a) Digital Link on colorandaroma.com.

b) Website Advertisement Posts.

c) Social Networking and Promotions through Facebook and Twitter.

d) Exposure through Tendril: The Color and Aroma Blog.

e) Discounted product and service offerings through Color and Aroma media outlets.

Two Months for Only $35.99!

Send us an email to wineries@colorandaroma.com or call us at 949-887-2260 to receive this offer that starts today, Thursday, July 29 and ends Friday, August 6th, 2010.

All Aboard!!

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Join us this Summer for a season you will never forget…

Our 2010 Summer Editorial Calendar:

a. Wine and Surf

- Seafood

- Surfing

b. Wine and Travel

- OC Beach Cities

- San Francisco

- Seattle

- Chicago

- Sydney

- The Maldives

c. Wine and Boats

- Yaughts

- Pontoon

- Houseboats

- Many more…

Safe Travels!

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Photo by Eric Stoner: San Gabriel Mission

Join us for a Southern California Wine Experience! 

Go online now and buy a single ticket for either day, and enter Brandon into the promo code and you will receive $10 off of your event ticket. http://arestravel.com/4138_attraction-tickets_a872.html

Please tell all of your friends!

Raleigh Studios, Hollywood, CA

5300 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90038

2pm-6:30pm

LA Wine Fest 2010

Come Join the Fun! 

www.lawinefest.com

Photography by Brandon J. Beeson

When asked to pen an article about Jerry Garcia and wine, I will admit that I wasn’t immediately hooked on the idea. The subjects seemed incongruous. Hippies drink $2 Heinekens or $1 Domestics in the parking lot if they drink at all, or at least that’s what I remember from the innumerable parking lot scenes that I wandered semi-aimlessly. But the parking lot scene at a Dead show has little to do with who Jerry Garcia was and what the Dead was about. And as I began to make an outline for this article, I was actually surprised how easily I could make connections between Jerry and my own ideas of wine, music, craft and doing something that makes people high and happy. So let’s get down to it: How did Jerry Garcia influence my winemaking?

• “Don’t panic, it’s organic.” I won’t tell you what the hippie barker was selling with that repeated mantra, but I suspect it wasn’t USDA inspected. His voice still rings in my head, though—a representation of that doe-eyed belief that we could all live in peace and eat food free from pesticides and corporate taint. Today I have a very balanced view of conventional and sustainable agriculture, but still have a strong bent toward using methods that respect the product I craft—pinot noir from one of the most beautiful pieces of dirt in the New World. A hippie adolescence provided me both an education in environmentalism, plus a healthy curiosity and skepticism that keeps me from drinking the Biodynamic kool-aid or joining Earth First. So Jerry brought me to the Dead, the dead brought me to the parking lot, the Lot taught me to love the Earth, but also taught me to be skeptical of the lot. My first show, Anaheim Dead/Dylan in 1987, disenchanted me because I felt that hippies were two-faced—anti-capitalist drivel rolling out of one side of their mouths while they hawked veggie burritos out of the other. Of course not all hippies are driven by the dollar, and now there’s corporate veggie burritos. Isn’t it cool how philosophies seek the middle ground as time marches on?

