Sta. Rita Hills--20 Years of Excellence and Elegance

The Sta. Rita Hills Alliance threw itself a heck of a party this past weekend, as it's been 20 years SRH has been an official AVA--my how time flies when you're making great wine. But even better, it's 50 years since Richard Sanford and Michael Benedict planted the vineyard that bears their names, and fittingly, that's where the Wine and Fire festivities began on Thursday night.

I'm going to get a bit highfalutin here, so hang on, please. There's something holy about that mossy Sanford & Benedict barn. After all, it's not that often you get to stand where something began and by standing there totally feel history in all its effort and magic. Look at that wind whipping the banner in the photo, bringing the Pacific in thanks to Santa Barbara's famous transverse mountain ranges. That it's all beauteous scenery is just sort of bonus, but still. It makes me think of the Brancacci Chapel in Florence, where a young and too-soon-dead Masaccio figured out perspective and then painted some stunning murals that kick-started the Renaissance. Michelangelo would stand in front of these master paintings for hours, tracking to crack the new code. And we sort of know what he ended up doing.

Well, Richard Sanford, fortunately still with us, is our Masaccio, and since several generations of filmmakers have stood in Sanford & Benedict Vineyard and made some of the best Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs California has ever tasted. Many of them were being poured at Thursday's event. Bryan Babcock (more on him in a bit) poured a Pinot from the AVA's first vintage, for instance. Twenty years meant its fruit had faded, of course it was a bit brickish, but the acid life made it clear what a wine it once was.

(And on a crucial side note, that's a cutout of Jim Clendenen, who's spirit infused the weekend. While his winery Au Bon Climat is in the Santa Maria Valley, as a force of nature, friend, teacher, there was no escaping his influence anywhere in the county, and yes, he did make S&B wines that are still sophisticated and delicious.)

Gray Hartley and Frank Ostini were both on hand, regaling the crowd with stories at the Hitching Post table, while taking us on a hop-scotching vertical journey through their S&B's, 2018, '16, '14, '01, 1999. As someone said, "Hey, we're drinking a wine from a different century." But it was all very much S&B, which in general features lip-smacking dark cherry to blackberry fruit, but then something special--a saline hint of that marine influence, some coastal herbal notes (no, not the recent coastal herb crop...), some floral notes. Always complex. An S&B Pinot, for me, is like when you meet someone you find intriguing and they only get more lovely the more you get to know them. 

Again, the oldest vintages were interesting to taste as how often do you get that chance?, but I'd still argue the sweet spot for the wines was eight or nine years, as that HP 2014 and Richard Longoria's 2013 were simply singing arias of Pinot magnificence that night. And it wasn't just the "old" masters of SB winemaking that knocked it out of the park--we also delighted in the very first Dragonette S&B Pinot 2019, a wee but big baby that's worth waiting out, the delicious, light on its feet Liquid Farm S&B Pinot 2018, and two wines from Tyler, who poured both S&B Pinot and a supremely elegant S&B Chardonnay.

And Full of Life Flatbreads kept is happily munching away as we sipped, with their usually fine flatbreads, but also some killer summer-in-a-cup gazpacho and corn served as "ribs." They take a bandsaw to the cobs and then roast them in the pizza oven, serving them slathered with a garlicky aoli. 

Friday we got to attend the sold-out Dinner Honoring the Pioneers of the SRH La Paulee, held at the Alma Rosa Winery. What a group of honorees that was--Wes Hagen was emcee, and he led a pre-dinner panel of  Bryan Babcock of Babcock Winery, Greg Brewer of Brewer-Clifton, Ken Brown of Ken Brown Wines,  Kathy Joseph of Fiddlehead Cellars, Rick Longoria of Longoria Wines, Bruce McGuire of Lafond Winery, Frank Ostini of Hitching Post, and Richard Sanford of Alma Rosa. Everyone reminisced abut Jim Clendenen to start, an emotional, but still often humorous beginning, for as Hagen said after, "We didn't hold a moment of silence because Jim would have hated that." Instead, Joseph recalled his kindness letting her make her second and third vintages at his production facility for free, Sanford charmingly called him a "rascal," and Ostini summed it up by saying, "He always offered us a challenge...Jim was as important as any winemaker in California."

The panel also concluded with the naming of the 2021 Vintner of the Year, Bryan Babcock. Presenting the award, Hagen recalled decades ago when Babcock pulled him aside and said, in contradiction to some press at the time, "This isn't the west side of the Santa Ynez Valley, it's the Santa Rita Hills." And certainly the evening was a proof of that.

For, as you might know, a La Paulee dinner has its roots in Burgundy as a harvest celebration. The feast featured winemakers bringing their best wine both to impress and to say thank you to their crucial community. Things began with lots of sparkling from Flying Goat, Kessler-Haak, Pali, Sanford, and Spear, with Aaron Walker's Sparkling Rosé of Pinot Noir a definite highlight (plus, I got at least this picture!).

