Green Drinks is an informal social gathering/networking event for folks that are environmentally minded. Cross pollinate, make new friends, catch up with old ones, and maybe even sprout an idea or three.
Green Drinks approaches a different host each month who selects the venue of their choice.
Green Drinks Ventura County: http://www.venturagreendrinks.co.nr/
Murphys Calaveras County California: think wine, not beer!
So you didn’t know that Murphy’s California is a big name in wine? Check out this article from the Los Angeles Times Travel section for more!
Although the author didn’t mention my favorite Calaveras County winery, Twisted Oak, you can see why this is a fun town to visit! Last time I was there was in 2003 when I gave a featured poetry reading hosted by Nila NorthSun. No wine tasting for me on that trip however–I was 6 months pregnant! We just visited there between skiing Badger Pass and camping in Yosemite and skiing Bear Valley and camping at Calaveras State Park– and I tasted my way through town! More to come on that soon!
In the meantime, see what the LA Times has to say: Murphys rings in St. Patrick’s Day with green wine – Los Angeles Times. which advises that “this town knows how to have a good time, with 18 wine-tasting rooms within a few blocks of one another.”
“You can literally sip wine from one end of town to the other,” says River Klass, who owns two restaurants on Main Street.
“I think Murphys is just a cool little walking, pedestrian-friendly town,” says Dorian Faught, owner of the Murphys Historic Hotel and Restaurant.
The hotel features nine rooms, each named after the famous guests who have stayed there, including Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant and Susan B. Anthony. A short walk from elm-lined Main Street is picturesque Murphys Community Park, which has a white gazebo (also with shamrocks on it) and bubbling Murphys Creek running through.
New Belgium Mothership Wit. In
its first foray into organic brews, New Belgium Brewing of Fort
Collins, Colorado, struck gold with this Belgian-style wheat beer. The
brewers practice what they preach by incorporating green building
design, using wind power and promoting transportation alternatives;
after a year’s employment, brewery workers get a customized bike.
Here’s a list by the Beer Sommelier of his 10 Best organic Beers.
Now where to find some of it around here?
March’s host Remy Charest writes:Wine Blogging Wednesday 55: North vs South – a bipolar roundup
It’s always fascinating to see the many ways people can interpret a proposition. So what did the participants in the 55th Wine Blogging Wednesday make of this idea of confronting North vs South?
From Michigan Riesling to Tasmania Pinot Noir, from Spanish Garnacha to Tennessee Chambourcin, there sure were a lot of possible pairings (and threesomes, and foursomes) put together by the 33 participants who took up the challenge.
Here’s the Vino V White Hawk syrah I compared with hazyblur’s Adelaide Plaines. For how other wines fared, check out Remy’s Round-Up including other shiraz/syrah pairings and more here.
Rumor has it next month will be KOSHER wines! Find out more here. Whoo hoo!! I just happen to live a few miles away from HERZOG, which makes buckets of kosher wine! Perfect excuse to get over there and do some serious tasting!
I’m fortunate to live in the prime grape growing and wine producing region of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties–and, until just recently, just a few miles away from the Grateful Palate warehouse facility in Oxnard (it’s now in Fairfield near Napa).
I’ve long been a fan of Adam Tolmach’s Ojai Vineyard from back in the day when I had a print column “The Art Predator” for a weekly where I reviewed art shows, restaurants and whatever took my fancy, and was paid primarily in trade, mostly food and drink (I could never say I was a starving artist.)
We had lots of trade at an Ojai restaurant which carried Adam Tolmach’s wines and I was thrilled to get to know many of them by the glass. It seemed that wine maker Tolmach often dropped off the odd bottle or two of wine that wouldn’t find its way onto a typical list or store. In particular, I remember being floored by one of his syrahs back in 1998.
So when I learned that Michael Meagher was a disciple of Adam Tolmach and was making his own wines under the Vino V label (V as in Ventura), that his limited edition wines (600 cases) are carried by restaurants like Campanile, and that his daughter was in my son’s kindergarten class, I wanted to get my hands on some and try it!
With this Wine Blogging Wednesday hosted by Remy Charest, pitting north vs south, here was a perfect opportunity to put a tasting together using a Vino V wine. Continue reading
They say artichokes are brutal when it comes to pairing with wine.
But as I discovered with this risotto last night, that if you braise the artichokes in bacon grease (along with the onion, mushrooms, and garlic) syrah is an awesome match.
I wanted to make something special for my husband to lure him into participating with me for this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday’s North vs South challenge, with Vino V’s 2005 White Hawk Vineyard Santa Barbara California syrah from the Northern hemisphere going up against a hazyblur Adelaide Plains 2003.
I found a lovely rack of already frenched lamb which he dolled up with a nice rub: kosher salt, black pepper, fresh rosemary and a few twists of Italian seasonings with sea salt.
For a side dish, I decided to make the artichoke risotto I’d been promising him. I had no official recipe but this is what I came up with and it tasted great! Here’s the recipe: In a large preheated iron skillet, Continue reading
Two questions: Where do you cellar your wine? And what should I drink from mine?
in the late 1950s, my grandfather built a wine cellar into the hillside of his house, the floor made from water-washed Japanese stones used as ballast in a ship almost a hundred years ago.
He enjoyed his wine, but it didn’t take anything too exotic to please him–he drank chianti by the jug, the more unusual or interesting wines in the cellar supplied by friends. One day I will inventory what’s there and see if any of it is drinkable, much less valuable for more than a conversation or two.
Conveniently for me, my grandfather’s nearly empty wine cellar is less than a mile from my house as the crow flies, right up the hill from where we live near the beach. It’s just far enough away to keep me from ransacking it regularly, and it allows me to forget exactly what’s in there allowing the wine to age well past what it would if it was underneath our house which also maintains cellar like temperatures most of the year.
For this Remy Charest’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, I decided to do syrahs (no surprise to anyone who knows my fondness for them!), and to compare Vino V’s White Hawk syrah with something from Down Under. So yesterday I headed up to the cellar to see what I had stored that would be a worthy competitor to Michael Meagher’s wine. Continue reading
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 