A Wine Country Visit to New Friends and Old

We just returned from a visit to California Wine Country (Napa and Sonoma counties) where we had the opportunity to make some new friends and to renew some old friendships.  I have been traveling for the last couple of weeks and so this trip, right in the middle, provided a nice respite.

We left Chicago early Friday morning so that we wouldn't waste a complete day traveling. After arrival, we made the trek up to Napa. Our objective was to be at the Pine Ridge Winery at 2 o'clock for their vineyard and caves tour and tasting.

Since we arrived just before 10 am on Friday, we made it up to Napa in time for us to have a little lunch. We drove into the town of Napa and headed to the historic downtown area.  After navigating around a little, we found a parking lot behind the correction facility and walked to the visitor's center.

Not only did they have some great information on the Napa Valley, they also had some items perfect for wine country.  There was one we couldn't ignore -- it was a picnic kit complete with two wine glasses, plates, utensils and a cutting board that fit into the size of a lunch box.

Whoever thought up this design was a genius.

The community is in the middle of restoration work on the river so there's a lot of equipment around. I imaine that when this project is complete the riverfront part of town will be quite beautiful -- and active.  On the hunt for a place to try we passed the Pear, a New Orleans bistro. It was also the location for Chef Anne Burrell's "Chef Wanted" program that evening.

While we were intrigued, we wandered a little further until we came to Morimoto Napa.  Iron Chef Morimoto's Napa Valley restaurant.  I've never eaten in an Iron Chef's restaurant before so I couldn't pass this up. It's both a restaurant and purveyor of Asian items, too.

I started with a glass of white wine -- a Rhone blend from Joseph Kent called 'vieux carre'. I found it to be quite nice.  It went really well with the Ishi Yaki Buri Bop. Prepared table side in a 500 degree stone pot. I had seen the Iron Chef prepare something like this on the show but I never had a chance to try it myself.

Until now.

I found the flavors to be quite pronounced as I ate everything. My dining partner had the ramen noodles. Two very outstanding dishes. Sometimes you're easily disappointed at restaurants of famous Chef's. This clearly was not the case here. I'd definitely recommend it anyone who's looking for a place to eat in Napa.

After lunch (and the purchase of the picnic kit, it was off to the Stag's Leap AVA for our visit with Pine Ridge. We arrived just before 2 and had an opportunity to taste some wines that were not part of the tour. I had first learned of Pine Ridge right after Crimson Wine Group had purchased Seghesio Family Vineyards.

We had two other groups of people joining our tour and met them as we left the tasting room and headed out to the demonstration plot. This makes for an interesting visit. They have samples vines of Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and others in a variety of trellis options.

With the grapes close to ripe, it gave us an opportunity to taste a variety of grapes. Very different than table grapes. Much more acidic and sweeter. The skins can be a bit tougher than table grapes, too.  I was trying to remember what I learned last year on my visit to sister winery, Chamisal Vineyards.

From there, we toured the winery. I was intrigued by the set-up that Pine Ridge has for barrels.  The barrel room is set up with these wine racks that allow for easy turning throughout the process. They didn't seem to take up any more space than standard barrel racking.

We then moved into the fermenting room to check out the various fermentation tanks. Unlike some of the smaller wineries where they utilize open tank fermentation methods, all the fermentation takes place within the tanks utilizing special yeast cultures.

As we were walking through fermentation room as they were getting ready to bring in this year's grapes as the tanks were all clean, empty and ready to go.

From there we moved into the caves where the traditional barrel aging takes place. While these caves are man-made, they are cut into the hills surrounding the winery. They keep the temperature consistently cool.

As we entered the tunnels, the winemaker, Michael Beaulac, and assistant winemaker, Jason Ledbetter, were there in front of a series of barrels.  They are in the midst of a barrel test to determine the barrels they'll be using into the future. We also had a chance to take part in the testing as we tasted some wines from a couple of the barrels.

I lagged behind a bit to ask Micheal and Jason their favorite wines to make.  With so many wines produced by Pine Ridge it's a little like asking a parent which of their children is their favorite. As it turns out their favorites are different but complimentary.  Michael's wine was the Stag's Leap Cabernet -- a little more subtle, more lush.  Perhaps, as Micheal suggested, the Stag's Leap carried with it more feminine qualities.

Jason's favorite was the Howell Mountain Cabernet. If the Stag's Leap had feminine characteristics, what Jason liked about the Howell Mountain was it's masculinity. A perfect pair, masculine and feminine. I've enjoyed both of these wines. It's amazing to me the opportunities that a winemaker has to mold a wine to their liking  I've had several wines from the Stag's Leap district and from Howell Mountain.  They're all different.

We finished out tour with a tasting in the caves.  They had paired three different wines with different artisan cheeses. I'm always intrigued by the way a wine works with different cheeses. Since we had three very different cheeses, I thought I'd try each wine with a little of each cheese.  I was surprised that some worked and some didn't.

I think, perhaps, the best part was interacting with other folks on the tour. We had a two couples from Miami and another group of college roommates from around the country.

