Category: Food Stories

I don’t recall how this meal became a late summer tradition for me and those I care for and cook. But it has. Maybe it’s because the heirloom tomatoes – and the green beans, are in season? No, that can’t be it. Perfectly ripe heirlooms, drizzled with Milanese-infused olive oil, lovingly caressed with truffle salt then hit with dry basil flakes goes with about anything in August. And green beans in season? They are great with roasted salmon and a baked potato with all the good stuff piled on top. So, who needs a lamb burger to serve perfectly fresh summer beans? 

I made lamb burgers recently for a group of friends that visit annually to run the local marathon, or half-marathon. I think I made this for them the first time they gathered in my new house three years ago. But the tradition goes back further than that. Perhaps it is because as we go deeper into summer, we still want fresh, hot, cheese-laden burgers coming off the grill, but want them to be a little different? Besides, we love lamb. Isn’t it curious, with lamb, that you either love it or hate it? 

Since our friends are social runners and do not aspire to threaten any running records when they run marathons, our marathon weekend always includes a wine tasting on the Saturday before the marathon at one of our local wineries. This time we went to Merriam Vineyards, which is just south of Beverly Healdsburg – or just Healdsburg if you are a traditionalist. But that’s another story.  

Oh boy. Did we get the white glove treatment! We must have tasted a dozen wines. And the cool thing about Merriam Vineyards is they intentionally make wines from the affordable range of “$30ish” per bottle to a mid-range offering and a top shelf collection of wines priced from $65 to $100 for their best Cabernet Sauvignon.  

Merriam achieves an affordable-to-exquisite range of wine offerings by how they source the fruit and how they make it. For example, and while I am not a big fan of Chardonnay nor do I buy it, we did a neat side-by-side tasting of the winery’s low-end Chardonnay that was fermented in stainless steel (2022 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay) for $30, and concurrently the 2022 Eastside Estate Chardonnay barreled in 30% new French Oak ($46), and both were delicious. The stainless version would pair nicely with cheese, crackers and fruit on a warm afternoon, while the Estate Chardonnay, with its oak, had the depth to complement that roasted salmon, baked potato and green bean meal mentioned earlier in this post.  

After tasting a series of red wines, for the lamb burger dinner that night I took home a 2020 Right Bank Red Blend ($84) that is comprised of 60% Merlot, 35% Cabernet Franc and 5% Malbec. Its tasting notes say the wine “opens with dark, alluring aromatics reminiscent of black plum, cranberry and brambly boysenberry pie with accents of cardamom, clove, cedar and a hint of vanilla.” There’s more, including “lush, juicy layers of tantalizing dark berry fruit and a lovely core of Russian River Valley energy.” And finishes with “the palate is rich and luxurious, full-bodied with velvety tannins and flavors of dark cherry, pie crust, cocoa nibs and fig compote gliding to a bright, elegant finish.”  

The word choices and elegant prose take me back to my freshman year in college and the spring Art History class taught by Vernon Minor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The class was part of the Humanities 101 series that all of us incoming freshman were subjected to. You know, Homer and Greek Mythology, Beethoven and Mozart, and Mr. Minor’s class. Which I loved dearly!

As a language aficionado, I had never heard the power or potential of words! It was as if I was learning an entire new language. And it did make the art we studied come alive.

I loved going to his afternoon lectures, delivered to a large and boorish group of pimply-faced, punk-ass kids (I was NOT one of them, as a 24-year-old, married owner of a 4-plex). I don’t remember the lecture hall name but it was huge, cavernous, a little dark, and a perfect venue for Mr. Minor to point out the various details, artistic thinking of the artists and even technical aspects of painting in some works of art. For example, he must have used the word, chiaroscuro, so frequently that here I am about 40 years later using the word in a sentence, and in my entire life – other than the three months or so in Mr. Minor’s atmosphere, have I ever uttered the word, chiaroscuro. Perhaps that’s because I don’t spend any time describing works of art. Chiaroscuro, by the way, is a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-dimensional objects and figures. Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Goya and Georges de La Tour are among the more famous artists that deployed this technique, and without doubt, Mr. Minor was talking about one of their works when he called out the chiaroscuro in their respective paintings.

Back to Merriam and knowing what was on my menu for that night, I also took home a bottle (or 2?) of Merriam’s 2020 Lower Pond Vineyard Malbec ($54), which was excellent and moderately priced for such a premium wine. Malbec, to me, is a nuanced wine and always leaves me with a ‘wow’ response after the first taste. The second is usually a gulp.  

The Red Blend and Malbec did indeed pair well with the lamb burgers, sliced tomatoes, a Caesar salad with house-made dressing, and the green beans.  

About the Burgers (makes 7 generous sandwiches) 

• 1.75 lbs. ground lamb 
• 0.75 lbs. ground chuck 
• 0.25 lbs. ground pork 
• 1 white onion 
• Harissa seasoning 
• Turmeric seasoning  
• (dried) Parsley flakes 
• Salt and Pepper 
• Italian breadcrumbs 

First, grate the onion until you can’t hold on to what’s left of the onion, then chop the remainder of it into small pieces, and sauté that in a generous amount of good olive oil. Add the spices and seasonings, and don’t spare the amounts. Other than the meat itself, this gives the burgers their unique flavors and taste.  

Second, while the onions are reducing, mix the meats well. I find that breaking up the meats that the butcher bags for me before I mix in the seasoned onion makes it easier to shape the burgers once that task starts.  

Third, integrate the onion mixture with the meats and shape the patties. This is when the Italian breadcrumbs are handy. I add them as I mix the meats in order to bind them into patties (the olive oil and onion mixture makes it wet). I put them on a platter for that night (there were 5 of us) and refrigerated them until dinner while I put the two remaining burgers in plastic and froze them for another time.  

The burgers were served on brioche buns with slices of melted Havarti cheese and dressed with mayo, mustard for some, ketchup, pickles and grilled onions.  

