A St. Patrick’s Day celebration wrapped in a birthday

I decided just one day to acknowledge my turning 70 was not enough, so I had two celebrations; an intimate one on the actual day and a party on St Pat’s Day. I’m certain St Patrick won’t mind sharing his day. I’m part Irish myself and have cycled a good portion of the Republic of Ireland, so combining the events seemed logical to me.

For my birthday, I prepared a Beef Wellington, which could have served twice our number, but then I do enjoy leftovers. I selected a bottle of Silverado Winery 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon from the Stags Leap district. There was spice, plum and red berry on the nose, with some tobacco and earth. I opened it two hours before serving to get all those ripe red and dark berry fruit flavors with hints of chocolate, earth and cloves and a wonderful finish.

This was my second Beef Wellington and much bigger than the one I did for my wife and me on Valentine’s Day. The pastry crust did separate a bit so I added aluminum foil. The pastry and pate coating – and we are not discussing fat content here – permits the internal steam to evenly and completely cook the meat to the proper temperature, which for me is medium rare. The entire tenderloin roast was done to a perfect medium rare and sensually tender.

My wife, Barbara, handled the Yorkshire pudding, which is a bit of a misnomer as far as pudding goes, but this is an English dish after all. Our good friends Don & Jan Swanson joined us and brought killer desserts and a bottle of Louis Roederer Premium Brut Champagne, which rocked with the supreme carrot cake.

Don and I finished with a glass of Black Bush Irish whiskey in traditional Claddagh glasses. The Claddagh symbol is two hands and a heart signaling eternal friendship and a perfect end to my birthday dinner.

St. Patrick’s Day

The Sunday dinner on March 17 required my wife and me to put in a lot of time to make a traditional Irish dinner such as my Grandmother used to make. Her recipes do require a bit of interpretation and a firm understanding of all things Irish to make them come out right. A pinch of this and a dash of that don’t quite cut it these days. I was also puzzled by a list of ingredients that included a box of raisons for the Irish soda bread. What size box did she have in mind?

Well, no matter, I added raisins and dried cranberries as if I was making Miss Fogarty’s Christmas cake. Check out the link if you’ve never heard the song. While I worked on the Irish stew, Barbara labored over the fadge. Fadge is sort of an Irish potato pancake, with day-old mashed potatoes, flour and a wee bit of grease to hold it together. Ironically, she used a star pattern, and Starr was my Grandmother Lizzy’s maiden name. I think that would keep her from rolling over in her grave in case we got the ratio of ingredients off a bit.

The salad had lots of mandarin orange slices in it as a nod to the Protestants of Northern Ireland where Miss Starr was born, but all of our guests turned out in lovely shades of green. I donned my World’s Tallest Leprechaun outfit to receive my guests and did create a stir. (See the picture below from 1998.) As it happens everyone showed up that said they would and everyone that wasn’t sure they could make it showed up too. That made it sixteen for dinner so I was glad we had plenty of everything, including wine.

No one wanted any green beer, which was a plus, but Keith Powell did gift me with a six-pack of assorted Irish beers and stouts. Being a somewhat non-traditional bunch, however, the sparkling wines and champagne headed the list. Some of those well-traveled sparklers did fizz over the top and I feared the place would rival a World Series winner’s locker room. It is usually a good idea to let sparkling wines rest up before opening, but everyone was ripe to party so we did.

I served a couple of bottles of Mark West 2011 Pinot Noir, an always dependable Pinot, and later a bottle of Mark West 2010 Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir, which was exquisite with the lamb stew. Some of our guests preferred bigger red wines, so we had a couple of Cabernet Sauvignon wines and heavy red blends.

We then launched into the Irish soda bread, my first at high altitude (5,100 feet), which needed extra moisture and came out grand, even if I guessed at the size of the raisin box. Barbara also made a carrot cake for me, and it was the best I’ve ever had, nicely spiced with a perfect cream cheese icing that did not require added sugar. That was probably the only concession to culinary sanity in the entire meal.

Just the same, next year I’m having the event catered.