• Understand the past to move into the future. During the first of my 52 Grateful Dead shows, Jerry sang a folksy little song I had never heard on ‘Skeletons from the Closet’ or ‘American Beauty’. It seemed the whole crowd knew the lyrics but me—I felt like an American atheist at his first High Mass in Rome. Everyone else knew when to sway, sing, kneel, chant and respond to the ritual being performed. ‘What song is this?’ I yelled to the Wookiee to my left. ‘Jack-a-Roe!’ he replied between fits of bone shaking. ‘Is it an original?’ I asked, bothering him again. Instantly becoming more erudite than stoned, he began my schooling: ‘It’s an Eighteenth Century whaling song—traditional, you know?’ So there I was in 1987 at a rock concert, listening to a whaling song from the 1700’s, surrounded by people stuck somewhere between the Age of Enlightenment and Aquarius. The Dead could never be defined as a rock band. They were part folk, part bluegrass, part jazz, part rock, add one part liquid LSD, a few shots of whiskey for Pigpen, and an audience stretched to schizophrenic passion for every note that emanated from the Wall of Sound. The entire band loved music with an abandon that informed them and allowed them to stretch their music into forms that have still not evolved in other musical genres. Jerry was a nine-fingered jug-band banjo-plucker who settled for an electric guitar. Bobby Weir was a beautiful, long haired hippie who loved to sing Elvis songs. Phil Lesh was a legit classical musician out of the celebrated Berkeley Academy of Music. Billy Kreutzman was a jazz drummer who laid down complex rhythms that drove the music forward in unexpected ways. Pigpen was a hard drinking blues singer and harp player. Together they made a sound that was purely unique and American as jazz. For me wine and music are about passion, personality and place. East Coast shows were different than West Coast shows like Burgundy is different than Santa Barbara Pinot Noir. Musical terroir, perhaps? But the point of this section is that understanding the history and traditions of your craft, music or wine (or both!), will allow you to benefit from the centuries of successes and failures of making vintages or melodies. In that moment when the audience expects brilliance, the past speaks through us, if we are literate, through the earth, through those that have touched us as artists or teachers. Without tall and strong shoulders to stand upon, we cannot see ‘furthur’.

• Complex but elegant. Throughout his life, Jerry Garcia considered himself a musical charlatan. He humbly told many of his closest friends that he didn’t consider himself a great guitarist, and was constantly amazed that people continued to line up to see him play. His first words as he came out of his first diabetic coma: ‘I’m no Beethoven’. The mathematic definition of the word elegant is simplicity, and I believe the power of Jerry’s playing was an amazing ability to reinvent melodies into new melodies that had not been complicated in the process. It’s like seeing Monet’s work in the d’Orsay. You look at it and believe it’s so simple, so universal, that you could have (no, you SHOULD have) painted it. That’s what I call Universal Artistic Simplicity. The work speaks so clearly and purely because it is raw and unadorned humanity. The wine version of this concept is winemaking that attempts to showcase climate and soil over winemaking affectation. It’s Chablis-style over butter-and-oak. Elegance over ripeness, restraint over concentration. Any kid can learn how to tap out a heavy metal scale, just like any winemaker can let their Cabernet ripen to thirty brix. But try to imitate Jerry Garcia’s solo in a 1971 Stella Blue, or try to make San Joaquin Grenache taste like 1971 Trapet Chappelle-Chambertin and you’ll quickly learn the lesson. Greatness emanates from where passion meets nature’s capacity to support that dream. With the Dead, on a steam-train-rolling kind of night, the instruments combined to form something immediately complex but also simple. With wine, I have to resort to a more musical language to explain: ‘Il vino es la poesia della terra.’ Wine is the poetry of the earth.

• When in doubt, ride the wave. No memoir on Grateful Dead music is complete without a story of shamanistic ritual, psychedelic abandon, and (with any luck) a return to sanity that drives home some hidden universal truth. Unfortunately, I was never that cool or crazy. As far as you know. But I did have an epiphany of sorts watching ‘the Boys’ in Mountain View, CA one fine evening in October, 1989. As I closed my eyes to concentrate on the music (and not the tall hippie in front of me who danced as if he were humping an imaginary sheep in front of him), I saw the whole band, sans Jerry, creating this beautiful blue wave of music—wave crashing, wave rising, wave falling, wave moving, building, waning— and Jerry was riding the wave. The melody was Garcia’s board—there to keep him from falling, but like any good surfer he wandered to every edge he could carve, explored it, ripped it, made it cry, and then brought it back to the center of the board before being sucked into the tube and ejected in a glorious burst of musical mist supplied by the rest of the band. OK, so that was a little weird. If you followed that stream-of-hippie speak, you probably went to more shows than I did. Now where were we? Oh yeah, wine! So the best way to be a great winemaker is to be a great viticulturist. If you can grow your own fruit, then you truly are a wine maker. Extending the metaphor, the climate is the wave (band), the terroir is the board (melody), and the farmer/winemaker is Jerry—exploring the quality and the breadth of the potential (vintage) and the craft (manipulations/soloing). So while Jerry’s job was to put sparkle on top of a solid musical foundation behind him, my job as a winegrower is to maximize the uniqueness of vintage by custom tuning my cultural practices (farming) to make quality fruit that makes great wine. Frost comes, turn on the wind machines and sprinklers. “Wind and rain…tell me why, seasons will end and roses die”. Pull leaves from the fruit zone to increase air movement in the canopy, reduce vegetal aromas and improve high toned fruit character. “Sunshine daydream, meet me in the tall trees, going where the wind goes.” In music, wine and life the best we can do is to ride the wave with passion and aplomb.

