Posts belonging to Category Malibu Coast

October brings seasonal changes everywhere except California and Florida. The autumn leaves turn colors. The days dwindle down. September. November.

October doesn’t rhyme. Here in sunny SoCal days cool off with daily highs in the 80s. You have to take a jacket if dining in Culver City, the cultural capitol of West LA. The A-Frame is the hot spot. A little bit of Portland right here in LA.

Roy Choi takes over a custom built Der Wienerschnitzel in an A frame building. Food comes out in small plates rat-a-tat-tat just like with his food truck. And the wine list is good enough. We ordered the same rose reviewed reicheer last week! UCLAns and Westside millenials packed the bar. With each 30 minutes the looks got hookier. Youth. Thanks to Kevin Eats blog where we got the foto.

Most importantly, baseball playoffs c’est arrivé. tBoW loves championship baseball. The postseason really makes the regular season look more boring than we already know it is. Very much like wines rated on the 100 point scale and wines that simply taste great. The ocean of Parkerized wines hardly makes an impact. But the emergence of unique fetishes like “natural wines” or wines from Mt. Etna or the small towns north of Barolo and Barbaresco… this is championship wine imbibing.

Fine wines we have been tasting are listed below.

2010 Romeo del Castello Etna Rosso Allegracore $23: Old World Cab wine from Mt Etna showed volcanic ash on the perimeter of the mouth, translucent robe, balanced, dignified composure. So Euro. Had this next to unnamed [ed. that would be mean] local Cabernet Sauvignon grown and made in the ‘Bu. The new World/Old World comps are obvious. The New World Cab was only five years old with plenty of fruit and sour overtones. Function of the inexperienced winemaker? Fruit is good enough to make decent wine. Needs a better winemaker. This Old World wine from Mt Etna contineus a string of wonderful wines from the Sicilian volcano. 14%

2013 Clos Roche Blanche Touraine $20: Old vine Sauvignon Blanc from a vineyard under control of the same family since the late 19th century. Small quantities made with miniscule intervention [ed. dat wooden be natch’l now woodid?]. The winemakers are chemists come to wine. How scientists look at terroir: “Using herbicide forces the vines’ roots to the surface, in which they can effectively grow in the 8 to 10 centimeters of fertile soil that you find anywhere in the world. This isn’t terroir. To get to the terroir you need to go deeper.” Rare bottles nearly extinguished brought back to life with care and dedication… spotty leafed newt? Compromise-driven Republican lawmaker? Water responsible farmers in Central Valley? Turf lawns in Beverly Hills? Maybe not that rare. Grassy hints, yellow gold color as in not pale, firm body. Could play wide receiver for Trojans. 13%

2010 Montebro Priorat Crianza $17: By the glass at Peddlers Wine Bistro, local wine bar and dining spot which always pours something unexpected. Like this juicy, light to middle weight Spanish red. U20 winner. 13%

More good news. Jen Carter has relocated to Topanga’s Canyon Bistro. The wine list already shows her fresh approach to value and curiously wonderful wine selections. The food and the setting have always been worth a trip. So goodbye Saddle Peak, hello Canyon B!

Tahoe is to Alpine lakes like Barolo is to great red wines. Peerless. The whole damn fam assembled on the beach for 9 days. Nearly all the Young ‘Uns too; studying analogies for LSATs, living with parents hoping for a job in San Francisco, working their way through JUCOs on their way to a UC, finishing high school, and on and on and on. Good opportunity to pull corks. (more…)

The Internet is a tool for having fun with anything you like. Well, we like food and wine so when REL invited us to her blog dinner we said we’ll bring the wine. We arrive at REL’s apartment building. She and Sean Rice have begun shooting this evening’s dinner that will be featured on Sean’s food blog Meat Me. REL has her own food blog Things I Make in my Kitchen. Obviously, the two have been trading bits, bytes and quite a few megapixels. We are the first of four guests. Sofie and Paul will arrive shortly. I open the first wine. (more…)

What the heck is going on in Camarillo? When we attend a wine festival, especially in Camarillo, we expect to taste and munch and meet and greet. We are not supposed to discover wines and new labels. The 2012 Taste of Camarillo provided the right concoction of need-sonar-to-find-em wineries [ed. now THAT is under-the-radar], go-for-it winemaking spirit, and excellent food to see something vinous is happening in the breadbasket of SoCal. (more…)

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…)