Glassware. Yes... It's important

Yes, yes, yes... the beet-o-riffic post from the Tyler Durden Emergency Food Night is almost done. Really it is. It's more done now than it was when we last spoke. But I thought the following article from the heavytable.com was worthy enough of a Food Night Breaking News Bulletin...

Georg Riedel at Kitchen Window



Two positevely BRILLIANT points Mr. Riedel makes in the article...

1). "Enjoy the company of the people you are drinking with." (Food Night Editor's note; Truer words have rarely been spoken. Wine always tastes better in the company of good people. Always.)

2). "How much do you spend on glassware a year? Zero, right?" (Food Night Editor's note; Buy yourself some decent Riedel/Spieglau/Whatever stems. If you are reading this... you care about food and wine. Treat yourself. Spend $50 on 4 decent Riedel stems. Please. And yes - you have to hand wash them. This will not cause the world to end. You can do it. Food Night believes in you. And Food Night is right about this... drink your wine out of proper glasses. Please trust Food Night on this one. We've gotten you this far....)





Food Night loves the heavytable.com. And Food Night loves its Riedel stemware. And Food Night loves it's loyal and fabulous readers. So, I thought you all should meet.

Happy Stemware Shopping.

One more thing... The wine on the left in this picture (from the above heavytable article)...


...the Roberts & Rogers Cabernet Sauvignon from Howell Mountain... um..... yeah. You want a bottle of this stuff. It's AWESOME. I just had it last week and it is drinking beautifully. And, It's on sale at Haskells right now... for half price. Come see your Food Night fellas at the Woodbury Haskells and pick up a bottle or two... and your life will immediately be better.

You say TAHG-nee, they say TAWN-yee; Our visit to Togni Vineyards

St. Helena, Napa Valley - Food Night is coming to you live, from the shotgun position of the sporty VW Jetta as we attempt to locate Togni Vineyards.*

* Let’s briefly touch on the proper pronounciation of this place, which the owners lend their last name to. As best I can tell, from listening to our hosts pronounce it, it is TAWN-yee. It is definitely not TAHG-nee… which is the way we had been pronouncing it. Linguistics experts we are not. Please forgive us.

After some back and forth, we finally zero’d in on our target. You see, the enterances to wineries typically look something like this…

Or this…


Togni’s enterance? It looks like this…


Yeah. A simple gate with a padlock. No signage to alert you to your proximity to world class cabernet, almost as if to say “We let the wine speak for itself here.” It was later explained to us the gate is useful in keeping deer out of the property. So world class wineries don’t like the deer either... I knew I was going to like these people.

After calling the winery from just outside the locked gate, because we (obviously… and predictably…) forgot the combination to the lock, we coasted down a little hill to a charming little vineyard scene. There were lovely rolling hills, a house further down the hill and what looked to be a winemaking facility next to the “parking lot”. And when I say “parking lot”, what I really mean is the parking SPOT. It was immediately evident that this is not some high traffic tourist trap scenario. This is a small (2000 cases a year, max) family operated winery that the Togni family has taken much care and pride in cultivating.

The experience at Togni was a true highlight of our trip to California. Let’s have a look at we saw…

As we climbed out of the Jetta, Birgitta Togni greeted us and proceeded to show us around the property. I couldn’t help but think it’s probably a good sign that the last name of the person showing us around coincides with the name that is on all the wine produced here. Just an observation. I like to state the obvious sometimes, bear with me.

