Category: Experiences

There’s something wonderful about tasting wine in sight of the vineyards where the grapes were grown.  But it can also be a lot of fun to visit tasting rooms in a city or town, near the countryside.  No city that we have ever visited has more opportunities for urban wine tasting than Santa Barbara.  The official count is 25 tasting rooms, primarily in three districts.

Power Tasting has reviewed several wineries’ tasting rooms in Santa Barbara in the past.  The fact is that what we wrote previously has in some instances become inaccurate.  There are new wineries represented, existing ones have disappeared and others have relocated, creating new wine tasting experiences. 

The courtyard of El Paseo, with the Grassini Family Vineyards tasting room under the flags.  There are four other tasting rooms scattered around the courtyard.

To the best of our knowledge, there are no vineyards within the city limits of Santa Barbara.  But there are many of them in Santa Barbara County, with a good cross-section represented in town.  Moreover, there are other winemaking regions within the southern end of California’s Central Coast, including Santa Ynez and Santa Maria Counties, available for tasting in Santa Barbara.  (There are a lot of saints in California.)  Wines from all those regions can be tasted in the city’s tasting rooms.

We used to associate Santa Barbara with Burgundy-style wines, i.e., Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  While this is still true, the broad Southern California region has many microclimates and terroirs that support Bordeaux and Rhône-style grapes as well.  This makes a wine tasting visit to Santa Barbara a more varied experience than in the past.

There are three districts within the city where the tasting rooms are concentrated and each presents its own personality.  Uptown, where the better stores line State Street, there are ten of them.  The Sanford Winery has moved out and now offers tastings at their vineyards.  It has been replaced by a husband-and-wife team of Barbieri and Kempe, each with their own tasting lists in the former Sanford facility, located in a classy shopping mall.  There are five tasting rooms in a passage called El Paseo, the best-known of which is Au Bon Climat, where you can get your Pinot Noir/Chardonnay kicks.  Finally, Kunin Wines, which used to be in the Funk Zone is now on the outskirts of the uptown tasting area.

Easy tasting at Paradise Springs Winery, in the Funk Zone.

In the so-called Funk Zone, the ten tasting rooms are not as classy (with some notable exceptions, like Margerum, which is reviewed in this issue).  That is not to say that the wines available to taste are inferior; we were quite impressed with some of them.  If you do go there, try to do so between Monday and Thursday, if your intent is some serious wine tasting.  On the other hand, if you want to party hard, the weekend is for you.

Finally, on Santa Barbara’s east side, an area of light industry, there are five tasting rooms.  They’re rather spread out, so going by car from one to the other is called for.  To our surprise, there was some quite creditable wine being pressed and aged there, for instance at Jaffurs Wine Cellars.  Wine tasting in this sector is a different experience than we have ever had elsewhere.  Wine is wine; you just need to be prepared for the factory atmosphere you’ll find there.  We weren’t, but will be the next time.

This little wine tasting adventure occurred many years ago, but still seems like a fresh memory.  We were travelling with some other people in Tuscany and had found an 18^th century palace that was available to rent.  There were only three of us, taking two rooms and we had the palazzo to ourselves.  It came with some lovely gardens and meals outdoors under a canopy.

There came a day on the trip when everyone had had enough of taking in the sights.  A lazy afternoon in the garden, with the sound of buzzing bees under the shade trees sounded just the perfect.  So after lunch, two of us indulged in a siesta.  But the other soon grew antsy and wanted to do something.  A little wine tasting at a vineyard we had passed the day before sounded very inviting.

San Gimignano in the distance, with vineyards all around it.  Photo courtesy of Artsy Traveler.

We had driven to nearby San Gimignano, the towered village between Florence and Siena.  We had passed a sign for a Bolla vineyard and made a mental note to return.  [This all happened long enough ago that San Gimignano was still a worthwhile tourist destination.  It hadn’t been discovered yet.  Today it is a medieval village that is overrun with tourists arriving by the busload and is better passed by than visited.] 

So the fellow who wasn’t interested in a nap took the car keys and set out to see if he could find that sign again. He did, but on arrival saw that the place was not a winery but rather for a family owned vineyard that the well-known Bolla corporation had hired to make a specific wine.  He drove in and found endless fields of grapes and in the middle of them all, a farmhouse.  There was no one to be seen in the vineyards or outside the house, so he wandered about a while, noticing that the vines were bearing fruit, all of which was white grapes. 

