Somm's Table

Labor Day might have just passed us by, but if you live in the Bay Area you know we still have another couple of months of sunny weather ahead of us. (If you live in SF, your summer only just started.) What better way is there to spend a beautiful day than to leisurely dine on a patio with good food and wine?

Frankly, I’m often a little surprised that we don’t have more restaurants and bars around here with outside seating to take advantage of weather which is so ideal nearly year round. Living in an apartment, we don’t have our patio or deck, so we must borrow one when we can, but there just aren't all that many. Greg and I recently had the chance to do just that for a wonderful afternoon of patio dining in an area you may not have considered for a day trip. . . Livermore.

With Napa and Sonoma looming large to the north, it’s sometimes easy to forget all of the other wonderful wine regions and incredible winemaking history we have in California. I recently started working in a PR capacity with Wente Vineyards (full disclosure), and it has been a great chance to delve into some of that history. Founded in 1883, Wente is the country's longest, continuously operated family-owned winery, and are now in their 5th generation. They have a gorgeous property in Livermore that includes tasting rooms, a golf course, and dining options.

They recently did a major revamp of one their restaurant spaces that has now reopened as the Vineyard Table & Tasting Lounge. We were invited to check out a preview of the new space at the end of June.

(Please note that while I am doing some work with the company, I attended with my blogger hat on. The meal was comped as a member of the media, but no other compensation has been received for this post.)

Before we get to the dining experience though, let’s geek out a little bit and delve deeper into some of that wine history I mentioned. Nowadays it’s hard to believe that there was a time when Chardonnay wasn’t everywhere in California. That time was actually not all that long ago since Chardonnay really didn’t become “a thing” here until the 1970’s and 80’s. What’s even more interesting is that the majority of Chardonnay in the state can trace its origins to one place. That place isn’t Napa or Sonoma; it’s actually the Wente Vineyard in Livermore Valley.

A Brief History of Wente Chardonnay

In 1882, a vintner named Charles Wetmore founded Cresta Blanca Winery in the Livermore Valley. Charles had also recently become the first President and Chief Viticultural Officer of California’s State Viticultural Commission, which he’d been instrumental in creating. California really wanted to up the quality of its wine game, so in his newly minted capacity, Charles headed off to Europe to acquire and bring back cuttings for California’s fledgling wine industry. Amongst the cuttings he brought back was some Chardonnay sourced from excellent vineyards in France. Upon his return, he made the selection available to other vintners in Northern California.

A Cresta Blanca Barrel, now on the Wente Property.

C. H. Wente started his vineyard in Livermore Valley in 1883, not long after Charls Whetmore started his winery and brought back his cuttings. Of course, some Chardonnay made its way to this new vineyard down the road. His sons Herman and Ernest came on board to work in the family business as well.

Ernest was the farmer in the duo and he really saw the potential for Chardonnay in California. He decided to plant more and brought in new cuttings from a vineyard not far away in Pleasanton, as well as additional cuttings from France in 1912. Prohibition put a wrench in things for a while, but nonetheless, the two brothers were ready to go when it was repealed in 1933. They released the first varietally labeled Chardonnay in the U.S. three years later.

Ernest kept selecting the plant material with the most attractive aromatics and flavors over generations of vines. Eventually, the Wentes developed a reputation for their amazing Chardonnay, which by now could be classified as its own clone. Winegrowers around the state started coming to them for cuttings. (To oversimplify a bit, there have been a few waves of this, so there are really a few Wente clones, rather than one.) On top of this, new vintners also got cuttings from the wineries that originally took cuttings from the Wente Vineyard, essentially starting new branches of the Wente clone family. All in all, nowadays, somewhere between 70-80% of California Chardonnay can now trace its ancestry back to Wente Vineyards.

Vineyard Table & Tasting Lounge

When you visit the winery and its tasting areas, this history is all around you. The Wente family actually bought the Cresta Blanca Vineyards property in 1981, so the origins of California Chardonnay are literally all right there.

This tree marks the location of the Cresta Blanca winery.

That said, the new concept for the restaurant really aims to modernize the tasting experience by creating a relaxed, comfortable, yet upscale vibe. The space is divided into different areas so that you can kind of choose your own adventure depending on what you’re in the mood for – full meal or smaller bites and sips.

If you'd rather have small bites while you have your sips of wine, head to the Tasting Lounge.

We sat outside in the beautiful patio area so that we could enjoy the sunny day. It was hot out, but even so, we were all good under the shade of the umbrellas. (Greg is pretty fussy about the heat, so it’s saying a lot that he was comfortable.)

A lot of the menu is intended for sharing. It's also seasonal, and it is still evolving, so some of the dishes here may not be available. However, everything we had was flavorful and well executed. Since it was hot out, we tended towards seafood and veggies. . . plus, some fries.

Shrimp a la Plancha with green goddess, chili sauce, and cherry tomatoes. All the flavors came together really well in the dish. A Sauvignon Blanc (see descriptions below) added citrus notes, while Eric's Chardonnay played up the minerality of the seafood.

