The Wonder Years

Looking back on my formative wine drinking years, I can see that having wine be a part of my everyday life was inevitable. Now, this can sound like a pretty nutty thing to say, particularly in light of the fact that it sounds like I'm saying that I drink every day...not that there's anything wrong with that. I don't actually drink everyday, but I can say that I've always been a bit "old for my years" when it comes to wine appreciation, at least in my younger days.

My business partner and I laugh because when she was young, she had an early love of the culinary arts and often played the role of chef at her parents' dinner parties, cooking for their guests herself while her parents entertained. At my home, I played the role of wine steward and service captain. I would set the table, open the bottles of Bordeaux and pour wine for her guests throughout dinner. I just loved pulling out all of the pieces of silverware from their special cloth covers, folding the linen napkins just so and especially pulling the corks from those mysterious bottles with the incomprehensible French writing all over them. Funny that Suzanne and I still get such pleasure from doing these things today.

My wine adolescence happened during college. I'm not saying that I didn't consume my share of white zinfandel and wine coolers in my four years at university, because believe me, Bartles & James were my good friends. But once I was able to move beyond the sugar-laden sweet wines, I ended up cutting my wine drinking teeth on more complex and satisfying, chewy red wines. I have particular memories of being in my early twenties, dining out with my long-time boyfriend and ordering bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe. We loved the dark, hearty and slight smokiness of the wines of that region and particularly loved the rustic qualities of the labels and the bottles themselves with the emblem of the region molded into the glass. He was a Spaniard who loved hearty, spicy food and Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe seemed to be the perfect counter to that. Call me a pushover, but I enjoyed eating and drinking what he did, and in this case it was clearly a good thing.

It was only a few years later that I discovered my first bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe blanc while on vacation with a new boyfriend in the South of France. And this is where I really fell...for the wine and the guy. I can closely describe my feelings towards white Rhone wines, and white Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe in particular, as the wine love of my life. This, my friends, is a love I've never gotten over. To this day, I feel a particular excitement when I get the opportunity to taste a white Châteauneuf. I feel myself start to get slightly giddy, like a child at the door to an ice cream truck, at the sight of that golden liquid being poured into a wine glass. This happened just the other day, when one of my favorite "wine guys" Jerome showed up with with a bottle of the 2009 Clos Saint Jean. I literally saw the words Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe and started to drool just a little bit.

Clos St. Jean, located in the famed Le Crau lieu-dit, is a family owned estate that was founded in 19o0 and has been making wine generation though generation. In 1991 brothers Pascal and Vincent Maurel took over the estate when their father died and hired on Philippe Gambie, one of the greatest oenologists in Châteauneuf, to consult. Their vineyard practices encourage natural methods, low yields and an overall respect for the environment. This relatively younger generation is working to create wines of excellence, which makes sense since their vines are some of the best situated in all of the region. Like all of the newer generations to be taking over family estates, they are trying to make their mark and to focus on quality over quantity. So far so good.

I could tell the minute I saw it in the glass that this was my kind of wine, dark golden color and sparklingly bright. It's made from a blend of equal parts Roussanne, Clairette and Grenache Blanc and is the essence of refinement. The nose shows delicate honeyed aromatics that continue on to the palate where they mix with fleshy rose, honeysuckle and unripe peach notes. Beyond even the palate, the texture of this wine really blew me away with its rich, oiliness and bright acidity. It was the perfect balance of soft and firm, lush and lean, fleshy and structured. The wine was partially aged in new oak barrels, giving the wine a rounded, slightly new world feel...but not in a bad way.

