Experience

In recent weeks and maybe even months, it has occurred to me that I suddenly have come to be regarded as having experience, in the wine business, that is.

How did that happen? In a blink of an eye, I have 5 years experience in the wine biz, 2 years in sales on the "street," with 3 years in retail.

Just last evening, I was working an event at a terrific wine bar in Santa Monica called Pourtal, and I met fellow wine people also pouring for Oktoberfest - a terrific line-up of German and Austrian red wines, including Blaufrankish, Zweigelt, St. Laurent, Portugeser, Spatburgunder, Samtrot and more. Fantastic, eclectic bunch of sales reps all selling some of the most interesting wines in the world. I met a new gal who recently started her own business importing and distributing wines after years in the business, and she asked how long I had been working for Rudi Wiest, and I said, "A little over 2 years." She replied, "Oh you've been doing it for a while then." Is two years a while? It seemed like yesterday that I started.

I'm glad that the time I have spent in the business has been successful so far, and has made me appear experienced beyond the years. I'm grateful for that! I don't think 2 years doing outside sales is much time at all - I spent over a decade working in health care as a dietitian and I still don't consider myself very experienced in that, just moderately experienced. But in all, I'm happy to give people the confidence that I seem to know what I'm doing and seem to know a little about the products I sell.

By the way, last night at the Oktoberfest tasting, the 2007 Schnaitmann Samtrot rocked, if I may say so. Great velvety texture, nice integrated acidity along with a smooth rich red fruit body. This is a red wine variety that is a regional clone of Pinot Noir. It tastes like Pinot Noir, but also not like Pinot Noir. We're going to have this wine at the Fora Restaurant Wild Game and German Wine Dinner next week on Sunday Oct 24 and it will be terrific with the wild boar sausages!

I also got to taste my cohort's Spatburgunders (Weinhof Scheu, from Schweigen, same village Friedrich Becker is from!), Pinot Noir from Austria (Juris), Zweigelt and Blaufrankisch, all very delicious red wines... more people should drink these. I'm glad there are other wine folks other there promoting the good word about these wines. And I love working an event with them - they are so much fun! Good seeing you Adam, Stetson, and Amy!

End of summer impromptu wine & steak night at friend's house

Is there anything better than dinner & wine at a friend's house? If there is, it's hard to remember what it could be when you are there. It really is the essence of fun and the good life.

A couple of weekends ago, good friends Linda & Bennett had us over for what started as an initial idea of watching the Swedish movie "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," since we have been obsessed with the Stieg Larsson trilogy, read most of the three books, and heard that the movie was graphic and worth watching. Of course, mostly we heard it was worth watching from folks that had not read the book, so we didn't hear much "the book was better," which I'm sure is what most people say most of the time about good books..... but anyway, movie night on Sunday night turned into dinner, with Bennett firing up the grill and putting on delicious Chateaubriande slabs onto the hot grill along with autumn squash. But first, before that, we tucked into a delicious bottle of Rose that our friend Derek had left us, from a producer in Washington State we had never heard of.

As it happened that it was a rare hot day in this summer, we downed this puppy pretty quickly, the 2009 Barnard Griffin Rose of Sangiovese. It was juicy, round, fruity, not too alcoholic, and fit perfectly with the weather and the home-grown tomatoes, savory dry salami, and addictive cured olives we were munching on.

Next up, we opened the red wine we brought, the 2007 Burrowning Owl Meritage that my sister and her hubby painstakingly brought back for us from the winery in Oliver, British Columbia (that's in Canada, just north of Washington State!) This is a region I have not visited, but plan to do so in the near future. In fact, my plan is to do a driving trip through the Washington State wine regions (Walla Walla, and others) then drive up to Oosoyos (hottest town in Canada) and Oliver and do all that area. I think that would be quite rugged and fun. Especially now with all the wineries there (I'm sure the area was considerably more rugged back in the day when the winery craze had not yet hit).

The Burrowing Owl Meritage (Bordeaux-style blend, which, if I recall correctly, had all 5 of the Bordeaux grapes in it: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec. Admission: I didn't remember exactly, and I wasn't sure if Petit Verdot was a masculine ou feminine, so I cheated and went to the Burrowing Owl website, and man, are those pictures of the winery stunning. I mean, if you like that sort of thing - nestled in the mountains, gently sloping vineyard, pristine interior of B.C. type scenery... if I learned anything in my recent weekend in Las Vegas, it is that appreciate more and more the look and feel of nature (I even admired the mountainous backdrop of Las Vegas more than I admired the neon and the gambling - new for me).