Wanting a taste of the wine that he knew must be made there, he figured his only chance was to knock on the farmhouse door.  It was opened by a woman who seemed rather confused as to why a stranger had appeared at her doorstep.  As she spoke no English and our friend little to no Italian, an explanation was not readily forthcoming.  But he had learned the work degustazione, roughly translatable as “tasting”.  Still seeming puzzled the woman, using a few Italian words and more hand signs, asked, “You want some wine?”  The fellow said, “Si, si”, so the woman led him into the kitchen.  There he found a few vineyard workers sitting at a table just finishing up lunch, looking at him rather quizzically.

She opened her refrigerator and took out an opened bottle of the Bolla wine made from their grapes, from a previous vintage.  Realizing he had intruded, the visitor drank up and figured he had to buy a bottle.  She reopened the fridge, took out an unopened bottle and handed it to him.  He took 10,000 lire (this was before the Euro) from his wallet, gave it to the woman and beat a hasty, somewhat embarrassed retreat.

Imagine how you would feel if some total stranger came to your door and haltingly requested a glass of wine.  You too might give it to him, just because you were so shocked that anyone would be so gauche and impertinent to even ask for it.

There is a sad, empty feeling that we get when a favorite bar, restaurant or shop changes hands and the new ownership changes it into something else.  Our favorite local tavern was once the best place for an honest burger and a beer; now it tries to attract a hipper crowd.  There’s a line of twenty-somethings waiting to get in to order designer beers and avocado toast.  And an old-fashioned family grocery store that featured locally made products was bought by a French couple that made it an outlet for French imports.  It went out of business.  Ah, well.

The same thing happens to wineries and in-town tasting rooms.  In a previous issue, we wrote about “lost wineries” that simply closed to visitors or were sold out.  There are a number of others in Sonoma County that we remember fondly.

Francis Ford Coppola Winery.  Photo courtesy of Tripsavvy.

Chateau Souverain has had a Sonoma County presence for more than 80 years.  We weren’t around for its early days, when the legendary Mike Grgich (sadly, recently deceased) was given his first American job.  But we did visit their second home in Alexander Valley.  It was quiet, a bit out of the way and rustic in appearance.  In 2006, the location was bought by Francis Ford Coppola who turned it into a swimming pool with wine (and Coppola tributes).  Yes, Chateau Souverain can still be bought.  They in turn took over an existing winery and are now not open for visitors there.

There is a tasting room on the northeast corner of the Healdsburg Town Square that is today the tasting room of Ernest Vineyards.  It was previously the place to taste DeLoach wines, principally their Pinot Noirs as we remember it, when they were acquired by the Boisset family from France.  It was more convenient to taste there than in the western part of the Russian River valley, where they still operate.  Before that, the space was occupied by Gallo Sonoma, when the well-known mass producer made a foray into fine wines. There may have been some intermediary tenants there, but these are the ones we can recall.

Chateau St. Jean

It’s not all sad stories of demise.  Sometimes new owners inject money to improve a vineyard’s wines without changing their overall style nor the experience of visiting.  For example, Chateau St. Jean was long a favorite of ours in Sonoma Valley.  Treasury Wine Cellars took it over and then in 2021 it was sold to Foley Family Wines.  As far as we can tell, the quality of the wines has remained consistent.  More important for Power Tasting, which is about the experience of wine tasting, the architecture, gardens, palm trees and statuary have all been preserved.

Elsewhere in this issue you can read about the former Pezzi King vineyards that have been replaced by Passalacqua Winery.  In the old days, if you wanted to try a heavy, highly alcoholic Zinfandel, Pezzi King was the place for you. Thankfully, the wines are very different now. 

The Wall Street Journal has long had a feature they call “Open That Bottle Night”.  The premise is that many people have a few bottles that they’re saving for a special occasion.  But the occasion never seems to come and so the wines linger until they’re no longer so special.  The Journal advises that we all should open and savor one of those bottles at least once a year.

Photo courtesy of Marketview Liquor.