And like those old bottles of red that my boyfriend I loved to drink, this wine has a label that is unforgettable. On it is a portrait of a saint with a gilt halo that appears to be taken from a 16th or 17th century painting. Reflective of the the wine itself, the combination of the image and clean, contemporary text on the package is a study in opposites; old with new, classic with modern, history with present day. This seems very much in keeping with what the new generation in the winery is trying to achieve. It also reminds me of my wine past and my wine present, reflecting where I once was and where I am now. Readmore »»

A Rosé By Any Other Color

I decided to try out an experiment to test a theory that I'd had. The theory surrounds a study that showed that people who consumed 14 glasses of wine per week were 60% less likely to contract a cold than other non-wine drinkers. One can see how I would find this to be an "au courant" investigation as we in Los Angeles are right in the midst of flu season and everyone around me seems to be dropping like flies. I myself have been teetering on the brink, so I started wondering if drinking a glass of wine or two could actually cure a cold. Many of my friends in the Latino community swear by the shot of tequila cure, but for a wine lover such as myself, I'd much rather drink a glass of fermented grapes, especially if I can find a good excuse to do so.

This all started as I began to feel the tell tale signs that I was coming down with something. I'm one of those people who just always seems to get sick. I swear I'm not a hypochondriac. The problem lies in the fact that I have two school-aged children who bring home every communicable disease known to man and I work in a business in which I shake many many hands every night. And although I wash my hands constantly and carry Purell, I still get sick all of the time. I've tried various methods for curing my various viruses including Oscillococcinum (do those little white balls of sugar really do anything?), Tamiflu (very expensive), feeding my cold (not great for my rear end), starving my cold (hard to do, but I felt really thin for a few days there), loading up on vitamin C (got tired of swallowing those horse pills), sweating it out (got thin again) and Theraflu (fell asleep at work!). This time I'm just ignoring my symptoms and working through it, which is not really doing anything to relieve my cruddy condition, though I do feel like quite the trooper. In my desperation to find a way to feel better, I decided to do one last search for a cure, which is how in my Google-based due diligence I came upon the delicious fact about wine drinking and cold avoidance. Immediately a light bulb went on in my head....maybe I can drink my way out of this illness!

I immediately went to my newly-dubbed "medicine cabinet" to find the appropriate bottle of wine to test out my theory. Within a few minutes I came upon a wine that I've been meaning to taste for a while now, the 2009 Scholium Project Rhododactylos, Phillips Farms, a wine that an employee at Tavern gave me after she worked with the winemaker during harvest and bottling. What struck me immediately about this wine was that I had assumed by its color that it was a white wine, until I actually read the label to discover it was rosé. I suppose that this wouldn't be strange for the Scholium Project as they are known for making wines that are fairly unusual.

It turns out that they actually made this wine by accident, an example of the curious things that happen when we try to control nature. The mistake happened in 2008 when they initially planned to make a deep dark red from 150 year-old dry farmed Cinsault, an utterly unheard of find from Phillips Farms in Lodi. But instead of yielding the anticipated small, dark berries from the vines, they got large, round, light colored grapes much like table grapes but with a muscat-like fragrance. They bled the juice off and fermented it into a rich and delicious white, or more accurately, light pink. They loved it so much that they decided to recreate it in 2009. This time they gently whole-cluster pressed it, fermented it in stainless steel and aged it in old white wine barrels. And though they say the wine was initially pink, it eventually lost it's color and became quite a serious golden color, somewhere between rose gold and 24 karat.

The wine showed aromas of roses, honey and allspice, all of which I was somehow able to detect through my runny nose. This honey intensified on the palate, resulting in a wine that drank much more like a mature white than any rosé I've ever had. It was rich with ripe stone fruit, exotic spices and incredible weight and texture, not unlike white wine from the Northern Rhône Valley. Although the wine was an unexpected rosé surprise, I would expect no less from The Scholium Project whose wines are always incredibly layered, intense and complex. They make the kinds of wines that are not only interesting to taste, but are also a pleasure to drink.

I enjoyed this wine over a couple of nights and though it didn't do anything obvious to help my cold, it certainly made me relax about my illness. This may be the same effect that tequila provides in a smaller, more potent dose. I've decided to make myself an experimental guinea pig and keep testing this theory in hope of finding a wine cure. I figure that it's the least I can do for the medical community.

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Catalonia, Take Me Away!