The Wine Guerilla Gets a Grip on Savings

One of the best producers of classic Sonoma County Zinfandel is the Wine Guerrilla. I sampled many of their products at a superb wine dinner held at La Casa Sena in Santa Fe for Albuquerque Arts & Entertainment magazine. There, executive chef Patrick Garrity amazed me by pairing these Zins with everything from appetizer to dessert. 

As a Zin-fanatic myself I was in heaven with these well-crafted Zinfandel wines and now you can too, as Bruce Patch, owner of Wine Guerrilla is offering a marvelous 6-pack of his wines at an incredible price. The details are below.

To celebrate the upcoming 2013 ZAP festival in San Francisco we've put together a tasty 6-pack for you Zin lovers. We're packing one bottle each of the 2010 Conte Vineyard Russian River, 2010 Mounts Vineyard 'Cypress Block' Dry Creek, 2010 Monte Rosso 'Block E44' Sonoma Valley, 2009 Coffaro Vineyards 'old vine' Dry Creek Valley, 2009 Harris-Kratka Alexander Valley & the 90 point Spectator 2009 Forchini Vineyards 'old vine' Dry Creek Valley all in a 6-pack ready to go to your home or business. This is an excellent opportunity to sample six different single vineyard Guerrilla Zins without buying a full case. This 6-pack would cost $225 if ordered through our website. Now you pay only $159 plus $19 shipping to anywhere we ship except Hawaii & Alaska. Californians will be charged tax. That's big savings on the wine PLUS you'll be saving money on the shipping too.

We'll ship as soon as we process your order. This offer good until midnight Sunday, January 13th PST and is not available through our website. You know the drill.....call 707-887-1996 or email wineguerrilla@sonic.net to take advantage of this pre ZAP offer. And remember, Guerrilla Zinfandels go great with most known foods!

I had to pass this deal on to my readers, but you need to act fast!

What's in a Name?

Cheddar. Bologna. Anaheim Pepper. Buffalo Wings. Dijon. Colby. What do these things have in common? Besides being the ingredients for a delicious lunch, these are all foods named after the place that they were first created. In fact, some cities are downright proprietary about it. Buffalo, New York lists the restaurant that first served their famous wings in 1964 on their official website. Many products are even protected legally, and cannot be named as such unless they are made in a specific area of the world.

"Gee, that's great, Jim. Thanks for making me hungry. But what does that have to do with wine?"

There is no such product or group of people as attached to a place of origin as those who make champagne. There are many sparkling wines produced worldwide, yet countries have laws in place that reserve the appellate champagne exclusively for sparkling wines from the Champagne area in France. The wine makers have several legal organizations that protect their interests, including the Comité Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne. The name champagne is legally protected by the Treaty of Madrid (signed in 1891), and again in another treaty in the 1920s.

Here in the US, we were a bit late to jump on the "ban" wagon. Other nations have respected the nomen for over a century, and the United States has only been on board for the last 7 years. Now, only those that had approval to use the term on labels before 2006 may continue to use it and only when it is accompanied by the wine's actual place of origin. The French producers even have lobbyists in the US government to protect their interests.

This leads us to the next point today- a little bit of breaking news. It's a tradition for the menu for the Presidential Inaugural Ball to be released early, and this month's selection bubbled some resentment to the surface. The chef chose an American "champagne", Korbel Natural, Special Inaugural Cuvée Champagne from California and the French lobby is très fâche.

You can read more about that in the articles below. It seems that they are not upset that a California wine was the selected winner, but rather that it was listed "Korbel Natural, Special Inaugural Cuvée Champagne- California" and not as "California Champagne."

So what is in a name? Centuries of history, a lot of politics, and a high standard.

Winter Vines: Why Vines Need a Rest, too.

You are in your Pajamas, it's 11:30 in the morning and you are watching bad television. It's cold outside and you can hear the cars in your neighborhood shudder as they are turned on. You've got your lunch on your lap. So what if it's a little bit early, it's winter and you are in hibernation mode.

Just like you, wine vines work hard for the rest of the season and become dormant in the winter. During this time cuttings are often taken from the mother root, and the vine stores up nutrients and hardens itself. Dormancy protects the vine from cold, and changes nitrate-nitrogen to arginine. You may think that the grapevine is at the mercy of the winter wind, but actually the plants need a sufficient dormancy period to produce quality fruit. In fact, this is such a problem in southern California that vineyards treat their grapes with chemicals to stop too early of a growth.