• In the end, it’s slightly meaningless. Oscar Wilde, in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, says ‘All art is quite useless.’ Considering Wilde’s formidable intellect and erudition, I can’t disagree with him before I agree with him. Would the world be dark and bereft without the music of Jerry Garcia and the taste of wine? Hell no! We would have beer and tequila and whisky and whiskey, we would have Hendrix and Coltrane and Mozart. Compared to our relationships and our passions, wine and Jerry are meaningless in a Buddhist all-is-transitory sort of way. But (apologies to Oscar and his lily-toting fanboys) my world would be much different and far less rich without the addition of Jerry’s bubbling guitar (the whaling tunes and all) and wine’s poetic expression of fruit and earth. It’s only wine, but I have dedicated my life and passion to it. It’s only music, but Jerry plays the way I wish I could play.

The Summer of 1995 was a sad year for Deadheads. Jerry died, and my life changed. I left the teaching profession to go full time into winegrowing. It’s been fifteen years and I love this vineyard, my deadhead wife, the shrine to Jerry on our mantle. We still listen to the music almost every day—in fact my wife says we can only listen to Grateful Dead and Bob Marley when making our Estate Wines. Hrmmm…Bob Marley’s influence on winemakers. A subject for another article, and maybe another magazine.

Peace

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Do your best to make it up or out to Paso Robles, CA this weekend for one of California’s Best Wine Festivals! There are still tickets available! http://www.pasowine.com/events/winefestival.php

Make sure to visit Castoro Cellars while in town!

www.castorocellars.com

Live and Love Paso!

www.pasowine.com

See you there!

C&A

www.clospepe.com

By

Brandon J. Beeson and Stan Brin

Photography by Eric Stoner

Welcome

 This is no secret to anyone who grew up in California. If you remember anything from elementary school, you remember Father Serra’s missions to convert California’s “Indians.”  If your fourth-grade teacher took your class on a field trip to the rebuilt missions at San Juan Capistrano, San Fernando, Santa Barbara or San Rafael, it made it part of your heritage.  

 If you didn’t attend grade school in California, you might find it hard to believe that a giant place like California could have its start around 200 years ago as a string of 21 mission churches. Like much of California’s history, it’s unlikely, and it’s true.

 Take a trip to a mission, if you haven’t already. Living anywhere near the coast of California almost guarantees that you’re within driving distance to one that is still standing today. There’s one south of Point Reyes in Marin County, Northern California. There is one in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, the famous one in San Juan Capistrano and San Diego. All were founded during a 60-year burst of activity by a few dozen people at a time, most of them with nothing but the best of intentions.  Ultimately, there were some tragic results.

 If you listen to the traditional view taught to generations of school children, the missions were islands of tranquility dotted with happy people living a safe and bountiful life under the benevolent rule of pious and kindly friars.

If you listen to revisionist historians, the missions were slave labor camps into which the native population was forced, a process the Spanish called “reduction.”  Men and women were separated, unless married in a church, and forced to live under a highly rigorous schedule of work and prayer regulated by the famous and what we now consider endearing church bells.

 A more moderate view refutes both arguments. There is little evidence that the native Californian Indians were kidnapped, dragged off their land and chained to plows. As Jim Graves, a docent at the San Juan Capistrano Mission, says, “How could two padres and six Spanish soldiers force a thousand Indians to do anything?”

 Robyn Beeson, who has taught mission history to Irvine fourth-graders for 22 years, tends to agree with Professor James Sandos, a Farquhar Professor of the Southwest at the University of Redlands. “The Spanish injected a complex system into these rather simple people. Father Serra was sincere in everything he did and never hurt a fly. But the Native Americans weren’t allowed to retain their language and culture.

