The afternoon of March 13th marked the 4th annual Family Winemakers tasting event in Pasadena. The morning after, my teeth are still a faint shade of purple, and as I watch my fingers type I'm suddenly aware of the purple line on the outside of my index finger that matches a purple spot on the inside of my thumb. It's the mark of a good tasting when you don't notice an entire day of wine dribbling down the stem of your glass, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to have the signature markings. And like many in attendance, today I'm scanning through my notes and finding that by the end of the afternoon they were either nonexistent, or total nonsense altogether.
Beside me on my desk I'm left with cards and fliers I picked up, with only muddled recollections of why I grabbed them, my stained digits being my only clues. Sometimes it isn't easy to match the memorable sips to the logos on the business cards the day after, but that's all part of the experience if you ask me. A tasting event of this magnitude isn't so much about discovering new wines you like, as much as it is discovering the one you're still thinking about the morning after. (Vino Noceto 2011 pinot grigio, Amador County, Shenandoah Valley.)
I'm still drinking my coffee and trying to jot down my impressions of my first Southern California wine see-and-be-scene bonanza. And I'm sorry to say that slowly the individual memories are already beginning settle into one round thought; one table nearly impossible to differentiate from the next, just as all the flavors and smells eventually did of the some 700 wines poured between the hours of one & need-lunch:30.
It isn't that I was drunk, mind you. For me, actual drinking isn't a part of the process. I walk around with my own personal sticker covered spit cup and bottle of water tucked in one arm, with my wine glass in my free hand. But no matter how much you spit and rinse, your mouth still instantly absorbs a small amount of alcohol directly through the soft tissue. And while that amount of alcohol is minute, when you multiply minute by 700, you get enough. And in some cases, way more than enough. And that was certainly the case for many, many people packed into the Pasadena convention center. (Number of wine glasses heard shattering on the floor: 5)
When writing an article like this I'm usually focusing on a single bottle, a varietal or a handful of winemakers, something specific, but what truly overshadowed the winemakers and the wines they chose to pour were the attendees. The elegance and style of people who came from all over Los Angeles to taste wine were in some cases worthy of their own sitcom, and for that reason alone it will be worth attending next year.
If you've never been to a large wine tasting event, I highly recommend attending one. Don't go under the impression you're going to be experiencing wine, while you do sample quite a bit, it's often hard to remember the subtle differences of the hundreds of wines offered in quick succession. What you'll really be experiencing are wine people. Wine people are a unique bunch, and like cork patterns: no two are exactly alike. Often times the effects of the minute bits of alcohol, when multiplied into the hundreds, can transform polite to pompous, easygoing to arrogant, and elegant to obnoxious in a way unlike any other tasting event. You almost never see matching couples clutching their own personal cheese knives at an aged cheese tasting, trying to match wits by boasting about a goat herder they've met. And you almost never see young women photographing one another laying on the hood of a taxicab, and spanking one another outside of the doors of a pickling festival. (Although, I have been know to do crazy things after eating too much kimchi.)
On arrival, a long line stretched outside of the convention center doors of people who, for the most part, were dressed to impress. Fancy men in designer suits with crisp white shirts accompanied by tall women perched on stilts towering over them. The scene wasn't unlike the outside of a trendy nightclub where an event is taking place and people are expecting to have their pictures taken against a logo sprinkled backdrop. It all left me feeling out of place and under dressed, I must admit. But I dress the way I do to these sorts of events intentionally.
I've always wanted to be one of those people who can confidently dress up for a big wine event. Unfortunately, I know myself all to well and I know no matter what I wear, in the end I know I'll be remembered as the guy who looks as if he thinks spin art clothes are still cool. (They were cool once, right?) Streak defying droplets of purple across my front, and purple spatter stains on my face from where the community spit bucket spit back at me, I'm often the buffoon the winemakers, marketers, sales people and snobs alike won't talk to at these things. Often times, they'll opt not to pour me a taste at all. It's as if they think I'm just looking for a hit and might attempt to take my sample of their precious wine off to a dirty bathroom stall, where I'll cook the juice down on a spoon and try to inject the syrup between my toes. However, in today's volatile times I suppose it's important to have those who see a wine tasting event as an important impromptu fashion show. After all, if everyone who converged on the event came dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt with an extra dark colored stain-covering flannel, the city of Pasadena might have thought it was being "occupied."
