009 Beaujolais vintage was immediately approachable yet has the requisite balance to allow it to evolve for awhile. You either like Beaujolais or you don't, and I happen to love the stuff, so the Spectator is preaching to the choir when they add a wine such as this to the Top 100 list.

Pichot's 2008 Vouvray Domaine Le Peu de la Moriette was subtle (as Vouvrays are wont to be) yet persistent on the finish, with a lovely texture and a flavor that hinted at off-dry yet never ventured over onto the sweet side of the occasion. This wine is not the bargain it used to be ($15 now vs. the $7 I paid for the 2002) but in the real world, the wine is a steal for a bottle that will work well with a lot of different cuisines and that will continue to evolve in the cellar for a number of years. This begs the question of whether it's worth the cost to store an inexpensive bottle for long periods of time, but I think it's worthwhile in a case such as this. And case might be the operative word, as this is the sort of wine where it's nice to have plenty of it around.

 

   

If the Moulin-à`Vent was Miss Congeniality, then the 2008 Loibner Grüner Veltliner Federspiel by Weingut Emmerich Knoll won the talent competition. Such masterful winemaking here, yet the technique didn't get in the way of the wine as it did in so many of the other bottles at this tasting. This is a seamless wine that was a pleasure to drink, offering as much intellectual stimulation and complexity as you'd care to draw out of it yet just being fun to drink if you wanted nothing more than to whet your whistle and wash the white asparagus or schnitzel down the ol' pie-hole. It was broad on the palate, with requisite Wachau minerality and hints of white pepper and a bit of smoke.

They selected the 2005 Bodegas Beronia Rioja Reserva at position #52 and it was quite enjoyable, very much on the "traditional" side of the Rioja equation. Balanced and amiable, it's the sort of wine I'd like to have in the cellar for those times I don't want to be blown away by a wine but still want something good to drink. The 2006 Bodegas LAN Rioja Crianza fits the same slot (albeit at #42), although I preferred the Beronia to the LAN, all things considered (I'd like a crianza to taste a little fresher to make up for the lack of complexity in a Reserva). But for under $20 per bottle, it's not a big deal. Non-blockbuster winemaking seems to have a place on the Wine Spectator list, and that's a good thing.

The most intriguing red wine of the day for me was the 2007 Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel. Early-on at the tasting the wine was good but lacked complexity. About an hour after opening the wine had turned into a roaring homage to the Southern Rhône, with flavor and aromatic sensations pinging back and forth in an organized yet chaotic manner as if the wine were a symphony composed by Charles Ives. Brett was part of this glorious cacaphony as were Provençal herbs and even a few Asian spices. Paso Robles lies in the new world so obeisance need not be paid to Chateauneuf-du-Pape with the level of attention thought proper in the past and this wine is all the better for it. I've been around Tablas Creeks wines since the first vintages (1987, IIRC) and this is by far my favorite wine they've made. Jason Haas and Neil Collins are on their game with this wine; I hope that vintage conditions in the future enable them to continue in this vein for a long time. I would also recommend that you check out the Tablas Creek blog. It is among the best-written, most often-updated, and just generally worthwhile-to-read wine blogs on the net.

Sticking to the Southern Rhône meme, the 2009 Clos des Papes Chateauneuf-du-Pape Blanc was an ideal choice to reside in the Top-10 of this list. Stone fruit sensory stimuli were in abundance, with a broad, silky texture and persistance on the finish. Although leaning toward the zaftig nature of this producer's red wines (at least since the 2003 vintage), this wine kept its over-the-top proclivities in check, resulting in a transplendent example of the heights that whites from the Southern Rhône can achieve.

I probably tasted 40 of the wines on the table and enjoyed most of them. When I began looking these wines up when I returned home, it became apparent that my sweet spot in the Wine Spectator rating world is right around 90 points. Not that I'm not happy to drink wines at the top, but most of those suffered from too much intrusive winemaking. Been there, done that, and I'm happy to know that if I'm not exactly a cheap drunk, at least I'm a more discerning one after a lot of years tasting a lot of wines and figuring out what makes me happy. Kudos for Fred Brander and his crew for putting on one of the year's most anticipated (yet low-key) tastings.

