How’s your summer going? Is it summer? Judging by most of the conversations I’m having, it’s a summer like no other … I do not count among my friends or acquaintances anyone who remembers the global pandemic of 1918-1919.
As usual, I’ve been tasting a lot of wines, for review purposes and otherwise, and every time I sit down to write about them, I hear a voice in my head saying something along these lines: “Wine? You are writing about wine? The world is falling apart, the alleged leader of the U.S. performing on par with the leaders of Russia, India, and Brazil, a pandemic is killing hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens, and you are extolling the wonders of Riesling?”
I listen to the voice, and I know it has a great point. “I am writing about wine, I respond to the voice, but I am also working on a piece that will attempt to lay out my emotions and thoughts about the chaos and dysfunction we are all experiencing.” The voice grows quiet, for a moment …
Yesterday, I published Wine Talk, this one featuring Bibiana González Rave, and today I’m going to sample one of her wines, a Syrah. She makes a Sauvignon Blanc that I wish everyone could taste. Get to know her, and buy some of her wines.
My Summer Wine Guide was published last week, at PaperCitymag.com. It is a selection of bottles I love, wines from, among other places, Italy and Oregon and California and Germany. Give it a read here.
I love to talk about wine with people who share my passion for it. We open bottles, we trade stories about travel and soil types, terroir and residual sugar, and we talk of taste and food and restaurants. We recommend wines to one another, we drink, and we learn a lot.
In Wine Talk, I introduce you to some of my friends, acquaintances, and people I meet as I make my way around the world, individuals who love wine as much as I do, who live to taste, who farm and make wine. You’ll appreciate their insight, and I hope you’ll learn something from them as well.
The first time I drank a wine made by David Ramey was epiphanic. I recall that I took a few sips, then put down the glass, savoring the whole of the moment. “This stuff is quality,” I said to myself. It was probably early in 2003, in Brooklyn, during dinner at home. A friend had brought the bottle of Chardonnay with him, and we were cooking flounder. It was a perfect wine, a perfect fish, and a perfect evening.
I love these wines.
Since then, I have opened and enjoyed many bottles produced by Ramey Wine Cellars, and they’ve never disappointed. Pinot Noirs, Chardonnays, Cabernet Sauvignons, Syrahs … not one was lacking.
I have written about Ramey and his wines, and I’ve read a lot about him and his approach to winemaking. This past September I met him at his winery, in Healdsburg, California. Angela, my wife, and I walked the short distance to the facility from the house in which we were staying, and Ramey, who was out front with members of his team, invited us to share their harvest-lunch food and wine. Sitting there, my mind went briefly back to that evening in Brooklyn, and the Chardonnay. It was as if a journey 17 years in the making had reached its destination.
Claire and David Ramey
After lunch, we went upstairs to Ramey’s office and had a comprehensive tasting. Ramey talked about his relationships with growers and other winemakers, and he enthusiastically took us through the bottles. It was a productive afternoon.
David Ramey is a generous and inspiring winemaker.
Ramey founded Ramey Wine Cellars with his wife, Carla, in 1996, and before that worked with Matanzas Creek, Chalk Hill, Dominus Estate and Rudd Estate. He holds a graduate degree from U.C. Davis — his thesis, written in 1979, is a seminal one, and if you want to learn how aromas evolve in wine, read it.
And Ramey Wine Cellars is a family affair; Carla and the couple’s children, Claire and Alan, are integral to the enterprise, and more than a few Ramey employees have been with the winery for nearly two decades.
Ramey’s demeanor is relaxed but exact; while he guided us through the tasting that afternoon he answered my questions with directness and clarity. He is a man who clearly loves what he does for a living, and what he bottles is a delicious demonstration of that love.
We left Ramey that afternoon with a recommendation for dinner that evening, Baci in Healdsburg. The man has great taste.
Let’s see what Ramey has to say in Wine Talk:
James Brock: Tell us about three wines you think are drinking well at the moment. What makes them worthwhile? How about a food pairing for each one?
David Ramey: Well, I assume you’re asking about our wines, so I’ll answer to that: 1) 2017 (or 2016) Fort Ross-Seaview Chardonnay, $42, widely available — or directly from us, www.rameywine.com. 2) 2017 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, $50, somewhat available, or from us. 3) 2015 Napa Valley Cabernet, $62, fairly available, or from us. Foods, in sequence: Chard — any seafood — salmon, crab, lobster, shrimp, scallops, halibut, sea bass. Pinot — almost anything! Cab — you know the drill — beef, lamb, chicken. For all three, nothing spicy hot or sweet (except the Pinot, which goes great with Thai).
JB:If cost was no consideration, tell us the one bottle you would add to your personal collection, and why?
DR: A 1989 Petrus, because Carla and I were married in Montagne-Saint-Émilion while working chezMoueix, and she picked those grapes.
JB: What is your favorite grape, and why?
DR: I’m loving cool-climate Syrah these days … (plus the odd bottle of Brunello).
JB:How about one bottle that our readers should buy now to cellar for 10 years, to celebrate a birth, anniversary, or other red-letter day?
DR: Our Pedregal Vineyard Napa Valley Cabernet, any vintage.