I know things are getting rough when I start desperately pining for my June vacation in January. I think that this actually happens every year as I hear myself saying how badly I need a break while looking longingly at the calendar and the many months between now and then. When these days of rest in a far away place are truly so far away, I often find myself trying very hard to imagine what I would be doing on said trip, and I attempt to recreate it at home as a form of fantasy escapism...a pre-trip cultural immersion, if you will. This way, I can trick myself into thinking that I'm just a little closer to where I'd rather be.

At this very moment, I find myself in the post-holiday moment of getting back to normal life. Of course, normal is a relative term in the restaurant world, since there is never really a time one can call business as usual. Each day at work literally brings a new crisis, a new drama, a new adventure. It could be the ever-glamorous plumbing problem, the overly intoxicated and therefore irrational guest or the random computer crash that can set my mind desperately searching for escape. So today, right as the local neighborhood crazy woman attempts to steal one of our water glasses and then proceeds to punch our bartender in the stomach, I feel my mind wander off to the mountains and villages of Spain, my family's summer destination. I imagine myself walking down a cobblestone street or dining in a charming sidewalk cafe. Of course, this dreamy moment in my mind also includes a glass of wine. In fact, one of the first things I usually think about when it comes to travel, is what wine I will be drinking on my trip. Whereas most normal people think about the sights and the adventure, I think about the wine.

This happens to be the perfect moment to be wondering off to Spain for me because I'm in the middle of an all-out Spanish wine obsession. I just can't seem to get enough of those yummy white Riojas and earthy, concentrated wines of the Priorat. So it seems fairly appropriate that after dealing with yet another not so normal moment, I eagerly reached for a glass of 2005 El Castro de Valtuille Bierzo Joven, a recent addition to the Tavern wine list. This is a wine made from 100% Mencia that is so delicious, I can't seem to stop drinking it.

Mencia is sort of an underdog variety, one that's gotten less attention than the more well-known Spanish grapes Garnacha and Tempranillo. Though Mencia is grown in a few different regions in spain, Bierzo is without a doubt the most famous. Castro Ventosa, maker of Valtuille, is owned by the Perez family of who have been farming 75 hectares of old vine Mencia since 1752. This is one of the top producers in the area and although this wine is called "joven" or young vines, these plants actually range from 20 to 40 years-old. I love anyone or anything that considers 40 years-old young!

The wine's nose shows intriguing black fruit notes of amarena cherries, cassis and black raspberry along side a delicate brininess that I often associate with Spanish reds. On the palate, the dark berry notes continue along side touches of anise, black tea and tarragon. It has a silky texture with firm tannins and a general softness that makes it a pretty easy-drinking, yet complex wine.

When I close my eyes, breathe in the aromas in the glass and finally take a sip of this wine, I am literally transported to Madrid, to a place where business comes to a civilized halt in the middle of the day and where long, lazy dinners last until late in the night. My body instantly relaxes and the tension just seems to melt away. It's enough to help me deal, if only for a few minutes, with the craziness that is my reality. If only June wasn't so far away.

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Really, It's Not the Wine. It's Me.

I just got back from a few lazy days in Phoenix. My business partner and I took our staff from AOC on an out of town retreat to Pizzeria Bianco, one of our all-time favorite restaurants. Pizzeria Bianco, for those who don't know, is a legendary pizzeria housed in an adorable old-time brick building that has won a James Beard award for its food and has such a devoted following that people often wait for up to three hours (no exaggeration) for a table. Part of the attraction to this place, besides the insanely delicious pizza, is its owner Chris Bianco who is not only incredibly talented, but is also quite a character. He's sort of a combination of Bobcat Goldthwait and Bruce Willis, with a head of wildly curly dark hair, baby face and raspy voice. He's one of those charming genius types who can ramble on about this or that culinary idea or inspiration with sincere excitement and child-like enthusiasm. He is amazingly self-deprecating and though he looks kind of tough, is actually a sweet and gentle person. We had an incredibly fun night there with our staff and ate and laughed our heads off. It was one of those nights that just passed by too quickly.