Roasted Cauliflower with chimichurri, sauce Basques, and lemon Aioli. This dish had strong, fun flavors. The cauliflower was nicely charred which added pleasant smoky notes. We particularly liked the Sauvignon Blanc with this dish.

It's hard to resist getting French fries in the mix.

Roasted Steelhead Trout with corn succotach, elote, grano padano, and basil Aioli. Perhaps they were a little heavy-handed with the sauce, however, the fish was cooked perfectly. The skin was really crispy on the outside, while the inside was absolutely spot on with a nice ribbon of rare pink at the center. All three wines below worked with this dish.

Taking recommendations from our server, we chose crisp wines to fit the hot the day and the style of the food. Here’s what we had:

2018 Winemaker’s Selection 4+5 Sauvignon Blanc (a wine club exclusive). It was clean and fresh, with green apple notes light herbs and hints of stone.

2018 Eric’s Unoaked Chardonnay. Given the context, we had to have at least one Chardonnay, and our server recommended this one out of the line-up Chards as his favorite. (It actually seemed to be a staff favorite, since we heard a couple of other waiters say the same.) He also thought that it would be particularly food friendly and versatile thanks to the wine’s lack of oak. (Heavy oak can sometimes make wines harder to pair.) I completely agreed, and our tastes run in a similar direction as well. The wine had a mix of green and gold apples, pears, white flowers, and plenty of minerality on the finish.

2018 Niki’s Pinot Noir Rosé. (Had to have it – it has my name on it. 😉) The wine had a bouquet of floral notes, tart cherries, slightly green strawberries, and light herbs on the finish.

To close the meal we had a peach ice pop which came in a glass with the Wente Brut Sparkling wine. Essentially, it was a fun twist on a Bellini and absolutely the perfect way to end a meal on a hot day while chilling on the patio.

Altogether, this felt a world away from Oakland, even if it was just a short drive away. It was an ideal afternoon getaway.

We celebrated 4th of July weekend this summer with our friends Lucy and Drew at the Culinary Cabin.

We love these weekends. They’re all about cooking up a storm and drinking good wine with our friends for days straight. I have to say, I love the summer trips even more since I love sunshine and we get to intercut the feasting with hikes and occasional boat rides on Lake Tahoe.

(We have a few more Culinary Cabin posts in the works from trips this summer. To own it, this one has been pending for a month now!)

Summer also means that there are more chances to use the grill. Since we live in an apartment, we don’t get to grill at our place. It’s fun to make use of one when it’s available.

One about Tahoe is that shopping options are limited. However, a while ago Drew discovered a wonderful specialty store called Market 28 in Tahoe City. There’s always something fun to be found here, so it’s now almost a tradition to stop in for treasure hunting. This time around we found frozen madako tako, or steamed octopus, along with a few other flavorful treats. We decided to use them to create seared, smoky octopus dish that was traditional of nothing whatsoever.

I had a bottle of Rioja Reserva waiting for us and thought that we could create a tasty pairing for it with the octopus. Tempranillo is Spain’s star grape, and Rioja is arguably its star region. (Located in NW spain, Rioja shares the category of Denominación de Origen Calificada, or DOCa, the top rung of Spain’s quality ladder, only with Priorat.) Red Rioja’s (white and rosé versions exist too) are usually Tempranillo driven, with Garnacha, Graciano and Mazuelo (aka Carignan) as the potential supporting cast. I think Rioja's wines are among the most versatile reds out there.

The tricky thing about Tempranillo is that it can be a little bit of a chameleon grape. It usually has red to dark red fruit flavors of strawberry or cherry, but it can go deeper and darker. You’ll also often find savory tobacco and herbal notes, and earthy notes like clay. The structural elements – acidity, alcohol, body, and tannins – can kind of range all over the place, which can sometimes make this a hard grape to pin down. Tempranillo’s million and one aliases speak to this grape’s multiple personalities. Here’s just a small sampling of the names it goes by: Cencibel, Tinto Fino, Tinto del Pais, Tinto de Toro, Tinto Madrid, Ojo de Liebre, Ull de Llebre, and Aragonez and Tinta Roriz in Portugal.

The other thing to be aware of is oak aging. In Rioja (and elsewhere in Spain) you might see the words Crianza, Reserva, or Gran Reserva on the bottle. In the US and other New World countries, we sometimes stick Reserve ad Grand Reserve on the bottle and it really doesn’t mean anything. They’re marketing terms that might be the winery’s way of telling you this an upper tier, or maybe they just thought it sounded good. That’s not the case in Spain. Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva are regulated terms pertaining to the length of time the wine has been aged in oak.

This infographic from WineFolly.com summarizes the details.

Both oak contact and aging affects the flavors in the wine, and these indications can give you an idea of the types of flavors you might find. Straight up Rioja, with now other indicator, will have little to no oak aging. These will tend to have lighter, brighter fruit flavors. As you move up to Crianza, you can start to expect little hints of spice notes in the wine, which comes from contact with the oak barrels. Reservas tend to have more spice notes, plus notes of tobacco and leather than start to emerge as wine ages. Gran Reservas spend the most time in wood, so you get lots of spice box notes, as well as lots of complex savory leather, tobacco, mushroom, earth, and dried fruit notes that come with time. One more thing to be aware of is that oak has tannins and can add to those already in the wine.

