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Petite Sirah: Survivor Grape

am — Tue, 22 May 2012 02:00:14 +0000

There is nothing dainty about Petite Sirah. Inky and peppery, this wine packs a wallop of tannins, that astringent quality that is not so much a flavor as it is a sensation. Like a scrappy wrestler who is more sinew than flesh, Petite Sirah will muscle down a steak, a stew or an earthy sandwich of Portobello mushrooms.

If you think wrestling is an odd metaphor for wine, you should see the Youtube video in which Petite Sirah is likened to a muscle car. Wrestling, muscle cars, wine, you get the picture.

Petite Sirah is not Syrah, it’s a hybrid of Syrah and a variety unto itself. It is distinctly Californian. Called Durif in its native France, it isn’t grown there much, it likes our drier climate. Petite Sirah was one of the first grapes imported to California to replace the so-so tasting Mission variety, a grape planted by the padres for sacramental and (I hope) recreational purposes.

In the early days people were less snooty about wine and more casual about the pedigree of their grapes. Growers confused this grape as a small-berried version of Syrah, thus its name. The small grape size is important for another reason. The skin of a grape gives wine its color and tannins, therefore the high ratio of skin to juice in Petite Sirah give it a punch of black-tinged color and lip-smacking tannins.

During prohibition this mighty little grape was prized for its portability. Many California wine growers, such as the Lanza family in Suisun Valley, survived prohibition by shipping grapes to home winemakers in the east. There was a loophole in the law that allowed home winemakers to make up to 200 gallons a year. Do the math: 200 gallons, 365 days a year, would a daily half-gallon ration of wine be enough to keep you happy?

Later Petite Sirah was used in blends to give oomph to the color and structure of other wines. Many single varietal wines are in fact blends, a wine needs to be only 75% of the variety on the label to carry that name. For example, your favorite Cabernet may in fact have small amounts of Merlot, Malbac or Petite Sirah and still be correctly called a Cabernet.

The advocacy group for Petite Sirah (yes, even grapes have advocacy groups) is called P.S. I Love You. Yes, Suisun Valley Petite Sirah, I do love you, let me count the ways. You bring the warmth of the valley to my table. You make my hamburger sing. You fill my glass with rich color, my mouth with big flavor. Most of all you remind me of a little girl who grew up near Suisun Valley, my daughter Sarah. Need I go on?

Horns of Plenty: BD 500 Gathering

am — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:09:36 +0000

Sean Mooney at Full Moon Farm and friends are hosting a Biodynamic Prep making gathering on Saturday November 19 from 10am-1pm. Joey Brinkley will join us to demonstrate how to make BD 500 preparation, which we apply as a soil spray to encourage beneficial microorganisms, stimulate root growth, humus formation and fertility. If you can attend please call 707.494.7869~~please bring a dish to pass and your helping hands! The address is 2000 Smith Lane in Kelseyville.

Biodynamic agriculture arose in response to industrial agriculture and synthetic fertilizers in the early 1920s, offering holistic land stewardship practices to express the individuality and potential of a growing site. Today Biodynamics can be found in many parts of Europe, India, and Australia. It is rooted in creating self-sufficiency and generating on-site fertility through the application of home-made compost and the use of nine preparations described by Rudolph Steiner to restore soil ecology, promote plant life and replenish etheric and astral life forces. The concentrated preparations come from mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, each aged uniquely and added to soils to revive beneficial microbial life and restore the evolving dynamic cycles of living fertile soils. These are applied in homeopathic amounts to compost, soils and plants after dilution and stirring--procedures called dynamizations.

Sail(s) to Remember

am — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 05:31:50 +0000

Today is my birthday, let me tell you how I celebrated my ongoing joy in being alive.

I went sailing for the first time on the San Francisco Bay this Saturday.

Sailing on a real sailboat has been on my bucket list for a long time. I grew up in Indiana, smack dab in the middle of the Midwest, about as far from the ocean as you can get. But we had a lot of lakes near my home, and my family had a Sunfish, which is the smallest sailboat you can get, if you can even call it a boat, it is basically a surfboard with a mast stuck in it. Because my father was either too cheap, or too mistrustful of driving with a trailer, we traveled with it on the top of the car. That means that if my dad wanted to sail, he needed at least one person with him, not necessarily to sail, but to manhandle that boat off the top of the stationwagon and into the water.

I guess he invited me on those Saturday sails because my brothers were playing sports or burning down the garage – that’s another story. I was the surly teenager moping around, watching TV and hating everyone. So my dad would take me sailing.