One of the first things we saw was this awesome medieval-looking door…



What do you think it leads to? I half expected to see a bunch of bearded fellas wearing fur garments sitting at a table drinking meade and gnawing at turkey legs the size of footballs on the other side of that door, but no… twas not to be. What actually WAS on the other side was far better (and less dangerous) than that. That door leads into…


… the barrel rooms. Pristinely clean barrel rooms, I might add. Here, the pressed and free run juices rest in new oak barrels… like this one…


It was here we got the INCREDIBLE opportunity to taste wine from said barrels (I believe it was the 2008 vintage)… a first for me to be sure. I figured we’d be tasting from bottle, obviously, but all of a sudden…


… there goes Birgitta with the “wine thief”, siphoning off juice and releasing it into glasses as I tried my darndest to suppress my inner 5-year-old that was desperately trying to illuminate the room with a joyous rebel yell. I mean, two days ago at that time, I was sitting in a stale cube while staring at a computer screen in St. Paul… and now here I am drinking wine out of a Barrel at Togni Vineyards that ROBERT PARKER drank out of. For you math majors out there… (Wine out of a Barrel at Togni) > (Cube Farm) x 1,000,000.

First we tasted the “free run” juice, which is the juice that is… well, think of this this way. You put a couple of tons of grapes in a tank. The ones on the bottom… they get crushed by their brothers and sisters sitting on top of them. So the juice resulting from that natural pressing is called “free run” juice. This juice is removed from the bottom of the tank via a valve or similar relief device, and is sometimes/often distributed back over the remaining grapes in the tank.

Next we tried the “pressed” juice, which is juice that is extracted from the remnants of the naturally crushed grapes via this bladder press…


I thought the free run juice was fabulous, but the pressed juice….. WOW. That stuff was uber complex and fat and unctuous with massive amounts of structure and acid and sophistication. World Class, the Togni cabernet sauvignon.

After Birgitta showed us around the barrel rooms, we exited the barrel rooms through a different door*...



* What is it with crazy wicked cool old doors at wineries???

... and were led into the warehouse where we met Philip Togni, gentleman, winemaker. Philip started making wine at Chappalet back in 1960’s, and has been growing grapes on the 25 acre plot of land where he and Birgitta live since 1981. These were such “real” people, true masters of their craft, yet completely down to earth, humble and affable.

One of my favorite things about this family owned and operated business I found over in the corner of the warehouse. The label making “station”…. shown here…

I mean, can you imagine how the labels are put on bottles at a place like, say, Sutter Home? Or Yellow Tail? At Togni… there is a table in the corner with a roll of labels and a chair with no back to sit on. Soooooo charming. And real. Loved it.

As we made our reluctant exit, I noticed Philip was somewhere out of view, fudging with bubble wrap or some such thing. Then as we were about to head up to the car, Philip, every bit the gentleman, hands us a bottle of Tanbark cabernet that he has wrapped in bubble wrap and explains in his fabulously articulate and distinguished English accent “I thought you might be having a bit of lunch next, perhaps you might like to enjoy some of our wine with your meal.”

I mean………. Does it get any better than that?!?!? No, it doesn’t. So classy. For the record; we were late for our subsequent appointments, so lunch was quite rushed, and as a result we enjoyed the bottle at dinner that night.

Thank you to the fabulous Philip and Birgitta Togni…


… for your gracious hospitality. Making the connection between a wine and the people that make it takes the enjoyment factor of said wine up an immeasurable amount.

And so we made our way back up the hill, past the padlock, bound for more tasting appointments, knowing full well our day had already peaked.

New Shoes, and new Blog Stuffs

If you are anything like me, when you were a kid, new shoes made you positively giddy. Unfortunately new shoes also typically coincided with the beginning of a new school year, which was certainly not cause for celebration. But the new shoes provided a nice distraction from the impending 9-month prison term school year. They signaled a page turning of sorts, a new chapter, a fresh start.

So, since it's that time of year, and the old blog here could use a bit of a shake up and wake up... I thought it might be wise to unfurl a few new ditties* here to keep things fresh.

*Ditty (noun). Definition; a thing.

Ditty #1. We are gonna have a go with messing around with the photo on the right side of the page on a daily (or semi-daily) basis. I've got a pile of pictures from various Food Nights and the trip to Cali that are sure to never see the light of day otherwise. Like this one...



I thought the Golden Gate was just a bridge. False. It is not just a bridge. It is a REALLY BIG bridge. And it's REALLY red. And REALLY cool. Ultimately yes, just a bridge. But it is one of those rare things in life that lives up to the nearly ridiculous levels of hype and hyperbole.