Grapes need anywhere between 250 and 800 hours of winter below 45 degrees to be at optimum for the growing season. (If you would like to read some more information on how to grow grapes in your own backyard while respecting the dormancy requirements of the plant, read here)

Another thing that is integral to the vine's health and production that happens in the dormant winter period is pruning. Annual dormant pruning removes the previous year’s fruiting canes or spurs (now two years old) and excess one-year-old canes. The fruiting habit of grapevines dictates a pruning practice that encourages the annual development of new fruiting wood. Fruit is only produced on shoots growing from one-year-old canes. Therefore, healthy new canes must be produced every year to maintain annual production of fruit. See the picture below for an example.

So the next time that you decide to watch all the Dune movies ever made, don't feel bad. Pour yourself a glass of wine,  and respect the rest that you both need and deserve.

Captain Andy Sunset Wine Cruise

A sunset cruise around the garden isle of Kauai sounds like a no-brainer. Who wouldn’t want to go? But there are sunset cruises and then there is the one Captain Andy sails aboard the Southern Star that navigates the Na’Pali coast. This is the Cadillac of sunset cruises for many reasons.

The Southern Star is a 65 foot catamaran with its own chef’s kitchen, wide bar in the main cabin, and generous room for the passengers to enjoy the run of the boat. The food prepared and served on board by executive chef Stephen. The cuisine is what one might expect from a fine restaurant, but with unparalleled views of one of the most stunning coasts in the world; the Na’Pali coast. 

Sheer walls of verdant green, jagged cliffs and lush valleys are interspersed with towering waterfalls that descend thousands of feet to hidden pools and streams. The cry of sea birds blends with surging surf crashing against the jumbled rocks below.

Unfortunately for us, this time the sea was too rough to follow the north coast, so Captain Rick advised us he’d have to track the southern coast. He asked, “Did we still want to go?” We were still on for the cruise, knowing it was our safety and comfort uppermost in his mind. I also knew from previous cruises that the wine would be good and the Mai Tai and Sneaky Tiki cocktails would be strong and authentic. 

Once onboard I enjoyed my Mai Tai with fresh pineapple and salt spray at the fantail, um, correction, my first Mai Tai. I decided not to compound things by trying the Sneaky Tiki, but checked out the wines they had at the bar. I sampled a few and decided we were in for a good time.

The Caesar and Island salads went quite well with the Talbott Logan Chardonnay, which was from Sleepy Hollow vineyard in the Santa Lucia Highlands, a premier wine region in California. A nice balance between French Oak and stainless brings out the richness in the grape without bludgeoning it. The melon, pear and pineapple would seem to be custom-made for an island cruise, and it often earns 90 points from wine specialists. We were off to a good start.

The dinner was excellent; NY Strip from beef on the Big Island, sliced potato and taro root, asparagus and carrots and big, flavorful prawns. A classic surf and turf, made all the better with a Kali Hart 2007 Pinot Noir from the Monterey coast. This one is also from Talbott Winery, which has a way of making mid-priced wines taste like high-priced and this Pinot was no exception.

Aged in French oak for 9 months it exhibits flavors of red current and red berry with plumy notes. The vanilla flavors and oak are nicely integrated assuring easy drinking and made to handle the shrimp and beef. I confess I indulged a lot, but I’m blaming it on the sea air, great views and wonderful food and wine pairing. 

If this sounds like your kind of cruise, one bit of advice: reserve early. A sunset cruise this good fills up early and you don’t want to left on shore when Captain Andy sets sail. Aloha!

Slate Street Café: A Great Place to Wine & Dine

The night after Christmas I joined the Gonzales family for dinner at Slate Street Café. I had previously met Rafael Gonzales at his Broken Eyes Studio in Los Lunas back in September and was fascinated with his paintings. Do check out his studio when you are next in Los Lunas. I was there to drop off copies of my new wine book, Wines of Enchantment: the Centennial edition, including one that would be a Christmas present for his daughter, Theresa. (See how far I’ll go to sell a couple of books?)

