Paloma, SAMsARA, What a Pair-A!

So often restaurant wine dinners are extravagant and obvious: why, yes, that tannic Cab is no mistake aside the steak. And how the Chablis-like Chard sings with the whitefish sautéed in the very same wine!  

So that’s why the recent SAMsARA dinner at Paloma on March 31 subtly surprised. The first of five delicious courses kicked off with—horrors!—a red wine. A chilled red wine. That was a 2022 Grenache from Spear Vineyard, a lighter, livelier version of the grape. SAMsARA winemaker Matt Brady--an efficient, ebullient host for the evening--called it "crunchy," which pleased me to no end as in my notes just prior I used the same term, meaning either I have a perceptive palate or we both love peculiar if precise adjectives. Its mineral, playful notes perked up with the Miliken Farms Japanese sweet potato, "brûléed" with a brown sugar BBQ sauce, hit with a bit of aioli, then strewn with sesame, scallion, and a vivid pickled ginger. Between the off-beat wine opening and the grounded yet vibrant first dish, everyone around the boisterous long table had to readjust their expectations for the evening. Very good was a bar at mere ankle-height for this crew.

The second course was spring itself on a plate, Tutti Frutti sugar snap peas, artfully sliced to expose their pretty innards, tossed with a rose dressing just faintly floral, crispy guanciale, and pickled red onion (a nice nod back to the pickled ginger in the previous course--it was that kind of sly segueing that made the evening even more memorable). The peas were buried in an avalanche of grated Pecorino, rich and salty. A steely 2022 Zotovich Chardonnay provided a laser focus to keep cutting the dish into sharper diamonds of delight. 

It turns out the process for the pairings began when Brady showed up with 18 wines for the Paloma staff, led by the unassumingly talented Paloma chef John Parker, to consider. Those flavor profiles got the kitchen's team mind spinning, and coming up with delights like the third course: a grilled oyster mushroom skewer--with all of that good red oak smoke inside--hiding a line of luscious Drake farms chèvre and also atop a shallow pool of green goddess, the two different creaminesses combining as a perfect complement to the mushroom umami. It needed a bit of textural balance that it got in two clever ways, one more typical--pepitas--and another spot-on, if oddball--toasted quinoa. The wine pairing for this course might have been the most by-the-book, but as Brady pointed out, "Pinot Noir is what we're best known for," so how could we complain? Especially when it wasn't just Pinot, it was 2022 Bentrock Vineyard PN, which Brady rightfully called "a rock star, an A+ vineyard." The wine's lean but far from mean raciness, that hint of wildness, unlocked even more flavor from the terrific dish it accompanied.

 

To be honest, they could have sent me home at that point a sated, elated man. I actually made sure to share a revised version of that old Borscht Belt saw to my nearby table mates, “Such good food—and such enormous portions!” And that was even prior to the fine servers dropping Snake River Farms wagyu tri-tip in front of me: not one, not two, but three hearty slices of precisely medium rare steak. A classic peppercorn au poivre sauce and scatter of chopped chive made the dish from Santa Maria but also from Ste. Marie, if you know what I mean, a culinary mash-up that completely worked. Plus, the humble inclusion of charred cabbage carried along the good time from the grill theme in the least pretentious, yet oddly scrumptious way. 

Brady poured one of his favorites of his own wines for this course, a 2021 Zotovich Syrah (the current release is the 2022). The 100% stem inclusion gave the wine a serious backbone, but only a hint of the green that stems can offer a wine. No, this was all about black pepper, as if it had its own au poivre sauce. Who needs a Cab when a Syrah can be this wonderful?

You know, when I started this I thought I might skip a typical course by course discourse, but I couldn't help myself. Writing this is such a lovely way to re-experience the delight of a night. And sure there was dessert, fortunately piquant and bright and light as these things tend to go--doesn't graham cracker crust seem somehow less dense? And toasted meringue, well, that's just air that's somehow spun from egg white and sugar--you could eat a bucket of that and it would barely register, no? Grapefruit curd is a fruit, so pretty much salad. White chocolate pearls are precious textural crunch and more eye candy than candy-candy, right? What's more, we washed it all down with a 2023 Blanc de Blanc that had the good breadiness you want from a sparkling wine but also a snappy depth and its own citrus bite. Another brilliant pairing that made the food better as the food made the wine better.

Kicking things off Brady made clear the SAMsARA mantra, "Let the site shine, don't put our fingers on the scales." That's a way to think of the entire evening, an unfussy yet artfully skilled celebration of gorgeous fruit and produce and proteins that would make any Santa Barbaran proud.

WOPN 2025: Old Friends

One of the reasons I love going to World of Pinot Noir is that I've gone to WOPN before. Even better, many people I really like go year after year, or go AWOL for a few and then reappear and it's as thrilling as when the magician brings his missing assistant in a flash back to the stage. I love wine, obviously--just count the thousands of words I've spilled about it in my life. But I love people more. And lord knows, we need community right now. So thanks for all of that, WOPN. 