Anyhoo, I do plan to go there sometime. A driving trip sounds like a nice adventure, especially combining it with a jaunt down to Washington State, whose vineyards I have yet to visit as well.

Oh, the wine: I found it oaky; perhaps it needed more time in the bottle to integrate its oak, but the fruit was fantastic, and it went terrifically with the steaks that had some terrific char on the outside and juicy middles. I have had Osoyoos Larose, another somewhat well-known B.C. wine from this general area, and I also found it to be on the oaky side - again perhaps I need to age these wines a bit longer before I will like them. But I do think definitely that these wines from B.C. see more new oak than French wines that I like, but perhaps they are as oaky as Napa wines? Perhaps that is more the model? I don't know. I haven't tasted too many Napa cabs as of late, but maybe I will soon...

(From the website's tasting note, it indicates that this wine is aged 22 months in a mixture of French, American, and Russian oak, of which 25% is new. Perhaps what I taste is American oak, which I find stronger.)

Next time, perhaps I will lay a bottle of Burrowing Owl down for a few years, or who am I kidding? Maybe I will try to source an older bottle that someone else has had the patience to lay down for a few years! :)

After the Burrowing Owl, we moved on to something from Bennett's cellar - he stayed with the Pacific Northwest theme and pulled out a wine I have never seen before: 2000 Cayuse "Camaspello." This is a Bordeaux-style blend with three Bordeaux varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc.

I really liked this wine, perhaps because it was a 10-year old.... not only am I starting to like nature more, I'm starting to like older wines more. It seemed complex and layered (those are things that come with age in good wine)....aside from that I don't have any more accurate tasting notes. I felt that it was old world in style, but my host thought it was quite a big wine, so perhaps I wasn't really tasting at that point, just enjoying.

Later, Bennett told me he is selling this wine - he had a couple of bottles - if I was interested, and I was - in fact, we're going to a wine tasting at someone's house tonight and the theme is new world Bordeaux varieties (and I think we are tasting some 2000 Bordeaux too), so I thought this 2000 Cayuse would be kind of fun to open. So I got one from Bennett!

I don' have any more Burrowing Owl Meritage at this time (I have a Pinot Noir left) but if I did, I would bring that too.

Wine - what fun. I look forward to an exciting tasting tonight as well, and I'll try to take some good notes and pics.

93 points Wine Spectator on 2 of our most popular wines

It's been some time since I've blogged on German wines. Maybe it is because it has been summer and I was feeling the vacation mode and wanted to blog more about other wines or restaurant experiences I had, instead of about my job. Well, now it is back to school, back to work, back to the fall season. Today I decided to put in a note here just to tout that 2 of our most popular wines just got written up on the Wine Spectator Insider and both got 93 points.

Those two wines are 2009 Monchhof Mosel Slate Riesling Spatlese and 2009 Monchhof Urzig Wurzgarten Riesling Spatlese. Two terrific wines from the Mosel estate owned by Robert Eymael. Both - 93 points each! Unheard of, to me. These wines have always been popular but have gotten 90 or 92 points, which are already super impressive, but this 93..... very impressive.

To me, this says one thing - that the 2009 vintage German wines are here to impress, and they will be getting the high scores. Just wait. This is just the beginning of the points about to roll out from the Wine Spectator and many other wine publications. We thought so back when we were freezing in Germany tasting the new wines out of tank and barrel, which were already quite good back then in February - we knew this vintage would turn out to be a crowd pleaser and here we are 7 months later feeling the love from the media.

So if you love Riesling, I say get your hands on those 2009s that are coming out, because as the points and scores start rolling out, the wines are gonna get scarce right quick. That already happened to me today when I wanted to roll out 6 cases of pre-ordered (reserved!) 2009 Monchhof Mosel Slate Riesling Spatlese out to a good customer, only to be told our local Los Angeles warehouse just got depleted of the wine and I'll have to wait till next week till a new transfer comes in. Made me cringe! But that's how it works - a wine you love gets the points, and it is a mixed blessing - GREAT because the wine will end up in the hands of many new folks who are now made aware of it, not so great because the demand just went up and your secret is out!

So while Monchhof gets the love today in the September 22 issue of the Wine Spectator Insider, grab a bottle today, and also stock up on Dr. F. Weins-Prum, Schloss Lieser, Fritz Haag, and Reinhold Haart - 2009s from all of these Mosel properties will be knocking your socks off!

A month ago at West

A month has passed since we were in Vancouver and in between enjoying time with family, we took a night out to ourselves to pre-celebrate our anniversary at an upscale restaurant in the South Granville neighborhood, called West.

