wine

I spend a lot of time living in hotels, airports and rental cars.  Most times I love it; meeting new people, seeing the country, talking about food and wine.  Sometimes I hate it; flight delays, snowed in at airports, canceled meeting, no samples, missing my wife, etc.

Thursday night looks to be in the “love it” category.   I will be attending a dinner event at the New York Metropolitan OperaClub with Jacques Schlumberger and our friends at Adams French Vineyardsfrom Bordeaux.   We will have dinner at the Opera Club and feature the wines of Michel-Schlumberger and AFV.  After dinner we go upstairs to enjoy La Traviata (give a listen).  Awesome.

I will let you know how everything went, but I am sure it will be another great memory for me at Michel-Schlumberger.

Yes, harvest is over. Pretty much everyone in Sonoma County is finished bringing in their grapes if they aren’t doing late harvest wines……
However, don’t let this fool you into thinking that wine country goes to sleep from October-January. The creeping of the seasons towards the end of the calendar year-just brings the beginning of the year that much closer and already we’re all hard at work planning our late Fall and Winter parties, tastings, and special events.

First up-we’ve got a BIG cellar sale on the 1st Saturday in November.

Then there’s the BIG Pig Party in November (we had over 100 people at this last year-and had to stop taking reservations!).  And then we’re still putting our heads together over the Holiday Event we’ll have for our Wine Club members in December……….

During which time the vineyards will be turning from yellow, gold, and orange to purples, and reds and then to naked, dormant vines waiting out the crisp winter weather to awaken once again in the Spring…….
I’m caught up in appreciating the beautiful Autumn ’scapes right now in Dry Creek Valley-I take a camera with me to work each day in case I see a view I just have to capture on film. Stay tuned for more updates on our event calendar, or just give me a call anytime if you’d like to hear about any new fun things we’ve got going on here at the Estate………..

Going into our 5th week of harvest luncheons this season, we are no strangers to festivity here at Michel-Schlumberger. For a small estate winery - we offer a lot of opportunities for folks to come and spend time with us in lots of different settings. As a hospitality manager, I often wonder which of our events are people’s favorites? And more than that, what are people’s favorite types of events in general?

Question: What is your favorite Michel-Schlumberger winery event that you’ve ever attended (if you haven’t been to one of ours, than tell us about another small winery’s event that you had a lot of fun at)? Where was it? Why was it your favorite? Was it the food? the ambiance? the people? the mood?  I’d love to hear your thoughts — feel free to comment…and feel free to contact me with your ideas for great wine events we can stage high on the hill above Dry Creek Valley at Michel-Schlumberger!

Steve Pile

Last Friday was the first significant rain we’ve had this season.  It was nice to finally see some moisture in the sky.  We had to scramble a bit for our Friday Night Music and move the festivities into the salon. Steve Pile played and he put on a great show.  One of the benefits of the indoor action was the salon was transformed into more of a cozy wine bar. We brought the couches in and rearranged the funiture a bit.  Our “bar” was moved into the kitchen like old times and everyone who’d been here before remembered the good old days of tasting in there. We liked the salon lay out so much we’re keeping the setup.   My question is to you is what type of music is most condusive to wine enjoyment. I know what I like and I think Steve Pile fits the bill well but I wanna know what you prefer.

It’s a jungle out there.  At least that’s what it sounded like last week when I went out to the garden after work to score some delectables for supper.  The oak tree was filled with all sorts of birds, hopping from branch to branch, and of all them chirp, chirp, chirping up a storm.  The abundance and variety was simply amazing.  We’ve always been blessed with plenty of birds here on the edge of the wilds but this was really extra crazy.

The sight (and sound), I suppose, shouldn’t have been so surprising to me.  As I wrote in a previous post about birds at Michel-Schlumberger, it makes perfect sense that if you increase the amount and quality of food, water and shelter for any organism the population will readily respond.

Which leads me to the topic of this week’s post.  Kate Frey, a good friend and serious expert on plants and bugs and bees is designing a series of brand-spanking new gardens on the estate.  With harvest 2008 slowly creeping to an end it’s time to get some serious planting done before the big Fall rains hit (you didn’t think we all took a nice big vacation after Crush, did you?).

The plantings will be fairly extensive but the highlights include a honeybee garden (Kate also designed the amazing Melissa Garden in the Russian River Valley), a beneficial/pollinator garden to provide blooming flowers and habitat all season long, and a small native grassland to give folks an idea of what was growing here before all the exotics arrived.