 

1981 Chalone Pinot Noir, nearly perfect (if only for a little while)

There are any number of "important" California vineyards, but precious few have achieved the level of vinous gravitas earned by the Chalone property up in the hills above Soledad. Originally planted in the 1890s by Frenchman Lucien Charles Tamm, by the time Dick Graff took over in the early 1960s it had been through numerous ownership changes and had become known for its Pinot Noir, Chenin Blanc, and Pinot Blanc. Graff, a reformed banker who'd taken winemaking courses at UC Davis after becoming a partner at Chalone, was responsible for guiding the winery through the years (and subsequent winemakers) and really setting the stage for subsequent winery mergers, takeovers, subsumations, etc, all the while enabling unique wine to be made. Chalone became the first winery to be publicly traded, and there was a affiliation with Domaines Rothschild and even a distribution alliance with Kermit Lynch, which was how I first became aware of KLWM.

My own winedrinking history has a lot of intersection with Chalone. The winery was featured prominently in Nathan Chroman's "The Treasury of American Wines", a book that got me started in the wine world. I seem to recall buying the Chalone Chenin and Pinot Blanc back in the mid-1970s - they were cheap and were lauded as being the best examples of those varieties in California. As it turns out, the Pinot Blanc at that time was just about the only example of that variety available, but it was touted as being emminently ageable, and that was a trait I was seeking at that stage in my collecting career.

My father was a stockholder in Chalone for a number of years, entitling him to purchase the Chalone Reserve bottlings. The Reserve Pinot Noir came from the oldest vines on the property; because the Reserve program began in the late 1970s, it's unlikely that the 1981 Chalone PN we opened a few weeks ago was made from vines that were a little younger. However, this was not at all a detriment.

The wine was a gift to me from a friend on the east coast. This bottle was purchased on release and has resided in what would appear to be a pretty basic wine cellar since then. When I pulled this out of the bag at dinner one night a few weeks ago at Restaurant 2117 in West LA, my dining companions' faces sank. The bottle looked kind of skanky, as if it had rolled around in the trunk of a 66 Corvair Monza for a summer or two. The color was a little on the brown side - I commented as to how it kind of reminded me of the color of aged Barolo, but my fellow drinkers weren't buyin' it. The cork came out in a couple of pieces but when I poured the wine into my glass, a glorious perfume wafted out into the restaurant.

All of a sudden, the folks at the table decided that just maybe the wine was worth drinking...

Although 1981 wasn't considered a great vintage for California in general, it wasn't all that bad either. This Chalone Pinot had developed some secondary aromas that were quite nice. It was delicate and very fragrant, with good acidity and leathery notes (aromatically and texturally) but a hint of sweetness carrying through the whole wine to the finish. It began to fade after about 15-20 minutes in the glass, but it was a real treat to have been able to enjoy this bottle that night.

This was bottle #1978 of 34.276 bottles produced. I wonder how many bottles still survive, and of those, how many are showing as well as this one did. For my tastes, the things that draw me to Pinot Noir are its ephemeral nature and the sense of pure chance that arises whenever an older bottle is opened. Maybe it's great, maybe it's not so great, but it's invariably interesting.

 

Tom Colicchio's South Australia Dinner 1 Nov, w/Torbreck, d'Arenberg & St Hallett

Chef Tom Colicchio visited South Australia earlier this year and returned to the USA quite inspired by the food and wine of the region. He'll be behind the stove on Monday, 1 November at Craft Los Angeles when he prepares a 6+ course dinner featuring the wines of Torbreck and d'Arenberg. One would have to believe that having spent some time with Dave Powell and Chester Osborne made quite the impression on Mr. Colicchio...