Only slightly less transcendent than the picture of one of the most monumental engineering marvels known to man is... the picture of Durden and Alex that is up there now. Or as I like to call it... "Shark Food". That was taken Sunday morning of our Cali trip, when we drove out to the coast, just for the heck of it. Remember, Minnesota boys like us don't get to see the ocean every day. I just love the pose/faces; what a couple of tools. Cracks me up every time I look at it.

So yeah. More pictures. Which is what I wished "Grapes of Wrath" had when I "read" it in high school.

Ditty #2. I'm going to put up a little blog-roll at the right. Basically, these will be links to blogs and/or websites that A). Food Night uses/references often, AND B). you like-minded people might find interesting and/or inspiring. Stuff like Ruhlman, Bittman, Simply Recipes, etc. I'm sure it'll be great.

Ditty #3. As the mood strikes, we'll fire up polls on the right, to query you... the faithful Food Night reader. As you can see... we've already got one going right now; Beets - your preferences. Food Night loves beets, and Food Night thinks you should too. Not to be pushy or anything of course, but they are good, colorful, good for you, AND... easy to prepare. Not to mention, one of Food Night's faithful readers is into beets, and Food Night is trying to cultivate his love of beets. So, more on beets later.

Ditty #4. Most if not all of you no doubt recall that... there is an UNDOCUMENTED Food Night still floating around out in the universe of past events! *** GASP ***. Yeah, I know. The horror. You recall the "Emergency Food Night" I teased a while ago I'm sure. So, to fix this, and since this undocumented Food Night happened in JUNE... I think I might run a quick and dirty version of it... kind of First Grade style. Which is to say, more...



... pictures...


...than words. We'll see. My thought is that way you'll get a little more meat on your Food-Night-bone, without me having to try to remember exactly what went down back in June. Cripes, I can barely remember what I did 20 minutes ago.*

* Which I'm told is perfectly normal. For a 93 year old.

And that's about all I know for now.

Oh wait, that's not true, I also know the post on Food Night's visit to the fabulous Togni Vineyards is on the Food Night Editor's desk awaiting final approval. So you've got that going for you...... which is nice.

Culinary Interlude... Tomatoes

I hope you are enjoying the deets of the trip to Cali as much as we enjoyed being there. But as you surely know, TOMATO SEASON is upon us, so I think it’s appropriate to sprinkle in a tomato focused culinary interlude. Included here are a couple of my tomato-centric recommendations and one recipe from the uber-deece-and-talented Sameh Wadi that is not to be missed.

First, have a go with Jamie Oliver’s simple yet brilliant compilation of tomatoes in what he accurately dubs “The Mothership Tomato Salad Recipe”. It’s elegantly rustic, if that is possible, and above all… the taste is amazing. Make sure you have some crusty bread to sop up the juices from the tomatoes and olive oil and other goodness that’ll be left loitering on your plate as you gobble up the tomatoes. And riff on it… it’s not a soufflé… you aren’t going to wreck it. Toss in some tarragon, some cucumber, some feta… go crazy. One thing to note… I usually skip or drastically reduce the garlic in this recipe. I feel like it overwhelms the tomatoes.

Difficultly level for Jamie's tomato salad recipe is literally ZERO. If you can slice a tomato, you can do this. And what’s more, you SHOULD do this recipe. Now is the time, when tomatoes are plentiful and at the height of their powers. Check out the beauties I saw at the St. Paul Farmers Market this weekend... pictured above, and right here...

Secondly, as a seasoned Food Night devotee, you undoubtedly know that I am a huge fan of the French Laundry Cookbook. Please know that just because the book says “French Laundry” on the cover doesn’t mean it’s out of your league. Case in point… the Heirloom Tomato Tart.