 “They gave up their freedom very easily. They were very docile, but the actual dynamic was difficult to understand. I want the kids to make up their own minds based on what we now know.”

 When the missions were dissolved by the fiat of the Mexican government in 1833, their population had been reduced by two-thirds. The survivors were left leaderless and destitute; the lands the Franciscans had held in trust for the Indians were sold or given to wealthy Mexicans to build vast ranchos, which have also left their mark on California.

 The missions, most of them built of adobe, rapidly fell into ruin and simply washed away. The California missions lasted for roughly 60 years; they were forgotten for about as long and have been romanticized and exploited even longer. But by the turn of the 20th Century, Californians’ search for a past turned the missions into legends. Vast sums were raised to rebuild the churches and grounds, often much grander than the originals.

 As a result, Californians have been living with faux mission-style buildings for more than 100 years.  Sandos believes much of the legend was created to finance reconstruction. Builders still feel the urge to capitalize on the mystique of the missions with false tile roofs on taco stands and supermarkets. And we keep buying the myth.

 Most California missions were named after angels and Roman Catholic saints who were important to the Franciscans. Under their original names, some might be familiar to English speakers:

- San Francisco was Saint Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan order.

- San Gabriel was, or is, an archangel.

- San Luis Rey in Oceanside was named after King Louis IX of France, who was canonized for his religious devotion.

- Santa Barbara was a 3rd Century Christian martyr.

On the other hand, not very many people, other than Franciscans, remember some of them:

- San Diego was founded on the feast day of Saint Didacus of Alcala, a 15^th Century Franciscan famed for healing the sick.

- San Luis Obispo is named after Bishop Louis of Toulouse, who died in 1297 at the age of 23.

- San Juan Capistrano is named after Saint John Capistrano, a 15^th Century Italian priest who fought heresies and helped the Hungarians defeat the Turks in 1456.

- San Buenaventura in Ventura was named after Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, a 13^th Century Franciscan leader and philosopher.

Please visit your local Mission.

 Have a Blessed and Happy Easter!

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Napa Vineyards

By Ken Friedenreich

Photography by Colin Michael

Napa Valley could occupy your time, your soul and your liver for more than a year at a rate of one winery a day.  That’s how much it’s growing.

Like other famous viticultural areas around the globe, Napa Valley is compact while still demonstrating considerable variations of climate, soil, topography and varietal — not to mention attitude and approach to making wine.

The first commercial vineyard opened 152 years ago.  Success did not always come easily. After Captain Gustaf Niebaum wowed the 1889 Paris Exposition with his Rutherford Bordeaux-inspired Inglenook wines, came the 1892 phylloxera plague that ate up much of the valley’s rootstock. About 140 wineries were affected.

Recovering in time for WWI, Napa growers greeted the end of a plague but faced a new obstacle. Her name: the fervent Prohibition activist, Carrie Nation. And, with her hatchet, she dispatched the nectars of the gods (paradoxically except for sacramental purposes) down the river of perdition. 

This is one example of what historian Paul Johnson calls the “law of unintended consequences.” In this case, Prohibition mixed mobsters and “swells,” people who imbibed their bootleg hooch into a heady cocktail of supply and demand. When the alcohol ban ended on December 5, 1933, the country stood in the grip of a worldwide economic Depression. It needed a drink.

Not until shortly before the Second World War did Napa’s wine trade recover, thanks to the efforts of imaginative, technically adept men like Georges De la Tour and André Tchelistcheff, who raised the standards for producing fine wines. Innovations that transformed grape juice into fine wine included cold fermentation and aging in oak casks.

In the postwar years, America still preferred spirits to wine and Napa Valley products were reputed relatively locally, some regionally. One exception was its jug-wine buzz bombs whose popularity on college campuses probably helped contribute to the implication behind the phrase, “If you can remember the 60s, you weren’t there.”

Taster Up!

But then there was Paris. The wines tasted at the 1976 Exposition put Napa Valley on the map for the rest of the wine-drinking world. The number of vineyards began to swell, and in the small society that comprises Napa’s cash crop, scions from established wine families branched out on their own.