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I was trading emails the other day with a prospective customer who told me he lived in the San Luis Obispo area (SLO) and had been there for about two years. I asked him if he had gotten into the local wine scene in Paso Robles (no, but thinking about it, he said) so I told him about some wineries that are worth exploring. I had refreshed my own memory just a year or so ago, when my partner and I opted-out of Thanksgiving weekend and instead, did a short road trip to Paso, where we ate, drank, looked at the ocean from jagged seaside cliffs, toured the Hearst Castle, and walked the wonderful beach in Carmel – home to legendary film maker and past mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Clint Eastwood.

Two of the wineries we enjoyed most on the recent visit was Four Lanterns, so-named by the proprietors for their four children – all girls, if memory serves, and McPrice Myers. Both make excellent blended or cuvee reds that are easy to drink yet structured enough, and pair with many foods. They are also less expensive than most Northern California wines of comparable quality.

Here’s the blend of McPrice Myer’s 2020 Beautiful Earth red wine: 48% Syrah, 16% Grenache, 14% Mourvèdre, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Petit Verdot, 4% Petit Syrah and 2% Zinfandel. Like musicians in an orchestra or symphony, each varietal has a role to play to bring that delicious wine to life. Currently listed at $75 a bottle, this wine ranked #16 in Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of 2022. I won’t trouble you with all the tasting notes, but will call out its last sentence: “Broad, weighty, and plush on the palate with a densely packed finish.” I would like to hear the winery’s founder and wine maker, McPrice (Mac) Myers talk about this wine. I don’t know how common it is for wine makers to blend both Bordeaux and Rhone Valley varietals into a wine, but this more-than-casual wine drinker thinks it’s a brilliant mix that produces a robust yet soft wine drinking experience. You get the calming influences of Grenache, Mourvèdre and Syrah (Loire Valley) with the punch of Cab Sauv and Petit Verdot found in France’s southwest. Anyway, whenever one thinks of the Paso Robles wine area, and this man’s namesake winery is also worthy – for both visiting and buying his wine to drink for all occasions, you think of Gary Eberle. It may not be an overstatement to say that the Paso wine region as we know it today was made possible by this pioneering wine maker.

Gary Eberle: The Godfather of the Paso Robles Wine Appellation

I wrote this circa 2013-2014 for a private-label magazine. Mr. Eberle recently turned 80, and can still be seen at the winery on most days.

Gary Eberle has come a long way since playing on the defensive line for the Nittany Lions. The Pittsburgh PA native is one of the four pioneers of the Paso Robles Wine AVA and a winemaking veteran of the region, having arrived in 1973 to help start Estrella River Winery (which became Meridian Vineyards and is now Cellar 360). Along the way, he earned the title of the Godfather of the Paso Robles Wine Appellation as well as a couple other monikers, such as the King of Cab and the Padre of Syrah.

Like any wine region, and just as it has been for Oregon’s Willamette Valley and even the Napa Valley, Paso Robles needed time to develop into a quality wine region.

“A limited number of vineyards were planted here in the 1950s and 1960s and a lot of the original wineries were essentially home wine makers, who could make some great wines in two out of five years but you don’t get anyone’s lasting attention with inconsistency. Furthermore, vineyard management is farming and it takes years to figure out what works… where and how. It wasn’t until we had a good critical mass of wineries and university-trained enologists that we really started producing good wines on a consistent basis. Paso in the 1990s just blossomed. Today, I am stunned at the quality of the wine makers here … they bring good ideas, credentials and experience to their craft,” said Eberle.

Eberle picked up his craft and a desire to be in the wine industry after graduating from Penn State University with a degree in biology and going to Louisiana State University (LSU) to pursue graduate studies in cellular genetics.

During his time at LSU, a professor introduced him to the magical world of food and wine. Tasting a sampling of fine, classically made Bordeaux from his professor’s cellar, Eberle took a keen interest in Cabernet Sauvignon. He began to envision the possibility of creating a wine that would rival those of Bordeaux and soon found himself on an airplane to California.

He arrived at the University of California at Davis, where he met with the chair of the enology department and explained that he wanted to become a winemaker. Impressed with Eberle’s credentials, the professor admitted him to the doctoral program without the usual qualifying exam.

During his work at Davis, Eberle realized the untapped potential of the Paso Robles region and decided it was where his winemaking future lay and arrived in 1973. Eberle made a few trips to Paso with some of his Davis professors, including pioneering viticulturist Dr. Harold P. Olmo, and was hooked.

One of his first jobs in Paso was to plant vineyards and see which varietals would thrive. On a little more than an acre, he planted 18 vines with 40 different varietals. All the clones from Pinot Noir, Beaujolais and Chenin Blanc did poorly, but the Bordeaux varietals did very well. At the time, Eberle didn’t know that it was the beginning of Paso’s emergence as a great venue for producing excellent Rhone-style wines.

10 years after founding the Estrella River, Eberle’s dream was realized with the release of his first Eberle wine, a 1979 Cabernet Sauvignon that was released in 1982. And a year later, he opened Eberle Winery, which is located 3.5 miles east of Highway 101 and along Highway 46. It was the same year – 1983, that Eberle and the three other Paso pioneers were successful in establishing the Paso Robles and York Mountain Viticulture Areas (AVA) as recognized and defined by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).

“Robert Mondavi largely gets credit, and deservingly so, for Napa Valley becoming recognized as a premium wine region. He was our industry’s greatest marketing visionary and a true genius. I met him a few times when I was at Davis. In Paso, a few of us knew that getting a recognized AVA was a crucial step for the region. Outside of California, no one had ever heard of Paso Robles,” said Eberle.At the time there were fewer than 10 appellations in the entire United States. Eberle teamed up with Herman Schwartz, who had a large vineyard in the area, Victor Hugo Roberts (winery Victor Hugo) and Tom Martin, who owned Martin Brothers Winery.