Inside, the room was alive with the even murmur of winers whining. The heavy air was dense with the scent of fermented juice, and the sound of bottle to glass rung like twinkling chimes high above the white noise.
The first memorable stop was at Tercero Wines where we sampled some of Larry Schaffer's whites, the standout of which was his gewürztraminer. "I call it the Outlier," he said. "No one in California should call a gewurz, a gewurz. As soon as you hear gewurz you think it's going to be 4% RS [residual sugar] and sweet and syrupy and that's not the style I make it in." He went on to explain that the juice is stainless steel fermented and aged with one barrel stuck at about 2% RS, which is then blended back into the stainless held cuvee.
I have to admit, when I think of gewürztraminer, sweet and sticky is often my first thought, but when the juice is taken all the way, as Schaffer has in this case, the depth and complexity can be awing.
Notes of lychee fruit off the top of the nose pull your senses into a gentle swirling floral blend of roses and honeysuckle. The acidity and spice hold your attention as the wine softly tingles on your palate bringing it to life. Normally, I like to go back to the first wine I taste at an event. Your palate isn't quite ready for the alcohol and often that first wine will taste slightly different the second time around, but with "The Outlier" this wasn't the case. When we moved on to the next bottle, I found myself stepping back in an effort to savor the moment a few seconds longer.
I have clear notes of that first stop, and it's clear in my mind too. The wine; the laboratory beakers on his table used for decanting; the explanation and enthusiasm he has for his craft. It was a memorable tasting experience, but I honestly can't say that was the case for all of the tables.
For example, I remember Dragonette Cellars vividly, genuinely enjoying the rose - a blend of grenache and mourvedre with a kick of syrah. Light pink in color, the shade of the inside of a seashell (say that three times fast), and a pop of strawberry on the nose with hints of lychee fruit as I recall. Red berry followed through onto the palate with good crisp acid in perfect balance while retaining a somewhat fatty mouthfeel and a peppery hint of spice on the finish. It was wonderful. But the rest of the memory of the wine was pushed aside by two seasoned wine tasters who shoved past me to assume the tasting space where I was already standing.
An older couple dressed in matching snug black outfits - the man differentiating his ensemble with a black leather vest - it didn't take a keen eye to know they've done this before. They're tasting people. They had their own Riedel tasting glasses, and as they shoved past me the bouquet of the wine in my mouth was sucked out by the perfume that may or may not had been surgically affixed to the woman's aura.
(Note to those who love to go wine tasting: DON'T wear any cologne or perfume. If you must have a scent on you in order to feel comfortable, simply find a wine you truly love and put a dab behind each ear, or do as I do and spill some on your shirt.)
Up one side of the room and down the other, my companion, winery publicist Georgina Stassi, paved the way through the crowds, red plastic spit cup in hand as if she was leading me from clique to clique through a college kegger. From Center of Effort (a nice un-oaked chardonnay, and a couple of exceptional pinot noirs) to Calera (a viognier worth note) we wove our way through the swarms of fancy men and their stilted women at heel, the only near miss being a girl in white jeans who drunkenly crashed into me sending a dollop of wine from her glass splashing to the floor between us. "Oops," she giggled as purples spots set into her jeans at around calf height. Before I could acknowledge her, she was gone and my companion was leading off to the next table.
We landed at Vino Noceto, where I had an experience that I can't seem to shake. Now, normally I'm not much for pinot grigio, not that I have anything against the grape, but I've come to never expect too much. A citric and sometimes slightly floral nose, nice acidity it's crisp and easy to pair, but I've never found depth or complexity in one - especially domestic ... until this one.
Floral and fruity (stone fruit, if my memory is serving me) right off the bat, and actual depth and complexity. Notes of citrus, distant peach, and wild flowers and melons - I kid you not. Layers upon layers of flavor with a nice dry bit of mineral towards the back of the palate leaving that crisp, fresh feeling, and a finish that lasted long enough for me to actually ask if it was 100% pinot grigio (it is), and whether or not it has a touch of residual sugar (it doesn't). At $16.00 a bottle, this is worth grabbing just to have around the house for those hot days of summer.