Those days were my best days. The wind, the water lapping the boat, the sun baking my shoulders after a long,long, gray, dark winter. Sometimes we would go slow and easy, and I could tan my legs on the bow and trail my fingers in the water. Sometimes we would go fast, and to keep the boat from tipping we would have to lean way over on the other side as the wind whipped my hair. I trusted my father about 98% not to tip the boat, but that 2% of unease equaled an intense rush of adrenalin that has hooked me ever since.

Occasionally we did tip over and capsize. When that happens, I learned you just flip your boat and start again. And that it's easier if your father is there.

When my dad would ask me if I wanted to go sailing, I could not refuse him because I knew how much he wanted to go. Now I know what an exceptional experience this was. Fathers in those days didn’t spend a lot of time with their kids, and daughters missed out most, since we generally didn’t play sports. At least I didn’t, I thought sweat was disgusting. Sailing was something my father and I shared when we shared almost nothing else.

Fast forward to my birthday. Every year, since being released from the whirl of dance recitals, wrestling tournaments and college tuitions, I try to do something, challenging, new, and “bucket listy” for my birthday. Two years ago I skydived for the first time, last year I hiked Half Dome. My goal for this year was to learn to ski better- and I failed. But Providence provides. I met someone with a sailboat just in time for my birthday.

This was no Sunfish, this was the kind of boat I told myself I was going to buy for my dad, before I learned the lesson that not all our dreams come true. This was a real boat, not a surfboard and a mast, and it was a boat for the San Francisco Bay.

Yet the elements that make life so worth living - the piercing blue sky, the lazy clouds, waves kissing the boat as they rush by and the sunlight that dances like so many fairies on the water, were just as alive on Saturday as they were on all those Saturdays so far away and so long ago. The only thing that could have improved that birthday sail was to have shared it with my dad.

I did this for a Toastmaster speech today - funny how you can say things aloud that sound rather schamlzy in print.

Biodynamic and Organic Farmers: I'll Have What They're Having

am — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 03:42:02 +0000

There’s a famous scene in When Harry Met Sally when Meg Ryan, in a crowded deli, proves that women do fake orgasms, often and convincingly, with a 90 second gasket-blowing, table-thumping, orgasm imitation, oh-oh-oh-OHhhhhhhh-YES,YES, YES!

The punch line comes when a middle-aged woman glances at her and then the waiter and says “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Well I’ll have what they’re having, THEY being organic and biodynamic farmers. I attended a biodynamic study group last year for no reason other than I was interested. At the time I wondered, are these people beautiful just because they are young or are they beautiful because they are connected to the earth, eating good food and doing what they love? Whatever the reasons for their beauty, their peace, their earnest but practical care for the land, I’ll have what they’re having.

I recently attended a workshop on organic farming, again because I was interested. Kudos to Solano County’s Agriculture Commissioner and the county’s U.C. Davis Cooperative Extension for doing this two hour panel discussion to help farmers and landowners learn about paperwork, subsidies, soil samples, inspectors and so much more to do with getting started farming organically.

Matt McCue and Lily Schneider, Suisun Valley's Shooting Star FarmThe panelists were not the kind of folks who save the earth by sitting in trees and stirring up publicity. They are young men and women, working within the system, through conservation programs and community supported agriculture groups, to improve our health and our world.

Once again, I don’t know why, but they were beautiful, and not a mascara wand among them.

I’ll have what they’re having.

Women of the West: Freedom, Adventure And An Awful Lot of Dirt

am — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:01:48 +0000

Here's a little something I wrote for Fairfield CA's Daily Republic. The assignment was to write about inspirational books for women. I'm not sure what was expected- self-help in the Dr. Phil genre perhaps, but I chose to write about four books that told the stories of women of the west. What does that have to do with wine? Not much except that for these women, the soil, the sun and the seasons were as primal as they are for anyone who loves wine.

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It was the way she evoked the nature of the prairie that first drew me to Willa Cather’s “My Antonia,” a story of Nebraska pioneers, and so much more. You smell the grass as it ripples across the prairie, and hear the wind hum through the lonely landscape. Antonia’s childhood friend Jim, who narrates the story, goes on to college and career; Antonia must stay on the prairie to support her family. When he finds her again, it is the prairie that inhabits her, making her a character to admire and savor. “She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one’s breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last.”