Since we had come in early after a full week of work and travel. The college roommates were tired after a day full of tastings.  They were headed up to Sonoma later in the weekend.  Since we typically spend more of our time in Sonoma rather than Napa, I was able to suggest a couple of options to visit later in the weekend.

After the tasting, we were back in the tasting room to add a couple of bottles to my existing wine club order and to visit further with a couple friends before heading over to Sonoma. I had thought that planning the weekend and a stay and a very attractive Bed and Breakfast was a great idea.

As it turns out the air conditioning wasn't working so well. But more of that in the next post. Thanks, Pine Ridge, for a great visit. Make sure if you're in the Napa region and haven't stopped by before, please put this vineyard on your list of must see places.

The Ravinia Goat Rodeo Picnic Contest and More

As many of you who've been following my blog or my facebook feeds know, we've spent a lot of time at the Ravinia Festival this summer.  I think when all's been said and done we went to 12 concerts this summer. Perhaps our busiest week was the last one when we had six of the twelve events.

Well, as I mentioned in my previous post, we went to see Yo Yo Ma and the Goat Rodeo Sessions. That was the evening that we were selected as one of 50 entrants into the Ultimate Picnic Contest. This joint event was co-sponsored by Terlato Wines so part of the judging had to include some Terlato Wines.

The good news is that Terlato has a wide variety of different wines ranging from rally nice Napa Valley and California wines to those found in France and in Italy.  While I had not had one of their wines before, there was enough to choose from that I didn't think we'd have much of a problem.

As it turns out we didn't.  As you may know if you have followed this blog for some time our trip to Paris a couple of years ago was the launching point for this blog (the background photo is a cafe along the Rue Cler in the 7th arrondissement of Paris). It was during that trip that my partner in these adventures developed a love for the wines of the Cotes-du-Rhone.

As it turns out Terlato has a couple of wines from a well-regarded winemaker in the region Michel Chapoutier.  His Belleruche wines are imported by Terlato.  We found these to be very consistently good in our pre-picnic planning.  At the same time I wanted to do something that I thought would be unique -- turn one of the bottles into a candle.  (As it turned out, it wasn't so much of a unique concept.)

Our original plan was to feature a theme of East meets West with the clever use of some Bento boxes.  Unfortunately, Amazon let us down and didn't deliver the boxes in time.  That left us scrambling a bit.

I had ordered a cheese from IGourmet.com that was a selection of Goat Cheeses.  This concert is a unique mix of talents from across many musical genres as Yo Yo Ma has blurred the lines many times. The name of this album -- the Goat Rodeo Sessions -- refers to a situation where the chaotic cannot seemingly be controlled with each person having their personal agenda and direction.  This certainly reflects the nature of this effort.

A cross between bluegrass and classical, elements of jazz with each musician playing elements together in what could be called controlled chaos.

Perhaps that's what my selection of cheeses could be called -- controlled chaos.  I ordered Aracena, Beemster, Midnight Mood and Buenalba for the event.  The Aracena by Dona Manuela is a raw goat's milk cheese from the Andalusia region of Spain. It's a full-flavored cheese full of herb and citrus flavors. It reminds me a little of a nice stinky cheese from France.

The Beemster is a Gouda made entirely of goat's milk.  Apparently there are a number of farmers who keep goats for the locals' enjoyment and so they also produce a goat's milk gouda.  I found this cheese to be a clean, sweet flavored cheese that was very easy to eat.

The Midnight Moon is a relatively new cheese coming from Cypress Grove Chevre. This is a very different cheese both in texture as well as flavor.  It has a nuttiness to it that makes it great to eat on bread or all by itself.

We finished the cheese with a Buenalba with Pimenton.  This cheese is similar to the Spanish Ibores but different in that the Pimenton de la Vera is infused into the goat's milk before setting it in curds.  This is another raw milk cheese.

These cheeses added nicely to the rest of the spread which included an unbelievable fruit tray with champagne grapes, blueberries, strawberries and our new favorite fruit, figs.

There were also olives, chicken salad on baby romaine leaves (really great for picnics) and a rice salad with some of our homegrown tomatoes and a heavenly lemon vinaigrette.

While we didn't win, show or even place, it was a lot of fun.  We really had a lot of people commenting on the quality of the spread and how it was something that they could reproduce themselves pretty easily.

That, I thought, was one of the best parts. I forgot to mention that we also had saucisson, a French dry cured sausage.  It was intriguing enough that one of the judges -- who views himself as mostly vegan -- had to try a bit of it.

Not surprisingly he found it to be quite good!

Perhaps the most difficult part of the whole affair was that we had to wait until after the judging was completed in order to dig into the delicious picnic fair. We certainly learned a lot about this for next year so plans are already in the works.

I'll leave you with some pictures of some of the other entries in the picnic contest. While there were a lot that were amazing entries, very few seemed like they were something to replicate.

I was astounded by the sound of Yo Yo Ma and the other musicians.  While at times it seemed as though they were all headed for a train wreck somewhere through the music, they ended up pulling every piece together. All in all a very enjoyable evening.

Picnics are always fun. What was your favorite picnic this summer?