When most people are asked about Sacramento, California’s capital, they think of governing branches and quite possible our celebrated Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Many know that “theGovernator” enjoys fine things including great cigars, exceptional food and a deep love of wine. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to travel far to Napa or Sonoma to explore one of the state’s best-kept secrets: the historically significant and romantically unspoiled Amador County.

Just south and west of Sacramento, Amador County sits on the outskirts of the Gold Country and the Sierra Nevada Mountains where the well documented Gold Rush in 1849 brought great interest and wealth to northern California. Many of the fortune-seekers who flocked to the Sierra foothills in the 1850s were European immigrants who planted extensive vineyards upon their arrival. After the mines ran dry, many of these wine-loving prospectors turned their focus to the craft. By the 1890s, there were over 100 wineries in the foothill region, more than in Napa and Sonoma counties together at the time! Trouble came to the California wine industry in it’s entirety in the form of America’s Prohibition, and Amador County was hit hard. It took Amador a long time to bounce back and wasn’t until the 1970’s that wine was once again flowing from this region in any significant quantity. Continue reading »

In chatting with some aspiring wine enthusiasts over the weekend I was delighted to inform them that all fifty states are now producing wine- what a far cry from a decade or so ago.

I began teaching about wine in 1990 for the trade, and had a class that I instructed called ‘Wines of America”. Now as then, California dominates/dominated the landscape being responsible for nine out of every ten bottles of wine made in the USA driving the majority of American wine sales. I’ve read differing statistics but now-a-days, that number is closer to seven out of every ten bottles sold, with California still maintaining a vinous stranglehold of sorts.

Yet, things have changed. Those initial classes I offered up in the 90’s always began with the question of how many states in the USA made wine commercially. I recall that the answer started in the low 30’s in that first offering and gradually climbed as the American wine industry grew and matured. The rest of the Pacific Coast is well established and has always been a contributing part of that answer. Washington and Oregon indeed have very healthy and thriving industries in wine and have for decades. The growth in quality, number of wineries and the like has been staggering. The Pacific’s dominance now meanders deeper and “internationally” to the north (Canada’s Okanagan) and the south (Mexico’s Guadalupe valley in the Baja peninsula). Continue reading »

A couple of blogs back I wrote about the concept of being a regular away from home (Being A Regular When You Aren’t, May 19th). I hope that the concept resonated with you and to prove that I do ‘walk my talk’ I did just that this past weekend while attending my daughter’s 16/U fast pitch softball tournament down in Salinas (California).

Salinas is a serious food municipality- but not in the sense of the word that you may be thinking. No ‘haute cuisine’ here and you’d be hard pressed to find a sommelier in town. That said, one can dine well if you know what to look for, and where to look for it. While Zagat, Michelin and the like may be the culinary bibles when you hit San Francisco or New York, my sources for smaller town dining are yelp.com, chowhound.com and roadfood.com. I see what each has to say, where the ‘Venn diagram’ connections are and start there. It takes a little bit of planning, but it’s just that easy. Continue reading »

Summer rolls around and that means a few certainties for me. First, I will be following and cheering for my daughter’s fast pitch softball team as they make their annual push to qualify for the Western Regionals.  Second, I will be down at the Santa Cruz Beach & Boardwalk at least twice (my kids love theme parks) and third, I will get to visit a few Santa Cruz wineries on the way to or from the land of deep fried Snickers bars, over priced popcorn and over-the-hill musicians trying to stay relevant (Can anyone say Eddie Money!?)

All kidding aside, Santa Cruz is indeed home to a great beach community with its fair share of hippy-like ‘beach bums’, a terrific college (The University of California, Santa Cruz) and many a surrounding winery. Though wineries like Ridge and Mount Eden Vineyards are amongst the most venerable and established names in California wine, Santa Cruz is only recently on the global radar screen- and it’s long overdue. Continue reading »

As we deal with the challenges of our sluggish economy, wine sales are one of the first places we see economic attrition. I have always thought that wine sales should be made part of the ‘leading economic indicators’ index as they tend to foreshadow peoples confidence vis-à-vis which wines people are drinking.

Wines are indeed an epicurean ‘canary in a coalmine’ to our economy at large. When times are good and people are flush, people seek out the so-called trophy wines of Napa valley Cabernets, Grand Cru Bordeaux, and 1esr Cru Burgundies. When times are less rosy, those same wines often reappear in the market at premium wine auctions led by the likes of Zachys, Hart Davis Hart and Sherry Lehman.

