Posts belonging to Category Sauvignon Blanc

Oysters are sexy.How could Georgia O’Keefe miss the inspiration? Orchids and oysters. We get it. Amy Reily makes a living writing about sexy foods and oysters are at or near the top of her list [ed. Amy blows away the competition in the sexy food and wine grouping]. I found myself in splendid company thick and tasty as a miyagi oyster. The event was the 19th Annual Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition sponsored by Taylor Fish Farms in Washington. The gig is more than just promoting the consumption of oysters. It is also about pairing oysters with domestic white wines. Jon Rowley is the architect of this two decade long “competition.” Longevity is a strong marker for interest but not always for quality which is best evaluated with a hands-on evidence based participation observation. This tasting hit both marks.

We arrived at the Water Grill in downtown Los Angeles at 3:00 sharp, chose a solitary table with 20 empty glasses, and waited for the glitterati to arrive. No disappointments there. Mary Sue Miliken – highly respected cute-as-a-button and sweeeter-than-honey LA food entrepreneur – sat down in an adjacent booth. LA food critic Jonathan Gold sat a few tables across. Apologies in advance for anyone not mentioned. The A-list food writers and job creators was fun. However, for tBoW the matching exercise was quite serious.

Jon officially opened the tasting with a quote from A Moveable Feast which is a collection of unpublished essays published posthumously. In one of the essays he describes chowing down on oysters, slowly, carefully, noting each nuance. For Hemingway the experience is, of course, transcendent. The urge to wonder what further stimulation awaits when pairing the slimy critters with wine seems obvious, no?

We are not strangers to oysters. In fact we love them. Acme Oyster in Nawlins is a must stop when in town. No trip to Seattle is complete without multi-raw dining. We once ate 5 dozen on a beach in Colombia… with another couple. So this was bound to be a treat.

A method was advanced. Chew the oyster first filling mouth with sea-borne flavors. Oysters are no more all alike than are acidic white wines that keep them company. Here come the platters. The first flight of glasses get three-finger fills. Generous. Sniffing before sipping is discouraged. No problem. tBoW powered through each flight directly, chewing and tasting his wine through all 20 wines. In fact, the kumamoto ersters were so delicious we polished off another half dozen for good measure. Forget about Honey Boo Boo. Oyster Boy below knows how to take down a slimy delight then pick thru the detritus for bits n’ pieces.

The kumamoto oyster is briny with a starchy texture and flavor. Each wine was bagged and tagged with a unique letter. Part of the deal is to see how well my oyster & wine palate matches with the other judges. The winning wines are announced but not in ranked order which is certainly the right decision given there is really no quantifiable argument. The only competition that truly matters is how many judges matched winning wines. A return invite could hinge on this outcome.

The tasting takes place in three cities – LA, SF and Seattle. Scores from all three tastings are combined. One LA judge and two San Fran judges matched 8 of the 10 winners. Jon Rowley points out no one has ever matched all 10. I gotta think 8 is pretty dang good. tBoW matched 3 of the top 10 wines which was the lowest matches among the judges. Gratefully, there were two others on the LA judging panel with similarly idiosyncratic palates. I found one pairing elicited a dry gin martini. Four of the top 10 wines were among my lowest ranked. Winning varietals included Sauvignon Blanc (6), Chenin Blanc (2), one Pinot Gris and one Riesling. Wineries represented California, Washington and Oregon.

All I know is this. After all the chewing and coating my mouth, then sipping on wines and spitting, and not taking one single sniff ever, I was left with a profound hunger for sourdough bread. Apparently this is something akin to how the Irish consume oysters. I will stand on Irish tradition any day except when it comes to religion. And Amy Reily walking away in heels should be available on video.

This was a wonderful affair which I hope to repeat. There are a couple oyster bars in LA that I plan to visit including L&E Oyster Bar in Sliverlake and Blue Plate in Santa Monica. The L&E GM was the 8-match dude in our group. It was all over much too soon.

Could be another match for oysters is Blue öyster Cult. Goes with slurpin’ n’ sex, no?

It was just so perfect. Everything aligned like things had been planned. Summer evening temps were in the low 80s. A tasting crew of 10 was ready to guzzle, I mean sip. The lineup included pre-tasting palate warmups with a Provencal Rosé, a California Pinot Grigio and two Gascogne white wines. The blind tasting of premium Pinot Noirs immediately preceded the meal. The wines were all outstanding sending the tasters back to the table buzzing. Summer dinners like this one make LA live-able. Here is the down low. (more…)

She FINALLY got here. Like the panting crowd waiting for the always-late movie star to arrive we expect a very good show. Along with summer come the wine festivals, music festivals, art studio tours, golf tournaments (SO to my NRCC homies struggling for glory in the sunshine) and plenty…I said plenty…of warm evenings with friends and fellow wine lovers. We already hit the first wine & food festival, Casa Pacifica in Camarillo. The Topanga Art Studio Tour is this weekend then LAs’ BEST outdoor party the Playboy Jazz Festival is Fathers Day weekend. (more…)

Poker players like to say “I’d rather be lucky than good.” Is this just another way of saying you do something often enough you’re bound to fall into something good sometime? Vince Neil and his band were very very lucky. They made superb RnR and at some point Vince made a wine. We have not tasted it. But we do have a motley assortment of other wine odds and ends. [ed. Dude that would have been cool tasting the Cr√ºe wine. I thought you knew people.] (more…)