So what to my wondrous eyes should appear pouring at The Hilt table than Patrick Reynolds. I knew he had been working there for a few years now, but he will always be one of Santa Barbara's best bartenders in my head--even winning a Foodie from the Indy way back when--and he started the Farm-to-Bar Tuesdays at Wildcat/Bobcat with Shaun Belway. A man with impeccable taste and boundless creativity, he's always good for a few fun stories along the way, too. Plus, he was pouring Matt Dees' as ever norm-setting wine from The Hilt. This was winning WOPN bingo. (That got reinforced when the person tasting beside me was Don Schroeder, director of winemaking at Sea Smoke.)

It was a delightful flight of nine wines, so I won't write about them all. But some important lessons: evidently the talk around the water cooler, as Patrick put it, is Radian is Chardonnay, Bentrock is Pinot Noir. (Here's hoping I don't have it introduce you to two of Sta. Rita Hill's wildest, most wonderful vineyards.) Or to put it another way, Bentrock Pinot is a dog--"A wine that hugs you--thanks, I needed that!" while the Radian Pinot is a cat, and says, "No love until I kill you." That's all Reynolds. The festive and fabulous sparkling is hand riddled, so Patrick is happy they don't make more of it (it's at 125 cases now). And then the Estate 2022 Pinot, a blend of all three Hilt vineyards (Puerta Del Mar too) and a bit of Sanford & Benedict whole cluster, well, it's not as singularly distinctive but it is all the yummy, and it costs a lot less. Sign me up.

Even more than wondrous moment above, my orbs might have done the cartoon sproing out of my head when I spied Aaron Watty. The lucky of you might remember him from his days as a server at bouchon, or his very small production but high quality Big Tar Wines. Heck, I even wrote an Indy feature about a dinner he once chefed himself featuring his wines back in 2015. But he hightailed it from these parts for a bit, down at The Rose in Venice Beach. So to see him at the Joyce Wine Company Table was a delight. Turns out Joyce took over the rundown Ventana Winery in Soledad in 2020, and has slowly been restoring it, now with Watty's help as an assistant winemaker. 

The winery has a Joyce label that's all priced at $25 a bottle, "fresh, charming, easy drinking everyday wines," as they put it, from Albariño to Syrah. Then there's the Russell Joyce label, higher end, club member only, and also single vineyard goodies. I got to taste two of these, the 2023 Rusell Joyce Pinot Noir from Pelio Vineyard from the hilltops overlooking Monterey Bay on the Carmel Coast. "It brings the salinity I'm familiar with," Watty points out, comparing it to the fruit he knew from Duvarita Vineyard in Santa Barbara County. It was clean, fresh, bright. The 2023 Russell Joyce PN from Cortada Alta I liked even better, a hearty, very typical Santa Lucia Highlands, deep, dark berry Pinot from the highest elevation in the AVA. Watty told a great story of how Joyce could drive grapes carefully down the precipice-edged hill in perfect a little-to-the-left, a little-to-the-right correction balance, earning Aaron's trust, and paralleling the ways Joyce can finesse his way between tension and harmony with his wines.

Speaking of Aarons, it's always imperative to visit Aaron Walker from Pali Wine Co. at WOPN. (Yes, it seems I only hang out with really tall winemakers, now that I think about it, not that you have a photo of Walker here.) I've known him since he served wine in our house as part of the we need to bring it back again Indy series Make Me Dinner (and the unsaid, And Pour Me Wine) in 2013. My apology to him was he was my last table to visit on Friday, and I only hope I wasn't as blurry as my notes of the tasting are. The two big news item he share were that their Funk Zone tasting room was scheduled for a big remodel and that Pali in general is going focus more on their own Sta. Rita Hills vineyard, planted in 2012 in Gypsy Canyon. That direction bodes well based on my taste of the 2020 PN Pali Vineyard that nails what SRH can do; my notes was, "always what you want from where you want." Each of the 7 different clones used for this estate wine is hand-harvested separately and then fermented and aged individually, so Walker and his team can blend and balance as they see fit. That blend is then barrel-aged for a year-and-a-half in 50% new French oak, 50% neutral. The result is 100% scrumptious. Also notable was Pali's last offering from the renowned Fiddlestix Vineyard, a 2021, that practically vibrated with the tension of acid and fruit.

While Aaron Walker gets to focus on Pali's own fruit, Matt Brady continues SAMsARA's fine project--finding the best Santa Barbara sources and making the best wine possible from each. (Note I didn't get a photo of Matt or his wines, so the above image is from the winery's website--I'm such a writer first, or is that old guy first/last, who didn't grow up with social media--thankgod.) He even flipped the Hilt's water cooler script, pouring captivating 2021 Radian Pinot and 2022 Bentrock Chardonnay. Both exemplified what I've come to think of as SAMsARA's signature--each wine will surprise you with the depth of what it brings. I was going to say a kind of Phil Spector Wall of Sound but: 1) no one members what that means ("River Deep - Mountain High" anyone?), and 2) Spector was a crazy, murderous bastard, so why drag him into it. Brady's wine makes you want to contemplate, not kill, and then sigh in happiness considering their profundity. 

