One of the vineyards along Highway 128.

Every winter, after the vineyards have been pruned and (usually) the rains have soaked the valley, washing away the dust and dirt of harvest, the wild mustard blooms. Despite the attention drawn to it by the Napa Valley Mustard Festival, mustard season is still the quietest time of year in wine country. Which is mind-boggling, really, because if you’ve ever been here then, it’s definitely one of the prettiest seasons. And this winter, folks visiting the area have been treated to some absolutely stunning weather.*

The wild mustard starts to bloom in mid-December in Alexander Valley. You don’t realize it’s happening at first, and then suddenly, right around the start of the new year, there are swatches of the brightest yellow carpeting the valley floor and all the spaces between the rows of grapevines. There’s a romanticized legend that Father Junipero Serra, founder of the California Mission System (and for you history buffs out there, you can visit the Mission San Francisco Solano when you visit out tasting room in the town of Sonoma), scattered mustard seeds between each of the missions to create a golden path, and the flowers inevitably spread to cover the hillsides.

An advocate for LGVs.

Nice image, but the California Invasive Plant Council suggests that it was probably spread through cereal grain being transported from overseas. It’s in the same family as a lot of other “power foods”: broccoli, kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, and the unfortunately-named rape, which they wisely market as canola. Common varieties of wild mustard that grow in the area, both of which are on the invasive species list, are Brassica nigra (black mustard, which can grow up to six feet tall), and Brassica rapa (field mustard, which is the wild relative of the modern turnip). Wild mustard greens, one of the most widely-foraged edibles, are high in fiber, folate, calcium, and iron, as well as vitamins A, C, D, and K. If Popeye were a hippie in the woods, he’d be eating wild mustard for sure.

From a 1796 painting by Johan Georg Sturm included in the book Deutschlands Flora in Abbildungen.

While the Brassicaceae are not reported to have any poisonous members, as with all foraged food, it’s important to cross-check anything you harvest from the wild, especially if you are new at it. This blog post is not intended as a field guide for harvesting. One good place to start though is with a beautiful book that is always present on my boyfriend’s coffee table: The Wild Table, by Sarah Scott and Connie Green. This had me out in the woods behind Peter’s house nibbling on pine tips last spring, and both of us trying (in vain) to find edible nettles.

If you do decide to harvest wild mustard, make sure you’re getting it from an area free of pesticide sprays (by this rule, you probably shouldn’t stop by the side of the road and munch on the plants in the vineyards), and wash it thoroughly regardless of where you collect it (bugs love it). Look for smaller, younger plants with tender leaves. Older plants tend to be woody and bitter. Blanching or boiling the leaves for a couple minutes can help with the bitterness. The raw flowers can be sprinkled on salads for a splash of color and a little bit of spice. Use the leaves wherever you might use spinach—in pastas or stews, and especially in Asian fare like stir-fry or soup.

And if you decide not to eat it, well … it’s always fun to run through.

*Make no mistake about it: the lack of rain is a problem, and it could have some serious repercussions for this year’s harvest. We got a few inches of heavy rain last week, and the Russian River, which had been calm and sedate for months, swelled overnight. But that was the first measurable rainfall we had since the October rain that sent harvest crews scrambling to bring in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in Russian River Valley before the mold took over. We’re way behind in rainfall, and it remains to be seen what will happen next.

Various bottle sizes

If you’ll excuse the banal title I’ve chosen for this post (because surely, I’m not the first person to make reference to such things in this context), I wanted to have a brief discussion about large format bottles.

You’ve probably seen your fair share of big bottles out there, either tucked into wooden boxes or propped up on mantlepieces for show. Maybe you came to our holiday shindig last year, where Jake and Stephen popped corks on everything from the 2003 Red Winery to the 2006 Pyramid, all in large format. Maybe someone gave you a big bottle of something for a birthday or holiday, and you stuck it in your closet thinking, “Okay, well, I have no idea what the hell to do with that.” Maybe, just maybe, you’ve even gone to a restaurant that’s smart enough to have large format on the wine list (and maybe, just maybe, you and your group of many people with similar wine tastes made the smart decision to order one of these bottles).

