The other day I visited a winery which is in the “true” Sonoma Coast, and just finding the place was an incredible challenge. Winding through narrow, mostly one lane coastal roads, around mountains and along jagged ridge lines, eventually rising above the layer of heavy marine fog you will find Flowers Winery. When Joan and Walt Flowers opened the winery in 1989, everyone told them they wouldn’t be able to grow anything in such a harsh environment. Today, the winery produces some of the most sought-after Pinot Noir in the world. In fact, the estate is surrounded by some 27,500 acres that, just a few months ago, achieved its own appellation status as the Fort Ross/Seaview AVA (although it should be noted that only about 500 of those acres have planted vineyards).

Sonoma County’s newest AVA encompasses two ridge lines, scattered with vineyards, as well as the valley between the two which actually is a small finger of the San Andreas Fault. So the two ridge lines were created by tremendous energy which compressed the rocks and turned them into soil. The estate’s proximity to the fault is what accounts for the amazing terroir and minerality distinctive to the wines from this tiny area. We tasted four of their wines: Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, Camp Meeting Ridge Estate Chardonnay, Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, and the Seaview Ridge Estate Pinot Noir. Wow. The Sonoma Coast Chardonnay has nice citrus flavors and great acidity up front, but the minerality on the finish is what gives these wines such a distinctive character. Very Chablis-esque. The next two were also exquisitely made, but not my cup of tea. And then the Estate Pinot Noir. This wine has wonderful dark fruit up front, amazing, delicate, earthy flavors like moist, moss-covered forest floor that carried the wine to a similar amazing mineral finish. As the wine developed in the glass, it also had some great spices coming out like clove and cardamom.

If you can make the trek out to the “true” Sonoma Coast, I would highly recommend Flowers. The view and experience is just as breathtaking as the wines are delicious.

Happy sipping!

People have been coming into the tasting room lately commenting on how relatively quiet it is. I’ve been saying that it’s the calm before the storm (or as Gandalf would say, “The deep breath before the plunge,” because I am an enormous nerd). It’s kind of nice though. The quiet season was less quiet and much shorter than it was in the last couple years, and it always ends abruptly with Barrel Tasting. So if we have six weeks or so of calm in the tasting room, I’m all right with it. It gives me a chance to really talk to people and get to know their tastes. And it also gives us all a chance to recharge before the summer really gets started.

There are a few things coming up in Alexander Valley in the next few weeks (and months). The first is Taste Alexander Valley, a wine and food event featuring the best of the best from our little valley. It’s a two-day event on May 19 and 20 from 11am-4pm (just like all events out here), and along with our neighbors you’ve all come to know and love, Taste Alexander Valley brings a few smaller folks out (I’ll say it right now: Blue Rock Vineyard. You heard it here first). Check out the Alexander Valley Winegrowers website for the full list of participating wineries, what they’ll be pouring, and who they’re having cook for them.

May 19 is also our Wine Club Pickup Party. We’re bringing out Rhasaan Fernandez of Boffo Cart for Taste Alexander Valley, and then we’re keeping him (and his chopped pork sliders) around for the party, which kicks off at 5pm and goes until 7pm. The Gluggers will be out on the patio rockin’ away, and the wine will be flowing. If you’re in our wine club and you want to come, just RSVP at our EventBrite page so we know you’re coming.

And then the fun really begins.

Saturday, June 16, is our annual Wine Club Dinner at the Red Winery Road Vineyard. Paula Hawkes will be donning her chef’s toque, and Jake and Stephen will be pulling the corks on some older vintages. This is an extremely limited-seating event available to wine club members (so if you’re not in the club and want to go, you can join here), and it always sells out quickly. You can purchase tickets for the Dinner at our EventBrite page, and if you can’t make it out for this one, keep your eyes and ears open for the date-to-be-determined Pyramid Vineyard dinner.

We had a disgusting amount of fun last year with our Summer Nights series, so we’re bringing it back this year. Kicking off officially Memorial Day weekend and running through Labor Day Weekend, we’ll have live music and fresh food every Saturday starting at 4pm and running until whenever we run out. Keep an eye on our Events page at the Hawkes website, and if you haven’t started following us on Facebook or Twitter, give it a go; we’ll keep you all updated about what food and music are coming your way every Saturday all through summer.

And now, if you’ll permit me, I’d like to get a little nerdy and experimental with you.

