It's been a LONG time since I ...

It's been a LONG time since I gave a proper restaurant review on here, so i'm going to throw in a bit about the wine tasting we did, too.

Oh, BTW, let me interrupt myself:
      Hi Earl! :-* Smooch! :-* thanks for saying HI in the comments!

So Kelly and I celebrated our 13 year wedding anniversary on October 2nd. Yes, i was practically a 'child bride' by Los Angeles standards, but 23 is a perfectly acceptable age to get married in Chicago. About this time of year, after someone asks how long we've been married, I get to make the joke, "13 years, but 12 of them have been in Los Angeles, so that's like dog years." Ha Ha Ha.

Ok, anyway, the review. We've come to San Luis Obispo to do some wine tasting, restaurant dining and "antiquing" (basically thrift store shopping but the stuff is clean and works).

If you've never done a wine tasting, here's what's supposed to happen:

(i'm using the words winery, tasting room and vineyard somewhat interchangably here.)

You can buy a pass to get a chauffered tour, which will pick up several other potential winos at different hotels and B&Bs, and then takes you all to 4 or 5 wineries. The tasting fees are often included in the tour cost. At some point, there will be a stop for food (which might not be included, so bring some cash) You will automatically meet new people, as we did on the chauffered tour between wineries (and it got more fun as we got more buzzed!) but we were lucky in that the other couples were friendly and fun. YMMV. You'll be on a schedule, kind of, because there's probably another tour after you, and the driver and guide (might not be the same person) are working a job, not having fun, like you are. So while there's a built-in designated driver, you might feel rushed, as we did the time we did a limo-tour. At the end, everyone gets delivered back to their own hotel.

You can also drive to each of the wineries yourself. You'll have to scope out what vineyards seem interesting to you, map them, and figure out how to get there. You can bring a picnic lunch. You can take your time, and look around at everything as long as you want. If you're going for the experience, and not just to drink, drive yourself. Of course, one person's got to stay sober enough to drive.

I'm not getting into bike tours, but i hear that they can be fun.

Once you arrive at the tasting room, you belly up to the counter, and they let you know what they're going to pour. Most places present just one winery, but others have more than one, so you might be offered to choose one or the other or both. They take out a (usually) generically shaped glass, and pour the first wine for you.

They always pour lightest-to-heaviest, so they'll pour whites first, usually in this order: gewürtsraminer, riesling, sauvignon, chardonnay, rosé, pinot, zinfandel, cabernet, port. They will most likely not do all of these varietals, and may have different offerings, but that gives you the basic idea.

Now, a curious thing, to me, is that at each of the places we went to, there were people who refused half of the wines. One couple only wanted to taste reds. At the next place, one woman only wanted to taste whites. I can appreciate that maybe that's all you'd want to BUY... but why not give the others a taste? ME, i have to taste everything. And if you're with me, i want YOU to taste everything too! If i've met you more than once, and we're eating together, there will probably be a lot of passing forks back and forth. but i digress. as i do every post of more than 20 words. whatever.

ok, so they pour you your first white. You'll only get about an ounce or so in your glass. first you smell. then you swirl, then you smell. and then do it all again. If you're not used to smelling wines, sniff first, and THEN look a the tasting notes sheet, and then sniff again to see if you can find those flavors. You can go through the song and dance of rim variation, clarity, viscosity, and all that other stuff, but usually that's to learn about a wine that doesn't come with a tasting sheet. So just smell, and then taste. I usually taste at least 4 times. First a tiny sip, to get a first impression, and to acclimate my mouth to the wine. then a bigger sip, to reinforce that first impression, and let the acids and tannins get out of the way. Then an actual mouthful, which i drink kind of normally, but i hold it in my mouth a bit before swallowing, to get a feel for the alcohol levels (feels like pressure on your tongue) and to pick out some flavors. then finally, a last mouthful, to see what the finish is like, and to see how long it lasts in your mouth. Since i've been doing this a while, i've gotten better at picking out smells & tastes. it's fun. If i like the wine, i'll drink what's left in my glass. if not, i pour it into the dump bucket. Then you go on to the next wine... but don't feel like you have to rush!

OH, btw, nobody spits at these, not even the guys working there, who often take a sip or two along with you if you mention a scent or flavor that makes them raise their eyebrows. One day i want to learn how to spit in a perfect stream. Oh, such lofty aspirations! lol.

