Yearly Archives: 2011

What to eat with your Petite? Ideas from Ellen Landis at PS I Love You Symposium

After over three weeks on the road, and tasting wine in Idaho, Walla Walla Washington and the Willamette Valley in Oregon, I made it Monday July 25 to Jim Concannon’s birthday dinner to celebrate his 80th and Petite Sirah at the PS I Love You Petite Sirah Symposium Tuesday July 26 at Concannon Winery in Livermore. (Links to participating wineries and those discussed below the jump; here’s a blog post by Jo Diaz about the events. Pictured below is Jim Concannon’s son John honoring him; pictured above is Karen Leslie who sat next to me).

What to eat with your Petite? If a summer time dinner or lunch outside under the table grape arbor at Concannon is any indication, it’s barbeque tri-tip, chicken, and beans!

But there is more to life than barbeque, so at Tuesday’s Petite Sirah symposium, Ellen Landis, Sommelier, proprietor of Landis Shores Luxury Inn, and author of Ellen on Wine shared some of her ideas on which foods pair best with Petite Sirah. I tried valiantly to take notes which she spoke; unfortunately, many of them were lost when I lost my internet connection! But basically, her main point was:

Drink what YOU like.

Since there are different styles of Petite sirah, the question really is which style goes with which food.

A basic rule of thumb is to match or contrast–match heavy meals with heavier wine styles, match flavor profiles or contrast them. Avoid pairing delicate dishes (like sole) with a powerful wine like Petite.

Here are some specific ideas:

How to gain creaminess with Petite Sirah? Landis suggest beef stroganoff paired with Rock Wall 2009. She also had specific suggestions of which Petite Sirah would go best with beef or pork tenderloin. At lunch I sat with Rock Wall winemaker Shauna Rosenblum (and yes I will be blogging about her soon! What a great story!) and tasted her Rock Wall 2009 Gamble Ranch that afternoon. This wine retails at $30 and is very rich and creamy in a cream soda or root beer float kind of way, very spicy, maple syrup, and chocolate malt.

Ellen Landis noted that the French pair red wines with fish–so don’t be afraid! She says try a blackened salmon with a PS; Ellen paired hers with a fruity Michael David PS which is 50% PS with 50% Petite verdot.

While most of us think of Petite Sirah as going with meat, vegetarians can enjoy PS with eggplant parmagiana with a variety of petite sirah styles. PS stands up to the fullness of the sauce and the creamy mozzarella allows the tomato sauce to work well and not clash.

Cheeses with Petite Sirah are great as a dessert course. For most palates, the wine should be as sweet as the dessert Continue reading →

A Few Lessons & Photos from the Road: Idaho & Walla Walla

Hard to believe I’ve been on the road since July 2! In that time I’ve tasted wines from Idaho, Montana, and Washington, and I’ve spent quality time at wineries in Idaho and in Washington. I’ve tasted some fabulous wines from the Snake River AVA (Cold Springs vineyards pictured with owner Bill Ringert, Snake River winemaker Scott pictured, Cinder winemaker Melanie Krause pictured, Zhoo Zhoo and Hells Canyon family pictured below ) as well as Walla Walla (Sinclair Estates, Dunham Cellars, Amavi) and I’ve got lots of stories to share as well as tasting notes (subscribe!!)

Yesterday, Tuesday July 19, I spent the morning at Dunham Cellars with Eric Dunham then tasted through a number of wines including two reserve wines and a wine that Eric is making with actor Kyle MacLaughlan.

Then as a huge windy rainstorm rolled in, I did some writing at Walla Walla Roastery including the post that follows which I published at my The Write Alley blog. In it, I share two stories from the road–one about synchronicity and one about doing what you love which came from my interview with Eric.

My last stop in Walla Walla was to taste the wines and learn more about Amavi Cellars; pictured above is the beautiful new tasting room. There I met with Eric McKibben, son of Norm McKibben who was one of the first people to plant wine grapes in the region which he subsequently made into wine at Pepper’s Bridge (Amavi’s sister winery).

Now, after a day of soaking at Bagby Hot Springs,  I’m staying with friends on the coast in Newport, Oregon and gearing up to visit more wineries and learn more stories! I’m off to McMinnville tomorrow afternoon!! I’m ready for some Oregon PINOT NOIR!

Yesterday, Tuesday July 19, I spent the morning at Dunham Cellars with Eric Dunham then tasted through a number of wines including two reserve wines and a wine that Eric is making with actor Kyle MacLaughlan.

