• 2005 Peay Vineyards Chardonnay Estate – USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast (11/18/2009)
  Honey suckle and other floral aromas start off the party. Creme brulee and an extreeeemely long citrus finish. Pineapple, lime, buttered toast with orange marmalade. Even some mango in there. Peay Estate is one of my favorite domestic Chards and in my opinion well worth the $45 mailing list price. (90 pts.)
  
• 2006 Peay Vineyards Roussanne/Marsanne Estate – USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Coast (11/16/2009)
  Quince, melon, and oily petrol. I find this Roussanne/Marsanne, and I guess most white Rhone blends, a bit distinctively stinky. Not awful, I think this is how they are supposed to smell, but also not my particular cup of tea. Not rated due to my lack of sophistication with this blend.
  

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The 2010 Napa Uncovered Calendar is now available. From their website:”it is a 12 month calendar featuring Napa Valley farmers and ranchers as you have never seen them. The proceeds from this cleverly revealing calendar will support the efforts of Napa County Farm Bureau to protect the agricultural land that provides a high quality of life for all rural and urban citizens of Napa County.”
I’d like to support the Farm Bureau, but am not sure I am secure enough to start using the calendar.

Last weekend we dined for the second time at JoLe Restaurant (Calistoga). Both times it has been great. It’s currently one of our favorite Napa Valley restaurants and certainly ranks as one of the best up Calistoga way.
Highlights included:
Chicken Livers with medjool dates and Point Reyes blue cheese ($9)
Crispy Pork Belly with quince, ginger, soy & apple cider ($13)
Half Roasted Cornish Hen with collard greens and corn bread stuffing ($15)
Duck Confit with herb spaetzle and huckleberry coulis ($15)
Service started off sputtering but rapidly improved. Our table wasn’t ready until about 20 minutes after our reservation and then after we were seated, it took a an uncomfortable, unusual period before being greeted by our server and then for him to return to take our order. I think there may have been some confusion on who we “belonged” to. Anyway, they caught up and we were treated in a professional and friendly manner for the rest of the evening. Especially of note was outstanding wine service for our BYOB bottles: Burgundy glasses provided for the Kistler Chard, Cabernet glasses for the Arrowood, discussing temperature and decanting needs. This is the type of service I don’t mind paying corkage for. Their own wine list is clever and fairly priced. Many, if not all, of the wines are also available by the pitcher or “pichet” which in this case describes a little decanter that holds the equivalent two glasses.
About the wines:

• 2005 Kistler Chardonnay Kistler Vineyard – USA, California, Sonoma County, Sonoma Valley (11/14/2009)
  A tropical fruit bowl with exquisite balance. Drink now or if you’re like me and love aged Kistlers, hold for years. (92 pts.)
  
• 1997 Arrowood Cabernet Sauvignon Réserve Spéciale – USA, California, Sonoma County (11/14/2009)
  Restrained and elegant with cassis, tobacco leaf, freshly plowed earth, and cedar. Drink now. (90 pts.)
  

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Earlier this year, Congress passed credit card reform with the aim of preventing card companies from predatory and unfair practices. The changes were scheduled to take effect February 2010. One can guess why the companies received such a long lead time before the regulations started. They are big contributors after all.
The credit card companies are rushing to jack up rates and tack on additional charges ahead of these new regulations. This week I noticed that both Chase and Citi had jacked my interest rates on personal cards to above 20%. This is in spite of exemplary payment history. In fact, it’s extremely rare that I even carry a balance. Nevertheless, as a business owner, when it gets more expensive for consumers to shop, it hurts me. What a stupid thing as we approach the holiday season when we hope the American consumer is able to return to the stores.
Fortunately, the House of Representatives has voted to rush implementation of some of the regulations and freeze rates by December 1. The Senate should do the same. The Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, has a form letter than you can fill out to be sent to your Senators or you can find your Senator on your own and voice your opinion.. Let him or her know how you feel about the delay in credit card reform and urge them to join the House in pushing up enactment.