"Women of the West" by Cathy Luchetti in collaboration with Carol Olwell is a book of photographs accompanied by stories of women, told in their own words, through journals, letters, and diaries. The book’s photographs, are truly worth a thousand words, depicting lives of freedom, adventure and an awful lot of dirt. These are the real life counterparts to the fictional Antonia. There’s a teacher in Texas, her school a shelter made of trunks and twigs, a sour-faced woman with her house of sod, and an Alaskan prospector jauntily posed with everything she needs: her man, her dog and her pipe. The book is dedicated to “those women of the West whose stories will never be told.” I have had this book over twenty years, and I never tire of scouring the photographs for clues to their stories.
It was in “Women of the West” I first encountered Elinore Pruitt Stewart, a woman who came to a Wyoming to be a housekeeper on a sheep ranch and married the rancher six weeks later. That did not deter her from realizing her dream of homesteading a claim in her own name. You can read her full story in “Letters of a Woman Homesteader” which is free, not only in the library but online, as part of Project Guttenberg’s free online book collection. “Heartland” is the movie of her story, featuring Rip Torn as the gruff rancher. Apparently living in a cabin on a Wyoming sheep ranch was not sufficiently “ roughing it” for Elinore, because when her husband goes off on a roundup, she gets restless an takes her daughter on camping trip.

“I wish you could once sleep on the kind of bed we enjoyed that night. It was both soft and firm, with the clean, spicy smell of the pine. The heat from our big fire came in and we were warm as toast. It was so good to stretch out and rest. I kept thinking how superior I was since I dared to take such an outing when so many poor women down in Denver were bent on making their twenty cents per hour in order that they could spare a quarter to go to the show.”

If you prefer a more local heroine, check out Luzena Stanley Wilson’s story, “My Checkered Life,” presented by Vacaville author, Fern Henry. Wilson’s husband had gold fever and she insisted on going with him to the mines. There were so few women in the camps- in six months Luzena saw only two other women- that men would pay top dollar for a meal “cooked by a woman.” The Wilsons lost everything in a Sacramento flood, where rats so infested the city that “they bit it at each other, and gnawed the legs of chairs where we sat.” They traveled on to Nevada City but lost everything again in a fire. Once again they picked up and started over, traveling to Vacaville and opening a hotel there.
Whether an autobiography, a book of letters or a classic from a master, these are the stories we are fortunate to read and read again. They stand for the stories of women we will never know, stories we can only imagine.

Best Job Announcement Ever: Wine.Woot Grunt for "Life-sucking position"

am — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:11:55 +0000

Saw this on winejobs.com:

Seeking gullible, starry-eyed plebe for entry-level, total-immersion, life-sucking procurement and sourcing position to feed the insanely popular website wine.woot.com.

What's in it for you? An underwhelming salary, all-but-unobtainable commission structure, hellishly long hours, and scant opportunity for upward mobility. Excited yet? There's more! You'll report to a self-absorbed, demanding boss, and expose yourself to the ridicule of a merciless, unrelenting 24/7 online community dissecting every curated wine selection you’d bring to the table.

Applicant must be wicked smart, Internet savvy, and possess a natural ability to evangelize in person, on the phone, and via the keyboard. Of course, a strong interest in wine and top-shelf writing skills are necessary, too. Industry experience gives you the inside track to what remains, despite all of the above, perhaps the coolest job in the wine industry.

If this still sounds like something you can handle, submit resumes to jobs@winecountryconnect.com and let's procure beautiful wine together.

Check out winecountryconnect.com to learn more about the history of this company.

Winterhawk Winery: Suisun Valley Juke Joint

am — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 05:24:35 +0000

If you like wine, if you like R&B. If you live within 50 miles of Suisun Valley and have five dollars in your pocket, you’re crazy if you don’t go to Winterhawk Winery on Saturdays.

It was a sopping Saturday, but Alvon and His All Star Band made it impossible to sit, so there we were, dancing in our raincoats. We got down, down, as Sly would say, in our puffy vests, rain gear and one old guy in an American Eagle sweatshirt, no doubt swiped from his grandson.

The logo sweatshirt wasn’t the only thing that was incongruously wonderful. We were some white people, some black people, in the middle of a vineyard, dancing to Motown in what amounted to a very large shed.

Winterhawk Winery’s Saturdays of soul are the doing of the owner, Don Johnson, a guy originally from Flint Michigan (ah, that explains the R&B). Across from the winery turned dancing shed, he surveys the scene from a folding chair on the office patio, with a couple of dogs, and a lot of women.