I have more stories to tell about these wineries in a subsequent posts, but in the meantime, here’s the post with two lessons from the road accompanied by photos of Eric Dunham with paintings that grace his reserve labels.

Tuesday Tips: Serve Up Some Synchronicity & Do What You Love I’m writing to you from Walla Walla Roastery, located not in the cute Main Street downtown of Walla Walla but out at the airport, home to a multitude of wineries! I spent the morning at Dunham Cellars interviewing winemaker Eric Dunham for my Wine Predator blog and a bigger wine writing project about family and sustainability. I’d like to say that I’d planned on talking with Eric but it just happened that way. I’d actually gone out there to talk … Read More

via The Write Alley

PS I Love You: Petite Sirah Symposium 7/26

As much as I am enjoying my NW road trip tasting and exploring and learning about NW wines in Idaho and Washington, I can’t stay here in Walla Walla any longer than today because I want to spend a few days in Willamette Valley before I zoom down to the Bay Area for the Petite Sirah symposium next Tuesday  June 26. I’ve also been invited to  the Jim Concannon Tribute Dinner the previous night which kicks off the Ninth Annual Petite Sirah Symposium at Concannon Vineyard. It’s also Jim Concannon’s 80th birthday,  so we’ll be celebrating 50 years of Petite Sirah and 80 years of life of this amazing thought leader in wine. (Photo montage by Jo Diaz).

According to this blog post “Concannon Is Pulling Out All of the Stops For Petite Sirah’s 50th Anniversary” by Jo Diaz:

It was Jim Concannon who was the first to embrace Petite Sirah as a variety, taking it from the obscurity of its hearty Burgundy days, and recognizing it as more than a simple blending grape. It was he who first labeled Petite Sirah as such in 1964 with a 1961 vintage.

Jim Concannon

Seven O’Clock
Dinner
The Arbor
Concannon Vineyard
4590 Tesla Road
Livermore, CA 94550

 Media Luncheon & Tasting of Petite Sirahs

Celebrate 50 years

Following the Ninth Annual Petite Sirah Symposium
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Lunch ~ 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Media Tasting ~ 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
The Arbor
Concannon Vineyard
4590 Tesla Road
Livermore, CA 94550

Learn more about Petite Sirah and PS I Love You, an industry advocacy group which also organizes “Dark &  Delicious” each February. This consumer tasting event introduces many to the delights of this definitely dark varietal paired with various tasty and delicious bites, many featuring pork! psliloveyou.org

Thanks to Jo Diaz of Diaz Communications and Wine Blog Org “Juicy Tales” for the invitation! I am very excited to be able to attend the event this year!

Check out her blog post Concannon Is Pulling Out All of the Stops For Petite Sirah’s 50th Anniversary to see a list of all the wineries involved as well as the wine bloggers and other media folks in attendance and you’ll see why this is a MUST attend event for Petite Sirah lovers, advocates, and wine media!

PS Sorry if you read this before I made all the Petit Sirahs into Petite Sirahs! I think I caught them all now! Please email if you ever see an egregious error! (Compliments and samples are nice too!)

NW & CA Wine Tasting Road Trip 2011: exploring “family” & “sustainability”?

Instead of going to my fifth Wine Bloggers Conference this July in Virginia (I went to Sonoma 2008, Sonoma/Napa 2009, Walla Walla 2010 and Lisbon 2009), since I wasn’t teaching summer school I decided to take advantage of the time off and have proceed on a wine tasting road trip that focuses on two big stories in wine: “family” and “sustainability.

It seems to me that just about every winery claims to be “family” run and operated, so much so that the term has lost its meaning.

Same with sustainability. As a lifelong environmental activist, and a UC Santa Cruz environmental studies major, so much of what’s passing as sustainability seems to be greenwashing. And just because a wine is “organic” doesn’t mean the winery is “sustainable.”

So to learn more about these two topics which I find to be intertwined, I have set out on a road trip to find and write about both sustainability and family–and I am taking my family along with me and we will be traveling as sustainably as possible in our 1990 VW Westfalia VW camper van.

Pictured up top: We’re camped in our 90 westy with our custom tie dye (I did it with lots of help from my husband and son!) along Granite Creek near Granite Creek Hot Springs in Wyoming south of Jackson; the Granite joins the Hoback which joins the Snake…more on that later! The wine, Hard Core by Core Winery, is a favorite of ours; my husband loves rhone blends with some cab in them–this is  60% Mourvedre and 25% Grenache from Alta Mesa Vineyard and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon from Santa Barbara Highlands vineyard. Aged 21 months in 70% new French and 30% American barrels and aged 7 months in the bottle. These folks are one of my favorite families in wine; yes I will be including them in this project!).

