If you’re searching for a review of Beaujolais Nouveau wines from the 2008 vintage and wound up here, I must admit that I haven’t yet reviewed the new vintage. But what I’d like to know is, Should I? Feel free to direct me by leaving a comment on this post.

Frivolous. Animated. Ritualistic.

No, it’s not a carnival I’m describing, nor a seance conducted in the Halls of the U.S. Congress.

It’s the third Thursday of November.

And that means that this year’s newest wine from France, the 2006 Beaujolais Nouveau, is frantically being shipped around the globe to a wine merchant near you.

These wines, made from hand-picked grapes (as is the custom in the Beaujolais region), have only been in the barrel about six to eight weeks. They’re not going to parallel the wares of the great Chateaux, I can firmly attest. More likely, they’re going to resemble a concoction akin to Kool-Aid, but with acid undertones.

Why on Earth would anyone drink so young a wine? Because Beaujolais Nouveau owes its easy drinkability to a winemaking process called carbonic maceration, also called whole berry fermentation. This technique preserves the fresh, fruity quality of the wine, without extracting bitter tannins from the grape skins.

Beaujolais Nouveau is meant to be drunk young. By most accounts, it should be consumed by the following May after its release.

That’s a pretty short-lived wine!

However, in some excellent vintages, such as the year 2000, the wine can live much longer and can be enjoyed until the next harvest rolls around.

I’m not sure if these answers adequately respond to the question. Nevertheless, many wine lovers will be rushing to their favorite wine merchants today to buy it. And I think I’ll be one of the many who will choose to drink it now.

If I can still get any tonight.

Yes, I’ll be participating in this lively ritual too. But because my fellow tasters have day jobs and limited evening schedules, I’ve decided that we should conduct our tasting tomorrow night, Friday, instead of tonight like a true Francophile will.

But even if I were a Francophile, I’d probably still not be so frivolous as to drink Beaujolais Nouveau more than once a year, especially when there’s all those “magnifique” Grand Crus from Pauillac waiting for me out there.

I guess tomorrow night I’ll be doing it for the bread, the cheese, and the camaraderie. And that’s what enjoying wine is all about.

******* UPDATE: I’ve now posted my ‘06 Beajolais Nouveau review.

~winehiker

• It’s Wine Blog Election Day! Make your vote count.
  Announcement: as of today, you can vote on your favorite wine blog!
  (tags: vote wine blog local events winehiker winehiking witiculture californiawinehikes.com)
• Why I love redwood trees
  These are Nature’s living cathedrals. Here’s why they’re worth visiting often.
  (tags: redwood trees california state parks californiawinehikes.com wilderness nature outdoors lifestyle hiking blog winehiker winehiking witiculture)

Many event planners in the wine industry favor Eric V. Orange’s Local Wine Events website to announce and list their wine-related events.

And well they should. After all, with 83,274 wine tasting and food listings since July 2000 (and counting), Eric’s site has been the go-to place for people who wish to find good wine- and food-related events around the nation. With articles, events, a classified section, and hundreds of events listed by locale, it’s easy to find a wine country dinner, a tasting, a barrel sampling, and more near where you are.

I’ve even posted winehiking events here, too, and I plan to post a whole lot more in the coming year.

Now, Mr. Orange (who calls himself “EVO”) has introduced a list of wine blogs on his site. What’s more, he’s allowed his readership to vote on their favorite blog (or blogger), which readers can do once every day if they’ve a mind to.

I hope you’ve a mind to! As I write this post, Winehiker Witiculture is listed as Number 19 on a list of 24 blogs. If you enjoy reading Winehiker Witiculture as much as I enjoy writing it, here’s a way in which you can show your appreciation and help me gain some welcome visibility.

You can vote anonymously. You’ll also send a message to readers of Local Wine Events that winehiking events are worth taking note of.

I sure appreciate your support, and I thank you a thousand barriques in advance!

~winehiker

• Trip report: It just wasn’t our Fault
  The challenge of keeping to the dim path while reveling in the glow of this elfin paradise bore the seven of us, seemingly, to a sidereal separation from earthbound worry. And then things changed abruptly.
  (tags: access autumn hiking blog wine blogger californiawinehikes.com winehiking Burrell School winery vineyard redwood trees outdoors nature wilderness winehiker witiculture)

Whether cool and breezy in mid-Autumn or hot and sticky in late Spring to mid-Summer, the heavy shade of The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park is often welcome to hiker and mountain biker alike. That shade is largely due to the untold populations of redwood trees that dominate the area, though Bigleaf Maples also do their share to offer mercy from the sun.

