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

What to Pair with Copper River Salmon: Pinot Noir & other ideas

Since Copper River Salmon is currently available, I thought I’d repost this article from two years ago to remind you to enjoy some CRS while it is in season.

Read on for more about CRS paired with a Babich pinot noir from New Zealand and a Vino V pinot noir from the Santa Barbara area. We also tasted the wine with difference musical selections to see how the aural experience changed out palates.

Get your CRS while you can and enjoy it fresh with a pinot noir or try a Washington merlot! It’s also fabulous with The Ojai Vineyard’s Red (pinot-syrah blend) or White (currently a blend of 41% Riesling, 31% Chardonnay, 28% Viognier)–I tried them both on Friday night, and while they’re both winners, I preferred the more earthy, richer Ojai Red over the minerally Ojai White; both retail under $20.

Looking for something bubbly and cold to pair with your CRS? Try a sparkling rose.

Wine Blogging Wednesday #58: wine & music symbiotics A month or so ago I went to a tasting at Paradise Pantry in downtown Ventura where Vino V winemaker Michael Meagher showed off his chardonnay, his Confundido blend, his pinot noir, and his syrah. I knew the syrah and even used it for the Wine Blogging Wednesday North vs South Challenge, so I was excited to experience the others. At a rushed tasting that night (we had a documentary on loons we’d planned to catch that night and we were on bikes), I … Read More

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Zev Robinson’s Film “Dinastia Vivanco: Giving back to wine what wine has given us” Screens Tonight in SF, Friday in Davis

If only I had mastered being in multiple places at the same time…!

But I’ll be here in Ventura doing the #crushit twitter tasting then attending my son’s elementary school talent show (he and five other students are doing Bill Wither’s classic “Lean on Me” with guitar by a parent!)

If I could, I’d be at tonight’s 6:30pm San Francisco film screening of Zev Robinson’s new documentary Dinastia Vivanco: Giving back to wine what wine has given us at the Viz Cinema, to be followed by a wine tasting. And I’ve already seen the film–Zev sent me an advance copy. We were hoping to arrange a screening in Southern California…

If YOU can make it, reserve your spot: http://dinastavivanco.eventbrite.com/

The film traces the Vivanco family’s 100 year history in wine-making, and what each of the four generations contributed to the development of the business, in a unique story as much about vision, persistence and passion as it is about wine.

As a teenager in the early 60’s, Pedro Vivanco started delivering his family’s wine by bicycle, then rose to become a major but anonymous producer for well-known Rioja brands. In the process, and as a result of 40 years of collecting, he and sons Rafael and Santiago have created what many consider the world’s best wine museum, reflecting their passion for wine culture and philosophy of “giving back to wine what wine has given us.”

Canadian-British filmmaker Zev Robinson first visited the Dinastia Vivanco winery and museum in 2009 to film material for his series of documentaries on Spanish wine, and ended up creating an hour long film on the family saga that has played an essential, but little known role in the transformation of Rioja wine.

Founded in 1915 as a small, personal winery, the film traces the contributions of each of the four generations in building the winery. Now run by winemaker Rafael and Santiago Vivanco, the director of the Museum and Foundation, the documentary uses interviews with the family and others conducted during Zev Robinson’s five filming trips to create a narrative interweaving the family’s history with that of the evolution of La Rioja.

Read a blog post about the making of the film. Read more about it and see a preview: http://zevrobinson.com/video/making-the-dinastia-vivanco-documentary/

Tomorrow Friday June 10 at 5pm, Zev will screen the documentary at UC Davis at the Robert Mondavi Institute. Details here http://aic.ucdavis.edu/cwe/dv/ Advance registration required.

Zev is working on a few other wine related projects including one about the Douro, due to be released September 2011. He’s done two previews; this is the second one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SjhATsAiXY

And he’s doing a documentary about Catavino’s Gabriella and Ryan Opaz and the Wine Bloggers Conference. This preview includes an interview with me from last summer in Walla Walla: