While I was waiting for the pourings to begin, I was actually pretty hungry and figured I'd be better off if I had some food in my system (little did I know about those big $1 hot dogs down at CalMart), so I decided to pop into Checkers, a restaurant on Lincoln Ave (the main street through Calistoga) which I had often walked past but never been to. Something about the whimsical, casual, "diner-like" appearance of it always made me skeptical. But I'm glad I gave it a shot!
The place was nicer inside than I expected, and the menu also more interesting than I had anticipated. The butternut squash ravioli with roasted chicken sounded interesting, but I was in the mood for a sandwich so I went with the leg of lamb sandwich and it was really a good choice! First of all, they brought out some bread and it turned out to be focaccia -- which is often hit-or-miss; focaccia seems to often suffer from being stale, or overcooked, too dense or too chewy or too dry. Not here! This focaccia was super light, fluffy, spongey, and delicious... it might just be the best focaccia bread I have ever had.
EDIT: I did go back for another lunch, and the leg of lamb sandwich was just so perfect that I didn't bother trying anything new -- except this time I got a cup of soup with it instead of salad. It was a white bean soup, and I was right: better than their salads. And I took a photo of the sandwich this time! Look at all that fluffy bread and roasted garlic...
Today marked the beginning of Calistoga's annual two-day "Mustard, Mud, and Music" weekend involving wine and mustard tastings and live jazz scattered at different venues throughout Calistoga.
I can only presume that this is part of the purpose of the event: to draw people into the boutiques and shops and restaurants. Unfortunately for me, many of these are places I would never normally visit if they weren't pouring wine inside: "Mudd Hens" sells bath, spa, and beauty products; "Mud Puddles" being a clothing store for young children; "Sugardaddy's" and "Attitudes" being fashion boutiques; and "Ace Hardware" simply being a weird place to have wine, though this is one of the local establishments I've found a need to visit on occasion.
Wineries included many of the local tasting rooms but also several small-scale or custom-crush pourers who don't even have a tasting room, so I wanted to be sure to give some of those a try and figured I could save visiting the existing tasting rooms for another day. The wines I tried were: Envy Wines, Raymond Vineyards, Alienor, W.H. Smith Wines, Castello di Amorosa (because it's normally $25 to visit and taste, so I wanted to a sneak preview to see if it's even worth tasting there!), August Briggs, Madrigal Vineyards, Kenefick Ranch, Laura Zahtila, Bennett Lane, Casa Nuestra, Sterling Vineyards, and Tofanelli. I didn't bother with Chateau Montelena because I've tasted at the estate and, famous as they may be, the wine was not great (despite being way overpriced); Frank Family Vineyards was also pouring, and I do like their wines but have already tried them before.
As for music, it was certainly nice to have around... I didn't sit and concentrate on any one performer, other than spending about 10 minutes listening to Susan Sutton (keyboard and vocals, with accompanying upright bass) at the Brannan Cottage Inn, because it was a nice, relaxing, secluded environment and the mellow music was great to accompany some chilled-out wine sipping. I was also impressed by Bob Culbertson's fancy fingerwork on the "Chapman Stick", a string instrument in which you play notes with both hands simultaneously. In this way, it's like a guitar but almost played more like a piano. Culbertson was certainly a pro at it.
This morning I had a seriously hankering for a shot of espresso. I considered going to the Calistoga Roastery, but there is another small, relatively new coffee place in town which I've walked past on several occasions and been somewhat curious about... and the nice thing is that it's on my walking route from the bus stop to the school, so I decided today was the day to give that one a try.
I wouldn't say the Calistoga Roastery is "corporate", but Yo El Rey is even more bohemian; it feels more like the small hippie (and hipster) hangouts you might find dotted around Haight Street or Potrero Hill in San Francisco. If you have dredlocks and/or are a vegan, this is probably the place for you. But the atmosphere and (particularly) the organic free trade coffee comes at a price. The menu is more sparse and the prices higher here than at most coffee shops. I can normally get a shot of espresso for $1.50-$2.00, with 50 cents for an extra shot. At Yo El Rey, it's $2.50 for an espresso and $1 for an extra shot.
Considering that, I decided to go with a cappuccino, which was priced more on par with other places at $3.00. It was nicely made and I have to admit that the coffee had a good flavor (less "burnt" tasting than Starbucks and probably less so than Calistoga Roastery, as well)... it was served up with some sort of small cookie. Judging from the strange, brittle consistency of it, I can only conjecture that it was vegan and maybe even gluten-free, but I don't know.
