Let us say that I’m a “friend of the farmer” behind Stone The Crows. And let us say that the “farmer” is a country gentleman who enlisted the Food & Wine magazine 2010 Winemaker of the Year,Mr. Thomas Rivers Brown to make this new Napa Valley boutique production Cabernet Sauvignon.
Thomas studied under Ehren Jordan (winemaker at Turley and Failla) and who by all accounts from Hardy Wallace, is a bonafide genius maker of fermented juice.
They key is pedigree. And then there’s this:
Three Twins Vineyard (photo courtesy of Stone The Crows website).
Tell me what kind of grapes wouldn’t be happy growing here? The Three Twins vineyard comprises five acres of vines planted on fairly steep hillsides way up Conn Valley road in St. Helena, CA. Underneath the cloud cover in the distance is Lake Hennessey, first cousin to Lake Berryessa. From these vines, comes forth a plush, elegant Napa valley Cabernet that over-delivers.
2009 Stone The Crows (Napa Valley)
Recently, I took the liberty of bringing along a bottle to a blind tasting that included some notable and well-established NYC noses (aka sommeliers). Here is a smattering of what the group thought:
Wine is 4-7 years old
Surprised by smooth, plush tannin
Bright cherry aromas
Surely an Old World wine
Et Voila! I revealed the wine and with the 2009 vintage clocking in at a mere 35 cases, as indicated on the bottle, excitement was had by all, especially in discovering that the wine was a young Napa Cab grown from vines neighboring a heavy-hitter like Continuum.
Stefan Blicker of BPwine.com and Wine Berserkers was equally impressed and you can read his review here.
225 cases will be made from the 2010 vintage and production is expected to reach a mere 500-600 cases in 2012. That being said, now is the time to find yourself on the list, especially if you’ve left your heart just north of San Francisco where some of the world’s most surprising, delightful and elegant boutique production wines are coming into fruition. And as the Three Twins Vineyard matures, this wine will grow in complexity – there’s already a good balance of minerality and fruit – it’s a feel-good wine that should accompany you out to dinner where corkage is reasonable and think: spectacular views, balcony-sipping, the feeling you have when you’ve just come from a round of croquet or decided to take Friday off (again). Yes, you just might do that – don’t forget your corkscrew. And don’t forget to visit the website and sign up on the list before it’s too late (retail price is TBA): www.stonethecrowswine.com.
Hands down, thumbs up for the best wine event in New York City: Edible Uncorked 2012.
Check out this time-lapse shot of the entire event by Max Flatow Photography:
I was there pouring for Millbrook Winery & Vineyards and can safely say that Millbrook’s New York State and Hudson Valley Region Chardonnay consistently impressed the fine guests that tasted them. Many an amateur connoisseur approached me asking what I was pouring. When I said “Chardonnay” their faces contorted. It was at that very moment, that I grabbed their glass and forceddemanded suggested that they try it. Heck, even smell it – and dump it out if it still “freaks you out.”
Well, the result time and time again was, “Oh… that ain’t bad! In fact, I kinda like it.” Yes, Mr and Mrs wine drinker! Yes – you like it! Chardonnay! Made in a Burgundian style with wood tannin nicely integrated into an absolutely aromatic and plush white wine from the Hudson Valley, a mere 90 minutes north of New York City.
“There you have it!” I would shout and point toward the heavens! And as people looked up, I would steal a sip myself from the bottle from my own glass.
This is a video I produced from last year’s festival – it was intended to get people in a wine mood!
Thursday, May 3, 2012 marked #LanguedocDay. We celebrated by exploring several different Languedoc wines (pictured below) and geeking out on the Languedoc region thanks to Approach Guides Wine app. In the house was David and Jennifer Raezer who created the app – so we had a great time chatting and sipping it up with them. On the left coast Rick Bakas and Forkly app were tearing it up at 1313 Main, a winebar in downtown Napa. From coast to coast we produced a lot of tweets, instragrams, pinterest and facebook posts. Thanks to these fabulous tweeters who socialized the night away:
About 10 weeks ago, Chef Rob McCue (Hell’s Kitchen, Fox) and Chef Adam C. Banks (Roble & Co., Bravo TV) summoned me to John Allan’s, a gentleman’s den nestled amidst the towering cathedrals of midtown Manhattan.