Like the mid 18th century Portola horsemen whose figures are painted on the cave walls located on this incredible property in the Malibu hills, the Semler family has gone exploring. The destination? The land of serious winemakers – sparsely populated territory in the ‘Bu. After several years of planning and a couple of key moves they seem to have all the pieces in place for a successful journey.

tBoW interviewed patriarch Ronnie Semler, son Shane and wife Lisa on the grounds of their highly successful “tasting park” off Mulholland Drive across from their 1,000 acre ranch tucked deep in the hills of Malibu. Ronnie quickly identified Lisa as the one with winemaker fever behind their Malibu Family Wines project. She pulled off the Saddlerock Malibu AVA application. In the late 1990s Lisa proposed pulling up several thousand avocado trees and planting vinifera. Avocado trees, she reasoned, are not nearly as robust a crop as wine grapes. Today they have 70 acres planted to the following varietals:

Cab – planted 1998 thru 2000 – 36.53 acres (60% Cab)
Merlot – planed 2002 – 5 acres
Syrah – planted 1999 – 6.53 acres
Syrah – planted 2006 Р5.85 acres – no production yet,
Sauvignon Blanc Рgrafted 2006 – 6.59 acres
Grenache – grafted 2006 – 2.04 acres
Mourvedre – grafted 2006 – 1.29 acres
Malbec – grafted 2006 Р.82 acres
Malbec – planted 2006 – 1.34 acres
Viognier – grafted 2006 – 1.59 acres

They have two labels, Saddlerock – blends of Central Coast juice from Santa Barbara to Paso Robles – and Semler – 100% estate grown. They do not own property outside the ranch…yet. They do have ambitious plans to take the 25,000 case production under Saddlerock to 100,000 and to double the current 10,000 cases of Semler. Their plan is to have 100 acres under vine on the ranch.

Lisa is the family vintner who unlike so many of her Malibu colleagues has taken numerous courses at UC Davis. However, her greatest edge may be knowing her limits – “don’t ask me about the chemistry; I prefer the blending”. She concluded that, after 13 years of climbing the steep learning curve, if she and Ronnie were to get serious they needed to bring in the professionals. They invited celebrated winemakers from Central California who confirmed they had excellent growing conditions, vines and soil.

So they hired two winemakers, a Santa Ynez veteran, and a viticulture specialist from New Zealand, to make sure they could get the most from what they have. If you want to see what the Kiwi had to work with down under click here and you will feel assured he can manage the many microclimates on the Semler Ranch.

They had already made the wise decision to take their harvest to Terravent in Santa Ynez [ed. Alma Rosa, Ken Brown, Summerland...]. “We were their first customer”. This decision was based on several factors including the smaller lots they could bring in at any given time during harvest and the quality of the winemaking staff there. tBoW has already confirmed that the region’s better wines are vinified at Terravent where the character of the local fruit doesn’t get washed out during vinification. Hey, we ain’t geniuses…the proof is in the bottle. [ed. he means Schetter's Sanity, Carol Hoyt of Hoyt Family Vineyards and Bob Haagstrom of Church Vineyards].

Another key experience was not anticipated. They were able to pick the brains of some of Napa’s most knowledgeable vintners during an non-wine stay at Meadowood in Napa in 2008. The result was they got a sense of what it means to “get serious”. They decided to drop more fruit – from 3 tons per acre to 1.5 to 2. The winemakers also have ideas…and they are quite exciting.

The Semler Ranch is a spectacular spot geographically. As a vineyard it is “fairly extreme” in terms of the terrain and yet it is 100% hand farmed [ed. some of the slopes defy equillibrium]. Our goal is to actually assess each corner in the vineyard and test each as lots for blending. There could be 40 to 50 of these.

One of the qualities I find impressive is the ability of the vineyard to hold onto natural acid. We see no reason to add acid to the blends. You want natural acid in your juice in order to produce elegant wines. Our goal is to produce wines at lower alcohol levels with good natural acidity. We will focus on Cabernet as this is the cash crop. However, we believe the Southern Rhone varietals will do very well on site.

We did blend the King of the Mountain red but do watch out for the 2008 reds not yet released. The 2009s will be even better. The vintage in 2010 will be the first where we have been able to care for the vineyard to impact the winemaking. Building the winery will mark the next serious step in being able to realize the actual potential as we will be able to better control for the microclimates.

We have felt that Semler is positioned to be the flagship in the ‘Bu winemaking community. “We already are” pointed out Ronnie. His crew has installed many vineyards in the region and they are frequently asked to consult on the Malibu Wine Country phenomenon. Despite decent success they want to do better. Having interviewed enough Malibu property owners – the term vintner is so easily worn as a mantle of respect – we can say these guys are way ahead of the pack. Granted they have a decade long head start which, admirably, has impressed them with how much they do not know.

How will we know when the Malibu Family Vineyard has arrived? When their wines are more than decent or well crafted; when their wines are distinctive, something that cannot truly be said to date for any of the wineries. There is a handful of vintners who understand this distinction and the Semlers are among this tiny crew.

Malibu Wine Country is a very loose collection of hobbyists generally making ordinary wines. Most have no idea what their neighbors are doing…or what they are doing themselves. Here is the biggest vineyard looking to separate itself from the pack on a large scale along with the few that already have. Look for the 2010 vintage wines from Semler to see if they have forged a gap. These are the wines that will have the full imprint of the new winemakers working in harmony with Ronnie and Lisa. After speaking with the entire crew we will be looking to the horizon with considerable interest.