“The AVA application was only 10 pages or so. We filled in the forms and sections on geology, meteorology and even drew the boundaries using U.S.G.S. topographical maps. The fee was modest. I delayed labeling and selling my 1980 Cabernet so I could use the Paso AVA and I ended up having the first wine with a Paso AVA. Eberle’s 1980 was first released in 1983 and “it still drinks beautifully,” Eberle said. He added that a limited number of bottles are available to purchase – for $1200 each.

The 69-year-old Eberle serves as the winery’s chief marketing officer and periodic grill master and pizza maker. The wine maker is Ben Mayo and the winery produces about 25,000 cases a year. About half of the wine is sold at the winery and the other half through distributors. Eberle flies his Cessna 340 (six seats, twin engine) with his wife to major markets for wine tasting events, sales meetings with distributors and wine makers’ dinners, making the 9-hour flight to the East Coast and meetings in Philadelphia, New York, Charleston or other U.S cities as often as possible, stating: “I built a business model to make more money selling direct to customers from our winery, but my ego demands that we have a presence in major markets, plus it brings in out-of-state tourists.”

Eberle Winery is one of the few of the 1500 or so California wineries that still pour complimentary wine tastings.

“We never charged for tastings and I think it is counter-productive. If you charge, you take away the customer’s ability to reciprocate and the way they reciprocate is to buy wine. I think we’ve sold more wine because we understand this aspect of human nature,” he said.

The winery also sells more wine by hosting barbecues and more recently, serving wood-fired pizzas from the new outdoor pizza oven. Three times a month in summer and once-or-twice a month in winter Eberle grills Tri Tips, duck sausage and baby back ribs and asks people to make a 25-cent donation to the Children’s Museum in Paso (it was started by Tom Martin). Wood-fired pizza was added in late 2013.

“It’s a lot of fun, our customers have a better wine tasting experience by pairing some of the wines with food, and it is a great return on our investment of $350 in food costs,” Eberle said.Don’t expect Eberle to retire any time soon. A self-avowed people person, he’s at the winery seven days a week and simply loves what he does too much to even consider quitting.

Coincidentally, in March 2022 I posted a piece in the blog called Food Dreams, and the featured food was pot pies. In that case, the meat ingredient was rabbit.

Two years later, I am updating that post with some pie-making experiences of the past 6-7 weeks, or during the dreariest of winter months. Winters are more bearable around the holidays, because that is such a joyous time, with parties, gifts, celebrating the birth of Christ, a little extra wine, and more time for naps. Yet once you get past the first couple weeks of January, you enter that period comparable to any other session in which grinding is the best method to get through it. For survival, we make great, wintry meals, such as the classics: braised ribs served with creamy polenta, Osso Buco, again with polenta, though I like it with mashed potatoes, too, or chicken pot pies.

The following recipe sounds like more work than it is, but I have found breaking up the cooking in phases is a bit easier than all at once, I think the flavors are richer, if you:

1. Make the dough one day, and refrigerate it
2. Cook the chicken, stock and vegetables including the green beans the next day
3. Make the thickening sauce and assemble the pies on the 3^rd day

At the very least, you have to make the dough a day in advance so it is cold and can be manipulated into pie toppings. I own a KitchenAid and make the dough with the machine. I break up the shortening into smaller pieces that what the recipe calls for, and same for the butter, so it mixes more evenly. Once all the ingredients- except the water, are in the bowl, mix until the shortening and butter is broken down into small pieces, then pour the water in all at once while the mixture is on. Mix for about a minute, and it’s done. It should be sticky. So much so that you need flour on your hands to handle it. This batch makes enough dough for about 10 pot pies, if you like the crust on the thinner side, as I do. if you are making 8–10-inch fruit pies, it is probably enough for 4 crusts.

Pie dough

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1.5 sticks butter, cold

Half-cup shortening, chilled, cut into 4 pieces

One-half cup cold water

Pie filling (for 5-6 pies)

3 or 4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

Olive oil for cooking the chicken

1 large onion, cut up good

2 cups chopped carrots

1.5 cups chopped celery

3+ cups chicken or vegetable stock

2 cups cut up green beans

Half-stick butter

¾ cup half & half or better yet, whipping cream (unwhipped)

1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard

2 brioche hamburger buns

Spices (for cooking the chicken): salt, pepper, garlic powder/granules, turmeric, harissa (not much), herbs de Provence, tarragon (not much)

Rinse the chicken then brine it in copious amounts of salt and warm water for at least 3 hours before rinsing, drying, and cooking.

In a 4-quarter pot, heat the olive, cook chicken and add the spices while cooking. I normally top the chicken while it is cooking with half the spices, and after turning them over to brown the other side, add the rest of the spice. Once cooked, remove the chicken to cool, add onions (and a little more olive oil) and cook until soft and golden, then add carrots, celery and stock and cover – and lower heat to simmer.

In a separate pot cook the green beans (I prefer French) and once done, drain and cool.

Using kitchen scissors, cut up the chicken into pieces and also the green beans (into 1-inch pieces). Leave on a plate for immediate assembly or if you are spreading out the pie-making over two days, store separately for ease of assembly. I also do it this way for better quantity control, or so the same amount of chicken and green beans are in each pot pie.

Once the vegetables and stock are done, turn heat off and store overnight, or keep going if you want to assemble the pies then.

In a bowl or measuring cup, put the cream in, then break up the brioche buns into small pieces and add them to the cream. Add the tablespoon of Dijon mustard, stir, let rest. This is the thickener to the pies, and easier than making a butter roux. The cream also gives the pies the color and texture you want.

If assembling the pies the next day, warm the stock and veggies after making the (cheater) roux.
Once the stock is warm, turn heat off and mix in roux.

Then assemble the pies.