While beautiful and stately, the redwoods in this forest are often no more than 100 years old. As one walks steadily up the former railroad grade that is Aptos Creek Trail, one can only imagine what this forest may have looked like in the mid-19th century. That was before these trees’ massive forebears were harvested for the burgeoning lumber needs of San Francisco, Santa Clara Valley, and other local coastal hamlets.

Fortunately there are still first-growth redwoods nearby at Henry Cowell and Big Basin Redwoods state parks. These are Nature’s living cathedrals, and they are destinations in which I lead hikes a few times every year.

Why?

Because those old matriarchs are worth seeing. Because everyone owes themselves a moment of Nature’s living grandeur. Because they’re there.

Because I love knowing that they’re there.

Though I might have the disposition for it, I don’t, however, hug redwood trees. That is, not unless I’ve got a set of fine tweezers and a lot of time to kill.

See related trip report: It just wasn’t our Fault.

~winehiker

It just wasn’t our Fault today.
‘Twas a bit early and a bit chilly Sunday morning when I related my intentions to y’all about the day’s planned excursion through the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. It was 45 degrees at 9:30 a.m.; not typical for early November in the San Francisco Bay Area. But even so I thought an uphill walk would warm me sufficiently. Golly, I might have been wrong about that. Already, it was going to be my fault not to don the silk longies.

Brrrr!

It was good to see the park again; I hadn’t spent much time at Nisene Marks since my mountain biking days. I’ve always enjoyed the heavy canopy of the park’s redwoods, regardless of the weather. Combined with the low sun of the Fall season, the forest shade was to keep our group cool for a large part of the day. Though ours was a friendly group, ready to brave the forest chill for a long romp through glorious redwood enchantment, we were a shivering group. But we planned to soon be warm: we faced 10 miles of steady hills.

We started out at the Porter parking area and walked steadily up the former railroad grade that is Aptos Creek Trail, covering nearly six miles before turning off on Big Slide Trail. That’s when the fun began: the trail wound down along a narrow redwood- and fern-lined canyon, alternating between moments of deep, mossy, forested darkness and fleeting glimpses of sunlight. Curving, twisting, and rolling downstream, the trail showed hardly a sign of human passage. The challenge of keeping to the dim path while reveling in the glow of this elfin paradise bore the seven of us, seemingly, to a sidereal separation from earthbound worry.

The group always wins
Alas, the reverie broke too abruptly. Another hiker, one who’d passed ahead earlier, was now returning, informing us that the trail ahead was signed as being impassable. Darn.

Double darn!

I can be ambivalent about such matters. Because if I’d been alone, I would have attempted to pass through the impassable, defying the faceless functionary who placed the sign, to determine the trail’s supposed impassability for myself. A guy’s gotta try, right? You’ve heard the standard phrase: Always Question Authority, Absolutely.

But the group always wins, of course, and for an obvious good reason: doing the right thing usually means nobody gets hurt.

So, after a moment of wistful wishes to continue mixed with negotiations for good citizenship, safety, and compliance, we turned back uphill instead of continuing into areas grey with unforeseen shadows.

Because we were good citizens, however, we never got to see our intended target for the day: the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. We did, however, get to hike about 4 more miles. But that was probably a good thing, since it kept us a little warmer a little longer.

We didn’t make it, but anyone else can
I figure we hiked about 14 miles Sunday. But the good news is: anyone who wants to can get themselves easily to the epicenter without hiking even one-fourth that long. That’s because there’s a much shorter trail that leads to it from a trail junction we had passed early on. But if you should take the long way and try to find the epicenter from the uphill side like we did, and if you find the trail impassable, not getting there won’t be your Fault, either. Unless you read this first and go anyway.

State park budgets being what they are these days, I don’t expect this trail to be repaired very soon. Like “in the next five years” soon.

The group always wines, too
Nevertheless, undaunted and not to be outdone, the seven of us actually did arrive at Burrell School Vineyards about 4:00 in the afternoon for a well-deserved wine tasting in their enchanting little ridgetop schoolhouse. And while only two of us, my buddy Vindu and myself, were keen to tongue-wag about the wines’ characteristics, all of us were keen to their beneficial effects.