Originally, West was christened "Ouest" - the French word for west... but they changed their spelling to the English form, as customers couldn't locate them in the phone book. ("How do you spell that *!?&*$ restaurant? Oh, forget it, let's go to Red Robin, at least we can spell that!")

That was 10 years ago. So West isn't so much a new restaurant, as much as new to me.

The decor is beautiful. Simple, but not stark. One walks in and feels that it is a special place, well adorned, modern, bright, with an open kitchen. We were seated near the front of the house.

We started off with glasses of Canadian sparkling wine - what it was, I don't recall - but it was refreshing and a little sweet - reminded me somewhat of California sparkling wine, a bit fruity, not at all like the crisp dry stuff one gets out of Champagne. But anything bubbly, just a glass, is a nice way to start off a fancy dinner, I say.

Then came an amuse bouche, which was an heirloom tomato of some sort. It was not really memorable, but it is always amusing to have an amuse bouche.

We ordered our appetizers - hubby had Smoked Tongue and Roasted Sweetbreads, which is pictured below. It was really nicely done. We had never before tasted smoked tongue - and this was terrific - flavorful and firm in texture. The sweetbreads were tender and flavorful and additctive. The dish on the whole was well put together and unique. We quickly discovered that West presents food very uniquely, and the cooking is expertly done.

I ordered the foie gras, and that was pretty terrific, as to be expected. It was a torchon de foie gras encircled by a layer of goat cheese and I finely chopped truffle. Very nice. Again, unique as I've never paired foie gras with goat cheese before.

Next, our main dishes. I had the rabbit, one of their signature dishes. The rabbit was done 2 ways. The leg was confit'd and the saddle were made in these circles that looked like I was eating bone marrow! But it wasn't bone marrow - it was artfully presented loin of rabbit, wrapped in bacon.

Hubby got the Fraser Valley Lamb (pictured at top) which was also done up in these tight circles. The tight circles were actually half lamb loin and half house-made lamb sausage or what they described as Provencal sausage.... delicious. And there was a succulent piece of roast shoulder as well

For wine, we wanted to enjoy a local B.C. wine, and we ended up choosing a red blend from Therapy Vineyards called Super Ego. I believe the vintage was 2006. The winery is in the Naramata Bench, a part of the Okanagan I have yet to visit but would like to in the future. It's a hotter region that can ripen those Cabernet and Merlot and Shiraz grapes that go into this wine. I enjoyed the wine - not on the level of some aromatic and seductive red Burgundy, but on the level of my enjoyment of some California reds that I have liked. Our server suggested it, and then decanted the big wine into a super-impressive Riedel decanter, pictured above... upon seeing this, I began thinking about how I'd like to have such a decanter, and how I'd like to have a cupboard to put it in and display it, and how I'd like to have a house in which to house such a cupboard to display such a decanter!

Since we still had some wine left after finishing our mains, we ordered a cheese plate to share, instead of dessert. Pretty:

In all, the meal was excellent. Very unique presentations and preparations, high quality local ingredients. The service was professional and upscale and made you feel you were in a classy joint. I like that! I was happy with the experience overall, thought the atmosphere was very conducive to romance and conversation, and I would gladly return to West in the future.

An "Exceeds Expectations" German wine dinner

The room was dimly lit, and my camera's flash was misbehaving, so I didn't get any good pictures of food or wine that night, but I would be remiss if I did not mention what a fantastic wine dinner I had the opportunity to co-host last Friday evening.

The dinner took place at a restaurant in Long Beach, a terrific owner-operated place with class and elegance, Delius Restaurant. Owners Dave and Louise are among the most generous and fun hosts I have ever met. They were turned on to German wine years ago by my former boss, Randy Kemner of The Wine Country. They became fans of the Rudi Wiest portfolio ever since.

And, for the past 5 years, or maybe more, they've hosting a German wine dinner once a year in their elegant "prix-fixe" dining room, matching some of the most luscious German wines with their eclectic and well-executed cuisine.

And, very importantly to me, the setting is so perfect. Dave and Louise already feature prix-fixe dinners every evening, with special themes that change weekly, featuring seasonally fresh ingredients, and taking diners through 5 or more courses of delightful, exciting fare.

So what did we have that was so wonderful? We started off with some refreshing and minerally 2009 Wirsching Iphofer Kronsberg Silvaner trocken from the traditional Franken bocksbeutel, which was paired with a pickled trout done in-house and served delicately upon a slice of cold Yukon gold potato that had been roasted to al dente, and topped with some creme fraiche. Perfect. An appetizing dish, not a hint of grease, a fun and stimulating way to start the meal.