Of course, Suzanne and I both saw this retreat as an opportunity to spend a coupe of extra days in Phoenix with our husbands at the Sanctuary, the perfect zen spa/hotel for relaxing and doing nothing aside from reading, sleeping and getting pampered. And let me tell you, "doing nothing" is pretty much all you can do when Phoenix gets so cold that it actually snows! We did nothing...which took some getting used to. You see, my husband and I are such constantly moving city peeps that we have a hard time wrapping our heads around the idea of actually not doing anything. The first day of any vacation, we look at each other and say, "Well, what should we do now?" and talk about how we should probably go back home. We always feel like we should be accomplishing something, fixing something, making something, going somewhere. It's not until half way through the second day of any trip that we grasp the concept of chilling out and finally just go with the idea of inactivity.

It was on this second day of our trip, after a day of just lying around that we went out with Suzanne and her husband to listen to jazz at a place called Kazimierz World Wine Bar. Kazimierz is a dark and moody joint (and I mean that in the best sense of the word) that feels a little bit like a speakeasy and is owned by Peter Kasperski, probably the best wine buyer in all of Arizona. Peter's got a ton of personality, as do his wine lists which are loaded with anecdotes and winemaker profiles, making it about a mile long and something that one could curl up with and read by the fire. The list is so big that it made me wonder how many people can possibly come into that place to support such a huge investment in wine. This list truly rivals many of those in the finest restaurants in the world, but in a far more casual, down and dirty setting.

Because of what I do for a living, it's usually left up to me to choose the wine for the table, understandably. It's just like at dinner when we all looked to Suzanne and her husband to tell us what we should eat. But I have to say that this task of selecting the wine feels like an enormous amount of pressure. It is not an exaggeration for me to say that I feel as though a poor choice is a sign of personal failure on my part. Thus, the selection process is a long and arduous one, usually provoking glares of, "come on, we're thirsty here!" from those at the table. I am also a bit obsessive compulsive. Combine this with the length of the list at Kazimierz, and I had a recipe for disaster on my hands. I was trying hard not to cave in to the pressure I was feeling and yet I was paralyzed by the selection. (I have to interject here to say that even though this feeling of anxiety never leaves me, I am normally quite successful in the wine selection thing.) That is, until this moment when I did a spectacular job of picking what I thought was one of the worst wines I've ever tasted. I chose a 2006 Côtes du Rhône from a producer (who shall remain nameless) that I normally like quite a bit, but it was so intense, dark and funky that I literally couldn't drink a sip of it. My friends at the table were kind enough to drink the stuff, I think as a way of making me feel a little better.

I wasn't sure what had gone wrong with this wine. Was it tainted? Did it have bret? Was it just not my style? Was it the vintage? Or. maybe it was just me, something that wouldn't have been unusual since wine is such a subjective thing. I decided to do a comparison and taste a 2006 Côtes du Rhône that I just happened to have at home to see how it was holding up. The wine was a 2006 Catherine le Goeuil, Côtes du Rhône, Cairanne, Cuvée Léa Felsch that I bought from Kermit Lynch Wine Merchants. And although the first sip was a bit tight, I am happy to say that the wine restored my faith in myself and the vintage. Catherine le Goeuil makes a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre, Cinsault and Carignan from a 14 hectare vineyard in the village of Cairanne. She has been farming the vineyard organically since 1993 and makes only this one red wine from the property.

After the initial sip, the wine opened up fairly quickly to reveal a nose of soft, cooked plum and dark berry notes with touches of dark green herbs and the very slightest hint of vanilla. On the palate, layers of tobacco and smoky game meat intermingled with dark fruit notes and delicate hints of cedar spice. Although dominated by dark fruit notes, the wine maintained a decent amount of acidity resulting in a feeling of freshness and youth. It was actually the perfect wine to drink with the pork and cavolo nero I made last night as the dark earthiness of the kale was the perfect partner for the wine's herbal component. I liked this wine so much that I'm inspired to buy some more of it to keep on hand for more cold weather meals.