Every day I stand outside of a little winery on the corner that says "Vermeil Wines / OnTheEdge" with a little logo of a football. This is because it is owned by Dick Vermeil, famed NFL coach and winner of Super Bowl XXXIV (and native Calistogan).
Since I had an hour to kill after work before the bus arrived, I decided to finally stop in and sample the wares, of which there is quite a variety. There is a chalkboard sign outside mentioning the variety of reds, whites, sweet, dry, etc. wines. Perhaps their signature -- and a varietal you don't always find everywhere -- is Charbono, so I decided to try that along with some Zinfandel; there are far too many wines to try them all, especially considering all of the different vintages they have open for some of the varietals -- such as charbono and zin. They don't have free tastings for Napa Neighbors, and the $10 tasting fee lets you choose 4 wines to try. I figured I would give those varietals a go for some side-by-side vertical comparisons, and come back another time to try others.
I was informed by MarySue Frediani (who seems to be the main manager of the tasting room -- I always see her in there) that Trent Green was a business partner for the winery, and that he happened to be in town visiting and would be swinging by at some point. I figured I wasn't going to wait around for that but my leisurely tasting went on for a little longer than I had expected (somehow this tends to happen) and I saw my bus pull up when I still hadn't quite finished or paid, and wanted to take some photos. So I figured I'd just stick around for a while longer and wait for the next bus (they come every hour on the hour). Meanwhile, I went to the memorabilia wall to read about the history and family tree of the Vermeils and Fredianis, which is followed by photos from Dick Vermeil's past such as his coaching at Napa Valley College, Stanford, UCLA, Philadelphia Eagles and, of course, the St. Louis Rams. While I was looking around, the door opened and a crew of 5 or 6 people rolled in... sure enough, it was Trent Green and company, greeted by the server and MarySue and starting to talk about this and that, leaving me pretty much ignored in the corner (which is fine by me. I would expect nothing less...)
On to the wines: the reds here, while definitely different from year to year, each have a certain quality I'm not sure I'm a fan of. I've noticed that wineries often tend to have an overarching style to their wines, regardless of varietal, that I can only presume reflects the personal techniques and preferences of the winemaker. In this case, the wines reflect a style that I have encountered elsewhere -- lighter-bodied, but somewhat acidic, reminiscent of cranberry juice. This is not to say they are bad -- they don't actually taste like cranberries nor like plain fruit juice. I'm sure some people love this style (because, like I said, I've encountered it elsewhere), but I prefer wines to be not quite as tart and a little more "round" or smooth in the mouthfeel... but without biting tannins, so I'm sure it's not an easy feat to pull off. I'm also sure the charbono grape, itself, is a little bit to blame -- being a slightly lighter red, with a little bit of citrus/orange note to it. However, even the zinfandel here tastes far less lush and jammy than most zins I have tried.
Apparently bakeries are the hot new trend right now. Despite the fact that there are now two coffee shops in town, both of which sell some baked goods (muffins, quiche, etc.), there recently opened the "Village Bakery" on Lincoln Ave. From what I understand, I think it's a new branch of a chain of two bakeries open in Santa Rosa and Sebastopol.
I've been looking forward to today for a little over a week now. Why? Because a week or two ago, as I was casually waiting on Lincoln for the VINE bus to arrive, I noticed some banners hanging outside of the Calistoga Inn and Brewery across the street.
Occasionally they hang signs outside for upcoming special events. They caught my eye this time because there was not one sign but three: Super Bowl Party, Valentine's Day Dinner, and Brewer's Dinner. As much as I like watching football, I wasn't super excited about the Super Bowl this year, and I generally don't like watching it in the pubs -- they always get too cramped, overcrowded, people get grumpy. So I usually just watch it at home (but I gave up TV years ago) or at a friend's house (but I also gave up friends years ago). Valentine's Day is a similar story -- I've done the whole "going out on a Valentine's dinner date" thing, and it's simply overrated. The romance level actually goes down because suddenly everything is stressful -- there is the stress of competing for a reservation, the stress of higher-than-normal prices, the stress of expectations for the evening. No, thank you -- I think I'll just stay in and cook a nice meal and spend some time with my significant other.
We arrived about 15 minutes early. but the restaurant doors were shut and locked. There were plenty of people hanging out in the bar area, but there were no signs or indications of where we were supposed to go for the dinner. About 5 minutes prior to scheduled dinner time, we went in through the bar entrance and scoped out the dining area to see what was going on. Nobody was there. Eventually we saw a waiter and asked him about the dinner. He looked confused and said "Oh, uh... I don't know. Let me see what is going on." He came back and said "Yeah, they aren't ready yet. You can wait in the bar area." So we went and sat down. We waited for about 10 minutes and didn't see anything happen, but that bar area sure got packed. We decided to walk around and see what was going on (and almost walked out, since it was stressful and nobody was telling us anything) -- then the waiter saw us and said "Oh, it actually starts in here."