First, ladle in (most of) the vegetables and juices

Add the chicken and green beans

Add a little more veggies and stock-roux, leaving enough room for the dough topping
Set aside the baking dishes

Cut the dough into enough sections to cover the number of pies you made

Press and role the dough and lay the sections over each ceramic dish

Drizzle olive oil on top and salt the top of the pies

Bake at 385 for about 25-30 minutes, until tops are brown

IT IS SUPER IMPORTANT TO BAKE THE PIES ON A BAKING DISH.

Unless you love cleaning messy ovens, because the pies inevitably bubble over and out of each ceramic dish. Not much, but enough to mess up your oven, big time.

Eat when cooled, though I have found them to be as good, perhaps better, when reheated another day.

For reheating, get oven to 400, then microwave the pie(s) for 1 minute, and place in oven (again, for insurance, on a baking dish) for 6-7 minutes to bring the crust up and heat the ingredients fully.

Like meatloaf, lasagna, Spanish tortes and many other dishes, there is a lot of variety to the way Green Chile, the Mexican (or New Mexican?) stew made with big sections of port shoulder and butt, though they all feature highly seasoned and roasted meat, and are slow braised for hours in liquids with chiles and onions.

The version I make is David Garcia’s grandmother’s version. David was the landscaper I hired to make improvements to the yard (and then maintain the plants, trees and bushes on the property) of a house I purchased in Marin County in 2000. He was referred to me by my Realtor, and while interviewing him, I said I would hire him on the condition that he brought me a batch of his grandmother’s Green Chile, with loose instructions on how to make it. I told him it was OK if his grandmother wrote it down on a piece of paper, since I can read Spanish and speak a little of it. The stew was delicious, and I have been making this version of Green Chile ever since. In fact, the main reason my collection of Le Creuset pots grew early on was the size of the batches I made, depending on the situation and number I was serving. And the key to that is the size of the piece of pork I would buy at the market – going up to 8-and-9-pound roasts. For neighborhood block parties, for example, I would use the 9-quart pot and with a large hunk of meat and added onions and chiles, and of course liquid and spices. Our block parties would get 50 or 60 people together so I also made a big batch of creamy polenta, and put the polenta down in throw-away bowls then ladle the Green Chile on top of that. Some of my neighbors ferried the bowls of food down to the street on trays (that house was on a 20-degree slope and well-off the street) until my contribution to the party was fully served.

Hence, I own 5, 6 and 9 quart Le Creusets in yellow, blue and orange, respectfully, and the most indispensable piece of cookware I own in my kitchen, Le Creuset’s 4-quarter braiser, in red. In fact, my collection is so colorful (intentionally) that when I built my current house, I made the end cap of the kitchen island that greets guests when they reach the second level of my home (where the kitchen and great room is) and serves as an introduction to my kitchen and for that matter, the entire second story of the house.

Today, I hardly use that 9-quart Le Creuset, but I did use the 6-quart pot to make the latest batch of Green Chile on one wintry, wet and cold Saturday in late January. Can you think of a more perfect time to eat and enjoy this meal?

You can serve this dish with rice, though I prefer creamy polenta the first night the dish is served, in part because if there is leftover polenta I can make crispy polenta a few days later, and eat another bowl of the stew, and have a very different eating experience.

As for a wine pairing, a good California Zinfandel works with Green Chile, yet so does a smooth Rhone wine that is blended with Mourvèdre, Grenache and perhaps Syrah.

Missing from the photo, and to make this a richer green sauce, toward the end of making this batch I added a big can of Hatch Green Chile Sauce. It made the sauce a bit creamier, greener, and more delicious.

I’m stilling looking to meet someone whose mother did not make meat loaf. It’s a fact, if you grew up in America of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s and well, the most recent decade for that matter, your mom made meat loaf. Or bought it at Trader Joe’s. And you ate it.

Meatloaf is best served with mashed potatoes and green beans. While that may be debatable, anyone that takes up the debate against this position is likely to lose. Because most of us grew up with this meal, and its sides, full stop. How you make the meatloaf is entirely up to the chef, and I never tasted a bad version of it.

I’m showing a photo of a meatloaf sandwich to accompany this posting, because as fine as my meal was during the Christmas holidays with its classic sidekicks, the sandwiches the next week were off the hook! But first, details on the loaf itself.

I used one pound of ground chuck, then one-half pound each of ground turkey (dark meat only), pork and lamb, the latter of which gives it a subtle flavor yet not enough to over power the palates of people that don’t eat lamb. I’ve made good meatloaf with a third, third and third of beef, turkey and lamb, if you want to leave out the pork.

For the bread or cracker filler, which also lightens the loaf, and is the dish’s prominent feature, I soaked one complete brioche bun in a one-cup measuring cup and filled it to the brim with half & half and one egg whipped into the cream. The egg helps bind the loaf during baking.

In the meat mix, I used one white onion, shredded with a cheese grater (the same way I make my lamb burgers), 3 green onions, cut into small pieces, and two-thirds of a bell (sweet green) pepper, cut into really small pieces. For seasonings, I used tarragon and Herbs de Provence, with fairly generous amounts of salt and black pepper. 

The amount of moisture overwhelms the meat mix during the mixing, so I keep a container of Italian bread crumbs handy and shake some of that into the mix as I shape the loaf.

Folks cook meatloaf in different baking dishes and such, yet I am a fan of the open mound of meat, compressed into a large, flat-ish ball, placed inside my 4-quarter Le Creuset braiser, then baked at about 425 (lid off) for 15 minutes before removing it from the oven, covering the top with a heavy spread of ketchup, then finishing it in the oven for another 20-25 minutes or so. It comes out nice and browned and the juices and bits that seep out at the bottom become perfect drizzle for the mashed potatoes.

But the sandwich!