I'm sure it seems pretty comical to hear that I have a hard time ordering wine in a restaurant, at least one that is not my own. And in the end, not loving that particular bottle of wine wasn't really the end of the world. I don't have to have a "relationship" with each bottle of wine I order. Besides, everybody else at the table was totally fine with it, so maybe it really was just me.

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The Most Wine-derful Time of the Year

It's amazing how stressed out a working mother can become as the end of December approaches. This is supposed to be a joyous and festive time of year, but for me it inevitably ends up being a time of mood swings and migraines. This fact always catches me by surprise because I have the most wonderful childhood memories of Christmas.

By the way, I should mention here that I come from a long line of "bad" Jews who celebrate Christmas each year, complete with a tree, lights, candy canes and stockings hanging from the mantle. My mother took the whole ritual of the holidays very seriously, and seemed to enjoy it immensely. Each year she would pick a different "style" for the tree's decor - one year it was all plaid with giant tartan bows, another year it was all silver ornaments, and so on. (She was one of those people who redecorated the entire house every other year.) She loaded the tree up with gifts and filled our stockings until they were overflowing. Every year she made the same breakfast of cheese eggs, toast and bacon -- again, "bad" Jews -- and literally played Christmas music while we unwrapped our gifts. I try to recreate this experience every year in my own home, much to the chagrin of my more religiously observant husband, and look forward to Christmas morning with as much anticipation as I did when I was a child. As a matter of fact, I'm eating a candy cane at this very moment.

The lead-up to December 25th, however is the part that can be rough. I actually started feeling it today, as my daughter and I set out to purchase some gifts for her friends. I don't know if it was the two clueless sales girls at the clothing store that set my mood off, or if it was the traffic that we fought to get across town only to purchase one measly gift, but I started to lose it. I think it's because I started to feel, as I always do at the holidays, that I am taking part in an un-winnable race, a steeple-chase complete with obstacles (traffic), challenges (what on earth do I buy for my sister who has everything), incredible distances to cover (the endless gift list) and that inevitable post-race muscle pain (the January credit card bill). I'm usually the one who decorates the tree, buys all of the gifts and cooks Christmas dinner, adding to the gauntlet that is my usual month of December. I started to feel that dreadful fear that I may not actually be able to finish the race this year, especially since I haven't even warmed up yet.

Much of this comes down to the fact that I spend many many hours at work and thus have very little leeway in terms of finding time to take care of these holiday chores. No matter how early I start my gift buying, I always end up duking it out on Christmas Eve with the rest of the shopping crowds. I end up spending way too much because I start grabbing one of every item that I see in order to avoid forgetting someone. I also carry a tremendous amount of pressure and guilt -- again, I'm a Jew -- about how much time I spend away from my children and subconsciously feel like I will make up for all of it on the morning of Christ's birthday.

So, as I felt that familiar feeling set in, and as my son in the back seat of the car screamed about not waiting one more minute to get our Christmas tree, I decided to retreat to my "happy place." My happy place is where I mentally transport myself in times of trouble. For instance, when on an airplane experiencing heavy turbulence, I close my eyes an imagine myself at my home, snuggled up under the covers with my son listening to him breathe while he sleeps. I say over and over to myself, "I'm in my happy place. I'm in my happy place." Somehow this gets me through without completely losing it in front of hundreds of people. I decided to take inspiration for my happy place on this irritating Saturday, two weeks to the day from Christmas, in my dreamy imaginary holiday moment, one in which I am sitting on my sofa in front of the fire, glass of wine in hand while the children decorate the tree. As I looked at my kids in the rear view mirror I came to slowly realize that my happy place may not be so far away after all.