Later Rafael contacted me and wanted to meet my wife and I for dinner in Albuquerque after Christmas; and did I know any good restaurants? Since I do restaurant reviews for Albuquerque Arts & Entertainment magazine, I had plenty of suggestions that I whittled down to four of my favorites and he chose Slate Street Café. The café is a good choice, both for the food and the wine.

Myra Ghattas, the owner provides comfort food made in imaginative ways with fresh ingredients and paired with fine wines. She is also a certified sommelier, and it shows in both her wine list and wines-by-the-glass list.  The wine markups are also modest, proving she understands the value of enjoying wines with her food. She also makes sure her servers are trained and knowledgeable about the food and wine. Our waiter made many thoughtful suggestions, which we took him up on.

Theresa selected a wine from Lake County, California using the Lemberger grape from Washington State. Not to be confused with Limburger cheese. Thankfully it wasn’t smelly on the nose, although the odd name does give some grape growers pause. Steele Winery did something very clever with the name and uses a variation of its ancient name: Blau Frankisch, literally “blue grape from France.” The wine is from Steele Winery’s Shooting Star series and they call the grape Blue Franc. That was when I noticed the label was a blue French Franc. Hmmm, maybe too cute?

The wine had dense tannins and a pleasing mouthfeel, cherry and spices and black pepper. It went well with the bruschetta, one of my favorites at the café, and the Portabella French fries; another favorite. Both appetizers made the rounds at our table of six, followed by accolades for the chef.

I decided on the ribeye to go with the 2010 Kunde Cabernet Sauvignon, a dependable mid-range Cab from Sonoma. The wine exhibits dark fruit with fig-like richness, black pepper, rounded vanilla notes and fine tannins. Kunde is a very consistent winery going back four generations with a fifth ready to take over the 1,850 acre property in the Kenwood region of Sonoma. 

The portions here are generous so when our waiter came back to ask about desserts he was not surprised when we said we had no room left. Good food, good wine and good company made this a very memorable meal.

Mediterranean Gourmet: An Intimate Luau

When is a luau, not a luau? The answer is when it is at the Mediterranean Gourmet in Hanalei, Kauai. Having done several reasonably good interpretations of this feast made legendary by the royal luaus of the Kamehameha kings, my wife and I had the good fortune to try an intimate luau at the Mediterranean Gourmet last year while at our timeshare in Princeville, Kauai.

This year was a first for us; returning for a second luau at the Mediterranean Gourmet. We also were celebrating our thirtieth anniversary. That was a first, too. There are four reasons why I recommend this so highly; the location, the food which is always fresh and good, the intimacy which brings us closer to the performers and the Hawaiian family that performs here every year.

Family Hula Halau is authentic, fun to watch and steeped in the traditions of Kauai. Coppin Colburn, the patriarch of the family, is a good musician and performer who connects with his audience as soon as he takes the mike. He also enjoys playing with fire, twirling twin-lit batons so fast a ring of fire appears at each hand. They even performed a special dance to honor our 30^th anniversary, which made our celebration even better.

The Mediterranean Gourmet has an imaginative wine list that is well-paired to the cuisine. After our tropical drinks, perfectly made, we ordered a bottle of Don Olegario, Albariño, which soon became two.  This Spanish white is one of my favorite wines. The Albarińo grape comes from the Rias Biaxas region of Spain, which is just above Portugal on the Atlantic coast. The coastal influence yields wines with great acidity, minerality and bold fruit flavors. I’m reminded of French Sancerre when I drink these wines, but at a much lower price point.

Imad Beydoun, the owner, takes personal charge, overseeing that all the dishes are in place and continually replenished. From first pass through the line until last there will be freshly made dishes of Kahlua Pork, various seafood and chicken dishes and an array of Mediterranean cuisine-inspired entrees. The servers are well-trained and attentive, which enhances the intimate feel of this luau.

At the end of their performance, everyone is asked to join hands while we all sing Aloha Oe. If you are not deeply moved by this rendition of one of Hawaii’s most beautiful songs, you should check your pulse. Hearts are warmed, new friends are made, and everyone leaves with their spirits lifted. This is the only luau I’d return to time after time because it is Kauai’s best luau.