The final memorable stop was at a winery table that I won't mention [Hitching Post] where the pourer seemed to only, and reluctantly, offer me a small splash of a sample, rather than the full taste he offered to my companion. She introduced me, and for a split moment he seemed happy to meet me. Not happy in the - wow, I'm happy to meet you because you might buy a lot of my wine - sort of way, but more the way one acts when meeting someone who has been battling a fierce drug addiction, and has the ground down purple teeth to show for it, but now claims to be just taking it day-by-day and keeping it real.
I was waiting for the next taste in the line of bottles when a fancy man in a crisp white shirt and a badge that said COSTCO asked me if he could slide in a bit, so happily I moved to the side. He shouldered in and actually stood where I was standing, turned his back to me leaving me one deep from the table - right where he had been standing. The wine pourer went from barely acknowledging me to focusing on Mr. COSTO and producing a bottle from under the table that wasn't offered to just anyone.
I took a step to the side, thinking that by changing my positioning I might get back into the pouring flow, holding my empty glass where it could be seen but it didn't happen. It was then that a voice came over my shoulder and the neck of a bottle appeared in my peripheral vision. "Here, try some of this." A man said.
I stepped over to the next table and swirled my glass then sunk my nose deep. Cassis hovered high above the darkness of a deep cherry note. Only one grape smells quite like this: cabernet sauvignon.
Hidden Ridge. If you should see this bottle anywhere, grab it - grab a case of it - and throw it into your cellar. The 2006 cab he poured me was, in a word: sexy. Deep dark fruit, layers of spice and cocoa, fleshy and concentrated on the palate and held together with structured tannins that have obviously mellowed in the past six years, but can still go for a long while.
From the west side of Sonoma's Spring Mountain, the 100% estate grown cabernet sauvignon grows in volcanic basalt and sandy clay loam on a 55% grade slope at elevations as high as 1700 feet. The vines have to work for everything they get and that creates a connection to the soil that can't come from just any plot of land. Elevation, grade, dirt and grapes that can only be picked by hand, when combined with a passion for making great wine, Hidden Ridge has, with one sample, made my list of must have bottles.
By the end of the event when my companion and I approached tables she would accidentally hold out her spit cup, rather than her wine glass, and I must admit I wasn't too far behind. We left the tasting room and were stopped by security to be sure we weren't taking glasses. Georgina was asked to open her purse to be sure she wasn't stealing wine (I offered my security checker a glance at the inside of my spit cup). We stopped for lunch on a patio across from the convention center and watched the wine people leaving as we talked about some of our favorite wines, a conversation which drifted quickly into general talk.
We watched the girl in the purple speckled white pants and her friend lay out on the hood of a taxicab together while a third friend snapped iPhone photos. They posed spanking one another, laughing loud and abandoning themselves to the facebook moment.
The matching couple dressed in black barked from across the street at the scene, with no awareness that they were making a scene of their own, as they clinched their ruby filmed Riedel glasses and made their way to a black Toyota four door with a designated driver, parked and waiting.
People in suits toted cases of wine, fancy men in not-so-crisp white shirts walked ahead of stilted women taking their time carefully descending the stairs one step to the next. It was hard to believe it was only 4:30.
Wine is the great leveler, isn't it? Owning a lot of it doesn't make you a connoisseur, and drinking a lot of it doesn't make you an expert, unless you're one of those who are truly interested and passionate about the stuff, then it takes on a meaning of its own. If you're spiritually connected to practicing yoga, you can't talk about it with someone who only goes to classes for the work out. If you're a surfer then you understand the meditation of being out on the water and waiting for the perfect wave, the peacefulness, beauty and lucid clarity that comes from standing on a wall of water, and you know you can't discuss that feeling with someone who tried it once while on vacation. Wine is its own language, it's its own passion and its own people, and the things we have in common aren't money, or education, or style, it's the fact that we all geek out on smelling bananas, petrol or leather in a glass of old juice.
When going to your next tasting here are some things to remember: not all good wine is expensive; not all expensive wine is good; no one person's opinion is any more valid than anyone else's, and nobody looks good with purple teeth, so don't be embarrassed. There's nothing more silly than allowing the wine to take you away, and then covering your teeth so no one can see you smile.
