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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The dining area outside Ehlers Estate.
Slow Food Napa Valley hosted a pig roast and potluck on Sunday, September 11th, in conjunction with Ehlers Estate in St. Helena. The following photos highlight the event, which provided a forum for SFNV members to discuss the future of SFNV, and how they can help to increase interest and awareness of the Slow Food movement. Naturally, the brunch was amazing. Please click on any photo for a full-screen view.
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Pig cracklins, up close.
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CIA instructor Patrick Clark carves the [... read more ...]
Gateway Market, Emeryville: Adorned with a fantastic mural alongside its parking lot, the Gateway Market is tough to miss on San Pablo Blvd. The artwork has a definite graffiti vibe, but the details are fantastic. Luckily, it hasn't been tagged over. The "W" in Gateway is pictured above (each letter has its own theme). Click on the photo to reveal all of the great flourishes.
Most of these pictures have never appeared on this site, although a couple did appear a few years ago, long before I sharpened my photo-editing skills. Many readers have emailed me about my [... read more ...]
These days, when a rising-star chef leaves any given restaurant, it has the potential to become news. Here in the Bay Area, we’ve seen this phenomenon recently with Nate Appleman exiting SPQR and with Jeremy Fox leaving Ubuntu. For the guests who have come to appreciate these restaurants, the departure of an executive chef can introduce many question marks, and quite possibly, a large degree of doubt. It all makes perfect sense, of course, since today’s professional chefs now have true rock-star potential. When David Lee Roth left Van Halen, it was certainly an issue for the band’s early [... read more ...]
I’ve covered so much about food lately that I haven’t been keeping up with my wine tasting notes. The best wines that I’ve tasted recently were some older vintages of Chappellet Cab, but I’ll try to address those in the future. For the sake of staying a little more relevant to the here and the now, I do have a few notes from my recent tasting at Joseph Phelps Vineyards. I’ll cut to the chase and discuss the 2006 Insignia ($200) the winery’s flagship bottling, and a wine that has developed a loyal following over the years. Recent buzz [... read more ...]
The tasting area behind Demetria Estate offers the shade of oak trees and a view of the Santa Ynez Valley.
Before my trip to the Santa Ynez Valley becomes too much of a distant memory, I wanted to recount the wineries that I had visited a couple of weeks ago. But before I delve into the specifics, I have to say that I was surprised by the pricing structure at many of these places. In short, I found that many wineries now command prices very similar to those of Sonoma County, especially in terms of the Pinot Noir. [... read more ...]
The BioDynamic vineyard at Ehlers Estate comprises 43 acres in total. In order to help amend the soil for the upcoming season, rows of vibrant yellow mustard alternate with verdant rows of grasses, fava beans and vetch. With rain subsiding, these same cover crops will assume a monotone shade of golden brown over the next month or so.
In some ways, it’s almost embarrassing to heap lavish praise onto my favorite Napa wineries. I often feel as though I might be coming across as some sort of Napa Valley rah-rah, gushing with unbridled hyperbole, as if I were [... read more ...]
Matt Taylor is not only Araujo's vineyard manager and winemaker, but he's also the estate beekeeper. For some reason, I'd always assumed that bee hives needed to be white by default, but Araujo's hives feature a terrific shade of pistachio. They reminded me of little droids lurking among the olive trees, standing guard over the nearby chicken coop.
With the harvest of 2009 quickly winding down, I’ve made this winter my time to catch up with a few winemakers. Among the folks I most wanted to meet, Matt Taylor certainly topped my list, not only as the winemaker [... read more ...]
Vineyard in repose, Mendocino County.
You can say what you want about Napa. I happen to live there. But for me, Mendocino County is Northern California’s true paradise. I spent the better part of the day in the Anderson Valley today, driving past dozens of miles of vineyards that have all slipped into fall colors. All of Mendocino County looked like the photo above, at least along the winding curves of Highway 128. Outside of wine country, the landscape is dominated by moss, ferns, redwoods and oaks. In the winter, every shade of green is on display.
As the former employee of a BioDynamic winery, I’ve had dozens of opportunities to promote the theories of BioDynamic farming. Unfortunately, the vagaries of BioDynamics are founded upon some very challenging ideas. For this reason, and despite my rhetoric on the subject, I feel that the BioDynamic movement remains largely misunderstood. At worst, BioDynamics is labeled as mere superstition. And while this dismissal is entirely unfair, I will admit that the underlying principles of BioDynamics are indeed strange and esoteric. I will also admit that, honestly, I don’t even understand many of the theories that surround BioDynamics [... read more ...]
I went on a bit of a Cabernet bender today, my first in a while. Typically, I get a pretty decent dose of Cabernet Sauvignon just by working at a Napa Valley winery. Cabernet is the currency here, and the juice is ubiquitous. Since this varietal dominates my nine-to-five schedule, I’m usually motivated to seek out other types of wine on my days off. I go to the Dry Creek Valley on Zinfandel missions, hit up the Russian River for Pinot Noir, or simply head up-valley to Calistoga for Petite Sirahs. But today, Cabernet was the focus, [... read more ...]
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