One of the perks of this job is that, at the end of the day, we get to take home the leftovers. I’ve done more wine tasting in this fashion than I have by actually going out to wineries, because I have at least a dozen friends who work at tasting rooms, run wineries, or work in the industry in some capacity. At our house, there’s usually juice from White Oak Winery, Medlock Ames, Red Car Wine Company, Hawley, Blanchard Family, and Silver Oak. And there’s always Hawkes. This is how I have come to know our wines forward and back; I drink them every day, and I’ve developed a relationship with each one.

Most of the time, if it’s been out for a couple days, we’ll dump the dregs. We’re all usually bringing home anywhere from two to six bottles of wine, depending on the season and the day of the week, so there is always plenty to go around, and there’s no sense in drinking something oxidized beyond recognition.

Which is why when I was at Peter’s house last week, I was skeptical when he went to pop the cork on a bottle of 2007 Alexander Valley Cab that had languished, half-full with the cork all the way back in, for over a week on the sideboard.

“You’re going to drink that?” I asked. Usually that bottle of wine would move over next to the olive oil, where it would be used for braising, marinating, and de-glazing pans.

“I’m going to try it, yeah,” he said. He reasoned that because the bottle was a little over half-full and had not been opened multiple times in the week since I had brought it home, yes, there would be more air in the bottle than was ideal, but that amount of air had remained constant. He tried it, than passed it to me, saying, “See what you think.”

He and I have an understanding: he’s not allowed to express any sort of opinion about wine until after I’ve tried it. I’m like a sponge, and I’ll glom onto whatever he says because of some Freudian desire to fit in, or something ridiculous like that. So what I thought about this week-old 2007 Cab was this:

It wasn’t bad. In fact, aside from very mild oxidization, it was pretty darn good. My personal preference in wine draws me to more tannic, structured Cabs (I can’t decide if that led me to work at Hawkes, or if it came about because I work at Hawkes), and the week of being open in our chilly kitchen had rendered it softer than I preferred. But it still had nice acidity, and it went nicely with our polenta with spinach and garbanzo beans (and the obligatory fried egg on top). So there you have it.

Waste not.

Strata (Italian Savory Bread Pudding)

7- 8 thin slices crusty rustic bread (of a type that does not have any sugar or sweetening)
4 T. butter mashed with 1 large crushed clove of garlic
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup strong chicken broth
1/2 cup Chardonnay (Hawkes, of course)
1/2 cup light cream (half and half)
1/4 cup milk
5 ounces grated gruyere cheese
2 ounces grated Parmesan cheese
1 t. Dijon mustard
3/4 t. paprika
1/8 t. cayenne
1/8 t. grated nutmeg
salt and black pepper

Butter a deep casserole dish about 9″ square or equivalent size deep baking dish.  A souffle dish also works.

Lightly butter both sides of the bread slices with the garlic butter and set aside.
Beat the seasonings and liquid ingredients into the eggs, using salt and pepper to taste.

Put a layer of bread in the casserole dish (cut slices if necessary to fit but precision is not important).  Pour on 1/3 of the egg mixture, sprinkle on 1/3 of the cheeses, then another layer of bread, egg mixture, cheeses and so on.  There will be three layers of everything.  Push down the top to make sure the liquid covers the last layer of bread, even if just barely.  Cover and bake at 375 F. about 20 minutes.  Uncover and bake about 20 more minutes until the top is puffed and brown.

Let rest five or ten minutes before serving. Cut or scoop down through to serve.

This is a Stephen Hawkes favorite – he get rhapsodic at the prospect of Strata for dinner.

It is fabulous with our Stone cabernet and a green salad either first or after.

I’ve had folks ask me about the “big fans” they see in some vineyards, or why the overhead sprinklers are going when it still looks like everything is still in winter hibernation. And with the nights still plummeting into the 30s in some parts of the valley—and lower where I live—it seemed like a good time to talk about frost protection.

It starts with bud break, when the vines show their first signs of life since they went to sleep before Christmas. Sometime between March and April, depending on where you are, how late you pruned, and what varietal you’re farming, fuzzy green buds start to pop out on the vine. These buds become the leaves and canopy that will fuel the vine all summer and eventually produce the grapes that become that year’s wine. But in March and April, it can still be pretty cold. Especially in dry years like 2012 has proven to be so far. Those cloudless, still, starry nights are a major threat to the harvest (and to any farmer’s REM cycle) usually until mid-May.