In my opinion, the Heirloom Tomato Tart recipe ALONE is worth the $35 sticker price of this book. I’m telling you… buy the book, and make that recipe. It has changed people’s lives. I’m not even going to say anything more… just buy it… and make it. Perhaps use the above tomatoes, lounging in the French Laundry’s garden,* as inspiration.

*No really, that is a photo I took on Food Night’s recent trip to California** of tomatoes in the French Laundry’s garden. I understand I do a fair amount of kidding and leg pulling around here, but this is not one of those times. Those are actual French Laundry tomatoes. I mean who knows… maybe those tomatoes found their way into an ACTUAL French Laundry Heirloom Tomato Tart!

**Which you have no doubt been reading about……… right?

Difficulty level for the tart is slightly higher than zero, but easily doable for anyone that cares about cooking. And that would be YOU if you are reading this. And if you opt for store-bought puff pastry (as I have done) instead of making it from scratch… I won’t tell anyone. The dish will still be fabulous, too.


Finally, I must point you to Sameh’s recipe for Tomato Jam that appeared in the August issue of Metro Magazine. This issue has a plethora of fun food stuffs in it, including a mouth watering pictoral of Sameh’s BLT… where the “T” is the following Tomato Jam.

You no doubt recall the Bacon Jam that we had with scallops at a Food Night last February. This Tomato Jam is a lot like that… except… with tomatoes! So get blanching and peeling, and your “B” and “L” will be forever grateful to be associated with this “T”. And please, make this recipe year round… just be sure that when you make it in February, use quality canned San Marzano tomatoes, mkay? Great.

Sameh’s Tomato Jam

2 T chopped shallot
2 T olive oil
2 T red wine vinegar
2 T honey
1.5 t Spice Trail Ras El Hanout* (see NOTE below)

2 28oz cans San Marzano tomatoes (peeled)
or
3 lbs fresh tomatoes, peeled, de-seeded, chopped

Saute shallots in oil until translucent. Add honey and continue to cook until shallot is caramelized. Add vinegar and ras el hanout. Add the tomatoes and cook for approx 1 hour, until the mixture thickens to desired consistency. Taste, and season as needed with salt and vinegar.

Bang. Done. You now now have the uber-condiment. Use daily.

*NOTE: You can successfully make this jam without the ras el hanout, but, I would highly recommend picking some up either at Saffron Restaurant and Lounge, or online HERE. It adds a interesting depth of flavor. In addition to its use in this jam, use ras el hanout as a dry rub on pork, chicken, lamb, beef, in stews, and as a way to keep rattlesnakes out of your kitchen. Yep - it's true - ever since I bought that stuff, not one rattlesnake in my kitchen. Nice fringe benefit, huh.

Difficulty level here is “easy”, and the end result is so delicious and versatile, it’s worth whatever effort you put forth and then some. As for uses for this spreadable delight? Use it as the “T” in your BLTs as Sameh does. Top a piece of fish with it. Slather some on a steak that is fresh from the grill (as I did last night - fabulous). Use it as a dip for French Fries or on top of the afore mentioned tomato tart! Just don’t let this season pass you buy without making it.

So get yourself to the Farmers Market, and find yourself some rosey red (or green, or yellow, or orange…) orbs of summery goodness. Then get cooking, because life is better when we cook for ourselves....... especially during tomato season.

Resources/Acknowledgements;

Mecca Bos-Williams, Metro Magazine Food and Drinks Editor

Sameh Wadi, Saffron Restaurant and Lounge

St. Paul Farmers Market

Food Night Field Trip - Calera, part 2

By now, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the interweb is absolutely, positively buzzing about Food Night’s Field Trip. We are even linked to on heavytable.com’s blog roll. Thanks, heavytable! On the off chance you are a new Food Night reader… I offer you parts one, two, and three of our Field Trip extravaganza to get you caught up as we resume our blogcast, already in progress from….