Speaking of profound, it would be hard to calculate all the good Karen Steinwachs has done for our region's wine industry. As you can see, she's not afraid to get her hand's dirty (again, not my photo). She's, and this list isn't exhaustive: a director and chairperson emeritus at WOPN; president of the Women Winemakers & Culinarians Foundation (who just had what looks like a great festival and I missed it all and I'm sad--my schedule is too crazy!); kindly helped staff the Santa Barbara Vintners table all weekend while other members off SBV were off in Korea and Japan, trying to build the SB brand there. She's always good for a few incisive quips but what's better, for making gorgeous wines as Seagrape Wine Co. At the SBV table she was pouring a 2022 Jump Up Pinot from Hibbits Ranch Vineyard. Matt Kettmann--speaking of old friends--wrote this about it in his 95 point Wine Enthusiast write-up: "Lovely aromas of raspberry, mulberry and black plum are decorated in complex waves of thyme and pepper on the nose of this single-vineyard expression from a vineyard just east of Lompoc. The zippy palate is brisk with pomegranate and raspberry flavors that are enlivened by sumac, cinnamon and blood orange touches." Exactly. Karen joked, "It includes all the clones [ten]. And yes, Michael Benedict was involved in its planting."

And yes, Gray Hartley of Hitching Post Wines was involved in WOPN. He and his partner Frank Ostini have been making SB Pinot for 40 years. (Heck, that was the year Mike Wallace grilled some rich New York jagoff about his future political ambitions on 60 Minutes.) Gray, ever with a twinkle in his eye, just loves making people happy with wines, and the occasional bad joke. For example, he told me that when people come up and tell him they knew of his wines before an Academy Award-winning film blew them and the Hitching Post restaurant up, he replies, "That's BS," and waits for their shocked expression before following up, "Before Sideways." While H-P's current releases were spot on, it's also good that at WOPN Hartley likes to open up older vintages to help prove SB Pinot manages just fine. After all, most of us don't cellar stuff away, especially given what real estate costs round these parts--square footage has to go to people sleeping and not wine bottle snoozes. One such pour was a 2001 from Fiddlestix Vineyard that was completely unbricked, fresh and fruit-driven to the point you would never guess it was old enough to drink itself. 

Heck, so is World of Pinot Noir at 25. Long may it pour/roar.

To Syrah, with Love

 

While the term Rhone Rangers always makes me think of winemakers astride giant wine bottles in Monument Valley--"Heigh ho, Nebuchadnezzar, away!"--the serious side of me never minds a ride with a few glasses of Syrah (or Grenache or Mourvedre or...). For as Santa Barbara legend Bob Lindquist put it, quoting Jim Fiolek, "Syrah delivers what Merlot promised." 

All of that is a far too fanciful way to introduce a quick look at the Santa Barbara Rhone Rangers' recent event on February 4, a Syrah tasting that took viewers on a quick tour of the county. Moderated by Lamar Engel of The Wine Militia (sorry, but by now that's a name that has to change, no?), it featured a stellar winemaker cast with brilliant bottles to boot:  

 Larry Schaffer of tercero wines with his 2014 Syrah - Larner Vineyard, Ballard Canyon 

Matt Brady of SAMsARA Wines with his 2017 Syrah - Zotovich Vineyard, Sta Rita Hills  

Kristin Bryden of Zaca Mesa with her 2016 Syrah - Black Bear Block, Estate Vineyard, Los Olivos

And the aforementioned - Bob Lindquist of Lindquist Wines with a barrel sample of his 2019 Syrah - Bien Nacido Vyd Z Block, Santa Maria Valley  

The group was wise, entertaining, and sometimes geeky, even entering into a clone discussion of Syrah as if it were all finicky like Pinot Noir or something! (Although they seemed to agree that site trumps clone for making a good wine.) Whatever the topic, this free Zoom also made clear Santa Barbara winemaking stands tall (and often foot stomps hard). 

And, perhaps, underlined one of the "problems" for creating a vinous Santa Barbara County identity. For this event featured four delicious syrahs (and we were lucky to taste three of them, all except for the barrel sample, and for that we swapped in a Jaffurs 2016 Syrah Bien Nacido Vineyard, which was a gorgeous monster, btw) that made clear site and winemaking will lead you to very different expressions of the same grape. The tercero, at just 12.9% ABV, lured you in to its loveliness, with a floral character the others didn't touch. It's the kind of wine that forces you to wake up and be aware, which is a good thing. The SAMsARA, with Brady's fondness for whole cluster, added a pleasing, despite the words I'm going to use, vegetal funk--a unique wine that made you keep sipping more. The Zaca Mesa, from the warmest location (and the SB vineyard that first planted Syrah way back when--we got a lot of history, too), had a fascinating depth and spice. And then Bob's wine--well, we don't know as we couldn't have any, but how could it not rock having been made by one of our county's founding wine fathers?

Even better, the SB Rhone Rangers will be doing more of these events, so go check out what they have to offer. And drink their wines--you won't get one expression of anything, but you will get a scrumptiously expressive everything.