There are a couple different ways the Hawkeses protect our vines from frost. The most obvious one are the fans, or wind machines are they are often called. These giant turbines mix the warm air from higher up (usually around 20-25 feet) with the cold air down below, and that helps to break up the inversion layer. The moving particles will usually be enough to keep the temperature from dropping below 32°F in most cases, though this is only a solution when it’s in the mid-20s. Below those temperatures, the air up top is too cold. (The other downside is that the wind machines are loud. Really loud. Jet engine comparisons abound this time of year, and they’re not far off the mark.)

The quieter solution, but one that has its own downsides, are sprinklers. There are a variety of systems that people use, but overhead is most common. Water generates a minute amount of heat when it goes through the freezing process, so the reason you’ll see the sprinklers on for long periods of time is because that reaction will generate heat for as long as you continue to apply water (and it will stop when you do).

Sometimes, with cold enough temperatures, the water will freeze on the vine; then the energy generated from freezing will create a layer of water that insulates the vine and buds from the ice, kind of like the wetsuits surfers and scuba divers wear. (The downside with sprinklers is that they use a lot of water. And in cold springs with below-average rainfall, when frost protection is most needed, water’s the one thing we don’t have much of.)

But when there’s enough, when the temperatures sit in the teens for nights on end, the result can be stunning.

Evening Edit: We got a comment on Facebook from a reader that I think is an important addendum, one that I opted to leave out initially in order to adhere to a self-imposed 500-word-maximum, which was my error and undermines the rest of this post. He pointed out that my last paragraph suggests that “frost protection presents a potential harm to anadromous fish are mostly outdated if not just false.” This is something I didn’t want to touch on because I am not familiar with the subject in great detail, only on the surface, but it was nonetheless unintentionally implied.

We moved our wind machines down to the Stone Vineyard from the Red Winery Vineyard because the Stone is more prone to frost this time of year, and with the below-average rainfall, the creek from which we have previously pulled water for frost protection—and the one which flows past my house—wasn’t just low, it was dry up until last month when we received record amounts of rainfall for the month of March. When I said “water’s the one thing we don’t have much of,” the potential danger I intended to reference was the lack of rainfall, not the use of water from creeks and rivers for crop protection. I apologize for the misconception.

The subject of using water for this purpose and the argument that it poses a potential threat to native fishes is a much bigger one than I could—or should—cover here. But if you would like to get a few more details, the Press Democrat published this article last October. It will give you a better idea about what Dave mentioned. And I for one would like to thank him for pointing out my mistake so that I can learn from it.

The best part of working at Jimtown isn’t the killer food or the supportive environment, although those are both wonderful things for which I was immensely grateful during that year. No, the best part are your regulars. There was Julian and his double-shot mocha breve. Carolyn and her half a tuna sandwich on wheat with extra pickles. Alice with her turkey chipotle and grilled onions. Robert, who always comes in for a cup of coffee right around 9:30. Liz, who spends an hour or so with a bowl of soup every afternoon. These are your neighbors, the familiar faces that keep you coming back to work every day.

And among these faces was one with which you’re all probably familiar: sometimes blonde, sometimes brunette, but never without a bright smile, her cowboy boots, and pearls. Over the year that I worked at Jimtown, Corinne was someone I always looked forward to seeing (she’s a pulled pork sandwich without the roll, with potato salad instead of cole slaw, by the way. Oh, and iced chai in midwinter, too). Sometimes she would come in with then-baby Beatrice, sometimes on her own. But in the middle of a winter that was pretty cold and dark, while my friends from high school were finishing up the last of their undergraduate studies, and a time when I personally had way too much going on in my head, chats with Corinne were always the highlight of the day. In fact, on my lunch break, there was a good chance you’d find me in the Hawkes tasting room, probably being more of a distraction than anything else.

Summer of 2009 came and went. One last turn as music director, and then I packed up and migrated south to Franz Josef for the winter. And when I came back in May of 2010, Corinne was there with the same welcoming smile. And with even better news: if I played my cards right, she and I could be coworkers. I guess that worked out, because here I am. And it’s been wonderful working with her for the last eighteen months. She is the most sincere, patient, genuine person I know, whether it was the time I forgot to send wine for someone’s wedding and she had to take it in with her before work, or that time we were carpooling back from a Sons of Doug concert in San Francisco at 2 A.M. with me fast asleep in the passenger seat. Corinne has been my touchstone since I started working here. She’s been my sounding board. My voice of reason. My Encyclopedia Britannica (at least as far as the Wine Club goes). She’s also the only person I know who can use the phrase “spirit of aloha” and not make me roll my eyes.