1. Brioche bun, warm it but don’t over-toast it.
2. A thick cut of leftover meatloaf, heated up in a non-stick skillet with a little olive oil
3. Cheese topping; I used slices of Gruyere because I like the flavor profile for meat sandwiches but use what you like, or what you got. And I only sear it on one side, so the meat doesn’t get dried out. Once I turn the meat over, after only 3-4 minutes of medium-high heat searing, I turn the stove top off and top the meat with the cheese, then place the pickles on top of the cheese, before putting half of the bun on top of that. Before topping the meat, cheese and pickles, smear a generous amount of mayonnaise on the bun.
4. With the bottom bun, I put the ketchup down first, then slices of red onion, and on top of that, a wedge of iceberg lettuce.
5. Then put the meat and the upper-half of the sandwich on top.

The Wall Street Journal wine writer, Lettie Teague, just published her column, called “An Affordable, Highly Versatile Winter Wine,” and is it is about Chenin Blanc. She makes her position known about the varietal right out of the gate, with a lead sentence that reads: “I love Chenin Blanc.”

I love Chenin Blanc too, for all the reasons Ms. Teague points out in her excellent column (all of them are), plus a few more. For starters, I like Chenin Blanc because it is not Chardonnay! While I love Chablis, which is made with Chardonnay grapes, I’m just so blah with Chardonnay, even if the California winemakers have distanced themselves from “the oak-ee buttery” days of Sonoma-Cutrer. Chardonnays are more drinkable now, but just for drinking, or paired with some foods (Chenin Blanc even pairs well with turkey, according to Lettie), give me a nice Chablis or Chenin Blanc and I will merrily sit on my front deck chair overlooking the vineyard across the street, or start my kitchen prep for dinner that night.

When her recent piece mentioned Vouvray – early in the article, that Loire Valley wine brought me instantly back to the late 1970s, and skiing, in Aspen, Colorado. It was our habit to stuff bottles of Vouvray in our backpacks and, since we were always the first ones on the chair lifts and first to reach the top of the mountain (other than the ski patrol), we would cut into the woods near the top of the mountain, then place the Vouvray in snow someplace hidden, but findable, for a return about 5 hours later. The locations were always on the western side of the mountains so we could ski our asses off and then sneak off into the woods to a clearing in the sun and sit with our wine. Why it was Vouvray, I don’t recall. There was a high-end bottle shop in downtown Aspen back then – probably still is, that all of us had accounts with, meaning, we would pick up wine or spirits now and again and pay our tabs at the end of the month. What a charming thing. But we also thought we were big shots because we had wine accounts at a fancy liquor store in Aspen, and were barely of legal drinking age. What we didn’t know! At least we had good taste, yet the truth is, we were probably drinking that Chenin Blanc because it had a reputation for being good. Our palettes didn’t know any better, but since we all had good paying jobs, we could afford it, so why not? Besides, it was a lot more affordable than the blow back then! I digress. 

Which brings me to last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. We took ourselves on a little road trip. We call them “our adventures,” as it is our way of getting out of normal routines and places, and seeing the world. And some of our nearby places are world-famous, too. In this case, the Napa Valley. From where I live, it is 26 minutes through the mountains separating the Napa and Sonoma valleys, and the road taken drops us into the little hamlet of Calistoga, a slightly funky, historical tourist town but not for wine, rather, for its natural geothermal hot springs. People from San Francisco used to come up to Calistoga in the 1800s to “take in the waters” for arthritis and all sorts of ailments. Some of the medical practices and medicines back then were a little wacky, to say the least, but they were on to something – how soaking in warm and hot water is so healing. Calistoga is also the northern-most town in the famous Napa Valley, and many tourists don’t make it that far north, as the majority of the 900-plus wineries in the valley are in the center near Helena—or south around Rutherford. The “900” is likely debatable; that was the number our server at Inglenook gave us in his discussion of Napa Valley wines; a simple fact check tells me there are about 400 wineries in Napa (according to 3 sources) while another source lists 1,700 registered with some government agency as a winery. Does it matter to you, reader? Accuracy matters to me, but I’m only taking some research, so far. Any way you slice it, there are a lot of wineries in the Napa Valley.

On recommendation and while driving south toward our first stop, we bought sandwiches to go at Guigni’s Deli in downtown St. Helena, a so-called “World Famous Sandwiches” place. We did devour them (pastrami) on a bench in the sun in the parking lot at Inglenook, which was a good thing – besides being hungry, because once we approached the entrance to the winery there was a sign that said “no picnicking.” Too late for that.

Anyway, on wine, we drank a lovely glass of a white Rhone blend at Inglenook that had Viognier among the three varietals in the glass, toured the facility, including the museum on property that is part homage to Francis Ford Coppola’s filmmaking career (he bought the winery in 1975, allegedly with the profits he made from making The Godfather). We even ‘met’ his daughter, Sophia, also a filmmaker, though in reality I just said hello to her when she arrived with her party of 4 (including her), for a book signing. Apparently, she has just produced a coffee-table book of some sort. Some fast facts from the visit. The winemaker at Inglenook, Philippe Bascaules, is also the winemaker at Chateau Margaux, the Bordeaux winery founded in 1855. Francis Ford Coppola’s father, Carmine, wrote all of the original music in The Godfather. What a talented family! Not bad for some guys from Detroit.

Inglenook is one of only a handful of wineries in Napa that are licensed to sell wines by the glass or bottle on the grounds, and that is exactly what they do. No wine tasting here. We just bought three glasses of wine at $17 each and walked around. In the second floor of this magnificent building, (which itself has a deep history going back to the 19^th Century that involves a European ship’s captain with a significant interest in wine https://www.inglenook.com/story/history that led to the 1887 construction of the Chateau we toured), there was classic old car in mint condition parked opposite of the top of the stairs. It was a blend of blue, green and turquoise and without being a car guy, looked like it was from the 1940s. Upon closer inspection, I wondered out loud if this was the car Sunny was shot to death in at the causeway in Godfather 1. One of the staffers passed by as I said that, and he said “no, though a lot of people think it is.” The car is a Tucker.

This is a 1948 Blue Tucker Torpedo, which can be bought online for as little as $40 (for a model of the car). Francis Ford Coppola directed the 1988 movie, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, starring Jeff Bridges.