He informed Brad Smisloff (brewmaster) who was standing right there having one of his brews, and we headed to the back where they had out tables with big bowls of homemade potato chips with gorgonzola (this was the first course). Unfortunately, it was already packed with people by now (good thing we showed up early, eh? It did no good when nobody could tell us what was going on) but we managed to squeeze to the corner table where they were pouring the first beer: their "Blintzen IPA" which was a strong India Pale Ale serving as their seasonal winter beer. To my surprise, they were pouring full glasses! I had come to this expecting small samplers/tastings of each beer, but that wasn't the case so far. The chips and beer were good, but the stress of figuring things out and people crammed together like sardines were not so enjoyable. We tucked ourselves into a corner away from everybody (but near the chips) and waited eagerly for seating to begin.
The rest of the evening went pretty much as I'd expected, with Brad Smisloff coming out and giving a little speech about each course and the choice of beer to go with it, some info about the beer and why it was chosen. The one thing that did surprise me was just how much food and beer came out. It was a complete feast! They poured probably 8 ounces with each serving -- totaling probably about 48 ounces of beer over the course of the evening. I also didn't realize that is that this was their first Brewer's Dinner they'd ever held (I suppose this might explain the confusion and lack of guidance)! However, he did say they've wanted to do this for a while and they plan to make it a regular thing... so if anybody out there is reading this and likes beer, keep on the lookout for that! He said they plan to do it quarterly (I guess one each season). Heck, I might go to several of them if the menu and beers are changing.
Homemade gorgonzola potato chips, Blintzen IPA. Good pairing, chips were good, maybe could have used more evenly-dispersed cheese.
Needless to say, after all of this (and polishing off Sarah's barleywine), it would have been ideal if we had a local place to crash! Driving after this event is not advised. However, I had finished half of Sarah's beers, leaving her capable of driving home (and leaving myself feeling completely full and slightly giddy.)
While waiting for the 4:00 VINE bus from Calistoga to Napa today, I decided it was time to try some wines at the new tasting room along Lincoln Ave: Rios / Ochoa wines. These are technically two different wineries -- Luis Ochoa, a longtime farmer, owns Luis Ochoa Vineyards; the tasting room is shared with Rios Wines, LLC (aka Solovino wines) 
It can be a daunting task to get through a tasting of these -- especially if you are like me, not picky about varietals but simply curious to try them all because you never know which will yield an interesting, exemplary wine. There were a total of 11 wines for tasting on the counter! The good news is that I was riding the bus (not driving), and had no other tastings that day, so I decided to try most of them -- I skipped the Solovino crisp chardonnay and opted instead for trying the fuller-bodied Ochoa chardonnays.
The wines (by both wineries) are small-production and there is a lot of variety here under one roof -- even with grapes sourced from the same vineyards, there are vast differences between winemakers and vintages. Of the reds, my favorite was the zinfandel because it had a rich, typical zin flavor (ripe, dark berry fruit and a tiny bit of peppery earth), but my favorite overall was Ochoa's 2003 chardonnay... of which he seemed to be a fan himself, considering it was the one he decided to pour a small glass and partake of. The pourer told me it was their best-selling wine, and I have to say I really enjoyed it for its unique flavor -- it has some of the full, rich fruit so prominent in California chardonnay, but the first hit on the tongue was not fruit but rather rich, mellow, spicy sweetness, like butter toffee, or cinnamon caramel, or granny smith apples and dulce de leche. Overall I feel like the experience is something like drinking a glass of not-overly-sweet apple pie.
Sarah offered to pick me up and drive me home again (she doesn't get to drive up the valley every day, so sometimes she likes to do so because she says the scenery is relaxing -- and it is!)
I suggested we take the "back route" this time, driving down Lincoln (the main street through Calistoga) to the end where it meets up with Silverado Trail and taking that south. This is technically not the fastest way, but it takes you through a winding, scenic, somewhat secluded portion of Silverado Trail that most people don't ever see. 
Right next door is a small winery called "Lava Vine", which is where we parked and decided to go ahead and have a taste. The tasting room is a separate building in the back, behind the attractive old home and right next to some sort of orchard (olive grove?) We went inside and I was actually pretty surprised by how crowded it was! Granted, it's a small, quirky little tasting room -- only room for about 6 people at the tasting bar. 
