• Open That Bottle Night: 2003 Sarah’s Vineyard Estate Pinot Noir
  A shimmering yet dark ruby spectacle, medium purple-pink at the edges, luscious legs, faint aroma of freckle fruit and Milk Duds. Oh, and 15.9% alcohol. Did I say that I love this wine?
  (tags: otbn wine pinot noir sarahs vineyard santa clara valley tasting)

Saturday evening was a busy one in my wine world. Not only was it the last Saturday of February and therefore this year’s Open That Bottle Night – the ninth annual – but it was also the night my friend Vindu brought me a case of Juice Crew Red.

Vindu wasn’t due to arrive until much later and, deciding not to wait, I broke out a wine I had been storing conveniently out of sight. If you’ve never heard of Open That Bottle Night, sometimes seen as OTBN, it is billed by its originators, Wall Street Journal columnists Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, as a call to wine enthusiasts to not wait for that one special occasion to open a special bottle of wine you’ve been saving. Instead, these two suggest, create your own occasion and highlight the wine as a part of the event. And who am I to say no to such a suggestion? After all, opening a bottle of wine is, to me, its own event. But I can be rather biased that way.

Being close to 4:30 p.m. and the day’s chores all done – all that were going to get done – I figured I’d save a taste or two for Vindu but celebrate while making dinner. I reached deep into my trusty wine rack and, after blowing off a little dust, sure enough, I held a bottle of Sarah’s Vineyard Estate Pinot Noir, vintage 2003.

And, after a moment, I beheld it: a shimmering yet dark ruby spectacle, medium purple-pink at the edges, luscious legs, faint aroma of freckle fruit and Milk Duds. I sipped, eyebrows lifting, mouth corners rising. I sipped again, and immediately logged on to Twitter.

Strawberries and tiramisu in this Sarahs Vineyard PN. A little coffee, too. With cream! Rich mouthfeel, lurking backbone hit all palate pts.

In other words, it is a wine I’m glad I saved. I would have added other words, too, but Twitter only allows 140 characters! Speaking of characters, I soon received a very apt reply from Sonadora, author of the Wannabe Wino blog. Sonadora lives in Washington D.C. and was celebrating with her special OTBN wine, a 2000 Cyrus from Alexander Valley Vineyards, Sonoma County, which she and her husband purchased on their honeymoon. Sonadora asked, simply,

Dessert in a glass?

Oh, Sonadora, indeed it is. And I don’t need a fork or spoon! With a complex and lovingly intense assemblage of berry fruit, mocha and vanilla flavors and a touch of forest floor underlaid by a near-perfect balance of acid, tannin, and just a dainty dollop of dessert-like sweetness, this Pinot is overtly pleasing, very food-friendly, even quite drinkable on its own, i.e., whether dessert is on the menu or not. But be careful. Despite its very reasonable bottle price, there could be a price to pay for this wine’s palate-pleasing creaminess: it contains 15.9% alcohol.

It is surprising to me that this exceptional Pinot Noir hails from the Santa Clara Valley. More precisely, it is made from grapes grown a few short miles uphill and west of the southern reaches of Santa Clara Valley. It is a fertile area bordering the southern tip of the Santa Cruz Mountain Range that experiences cool ocean fog, blazing hot summer sun, and therefore dynamic daily swings in temperature potentially unsuitable to the cool-climate-loving Pinot grape. Despite the valley’s rich agricultural history, it is not particularly easy to create consistently good wines in this area, much less the finicky Pinot Noir grape; perhaps that is why the Santa Clara Valley is not particularly known for its Pinots.

Despite these uncertainties, the wines of Sarah’s Vineyard have, to my mind, few area competitors; along with their Pinot, their Chardonnays and Syrahs* stand out like white swans on a pond of mallard ducks. That’s rather remarkable considering that there are a handful of other producers in the immediate local vicinity that experience similar growing conditions. Slope and elevation account for some of this, to be sure, yet so does the soil itself as well as carefully-chosen Pinot Noir clones planted in 1989.

Depending on the vintage and which side of the summit the grapes are grown – ocean side or valley side – this pocket of relatively unexplored territory called Santa Clara Valley can be hit or miss with its wine production. Yet it is a splendid area worth exploring whether by car, by bicycle, on foot, or simply by the glass.

Varietal: 100% estate-grown Pinot Noir
Production: 189 cases
Alcohol: 15.9%
Where purchased: Sarah’s Vineyard; also available on snooth.com.
Price: $25

For more about Open That Bottle Night, see the Gaiter and Brecher article, An Evening to Uncork Memories. For more about Juice Crew Red, please see my follow-up post-to-come this week.

~winehiker

*The Syrah grapes are not estate-grown; however Sarah’s Vineyard is currently testing additional plots of Pinot Noir, Viognier, Grenache and Roussanne on the estate (from the Sarah’s Vineyard website).

I must admit that lately I seem to have all the powers of concentration of a flea. And my recent writing on this blog – if you can call it writing – shows it.

Oh, the vapidity!

Alas, ever since the turn of the year, my schedule has achieved a supremely high level of hecticity (I have exactly three jobs right now, not including neglected housework) and I find that devoting more than a few minutes of my time across a span of demands has had me writing in terms of blips and bytes instead of the usual loquacious syllogisms.

