News from Nowhere

Quite apart from my general disapproval of bank holidays, this has been one of those irritating weeks: we had three fun things to do, but since they all happened at the same time, we could only do one of them. So on Tuesday, I could have gone to the Graphic Novels Reading Group, or we could have accepted a last minute invitation from friends whose wine club was mostly on holiday: would we like to take up some of the spare spaces at their New Zealand wines dinner? But we were long since booked into Helen Savage's Napa Valley Masterclass, so that's what we did. It wasn't a hard choice: we don't see Helen and Olwen often enough, and the evening's wines were supplied by Napa Vintners, so for a reasonable price we tasted wines well above our usual price level, some of them stratospherically so.

I'd like to be able to report that it was an eye-opener, but no. Once, at a Wine Society event I was served maybe a teaspoonful of Château Pétrus, and that was stunning. I thought then, if you had the money that this stuff costs, it wouldn't be a silly way to spend it. I didn't taste anything on Tuesday that I would have paid the price of - and I'm not just talking about the Heitz Martha's Vineyard cabernet sauvignon, which retails at £194. The Grgich Hills zinfandel (my notes say "smoky, smooth, elegant, pleasant") costs a mere £45 - but you will note that 'pleasant' is not a term of praise in my vocabulary. Compare it to the Wine Society's exhibition zinfandel, which is made for them by Frog's Leap and costs £16, next to which I have written a combative "There is nothing wrong with this." Even so I prefer the Ravenswood, not to mention the zins we drank last time we were in California...

It wasn't just me: the consensus of the evening was nice wines, shame about the price. In fact, I found myself making the case for the defence (well, maybe it's more of a plea in mitigation), arguing to our neighbours at table that prices reflect not only how good wine is, but also how rare it is, and how difficult to produce: the Trefethen riesling had been made with great care to retain its freshness and acidity despite the California climate, and if you want a Napa valley riesling you won't have much choice, so you might consider paying £28.80 for this one; and then if you serve it to me one a summer afternoon in the garden, I won't complain. But if you simply want even more clean, fresh riesling acidity, here's one we enjoyed in Trier, and it costs under €8 a bottle (though you might have to go to Germany to find it). I certainly wouldn't pay the high price for the curiosity factor of a California riesling - but I will, at least occasionally, pay the extra for English wine.

One odd thing is that we tasted ten wines (not counting the Frog's Leap) with two bottles of each to go round 30 people; and of these, there were two bottles which were to some extent faulty. As chance would have it, the two bottles served the two halves of the room, and we were lucky enough to be in the half which got the less faulty one. One of those very fancy reds was underperforming: and my notes are sufficiently garbled at this point that I'm not going public on which one (but I will say that if I had opened this bottle at home, I might well have been disappointed, but I wouldn't have known it was faulty, and I certainly wouldn't have sent it back). The other half of the room had a white with a distinct cork taint, and they were all aware there was a problem. So that's educational.

A final treat: a couple we know both from Helen's tastings and through another connection, but don't often see, were there, though as we arrived quite late we didn't see them until we reached the station. But we had pleasant conversation on the homebound train.

There've been several times in the last few days when I almost posted something here: but what would I post about? The fall-out from the election, the post-election campaigning, has been even more depressing than the election itself, and I'm torn between having altogether too much to say about it, and not wanting to talk about it at all. There is a dentistry crisis: everyone's teeth are fine, thanks, but we are growing weary of the administrative ineptitude of our dentist. This is pretty much resolved, but I'm not in the mood to talk about it. We go on holiday the day after tomorrow (tomorrow, now, due to this post being longer than intended!), and that's a good and happy thing, but also a stressful one: so much still to prepare, I should be ironing, cleaning my boots, checking the weather forecast (which is not so good) instead of dilly dallying on LJ...

So here's a post about last summer in California, ( behind a cut, because long, and photos! )

The post should end there, but I can't resist adding that my notes for the following day begin: "Everyone wants to ask about the Scotland independence vote." Next time you hear from me - internet access permitting - I'll be in a Scotland that's just had another interesting vote. What goes around comes around.

Our friend A. takes the New Yorker, and when she comes across something that she thinks might interest us she rips out a handful of pages and sends them, through the post. Because you can still do this. The most recent of these was this article about the Wayback Machine, the archive of the internet. Which is interesting for what it says about archiving, and link rot, and content drift, but also answers a question I had never thought to ask: where is the Wayback Machine? Its physical presence is not in some anonymous server farm on an industrial estate somewhere, but in a neoclassical building ("We bought it because it matched our logo") in San Francisco's Presidio. If we'd known it was there, we could have paid it a visit on the day we were in San Francisco last autumn. desperance, why didn't you tell us? Oh, well, next time. And looking up the location I discovered that the Presidio also has three pieces by Andy Goldsworthy. That, too, next time...

