Bringing the Wild, Wacky, and Wonderful to LA

There’s that great bit in the 1963 comedy-thriller-romance Charade where Audrey Hepburn’s character asks Cary Grant’s character, “You know what’s wrong with you?” to which he replies, “No, what?” and she pauses, then says in elongated exasperation, “Nothing.”

Well, Santa Barbara wine country is sort of like Cary Grant without the chin dimple. As writer and marketing maven Allison Levine from Please the Palate puts it, “What do they grow in Santa Barbara? Everything.” Which makes it tricky to introduce people to the wines of the area; where should one start?

Want to read the rest then do so at the Santa Barbara Vintners blog.

Squashing Wine-Food Pairings at the SB Vintners Grand Tasting

(photo courtesy Santa Barbara Vintners, credit Bob Dickey)

When the Santa Barbara Vintners call their April 23rd event a Grand Tasting, it’s far from marketing puffery. After all, River View Park in Buellton will contain over 100 wineries and 30 food purveyors, more than even the most ambitious, bottomless festival-goer could ever partake in. That said, a 3 to 1 ratio of wine to food tastes should do a pretty good job of giving anyone a lay of the Santa Barbara bounty and keep the person more sober than not (remember, spit! or at least sip-sip-dump! or share with a partner!).

That food runs the gamut, from Cowboy Ike’s Wine Jelly to the Hitching Post II, but this spring one of the features will be a crop in surprising early abundance (thank you, rain!), namely zucchini. Zucchini, however, isn’t the first food most winemakers turn to when looking for a pairing. “Zucchini, and most vegetables, are not super wine-friendly, especially when raw,” Dave Potter from Municipal Winemakers and Potek points out. “I’d be grilling the zucchini on the bbq with some olive oil and garlic and then drinking it along with all the other stuff I’ve put on the grill with a chilled red. I love chilled, lighter-bodied grenache with bbq’ed veggies.”

Indeed, this Grand Tasting might be he chance to fall in love with grenache, if you haven’t (and if not, why haven’t you? it’s the place where syrah and pinot noir make lazy passionate love). Larry Schaffer of tercero wines, who has been baking bread almost as good as the wines he makes of late, says, “I make a pretty killer zucchini bread with cinnamon, apple sauce, and a touch of sour cream. A lighter red actually goes wonderfully with this – perhaps my Verbiage Rouge, which is a grenache-based blend.” Meanwhile Drake Whitcraft of Whitcraft Winery was so flummoxed about the zucchini question he “asked a somm friend and he said my grenache because it’s light and floral and will play off the lavender and subtle herbaceous character of the wine while still allowing the fruit to show through.” Perhaps Mikael Sigouin of Kaena summed it up best, “Grenache is a natural pairing. Whether it be fried or any other combo, grenache works incredible with veggies because of its feminine nature. Aloha!”

Of course, there are almost as many ways to prepare zucchini as they are varietals you can turn into rosé. “As far as zucchini goes, I'm a huge fan and love to use it with the spiralizer to make a really great pasta with it. It’s a great way to save calories and it tastes just like pasta but without all the carbs,” says Katie Grassini from Grassini Family Vineyards. “I've made a great turkey carbonara with spiralized zucchini which would be great with our Articondo Bordeaux Blend.”

That Bourdeaux blend, just one of the many featured from hot spot (pun intended) Happy Canyon, helps prove there’s practically no varietal you can’t grow in Santa Barbara somewhere. Just from the winemakers quoted in this article, a mere 5% of those pouring on Saturday, there will be Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Rhone white and red blends, Gewürztraminer, pinot noir, chardonnay, and sometimes surprises under the table (talk your pourer up, especially if he or she is the winemaker).

It all gets summed up well by Larry Schaffer, the loquacious man who aptly named his blends Verbiage, “I love Vintners' Weekend because I can meet so many wonderful wine-loving people who make the trek from both near and far to enjoy the wines of the county I’ve chosen to call home. It’s a celebration of part of what makes this county special – the wines, the food, the people.”