Robert Mondavi left the family business (CK Mondavi) to start his eponymous winery, opening his celebrated Oakville landmark in 1966. Over the next 40 years, this dynamic man not only set a Napa gold standard, he helped many others launch wineries. His passion for wine parallels Julia Child’s influence on the output of American kitchens. Mondavi taught a generation to love wine as a food crafted from the handiwork of man and nature.

The Winding Road

Of all of California’s destinations, Napa Valley has become an adult Disneyland, and only the “happiest place on earth” surpasses its 3.6 million visitors a year. In all, there is around 400 brick-and-mortar wineries that make wine grown or sourced in their own facilities cover the valley.  90+ more small producers source their grapes from Valley growers and cooperatively use local contract crushing and bottling facilities.

“The most surprising statistic,” says Terry Hall, communications director of the Napa Valley Vintners Association, “is that Napa Valley produces only four percent of all California wines, about half as much as in neighboring Sonoma County.” With its high profile, one might expect Napa’s output to be greater.  Indeed, about 45,000 acres in all produce wine. The wine industry, says Hall, is committed to maintaining a high standard of quality as well as preventing the valley from becoming a victim of over-development.

Into the mix came people from other industries or big players in the spirits business. They drove through the valley, snatching up wineries like Wimpy at a fast-food drive-through.  Historically, dilettantes and conglomerate bean-counters rarely become great winemakers.

However, a thread of sanity and foresight preserved the essentials. The state university system encouraged enological study, producing qualified people to operate one of California’s greatest agricultural resources. A second phylloxera outbreak — sort of a hundred years’ plague — occurred in 1983. Ironically, it provided the chance to remove certain vines in favor of others that produced better fruit with more character.

Today, Napa’s wine business retains some remnant of its humble past, all rolled into a major viticulture industry. Properties have become so valuable and numerous that a once crazy-quilt of tin-roof tasting sheds has become as manicured as lawns in Beverly Hills.

Tasting and sales facilities have morphed from modest to substantial, if not palatial. A battle of blends may loom large in the near future or become a tempest in a Riedel. And nature’s backhand is never far away: the glassy-winged sharpshooter insect carries the vine-wasting Pierce Disease parasite.

In the Rhone Valley, locals have been producing wine since at least the 6^th Century B.C.  So Napa Valley has come quite far in a comparatively brief span. It’s a Horatio Alger’s success story built on innovation and inspiration plus plenty of improvisation, and, unlike Alger, lots of jack.

Napa has retained its low-key agricultural profile but sometimes the presumptuous do wander through.  One well-known winery evicted two gentlemen setting up linen-clothed tables for their family reunion as if in a public park.  Adding to the affront of trespass, they didn’t muster the etiquette to purchase wine from the site they commandeered. Another veteran wine docent recalled finding two young women, having fallen away from their tour group, happily skinny-dipping in a vineyard fountain. ”I explained I would not leave until they dressed to rejoin their tour,” he said with a wry smile.

Tasting Odyssey

In Napa Valley, one drinks appreciable to superior wine as if by divine right. Our notes highlight seven stops along the way that might inspire extending your visit.

10 a.m.: Hess Collection Winery, 4411 Redwood Road. The day starts with a 2006 Small Block Series Syrah Rose. Hess produces 14 different wines, many of them grown in small vineyards on Mount Veeder on the western side of the valley.

Hess Collection Tasting Room

The big-boy Cabernets have trademark minerality and proportion typical of the high, cool elevation.  Located on the former Christian Brothers property, the first vineyards were planted here by German immigrants after 1876.  The main building dates from 1903 and was finally leased by Donald Hess in 1986. The two-year renovation that followed put 13,000 square feet of gallery space into the old winery where some of Hess’ modern art collection is on permanent exhibit. The barrel chai (cask storage) is beautifully illuminated, the casks arranged like soldiers at review.

12 noon: Altamura Vineyards, 1400 Wooden Valley Road. Frank Altamura established his namesake winery in the Wooden Valley in 1985 nine miles northeast of Napa. The vegetation on the eastbound drive from Hess is reminiscent of a scrub-oak hillside in a Texas western — a telling demonstration of the variations nature plays in Napa Valley.