There’s still a ton of work to do but I’ll try to post updates and photos as we go.  Once we finish rolling out this red carpet for our buddies the bugs and bees I expect a nice, deep baritone buzz to accompany our chirpy serenade.  The fun never ends…

Ok, we all know that steak and Cabernet Sauvignon is a classic pairing.  Maybe not the most adventurous or daring, but classic and for good reason.  I spend a great deal of time traveling around the country tasting people on Michel-Schlumberger.  This past week I had the pleasure of visiting Miami pre-tourist season.  The weather was perfect and the locals are all calm, preparing for the tourist storm.

I already know what you are going to say,”why would you go to Miami to get a steak with all that fresh local seafood?”  I hear you, and normally I would agree with you, but trust me when I say go to Prime One Twelve for a steak.  Prime 112 is a sleek modern steak house on Ocean Drive in South Beach.  This restaurant is always full, always delicious and always a scene.

Sommelier, Matthew Heinz, has supported Michel-Schlumberger for years and has just put the 2006 Chardonnay “La Brume” and 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon “Deux Terres” on the menu.  As a matter on fact, Prime 112 is one of the first restaurants on the east coast to offer the 2004 Deux Terres.

Oh yes, the pairing, steak and Cab good, but dry aged prime, perfectly grilled and lightly seasoned with the finest sea salt, paired with our finest Cabernet, 2004 Deux Terres, is mmm, mmm, good.  Simple ingredients done well with complex flavors that blend together perfectly and make the other even better.

Book your table in advance, make sure you say hi to Matt and enjoy the start of your night out in South Beach.  Btw, your were right, the seafood at Prime 112 is out of this world.

What do the winemaking and cellar staff do on those days when there are no grapes coming in to crush? 

The better question is-what don’t they do since there are always tasks aplenty in the cellar of a winery.  Today I jumped in and tried to lend a hand in the Michel-Schlumerger cellar.  Really I was mostly holding things,  pressing on things, filling things and watching others do them much better than I could.   A picture is worth a thousand words — but everyone should try to volunteer at a harvest somewhere.  The hand’s on experience is irreplaceable.  And it gives one such appreciation for the artistry of this magical industry.  

Cool stuff.   Thanks guys for letting me hang out for the day!

One of the many things I do here each day is taste our wines.  Most of the time, it’s simply to check for any off aromas or flavors before pouring them for our guests.  But other times, I sit down and actively taste.  This process is more cerebral and I try to do it alone and in a quiet place where I can concentrate. 

As part of an ongoing series, I invite those of you who’ve had this wine recently to add your own tasting notes in the comment section below.

The name Deux Terres originates from the French meaning two lands or two soils and it’s appropriate for this wine because it unites our two ranches at Michel Schlumberger.  We take the two best blocks of Cabernet Sauvignon from the lower ranch and the best block of CS from the Upper Ranch on Bradford Mountain.  Keeping the wine from these blocks separate while aging allows Mike to pick the best barrels from each and then find the perferct blend.  In 2002, there is a dash of Malbec from a neighboring block.  

Color
Deep purple at the center with darker tones of falu red along with edge of the glass

Aroma
As I typed the intro to this post, I could smell wine a foot away from my computer. An intense bouquet of violets and cherry eminated from the glass and now fills the room.  Everytime I smell this wine I’m reminded that this place is special.  Diving into the glass proper now, an array of spice-nutmeg, lavender, rosewater-swirls around a solid frame of crushed red fruit-cherry, strawberry, raspberry.  There’s a touch of cedar spice but in the guise of pencil shavings and graphite. There’s so much going on as the wine relaxes, I get black tea and darker fruits like plum and blackberry.  These are the kind of smells that make me excited to taste.

Taste
Wow!  The interesting thing about the 2002 Deux Terres is what’s not there. It’s not overripe and loaded down with alcohol like a lot of modern CA Cabernets. It’s not jammy or cumbersome.  Texturally, it’s so nice. Slightly smoothed tannins alongside perfectly balanced fruit and acid. Six years in is a magical time for our wines.  Flavors of black cherry cobbler and strawberry pie come lushly across the palate followed by muted tannins and still bright acididty after all these years.  

Pairing Suggestion:   
I want a steak so bad right now, I can taste it!  But on further reflection, I think I would decant this wine at the beginning of dinner and serve alongside something more delicate like a cheese course.  It think it would go spectacular with St. George from Matos Dairy or maybe Mt. Tam from Cowgirl Creamery.

One of the side benefits of this post is that I get to take the rest of the bottle home with me.