I will be blogging about as many wineries as I can along the way as I search out and meet “winery kids” to explore what it’s like growing up among the vines in the Wild West…and discussing sustainable practices too.

The plan is to use the blog posts as a backbone for a book about “Winery Kids” (a topic I personally find more interesting than winery dogs!) The book will ultimately include information about the winery, the family engaged in the winery, and the winery’s sustainable practices. Family life includes wine and food so the book will have family friendly and favorite menus matched with a wine or two from the winery and with at least one family recipe to go with the wine. While it won’t be a guide book to family friendly wineries, it will include wineries that are family friendly.

I’m starting out near the headwaters of the Snake River in Wyoming. Pictured above are two Idaho wines in our Grand Teton campsite that we had with elk burgers, and the same wines which we enjoyed the next night along Grassy Lake Road near Yellowstone with buffalo burgers!  (In case you’re wondering, I prefer elk. And both syrahs were different but awesome. More on that later.)

Then I’ll travel south then west and north west along the Snake River AVA in Idaho. Then I’ll drive north east to Walla Walla and along the Columbia to write about a Washington AVA or two, then head south into Oregon’s Willamette Valley, down to Sonoma and Napa and Santa Cruz. I intend to include Calaveras County in the Sierras and, later Temecula wine country in the south. Since I live in the central coast, I will attend to the region in my backyard during day and weekend trips.

Come along! It’s easy–just subscribe to this blog and you can read about our adventures from the comfort of your own computer!

And check out my twitter feed–that’s where I will be posting pictures and notes as often as possible.

Weekend Wine Warriors: #SauvBlanc Friday, Santa Barbara Nat Hist Museum Sat

YOU’RE INVITED FRIDAY June 24 2011:

“Please join us online, all day, from any time zone on Friday, June 24, 2011 to raise a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. By searching for conversations online mentioning #SauvBlanc you can see what the conversation is all about. By adding #SauvBlanc in your own online posts, you are PART of the conversation. Be a part of the wine tasting too – open a bottle (or several) of Sauvignon Blanc and let everyone know what you think, what food you enjoy along side the wine, what occasions are ideal for the wine, your favorite memories of the wine…it’s all relevant, it’s all fun!”

For Sauvignon Blanc Day, we enjoyed a 2009 Brancott Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand. Lots of lovely acidity and citrus, grapefruit, lime, lemon, a hit of white peach and nectarine, a screw top, and reasonable 12.5% alcohol.Widely available at a grocery store or restaurant near you for under $15; I found it on clearance for $7. I opened it on Wednesday and it was still in great shape by Friday.

I’m especially fond of this wine with arugala pesto so in honor of Sauvignon Blanc Day, my husband stuffed then grilled organic chicken breasts with oyster mushrooms, asparagus and my homemade arugala, rosemary and basil pesto with pine nuts and organic olive oil. On the side, I prepared a salad of organic arugala, basil, and cherokee tomatoes, all fresh from the farmers market, with fresh mozzarella and pine nuts. They all played well together!

June 25 will be quite a day for Santa Barbarians! Saturday is the HUGE Solstice Parade. Wildly decorated people will take over State Street and dance their way from one end to the other, concluding at a park where people can see the floats, dance to live music, and check out vendors. It goes on until 4pm but wine enthusiasts will bug out at 2pm and drive up the hill to the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum because YOU’RE INVITED SATURDAY June 25:

Saturday, June 25, 2011 2:00–5:00 PM
Tickets are still available day of/at the door $95.

“SWIRL, SIP, & SAVOR…wines from more than 70 Central Coast premier wineries complemented with savory and sweet delectable delights at the Santa Barbara Wine Festival™. Escape for an afternoon and enjoy the refreshing ambiance of being in nature as you take pleasure in tantalizing tastings of food and wine. This is a must-do summertime favorite and the wine festival you cannot miss. Proceeds benefit the Museum’s exhibits and science education programs for school children.”

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is a wonderful venue and a chance to mix it up with the beautiful people of Santa Barbara for a good cause–my son and another mom and her two boys were just up there a month ago to see the butterflies, the exhibits, the creek, and the raptors in rehab. The 70 Central Coast premier wineries and restaurants presenting savory and sweet delectable delights are all top notch. This is one classy event!

