Between the 14th and the 24th of October, there has not been much email activity from Blast, nor many sales. Which is not great. But for two weeks of holiday in California, well, sacrifices need to be made.
This was not a wine trip, we were in the middle of harvest season and would have felt guilty about imposing ourselves on smaller wineries, so we made do with some nice dinners and bottles.
For our second night, just outside Malibu, we ate at a small local restaurant. The food was excellent, the wine list decent but nothing special. I couldn’t help but notice our companions down the aisle from us, working their way through some 1970 Palmer and older American wines. We chatted for a bit and towards the end of the evening, they sent over a half bottle of 1991 Opus One. I do think Opus One is a stupendously boring bottle of wine but I thought it might be polite to keep that observation to myself.
A more exciting find by half, and a wine recommended by Californian trend-spotter Mike Sager, was a 2013 Peter Martin Ray Chardonnay from Ceritas, a producer new to me. From a 30 year old plot high in the Santa-Cruz mountains. I asked the sommelier at Marchand in Santa Barbera, what he thought, and he raved about it. On the nose, it was quite reticent, like a Grand Cru Chablis rather than either the more oak-driven style of the Cote d’Or, or the more tropical accented style of a Californian classic like Kongsgaard. On the palate, it delivered such zen-like precision and balance, that it achieved that feat only a few wines do. Power from simplicity and definition, rather than body. A task completed by say, Freddy Mugnier in Chambolle. It was superb.
Our next stop was at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, a place that I’m not going to write a big intro for, given its place in the history of Californian and global restaurant culture is so assured. What I would say though is that I was worried that a) it would be a let-down given how much competition there now is for this style of ‘farm fresh’ cooking. b) They wouldn’t have much on their prix-fix menu (which is all that’s available) for a vegetarian.
On both counts, I shouldn’t have been. The food was sublime, the service and ambience relaxed and for my partner, they’d printed out a separate menu, and a vegetarian meal that was just mind-blowingly good. In addition to how good the food was, the wine list for a place of this reputation was incredibly fairly priced and a superb blend of Kermit-Lynch sourced European classics with some of the best emerging US bottles. We tried a bottle of 2013 Arnot-Roberts Watson Ranch Chardonnay that was not in a dissimilar style to the Ceritas but slightly more open and terrific value at about $80.
A lot of people think they have ‘a book in them’. Others think of opening their own restaurant, usually because they can cook up a storm when friends come round for dinner. Me, I’m under no illusions of doing either, I picture myself sweating in the kitchen, botching plates as the orders pile up. So, to see an operation as effortlessly slick and relaxed as Chez Panisse was incredible. They’re not trying to push boundaries, they just cook with the confidence that their offering will be timeless in its appeal.