The second course was a sauteed sweetbreads served with cauliflower and salsify - as if the sweetbreads themselves were not interesting enough, I thought the menu tacticians were taking great care to serve interesting vegetables as sides, too, like salsify - which was very salsifying! The sweetbreads were meaty and nicely done to a golden brown, and the entire dish went nicely with 2008 Pfeffingen Estate Riesling Kabinett (a.k.a "Pfeffo") which is a medium-dry style Riesling with nice body and weight, owing to the fact that it is from the Pfalz, a warmer growing region than say, the Mosel, and also owing to its vinification style, which is toward the drier side vs. a fruity Kabinett. I thought the pairing was nice - it was the wine recommended by my boss Rudi Wiest - though Randy mentioned that he wouldn't mind something with a bit more residual sugar (read: sweeter) with the dish. I could see his point. For someone who doesn't mind a well-made German Riesling with residual sugar - or someone like me who likes a fruity Spatlese with dinner - a fruity Kabinett or Spatlese would have been fine, even delicious, with the meal.

The next two courses were paired with German red wines. People were pretty excited to hear that, I'll tell you what! And I was pretty excited too. First, we had the 2008 Becker Estate Pinot Noir paired with the duck course. Now, Pinot Noir & duck is a natural perfect pairing, so this was a no-brainer in the planning department. But little did I know how AWESOME this was until I tasted it. Seriously, I'm not just pumping up the wine right now to sell it - it was terrific and showed beautifully that night - I'm not sure if the Becker is just at a really perfect stage right now, or if the duck dish brought out all its wonderful cherry fruitiness. Wow. The duck was no ordinary duck, but it was a Muscovy duck breast, thick, tender, rich, cooked just perfectly, ie. medium-rare, and served with black beans (the menu said "black bean and pear chutney") and it was supposed to be cinnamon scented. I didn't notice the cinnamon accent when I ate the dish, but then I was pretty distracted by the lovely wine. Wow.

The final savory course, after that generous slab of duck breast, was a pan roasted veal loin paired with 2007 Schnaitmann Lemberger from the Wurttemberg. Now, I won't lie to you - I have trouble selling this wine. One restaurant buyer summed it up most succintly in this way: "Look, I can't sell a wine with three words on it that no one knows what they mean: Schnaitmann, Lemberger, and Wurttemberg." So there you have it - no one knows what Lemberger is, and if they had a guess, it would be a stinky cheese. Well, it isn't "limberger" - the stinky cheese, but instead, it is the same variety as Blaufrankisch, the name the Austrians give to this grape. But in Germany, the wine is called Lemberger. As soon as this wine was poured into the glass, its aromas made themselves known to our noses. Yum! Enticing blackberrry and blueberry lept from the glass, but on the palate, we didn't get gloopy Shiraz, but instead, elegant, structured, fruit-forward yet not jammy Lemberger, a delicious and satisfyingly rich red that is unlike anything else I represent. Oh it was tasty, and it was so fun to introduce it to a roomful of people who had never tasted Lemberger. This wine would fly off the shelves if only it didn't say Lemberger!

Finally, we came to dessert. There was no dessert wine, just coffee with it - a chocolate mascarpone cheesecake baked to perfection, light as a cloud and not super sweet - very nice, with a side of blackberry gelee. No dessert wine to compete with that lovely ending.

In all, I was super impressed with the caliber of the Delius kitchen, the fantastic culinary adventure, the way the wines performed, and the mood of the entire dining room. Everyone was pleased. And I got requests to do another wine dinner this fall at another local restaurant that I've done a wine dinner at before - Fora in Naples... two years ago we did a hunter's wild game dinner with German red wines. We've been asked for an encore, and that's now in the works. Stay tuned...

A Week without Wine (almost!)

Wine has its place, and can add so much to an experience. But there are also times when it is not much missed. Last week, when I was on vacation in Vancouver, B.C., that was one of those times, a non-wine-focused holiday.

Not to say that British Columbia doesn't have some great wines. It does. In fact, my sister brought me back a couple of bottles from her trip out to Burrowing Owl, and I do look forward to tasting those (Pinot Noir & Meritage). It is just that I prefer to drink wine when it is a wee bit cooler outside.



The weather, was for the most part, sweltering hot. I was happy guzzling my B.C. tap, some bubble tea, and some good beer.

But most of all, it was a time to spend with family. And re-acquainting myself with the city. The city in its summer self, when lawns were yellowy-brown and parched, unaccustomed to being so starved for water in a city known for its plentiful rains.