Wine consumed, we decided to stop by a place we eyed on the way south to Rutherford, as we drove back north to go to Chateau Montelena for a 3 pm tasting. The place we stopped was The Prisoner, and there, tasting a Viognier, then a Rose (made from GSM grapes that eerily reminded us of Marquiliani Vin de Rose, for good reason – Marquiliani (Corsica) is mostly Mourvèdre and Grenache), and finally The Prisoner’s classic Red Blend ($52, half Syrah, half Petit Syrah) and its rich uncle, called Derange ($100, and also a red blend with the Syrah’s plus some Cabernet Sauvignon). It was then that I came up the tongue-and-cheek phrase, Give Napa a Chance. The unusual title has its roots in the anti-war song written by John Lennon in 1969 (it was originally credited to Lennon-McCartney), Give Peace a Chance. Yet that goes back to an earlier and spontaneous comment Lennon made when answering a reporter’s question why he and Yoko Ono had spent all day in bed during a “bed in” day to protest the Vietnam War and to promote peace by staying in bed all day. Lennon said his reason for staying in bed all day with his woman was to give peace a chance.

Off topic, sort of, but writing this reminds me of the time I spoke with an older Vietnamese man (way back in the 1990s) who corrected me when I asked him about his experience during the Vietnam War. He smiled softly and gently corrected me in good though accentuated English: “We call it the American War.” I remember that I did not say a word in response, as I grasped his meaning instantly and clearly.

One primary reason I had the notion of cutting Napa some slack and in particular, this wine, The Prisoner, is that I had written about it a year or so ago and in less than complimentary terms. Mind you, it was not disparaging, though it was a little bit dismissive.

A secondary reason, and for readership background, we have a little fun over in the Sonoma Valley where I live, and routinely snub or eschew Napa wines for our home-grown favorites. We’ll even invoke the standard line that I first heard in the Central Coast wine region around Paso Robles, and one winery actually sold T-shirts, with the words printed on the back: “Napa is for Auto Parts.”

I started changing my mind about The Prisoner just a couple months ago. We were in Hawaii and our first night in Kapa’a (on Kauai), we did take out from a roadside grill shack called Chicken In a Barrel, where they smoke and BBQ chicken and ribs. FUCK! Talk about delicious! It was so good that we went back the next night. The only difference is that day we had stocked up the time share condo kitchen with groceries, spirits and wine from the local Safeway, which included a bottle of The Prisoner. We drank The Prisoner the second time we had Chicken In A Barrel. What a brilliant pairing!

I did not give the wine another thought until that Friday after Thanksgiving in 2023. The Prisoner is a very worthy winery, and affordable by Napa standards. I’m even thinking about joining its wine club. If a winery can satisfy my palette with three of my favorite wines to drink – Viognier for a white, Rose for any occasion, and Red Blends with a variety of foods, I have to change my mind about the wine and where it is produced.

Combine the total beauty of the Napa Valley, with its forested slopes on the western side of the valley and craggy, mountainous crests on the eastern ridgeline, and all those glorious vineyards in between, the delightful flight of wines we tasted at Chateau Montelena (great Merlot), I encourage everyone to do more than just give Napa a chance. Go and enjoy what the region does best – which is making and serving world-class wines.

Of all the emotions, fondness may be the sweetest. It’s not a ‘hard’ emotion, like love or anger. Those are full-spectrum emotions, charged with loads of energy, and perhaps some history to arriving at those respective places, at those specific times. Nor is it a complicated emotion, like disappointment, which is full of nuance and metaphorically speaking, like taking a winding path through a forest – there is a same-ness to what you see but because you are traveling in an indirect line, there’s a new-ness to what you see, also. Plus, disappointed is a small act of betrayal, and comes with thoughts of ‘what could have been.’ It’s fair to point out, that while others may disappoint us, we sometimes disappoint ourselves.

The joy of feeling fond of something, or someone, by contrast, is that it is easy and uncomplicated. It’s not an emotion that requires much thought. In fact, most of our emotions are a product of much thinking, even over-thinking. Fondness is the sweetest of emotions, also, because it doesn’t require a big commitment. There’s a purity to it because it sort of creeps up on you and then, you feel it.

A couple nights ago, a friend and I were sending text messages to each other, asking about our traveling this year, and he was texting from New Orleans.

I have a fondness for the New Orleans restaurant, Restaurant August, because it brings back certain memories, all very pleasant, but also fun, and funny. Not to mention, the food, environment, and service, are excellent. We posted a piece on this back in February 2022, if you want to revisit that story.

We want to France in May of this year. It was epic in scale and style, with 23 days of eating and drinking our way through Paris, Corsica, the Cote de Azur, Provence and Lyon, and yet here we are late in the year and I had not posted a single note from that trip. Perhaps because the trip overwhelmed our senses – though doing the trip was not overwhelming, at all. A bit exhausting, but that is the nature of multi-city traveling. It makes you know, without having done it, why people like cruises so much. “You board the ship, get to your room, unpack, and that’s it,” they say. I get it, but it’s not me. Besides, as a former backpacker, I can unpack in 8 minutes and re-pack in about the same time. As the memories of that France trip go deeper into my psyche, I am sure there will be moments of fondness that I am left with.

As emotions go with food, ‘comfort’ comes to mind, because there is a food category of that moniker. And so it was last night, with a dear friend in town for a few nights, I made comfort food. Penne pasta finished in a truffle cream sauce, baked fennel, mixed with butter, lemon juice and parmesan cheese, and pan-seared chicken (boneless, skinless) cooked in a basil-infused olive oil, with red and green peppers, chopped garlic and green onions, and zucchini. The other day I read a column about one of my favorite chefs, Eric Ripert, and the story theme was ‘cooking at home with Eric” or something like that. As everyone knows, his 3-Michelin Star restaurant in New York City, Le Bernardin, does a lot of seafood. At home, the only spice he keeps around his kitchen, other than salt and pepper, is Herbs de Provence. Hence, I used a little of that with the chicken and vegetable dish. After a bottle of Bandol Tempier Rose (2021), for the meal I went with a Central Coast wine that paired perfectly with dinner, Sardius, a red Bordeaux blend from Red Lantern (2018), in Paso Robles. It’s 82% Merlot, 16% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Tempranillo. Fantastic, and only for about $50.