Perfect Pairs for Valentine's Day: Wine + Cheese

Since Valentine's Day is all about pairing up and then spending too much money to celebrate that fact, talking about pairings might be a good way to prepare you for the holiday. Since one of wine's best food mates is cheese, I turned to the experts at Santa Barbara's C'est Cheese, owners Kathryn and Michael Graham and their staff, for some advice. And since love is a many splendored thing, I asked them for a series of pairings that might reflect some very different love stories. And remember, even after a stinky cheese, love means never having to say you're sorry.

Want to read the rest then do so at KCET's Food Blog.

C-Food, A+

How fitting it was that for our anniversary celebration we got to enjoy one of the best marriages of talent Santa Barbara could muster on Sunday night at a pop-up dinner at Municipal Winemakers featuring Cindy Black of the Blue Owl cooking using the seafood caught by Sea Stephanie Fish (aka Stephanie Mutz). This was truly a feast, listed as a three-course meal but much much more, especially with Dave Potter pouring generously, and for the last two courses from milk jugs (you can age in them! only kidding) since the 2011 Moorman Vineyard Pinot Noir and the delectable 2010 Lopez Ranch Cucamonga Zinfandel Port aren't bottled yet. But that does mean there's lots to look forward to from Municipal, and when I go on and on about the food you didn't have, there's at least that consolation.

The evening kicked off with lots of 2011 Bright White Dry Riesling, the perfect pairing for a salad that could have easily been my entire meal and left me totally happy. Part of that happiness comes from getting to include the words Semicossyphus pulcher into this entry, a name much more suggestive and catchy than California sheephead, which is the type of fish featured in an incredible salad. Stephanie joked she liked to call lobster "rich man's sheephead," and it did have more of that luxurious taste and texture, especially when Cindy Black got done with it, both grilling it and then pickling it (or vice versa?), so it had some of that good charcoal flavor and then the quick zing of the pickle-process too. That set the chunks up well to star in a salad full of all sorts of greens, from mint to dandelion (I think) to other herbs too numerable to mention. Then add pistachios, grapefruit, and tomatoes-a-bursting with flavor for more brights and acids and different levels of chew. Oh, and there was even quinoa, and it was so good one of our finicky tablemates exclaimed afterwards, "That's the most quinoa I've ever eaten, and I liked it!"

The menu for the evening suggested that for course the second "You should go outside." There we were met with platters of rock crab, mallets, and trucks waiting to whisk our soon-to-be-crab-besplattered clothes off to the dry cleaners. (OK, made that part up.) We got to whack away at our crabs, served cold and doused with a lemongrass-chili oil, plate them up, and then head back in to enjoy, where a platter of grilled vegetables (oh those romano beans--now that was edible summer rich in garlic oil and carbon char) and corn grilled in uni butter awaited. Now, I did my time in Maryland so I still long for the tradition of camping out at a table piled high with Old Bay steamed blue crabs that you pick at all day while drinking beer, so this was my idea of a great time. Rock crabs are heartier than blues, though, so one of my thumbs took one for the team getting through the shell some--the good news is a bit of blood is a fine accompaniment to lemongrass chili oil. By the way, in that photo, that's a big chunk of bread on my crab, soaked with the oil, too, because you can't get too much of that good a flavor.

Here's the vegetable platter we got nowhere close to finishing, despite 6 of us at the family-style-served table. Warning-the tomatoes in the photo are yummier than they appear.

I didn't get a photo of another portion of this feast, Kellet's whelk flatbreads, another item I could have eaten all night. Black has a way with dough, so simply the surprisingly thick bread itself was wonderful, with good pull on the inside and some crunch on the out, but then the chopped whelks were a cross between abalone-snail-clam to taste and not in the slightest rubbery, and atop all that was a healthy handful of chopped cilantro. So good.

As for dessert, there's no photo of that either, as I think I ate it. Dessert, that is, not the photo. I'm a sucker for gallettes, as the dough is always tasty and it doesn't bother with nicety--it's just folded over in a rustically beautiful way and let's the fruit peek out suggestively. (The suggestion: eat me.) This gallette, fired up in the oak oven so it had that extra character, too, starred apples and grapes, but then also was sprinkled with figs and berries, so was a fruit-wonderment. I only regret I was too full to have two pieces.

Cindy, Stephanie, and Dave, you all knocked it out of the park.