The weather for yesterday’s Harvest Festival at Rancho Sisquoc Winery could not have been more perfect for a day of meandering through Santa Barbara County’s finest wine and food vendors. An hour outside of downtown Santa Barbara it was crystal clear and the silhouetted mountains looked like a painting in the background of the event. The cool breeze swept us into fall and transitioned us from the hot temperatures that we were experiencing just one week ago into brisk chills, chapped lips, and yellow leaves.
We poured a selection of wines that included the 2007 Pinot Gris, 2006 Reserve Chardonnay, 2007 7.3 Riesling, 2007 ZCS, 2005 Petite Sirah, and 2005 Primitivo. Lafond was pouring their 2006 SRH Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, 2006 Syrah Grenache, and 2005 Arita Hills Pinot Noir. There was an amazing selection of varietals being poured from Pinot to Riesling to Barbera. There was also no paucity of grilled tri tip, crispy french fries, and freshly baked flat bread (which I waited in line for on three seperate occassions).
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Lafond Winery is holding an Open House tomorrow to celebrate harvest over the long festival weekend in wine country. The open house will take place during normal tasting room hours (10am-5pm). Cheese and tacos will be served amidst a backdrop of harvest flurry. White fermenter bins, forklifts hauling grapes, juice, seeds, and skin. See first hand a portion of the process through which grapes turn from fruit on a vine to wine in a bottle.
Santa Barbara Winery and Lafond will be accepting the Vintner’s Visa starting today through Monday. This ticket is $35 and gets you free tastings at 12 participating wineries throughout the four days. We are all set for a warm, crystal clear weekend (which is a bit more than I can say for this years Vintner’s Festival a few months back). For more information on participating wineries and weekend events and happenings check out the Santa Barbara Vintner’s Association website.
If you are attending Saturday’s Harvest Festival come say hi at both of our booths. Enjoy the long weekend, take a drive out to the Santa Ynez Valley, and be safe.
Lafond Winery Open House
October 11, 2008
10am - 5pm
www.sbcountywines.com
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Assistant winemaker Ryan Ralston was the speaker at Spiritland Bistro’s Wine & Dine event on Monday evening. The second Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir-themed tasting and dinner in the past month was sold out just like the first, which took place on September 24. Ryan spoke about his past winemaker experience, the transition from his beginnings in Paso Robles, and SRH pinot characteristics. The dinner menu was full of classic pinot pairings from a mushroom tart to salmon and a delicious berry crumble.
One of the three cheeses paired with the stand up tasting course in the beginning of the meal was different from the last dinner, Cypress Grove Midnight Moon. This was definitely my favorite cheese of the night and its semi soft texture went really nicely with the pinots. Midnight Moon is a pasteurized 100% goat’s milk (Chevre) cheese (Chevre = goat in French) that is aged for at least 6 months. During the aging period, it develops a caramel nuttiness. This cheese is made by Cypress Grove Creamery up in Humboldt County and would be great served with Fig preserves or used in grilled cheese.
Spiritland’s next dinner is West Coast Cabernet on October 29.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
I recently came across a helpful video on Winespectator that presents an explanation on two cheeses that pair nicely with Cabernet Sauvignon. In the video, Harvey Steiman (Editor at Large, Wine Spectator), speaks generally about pairing red wines with cheeses. and then more specifically goes into two cheeses that pair particularly well with a Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. These two cheeses are Ossau Iraty (France) and Piave Vecchio (Northern Italy).
“Reds can be tricky with cheese, but they have a certain affinity for some of them,” claims Steiman. It’s best to choose firm, mellow cheeses with lower acidity. The best red wines to pair with cheese should have lots of ripe fruit flavor and lower tannins, which can be made more astringent with the saltiness of cheese. Lower acidity in cheese can soften the tannins in wine. Wines can have tannin, they just need to be “integrated and polished.” Wine Spectator video
These educational snipets on Wine Spectator’s website are great because of the depth of information that they provide in three minute or so periods. They don’t go into too much detail, but have the ability to tap into a vast range of subjects in a substantial manner.