The days were so hot at one point, that I thought I was visiting my family in Vegas or something - I couldn't sleep at night, and complained that it was so much hotter than in L.A. Then one evening, before sunset, I declared that it was enough, I had to get out of the house, so my sister took me and my husband down to the beach. English Bay. And it was gorgeous.

We had front row seats for the sunset. Literally, a great park bench that no one else had claimed. The sun took its sweet time descending from the sky to tuck in behind the mountains. I even heard myself complaining that it was taking too long to descend. "Why isn't it going down already??" I am cranky when hot and the sun is in my eyes. But then I learned that the farther one is away from the equator, the longer it takes for the sun to set. In the Caribbean, it would dive down in a minute, I was told.

During the week, we even went to a concert - Michael Buble - a veritable Vancouver boy - 34-3/4 years old, crooning the oldies. He was opened by this group, Naturally 7, who did "voice play" - a version of a capella, except not only do they use their voices to sing, they used them to simulate instruments. Sometimes, they even became their instrument. They were cool. One group member reminded me of Barack Obama. He was the double bass, I think.


Then came Buble. He sang for a solid 2 hours. By himself. No back-up singers. No duets. Just himself. He sang lots of oldies. I enjoyed it but didn't go crazy over it. Being at this concert at Rogers Arena (formerly GM Place & Canada Hockey Place) made me feel nostalgic for a George Michael concert I attended maybe 20 years ago, when I really went nuts for all the songs.

Memories...

Now, for my next post, I'll share with you the one wine-inclusive evening that I did have in Vancouver...

A tale of Oliver Haag in Two Cities

When I first learned about German Rieslings, then later about the subcategory of Mosel Rieslings, I began to learn from Randy, owner of The Wine Country, about how special the Rieslings of Fritz Haag Estate were. These Rieslings always seemed the most pure, the most classic, the most full of stuffing while still delicate on their feet... full of mouth-filling flavor and crystalline beauty. In a quest to find out more about these beautiful wines, I learned that they were made from a site called Brauneberg, a wine village dating back to Roman times, when it was called the Latin name Dusemonde or "sweet mountain." It was later named a more Germanic sounding Brauneberg, or "brown mountain," which, while being less poetic, was an accurate description of this site which, unlike other hills covered with vineyards, Brauneberg was not topped with a rich forest of trees which served as a sponge for rain water, but instead was topped by an almost bare hilltop, with little to no water reserve. This hillside vineyard is therefore dry and brown.

Aside from the legend of the wine village and hillside vineyards Juffer and Juffer Sonnenuhr was the legend of the man, the winemaker Wilhelm Haag, whom I met the first time I attended a Rudipalooza tasting with Randy, back in 2006. Wilhelm Haag is a legend because he has worked his family's winery from the age of 20 to the age of 70, 50 years of winemaking, while being, I believe, the head of the VDP at some points..... the details of which I am unclear about, but I do know he was a major advocate of quality wines in the Mosel region. I also know that as a person, he is very kind, generous, open, and hilariously funny. In my various meetings that I have had with him since that first time at that tasting in 2006, he has told some funny jokes with great delivery - charm, I think it is called - for example, he said of his wines from the vineyard Juffer ("virgin" in German), "it is the only virgin that gets better with age." Guffaw guffaw...

Anyhoo... approximately 5 years ago, Wilhelm Haag did retire and pass on his estate to his son, Oliver Haag. Oliver Haag worked for years for the Wegeler estates, and finally, he had returned to run the family estate and carry on the strong tradition on great winemaking in the Mosel. I had met Oliver Haag on several occasions going to taste in Germany, but I didn't really get to know him as a person until in July this year when he came to work with us in California, and I got to work with him in both San Francisco and Los Angeles.

And here's what I found out about Oliver Haag - he is a terrific person, super smart and knowledgeable, generous and great to work with. In San Francisco, we dashed from one restaurant to another - Slanted Door, RN74, Vanessa's Bistro & from one wine store to another - Wine House, Wine Club, and many others...

In Los Angeles, similarly we hopped from account to account - starting with a breakfast meeting at 9:30 am at Starling Diner in Long Beach (pictured above with owners Ed and Joan), then to The Wine Country to see Randy (top), then up to picturesque Santa Monica, and ending the evening with a wine dinner at 3 Square Restaurant in Venice, where chef/owner Wolfgang Gussmack orchestrated a 4-course meal replete with savory dishes that went beautifully with the Fritz Haag wines.

Working those long days in SF and LA with Oliver were hard and tiring - I won't lie to you! - but he made it worthwhile by being a wonderful person to work with, confirming to everyone, me included, that behind the delicious Mosel Rieslings of Fritz Haag Estate is now yet another terrific and genuine Haag leader and winemaker.