We do in fact have a certain number of bottles that get extra care and, yes, we do open them on some special occasions – birthdays, anniversaries – and some not so special, like that first barbecued steak of the season.  But then there are some reasons for wines that are important for someone else.  These might include welcoming a new addition to the family, reciprocating a friend’s wine generosity or celebrating some relatives’ fiftieth wedding anniversary.

We have confronted that situation over the years and have taken a few different approaches.

The easiest is simply to look through our collection and choose one of those wines to share with others.  That works well if we’ll be drinking it at our house, where we can control the handling of the wine from cellar to table.  But if we’re going to someone else’s place, all the care that has been given to a bottle over the years is likely to be for naught.  The sediment will be shaken, the temperature will be unpredictable and so the wine really shouldn’t be drunk that night.

So off to the wine shop we go.  But what to look for?  First, we really need to understand the tastes of the intended recipient, the nature of the occasion and possibly the menu.  There’s no sense bringing a California power hitter if the people we’ll share the wine with favor delicate Burgundies.  The intent is not to say, “Here’s something we like” but rather to show that we have an appreciation for what they like.

Another approach is to avoid table wines altogether.  How about a Champagne, say, or a Port?  The problem with giving Champagne these days is that there seems to be no middle ground.  Any given Champagne maison will have a base-level bottle that’s not quite special enough and a top-end premium bottling that may be beyond a reasonable price range.  For example, the wine shop we usually patronize has Pommery’s Brut Royale for $55 and their Cuvée Louise at $220.  Just how special is that special occasion?

Port has some of the same problems as a red table wine.  First, vintage Port that’s ready to drink (20 years old or more) can be very pricey.  And even more than aged red wines, Port throws a lot of sediment, making it difficult to consume at the time it is offered.  Sauternes might be a good alternative, but these dessert wines don’t have the same cachet as Port does.

In the end, the wine version of the Golden Rule (“Give what you would like to receive”) applies, combined with some serious consideration for what we know of the recipient’s tastes.  The secret is to say, “We hope you enjoy this wine.  You don’t have to serve it tonight.”  If that means we don’t get to share it with them, there will be other occasions and other wines.

Over the course of years, we have been members of at least 20 wine clubs (not all at the same time).  These clubs are effectively an agreement for the members to buy a case of wine each year from each sponsoring winery.  In return for that commitment, you get a discount, normally 20%, and free tastings when you are at the winery.  In addition, in many clubs there are events that members may attend, almost all of which entail plentiful servings of their wines.  If you like the wines a particular winery makes, joining the club makes good sense.

Loading the truck.  Photo courtesy of August Hill Winery.

However, when you join you quickly learn that there are matters that require management on your part, eating up time and detracting from the pleasure of having fine wines delivered to your home.

• You like some of the wines, but not all. Some clubs allow you a degree of specificity, such as only red wines or only certain varietals.  But many have a policy of sending you what they want to send (that you must pay for).  If customization is permitted, that means that when you receive the notification of an upcoming shipment, you need to make decisions about which ones you want and don’t want, replacing them with other wines and communicating these choices to the club’s designated contact (often nowadays the “ambassador”.  Thus are wine snobs made).
• You won’t be home for a delivery. If you know at the time of ordering that you will be traveling, you can notify the club contact.  Most are accommodating to your schedule.  When you get a notice that a shipment is on the way, you usually get the tracking number from the shipping company so you can track your order.  But then you (or someone) must arrange to be at home to receive the wines, which usually means the whole day.
• You want to speak with someone at the club. Some wine clubs, alas not the majority, are eager to engage in person with their members.  They’re available by phone, they reply to emails and know more about wine than order numbers and ship dates.  In all too many instances, so we’ve found, the contacts disappear between shipments.  It’s just frustrating and this type of difficulty has sometimes been the reason we’ve quit certain clubs.
• You’ve become tired of their wines. With a few exceptions, we resign from our clubs after two or three years.  No matter how much you liked the wines at the beginning of your membership, you may not like what they send you at the rate of a case a year.  Especially if you’ve been buying age-worthy wines, they begin to accumulate in your cellar.  The expense of club membership may deter you from drinking other wines you know and like.  Yes, you can quit, but that means remembering to put it in writing and checking that your resignation didn’t get lost somewhere in the winery’s back office.

