This past Sunday we participated in the annual Corona Creek Olive Harvest. Corona Creek, in addition to it’s excellent Pinot Noir vineyard, has an olive grove. Chris makes the most incredible olive oil out of these olives.
A crowd of about 50 volunteers descended on the olive grove early in the morning and got busy pulling, shaking and generally having a good old time helping Chris, the owner, bring down as many olives as we could before the lunch feast at noon.
Picking olives
Kathryn setting up the olive capturing tarp
Ben 'working'
french baby picking olives
One of the main reasons we elected to source grapes from Corona Creek is due to the fact that it is a small family farm with sustainable practices growing a variety of vegetables in addition to the grapes and olives. In other words, it is far from a mono culture farm. In fact, it is quite multi-cultural.
In any case, olive picking was a lot of fun. We met a lot of people from all walks of life. The kids and dogs had a great time through the trees and the vineyards and we learned a bit about what makes good olive oil while enjoying our fellow pickers’ company. Afterward we enjoyed a lovely meal along with some of Corona Creek’s own Pinot Noir. To top it all off, a lively singing trio was on hand to entertain the crowd during lunch.
Singing trio
Berkeley turkey
Everyone this time of year seems to be either writing or wondering about what wine goes with turkey. Personally, we always serve three types of wine for Thanksgiving at our house — a bottle of bubbly, a Chardonnay and a Pinot Noir. We open the sparkling wine to drink with appetizers while the turkey finishes in the oven. Then the Chardonnay (which goes well with traditional side dishes such as sweet potatoes) and the Pinot (which goes well with turkey) are opened and served with dinner. But you can find articles in the Wall Street Journal, Wine Spectator, SFGate, etc., to tell you what wines to serve at the Thanksgiving table.
What I want to tell you about is what went really well with Uzi’s famous spit-roasted pork loin seasoned with rosemary and garlic the other night–Pinot Noir. We opened a special bottle of premier cru Chambolle Musigny to go with it. And just to gauge our winemaking expertise against this Burgundy benchmark, we also opened a bottle of our 2007 garagiste Carneros Pinot Noir. Though they are very different wines and I almost hesitate to mention the two together in the same breath, they were both fantastic and both went splendidly with the pork.
So go cook one of these later this week when you’re tired of turkey and open up a bottle of Pinot Noir. And next year, when you’re planning your Thanksgiving dinner, consider a 2008 Stomping Girl Pinot Noir to go with the turkey.
Pork roast and Pinot
1991 Calera Mt Harlan Chardonnay
We recently had our good friends over for dinner and were looking forward to opening a special bottle from the cellar. It was a 1991 Calera Mt. Harlan Chardonnay we had picked up on a visit to the Calera winery last year. Calera has an incredible and inspiring story and their wines are really quite unique for California Pinots and Chardonnays.
Look closely at the picture above and you will see the large (some may say disturbing) amount of tartrates. Tartrates had solidified and ended up on the bottom of this old bottle of Calera. Looks bad but it is not a fault. It was a 1991 for god’s sake. And, in fact it is a testimony to the quality of the wine and the natural winemaking methods used. Read more about tartrates here. The Calera was fantastic and was a perfect match for rich halibut we served.
By the way, for those of you looking for Thanksgiving wines, an old Calera Chardonnay Mt. Harlan would make an excellent addition to your turkey dinner…so would a Pinot Noir.