I immediately turned the car around and drove over the Christmas tree lot down the street from my house, the one where the trees are a touch more expensive, but they are delivered to your home within one hour. My overjoyed son ran up and down the aisles of Noble Firs while my daughter and I looked for the perfect tree. I've brainwashed my little girl over the last thirteen years to look for the exact type of tree that I like: the super model of trees, slender, elegant and very tall. We found our green version of Kate Moss, paid for the beautiful yet doomed tree and headed for home. I decided when we got home to do what I have never done before, and allow the kids to decorate the whole tree themselves. Normally, I would fuss over it myself in an obsessive compulsive manner, quashing their creativity to satisfy my own need for order. This year, I decided to allow myself to just sit back and watch, and to allow them to experience the fun part, the part that I used to look forward to.

To help me in my quest for pre-Christmas relaxation, I opened a bottle of 2007 Jorian Hill "Beespoke" Grenache/Syrah blend. In my mind, this hearty red is one of the most perfect wines for this time of year. Jorian Hill is a small family-owned winery in the cool climate area known as Ballard Canyon in the Santa Ynez Valley. Their winemaking and viticulture team of Mark Crawford Horvath, Kenneth Gummere and Jeff Frey focuses on organic farming, low yields and small lot fermentations to create wines that are at once rich and elegant. This wine is striking from the start with its aromas of black olive, tar and raspberry. It has a seriousness and muscularity that comes through well before even tasting. On the palate, the wine shows an interesting balance of qualities from both the Syrah and the Grenache. It has a meatiness and dark intensity that is balanced by nuances of red fruits and spices. It has strength and grip while also being soft and fleshy. I figured that its dark brooding character and comforting fruitiness was probably the perfect match for my mood and situation.

As I sat and listened to the kids laughing and enjoying themselves while decorating the tree, I was able to bring myself back from the dark depths of holiday irritation and appreciate this time of year again. They placed each glass ball and silver bell where ever they saw fit and I didn't interfere or offer my opinion. Now, I'm not sure if I drank too much wine or if I was just overwhelmed by the fact that I didn't have to lift a finger, but I knew then and there that I had never seen a better looking Christmas tree.

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Thanks For Giving

It has been quite a long time since I've written anything here and I am loaded down with a tremendous amount of guilt and hesitation. I realize that by blogging, I am cultivating a friendship with those who are my followers. And like every other important personal relationship, one has to devote a good amount of time and attention to it lest it whither away and die. Now, my lack of blogging in the last couple of months is not due to a lack of interest or love. I haven't stopped caring. I was just basically overwhelmed with working on Suzanne and my LA Loves Alex's Lemonade fundraiser, and with preparing for the restaurants and myself for the holidays. I just did not have any time left in my day to focus on this particular relationship. Of course, after such a long time away, I find myself consumed with the inevitable self-questioning that further exacerbates getting back on track: "Has it been too long? Will they even want to hear from me? Do they even care?" Either way, I've decided to "pick up the phone" and re-initiate contact. Hopefully the friendship is not over.

To aid in this, I actually found that Thanksgiving gave me a reason to blog again. You see, I'm one of the lucky few in the restaurant business who get to take the last Thursday of November off to eat turkey with the relatives. And the perk for having twenty people over for dinner is the occasional hostess gift in the form of a bottle of wine that can come my way, something that I obviously greatly appreciate. A friend of the family brought me a bottle of 2008 Lioco, Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. This is clearly someone who knows my palate and penchant for delicate Pinot. I've been a longtime supporter of Lioco and because of this, I waited to open the bottle thinking that as I've had the wine before, there was no need to rush. In the end I didn't wait all that long, since I opened it up the very next day to drink along side my plate of turkey and stuffing leftovers. It was the perfect choice.

Lioco was started by Kevin O'Connor, the former sommelier at Spago and his friend Matt Licklider, a former LA import wine salesperson as a pursuit to create well-made wines that speak of their location. So often, people perceive California as a place of fruity, juicy wines that lack a specific regional expression. These guys have proved that idea as false with their series of elegant single vineyard, single AVA whites and reds. As lovers of old world winemaking, they take inspiration from traditional European methods, seeking out vineyard sites that make the vines work harder to survive, thereby producing higher quality fruit. They focus on using little or no oak in the aging process, fermenting naturally and over-delivering in terms of the wine and its price point.