THE WINE & PAIRING

Today’s wine is a the Bodegas LAN Rioja Reserva 2012. The winery has been around since 1972 and the name is made up of initials of three provinces of the DOC Rioja: Logroño (currently part of La Rioja), Álava and Navarra.

Note: This bottle was provided as a sample. No compensation was received and, as always, all opinions are my own.

LAN’s wines are pretty easy to find in many places in the US. They’re sizeable, but they pay careful attention to sustainability. They believe by doing so, they help to develop the immunity of their vines to pests and diseases. They also predominantly work manually in their vineyards as part of their effort to reduce soil erosion and pollution. In addition, they limit their water usage and do not apply any chemical herbicides. Their sustainability practices go much further – you can read about them here.

LAN’s winemaker María Barua has had a big part to play in their sustainability efforts. She got her love of wine from her father, who would always take great care in selecting the wines to be served with their Sunday lunch. She went on to study Chemistry and Enology, and eventually started working at LAN in 2002, where she rose through the ranks. María puts LAN’s founding principal that winemaking starts with viticulture into practice. This is enhanced be research and innovation. María has spearheaded some of LAN’s more special projects, like LAN Xtrème Organic, her and the winery’s commitment to the land and a more sustainable future.

Photo of María Barua courtesy of Bodegas LAN and Gregory + Vine PR

Our subject wine today though is their Rioja Reserva 2012. Like I mentioned, we enjoyed the bottle at the Culinary Cabin over July 4th weekend. Greg, Drew, and I gathered around to taste it and get ideas for our lunch. The wine showed notes on the nose of steeped cherries, tobacco, cigar box, dills and other mixed herbs, hints of coffee.

On the palate, there were sour cherries and other mixed red fruits, light tobacco, mixed herbs, leather, licorice, and spice box – a pretty classic representation o Rioja Reserva. It had medium acidity that was approaching medium plus, medium tannins, and medium+ body. Greg noted that the wine’s structure was very integrated, a fact that only increased with time, as the wine got smoother with air.

As I mentioned, we’d picked up octopus at our favorite local store and we thought it would be a good match with the wine. So you might be thinking, ‘Red wine and seafood?!’ Depending on the region and style, Tempranillo can have moderate tannins (I did say they could run the gamut). When this is the case, and it often is with Rioja, it allows the wines to work with certain seafood dishes. Seafood and tannins don’t like each other very much and tend to clash, creating unpleasant flavor sensations when had together. It’s one of the factors that has led to the rule of thumb that seafood should be paired with white wines.

As is the case with a lot of rules of thumb, however, the reality is more nuanced, and if you know more about the issue you know there are ways around it. Picking red wines that have light to medium tannins will lead you to a higher success rate at having them get along with seafood at the table. Light, delicate fish are also less likely to play as nicely as something a little more meaty. Salmon and Pinot Noir are generally considered to be a classic combo for just these reasons – rule of thumb be damned.

Octopus is also a pretty meaty piece of seafood, and I find it often works well with light to medium red wines. On the flip side, the tannins on this Tempranillo were present, but not terribly aggressive, so it stood a good chance of working well with the octopus. The oak was a similar case, and we thought we could integrate those flavors further by giving a smoky char to the octopus on grill. In addition, Greg, Drew, and I all huddled around the spice drawer tasting and smelling things to come up with a blend we thought would work.

I took our selections and made a seasoning mix that served multiple purposes. It served as a rub for the octopus, seasoning for vegetables to be grilled, and got mixed into an oil to be drizzled on at the table.

Just as we’d hoped, the complex mix of herbs and spices brought out similar notes in the wine, with the char on the octopus speaking to the light toast. It all worked super well together!

OTHER POSSIBILITIES

I think we covered the basic of red wine pairings for this above: keep your selections in the light to medium body camp, with tannins that are light and/or very supple.

I think this dish should be fairly versatile – plenty a white wine and rosé would work here as well!

By a similar token, I think this is a wine that can go well with a lot of different dishes. On their site, LAN recommends, “All kinds of meat, particularly game, lamb, ‘cocido’ and other rich stews.”

THE GEEKY DETAILS

Taken from the tech sheet.

GRAPE VARIETIES: 92% Tempranillo and 8% Mazuelo.
VINEYARDS: Selected vineyards in the Rioja Alta and Rioja Alavesa subzones with an average age of more than 25 years.
WINEMAKING: Fermented in stainless steel tanks, with temperature control to ensure that it doesn't go over 28ºC to avoid losing the aromas from the grape. Three weeks' maceration with frequent pumping-over to ensure a good colour extraction.
AGEING: 18 months in hybrid barrels of French and American oak. Bodegas LAN is a pioneer in the use of hybrid barrels that combine American oak staves - giving vanilla elegance - and French oak bases, which provide touches of spice. LAN Reserva remained a further 20 months in the bottle, to complete its rounding off.

MONEY TALK

The SRP on this wine is $20, and Wine-Searcher.com lists the average price at $16. The wine delivers quite a bit at this price point, making it an Over Achiever.