All this may make it sound like wine clubs aren’t worth the effort.  With membership in five or six at a time, we are definitely advocates of joining clubs at wineries you love.  Just remember that there’s work on your end, too.

Power Tasting has written before about the perils of wine snobbery.  It’s an affront to politeness and often to the people in front of whom the snob is showing off.  But conversing about wines with friends and acquaintances who are knowledgeable about wine is a pleasure that should not be avoided either.  In fact, with a certain circle of our friends, we know that every get-together is going to include discussions about wine.

Photo courtesy of Skurnick Wines & Spirits.

No one is trying to one-up the other.  Still, we can drop phrases like “a high degree of malo*” into conversation and know that we will be understood.  It is fascinating to sit around a dinner table and hear others expressing their opinions about aromas and tastes, some of which each person agrees with and others that lead to statements like, “Are you sure we’re drinking the same wine?”  We trust our own senses and have faith in those of our friends, so such a discussion is informative, not confrontational.

There are particular lessons to be learned when one person is particularly familiar with a specific wine or wines from lesser known grapes or regions.  We, for instance, can speak knowledgeably about Quebecois dessert wines, since we spend a fair amount of time in the Quebec  province.  And if someone else can compare them with, say, ice wines from Ontario or Germany, so much the better.

A few problems can arise when the conversation drifts towards wines.  If everyone in the room has a roughly equivalent degree of knowledge, that’s okay.  But it does risk slipping into rather boring discussions after a while.  This is even more the case if not everyone is at the same level or, even worse, some don’t really care about wine at all.  By comparison, imagine being in a room full of Yankee fans and not only you don’t root for the Bombers, but you don’t know left field from first base.  The line between knowledge and snobbery is a fine one and might differ depending on the observer.

The way to make a wine conversation more amenable for everyone is to avoid specialist terminology and talk about one’s own impressions.  Many people are in the dark when someone says that a wine evokes, say, warm buttered toast.  But when those same people are offered two wines from the same grape and asked to dig down a bit to differentiate them, their taste buds go to work.

If, for example, they are offered a California Chardonnay and a Chablis, they may be astonished to find out that they’re made from the same grape.  When asked what makes one smell and taste different from the other, they may bring up words like butter, apples and oak.  This puts everyone on the same plane.  We’ve known beginners who have tasted something subtle that the experienced wine people, attuned to what is supposed to be in a type of wine, have overlooked.

* It means that the wine has undergone a lengthy second malolactic fermentation, which turns rather austere malic acid to buttery lactic acid.

Enotecas are a distinctly Italian combination of wine bar, wine store and snack bar.  Like wine bars around the world, they’re places to relax, sip some wine, people watch and engage in a little conversation (much easier to talk with others, of course, if you speak Italian).

Some Italian enotecas are raffish and frequented primarily by locals.  Others are in areas where they are sure to have tourists dropping by as well.  Nibbi belongs in the latter category.  It’s located just off the famed Via Veneto, the hillside roadway in Rome that has long been a byword for moneyed elegance.  The area near Nibbi contains posh hotels, excellent restaurants and the American Embassy.  So while the hoi polloi might find their way to Nibbi, you’re more likely to find a more refined crowd.

It’s not that you need to be rich to go there.  There are about 20 wines to choose from, including reds and whites from around Italy, plus rosés and bubblies.  Beer and aperitifs are also served.  The pours are generous and the prices are amazingly inexpensive.  Glasses of most of their wines run between six and nine euros.  We’ve seen prices two to three times that cost back home.

The wines available by the glass are also available by the bottle, to be consumed on-site or taken home.  The wines by the glass may not always be the greatest exemplars of their vintages, but they’re not plonk either.  You can have a great tour of Italian vineyards without leaving your seat.

The food menu runs to potato chips, olives, salads, sandwiches and platters of slices salumi and cheeses.  All seemed very appetizing as they were served to other parties.  We always stopped at Nibbi for a pre-prandial glass or two before proceeding to the local restaurants, so we never tried their food.

The interior of the enoteca is quite nicely appointed, more like the American equivalent of a cocktail lounge than a bar.