The South Oz evening will begin with a reception featuring the wines of St Hallett from the Barossa Valley. Once seated, diners will begin with a dry white from d'Arenberg (of McLaren Vale) and move on into a formidable lineup from Torbreck, beginning with their Woodcutter's Semillon, Viognier/Marsanne/Roussanne, and then on to the Steading (GSM) and The Struie, a Shiraz blended from fruit grown in the Barossa Valley and the Eden Valley. Dessert will be accompanied by one of the d'Arenberg "Noble" stickies.

The dinner also celebrates the launch of the Unlimited Flights To Australia sweepstakes, sponsored by SA and Qantas; the winner will receive just that: unlimited flights to Australia for a year. There will also be some extraordinary travel packages (including tours of the Penfolds Magill Estate in Adelaide) available at the dinner, so come prepared to work out an itinerary for your visit!

For reservations, email Anna Morini at AMorini@CraftLosAngeles.com or call 424.279.4180.

Click on the image below for more Information about this fantastic event!

 

Hirsch Vineyards Wine Dinner @ La Madia in Chicago, Nov 4th

Vigneron David Hirsch of the Hirsch Vineyard & Winery on the true Sonoma Coast will be hosting a wine dinner in Chicago on November 4th. La Madia Chef/Owner Jonathan Fox has created a menu to pair with the Hirsch Vineyard wines that will be servedto accompany dinner. On the carte are Pizza with Umbrian White Truffles, handmade pasta with ragu, and, one of Pinot Noir's favorite food matches: Porchetta. 

 

 

Hirsch will be pouring the 2007 and 2008 Bohan-Dillon Pinot Noirs, the 2007 Hirsch San Andreas Pinot Noir, and the 2008 Hirch Chardonnay. All of the wines are estate bottled, grown on the Hirsch property high in the hills south of Cazadero, California.

 

The cost for the evening is $87 per person and reservations may be made by contacting the restaurant at 312.329.0400.

 

A Most Memorable Solomon Burke Performance

The passing of Solomon Burke earlier this week reminded me of a remarkable summer evening back in 2003. The night was one of those perfect confluences of music, wine, and personal strife (sounds like my life in a nutshell)!

I had just begun the transiton from wine retail to the world of wine PR and was sort of "between steady employment" when Bob Golbahar from 20-20 Wines called. It seemed he'd gotten a call from an event organizer to provide the wine tasting component of a welcoming reception for the new editor of GQ Magazine. He apparently was a wine afficianado and they wanted a couple of experts on hand to talk about the wines and class up the joint, and since I could certainly talk about wine and I owned a suit that fit, Bob wanted me along to help out.

I arrived at the shop the next afternoon, packed up a couple of cases of wine from some top California producers (IIRC it was DuMol, Torbreck, Talley, and a Napa cultish Cabernet, the name of which escapes me) and headed over to Holmby Hills, a part of town that even people in Bel Aire and Beverly Hills aspire to. The venue turned out to be a sprawling mid-century house that might have been considered "architecturally significant" ahd it been designed by say, Neutra or Lautner but it was more influenced by that school of design and thus was nice but not really knockout. No matter, I was shown out to the poolside area where I set up the wines on the table provided us. A band was set up at the end of the pool and it struck me as kind of odd that the setup included a harp and a throne. Yes, a throne, like something a king sits on. My first thought was "Shit, they're probably going to be playing new age music and I'll have to listen to Vangelis covers all night long" but upon thinking it through, the throne didn't fit in with any sort of vibe one might encounter in a new agey touchy-feely band playing for a party, and what the hell, a harp could fit in with a lot of music (sort of - I'm ever optimistic).

It turned out that the entertainment was going to be provided by none other than Solomon Burke. Now, this was two years after he'd been inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and a year after the release of "Don't Give Up On Me", his well-received comeback album. And here he was, performing for a private party that I was working. The new GQ editor was as much a fan of great R&B as he was into wine and I suppose they wanted to make a big splash in his introduction to the Southern California celebrity contingent and Burke was probably more available that night than Aretha Franklin. Hell, I was impressed.