I grew up Italian. And Irish. Most of the food we ate was American, except during the holidays. It was… what do you think? Italian, of course!

The truth is my mom was just an ok cook. We never went hungry and the food was down the middle of the fairway, as they say. Dad was a classic meat and potatoes man. He tolerated pasta at holidays, but don’t bother with rice or any other carb the rest of the week. Just potatoes, cooked in all ways possible, though I think there are only four of them. Which reminds me of one of my early golf trips to Ireland with a bunch of men – in my 40s. We played and then were having drinks and food afterward at the golf course restaurant and bar. The server brought out sides of fried potatoes and roasted potatoes. I asked if they had any other vegetables and he said “oh sure I’ll bring them right out.” He brought out a bowl of mashed potatoes with a tab of butter on it. Clearly, the joke was on me.

The Christmas Eve tradition in my family was all non-cooked food. Today we would celebrate it as charcuterie and all that. What I remember most was a cheese log covered in ground-up nuts. Walnuts, I think the were. I think I can speak for my sisters – it was an unsatisfactory dinner, to be polite about it. Practically speaking, mom cooked all day on Christmas Eve, so those ‘night before’ dinners had to be easy on her. On Christmas Eve, she made the gravy (red sauce with a variety of meats) because everyone knows, the sauce is always best the next day. She also made the pasta dough for the Christmas raviolis, which were assembled on the dining room table, after a giant cheese cloth had been put down. She would roll out the dough and dad would lay strips of it on the table, then mark the squares for the Ravs.

First down was the ricotta, followed by half a teaspoon of a parsley and olive oil mix, a sprinkle of Parmigiana Reggiano and lastly a small slice of fresh mozzarella. Dad would then cut them and we were taught how to tuck them together into individual raviolis with sealed edges. The sauce has fresh Italian sausage that my father had ground together the day before, and we all stuffed the meat into the casings. The sausages were lightly browned in the oven and then dropped in the gravy. Then there was the braciola, or a rolled meat dish pronounced – at least in our family, braaahzzyal, which is popular in Southern Italy’s Puglia region, among others. My parents made it with a top or bottom round beef roast, pounded flat so it could be rolled up, after it was stuffed with a mixture of bread crumbs, olive oil, garlic, fresh basil, a little prosciutto and pecorino cheese. And red pepper flakes with a little salt. Then it was rolled, tied together with strings, browned on the stovetop in a skillet with olive oil, then dropped in the gravy to slow cook for about four hours. When it was sliced and served, dripping in tomato sauce, it was fork tender. If I were to make this dish today, and something tells me I will, I will use truffle salt instead of regular salt.

I don’t remember any of the side dishes that were served with the raviolis, gravy and a nice slice of braciola, but there was probably a bowl of steamed broccoli on the table. We ate a lot of broccoli!

Once I left the nest, I kept the family tradition for awhile before it faded. My very first Christmas away from home, however, was in Aspen, and I made that dinner for my roommates and our friends. That was a magical night. After cleaning up the kitchen, we took our cross-country skis up to the old mining town of Ashcroft, which is 11 miles up Castle Creek Road. It was a full moon night and about 8 degrees below zero, without a whiff of wind. We skied out into the meadow when a nearby elk began to bugle. We stopped and listened, just smiling at each other, then someone pulled out a flask and we each drank from it.

I brought the tradition back once my daughter was born. I wanted her to know a little bit about growing up Italian. On Christmas Eve and instead of ravioli, we would make pasta together and use a machine I still have to cut fettuccini noodles, then hang them all around the house on shirt hangers to lightly dry the day before we cooked the pasta. We made the gravy the day before, just like mom did, but I bought the sausage. And made the braciola.

Fast forward to the new tradition, which is to get together as a family for Christmas lunch (a few days before Christmas)– dunch, really, even though we are no longer married. But our daughter is still our daughter, all of us love pizza, so I made pizza!

I made pizza a couple weeks earlier for some new friends. It was the first time in over four years since I made pizza dough (post-divorce, and not enough people to cook for—at least to trouble with homemade pizza) and while the toppings were delicious, I was rusty with the dough. It lacked the elasticity pizza dough should have, likely from either too much flour or not enough water. This batch of pizza dough was perfect! I made sure to use more water, and to the point that it was almost too hard to handle once I pulled it from the mixer. That early-phase stickiness is exactly what was needed to create elasticity in the dough.

We like our pizza with thin crusts, baked almost to the point (but not quite!) that the bottom is like a cracker, then loaded with ingredients on the top – and a bit “wet,” meaning no shortage of sauce. And not too much cheese!

With respect to the vegetarian in the family (our daughter), the first pizza was a classic margherita, with freshly sautéed garlic in olive oil, before the (vegetarian) tomato sauce was added. Instead of fresh basil, I hit the pizza pretty good with dried parsley and Herbes de Provence before putting on a light coat of parmesan and a light coat of mozzarella. That’s it.

The second pizza had a white truffle and tomato sauce base, with freshly steamed fennel cut up into small pieces, cherry tomatoes (halved) sliced black olives and both cheeses. We shared the first two pizzas. The third pizza was for my daughter. The tomato sauce had a little pesto as well as black truffle sauce, mostly feta cheese and a light topping of mozzarella cheese, with lots of black olives. The fourth pizza – the one pictured in this post, was shared by my ex and I. It had basic red sauce, cut up bell (green) pepper, a few of the sliced cherry tomatoes and a very generous portion of fried Italian sausage, broken up into pieces, and black olives. Then topped with both cheeses.