11300 CIENEGA ROAD, HOLLISTER, CA – We are here at Calera, Food Night’s wine Mecca. While we sample the day's offerings, we are roaming all over the Calera Campus, like teenagers in a comic book store, or wolves in a henhouse… not sure which is a more apt analogy. As we roam, we are bombarded with images of mountains and boxes and stacks upon stacks of Calera…


… not to mention treasures like this… a case of 1990 Jensen Pinot Noir…


It’s a sensory overload of Calera!!! I cannot even begin to imagine the Food Night we could throw down here in Calera’s warehouse. And speaking of aged Jensen Vineyard Pinot Noir, about a year ago, Josh Jensen came to Minnesota for a tasting in Bloomington, which your Food Night correspondents happily (and obviously) attended. While there, we got a sip of 1992 Jensen out of a magnum. And um, yeah, that wine was preposterously good. A Top 5 wine of all time, for yours truly. The only thing I can compare it to… Leroy. The uber-Leroys that is, not the simple little Cotes du Beaune Villages discussed previously on these pages.

Anyway, I don’t even remember how this happened, if everyone gets this treatment, or if you have to practically foam at the mouth and act like 10 year olds at Disneyland for the first time… but eventually our very gracious and PATIENT hostess Lindsay was leading us up a staircase to Calera’s barrel rooms. I don’t know if there is a more technical term, but I’m going with “barrel rooms”. Some of the barrels Calera uses are brand new…


… while some barrels are older…


But all are made of French Oak, which imparts more subtle and gentle aromas/flavors/textures to the wine than does American Oak. And of course the older the barrel the softer still the impact it has on juice it contains. I believe Calera keeps barrels around for a max of 4 years, before they are put out to pasture in the great “barrel room” in the sky. There is certainly a TON of expertise that goes into blending wines from barrels of various oak volumes, and Calera does it brilliantly.

This first barrel room was fairly dark and even eerie feeling. Water sprayed/dripped from the ceiling in an effort to… I have no idea but it was certainly a moist environment.


Then there was barrel room #2, or so I’m calling it, where we saw cool stuff like this… remember this…


What do you think that is? Wow, why yes, that’s correct, it IS the inspiration for the tattoo I just got! How did you know?! But, it is ALSO a close-up of the absolute coolest door in the history of the world…


How neat is that??!! If you can't tell, the doors are like 13 feet tall... roughly. Don't they look like something out of a Medieval Castle?! Or from Lord of the Rings, like these are doors that keep the Orcs out. But actually, these doors lead up to the unloading zone, which I believe is where grapes picked up on Mt. Harlan arrive for processing. I could be wrong. If anyone who actually knows what they are talking about is reading… BY ALL MEANS… chime in. I’m just your host here, I don’t claim to know much of anything about anything*.

* Except for scallops. I can sear you a helluva nice scallop.

Next, we went to a pretty special place... Calera's Wine Cellar. Residing here are things so completely and utterly awesome that my head nearly exploded. Things like the first* Reed Pinot Noir ever bottled…


*At least I'm pretty sure 1978 was the first year the Reed was bottled...

And these “Leaking” bottles of 1996 Selleck Pinot Noir, that all of us would have GLADLY taken off the premises so as to prevent them from leaking all over anything but our mouths…


And even THIS…


A magnum of 1980 Calera Zinfandel?!??! Are you kidding me?! And speaking of Calera Zin, remember that one additional bottle I said we tasted at the end of the last post… YEP. We got to try a bottle of 1979 (NINETEEN SEVENTY NINE!!) Calera Zin!


I was absolutely shocked at how disparate the aroma and flavor of the wine were. The nose was almost… how do I say this delicately… the nose smelled nearly rotten. Decaying organic matter was all I could come up with for a description.* My expectations were immediately reduced to virtually nothing as I smelled this seemingly off-putting wine.

*”Decaying organic matter.” Not something you often see on a wine’s label as a selling point.

But then we tasted it, and of COURSE it was spectacular. Smooth, silky, and still totally alive. Absolutely astonishing. I don’t even know how to process a 1979 Zinfandel… but that just happened!