So we took a seat and looked around and just waited patiently for an open spot and for the pourer to become available, then we sidled up and decided to share a tasting; tastings are $10, refunded with purchase of a bottle. Even though they don't do the Napa Neighbors program, I think this is a very fair tasting fee policy. The tasting consisted of a Syrah, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and a dessert wine (ruby port). They were out of whites for now, but the pourer said they do make a viognier and chardonnay which will be available in March. Also, since we were so curious about white wines, he poured us the last few drops of an open bottle of late-harvest semillon he had on hand.
To be honest, I was disappointed with this winery -- not with the tasting experience, which was fun and casual and I liked the tasting room atmosphere. But the wines themselves were simply not that good, yet had pretentious pricetags that were simply unwarranted. I noticed right up front on the nose of the syrah, before even sipping it, that it had a sort of hot, tart, prune-like scent. This is not entirely uncommon for syrah, but was far more pronounced with this one than most. Upon sipping it I said "This is... uh... different." And the pourer said "Really? It's actually a quite typical syrah, possibly one of the very purest expressions of the fruit." Hmm.. oh yeah? Where? Because I've had syrahs from France, California, and Australia, and the only ones that this one reminded me of are Yellow Tail and maybe Charles Shaw. The Lava Vine is better than the Charles Shaw syrah, which is horrible, but not any better than the Yellow Tail -- which retails for $7 while Lava Vine is $36.
At around 5:13 a fairly large building caught my eye. It looked new and I don't recall ever seeing it or the winery name before: B Cellars. The sign said "Open" but didn't list hours, so we pulled into the parking lot. There were plenty of people lounging around in the large tasting room, and the door was open and unlocked, but the sign said tastings ended at 5 pm, so we were confused but ventured in to take a look anyway. The pourer indicated that tasting had just ended for the day, so we said "Okay, thanks!" and turned to leave.
This place has clearly gone all-out with the marketing; they clearly know the value of visual appeal and sales. The room's architecture was nicely done, they had glossy full-color brochures outlining the blends (along with recipes and food pairing suggestions), and even the wine glasses seemed to be very high quality -- they were unique looking, delicate, lightweight and easy to hold. I think many wineries underestimate the psychological power (if nothing else) that the wine glasses have; whenever I have wine in a light, well-balanced glass like this, I notice it makes the wine itself seem smoother and well-balanced, as well. Even when I'm aware of the psychological mind trick, it still works on me. 
If you're ever in Calistoga and you drink coffee, there is a good chance you will end up at Calistoga Roastery. This is the local spot for coffee. There is no Starbucks or Peets in town (neither is there in nearby St. Helena). There are a couple other places that serve coffee: San Marco up the street is a small ice cream shop that also serves coffee, and Yo El Rey is a newer establishment across the street which has a more "indie" feel to it, with a focus on free trade organic coffee. But Calistoga Roastery is the biggest, the best known, and the most popular one. In fact, it was even featured in the TV show "Weeds"
For lunch today I decided to try another local eatery in Calistoga: Buster's Barbeque, located off of Foothill Blvd (hwy 128, which is what 29 turns into if you keep going straight past Calistoga), right after the turn for Lincoln Ave. into Calistoga (if you're heading north)
As soon as I rounded the corner on my short walk to the establishment, I could see the signature smoke signals of carnivorous delight climbing into the sky. When I cam close, I saw about 2 dozen heft slabs of meat slowly cooking on the outside charcoal grill they use, and they were being carefully turned and tended by one of the workers.
As I approached to order, the lady at the cashier gave me a look and said "Your day off?" Haha, she knew who I was! Like I said, Calistoga's a small town, and I teach every kid at the elementary school, so I guess I become pretty famililar (not that I knew which child she was a parent of. It's hard enough to remember 450 kids' names!)
Whenever I've been there, I just make a beeline for the taqueria counter -- which is never crowded, but I'm also usually not the only one who stops there for lunch. There's nothing fancy about it, but the food is decent and the prices are pretty reasonable (especially for Calistoga) -- about $6 for a burrito or $1.75 per taco (meat tacos on soft white corn tortillas). I like the fact that I can be adventuresome and try some of the traditional Mexican meats that you might not find elsewhere -- they have some of your standards, like carnitas (shredded pork), pollo (shredded chicken), and asada (beef), but then they also have pastor (one of my favorites -- marinated grilled pork pieces), and pollo asado (roast chicken), and then things get even more interesting with lengua (cow tongue), chicharron (fried pork rinds), buche (pork stomach), and cabeza (beef head).