There was a pool table, a comfy leather couch and far too many amber elixirs (neat) to go around the room. I hadn’t seen Chef McCue since this collaboration from September 2011. McCue introduced me to Chef Banks and spoke of an epic culinary adventure, that could potentially use my creative stamp. The centennial anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic was to be April 14th of this very year, 2012. To commemorate the night, he and Baks were planning to serve the very same meal those fateful first-class diners enjoyed before the inevitable demise of her majesty Titanic.
Interesting, I thought. But, why? What would be the purpose of re-creating a meal where the dishes themselves are by today’s standards, mildly interesting? What would the great people of this upstanding nation think, or how would they respond to a group of rogue culinary masterminds plotting to dish up the Titanic’s last meal? (I heard the voice of Jeff Morgan, a good winemaker friend whom I’ve turned to for advice in recent months, ask, “Was it Kosher?”)
The answer came to me after those burning amber waves of grain slowed my mental process down to the tune of a noble cause: Yes. Yes, we can I thought! Yes, we can recreate the last meal served aboard the Titanic, if… if…if and only if we dedicated ourselves to a far greater cause: to re-imagine the last meal as if it might have been served “today.“
Let us imagine that the R.M.S. Titanic had passed the iceberg and sailed into New York; if she were still out roaming the seas today, carting passengers to and from the coasts of the world. We would pay homage to the Titanic by focusing on the jubilant moments during that final meal, before the threat of danger was prevalent and when nothing by exuberance and ecstasy filled the hearts of the souls aboard the ship. To be aboard the Titanic, meant to be sailing upon a vessel the entire world was curious about – a veritable Ark, that sadly betrayed its passengers. However, by tapping into the energy and excitement that surely permeated her walls during these exultant moments, we would memorialize the passengers and crew in uplifting fashion.
The menu, it was decided, would be composed of the very ingredients and components from the original First Class menu (copies survived in pockets of a few who escaped). Our twenty-first century version would condense 11 courses to 7, and elevate the cuisine to modern standards of culinary deliverance. The next eight weeks would prove to be a Titanic undertaking, indeed.
In my mind, the beginning of this journey was marked by what I believed to be the most important questions to ask: What wines will we serve – and why? No record exists of the wines that were paired with the many meals served. There are accounts from The White Star Line’s distributors of what had been purchased and what was on board: mainly French, Italian, German and Portuguese wines. Enter: the Galloni’s. That’s right, Antonio Galloni.
On our behalf, they reached out to a distributor whose wines fit the bill of what we were hoping to accomplish with respect to pairings. I’m incredibly thankful to the Galloni’s for having made an important introduction, and from there we began to assemble our wines. To help complete that task, enter: Master of Wine, Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan.
The stunning, lovely, brilliant, Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan, Master of Wine (and lover of cocktails).
Jennifer is truly Master of the House (I’m singing Les Mis in my head) and her enthusiasm and support turned an evening of impressive wine pairings into an evening of brilliantly planned and thought-out pairings. Her goal was to help source wines from brands that existed in 1912 or before. Trying to source actual wines from 1912, and enough to pair each course for 80+ diners, was well out of our budgetary means and frankly unrealistic (we were this close ( ) to landing that $250,000 sponsorship from NASA – alas, another time). Jennifer’s approach made sense, and all our combined efforts produced this fabulous list of wines/courses:
First Course
Oysters a la Russe
Local Long Island Oysters, Tomato, Vodka, Horseradish 2009 Domaine Ferret Pouilly Fuisse (First Class) 2008 Domaine Ferret Pouilly Fuisse Les Menetrieres. (VIPs)
Second Course
Consomme Olga
“Vesiga,” Celeriac Root, Vegetable Garni 2006 Alvear Fino (First & VIP Class)
Sixth Course
Squab & Watercress
Asparagus, Squab Reduction 2009 Joseph Drouhin Chorey les Beaune (First Class) 2009 Joseph Drouhin Gevrey Chambertin (VIPs)
Dessert Course
Mock Waldorf Pudding, Suspended Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly, Eclairs Taylor Fladgate 10 year old tawny (First Class) Taylor Fladgate 40 year old Tawny (VIPs)
And what is stellar wine without a stellar wine-pouring team? I assembled a group of some of New York’s finest Somms and impresarios, who together bedazzled our guests with their wine-speak and exemplary service. They shall be named:
Without the support of these upstanding libationists, I would not have been able to focus on my most important and immediate task at hand: to prevent the Titanic from sinking.