Finally, we purchased some wine (Pinot Noirs – 1996 and 2000 Mills, and 2002 Jensen), some t-shirts, and scooped up some dirt from these sacred grounds to take home as a memento. OK – I made that last part up, but I would have likely done so had I thought of it at the time. And you think I’m kidding…

Well, I suppose that about wraps up our visit to Calera. As we drove away, we couldn’t help but think… where do we go from here? We thought; "We are going to be in the Napa Valley all day tomorrow, but, how can we POSSIBLY top a day that featured a Monte Bello tasting, AND a tasting at Calera?" It’s like Usain Bolt running the 100m in like 2.73 seconds or whatever he does… that's simply as good as running gets. Monte Bello and Calera in one day? That's as good as wine tasting gets in America.

As we navigated our way north back toward San Francisco, we contemplated just cancelling all our appointments the next day and flying home a day early. Actually no, that is totally false, we did not consider that at all. What we DID do was stop by K&L Wines near Palo Alto, where we secured a little something to enjoy with dinner at the Market Bar in San Fran (the view from Market Bar is pictured above)...


The wine we bought at K&L was a 1992 Howell Mountain Dunn Cabernet. That's it above, along with one of the best Chardonnays you will ever have, from Navarro Vineyards. If there is a better pairing than Drake's Bay oysters and that Navarro Chardonnay... I'm not aware of it. Also pictured is the 1996 Mills we bought at Calera, which went unopened due to our relatively brief stay at Market Bar (you’ll understand why it was a brief stay in a moment). I won’t belabor the details of the Dunn other than to say 1). Dunn is atop the destination list for the next trip to Napa, and 2). all three of us thought the Dunn was EASILY in the top 3 wines we tried on the entire trip. Spectacular stuff, even out of these preposterously tiny B.S. wine glasses they had at the Market Bar.

Apparently the owner of Market Bar decreed that all wine and spirits (and maybe even beer, I’m not sure) shall be consumed out of these thick little glasses with 1 inch stems and small bowls. Mind you, this is a pretty nice restaurant. Maybe not this nice...


... but pretty dang nice. And as the manager of the restaurant was relaying this bit of flawed glassware logic to us, he was actually simultaneously asking us to LEAVE because we had stayed until the preposterously late hour of……….10pm. I kid you not. Anyway, my inner wine-snob may be showing a bit here, but it was borderline criminal to drink the Dunn out of these glasses. Imbibing from these “stems” was like trying to listen to a live performance by Miles Davis... underwater. The fact that the Dunn was STILL so spectacular blows my mind to this day. Dunn makes two wines… the Howell Mountain and the Napa Valley. The Howell Mountain is the top label, and contains 100% fruit from Howell Mountain. The Napa Valley label contains up to 15% fruit from the Napa Valley floor, the rest from Howell Mountain. Do yourself a favor, and get some. Post haste.

In any case... wow, Calera. We actually went to Calera! Here's the proof...


Thank you to Lindsay, Dora, and to Josh Jensen and every single person at Calera. There is nothing else like Calera in this country.


Up Next; Food Night Field Trip A.C.*

*After Calera. And yes – it was worth it. Very much so, in fact.

Food Night Field Trip - Calera

If you missed part1 or part2 of Food Night Field Trip, please consider checking out part1 here and part2 here. And understand that what follows here is a VERY special post for Food Night. Kind of like in the 80’s when you’d hear TV promos for “very special episodes” of your favorite sitcoms. Like this; “On a very special episode of ‘Silver Spoons’, Ricky gets caught lying… “, or this; “On a very special episode of ‘Diff’rent Strokes’, Arnold asks Kimberly what she is talkin’ ‘bout”. You get the idea. Anyway, let’s get the ball rolling from…

11300 CIENEGA ROAD, HOLLISTER, CA – Calera. We made it. We awoke Friday morning and thought “Holy Shizzle Sticks, we are actually going to go to Calera today”. How can I even begin to convey the anticipation? The sense of “This is actually going to happen. We are actually going to go to Calera."