But the place to sit is outside, especially in nice weather, which in Rome seems to have at least ten months a year.  There’s always a crowd gathering in front of nearly all enotecas, but Nibbi also offers a glassed “shed” where there always seems something going on.  We’ve seen large parties, with bottles and platters seeming to arrive every ten minutes.  There was a fellow on his PC writing what must have been the Great Italian Novel, made up of equal parts of inspiration, wine and cigarettes.  And there was a woman enjoying a glass of wine by herself without getting hassled (try that in New York!).

The complete name of this enoteca is Bar Enoteca Nibbi dal 1936, meaning that actual fascists and their followers must have drunk there back in the early days.  As with almost everywhere in contemporary Europe, it’s hard – at least for visitors – to conceptualize the destruction and despair of war in these lovely sites.  So, we recommend, don’t do more than give momentary thought to the past, drink up and live for today and tomorrow.  Nibbi certainly provides a pleasant venue for such enjoyment.

We were only in Croatia for a few days, as part of a longer trip.  We did not have the time nor the means of transportation to visit wineries, which we would certainly have done if the purpose of our visit was wine tasting.  As it was, we were simply tourists in Dubrovnik, but we did want to take advantage of being there to learn as much as we could about Croatian wines.

Normally, we wouldn’t write about wine tasting in a region without actually seeing the vineyards and speaking with the people who make the wine.  But as there is hardly any wine exported from Croatia, we thought it would be a good idea to share what we learned with Power Tasting readers.

Croatian wine regions.  Map courtesy of Vineyards.com.

A few notable facts:

• Wine has been produced in Croatia for thousands of years, going back to the time when the eastern Adriatic coast was settled by ancient Greek settlers. The mountainous geography and the Mediterranean climate has long made Croatia an ideal place to grow grapes.
• Wine is made all over the country, from the Dalmatian coast in the south, Istria in the west, to the eastern highlands and the region along the Danube.
• The Croatians make wine from grapes we’ve never heard of. And they taste unlike any wines we’ve ever sipped.

The dominant red wine grape is Plavac Mali, pronounced “Plavass Molly”.  It produces a dark, intense wine, which we would categorize with Merlot.  It can be a little rough around the edges, but that may have more to do with the limited production facilities in Croatia.  There are no large producers, just small vineyards making wine for their neighbors and fellow countrymen.  So what we call “rough” they might term “honest”.  And to be fair, we did taste a number of Plavac Mali that went down smoothly.

We tasted two white wines from a variety of producers.  They were called almost the same thing, but what a difference a single letter can make.  Malvazia, with a z, (also sometimes spelled Malvazija) comes from Istria, the Croatian province not very far from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of Italy, which is best known for Soave.  But the Istrian wine is much fruitier, with hints of honey and honeysuckle.  From what we saw of restaurants and wine bars in Dubrovnik, it’s the most popular white wine there.

In the south, quite near to Dubrovnik, they grow Malvasia, with an s.  This is the same grape used to make Malmsey Madeira, a luscious dessert wine.  But the Croatian version is quite different.  These white wines are austere (in the same vein as Chablis), acidic and distinctively perfumed.  They go well with shellfish, much like a Sancerre, but are not especially good wines for sipping on a pleasant sunny afternoon along the beachfront.

 

Sadly, with rare exception, you won’t find Croatian wines in the United States, which is a shame.  There are a few stores in New York that carry a few bottles, but that’s about it.  The production at individual vineyards is too small to attract many American importers and the wines are too unknown to make a large place on wine store shelves.  These are wines worth getting to know and we recommend that travelers to Croatia make time for them.

 

This is a continuation of Power Tasting’s irregular series on great wine bars of the world. Previous issues have taken readers to locations in Paris, London, Copenhagen and Lisbon…and now, Rome.

If you google “Best wine bars in Rome” you’ll get various lists made by people with different tastes and experiences.  In almost all cases, you’ll find Angolo DiVino there, often at the top.  It’s a Roman attraction, albeit a bit difficult to find.  Nonetheless, Italians do find their way there and these days you’ll hear other languages spoken, not least American-accented English.

It’s located on a very narrow street called the Via dei Balestrari.  Cab drivers have never heard of the street; GPS gets lost; and in typical Roman fashion, everyone you meet on the street will give you directions, whether they know where it is or not.  The key is that it is only a block off of one of the corners of the Campo di Fiori, which every cabbie can definitely find.  Ah, but which corner?  There’s a restaurant at one end, called Carbonara.  That’s the wrong end.  But if you turn your back to the restaurant, go to the corner of the Campo to your right and walk one block, you’ll be there.