Read more about The Santa Barbara Wine Festival at the SB Museum of Natural History  on their blog. We were going to be out of town so I didn’t get myself a ticket–now we’re going to be here and I have to admit that, as much as I’d like to go, $95 is out of this Wine Predator’s budget!

Ventura County Wine Trail Celebration at Heritage Square Benefits FoodShare

Tomorrow’s 4th Annual Ventura County Wine Trail Celebration showcases the best local wineries as well as fine restaurants and local attractions and includes tastings of great artisan wines, delectable appetizers, and live music.

It’s also a launch for the latest edition of the Ventura County Wine Trail map which lists 17 wineries, but I couldn’t tell you which ones will be pouring except Herzog which publishes the map, did the facebook event page, and sent me a message telling me to visit them at Table #30.

Ventura County Wineries which might be participating include: Continue reading →

Pretty in Pink–Salmon & Pinot Noir: Father’s Day for Our Super Heroes

Since the Alaskan Copper River Salmon we found for Father’s Day was out of our budget at $33 pound, we made do with some fresh King salmon, simply prepared and lightly grilled with lemon, olive oil, pepper, and kosher salt.

And it was lovely, served with asparagus and basmati rice, for my husband, son and 90 year old father-in-law. The wine I chose was a 2006 Michel-Schlumberger pinot noir “Le Fou” and for dessert, I made a fresh strawberry and blueberry gallette with vanilla quark and vanilla ice cream which we enjoyed with a Penfold’s port. Yummy!

A little more about the wine: at the end of the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference, I went with a group to Michel-Schlumberger for a vineyard walk and wine tasting.  M-S is located in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma, a region most famous for its zinfandels, but M-S specializes in Bordeaux blends as well as a rhone blend and a small amount of pinot noir–a grape that very few people grow in Dry Creek, hence the name of the wine “Le Fou” or “The Fool.” Very generously, M-S gave us a 50% discount on any wine we chose to purchase that day. I invested in a case, most of which is gone, save a bottle or two of The Fool –since I bought 6 that day! (I think it retails around $30 so we got it for $15).

“Le Fou” grows on a steep slope in the most western portion of Dry Creek Valley,  on an eastern facing slope, a spot where the coastal fog creeps in and cools the vines making it possible to grow this “prickly” grape. The alcohol levels are still a bit high for a pinot (14.6% it says on the bottle) but the wine is nicely balanced–it doesn’t come across as too hot.

Be sure to serve this red wine (like all reds)  at cellar temp, not room temp. (That means in the low 60s not the 80s!)

What I like most is how complex it is: this pinot noir is not one of those simple one note strawberry pinots; it has a lot of bramble berries–raspberry, certainly, and blackberry, even a hit of blueberry (ok, not a bramble but a bush…) and some solid fresh cherry. There’s a bit of earth but it’s not very “truffley” –it’s actually more minerally.  The finish is long and rich.  It has nice body but it’s still a pinot, not a pinot passing as a full bodied wine.

What I also like about the Michel-Schlumberger is the care they take of the land: they have sheep, a pond, nesting birds, a “kitchen” garden, bees, and more. While they are not certified anything, they are sustainable by practice and by heart. I am looking forward to visiting the vineyard again this July with my 7 year old son!

I last tasted the 2006 M-S pinot noir in December during the pinot noir tweet up. I brought a bottle to a fundrasier for WEV (Women’s Economic Ventures), a holiday fair where I helped pour wine. This wine was clearly a favorite and I actually had to set the bottle aside to make sure I got some! I also brought this wine to a tasting at Burning Man; there were some amazing wines there and this one held its own. People were pleasantly surprised to discover it was a pinot noir from Dry Creek!

Not surprisingly, the color isn’t as pretty as it was years ago–it’s going a bit coral around the edges–but it is still pretty in pink.

Read on for our 2009 Father’s Day salmon dinner and wine!

Pretty in Pink Father's Day Celebration for Our Super Hero In the Pink Drink for Pre-Dad’s Day Celebration: Here’s MY SuperHero, sneaking in a nap between chapters of Melvin Beederman, Super Hero, one of their favorite chapter books to read and reread. And reread again. We couldn’t recommend Melvin more. The Dad comes highly recommended too. For the Big Monkey, aka Dad to the Small Boy, catching some extra shut-eye is a favorite weekend pastime. So is putting some sockeye salmon on the grill! Thank goodne … Read More

via Wine Predator