Instead we drove into the city, straight up Highway 1, past the rows of little box houses, all the same size and basic shape, all different pastel shades and every one different in the details - I never get tired of looking at them - and into Golden Gate Park. The Japanese garden was cool and green and full of French people. I asked desperance, how big is the garden? and he told me "It's like your intestines: they occupy a small space, but they go on for miles," This is true. We lunched at the Tea House, and drank different kinds of tea. Japanese pancakes turned out to be drop scones, and the ice cream cabinet was decorated with a cute octopus. The Buddha ignored us benignly:



Back at the car park, there was a flurry of little birds underfoot: about the size of starlings, soft grey all over with iridescent blue-green tails and sharp little beaks.

I wanted to go somewhere where we could be tourists and see the Golden Gate bridge from below (instead of just driving over it), so we went to Baker Beach and walked on the hot sand towards the bridge. Allegedly, Baker Beach permits nude bathing, but there was not a lot of bathing going on: plenty of nude standing about hoping to get in people's tourist photographs, though.

We took the scenic route home, with a pause when we hit the coast, to watch the pelicans flying past, and then along Skyline. There was dinner with Yogis, and I don't remember why we were talking about Le Lorrain, but K. told us about the Claude glass or mirror. I hadn't met this before, and had heard the phrase 'black mirror' without recognising the device it describes. K. explains that it's because she comes from Maine that she pronounces it 'cloud mirror', which adds another level of richness to the mix.

We dined inside a water tower; Mendocino is famous for its water towers, and Flow is located upstairs at the one on Main Street. We brought home with us the remains of a bottle of Atrea Old Soul Red, which is everything the website says.

durham_rambler has found a weather forecast, and the rain may be easing off. But I won't tempt fate by saying so.

While we were in Woburn, we received an e-mail from desperance: "Just another data point," it said. "There's a supplement in the newspaper today about Amador, up in the Sierra Nevada. It's two and a half hours from Sunnyvale, according to the internets - and the Shenandoah Valley has forty-odd wineries, including some of the oldest Zin vines on the planet..." That'd be the San Jose Mercury's 'Eat-Drink-Play' supplement, and I'd link to it, but when I try to go there, I get adware, so take my word for it.

Anyway, I read the supplement. I was pretty much hooked at "hundred-year-old zinfandels" (though the cool kids seem to be moving into barbera), but wine-and-food destination among the Gold Rush towns - that's irresistible. Which is how I come to be writing this on my patio at the Sutter Creek Inn, under the grape arbour. (Ours is the Cellar Room, if you wondered, but don't be put off by the name).

By the time we were installed last night, it was five o'clock: we'd stopped a couple of times en route, and reception was slightly chaotic - we had trouble finding anyone to book us in (it's all twisty garden paths and rustic outbuildings), and then the person we found denied being the housekeeper, and wanted us to be an Irish couple he was expecting... But by five we were ready to go and taste at the only one of the town's nine wineries that we expected still to be open.

Immediately across the road, though, Driven Cellars (who aren't on that list) still had the 'Open' sign up, and made us very welcome, even though it became apparent that they simply hadn't had a chance to take down the signs. The 'driven' name comes from the patriarch's collection of defunct automobiles, and the bright, sunny showroom was decorated with one or two dramatic pieces: a rust-red petrol pump, a radiator grille. It's clearly a family affair, and the woman who served us was relaxed and frindly, assuring us that our late arrival was no problem, and that she thought they should shift their opening times an hour later, anyway. She was dismissive about their white wines, and assured us throughout the tasting that her favourite of the wines was the last one we would taste, the primitivo - and we agreed with her. I was pleased to have tasted zinfandel from hundred-year-old vines, but we bought a bottle of the primitivo.

Back across the road, the doors were still open at Scott Harvey, where they were having a 'Locals' Night'. "Are you local?" asked our server; "Say yes." So we said that we were indeed local, from just two doors down the street, and proceeded to taste our way through a succession of delicious wines. Scott Harvey trained in Germany, and knows that it is possible to make white wine with subtlety and elegance, even in the California climate. His Jana sauvignon blanc (Jana is his wife, and her name goes on the wines made with grapes from Napa) has just a touch of riesling, and lots of rounded fruit - I would not have identified the main grape as sauvignon, there was none of the green vegetable acidity I associate with that grape. Premier Beso is a blend of grapes from Amador (chardonnay, riesling and something called symphony). We also tasted three zinfandels: a 'Jana' old vine, fresh and fruity, a J&S Reserve, spicy and beautifully structured, and a Mountain Selection, big and soft, and I'd probably have liked it better if I hadn't been knocked out by the previous wine. (Our server then produced a barbera, so we could see why people were moving towards this grape, and it was very persuasive. It's not that I don't like barbera, just that in California I want to drink California wines, but the barbera was excellent).

If I were permanently local, I'd be buying these by the case, especially at Local's Night prices, but as it was we restricted ourselves to a couple of bottles. desperance, if you're reading, the Premier Beso is recommended with cheese, so if we're doing that cheese crawl...