There were a lot of Hollywood A-listers in attendance once the party got rolling but it soon became apparent that they weren't necessarily wine people. Our wine expertise was spent on directing the revelers to the other end of the pool to the vodka bar (or maybe it was a Tequila or Mojito bar, does it really matter?) and by the time that Reverend Burke took the stage things were so under control that I moved closer to the stage to enjoy the music. This is more than can be said for the attendees. About thirty minutes into the set the only people paying attention to the performance were me and another guy who was as into the show as much as I was. Between songs we struck up a bit of conversation, mainly about how strange it was that all of these people didn't seem to have any awareness whatsoever of who it was onstage singing and his importance to American music. Some of these people wouldn't know culture if they saw it on a petri dish, much less on a stage, so I kind of at a loss about what to do about it, other than just listen. In all honesty, the band was pretty aware that the audience (such as it was) wasn't particularly a music crowd. They performed well, but the energy wasn't happening because there wasn't much response from the audience for them to feed off. It was a warm summer evening, Solomon Burke was in fine voice, he sang his hits along some songs from the latest album and it was kind of sad that he wasn't being paid attention to but still kind of inspiring that the show was as good as it was - he was performing for himself and for those of us who were paying attention.

About when the band started to wrap up the show and began "Cry to Me", I became aware of somebody behind me causing a ruckus. I glanced over my shoulder and it was the event organizer, directing the aformentioned ruckus in my general direction

I'd had a bit of a run-in with him earlier as I was setting up because I apparently wasn't wearing a black suit and appropriate tie. He had mistaken me for a bartender and I explained to him that I was not a bartender but one of his rent-a-wine-experts and that no specific instructions with regard to attire had been given to us. I continued by informing him that my dark blue Valentino suit had been good enough to get me by at numerous other events held in honor of people of greater notoriety than a mere magazine editor. He wasn't exactly pleased with my response (I was more rebelious in those days) but he realized that if he tossed my ass out of there at that point he'd be shy one wine expert and after muttering something under his breath about "freakin' wine people" he stomped off. I'm used to dealing with overly-stressed event organizers but this guy seemed to have other issues (maybe anger management?) and his approach to his team before the event seemed verging on malevolent (seething once it started), with his staff interactions being accompanied by threats and shouting and a lot of scowling and scrunched-up facial features. Whatever.

So when I realized that it was this same officious maladroit pitching a fit not only in the middle of a Solomon Burke performance but in the middle of the virtually empty expanse in front of the stage where anyone who deigned to look in the general direction of said stage could see and hear him ranting (over the music even), I thought it in my best interest to not run for cover but to at least stick around long enough to discover what it was I'd done that was so offensive to his sensabilities.

"YOUR'E A FUCKING WAITER AND YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO MINGLE WITH THE GUESTS AND YOU'RE NOT CARRYING YOUR TRAY AND WHERE'S YOUR TIE AND YOU'RE FIRED SO GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW!!!!!"

Now, I was sort of thinking to myself that he should have been grateful that I was one of the two people in the joint who were actually listening to (and enjoying) the music they'd paid so much for and I was about to point this fact out to him when the other guy standing there turned to the organizer and calmly said "no, let him stay".

"And just who do you think you are to tell me what to do?" said the organizer.

"I'm Jim Nelson, the editor of GQ and it's my party and he can stay."

"Well" the organizer sputtered, "when the show is over get back to a table somewhere and don't irritate the guests." He stomped off into the night and I thanked Nelson for coming to the rescue in such a gallant manner and I enjoyed the rest of the set. The band beat it the hell outta there after the set was through, probably happy to have the money in their pockets and to have this gig behind them.

Jim came over to the wine table afterwards and tasted through the wines we were pouring and knew about each of the producers. We got to talking about an interview he'd done with Sean Thackrey a few months previously and I made a few suggestions about other interesting wine people who might be of interest to people in the GQ demographic. He seemed like a real person, not the Hollywood "scrape beneath the tinsel and you'll find more tinsel" celebrity type. Maybe that's why he's still at GQ, lo these many years later.