Another recommended video for cheese lovers is posted right now. It is about buying cheese in a cheese shop.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Harvest is in full swing at our downtown winery, where we process all of our white wines. Over the past couple of weeks we have been getting in truck loads of tiny small cluster berries such as sauvignon blanc and orange muscat. Today we received about 5 tons of Thompson Vineyard Chardonnay and about the same tonnage of Monterey Sauvignon Blanc (Musque Clone).
We receive fruit by the truckload, which brings it right to our front door, parking right in front of the visitors area of the winery. The juice immediately gets pressed off of the skins and fermentation begins soon afterwards. We have gotten the opportunity to taste sauvignon blanc juice through the stages it takes from just grape juice to an active fermentation. As the wine is fermenting the sugar disappears and it turns into wine as those sugars convert to alcohol. Each day the juice is a noticeably less sweet.
Visitors today can taste the chardonnay berries that we have in the tasting room as they sip through current releases of our 2007 white wines that were going through the same process just one year ago.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Thursday the 25th of September the urban harvest crew received the largest tonnage of grapes for the season. The grapes were Sauvignon Blanc from the Jack Mcginley
vineyard, formerly called the Westerly vineyard. Ryan Ralston, the assistant winemaker for Santa Barbara Winery and Lafond Winery wines has a pension for creating Sauvignon Blanc with balanced, rounded tropical fruit flavors, little astringency and crisp finish.
“The key to having great California Sauvignon Blanc is allowing mother nature to exude its full effects on the grape. To do so the winemaker and vineyard manager must have some faith in the sometimes fickle California climate and let the grapes hang until peak ripeness is achieved.”
Anything less would be uncivilized and add bitter, grassy and sometimes harsh poly phenols and phenolics to the wine.
Photo above shows whole-cluster grapes dropping into the press from the conveyor. The stems provide channels for the juice during the press cycle. The grapes enter the press undamaged.
The bottom photo is of juice being extracted through the press. The press has a large bladder which on being expanded by air, like a giant balloon, gently pushes the grapes against the wall of the press and its screen.
Cameron Bendetsen, Sata Barbara Winery
Another day, another wine dinner in Santa Barbara… Spiritland Bistro’s Wednesday Wine and Dine featured Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir as their designated varietal this week. If you have missed my previous postings about this event, each month a four course meal is paired with a designated varietal of which each guest brings their own bottle. Between each course an expert on the varietal speaks about its characteristics and food pairings.
Lafond was the most popular label of the night, I think there were about 7 bottles
of Lafond brought in the mix of 35 wines. I brought two bottles: 2006 Lafond Martin Ray Clone Pinot Noir and 2007 Santa Barbara Winery Pinot Noir. These dinners provide an amazing opportunity to learn about specific areas of wine, particularly pairings of food and wine. It is great to be able to taste wines from the same appellation against each other and see why the wine works with the menu and cheeses.
Food was delicious - delicate mushroom tart to start followed by baked salmon and potatoes au gratin. Dessert was a delicious berry crumble. The stand up cheese course featured three cheeses that matched perfectly with the wine - Cabra al Romero, St. George, and Brie de Nangis. There is always an effort here to collect an assortment of diverse cheeses from around the world while still keeping their flavor profiles in line to complement the pairings.
Cabra al Romero is a pasteurized Spanish gourmet goat cheese from La Mancha. This is an area in central Spain where you can also find the famed Manchego cheese. It is coated with rosemary, which seeps through the outer walls to produce a fragrantly subtle herbal nose. This quality makes it a really nice match with pinot. Its texture is dense and firm with a slightly fruity finish.
St. George is a richly textured, semi-hard, full flavored cow’s milk cheese from Northern California. It is based on a Portuguese recipe, but retains a distinctly American spin. It has a depth of flavor that effortlessly works with pinot and is fantastic when melted in polenta.
Brie de Nangis (bree duh nahn-ZHEE) yields from France and is firmer in texture than its relative Brie de Meaux. It is milder than other Brie cheeses with a hint of earthiness. It is soft ripened (bloomy rind), which gives it a creamy and smooth texture.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
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