And watch your mailbox. Don’t be surprised if you get a little notice from your credit card company that you’re getting screwed too.

Next week is Thanksgiving and we’ll be spending it with relatives out on Long Island. We need to bring a dish so I dusted off an old recipe we cut out of the SF Chron years ago. Before submitting it to “the public,” I needed to practice.
It was awesome, if I do say so myself. Not too sweet. In fact, I don’t think you need the ice cream or whipped cream it recommends to accompany the pie. Just serve with a big glass of milk. Also, while the recipe recommends the final baking step be 45 minutes, keep an eye on it. We found that 35 minutes were enough for us.
One Facebook friend mentioned that the best pecan pie recipe they found is the recipe on the side of a Karo corn syrup bottle. The ingredients in that recipe and this one are similar but we found that the (much) higher butter content and using brown sugar instead of white makes the Chron recipe pie less sweet and more to our tastes.
Tomorrow, if the mood is right, I need to practice making good ole fashioned, corn bread dressing like we used to have in East Texas. That oyster and chestnut stuffing those Yankees eat is just not going to cut it any more.

Here’s a brief report from winemaker Cary Gott after tasting through the barrels today:
I just tasted all of the wines we have that are in barrel. Very nice wines.
09 Butterdragon, a deep rich wine, a wow!, just finished ML [ed: malolactic fermentation]
09 Baconbrook, clean/fresh- firm texture, will need the extra aging as in past years, just finished ML
08 Butterdragon, beautiful barrel and Cabernet note in the nose and mouth, complex
08 Baconbrook, high structure, nose is developing, flavors are full and round/firm, nice
07 Baconbrook, elegant complex nose, as usual for Baconbrook, plenty of age worth structure, very nice

Recently, I had a customer describe one of our wines with one of the most vivid descriptors I’ve ever heard. He said it was like a Northern New Mexico gift shop. My mind and memory went there right away. Leather souvenirs, old cedar floors, piñon tree incense, a wood burning fireplace, berry flavored candles… it perfectly paints a picture of a really good wine.
When reading tasting notes written by professionals and experienced consumers, a new wine drinker may be intimidated by how these guys and gals describe the various aromas and flavors in a wine. Don’t be. While their descriptors may range from flowery and poetic to crass and profane, a tasting note should reflect your own experiences. A big proponent of trusting your own palate and describing wine based on your experiences is current media darling, Wine Library TV creator, and the owner of Wine Library, Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary’s tasting notes can really push the descriptor envelope. One may never hear Robert Parker say a wine reminded him of Big League Chew bubblegum or dirty gym socks forgotten in a locker for a few months, but such descriptions are typical from Gary.
So next time you’re trying to describe a wine, close your eyes as you drink and see where it takes you. I bet you’ll like the journey. I may not know what your Grandma’s gooseberry pie at Christmas tastes or smells like, but you do and it may be the perfect descriptor for a wine you’re enjoying.
If you need a little help to job your memory and get you started, Alder Yarrow of Vinography.com has a convenient aroma/flavor card on his website.

• 1996 Joseph Phelps Insignia – USA, California, Napa Valley (11/7/2009)
  Huge pine forest nose… like walking on to a Christmas tree lot. Flavors of fresh bing cherry, baking spices, cedar, espresso, leather, and a zippy acidity that belies its 13 years of age. Very long finish with a smooth, rich mouthfeel. I didn’t love this wine to the extent some recent tasters did, but all-in-all, an excellent bottle. Probably the one thing holding this wine back from stratospheric scoring with me was that cedar nose… it was almost too much. I wish I had this bottle a couple of years ago. (93 pts.)