And once you get a table, you’ll be glad you did.  L’Angolo DiVino is quite small and you may have to wait a while for a table.  Of course, you can order a glass and stand outside sipping while you wait.  Once seated, you’ll be handed the wine list of the size of a short novel.  There must be a hundred wines to choose among.  However, most of them are sold by the bottle and it seems that most patrons, especially groups larger than two people, order bottles.  Buying by the bottle gives you a greater selection to choose from but less chance to experiment with the little-known wines on the by-the-glass list.

There is also food to be had from a rather short menu of bruschettas, salads, cold cuts, olives and cheeses.  It’s possible to make a meal from these dishes, but it seems that most patrons order their antipasto at l’Angolo DiVino before moving on.  We must say that the prosciuttos, salamis and cheeses complement the wines quite well.

You can get an education in Italian wine at l’Angolo DiVino, if you have the time and stamina to work your way through their list.  But you can also get an education in the easygoing way of Roman life.  This enoteca is no different from the hundreds of others scattered around Rome, with a better quality of wine and a less rambunctious clientele.  Voices are not raised at l’Angolo DiVino.  Families get together there.  Couples sit, sip and talk.  And the servers really do know what they are talking about when it comes to the wines on offer.

As said elsewhere in this issue, enotecas are beloved gathering spots in Rome.  Many are neighborhood hangouts.  L’Angolo DiVino is a destination.

And oh, about the name.  Angolo means corner, and indeed this wine bar occupies a corner.  The rest is a play on words, so it’s either the Corner of Wine or the Divine Corner.

We like wine; we know a bit about it; and of course we publish Power Tasting.  We’ve had some friends and acquaintances who are aware of our oenological tendencies tell us that they/their neighbor/their father-in-law makes wine at home.  And they always tell us it’s as good as the best from Napa/France/Italy.  There’s no way to put them off by saying, “I’m sure it’s quite good”.  They insist on giving us a bottle to hear our opinion.

Photo courtesy of the San Diego Amateur Winemaking Society.

We suspect they never tasted Petrus and certainly not their home-made wine next to a glass of it.  So we sip what they give us, hoping that it isn’t vinegar, swirl it in our mouths a while and then, trying hard to look earnest, tell them that while theirs is interesting, we prefer to stick with the wines we know.  Notice the absence of any actual opinion.

This experience comes to mind in our wine tasting travels because quite a few wineries offer the experience of making your own wine.  We are aware of several that have similar programs, including Conn Creek and the Wine Foundry in Napa and several places in Texas called Water2Wine. We have tried our hands at blending at Joseph Phelps in Napa Valley, trying to replicate Insignia, their flagship wine. We have concluded that a) we are not very capable winemakers and b) professional winemakers do an awfully good job.

Neither of those points should have come as surprises.  We have no training, no experience and, though we hate to admit it, probably no aptitude for winemaking.  We don’t expect rank amateurs to do our jobs, so why should we be expected to become skilled professionals just because a fine winery has given us some fermented juice to play with.

We have been fortunate enough to spend some time with several real winemakers from wineries we admire and we have great respect for them.  It’s not just that they have skill at blending varietals.  For one thing, they have well-cultivated tastes for wine.  Sure, we do too, but we only taste the finished products.  They can sip a little of this, a bit more of that and figure out what combination will be consistent with the production of years past and will taste good years in the future.

We’re happy to leave our expertise at opening bottles, pouring wine into glasses and having enough insight into wine to distinguish well-made ones from plonk.  At best, we know the difference between good wine and really good wine.  Which brings us back to the wines made at home.  There are home cooks who can make a great, restaurant-quality meal but not hundreds of meals of exactly the same quality every night for years.  The same applies to amateur winemakers.  We’re certain that they enjoy what they’ve made, if only because they get to drink the results of their own handiwork.  We’ll go further and recognize that if they like their own wine, that’s their own business.  But they cannot make great wine, just wine they like.

Having had the chance to make our own wine, we’ve decided to let the professionals do their thing and we’ll do ours: drink it and enjoy it.