Remember when

Douglas handed me a piece of goat's milk cheddar on a slice of sour dough loaf bought from Sonoma’s gourmet store, Epicurean Connection, and poured me a tasting of Hawkes’ 2011 Gravel Bar Chardonnay. 

“Here, try this,” he smiled.

I sipped and savoured the wine, took a bite of the food, and enjoyed that sensation when time stands still as the wine, cheese and sour dough combined in my mouth delighting my tastebuds.

But of course time waits for no-one and in its constant steady march we are but passengers.

Perhaps this is why I can cast my mind back to similar occasions (like the one Douglas inadvertently had just imprinted on my memory).

Because how often can time stand still?  For wine enthusiasts, it can feel like it does when one partakes in a good wine.

I recall the glass of Prosecco, a varietal I was trying for the first time with my German friend Trixi, whom I had visited in her hometown of Frankfurt after meeting her the year before on a travel tour in Africa.

The bottle of Rose, my good friend from Sydney, Ischa, who had recently moved abroad and I shared on the embankment of an Amsterdam canal, under the diminishing light as a coveted July summer evening slipped by.

The sips of Penfolds Grange I snuck from my father’s glass when he had decided to splurge with his partner at the time, opening the $450 bottle over birthday dinner at a family pizzeria in Melbourne.

For me, many memories partner with wine along with music, people and travel.

I listened to Portishead’s debut album Dummy, over and over again in the Berlin flat of an Irish architect I’d met while backpacking around Europe, and again in the upscale east side Manhattan apartment ANZ had provided for dad during his six weeks working in New York. 

I sipped red wine from my local gastro pub, Lamaros, in South Melbourne and listened to Mumford & Sons as I packed up my home of six years to travel India and eventually relocate to the States.

Good wine makes lasting memories and one can’t argue, it’s best to bottle that. 

Photo - Ischa's lovely painted toenails in Amsterdam that sunny July day in 2008 with our rose.

Wine tasting

The first time I went wine tasting was as a tag along ‘plus 1’ on my friend’s work wine tour.

Justine was working at global law firm, DLA Phillips Fox, and its Melbourne office of young lawyers had rented a tour bus and guide to take us for a day’s tasting in Victoria’s Yarra Valley.

A group of rowdy young women enroute and back made for enjoyable times at the wineries. 

Justine and I have gone onto more wine adventures together – one where we drove for three and a half hours with our friend Renato and his friends, just to experience the lunch we’d read about in newspaper reviews at one of Victoria’s wineries.

Of course wine tasting allows a wonderful avenue for romances to blossom and couples to strengthen bonds and friends and family to make nourishing memories.

Many a wedding reception has taken place at a winery – and it’s also an opportunity to do something nice with your parents - guaranteed both parties will enjoy. 

Hawkes’ winery has the good fortune to see such gatherings pass in our tasting rooms every day.

Wine tasting has something for everyone, including the solo wine taster.  

Why not treat yourself to the nectar of the gods next time you’re walking by a winery?

Photo - partners in crime when it comes to sharing good wine and times: me, Renato and Justine (albeit at the races this occasion and not wine tasting).

An Australian in Sonoma

“So has anyone commented on your accent yet?” my 23 year old friend from Boston, Andrew, asked me recently via a skype session.

“No, no-one,” I say. 

Andrew has somewhat of an obsession with Australians.  I met him while he was doing an internship at the company I was working with in Melbourne and despite our 15 year age difference; we bonded over Mad Men. The friendship was solidified when he introduced me to Game of Thrones and further endorsed Breaking Bad (my friend Renato had long been telling me I must watch it too).

Andrew had the typical American drawl and as a typical Aussie, I chose a nickname for him – not particularly original – I called him “Boston”.

Boston is now back in Boston, working in a great job after completing his information systems degree at Carnegie Mellon.  Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, long distance friendships are made relatively easy these days – something called facebook?

In anycase, it’s always stuck with me that Andrew liked the way I speak.  Specifically, he liked the way I speak, because it’s with an Australian accent.

It was not until my first Saturday at Hawkes tasting room that I finally witnessed the true American amour for my accent.

Even though I’d been travelling through the States since March, people had obviously resisted commenting on it as an everyday citizen.  But working in the tasting room – it would appear I’m open game for inquiry.

“Where are you from – New Zealand or Australia?” one taster would ask. “Is that an Australian accent?” another would ponder.  “Whereabouts in Australia are you from?” was the most frequently asked, followed by “Oh, I’ve not been to Melbourne – or I’ve been to Melbourne!”

An Aussie in Sonoma is supposedly a curious thing.

Photo - me, pouring wine at Hawkes tasting room in Sonoma.

Napa vs Sonoma

I liken it to city mouse vs country mouse.  Sonoma is the country mouse but he’s sure dressed well.  Downtown Napa feels like it has extra gloss - town in Sonoma while so pretty – has more of a village feel.  And to raise a family, they say it takes a village. Sonoma feels like that, like mama’s opened her arms and is giving you a big, warm hug, whereas in Napa it feels like all the mamas are probably in pilates class.  

Napa is gorgeous country.  But it has a BIG reputation, and therefore it has to be a little bit snooty to live up to that, don’t you think?  I still think St Helena (in the Napa Valley)  - a stunning boutique town - and the Silverado Trail which is a long road with these huge, gorgeous Napa wineries lined up side by side is the closest piece of vista heaven in wine country I’ve come across in California. 

Photo - Regusci winery - Silverado Trail, Napa Valley

 

Time to settle the ‘Sideways’ score

After the film Sideways, word reached all the way to Australia that winemakers in the US were having a hard time shifting Merlot sales. Conversely around the same time as the film’s release, Pinot Noir sales surged.

I am now in California working at Hawkes’ tasting room in Sonoma and thoughts drift to the 2004 film.  It’s come up in conversation a couple of times with patrons and even though the two lead characters, Miles and Jack, didn’t reach this far north in their wine travels (they travelled Santa Barbara wine region), the running thread of ‘Pinot is good, Merlot is bad’ still sticks nearly 10 years from the film’s release.

“So, why did he have such an aversion to Merlot?” I ask my tasting room partner Douglas, a Sonoma local.

The he I’m referring to of course is wine-aficionado, Miles, who has a bordering on neurotic dislike of Merlot.

Let me segue to the Merlot we’re serving in Hawkes’ tasting room.  Our merlot grapes are grown on clay and shale, and make the best tasting grape possible.  The current release 2008 Merlot we’re serving in the tasting room is a superb drop.  I bought a bottle after my inaugural Hawkes’ tasting and selfishly enjoyed this by myself one weekend at my friend’s cute little art deco apartment in the Marina District I rented from her while she herself was at a bunch of wineries.

Douglas had a good theory.

“Well, for a long time, everyone was drinking Merlot. And it’s an easy grape to grow, so there was a lot of Merlot produced in California.  But not all Merlot produced tasted good. In fact, a large percentage of it was pretty bad.  So people, discerning as they are, were turned off.”

An irony in the film however, and the last laugh with Merlot, is that the red wine Miles so coveted and drank after the wedding of his best pal, is (I hear) a Merlot blend.

Photo - scene from the film Sideways.