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Garibaldis Restaurant in Oakland has been around for years. In the past, each time we’d go there, we’d ask ourselves why we don’t go there more often. It’s usually very good. Recently the restaurant made a big change. They remodeled, dividing their space into two restaurants. One part remained Garibaldis and the other space became Marzano, their pizza / small plate concept. On Saturday, we went to Garibaldis for the first time since the remodel. The space is beautiful.
Service was friendly and sincere, but spotty in the results. The overly-busy staff did not seem ready for the task though I suspect a lot of the difficulty had to do with the big party next to us. Wine service for our BYOB Phelps Insignia was good with the server bringing us excellent stemware without being asked.
Most of the food was good to excellent. My dinner companions liked their salads and hamachi crudo appetizers. My son and I loved our steak tartar. A couple of us were not that hungry and the kitchen and server cheerfully and generously split a delicious salmon entree which was grilled to perfection and served with a yummy pomegranate sauce. The disappointing entree was my own: the potato gnocchi were salty and mushy.
Garibaldis has always been loud and this hasn’t changed. The copper ceiling, while beautiful, doesn’t lend itself to sound dampening. The noise level on our visit wasn’t helped by the neighboring table of about 20 twenty-somethings. They were at least tipsy and for some reason, their table could never be full. Two would leave the table just as two more would return. The constant traffic did take away from our experience.
So, with more hits than misses, we’ll again return to Garibaldis someday, but as usual, a few inconsistencies keep it from being at the top of our list.

According to research cited in the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail recently, it does. Study participants were given 3-5 identical — though they didn’t know it — glasses of wine to taste and then asked to indicate which glass they thought was the best wine.
It’s commonly accepted, and supported by past research, that the attitude “first is best” is prevalent. This again proved to be the case: When subjects were given only 3 glasses, they preferred the first glass.
Heck, it could be for other reasons. I almost always think the appetizer was the best part of a meal.
I know anecdotally from pouring our two wines that approximately 3/4 of folks prefer Butterdragon over Baconbrook. This isn’t because Butterdragon is better, but it is more approachable young — and all our wines are still young — plus it has more mass appeal than the brawny mountain fruit of Baconbrook. However, in side-by-side “horizontal” tastings, if I lead off with the Baconbrook, that 3/4 preference for Butterdragon goes down. It doesn’t work out that the first poured wine is always the favorite, but the crowd-pleasing popularity advantage of Butterdragon is minimized. My experiences seem to mimic the study results.
Back to the study cited in the Globe and Mail article.
When the the number of wine samples went up, and particularly as the wine experience level of the test subjects went up, the preference started to be towards the last sample glass. Researchers had a theory about why this order preference changed:

“Wine geeks thrive on discovering new and ever-better drinking experiences, so they’re more likely to give subsequent options a chance… [T]hey will keep looking and they will give themselves even more of an opportunity for something later in the sequence to beat the current favourite.”

Here’s where my experience seems to be different than the study. When I am pouring multiple vintages of both of our wines, no matter what serving order I pour, tasters usually gravitate towards the wine that is currently drinking the best and the 3/4 Butterdragon preference holds true. One thing to also note is that tasters in this setting with me, like in the study, are usually fairly experienced in wine. Without a public tasting room, my vertical tastings are with my customers accustomed to buying $60+ bottles of Cabernet.
According to the article, “The results have an obvious implication for the wine industry.” If trying to sell an overstock or high-profit wine, serve it first. If trying to impress a sophisticated buyer, save the best for last. At your own dinner party, they also recommend saving the best for last as the first wine will shine anyway. Really? At least according to my experiences, it’s not so “obvious.” While I can see the advantages of organizing a tasting so that it builds to a crescendo, I don’t think sophisticated palates are so easily swayed. One also runs the danger of your tasters suffering from palate fatigue before they ever get to the wine you really want to shine. Just because a study using identical glasses of wine shows an order preference doesn’t mean that it will translate to real-world enjoyment of wine.
I’d like to see a bit more information about this study. The article does not say how the subjects indicated their preference. Did they try each wine and in the end just say which they liked best? Or did they write notes — and perhaps even score — the wines as they went along and use those notes and scores to determine the preferred wine? I think the results could be different.