Allow me to attempt an analogy, to try and lend some perspective. Imagine you are a hopelessly devoted Red Sox fan… but you live in Nebraska. You DVR all their games. You collect memorabilia. You wear Sox gear, are rote on the rich history of the franchise, and generally spend an irrational amount of your free time obsessing ABOUT, thinking OF, and spending your cash ON all things Red Sox. But you’ve never been to Fenway Park. And then, an opportunity presents itself to go to Boston... so, you go. You get on a plane, and the anticipation begins. You land in Boston. You get off the plane, trying to keep calm, trying to retain some sense of composure. After all, you are thirty-sizjheuhhhh years old, come now! It’s just a baseball game, a baseball park, bricks, mortar, grass… but no, there is history there. There is depth. Tradition. Excellence. It’s more than just a physical space, or an address. The "contents", if you will, of that building have made your life better, have given you untold hours and enjoyment.

So you climb in a cab, and as you ride, your mind races as you realize your previously held perspectives and visions and assumptions are going to get a massive dose of REALITY. From now on, you won't have to imagine what Fenway is like anymore. You'll have actual, tangible experience to draw from. It’s really happening, and you don’t know what to expect. Have you built the experience up in your mind to a point where your fantasy and reality cannot possibly intersect? Will you be underwhelmed? Overwhelmed? Plain-old-whelmed? Who knows. You just know, you literally can barely sit still as you anticipate that first glimpse of the Green Monster…

So yeah, going to Calera is a pretty big deal to Food Night. We’ve smelled and tasted and ranted and raved and hooted and hollered and recommended and re-recommended and sought out and pondered and reminisced about dozens of different bottles of Calera’s wines. It is hard to capture exactly how excited three grown men* were as we pulled into the gravel parking lot next to the warehouse. Calera is our Fenway Park, so to speak. It has history. Depth. Tradition. Excellence. Calera is, in our opinion, the pinnacle of what can be achieved in wine in this country.

* "Grown men"... as in, men that are all grows up. Yeah, like that.

To visit Calera, one needs to make a point of doing so. That is to say, you aren’t going to happen upon Calera on your way to… pretty much anything else. Unless perhaps you are trying to get lost. Because it seemed to me we were about a stone's throw away from downtown "Lost" before we pulled up Calera's driveway. Check out the view out the front door at Calera…

Looks like something out of an old Clint Eastwood Western, right?!? Calera is indeed a destination, and one absolutely worth seeking out. Before we dive into the tasting deets…


… we should briefly go back to the start, where this fascination with Calera began. It was one bottle… the 2001 Calera Selleck Pinot Noir. I believe it was Alex, Tyler and Tom that opened it one night. So utterly profound was this one bottle of wine, that in subsequent weeks we began buying up and opening others. Without fail, each new bottle we tried was absolutely astonishing in its own way. But all of them, every one (of the pinot noirs, that is), had that “Calera perfume”. I would say without exaggeration that any of the Food Night fellas could pick out a Calera pinot noir via smell alone. Recently, I had the 2004 Calera Central Coast Pinot Noir out of a lowball glass in a hotel room, and even THEN I could easily pick out that unmistakable aroma.*

* I'm not even going to attempt to describe the Calera smell, as it defies my powers of description. Just buy some Calera, and see for yourself.

Calera. Even out of a hotel lowball glass. Josh Jensen, if you are reading, feel free to us that little beauty in future marketing campaigns.

One final (I promise) quick point before we get to the bottles we tasted. Without oversimplifying things too much, Calera’s wines can be divided into wines produced from grapes grown on their vineyard sites on Mt. Harlan, and wines produced from grapes purchased from other growers in the Central Coast Region of California. The Mt. Harlan wines are Calera’s top shelf offerings, while the Central Coast wines are a more cost effective (and still fabulously delicious) alternative to the singular Mt. Harlan offerings.