JB:Where is your go-to place when you want to have a glass or bottle (outside your home and workplace)?
DR: Baci in Healdsburg (closely followed by Campofina, Barndiva, and Willi’s Seafood & Raw Bar).
JB:If there was one thing you wish everyone would keep in mind when buying and drinking wine, what is it?
DR: Just as when you (or at least I) buy a car —stretch just a little — spend a little bit more than you thought you should.
JB:What is your “wine eureka moment,” the incident/taste/encounter that put you and wine on an intimate plane forever?
DR: The long drive from Mexicali to Hermosillo in 1974, wondering what I was going to do next: The inspiration came to me, “Why not make wine?”
JB:What has been the strangest moment or incident involving wine that you have experienced in your career?
DR: I was monitoring the top of a 12,000-gallon tank of fermenting Chenin Blanc at Simi Winery in the early ’80’s, and we wanted to mix it, so a cellar worker put a propeller mixer into the racking valve down below. We turned it on and off slowly several times — no reaction. So we left it on longer … disaster! The overflow went for minutes; the aisle was 6-inches deep in wine. We lost a thousand gallons and learned that you don’t do that to a tank of fermenting wine.
JB: What is your favorite wine reference in a work of literature?
DR: “Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.”
And: “I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was Château Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company.”
One of the many great things about living in Los Angeles is that I am now much closer to Napa and Sonoma — not to mention Santa Barbara — and the wines and wineries there.
And the food. There are some outstanding restaurants in the Napa Valley, and the latest Wine Talk’s subject oversees the wine program at one of them, La Toque. Angela and I dined there on our honeymoon back in October, and we will most definitely return for another meal.
The milk-fed veal chop at La Toque (Megan Menicucci photo)
Richard Matuszczak poured some excellent wines for us during our evening at La Toque, including a Seavey Caravina. His selections paired beautifully with our courses, which included pork belly, shrimp, and mushrooms.
Matuszczak’s Wine Talk includes his take on Caravina, and some other great bottles, so give it a read, and make a reservation at La Toque.
One of the things I love about this crazy planet we call home is that our ancestors learned how to cultivate grapes and create wine. For thousands of years, vines growing in some of the most beautiful (and not so beautiful, in some cases) places in the world have mystified, confounded, pleased, nourished, and sustained multitudes of people: farmers, winemakers, drinkers royal and low, and all sorts of others in between have been changed by the grape. Those small orbs are miracles, worshipped by characters hailing from all walks of life.
I’ve been partaking of those miracles for a long time, since I was a high school student in the Rheinland Pfalz, home to, among other things, my favorite grape and wine, Riesling, and my Fußball team, 1. FC Kaiserslautern. I was introduced to both of them at around the same time, and though the team has been going through a period of crisis for too long now, a mere shadow of its Glory Days version, Riesling and her companions shine on.
God’s country, and home to some outstanding Rieslings. (Photo courtesy Germany.travel.com)
When I open a bottle of wine, I almost always think of the individuals who produced what’s in it. My mind wanders to the land on which the vines are growing and I mentally draw a picture of the harvest, imagine the tractors and baskets and weather and calloused hands. Without people, the wine would be nothing. Never forget that.
People. Beginning with the man — hand deformed on a battlefield in Germany — who sold me my first wine book (I recall still how he would hold the ink stamp he used to mark books purchased at his store), to Terry Theise and the woman who poured me a revelatory Crianza in a small tasting room in Rioja, people are the unifying factor in my journey with wine. There was the high school teacher with the cellar in the Pfalz who let me taste with him, and the restaurant owner in Florence who slipped a bottle into my backpack (he was, I guess, paying me back for the kindness I showed his elderly mother during my meal on that evening). Wine has been the common denominator in some of my most satisfying experiences and graceful memories, and I look forward to that continuing. That first book? “The Companion to Wine,” by Frank J. Prial.
Wine Talk, a series I started several years ago, is still going strong, and, similar to the world of wine, it has few limits. In it, I’ve introduced readers to scores of people and vintages, and I’ve made some friends. Their insights and recommendations and passions are laid down for the record, and I’m happy to put some of them (plus a few pieces on bottles I’ve enjoyed) in one place for your approval.
Below you’ll find Chris Nishiwaki, Donald Patz, Gerry Dawes, Vanessa Treviño Boyd, and David Keck, to name but a few. You’ll also, I hope, find the inspiration to go out and buy a few bottles based on what you read. Please create some graceful memories of your own. (And stay tuned for more Wine Talk.)
Back in December 2016, I accepted an invitation to taste some wines at Rosinka Wine & Tea House, a little place in Houston to which I had never been. I’d driven by the wine bar (yes, tea is also sold there) several times, but never had the time to stop, so was happy to accept. On the evening of the tasting, Angela and I arrived and encountered Nicholas Cain, the man behind the bar at Rosinka. He poured and we talked and I grew to like Cain more as we spoke. He was — and is — straightforward, friendly, devoid of pretension, and passionate about food and wine and making sure people enjoy them.
I knew he would be the perfect subject for Wine Talk, so here it is. Give it a read, then pay a visit to Cain at Rosinka. You’ll enjoy the wines and the conversation.
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