May 19, 2012 Lunch - Pinot Festival and Dinner – Salmon, Asparagus and sautéed Cippilini Onions.

May 19, 2012  Lunch - Pinot Festival and Dinner – Salmon, Asparagus and sautéed Cippilini Onions.

This full day of activity started with a stop at a church Barn Sale where I bought ties, and a pair of L.L. Bean Khaki pants.  Suzette bought scarves for handicraft projects for the seniors.

Then we went to Lemon’s Market in Philo.  The main reason for going was to buy sandwich fixings for tomorrow’s drive to Oregon.  When we arrived at Lemons we walked back to the meat counter and saw piles of fresh salmon steaks and fillets.  The Lemons have two fishing boats that bring in fresh fish and seafood. Today they had the freshet salmon I have ever had.  It had been caught last night and kept live in a tank on the boat until the boat arrived at the dock.  We bought a salmon steak that was a little over one lb. ($14.99/lb).  Then Suzette saw lovely fresh cippilini onions and said why not make a warm Salmon salad for dinner.

So I walked over to the vegetable area and found a bag of fresh baby spinach leaves and a beautiful bunch of asparagus.   We then went back to the meat counter and bought Molinari salami and sliced toma cheese and a tomato for the sandwiches and a lemon for the salmon.

            We then drove to Boonville and went to another yard sale, but it was all old junk like old tools.  A block away next to the Boonville Hotel, we stopped at the Boonville Farmers’ Market next to and bought a bottle of Tuscan field mix (five varieties of Tuscan olives) olive oil from Yorkville for $18.00.  Then we took all the groceries back to our room and put them in the refrigerator and got dressed for the wine tasting. We drove over to Goldeneye Winery at around 10:30 and checked in around 10:45 and then waited until 11:00 when the festivities began. 

            The wine tasting was held, as usual, in the Goldeneye Vineyard in a four sided tent with a central open area.  About 40 to 50 tables with wineries at each table lined the outer edge of the tented area on three sides with four food serving areas on inner edge and tables in the courtyard formed by the four sides of the tented area.  The front side of the tented area was the entrance and a silent auction area and wine glass distribution and payment area.  The wineries were lined up alphabetically with Balos at the beginning and Zine-Hyde at the end. The only wine being poured was pinot. We started drinking rosés both still and sparkling. The best rosé was Toulouse Winery’s and the best sparkling rosé was made by Handley Winery.  We then ate a plate of chicken mole with beet and carrot and cabbage slaw and white rice and a warm tortilla and salad. 

            Then we started into the red pinots.  Anderson Valley is the premier producer of pinot in the Country as far as I am concerned.  There not many pinots that we drank that were ranked less than 90 points by Wine Spectator or Parker. There were hundreds of great pinots, because many wineries were pouring samplings of their last four or five years’ (2005 or 2006 to 2011) production. Others wineries that had several properties were pouring from several of their properties, single vineyards like Block 5 and others who bought from growers like Ferrington and Londer were sampling their wine making by offering their wines from one year such as 2009 from each of three different growers’.    Even the new wineries, like Balos, offered at least two wines, a rosé and a red, but most offered three or four wines.  I have never been to a better offering of Pinots.  This is heady company where famous well financed wineries like Roderer and Goldeneye (Duckhorn’s Anderson Valley winery) get submerged by the mass of great wines.  At the end of the day I walked over to Londer and said hello to Larry Londer, who poured me a sample of his Londer 2006 Reserve.  A great wine with a rating probably around 95 that tasted clean and delicious but not exceptional in this rarified company, as it would anywhere else.             

            As for the food besides the black chicken mole, there was a table of cheeses and fruit.  The Point Reyes blue goat cheese was my favorite. 

            Also there was a table making queso fresco quesadillas with fresh handmade tortillas with black beans and organic salad and your choice of a tomatillo salsa verde or a pico de gallo red salsa.  Then in the other corner was a table with pork belly and cheese egg rolls and fruits and fresh vegetables like sugar snap peas.  As 2:00 approached we decided to go to Handley and Toulouse to buy wine, so we could hit the road early in the morning.  But then we saw the Mexican women making the fresh tortillas so we went over to the grill area a few feet outside an opening on one side of the tent and asked for one hot off the grill handmade tortilla. As usual the women obliged us and gave a hot tortilla which was lovely but too hot so I went to the quesadilla table and got a scoop of black beans and a dab of green tomatillo salsa and had a Mexico moment. 

At 2:00 we left and drove to Toulouse Winery and drank several more whites and bought a bottle of Dry Riesling for dinner and ordered a case of rosé to be shipped to our home.  We then continued west on Hwy 128 to Roderer Winery and tried a few wines. We were impressed with their L’ Ermitage, which is a little like a VC Grand Dame and decided to buy a Magnum of it for $92.00 for Willy’s graduation party, but as we were getting ready to pay, saw a Jeroboam sitting on a table in the tasting area.  I asked if it was a L’ Eritage and the pourer said, “No, it is a brut.”  So we asked to try the brut and when he poured it, it tasted bright and light and very clean and bubbly and drinkable.  So we got a little crazy and bought a Jeroboam of Brut for $120.00 (3.liters or 4 bottles of wine in one bottle).  We then asked about Chateau Ott, and the pourer said they had three bottles of 2008 left, so we purchased one of those also for $33.00 which is a great price. Chateau Ott is one of the greatest rosé wines in the world, it usually makes most people’s top ten list and is grown in Bandol, like Tempiers. 

Then we drove to Handley and tried several more wines and settled on two bottles of their sparkling Rosé and two bottles being offered on a close out at $12.80 2008 Ranch House Red that was 82% Pinot and staggeringly delicious.

We then went to John Hendy Woods State Park that had recently been saved fromclosure by the financial commitment of AndersonValley residents.  We walked for about forty-five minutes through groves of some of the largest Coastal Redwoods I have ever seen stretching along the western slope of the valley along Navarro Creek.  I didn’t measure any but there seemed to be lots that were over 300 feet tall.  Finally at around 8:00 we drove back to the room and prepared dinner. I peeled the cippilini onions and snapped and cut the asparagus stalks into ¾ inch sections.  Suzette washed the spinach leaves and I opened the Toulouse Dry Riesling. Then Suzette began sautéing the onions in olive oil and butter and then threw in the asparagus and a dash of wine and covered them to sweat them while I chopped up some fresh dill and parsley from the Nickless’ garden.  She piled spinach on plates and then started sautéing the salmon steak in olive oil.    After the salmon was cooked to pink on the edges she stopped cooking it and took it off the heat and made a sauce by adding a scoop of sour cream and the chopped dill and parsley and salt to the salmon cooking juices in the pan. When the sauce was ready, we laid the salmon on the spinach and slid the sautéed onions and asparagus onto the plate beside the salmon and poured a glass of Dry Riesling.  We thought the Dry Riesling was a little heavy and sweet for the sautéed salmon and only drank one glass each. But we agreed the salmon was the best we had ever tasted.  It was still uncooked in the middle and was as tender as any I have ever tasted.  It had no fishy flavor and as Suzette said, “It tasted like butter.”

            This is how Suzette and I like to travel. We rent a car and drive around looking at lots of things and buying food and wine.

Bon Appétit