Ah, liquid anesthesia!

Vindu and I even found three out of the five bottles poured to be quite worth taking home. I sprung for a 2002 Zinfandel from Ryan Oaks Vineyard, Amador County ($30), which I found quite jammy and well-finished. Vindu, flush with endorphins and polyphenols, let his MasterCard speak for Burrell’s 2002 Estate Chardonnay from their schoolhouse estate in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a fine combination of butter and spice, on sale for $16. Plus, though they weren’t pouring it,* Vindu also picked up 3 bottles of 2003 Cabernet Franc from the Santa Cruz Mountains, a young (but highly drinkable now) estate-grown pure varietal that is very much worth cellaring; it’s priced at $40 a bottle.

Wait! There’s more.
I’d mentioned in my last post that fellow outdoor blogger Tom Mangan would be along for this hike. You might enjoy Tom’s account of this day, a darn-fine photoessay.

*A side note on the Cab Franc: we had thought we would taste this wine at the winery. However, Burrell School is currently down to less than 20 cases and is therefore no longer pouring it at their tasting bar. You can still buy it, though, if you hurry. Vindu and I enjoyed one of these solid Cab Francs for dinner that evening, the upshot being that we both purred like satisfied cats and finished the bottle. And that was nobody’s fault.

See a related story, Why I love redwood trees.

~winehiker

ActiveTrails allows you to view coordinates of trails that you have conquered through Google Earth. I could buy a GPS, spend hours figuring out how to use the dang thing, then spend weeks being the enterprising soul that would add more trails to this mashup. But I might want to simply hike those trails instead.

read more | digg story

The Fall weather here in Northern California is beginning to get cool, almost wintry. I know that’s a mild statement when compared to the weather in much of the rest of the country. And yes, I’ve heard all the usual stories about how we here in California don’t know real weather. But here in my vegetable garden, I’m still harvesting basil, tomatoes, and chili peppers.

It’s still good hiking weather, too. I’ll be rendezvousing with friends this morning for about 9+ miles of hilly trail at Nisene Marks State Park above the seaside town of Aptos. We’re managing, somehow, to sandwich a sunny clear day in between two rainy ones. That’ll make the ocean air pretty fresh for our walk in the redwoods — great for filling our lungs as we gasp uphill.

We’ll follow our traipse with a stop at Burrell School Vineyards, where we “promise to sip” some good Syrahs and at least one good Cab Franc. Fellow hiker/blogger Tom Mangan will be along for this one, ostensibly to further his winehikerness. I think he’s got what it takes.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

******* UPDATE: I’ve now posted my Nisene Marks State Park trip report.

~winehiker

• What tree is that?
  A fun Flash animation from the National Arbor Day Foundation that can help you learn to identify trees.
  (tags: tree finder identification trees fun reference nature outdoors wilderness learning education winehiker winehiking)
• What’s the happiest you’ve ever been?
  More happiness at Winehiker Witiculture — more than most folks can bear.
  (tags: happiness happy thoughts positive health optimism optimist call response bear story)

Studies show that happy people catch fewer colds, that happiness can buy success, and that optimists live longer.

I’m happy to believe these things. In fact, my first 2006 post to this blog, back on January 1st, sums it up in a little poetry.

Fellow hiker Tom Mangan over at Two-Heel Drive yesterday asked, “What’s the worst jam you’ve ever been in?” The story he refers to, about two experienced hikers who still managed to get wildly lost, is, fortunately, one that ends well.

Tom prods me a little in that post. But then, he’s one of the lucky few who’s already heard my bear story. Around a campfire, no less!

I didn’t quite take the time yesterday to recount my 1976 episode with that pesky black bear in Yosemite. Someday I’ll transfer that cautionary noveletta from a campfire tale to the written word. Today, however, I thought I would follow Tom’s formula but switch gears a little to inquire, dear reader, about your happiest moment.

Yes, we’re getting back to the point of this post: a call for your response to the question, “what’s the happiest you’ve ever been?”

Don’t think too hard about this one. After all, you’ve been happy at least once in your life, right? So go ahead and share your happiest moment here by adding a comment, dear reader — kinda let’s me know you’re actually reading this stuff. Not that I need validation or anything remotely resembling it. (But it might make me happy.)

Hey, maybe your words will make another reader happy, too.

~winehiker