Whatever the context you know large format in, you may or may not know one of the coolest things about them. It’s the reason Jake and Stephen make sure that all our reds each year are bottled in both 1.5-liter bottles (magnums) and 3-liter bottles (double magnums or Jeroboams, depending on which part of France you’re in. Yes, really. Don’t tell me you’re surprised). The reason is this: in general, when cellared properly alongside regular-format bottles (750mL), large-format bottles, and Magnums in particular, age better, more consistently, and for longer periods of time. So basically, what this means for the serious wine collecter, if you really want to age something to its fullest potential, you should probably buy a magnum of it.

Standard (left) versus Magnum.

The reason for this phenomenon is pretty simple: 750mLs and Magnums have a neck that is the same size in diameter, so they generally have the same headspace (or ullage, as we learned in my old-bottle-drinking post from September). But obviously, being twice the volume, the ratio of wine to that airspace is increased, so oxidation is slowed. Temperature fluctuations are less dramatic in larger volumes, so the potential for damage due to heat or cold is decreased. For parties, holidays, or even just a dinner with a larger group of friends, large-format bottles can be a better value simply because the cost of two or four equivalent bottles (particularly if you’re eating out at a restaurant) is usually more than the cost of one in larger format. Plus, they’re just fun. Wine is meant to be shared, and the more the merrier.

Now, you might think that if bigger is better, extra-large jumbo, venti, super-sized bottles are best. A word of caution there, something I learned when I was reading up on Champagne and the méthode champenoise:

If you’re entertaining, you should know that the ideal bottle size for Champagne is the magnum, which is equivalent to two bottles. The larger bottle enables the wine to age more gently in the winery’s cellar. Magnums (or sometimes double magnums) are usually the largest bottles in which Champagne is fermented; all really large bottles have had finished Champagne poured into them, and the wine is therefore not as fresh as it is in a magnum or a regular bottle. (Wine For Dummies, 284)

Keep that in mind if you’re buying large bottles for aging, you should make sure that the wine went directly into them, as opposed to being aged in regular-format bottles, then used to custom-fill a Balthazar.

Large format bottles make excellent gifts!

Jake and Stephen bottle our Merlot and our Cabs in magnums and double-magnums every vintage in limited quantities. Obviously, they make great gifts, and there is a gift-giving, economy-stimulating holiday coming up in about a month’s time, but for the wine collector out there, everyone knows the 2007 vintage is one of the best from Alexander Valley in recent years. Its remarkable balance means the Cabs from this vintage should age for upwards of ten years—and large formats even longer. So if you’re feeling like rounding out your collection, you can let us know at the tasting room, and we’ll make sure it happens.

It's autumn! This is a goat!

If you were to make one assumption about people who work and live in this area, it would probably be that we all drink a lot of wine.

And you would be right. My friends and I all work in the industry in various capacities, whether it be sales, marketing, production, or service, and as the handyman who fixed the broken pipe in my apartment yesterday pointed out, we’re all hoarding wine. Sure, we drink our fair share of local microbrews as well (silly not to, since we’re so close to the Russian River Brewing Company, the Bear Republic Brewery, the Healdsburg Beer Company, the Lagunitas Brewing Company, and the Anderson Valley Brewing Company), but the main currency down here is wine. You want to stop by and taste with one of your neighbors? We bring ‘em a bottle of Cab, and usually a swap will happen. It’s probably the best way to really get to know your neighbors, and you get to share it with people in the process.

The view from the tasting room right now.

We all know food and wine are a big deal. I’ve talked about it many times here. But honestly, I think I pair my wine more often with music than with food (often because I have a one-track mind, and if the food rocks, I tend to do that cramming-shoveling thing that we Americans are so stereotypically known for (sorry for upholding that one. I’ll try harder).

Autumn is a particularly good time of year for the wine and music pairing because it’s the first time in a few months that we all get a chance to settle down and breathe a bit. And with the change of seasons comes a change in what I like to listen to. I’m a year-round fan of bluegrass and and 1960s skiffle-influence rock and roll (OK, maybe that’s just limited to the Beatles), but there is something about shorter days and evenings snuggled up on the couch with the cat and a fire in the woodstove that whispers “folk” to me.