Of 400 ranch acres, 65 are planted with Cabernet, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese and Sauvignon Blanc. “I like it out here,” Altamura remarks while driving an open 1943 Dodge Hummer prototype to the vineyard’s tasting caves. “You really want to come here if you find us.” In the caves, we were glad to drink to that. Wine guru Robert Parker rated Altamura’s 2004 Cab impressively at 94; its $75 price tag makes it worth cellaring.

The ‘04 Sangiovese and ‘05 Sauvignon Blanc are singularly good ($45). The 2002 Nebbiolo is a knockout, available only online or on premises and worth its $70 tag. It retains the depth of its Italian counterpart, which is the only grape to produce Barolo. Altamura’s translation is supple and delicious. Don’t forget to pet Woody the Wine Dog.

2:15 p.m.: B Cellars; while its business office is located in San Juan Capistrano, B Cellars uses the custom crush facilities for artisan wineries at Silenus Vintners in the Oak Knoll district of Napa Valley at 5225 Solano Avenue (parallel to Route 29). Duffy Keys and Jim Borsack put their idea together while enjoying a Southern California barbecue. Partner Ken Westbrook, a serious wine collector, told Borsack, “Go to Napa; it has the best juice.” And so, Borsack, who is as intense as the blends he produces, did just that.

B Cellars numbers its blends, sourced from nine first-class vineyards.  “Most people who buy wine drink it within a week, so where the grapes come from rarely means much. To us, though, these growers are superstars,” says Borsack. The blending of varietals yields intense, spacious flavors with great fruit, fine balance and dazzling finishes.

Laird Family Estate

Borsack loves to cook; so the wines are meant for food. We sampled ‘04 and ‘05 blends 24 and 25, the latter blend of Cabernet and Syrah particularly rewarding. The Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay blend from 2006 possesses unique character, creating something “rich and strange” that offers a break from the typical California Chardonnay or Italian Pinot Grigio, but, alas, it is sold out. B Cellars’ price-points for current releases run under $50 and provide an object lesson in producing a superior product without farming one’s own grapes.  Don’t forget to pet Hannah.

4 p.m.: Laird Family Estate, 5055 Solano Ave.  Known as the “Pyramid” for its pointed roof, what started as an orphaned acre-plus vineyard in 1970 has become the place for contract crushing and production for about 46 winemakers. Laird wines are well-crafted, such as the ‘04 Diamond Mountain Cabernet ($60) and the ’02 Suscol Rand Merlot ($48). Whites include Cold Creek and Red Hen Chardonnay ($35 each), a suave Chardonnay from Carneros ($28) and a turn-on Pinot Grigio (also Cold Creek, $18). Laird’s beautiful tasting facility offers many small-lot wines to taste and take home.

9:45 a.m. the following day: Rubicon Estate, 1991 St. Helena Highway, Rutherford. This property looks to the past. It belonged to Captain Niebaum whose innovations included a gravity process for extracting the juice, bottle sterilization and the development of a rootstock that survived the first plague.

Francis Ford Coppola’s restoration here underscores his understanding that a place tells a story, too. Beneath the contemporary, says historian Simon Schama, is “the ghostly outline of an old landscape” that makes us “vividly aware of the endurance of core myths.” Coppola had to make two parts of The Godfather to acquire some of this property in 1975, and a vampire movie, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1995), to attain the rest, thus restoring all 1650 acres of the original Inglenook estate.

As narrated by Howard Frances, who may be the valley’s version of archetype greeter the dashing Grover Whelan, one realizes that Coppola, the great storyteller of film, also wants wine to tell its story. The estate produces Blancenaux ($45) and Cask (100 percent Cabernet at $100-plus a bottle). Also featured is Pennino, a Zinfandel that honors Coppola’s maternal grandfather (about $60) and the eponymous Rubicon, a Meritage that tips the cash register north of a C-note. For those unfamiliar with the species, a Meritage is made in the style of Bordeaux, but the name “Bordeaux” is a legally protected trademark jealously guarded by the folks of that famous appellation of Southern France. Currently, wineries from the U.S., Canada, and Australia are licensed by the Meritage Association to use the name “Meritage.”