In trying to save some dough, folks may trade down to wines that give pleasure but are not as expensive. ‘Tête de Cuvée’ Champagne (the Dom Perignon, Taittinger ‘Comte de Champagne’ sorts of bottles) gives way to tasty non-vintage bottlings. We see less 2^nd and 3^rd growth and more ‘Cru Bourgeois’ Bordeaux wines find themselves being “discovered” and enjoyed. Continue reading »

We all know that imitation is said to be the most sincere form of flattery. If that’s the case, then the wine industry’s practice of linking wines with place is the source of a lot of blushing… for the wine folks.

From the time that I began working in wine decades ago, this linkage has always been clear. The same grape producing wines in different parts of the world lead to different results, much like two chefs working with the same ingredients and recipes and coming up with two different tasting interpretations of a dish. Winemakers using the same varietal(s), equipment, barrel sources (and coopers), yeast strains and any other replicable variables can still make very different wines. Winemakers who create wines from the same varietal AND vineyard will, despite making different wines from their interpretive styles, will still have a thread of continuity.

Continue reading »

I just returned from speaking at the annual Sante magazine On-Premise Restaurant symposium in beautiful Manchester, Vermont this past week. It was a super event attended by lots of my peers and with great content in terms of the presentations and, of course, the food and wine.

During a tag-team session with Charlie Trotter‘s team (led by Conrad Reddick, the chef sommelier and company beverage director), as part of an interactive food and wine presentation, the subject came up about wine and food pairing and the importance of the emotionality or ‘emotional attachment’ factor that colors our perceptions of what we like. Needless to say, the same wine under two different circumstances can taste completely different simply by changing the environment, people and context. This is true as well of food- again based on your dining companions and, I would add strongly, the quality of service that you receive.

There’s complete truth to the old adage that a great waiter can save a bad meal but nothing can save a bad waiter. Delicious food served in a dining room that’s more reminiscent of a Keystone Cops comedy than a fine oiled machine will always fare poorly. Conversely, decent food served by a great waiter will always taste better than it actually is…we all know that first hand. Continue reading »

Did you know that among the fastest growing home furnishing categories at Target are home wine cellar units? Indeed more and more Americans have take to keeping and not just drinking wines. These cellar units that I referenced above are not with all the bells and whistles of those being made by companies like Sub Zero and Viking but they are nevertheless practical and effective and allow people to keep modest quantities of wines on hand and ready to drink.

The more pressing question is once you’ve made the decision to purchase wines to have around, what should you actually buy? Most of this is going to be based on your preferences and drinking habits: Continue reading »

Being a sommelier today is very different than what it has been previously. Forget the fact that a contemporary somm needs to be aware of wines coming from Greece, Argentina, Portugal and South Africa in addition to the derigeur classics- Italy, France, and California. They have to be more adept at inventory management, staff training, cont controls and oh yeah, they need to know about pairing wine with food. Not as obvious today as it once was. Let me explain…

Historically there has been a ‘traditional’ culinary order that a sommelier addressed on the floor of a dining room: an appetizer or salad, a ‘main’ culminating in a dessert. Sure maybe a cheese course was fit in between the entrée and the sweet or an amuse was tossed in at the beginning to titillate the palate but the basic architecture of the meal was essentially consistent. But that’s not the case of many restaurants today. Continue reading »

Sometimes things surprise me. A bottle of wine that I didn’t think would age that did, a restaurant meal that blew me away that was completely unexpected, and people’s reactions to different reading materials. Case in point was my recent factoids blog of a few weeks back. I am personally obsessed with food and beverage

related tidbits; you can use them for conversation starters, selling business (really!) and impressing folks who come from those fields who themselves may not know that intriguing morsel of wisdom. So…back for a command performance, ‘did you know…” (FYI, all of these factoids are pulled from Gourmet magazine’s regular feature “Good Living”.)

For much of Italian history, eggplant and fennel were considered Jewish rather than pan-Italian delicacies (sure beats gefilte fish and kugel!) (April 2008)

Thomas Jefferson is credited with having brought French fries to the colonies. He was so enamored with the pommes frites he had in Paris that he brought home the recipe and served them at the White House (something to snack on while coming up with all those important policies.) (March 2008) Continue reading »