The maple tree next door.

There’s a point in the summer where it becomes obvious that fall is here. I’ve dedicated a couple blog posts to it already this year, and you can bet that for as many autumns as I work for Jake and Stephen, there will be a few, “Man, I can’t believe it’s already fall” posts. I can’t decide if fall creeps up on us gradually, or if it comes all at once. This year, I’m inclined toward the latter, mostly because it was 78° and stunning on Wednesday this week, and we’ve got our first frost warning in effect for Friday night. It’s snowing in the Sierra (heck, it was snowing in Boston last week). Jake, Stephen, Pancho, and the boys got the last of the Cab off the vine—fall is in full swing, and the frost can come tomorrow and kill our basil.

In the meantime, I’ll be sitting here by the fire with a glass of Cab* listening to a few of my favorite soft and whispering folk musicians with the cat for company. Some are old friends, some showed up on my Blitzen Trapper station. Actually, I’ll start there:

• Blitzen Trapper, but specifically “Lady on the Water” and “Furr,” which are both songs of indescribable beauty.
• Nick Drake, king of the fingerpickin’ sweet melodies (“Northern Sky,” “Pink Moon,” which was my intro to ND through the Cabrio commercial a few years back (and which made me want a Cabrio. I still kinda want a Cabrio), and “Place to Be.”
• 

  The venerable Tavi romping on the couch.

  My old standard, Bob Dylan. Fantastic year-round, but certain songs ring truer in the autumn: “Girl From the North Country” (the Freewheelin’ version, not the Johnny Cash duet), “Boots of Spanish Leather,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” and of course, the song that competes with “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” for my favorite Bobby Alan Zimmerman song: “Buckets of Rain.” Try the Redbird version, too. It’s stunning, and it sounds more like rain to me.

• Here’s a new one: Gregory Alan Isakov’s “Stable Song,”Raising Cain,” and “All There Is.”
• My friend Connor Garvey has been over-achieving in the folksy-singer-songwriter genre for coming on ten years now. This bearded redhead is a native of Maine, and we went to college together for two years. Now, he spends his time minstreling around the country in his hatchback, and his specialty are songs that sound better in the fall, like “Summer’s End,” “Backroads,” “Western Wind,” “Laura Beth,” and “Go Deep.” You can stream both of his most recent albums from his website.
• You’ve probably heard Joe Purdy before, but this bearded troubadour from Arkansas (whose writes self-described “sad bastard music”) has an impressive self-produced repertoire that goes so far beyond the Kia commercial from a couple years ago, or the Dawn commercial with the oil-covered animals. Check out JoePurdy.com, where you can stream all of Joe’s music from the last ten years. This American, 4th of July, Julie Blue and Stompin’ Grounds fall in the whisper-soft category, but Only Four Seasons is probably my favorite.
• The Tallest Man On Earth is a recent discovery. I have two albums of his, Shallow Grave and The Wild Hunt, and I would say “The Blizzard’s Never Seen the Desert Sand” is the go-to track off of Shallow Grave. He’s earning himself some (well-deserved) comparisons to Bob Dylan.
• And then of course, there is Sufjan. I’m a huge fan of his five-disc Christmas album, and while he has a tendency to do things like have choirs of children banging pots and pans while playing the klezmer in the background of his songs, he also is the perfect example of autumn music. From Seven Swans comes “All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands” and “He Woke Me Up Again“; from Illinois (or as I prefer, Sufjan Stevens invites to you come on, feel the Illinoise!) we get “Chicago,” (although that’s the version from the Outtakes From the Illinois Album) “Casimir Pulaski Day,” and “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!” (as well as the children/klezmer/pots and pans tune with the most ridiculous title: “The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You’re Going to Have to Leave Now, or, I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!” Yes, really.), and from Michigan come “Romulus” and “For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti,” the latter of which competes with “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” for my favorite Sufjan song. Ever.

That’s probably enough for now. You get the idea.

*Not intended to be a factual statement. I confess I don’t have any Cab open. I’m drinking this crazy delicious thing called water. Have you guys tried this lately? It’s pretty good.