So, the tasting. Let’s begin before we run out of bandwidth. You’ll notice right away from the roster above that the world’s greatest Rosé was in play. I have to stress to you… it is soooooo faaaaaaar superior to any other Rosé any of us have ever had. The level of richness, the perfect balance of subtle sweetness, crisp acidity, bright fresh fruit flavors, and lush, creamy mouth-feel are simply unheard of in other Rosés. It is a wine that is at home by itself, and with virtually any cuisine you could think of.


Before writing this, I had no idea why Calera called their Rose “Vin Gris”. For you non-link-clickers… here is the most interesting nugget from that link; “Producing a small volume of Vin gris (or rosé) can also be used as a technique to improve Pinot noir. Removing some clear juice increases the concentration of colour and flavour compounds from the skins in the remaining juice intended for making red wine.” Makes total sense, right? We’ve all had Pinot Noir that tastes… to be blunt… watered down. Well, what if after crushing pinot noir grapes, some of the clear juice is removed from contact with the skins. Strike the right balance, and I would assume you have not only improved the richness and concentration of your red wine juice, but you also have a killer Rosé to boot. Obviously I’m oversimplifying here a bit, and generally have no idea what I'm talking about since I'm not, you know, a winemaker. But I think you get the idea.

Moving on, also tasted were two Central Coast white wines; the 2008 Chardonnay and the 2009 Viognier. At the risk of sounding repetitive, Calera’s Mt. Harlan versions of these two wines are easily and securely among the top chardonnays and viogniers we’ve ever had. I would say the Mt. Harlan Viognier is EASILY the best viognier we’ve ever had, and the chardonnay is definitely in the running in that race as well. And get this… they both retail for under $30!!! That’s INSANE for wines of this quality. Yet another reason to love Calera, the extraordinary price the value ratio.

The Central Coast whites we tried were “baby” versions of their Mt. Harlan parental units. Pleasures to drink, and at roughly $16/bottle, absolutely incredible values.

And now, the Pinot Noirs. First up was the 2008 Central Coast Pinot Noir, which was delicious, but perhaps not as “Calera-like” as the 2004 I had in that hotel room. Who knows why it was not as Calera-like, and frankly who cares, it was still fabulous. Then we moved into the Mt. Harlan single vineyard pinot noirs, beginning with the newest vineyard site, the de Villiers. This 2007 is the very first bottling of the de Villiers, and I believe we were told the grapes from this vineyard had previously been used in the Central Coast cuvee. What a treat it was to be able to taste the first edition of what will surely be another classic label.

Next was the 2007 Ryan, which was more restrained, subtle and softer than some of the blockbuster Mills and Selleck Pinot Noirs your Food Night Fellas have come to admire so much. This Ryan is certainly a great wine, and adds diversity to the Mt. Harlan offerings.

Finally, we got a splash of the 2002 Mills. Ho. Lee. Cow. This wine had absolutely incredible funky, earthy, organic notes exploding out of the glass (in addition to that special Calera perfume), to go along with lush pinot noir sophistication on the palate. All kinds of non-fruit things happening in that bottle – we could have lingered all day and still not gotten to the bottom of every inch of intricacy this wine had to offer. One of the best pinot noirs I have had, no question.


Finally, there was the 2006 Dessert Viognier, a wine I didn’t even know Calera made. And of course, it was all you’d expect… a near perfect balance of sweetness and acidity. You know how some dessert wines you have leave you practically licking a film of sugary residue off your lips? Not this one. Lots of concentrated viognier flavors like melon and citrus, without the sticky sweet finish, yet retaining the fuller texture that perhaps you would expect in an “after dinner” libation. Brilliant.


There was one more wine we tried, but that will have to wait for the second part* of this Calera posting. The mere EXISTENCE of this wine at Calera blew us out of the water. What was it? The answer, and glimpses “Behind the Scenes” at Calera are coming up next.

* You didn't really think I could pack a two hour visit to Calera into one post, did you?

So don't wander off. From the looks of the landscape out here, you might get lost and run into these fellas. And that wouldn't be good, but rather bad... or even ugly.