Every detail of the villa pays homage to the history of Napa Valley with that vision fast-forwarded to Coppola’s other projects, including the makeover of the Chateau Souverain property in Sonoma County. As a wine tour, Rubicon is the mother lode.

Makers of excellent Chardonnay that represents the classic style of this varietal, ZD also makes its Cabernet from aggregated vineyards that are separately aged in oak before blending, returning the mix to oak to age more, before finally bottling. The Chardonnay grapes come from the cool Carneros district, aged in American oak, fermented slowly without malolactic help to retain varietal character and fine acidity. There are six current releases with the ‘06 Cab priced at $60 and the ‘05 Reserve Chardonnay offered at $53. A reserve Pinot Noir (Carneros, $65) is elegant with just enough fruit and a satisfying finish.

3:45 p.m.: Miner Family Winery, 7850 Silverado Trail, Oakville. The Miner family respects its Assyrian and Persian roots; its label features an Assyrian symbol.  The wine offered at tasting included a 2006 Napa Chardonnay and a 2006 Viognier from Simpson Ranch ($30 each). Their high-impact reds revolve around their Oracle, a Bordeaux-style blend sourced from the Stagecoach Vineyard.  The blend changes each year.  Several now are available retail at $70-75.  The tasting room resides on the eastern slopes of the valley offer a stunning vantage of the Oakville surrounds.

Miner Family Vineyards

Life is short but art is long, said Oscar Wilde. When you sample the wines in Napa Valley for yourself, you’ll ask yourself what took you so long?

A Personal Experience at the CIA (of food, that is)

By Dennis Myers

If Napa Valley is to be characterized as the New World Mecca of wine growing, then the prestigious Culinary Institute of America West Coast campus is the region’s seminary for food and wine studies.

Punctuated by the spires of the former Christian Brothers winery, the school has the look of a sacred enclave where students religiously devote time (and lots of money) to culinary pursuits at the highest level. Also known as the “Greystone” campus, the school is not far from Route 29 and near the outskirts of St. Helena in Napa Valley, just two hours north of San Francisco.

Early in the 1990s, the CIA (not to be confused with the government bureau), headquartered in Hyde Park, New York, recognized that a location in the West Coast’s burgeoning wine region could be instrumental in advancing their influence on the culinary arts. They were right. Surrounded by world-class vineyards and the exceptional restaurants of the Napa Valley, the famous school has successfully broadened their professional culinary programs and their influence is indeed felt all over the globe.

The teaching kitchens are five-star educational facilities, surrounded by terraces of organically grown herbs, vegetables and flowers, all used on campus.  Culinary events and training sessions are conducted in the main building around a series of cooking islands in a 15,000-square-foot teaching area.  A top-rated restaurant, the Wine Spectator Greystone, is open to the public there.

The Rudd Center for Professional Wine Studies was recently added to the building’s roster. It is, essentially, a laboratory for the study of tastes, especially wine, of which I have now found myself a student.

Most vintners believe that an important factor contributing to taste, especially of wine, are the characteristics of the land and the climatic influences upon it, aka terroir (pronounced “tear-waare”).  They believe the terroir — geologic, topographic, atmospheric and soil factors such as temperature ranges, elevation, rainfall, aspect to the sun, wind velocity, soil pH and fog frequency, to name a few — affect the growth and health of the vine and, thus, the fruit. Controversy arises over how much control winemakers can exert when it comes to influencing these aspects of the terroir.

As a culinary enthusiast, I have attended professional chef programs at the CIA in the past.  On this visit, I participated in a four-day examination of all features of terroir — from the type of soil to the taste of the grape in a glass of wine. Frankly, I was feeling a bit terroir-ized, knowing from my first glance inside the Rudd Center’s “Napa Valley Vintners Sensory Classroom” that I was playing in a league way above my wine-tasting skills.

For one thing, before me stood three tiers of tasting stations with glistening wine glasses precisely arranged in rows. There was a set of eight wine glasses ready for each student’s first tasting.  The instructor’s table was equally equipped with glassware, as well as eight wine bottles in brown unmarked bags, ready for pouring.