In his book, From Time to Time, author Jack Finney reveals the story of a government agency dubbed, The Project, in which Einstein’s theories of time, space and travel are employed to transport members of The Project back in time. The Project’s process of transporting a person back in time is rooted in deep mediation practices, imagery and the presence of a “gateway,” a place that exists in the present and in the past. Some examples are the Statue of Liberty, The Dakota, certain areas of Central Park, etc. For one to be successful in traveling back to another time, one must be present in one of these gateways and in practice, settle into a state of mental deceleration. That is: to let the present move ahead and let the past catch up. Through self-hypnosis and meditation, one has the ability to latch onto “threads” of the past, according to Finney, and connect to and exist in another time.
The evening of April 14, 2012 – the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic – presented a gateway and the potential to change history in a serious way – I set out to do just that. To help in my righteous quest, to assist me in dreaming the impossible dream, was the Captain of the R.M.S. Titanic and the Jotta Girl, a character from Finney’s book:
In the words of Neil Diamond, “I’ve got an emptiness deep inside and I tried: but it won’t let me go.” And so, to help me “let go,” came the generous support of one of my best, best friends in the world: an amber wave of grain, a mountainous glass of majesty, the color of a California sunset, a libation that has been in existence since the 1800s, well-sipped over the evening to help settle me in under the influence of a decelerated state of mind, ole faithful: Glenmorangie.
Finally, underscoring the evening – the journey that is – was perhaps the finest addition to the entire Dine Titanic fete: Chrome Canyon featuring Icky Doom of Shad[]wb[]x (computer) and Megan Sears (cello). The account of the musicians playing as the ship sank is essentially common knowledge – and the moment is memorialized in James Cameron’s leviathan of a movie. Instead of a string trio or quartet, eerie sounds, ethereal sounds, sampled air, ocean and bits of “Nearer My God To Thee” were sampled into hypnotic, persistent, dark undercurrents of depth-inducing sounds. They looked like this:
And with that, good reader, good wino, good foodist, good friends, I leave you to a short documentary of my experience and a rhetorical question: what do you recall about the Titanic? Is it possible that some of you now have a memory of her docking in New York City in 1912?
Millbrook Vineyards & Winery - Hudson Valley, New York State
Millbrook Vineyards & Winery is a mere stone’s throw from the former farm-land of good old New York City. They are the pioneer grape grower of the Hudson Valley, begat by John S. Dyson in 1985, who also happened to coin the I “Heart” New York campaign we see so commonly attached to car bumpers. At Millbrook it is attached to wine glasses:
Tasting glasses at Millbrook
John was an agricultural genius, and as dairy farms were suffering in the 80′s, John saw the potential to turn the Hudson Valley into a premier farm region known for much more than its dairy farming. Enter: Millbrook Winery.
I recently had the opportunity to visit and taste through Millbrook’s entire portfolio. I was absolutely thrilled by their Chardonnays – which are vibrant, crisp and have a classic cool-climate Chardonnay nose. And their New York State Pinot Noir is alone worth a trip. Speaking of…
We all know just how lovely New York City is during the hot summer months. And if trips to Coney Island and Jones Beach are getting old, how about hop on the Metro North to Poughkeepsie (for those of us without cars) and let a shuttle bus drive you through green mountains toward a winery where you could taste wine, have lunch at the vineyard grill or better yet – cultivate your own vines from bud-break to harvest and take home a case of wine while you’re at it.
Inside Hook has the scoop on a Wine Growing Boot Camp Millbrook is offering — periodic Saturdays from April to July, harvest in October and a final trip in 2013 to bottle.
Winemaker is John Graziano who’ll take you under his wing – and with 25 years of winemaking and growing experience at Millbrook, you could say he is pretty much one with the vines up there. Tell em, “Jonny sent me,” and they’ll put you to work.
Love to see these kinds of displays in the winery.
View of the tasting room.
By the way: Millbrook is part the estate properties also in possession of Williams-Selyem and hence, a good deal of it is available at Millbrook, which is really kind of amazing.
My visit was during one of the only snowy weekends. Was exciting to be amidst vines even though I could see my breath.