The deal is this: for $5 you buy a ticket, taste a bunch of Winterhawk Wines, then choose your favorite for a glass, take that glass to a table, dance to music and eat free pizza, rolled, pulled and oven fired as you watch. Who cares if the wine is good?

It was too cold to really taste the wine, I’ll have to go back when my breath isn’t steaming to try it again. I have bought Winterhawk Chardonnay ($16) in the past and it was good, with pear, apple and butterscotch, not a lot of acid, fine. Yes fine.

But the Saturday experience, now that was fine. There was no shortage of men who asked us to dance, and who after the dance, courtly led us back to our seats. Their mothers, no doubt long gone, would be proud. But dancing without a partner was OK too. Everyone was having such fun, dancing, "in the moment."

It was very Zen in a Wilson Pickett kind of way.

I did wonder, surveying the grey heads of the crowd, if R&B, like opera, was destined for the AARP slag heap. But later some younger folks arrived and I was cheered to see that soul and wine have a brilliant future, even on a dripping day.

I’ve Got a Crush On You - My February Article in SolanoFit

am — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 06:31:02 +0000

Lovers and wine have a lot in common. Let me count the ways.

I am drawn to Don Draper like a bug to a bulb, it’s a good thing he’s not real. If you haven’t met him yet, Don Draper is the dreamy Mad Men character, whose appalling lapses in morality diminish his magnetism not a bit. Pinot Noir is the Don Draper of wines, smooth, silky and a mouth full of spice. Nothing about Don is cheap, and bargain Pinot is usually a disappointment.

If your taste runs to muscles and the brawny guys who decorate the romance novels, think about a big buttery Chardonnay. Some of them are so fat and woody they are a joke (Fabio anyone?) Good ones are structured with hints of citrus, apple and a soft touches of oak, like Aidan Shaw, the furniture designer that Carrie Bradshaw let get away in Sex and the City. Aidan was the kind of guy who would build you a table then make you a meal. Chardonnay is like a steady boyfriend, a wine you can appreciate, even when you drink it every day. The San Pablo Bay fog kisses the Carneros region of Napa and Sonoma, making it a prime growing region for this cooler climate grape. It’s a short hop over the hills from Solano and a great place to sample Chardonnay.

No lovers wine list would be complete without a nod to Petite Sirah especially since many delicious examples are grown in our Suisun Valley back yard. Despite its name, there’s nothing about the flavor of Petite Sirah that is small. Nor does it have anything to do with Syrah, a wine with which it is sometimes confused. What it is, is an inky blast of blueberries, chocolate and pepper with lip smacking tannins. Have you ever have the hots for a bad boy like Russell Brand? Tony Soprano? Then you’ll say P.S. (Petit Sirah) I love you.

Buena Vista Carneros Winery Closing

am — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 02:06:21 +0000

At 2 p.m. Buena Vista Carneros employees at the Duhig Road facility were told that the parent company, Ascentia Wine Estates was moving operations to the Geyser Peak location and that their future employment was uncertain. According to my source (I’d make a joke about that cliche if it weren’t such a sad subject) the CEO said because of the bad economy they would keep the venerable label but the Carneros winery would close, or at least end it’s life as Buena Vista Carneros.

As is so often the case, employees were shocked, none of them saw it coming. The news was delivered after a deal to sell 300+ acres of Carneros vineyards and the winery fell through on Friday. Employees were told that the decision was made over the weekend. The rush to tell employees of their fate, without much detailed information, was necessary because the company that had been slated to buy the vineyards was getting ready to release the info to its stockholders.

According to a Press Democrat article, Buena Vista was part of a 2008 deal in which Jim DeBonis, a Sonoma native, and his partners acquired eight Sonoma wineries from Constellation Brands to form Ascentia Wine Estates. Then the economy tanked, wine sales suffered and last year, one of the investors and the wine group's marketing partner, W.J. Deutsch & Sons sued the company, claiming DeBonis had inflated sales figures. DeBonis was replaced by Artesa's Michael Kenton in January.

Hilarious Blog: Things Real People Don't Say About Advertising

am — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 02:42:39 +0000

Hop over to this tumbler blog called Things Real People Don't Say About Advertising and page through the slides. I've traded a few of these kinds of adver-centric comments with some of my ad friends on Facebook, now there's a whole blog of them - and illustrated with stocky-stock photography too! My favorite is "I wonder if my favorite brand of kitchen roll has a twitter stream I can follow." Thank you Bill Israel whoever you are. You made my day!