We drank a couple bottles of Chateauneuf du Pape, Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe, that I just got from Kermit Lynch. It was a bit young — a 2020, but I decanted it for a couple hours and paired more-than-well with the homemade pizza. The wine will no doubt improve with age, which is an appropriate metaphor to aspire to with what remains of our lives.

Had this complex wine varietal actually slipped from my consciousness? Kinda sorta. I haven’t been drinking much of it lately. I was telling a friend that seven or eight years ago, if you asked me my favorite varietal, it would have been Pinot Noir. Before that, going 15 years back, it was Zinfandel. Now I seem to be firmly in Rose’s camp in the summer and bold red blends, or the fancier term for a blend, cuvee, more often than not. Now that the weather has turned cold, I’m making “big” meat-based food with sauces for dinner half the week, and I need wines that hold their own with the food. Tonight, for example, I’m doing a bolognase with freshly steamed fennel, sauted green pepper and garlic with an infused olive oil and leftover meatloaf (lamb, turkey, ground chuck, Italian-seasoned ground pork) in a tomato sauch with Marsala wine, which will be poured over mushroom raviolis swimming in a black truffle tomato sauce and topped with Mozzarella. For good measure, I’ll top the bolognase with freshly grated, 10-year-old hard parmesan after smothering the raviolis with the meat and vegetables. I haven’t gone through the cellar yet to pick the wine for tonight, but odds are on a red blend.

Anyway, back to Pinot Noir. I had lunch this past week with a fellow North Coast Hobo (that’s another story, another day) and we were talking about wine but not drinking it. Plain water with Chinese food was not fodder for a wine conversation, per se, but he was telling me that he had taken a viticulture class at the local JC to learn about growing grapes, because he and his wife had recently bought a property that included four acres of vineyard – along with their new home, and he took the class so he could communicate intelligently with the farmer managing his vineyard.

My new friend’s vineyard has Chardonnay grapes but the conversation shifted to Pinot Noir, and my new friend expressed his displeasure at most of the Pinot’s on the market today. Mind you, dear reader, we live in Sonoma County, with many micro-climates, some of which are either good for Pinot, great for Pinot or exceptional for the delicate wine. My friend started to say how they taste to his palate and paused in mid-sentence to find the word, when he said it. “They just taste so…….raw, to me” he said, adding: “I don’t know how to describe wine like the wine writers and Sommeliers do.” Neither do I.

Coincidentally two days later I got an email from one of the local Pinot Noir makers, Black Kite, offering some holiday specials, with the only thing being special was the free shipping. In the past when I have purchased this excellent wine I would just go pick it up, as it is right up the road from me. But what the heck the shipping was included and I bought a six-pack that included Anderson Valley Pinots from 2016 and 2018, for $300.

With the knowledge that my Black Kite would be replenished this week, I grabbed a 2018 Gap’s Crown Vineyard bottle that was from an estate vineyard in the Sonoma Coast Appellation. This is an AVA (American Viticultural Area) that encompasses more than 500,000 acres – mostly along the Pacific Coastline, and extends from San Pablo Bay (an off-shoot of the San Francisco Bay) to the border north of Sonoma County at Mendocino County. The appellation is known for its cool climate and high rainfall relative to other parts of Sonoma County, and given the size of the county, it has no fewer than eight sub-regions in the AVA. For wine nerds, I will spell them out:

• Chalk Hill AVA
• Fort Ross-Seaview AVA
• Green Valley of Russian River Valley AVA
• Los Carneros AVA
• Northern Sonoma AVA
• Petaluma Gap AVA
• Russian River AVA
• Sonoma River AVA

Farmers must appreciate this post!

The Black Kite Pinot paired perfectly with last night’s dinner, and the wine was absolutely declious. Dinner was simple and classic comfort food after a day of hard and very cold rain: baked potatoes with butter, finely diced red onion, sour cream and dried parsley; chicken wings (all flats) that I had brined five hours and then seasoned with garlic powder, sage, paprika, black pepper and rosemary, and Sicilian (oven) roasted broccoli (tossed first with olive oil, truffle salt, red pepper flakes) and when the broccoli was fully roasted, I clustered the vegetables in the middle of the baking dish and drizzled fresh-squeezed lemon juice and then topped the veggies with grated parmesan-pecorino.

The food and wine was so good it led to music played loudly (Christie McVee singing You Make Loving Fun – Fleetwood Mac) and a little dancing. Then we cleaned up the kitchen and retreated to watch the 2004 movie and much revered, Sideways, which is a lot of things but in the category of wine, it elevated Pinot Noir to stardom while in the name of unitended consequences, led to the tanking of wine sales for more humble varietals, namely Merlot.

At about 56 or 57 minutes into the movie, there was the ah-ha moment about Pinot Noir, and the essence of this wine varietal was more than aptly described by Paul Giammati’s character in the movie.

Maya, played by Virginia Madsen, asks:
“Can I ask you a personal question, Miles? Why are you so into Pinot?”

Miles answered:

“It’s a hard grape to grow. It’s thin skinned and temperamental. It ripens early.

It’s not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and ah, thrive even when it’s neglected.
No. Pinot needs constant care and attention.

In fact in can only grow in these really specific, little tucked away corners of the world.

Only the most patient, and nurturing of growers can do it, really.

Only if somebody really takes the time to understand Pinot’s potential, they can then coax it into its fullest expression.

And then its flavors are the most haunting, and brilliant, and thrilling, and subtle and……they are the most ancient on the planet.

I mean Cabernets can be powerful and exhalting too but they seem prosaic by comparison.”

Wow!
Hats off to writers!

For the record the writers were Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne, the latter of which also directed the movie. In case you don’t recall what prosaic means, it was not a flattering word choice by Miles, because it means “lacking poetic beauty.”

Get over it, Cab lovers.

Going forward, I might be a little picky about which Pinot Noir I buy and drink, but after last night, it is firmly back in the rotation.

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