(WBC Post 1) Wine Predator Drinks Up 1st Wine Bloggers Conference

Wine Predator Drinks Up 1st Wine Bloggers Conference

I’m drinking an iced coffee on a warm sunny day in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, from the lobby of the Flamingo Hotel, host of the First Wine Bloggers Conference and watching cases of wine roll by which they are opening rapidy as they set up for the next tasting of Sonoma wines.

Wine bloggers wander around a bit dazed; the women all seem to be drinking coffee as we all gear up for more wine! I seem to be the only person publicly bloggging; maybe people are in their rooms writing but I doubt it. Last night when Gary Vaynerchuk gave the keynote, he asked how many people in the room have a blog and most of them raised their hands–probably 150 of the 180 people in the room. But when he asked how often people post, only 10 of us post 5 or more times a week. (And yes, I was one of the 10!)

Since I drove in last night (in the new wonderful soon to be written up car!), I have tasted 10 or so Zinfandels from the Dry Creek Valley,  tasted a half dozen wines from New Zealand, walked through the organic and biodynamic winery Quivera with the winemaker Steve Cantor,  enjoyed an incredible lunch of local foods and venison navy bean soup and Quivera wines, and followed by two breakout sessions. My head swims with wine and wine words.

Adventures and details to follow soon–after I taste some more Sonoma County wines! After that, we have dinner tonight at Sebastiani with keynote speaker Alice Feiring author The Battle for Wine and Love or How I Saved the World from Parkerization which I recently devoured and can’t recommend highly enough!

Am having a fantabulous time–wish you were here!

P.S. Since they ran out of nametags, I get to wear my Lettre Sauvage letterpress beautiful card around my neck!!

What to drink with your Thanksgiving feast: sparkling shiraz!

A sparkling shiraz is a refreshing and festive surprise of a wine which marries well with any holiday –turkey, duck, goose–or even ham!

Red, White, Green?

organic vs commercial produce: pay the price?

I buy organic as often as possible because produce grown organically is much easier on the earth. However, I often wonder whether it’s worth the extra money to get organic with regards to pesticide residue and for my family’s health, not just the Earth’s health.

One source for this kind of evaluative information is the Environmental Working Group. Its Web site lists 44 fruits and vegetables ranked by the amount of pesticide residue each contains and they offer a small wallet guide with the rankings. Knowing which fruits and vegetables have the most pesticides and which are cleanest can help you decide when to buy organic.

The EWG’s “dirty dozen” are peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, grapes (imported), pears, spinach, and potatoes. The “cleanest 12″ are onions, avocados, sweet corn (frozen), pineapples, mangos, sweet peas (frozen), asparagus, kiwis, bananas, cabbage, broccoli, and eggplants.

Food for thought: The best choice for the health of your family and the planet may not be between organic and commercial, but local and exotic. The best choice is to purchase food produced locally by frequenting local farmers markets; even better to choose locally produced organic goods. Where I  live the soil is some of the best in the world–the flood plain here is several miles deep–plus we have generous weather with lots of sun, temperate days and the rare night of freezing weather. (Of course the region is essentially a desert with under 15″ of annual rainfall a year!)

And a few questions for me to find more about: how green is wine? which wines, red or white, are greener? does organic make that much of a difference–either for my health or the planet’s? which winery businesses and agricultural practices should I support with my purchases? how much does it really cost the planet to drink wines produced on another continent? what does it mean that imported grapes on the the dirty dozen list?

Grateful Palate Warehouse Sale: thanks for 2 great cases!

Art Predator Scores 2 Cases at Grateful Palate Warehouse Sale!

Art Predator Carries out 2 Boxes of Wine!

Art Predator Carries out 2 Boxes of Wine!

Yes, that’s me there, carrying out two cases of wine, 4 pounds of bacon, and two jars of jam that I scored at the Grateful Palate Warehouse sale today! Even though many of the prices were higher this fall than they were in the spring (from 10-20% higher…which I guess isn’t too bad considering the fate of the US dollar when compared to the Australian).

What did I get, you ask? Which wines will I be drooling over and writing about this fall and winter?

3 Sparking reds! Hmmn,  should be 4–somehow I missed out on a bottle of the $8 Paringa, but my friend Kathy got some, I know; hopefully she’ll share! I did get one bottle of Trevor Jones ($14), and passed on the magical Majella ($25)  we enjoyed last spring in favor of something very unusual and impossible to buy anywhere else in the US–2 bottles of “The Doctor” sparkling shiraz by The Willows for $23. After GP imported it here, they found out they couldn’t sell it because of the word Doctor on the label. Can you say “duck”? We’ll have one of these at Thanksiving, for sure!