Shortly, the fourteen other students assembled. Formal introductions confirmed I was in impressive company.  There were three buyers for large wine distributors, one local vineyard owner, three employees from Napa wineries and two spouses of chefs destined to be sommeliers in their own restaurants. The rest were collectors.  And me, a chef in my own home (although near-professionally equipped) kitchen with just enough wine knowledge to make me dangerous.

The lecture and first tasting started promptly at 9 a.m. (a little early for my taste buds but I guess rolling with the program is part of being a professional). Like all the instructors at the Rudd Center, Rebecca Chapa’s credentials are stellar. She’s a Certified Wine Educator and holds the Diploma Wine and Spirits from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust in London.  She chairs the Los Angeles International Spirits Competition, and is a Contributing Editor for Wine & Spirits Magazine as well as a prolific writer for other wine publications as well.

Her degree in wine and spirits was earned at the prestigious Cornell University’s culinary school. Add to these credentials consulting assignments and competitions all over the world, and I could sense this frosh was in for a real education.  On top of that, Chapa is serious about the terroir, including the dirt and rocks that literally comprise it.

In a nutshell, the terroir class examines the environmental influences that impact vineyards and, as a result, affect the aroma, flavor, body and style of wines made from those vineyards. Technically, that means everything that touches the valuable fruit used to produce wine is evaluated to identify the grape’s heritage.

This includes understanding the viticultural factors as well, such as site assessment — rootstock, grafting, vine spacing and a myriad of other variables that wine growers have grappled with over the centuries. And that doesn’t even count what happens after the grape is picked!

My classmates and I were all staring at the now-poured eight glasses of white wine (and spitting cup) in front of us, and, soon, all of these considerations would be factored into our assessment of their contents. At first, my senses felt overextended trying to decipher this colorless — pardon me, “straw-colored, medium-bodied, slightly acidic with hints of chalk and grass” — wine’s origin. After an hour of discussion about the characteristics of the first two selections, the bottles were unveiled and the origin of the wine revealed, the Alcance region of France.  Who’da known?

A small sample of the region’s soil was neatly piled next to the bottle. Eventually, terroir started sinking in and making sense, mostly because our lecturer spent considerable time describing how the regions were formed long before man inhabited the earth. Remember, Chapa has a dead-serious attitude about dirt and rocks. The Alcance was once an ocean later to be covered by earth as a result of glacial movement — thus, the importance of this shifting substance, aka terroir. 

The best part of the class was the field trips, including Frog’s Leap Winery where we met John Williams, the owner and veteran vintner in Napa Valley. His demonstration of the difference between organic farming and conventional methods showed us the actual affect on the ground.  Williams used a spade to turn the soil easy in a row of his grapevines. Yet, across the road in a field using advanced drip irrigation and conventional fertilization techniques, the soil was hard and difficult to break.

That demonstration illustrated part of the controversy. Skillful wine experts are said to be able to affect the taste of New World wines to the point where they match exclusive wine regions of the Old World — regardless of the terroir. There are all kinds of influences that can be used, including oak barrel usage, fruit ripeness, micro-oxygenation and additives, among others. Any winery with an effective marketing program emphasizing the Old World likeness and such “artificial” wines can command premium prices compared to wines reflecting the actual terroir.

That was the case with Frog’s Leap versus the neighboring vineyard. Williams’s excellent organic wine, carefully grown to adhere to stringent organic certification guidelines, garnered a lower price (and profit).  Thus, the controversy.

Back in the classroom, Chapa never gave up on us.  By the end of the fourth day, we were instructed to “identify Old versus New World wines in a blind tasting with greater than 65 percent accuracy.” There, the proof was in the pucker! Most of the class received 100 percent reward for their tasting skills.

I managed to get two of the three identifications right — even though two of the answers were reversed and, therefore, technically incorrect.  But who’s counting?  By my math, I passed the 65 percent test! More importantly, we all left the class better-versed and educated about the influences the terroir had on winemaking techniques — and we found there was a testable and taste-able difference.

The CIA has a wide selection of wine and culinary courses designed for all types of interests. Maybe I’ll look into another topic right away before the terroir-ized attack sets in again, just to prove to myself that this wine-tasting stuff can be easier than it looks.

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Elk Cove Vineyards 2008 Willamette Valley Pinot Gris