Perhaps the underlying theme of the night was "do more than the right thing". Solomon Burke didn't have to perform as well as he did, given the lack of a receptive audience, yet he still sang to the people who were thrilled to see one of the world's great singers that close up. Jim Nelson could have watched as I got bounced out of the venue but stepped in and used his new position and its authority to beat back a bully. I got to see Solomon Burke, got to talk to at least a few people about some swell wines, and I think that the night ended up back at 20-20 with us smoking cigars, and drinking Donnhoff TBAs into the wee hours.

But back to the music....I only saw Solomon Burke perform once more after that evening. In 2008 he opened at the Hollywood Bowl for Etta James. Now, I like Etta just fine. She's looking and singing well since her bariatric surgury and the crowd loved her set. But Burke blew her away. His band was much larger than at the GQ party, including probably a dozen of his children as backup singers. He took the stage and didn't relinquish it in any manner for 45 minutes, singing from atop his throne with enough command and power to reach the farthest rows at the top of the Bowl. It was a stunning set, full of the power, majesty, and control that one hopes to hear from a classic artist such as Solomon Burke.

 

Martian Ranch & Vineyard Debuts @ Santa Ynez Celebration of Harvest

The first releases from Martian Ranch & Vineyard debuted over the weekend at the Santa Barbara County Vintners' Association Celebration of Harvest event. We poured Viognier, Grenache Blanc, Rosé of Grenache, and Syrah; the wines were very well recieved all around.

Martian Ranch & Vineyard is a property on Alisos Canyon Road in Los Alamos. The estate vineyard is farmed biodynamically, with consultant Philippe Amenier assisting with the overall growing regimen. The first wines from the property will be from the 2011 vintage, but until then the Martian Ranch wines are are being crafted by Brett Escalera of fruit sourced from vineyards in the Santa Ynez area.

Diane and Nan have their gamefaces on (and donned sunglasses) for the trip to the site of the tasting....

Due to the nature of alphabetization, the Martian Ranch table was right next to Rick Longoria's table. The near-legendary Santa Ynez winemaker and blues aficcionado has been a great source of advice to Nan and Martian Ranch over the past few years so it was great to be able to pour our wines alongside his.
Kathy and Nan behind the table

One topic that arose a couple of times was that people seem to expect ultra-ripe, full-bodied wines, regardless of the grape variety. Below, Nan explains that the Martian Ranch Viognier ideal is not to concoct a goopy-gloppy overoaked, highly-extracted syrupy fruitbomb milkshake-consistency wine, but that she's striving to make a Viognier that bears a lot of resemblance to say, Condrieu from the Northern Rhône. Elevated alcohol levels are okay if there's enough acidity and fruit to make it work. People got it after tasting the wines. Well, most of them did...

Nan expounds on the concept of terroir and how it pertains even to purchased fruit...

The Martian Ranch Rosé of Grenache was extremely popular. The result of a saignée of juice after four days of cold soaking, this rosé is rather dark for what might otherwise be a "pink wine" but it showed beautifully, particularly in the heat. Over the course of the day we heard several times from people "I only like red wine but it's kinda hot and that rosé looks kinda dark and looks real cold so I guess it'd be alright if I tasted it. But don't tell my friends, okay?" Needless to say, they loved the wine and no reputations were besmirched in the process.

Diane explains the Martian Ranch rosé approach to Rick Longoria.

The Martian Ranch table was quite popular throughout the day. We almost poured everything we brought with us (fortunately it was only a three hour long tasting). The Grenache Blanc showed well (particularly with the short ribs that Chef Budi Kazali of the Ballard Inn was serving). The Syrah was served with just a little chill on it, ideal for such warm weather conditions. It was a remarkable showing for a first-time winery and bodes well for the future.