Since I’ve been on a mourverde kick since I tasted the 2002 RBJ Mataro last summer, and since I love the 2001 mourverdre/grenache theologicum, I picked up a Veritas 1998 shiraz/mourverdre, another RBJ Theologicum mourverdre/grenache (I know, another one–but I like it!), and a 2000 Hutton-Vale grenache/mourverdre. There was a bottle of a GSM somewhere in the warehouse that I meant to pick up, but I lost track of it in all of the excitement. Or maybe someone picked it up before I made it back over there with my cart!

Then there’s my collection of Barossa Valley shiraz–2 of the wonderful Chris Ringland 2006 Ebenezer shiraz which is about all gone from the stores and the warehouse ($18), a Barossa Scholar shiraz (project of a local school), not to forget the  $9.99: Digger’s Bluff Stray Dog 05 GSM (made by the son of the granddaddy of Australian wine I hear) plus a Lens & Cooter 2003 Victor shiraz, and 2 cab/shiraz blends for the Big Monkey–McLean’s Farm 2002, and 2 Old Plains 2003 cab/shiraz.

Then there’s the oddball: Tscharke Montpulciano 2006 which I just had to give a try ($17)–just because I didn’t like the tempranillo doesn’t mean I won’t like something else!

The most expensive wine of the day, and possibly the most exciting, is a 1998 Brothers in Arms shiraz. I think I will save that for a rack of lamb or duck. I found it a couple places on-line for $75; I took it home for $25!

Since I love my port, I picked up a bottle of tawny Jonesy for 20% off retail, and a bottle of the Barossa class port 2000 which blew my socks off last summer. A split of that went for $4.99 last spring but was up to $7.99 this fall. Ouch! I definitely liked things better when the dollar was stronger.

Who needs jewelry for Christmas? Wine’s just fine!

And a partidge in a pear tree!

No Burning Man Party: Bitch (Grenache) & Bubbly (Chateau Ste Michelle Blanc de Pinot Noir)

Burning Without The Man

The Man Burned Without Us

Somehow, all the hard core Burners I know stayed home from the Burn this year. Even Alan Sailer, who graced Yahoo’s news coverage and showed up on the New York Times on line coverage last year Continue reading →

R Winery’s Luchador Puts Up a Fight!

Art Predator hit 21! That’s 21,001 hits as of 8/10/08! I can drink now! Whoo-hoo! Good thing I’m legal since I consumed quite a bit of wine, like the Luchador below, tonight at the Animal Fair Party!

My favorite of course was an Aussie shiraz–R Winery’s Luchador Shiraz 2006! Pictured is “El Jefe;” we drank “Gigante”–there’s 4 different Luchadors to choose from!

No surprise this came from Grateful Palate Imports and was PERFECT for the tritip BBQ, roasted corn, chili beans! Luchador shiraz  can stand up to ANYTHING you might throw at it since it has so much flavor, liveliness, PERSONALITY!

We were battling for the bottle, I admit! At 15.5% alcohol, it’s a tad hot (and I didn’t get a chance to cool it a bit before we drank it), but remarkably well-balanced (at least that’s what several people remarked!)

And what a conversation starter! Seemed like everybody there had at least a taste as we shared glasses and conversation amongst good friends (like, wow, this is really good! for example…). You can find it for about $15, which is a great price for a wine with this much pizzazz. But hey, it’s a Chris Ringland wine–what else would you expect?? Continue reading →

A New Path to the Waterfall & trout for breakfast

Day 10: trout for breakfast

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Footsteps on the gravel in our campsite wake me.

THWACK! Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

It is 6:37am. We are at the BLM’s Tuttle Creek Campground a few miles and a thousand feet or so up from Lone Pine toward Mt Whitney Portal. Last night when we climbed into bed, it was raining and windy. Naked, listening to the rain on the roof of the van, looking out at the stars, smelling the wet sagebrush, hearing the creek nearby, full belly content after a wonderful meal at the Still Life Cafe in Independence, we realized we’d forgotten to pay the $5 for the campsite.

Which explains the THWACK–a ticket most likely lay under our windshield wiper. Continue reading →