And the reason I write all this is because, after four years with the Hawkes family, Corinne has decided it’s time to do the Next Thing™. We threw her a sendoff party at the Sonoma tasting room after Barrel Tasting last week that involved a lot of gluten-free grub and gin. There were tons of hugs and well-wishes from friends. My boyfriend Peter offered a rather bleak “tell her I said good bye” until I reminded him that we’ll see her next time we go visit his family on Oahu. It was a slightly bittersweet good bye, but Corinne’s excited to become a renewed resident of the fair state of Hawai’i, so if you’re ever headed down to Honolulu, be sure to check the beaches for our friend. She’ll be easy to find; just follow the sound of her cowboy boots and the spirit of aloha.

I thought about writing this post about a week ago while scrubbing down a barrel with sodium percarbonate. I had been packing a few shipments in the back room the day after the barrels had been brought over from the winery when all of a sudden the barrel of 2010 Stone Cabernet threw its bung. This happens from time to time, particularly with barrels shortly after they make the trip from the winery to the tasting room. They’re extra full at that point, and the tasting room is a little warmer than the winery, so the wine expands. What generally happens is the rubber bung gets thrown out of the barrel at some point, I find it on the floor, throw it in our high-temperature dishwasher to sterilize it, and put it back. What happened this time though was a small geyser of Cabernet erupted from the barrel, and since I just happened to be right next to the barrel, I found myself dripping with wine. The barrel was soaked, and the wall behind it had a spatter Dexter Morgan would have envied.

And that led to me scrubbing down a 600-pound barrel and thinking about what was inside it. The 2010 Stone Cabernet is one of our three vineyard-designates that we’re selling as Futures this year, Red Winery and Pyramid being the other two. The idea of Futures and the annual Barrel Tasting event that happens this weekend and next are both borrowed from France, where the early spring marks the opportunity for wine drinkers to go to wineries, check out the wines while still in the barrel. There, and here, folks who like what they try can purchase those wines, usually at a hefty discount. The tradeoff is that they pay up front, though they won’t receive the wines until after they’ve been bottled.

There are many reasons why people buy futures. Sometimes it’s just because they like what they try. But a lot of people buy futures in order to stock their cellars. And as I worked away at the magenta stains on the side of the barrel, I thought about the wine inside and decided there was a third reason to buy futures.

2010 was the summer I came home from New Zealand. It’s the year I started to work at Hawkes, and it’s the first vintage (of many, I hope) that I’ve seen through from start to finish with this company. I have a lot of strong feelings about 2010, and the wine in the barrels at the tasting room right now represents all the positive changes that I enacted on my return. So these wines feel like old friends, like family. And just like people, they’ll grow and develop, mature and improve over time. And what wine-lover wouldn’t agree with me that the wines in their cellars aren’t the exact same thing to them?

So that’s why I’m a bit jealous that everyone reading this has the chance to participate in the 34th barrel tasting and I don’t. I want to stock up on 2010s, so I’m hoping I’ll have the chance at a later date to get in on some Futures opportunities because this weekend and next, I’ll be at the Alexander Valley tasting room talking 2010 Cabernet with anyone who wants to hear about it. And trust me when I tell you, you don’t want to miss out on these wines.

I knew this day would come eventually. I just wasn’t sure what the cause would be. I’ve known for quite some time that my job is pretty awesome. I mean, it’s a dead giveaway when folks who retire to Sonoma County take on a job like mine for fun. But my job in particular really does come with perks that others in a similar position just don’t have. Like who I work for, for starters. Or the fact that at no point have I ever had to pretend to like any of the wines I’m selling (and I’m the first one to admit that if we were slinging some butterball of a Chardonnay, I’d be lying through my teeth if I told you I enjoyed drinking it). Working next door to where my boyfriend works is also nice, not to mention the view out the windows of the tasting room get more breathtaking with every passing season.

But this past Tuesday I experienced it, finally. The ultimate. The be-all and the end-all. The moment where I realize I would finally get to say it and really mean it. And so I’ll say it now, without a trace of irony, with no intention of being boastful (well, not much), and without intending to be smug (sort of):

We really do live the rockstar life out here. Honestly. My friend Mark Blanchard said it in those words the other night, most likely as we were all downing glasses of 1991 Iron Horse Joy! And you know why? This is what Valentine’s Day was for me: four glorious hours with three very good friends eating incredible food at the Jimtown Store and drinking killer back-vintage wines from my very own employer. Seriously, guys, this happens all the time, and it will never, ever get old. You should consider joining me next year. It’ll knock your socks off.