Then throughout the meal it sort of came down to what winemakers were sitting nearby as to what wines you got to enjoy. Luckily, we were next to Greg Brewer who shared a wealth of big bottle brilliance, from a 2011 S-D Chardonnay to a 2009 Ampelos Vineyard Pinot. Again, Brewer's wines proved a decade is a sweet spot for SRH wines, so if you have some stashed, drink up. (If you didn't hang on to any, that makes plenty of sense, too.) The honorees/pioneers were pretty good about making the rounds, too, so you got a sip of Babcock, a splash of Longoria, a taste of Fiddlehead, plus Kathy Joseph's story about how she beat rock promoters to the word Lollapalooza. Plus, many fun folks to dine with. (Side note: Wine Alliance, make it clearer you want guests to bring wine too, or drop that maybe they should. And no, I'm not just whining because I did bring a bottle and most other guests didn't.....)

And, of course, there was food, plenty of it, courtesy of the team from the Alisal Ranch led by chef Anthony Endy. Buffet feeding is always a bit tricky, but they pulled it off with aplomb and a lot of red oak--it was a true, classic Santa Maria style feast. But that said, it's always hard to compete with all the wine buzz at an event like this.

At that point I was celebrated out, but there were more events--focused tastings on aging wines, sparkling, and a grand tasting on Saturday at La Purisima Mission. It's been an amazing 20 years for this AVA, and one can only look forward to the next 200. To leave you with one last Sanford & Benedict image, here's a view out the barn itself, with all apologies to John Ford's The Searchers for the framing.

A Review of Marc Ribot's "Unstrung"

 

Brilliant guitarist that not enough people know by name Marc Ribot has written his first book, Unstrung: Rants and Stories of a Noise Guitarist, and all those scary words in the title are meant to warn you. Not very many pages in, while eulogizing Derek Bailey (yet another level of obscure guitarist deep), Ribot writes: “The palpable fear of beginning from, of returning to…silence/nothing…is an expression of the fear that the sounds you make won’t compare favorably with the silence which preceded/follows it. This in turn represents a deeper fear. In music, too, silence may equal death. The suspicion that both are preferable, and all this implies, is among the oldest of terrors.”

You can read the rest of the review at the California Review of Books.

The review also was posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on November 3, 2023.

The Presidio Neighborhood Welcomes Alessia Patisserie

Alessia Patisserie + Café has such a musical ring to it that it’s surprising the name wasn’t the first thing that popped into Alessia Guehr’s mind before opening her jewel box of a spot on East Canon Perdido. But given that her parents, Brigitte Guehr and Norbert Schulz, are Santa Barbara food scene veterans — arguably, the creators of it — who both owned restaurants named after themselves, Alessia eventually realized, “I should keep up the family tradition.” 

 And that she does, not just in name. Guehr’s team had to demo pretty much everything in what was briefly Miso Hungry to create this inviting urban space of hardwood floors, copper banquettes, and a pastry display that demands damning the calories, as full devouring is ahead. “People eat first with their eyes,” Guehr explained, “so everything has to be beautiful.”

If you want to read the rest of this story, you can at the Independent.

(Photo of the duck confit sandwich mentioned later in the story)

A Review of Cecilia Tichi's "Gilded Age Cocktails"

 

If you’ve ever wondered how historical nonfiction can be dry like a martini and not dry like a textbook tome, you need to pick up Cecelia Tichi’s Gilded Age Cocktails. A professor of American literature and culture at Vanderbilt (and the Commodore who founded that university even makes an appearance in the book, as both a figure and a cocktail), Tichi brings to glittering life what it meant to drink from 1870-1910. Chock full of quotes from primary sources of the day with titles like 1890’s Society as I Have Found It, Tichi makes clear how much lubrication kept this period of history afloat, prior to the double blow of a first World War and Prohibition.

You can read the rest of the review at California Review of Books.

The review was also posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on July 25, 2024.

A Review of Richard Buckner's "Cuttings from the Tangle"

 

Richard Buckner, songwriter, singer, can open a song with the lines “Tough is as she does, won’t you slump on over and stir my shuffle down,” and you don’t get too hung up on not parsing each word exactly. Part of it is this is a song, and while the melody is simple, it’s still catchy enough in its strummy guitar way to draw you in. Part of it is Buckner sells it with his emotive baritone that helps make the somewhat odd words feel lived in. You get the emotional weight of a relationship from these lines even if you don’t get the outlines of the actors.

Want to read the rest of this review, then do so at the California Review of Books.