This wine exemplifies everything I love in Pinot Noir with its tart red fruit notes, bright acidity, earthiness and the fact that this wine literally speaks of the holidays. On the nose, cranberry and cinnamon notes mix with touches of cassis, raspberry and candied yam. The palate manages to be lean and slightly fleshy all at once with red plum fruitiness, ginger and cardamom spice, orange peel and long finish laden with bacon fat. It's a wine that clearly represents its Sonoma Coast location with its cold climate and coastal proximity, resulting in Pinot Noir that tastes like Pinot, rather than some suped-up, Syrah imitator. It would have been the perfect pairing for my Thanksgiving turkey, especially since I follow my family's tradition of covering the top of the bird with bacon and basting it with butter. What better to cut the fat and marry with the bacon than this earthy, spicy wine.

I'm always in a quandary as to whether to immediately open a bottle of wine that a guest brings to dinner and drink it on the spot, or if I should save it for a later date. I never want to insult my guests by not drinking the wine with them, or by acting as though their selection isn't special enough to save for an important occasion. Fortunately, I was so distracted by the crazy family gathering taking place in my living room that I didn't even have time to think about what to do. This would definitely have been a great wine to drink with dinner that night, but I'm really happy that I saved it for the day after. That way, I didn't have to share a drop with all of those people.

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State of Grace

I have to say that my meeting with Angela Osborne was one of the more unusual interactions I've had. One day during lunch service at Lucques, this young woman approached me and asked me if she could shake my hand. Hmmm. I don't know if I've ever been asked that particular question before. Can I shake your hand....of course. Most people don't actually ask, so please go ahead.

After getting through that odd moment, Angela got to the gist of her visit. She is a winemaker, originally from New Zealand who came out to California to work with her favorite grape variety, Grenache. Angela said that she had considered the major Grenache producing regions of the world, Spain, Southern France, Australia and California and eventually settled on the latter. She was hired on as assistant winemaker at Lioco under Kevin Kelly and thus began her California career. She wanted me to taste her new release, A Tribute to Grace, from the Santa Barbara Highlands Vineyard of Santa Barbara County.

I was honestly a bit worried about tasting her Grenache, particularly right in front of her because I'm not normally a big fan of the variety, especially from California. I find most Grenache made here to be too concentrated, juicy and rich for my palate. I was also dreading tasting the wine with a winemaker that I didn't really know for fear of not liking the wine. It makes me feel terrible when I'm in that position because I don't like disappointing people and I usually end up doing the polite/impolite thing of lying about my love of the wine then never ordering it.

The moment I saw the wine in the glass though, my interest was piqued. Rather than being a deep dark purple, the wine is the color of translucent ruby red, so faint in fact that it could be mistaken for a light Pinot or dark rosé. On the nose, high-toned cherry notes mix with elements of cinnamon and un-blossomed roses, resulting in an exotic, spice market aroma. On the palate, Grace is bright and fleshy in an elegant, feminine way, blending fresh and cooked red fruit notes, with cinnamon and clove spices and vivid acidity. It has hints of floral perfume and touches of savory herbs with a medium body, velvet-like texture and long finish. Even before I put the glass to my lips, I was reminded of Chateau Rayas Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe, another Grenache that goes against type, and that like this wine, drinks more like Pinot Noir than anything else. For me, this is a good thing.

Angela makes a tiny amount of this, less than 200 cases, and numbers each bottle individually. She named it after her grandmother who has been a source of inspiration and strength to her. To say that this wine embodies the idea of grace with its elegance, balance and finesse is an understatement. Angela herself seems to follow in the same mold with her delicate personality, wispy long hair and soft demeanor. I immediately bought a case for myself as well as one for the restaurant, both of which seem to be disappearing quicker than I expected. Everyone who I've introduced the wine to has fallen in love with it and come back for more. This is a wine that I will keep on my list at Lucques for as long as it is available, because I wholeheartedly believe that we all could us a little more grace in our lives.

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