The Culinary Timeline is a side-project that I've been working on since October. I'm hoping to have most of it complete by the end of January, with any luck. Until then, updates around here will be weekly, rather than twice weekly. Do stay tuned.
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Although dozens of Mexican restaurants (and a handful of catering trucks) keep the city of Napa resplendent in tacos, finding something beyond the obligatory burrito can often be challenging. For the most part, Napa has the staples of Mexican food pretty well covered (with a couple places in particular that certainly put the competition to shame). But as much as I adore the simple elegance of the carne asada taco, it can hardly represent the entire catalog of Mexican food.
Having enjoyed some noteworthy versions of Oaxacan cuisine while cooking in Los Angeles, I was [... read more ...]
I found an interesting book at the Napa Valley Goodwill today: Anthony Dias Blue’s “American Wine,” which was published in 1985. Although the information in the book has become a bit stale (to say the least), for two dollars, it remains an interesting time capsule. The book lists prices, features wine ratings, and tells the history and vital statistics for hundreds of wineries throughout the United States. Here are some interesting tidbits from 1985:
• The 1980 vintage of Kistler Dutton Ranch Chardonnay is given zero stars, and is noted as seriously flawed. The following [... read more ...]
Last week, the quest for decent Cajun cuisine brought me to Angeline’s Louisiana Kitchen in Berkeley. I had first noticed this restaurant while perusing the neighborhood for used records and books (Telegraph Avenue has incredible stores for both). I was interested yet skeptical, wondering if any place in the shadows of Chez Panisse could possibly keep the “California” out of Creole. When it comes to Louisiana cooking, I only want to have the pure, unadulterated product. I wasn’t interested in composed salads made with heirloom lettuces and boutique olive oils — I wanted my lunch breaded and [... read more ...]
Yesterday I attended an event at Viader, which is located along the hillside of Howell Mountain, about 1200 feet off the valley floor. The tasting room is a quaint little space, with a back patio that features a great view of the upper Napa Valley and the Bell Canyon Reservoir. The event featured pass-around hors d’oeuvre, including duck-confit beignets, black-pepper gougeres, Chinese spoons with polenta and mushrooms, and puff pastries with lamb, goat cheese and tomato confit.
The winery had several wines available for tasting, and I naturally sampled them all. Viader offered a vertical [... read more ...]
Once you’ve seen the winemaking operations at one winery, you have pretty much seen them all. These days, certain equipment has now become de rigueur for any modern facility: stainless steel tanks with glycol jackets, bladder presses, crusher-destemmers. If you visit enough wineries, you will see these items over and over again, and you may even begin to recognize specific models of each. After a while, the winemaking facility itself can only provide a passing interest to the seasoned visitor (and the focus should be on the wine, not the winery, anyhow). I did discover an exception [... read more ...]
In “The Great Wines of America,” author Paul Lukacs assembles a melting pot of wine that portrays the current diversity within American viniculture. Lukacs’ book devotes individual chapters to 40 different wines, ranging from nearly-impossible-to-find Napa cult wines, such as Harlan’s Proprietary Red, to nearly-unknown wines from east of the Mississippi, such as Horton Vineyards’ Viognier. As Lukacs explores the American landscape, his book also touches upon various styles of wine, from Dolce’s botrytis-influenced dessert wine to the sparkling wines of Roederer and L. Mawby.
To be sure, a large percentage of the bottlings profiled [... read more ...]
As with the Zinfandel tasting of a couple weeks ago, I participated in a blind tasting of Cabernet Sauvignon today, along with about 10 other wine industry professionals. The wines we tasted were all from the 2005 vintage, with fruit sourced from four different appellations within the Napa Valley. They were all similarly priced, at $45 to $50. The wines in the flight were:
• De Sante Oakville 2005 ($50)
• W.H. Smith Howell Mountain 2005 ($45)
• Cliff Lede Stags Leap District 2005 ($50)
• C. Beck Barlow [... read more ...]
I hosted a Zinfandel tasting last week, in which five Zinfandels were blind tasted by a panel of 15 people in the wine industry. The flight of Zins included the following:
• Kuleto Estate Napa Valley 2006 ($39)
• Nickel & Nickel Bonfire Vineyard Dry Creek Valley 2006 ($48)
• Ridge Ponzo Vineyard Russian River Valley 2006 ($28)
• Unti Dry Creek Valley 2005 ($25)
• Mauritson “Rockpile” Rockpile Ridge Vineyard 2006 ($35)
The resounding winner of the tasting was Nickel & Nickel’s Bonfire 2006, [... read more ...]
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