We went to Saucelito Canyon/Ortman Vineyards tasting room first...
•Saucelito Canyon
•Ortman Vineyards
...and tasted 6 7 wines ($5), with very little going into the dump bucket. They poured in the order mentioned above, intermingling the wines from both vineyards. Each of them presented a white that was spectacular. The reds were rich and interesting. We took home a bottle of a rich, red, gorgeous Zinfandel that had some lime undertones, that I want to see if i can make work with a meaty fish. The tasting room was small but cute, and the men behind the counter were friendly, charming and bantered with each other faux animosity. It was fun.

Oh, and the reason for the strikeout above: we got a special "bonus" pour of a newly released cabernet that the winery's rep was very proud of. As another aside, a LOT of people who are intimate with their wines are itching to share something new, or something they think is special, as a little bonus pour. with that in mind, take note, as they probably know what's worth mentioning, and also, be respectful, because saying it tastes like swamp water is not only rude, but insulting to their tastes.

Don't be afraid of asking questions,

Also don't think you have to like every wine offered. Like i said in the "do it yourself wine-tasting course", taste is subjective.

Ok, so on to the next winery. This was Claiborne & Churchill Theirs is the tasting room is made of bales of hay covered in stucco. It was so crowded, i considered suggesting that we try another place...6 pours for $5, you could see why...but soon enough we got our first pours. This winery specializes in dry gewürtztraminers and dry rieslings. We also tried a couple of their reds, which were very nice, but we finished with a port that was just superb. We purchased a bottle each of the gewürtztraminer and the port.

Another nice thing about doing a tasting is that they refund your tasting fee if you purchase a bottle. This might not be valid everywhere, but it did apply at both places we went. That's something you can take into account:
      pay for the tasting: $5
      got to a tasting, $5; buy a bottle, get $5 off.
so if there's something you like, when you look at the price, take $5 off per bottle, per person in your group. (In other words, if you are two people, and you buy two bottles, take $10 off the total.)

Each of these places had a cute little outdoor seating area where you could wait out your buzz if you didn't go with a group.

I'll write about dinner later... where there was even more wine!!!



Last thing I ate or drank: the above Crème Brûlée and the 6 grapes port.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink in Los Angeles

Whoops! I left a blog in the draft!

I reviewed "Educating Peter" by Lettie Teague but I left it in the drafts section of my blog. So please click & check it out!

Last thing I ate or drank: thai iced tea with rice milk... which, by the way, curdles! It tastes better with sweetened condensed milk, so although rice milk and splenda are a perversion, it's satisfying the craving.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink in Los Angeles

Book Review: "Educating Peter" by Lettie Teague

The full title of this book is Educating Peter: How I Taught a Famous Movie Critic the Difference Between Cabernet and Merlot or How Anybody Can Become an (Almost) Instant Wine Expert

I will cheat, just a teensy bit, by posting an excerpt from the amazon page:

Lettie Teague knows wine. She has been the wine editor at Food & Wine magazine for almost a decade. After many years of fielding these questions, Lettie was determined to debunk the myth that learning about wine is hard. She decided to find just one wine idiot and teach him a few fundamentals -- how to order off a restaurant wine list without fear, approach a wine merchant with confidence, and perhaps even score a few points off a wine snob.

If you're so inclined, you can also listen to the Splendid Table interview, which you can find here OK, now that you know the gist, I will offer my opinion, which is why Ms. Teague's people graciously sent me this book: to review it and post it on this blog.

I loved this book. I read it through voraciously, sometimes up to two hours at a sitting while I waited for the rest of the world (well, my world) to wake up. Big pot of hazelnut coffee, spa-type waffle robe, flip-flops, and this book, outside on my back patio. I felt as though I should have been taking notes. As I read it again, I plan to have a pen and paper handy. (and dammit, I have a no-renew-because-there's-a-waiting-list book checked out from the library.)

The book is fun, although as a read a passage out loud to my friend, he said, "it sounds like someone ran it through a thesaurus and replaced all the normal words with longer words, so it sounds more impressive," which is kind of accurate, (I don't think the average reader should have to pull out a dictionary (or dictionary.com) to comprehend a book like this, but beyond that i thought it was a fun read.

Anyway, yeah, it's a keeper, and very well worth the price of admission, if you consider that you'll have learned several tricks to avoid bad wine that you'd otherwise pour down the sink. And it's also good to have a few good wine-drinking terms up your sleeve for tossing around at dinner!

My only comment would be that I'd have liked to see her talk about how to actually drink wine before the very last chapter. It sounds as though she let that poor Peter go around like a dolt until he got to the restaurants.