Review of Alice Waters' "We Are What We Eat"

 

In Charles Laughton’s fantastic 1955 fairy tale noir Night of the Hunter, Robert Mitchum’s curdled preacher is infamous for having “love” and “hate” tattooed across the knuckles of his hands (see Spike Lee and The Clash for just two echoes). As Mitchum puts it, these fingers are “always a-warring and a-tugging, one agin t’other,” but luckily, it’s love that’s won. 

 Reading Alice Waters’ We Are What We Eat, it’s easy to imagine she’s a preacher for a food revolution with “fast” and “slow” tattooed across her knuckles. And alas, we don’t yet know who will win. But if Waters has the slightest say in it, the whole world will soon be eating slow.

Want to read the rest of the review then do so at the California Review of Books.

A Dees-licious Wine Dinner at The Lark

 

So I could simply say just read that menu and that would save both of us a whole lot of work--you can probably taste the yumminess just from that.

But I still want to write about how well a wine dinner can synch, for the one last night at The Lark (ok, actually held at sister property the SB Wine Collective, but created by The Lark team) featuring wines from the wondrous Matt Dees--namely Mail Road and Kimsey--danced like Rogers and Astaire, harmonized like the Temptations, even comically contrasted like Laurel and Hardy.

Let's start with dessert, shall we? See what wine paired with it? Now, when does a wine dinner end with rosé? But it totally worked, here, its copper color fitting in with the playful mix of balled melons, and the wine's acid cutting the sweet of the granita. Even the kick of the Aleppo pepper--and it was pretty kicky--turned the dish into something more (the borage flowers, so pretty and a bit tart, didn't hurt). Such a clever, refreshing course.

And refreshing might be the key word for Dees' approach to whites, too. That Mail Road Chardonnay illuminated the brilliance of the unique Mt. Carmel Vineyard, a site Dees clearly loves. (He likes his vineyards a bit harsh and unforgiving--remember he gets to work with Radian and Bentrock, too.) If you're looking for oak, this is the wrong wine for you--it's a pure expression of its fruit, with lime zest zing and then enough acid you could almost cut with it. 

Or cut a surprisingly rich dish like the opening halibut crudo, that I joked was halibut potato salad because of the grilled corn aioli that leaned a tad into its mayonnaise-ness, especially with the addition of some pickled green tomato. (I mean this is the most loving way.)  Still, that fish was rich and nearly unctuous. And then the perfectly fried avocado nuggets.... Chef Jason Paluska put together a dish cohesive and unusual all at once, and it set the tone for the rest of the delicious evening.

That's Dees explaining that when the block of marble comes in from the amazing vineyard sites he gets to play with, in this case Mt. Carmel in the Sta. Rita Hills and Kimsey in Ballard Canyon, you can either take a chisel to it and make it something else or take some sandpaper to it, and make it shine. One guess what he does.

Which he does no better than the Mail Road Pinot they poured last night. Here's how Antonio Galloni aptly put it: "A wine of structure and power…dark, sumptuous and enveloping on the palate…the 2015 possesses remarkable fruit intensity…Black cherry, plum, spice, leather and menthol…Don’t miss it." We didn't--and thanks to the staff for keeping refilling the glasses, too--very generous.

That powerful pinot was an on-the-nose match for the richness of the duck liver mousse, not quite as gamey as foie, but lavish and creamy, sort of like if meat and gelato had a baby that could live at room temp. This dish's accoutrements were equally brilliant bites, cashews roasted in duck fat so extra umami-ed, and Rainier cherries poached and plump. I might have said I would have spent the rest of my life at the Wine Collective if someone would keep bringing me boards of mousse and glasses of pinot. 

Yes, it's almost hard to see the lamb ribs in there, but that just attests to this dish being all about its strewn-composition, the smoke on the meat, the char on the eggplant and peppers, the juice of the pluot, the bite of the watercress. So much to take in, you just keep savoring bite after bite. And then there's the Kimsey Syrah, a bold wine, as it needed to be to stand up the fat and sweet lamb, but then it just cascaded with flavor, blackberry, a hint of anise, sage, black pepper, and more. 

Here are Chryss's two subs for the meaty things she doesn't eat. She says they were as good as they looked. And the couple of bites I snuck said the same.

The Lark is going to keep doing these winemaker dinners, and now that all of us vaccinated folks can sit inside next to each other and not die, they're going to be a lot of fun. The next one will be with Graham Tatomer.

And one tiny issue--why is "served to share" still a thing? I imagined COVID would have knocked that one out of the kitchen playbook, but even without the fear of cooties, it's often just awkward, especially with something like the mousse board. And our end of the table sat three people with dietary restrictions, all different (one gluten free, one pescatarian, one lactose intolerant), so they had to bring up a bunch of different dishes too. I get the largesse of it, and the sense we all dip into the communal plate and all that. But that's also not quite reason enough.