By now it was eat or fall over, so we went to the Hotel Sutter and ate their signature dish of brussels sprouts frizzler with bacon and served with a lemony mayonnaise (which they call aïoli, but isn't). Back home, we listened to Scotland deciding not to leave the UK, which is good news for the UK, I think, though not necessarily for Scotland. There was a very high turn-out, which suggests that low polls demonstrate that voters are apathetic, not from original sin, but about the choices they are being offered.

Breakfast in ten minutes. Time to go!

ETA: that of the red wines we bought and took back to Sunnyvale for actual drinking, it was the Driven primitivo which really stood out. I hadn't expected that.

Continuing my attempt to complete writing up our last visit to the States before we set off on the next one, I was encouraged by finding the notebook: no, I don't write these posts completely from memory, I have a notebook and a camera.

The notebook tells me that we spent St. George's day in San Francisco, but all it has to say about it is that Russian Hill smells of jasmine, and that a sudden thicket of rosemary comes as a relief. So this will be a picture-heavy post. Think of it as a sequence of postcards. ( Behind a cut, because pictures. And heavy. )

Something more cheerful than my last post: continuing our travels in California last spring. It wouldn't have occurred to me to visit an aquarium, but the one in Monterey was enthusiastically recommended to us by a variety of people, none of whom are hardened aquarium visitors. So we booked ourselves an overnight in Monterey, at the Clarion Hotel, up a long hill from the waterfront but very comfortable, with swimming pool. They offered a two day ticket to the aquarium for the price of a single day, and armed with this we split our visit in two, with a preliminary sortie in the late afternoon, and a more thorough exploration the following morning - a very successful strategy. And did we see anything? Yes, wonderful things:



( - which is why most of this post is pictures. )

I liked Santa Cruz. I liked it so much that we went there twice, two days running. We hadn't intended to, but things we had planned didn't quite fit together. and in the end we made two separate trips: it was no hardship.



The first was my birthday excursion, and we were accompanied by desperance. One of the bits of plan that didn't work out was that we had hoped to see his friends Mike and Paula, formerly of London but now of Santa Cruz. That would have been a bonus, but I was quite happy to stroll through the sunshine and admire the shops and the murals. Then we found the Santa Cruz Bookshop, and I was more than happy: I found the books I hadn't been able to buy in Borderlands, and more besides.

Although Mike and Paula weren't able to join us for lunch, Mike recommended a restaurant: so we ate Middle Eastern in the courtyard at Laili (warning: slow-loading website plays music). We shared flatbread (which they called naan), dipping it in herbs, chopped vegetables, oil. My starter was the Silk Road plate: minty tzatziki, tabbouleh, hummus stained bright yellow with saffron and baba ghanoush (which was good, but not as good as that served at Dish'n'Dash across the road from our hotel. This was not automatically served with bread, but when we asked for bread it was supplied promptly. Since the spinach salad was my main course, I took the option of adding chicken, which was tasty but unnecessary: the pile of spinach leaves was already enlivened with slivers of pink pickled onion, candied walnuts and haloumi. Only durham_rambler was tempted by dessert, a cardamom-pistachio ice cream so thickly studded with pistachios that it was difficult to force a spoon through it (but we all managedm even desperance, who does not do ice cream). We drank white wine from Sarah's Vineyard, billed on the menu as grenache/viognier: this turned out to be there Côteaux de la Madonne. When we tasted it at the vineyard, I had thought that the viognier was masked by the marsanne and roussanne in the blend; here, served colder, the viognier was more apparent, but as it warmed up a more unctuous quality emerged, which was interesting, and I was very content with my choice.

The smarter part of Santa Cruz lies well back from the sea front. We walked (which was a mistake) to the sea, to the Boardwalk, which is seaside as Whitley Bay or Southend is seaside. But if you make your way along the Wharf (which is what I think of as the Pier) past the fish and chip shops and the gaudy souvenirs, down at the far end there's a patch of sea which is all splashing and thrashing and barking: and that's the sea lions, a great raft of them tumbling and jostling and generally having a rowdy good time. And just as I was explaining to desperance that while I was sorry that we hadn't been able to see Mike, actually, the sea lions were better, two pelicans flew past. So as far as I am concerned, the day was, in its unscheduled way, a success.

Cornwall is famous for - and rather smug about - the mildness of its climate, and I knew I would see plants there which won't grow here in the north-east. I was still disconcerted by the golden California poppies nodding over the wall of the garden at the end of our lane - and that the ice plants which carpet (and stabilise) the verges of California highways are known here as Hottentot fig, and regarded as an invasive nuisance.

Some of the wild flowers were completely unfamiliar. I was particularly entranced by wall pennywort - also known, it says here, as Navelwort, Dimplewort, Maid-in-the-mist, Pennypies, Penny-grass, Venus'-navel, Wallwort - and took very many pictures of it, in all sizes from tiny to over a foot high. This one was taken at St. Mawes castle, and the circle in the stonework is sone three or four inches across.

However much you may think you are accustomed to the dawn chorus, it still comes as a surprise when the seagulls join in.