Which is why there are some days in which, when I have spare moments between a slough of unreal expectations, I find Twitter to be a very balancing, and refreshing, destination. In addition to being a highly conversational and collaborative community, it is also rather “sound byte” oriented in that I am limited to only 140 characters with which to make a statement – any kind of statement. It’s kind of like IM’ing except that all of your friends can share in your multiple enthusiasms. Or lack thereof.

Writing tweets on Twitter focuses the mind. Yet doing so also somehow soothes my heavily-pinged synapses. In this way, it’s kind of like mental Alka Seltzer. Or doppio espresso. There’s even a site called tweet140.com that keeps track of all registered twitterers (a.k.a. twits) who wish – for no explicable reason – to showcase their 140-character proclivities for all to see. Try as I might, however, I apparently suck at twooshing: I only have an overall twooshrate of 65%. But the tweet140 folks tell me (in exactly 140 characters, of course) that I tweet like a falcon, so that’s something. I think.

I probably can’t explain to the uninitiated why I enjoy this Twitter exercise; it’s the kind of pastime you either immerse yourself into or you don’t – kind of like Sudoku or crocheting doilies. I do know that I enjoy engaging with my fellow Twitterers, most of whom are solid members of the wine blogging community – though there are some avid hiking types who enjoy these virtual birdcalls too. Heck, we all jump in and out of it together, daily.

The crux of Twitter, for me, is that I’m making new friends and solidifying current relationships more quickly and in more satisfying ways than this blog, up until now, has been able to accomplish. I seem to have garnered more followers on Twitter in six months’ time than I have subscribers on my blog in two and a half years! And therefore I have another reason to consider why this Twitter thing, to me, should be a valid pastime.

Ah, Twitter: it’s a heady wine! And Geez Louise, I’m up to almost 1000 tweets since August 2007. As if I’d rather tweet than blog!

Lo my friends, fret not, for I shall return to a more consistent brand of essayist witiculture ’round the next bend in the winehiking trail.

Yep, you guessed it: that last sentence was exactly 140 characters.

~winehiker

Springtime, and the acacias are bloomin’
Southern California will see one more day
Dreamland, and business is boomin’
Birds are a-singin’, as I drift away.

- from “The Hollywood Waltz” by The Eagles
One Of These Nights, 1975

When I first heard the opening lines of this bittersweet Eagles’ ballad back in the Spring of 1976, I didn’t yet know what an acacia was. At the time, I was into my second college semester pursuing a Biology degree and had already enjoyed a botany course the previous semester. I was therefore compelled to know more about nearby plant species such as the acacia. Not only did I learn that acacia trees also grow in Northern California, they also serve as a bellwether of Spring.

Flowering acacia branch detail.

Fast-forward to the second week of February, 2008: While commuting to my job through the lush and velvety green hillsides above Los Altos, Palo Alto, and Stanford University (an area that makes up a moderate chunk of the San Francisco midpeninsula greenbelt), I am exulting at the sight of roadside acacia trees showcasing their bright yellow clusters in a profusion of blossoms that, day by day, grows steadily more prolific.

Funny how, when you’re tuned to it, you begin to notice things you either didn’t notice before or which never seemed to matter at other times. Indeed, when the acacia isn’t blooming, it can be a rather unremarkable tree when viewed from a speeding automobile.

But early Thursday evening after work, I headed over to Picchetti Winery to pick up my latest wine club selections and was hard-pressed not to notice the healthy glow of a magnificent acacia in the waning twilight.

A blooming acacia tree at Picchetti Winery.

So is Spring right around the corner? Well the birds, they are a-singin’, and they’re making it all too easy for outdoors junkies like myself to simply just drift away, heart full with the promise of Spring.

Another sure sign that Spring is on its way: it’s peacock mating season!

~winehiker

This Valentine’s Day, I don’t think I could share my thoughts with you any better than by presenting today what I wrote just one year ago. Year by year, the sentiments that follow continue to drive my heart. Happy Valentine’s Day, my friend.

American naturalist and essayist John Burroughs once wrote:

“A sense of the power and mystery of Nature shall spring up as fully in one’s heart after he has made the circuit of his own field as after returning from a voyage ’round the world.”

That statement sure rings true with me. I can hike the same trail over and over again in different seasons or in the same, and still I find that I cannot divorce myself from that sense of wonder that I used to know as a kid. I still want to get belly down on the ground sometimes just to marvel at the life going on within a square foot of space.

I hope I never lose this sense of awe, this inspired revelation, this connection to our world’s intricate graces, this true love.

And so I endeavor to keep on learning, exploring, taking my world into deeper realms of understanding, connection, and reconnection. Whether it’s that tongue-brain connection that tells me why I like a wine and not just that I like it, or whether it’s being able to observe and uncover the relationships between rock, tree, cloud, vine, flower, bird and insect, I continually want to know more about this relationship between me and my earth, us and our earth. I feel it strongly, viscerally. I feel it because I choose to live in the present, this moment on the trail, right now.

I want others to share this, too: the desire to find the beauty, curiosity, wisdom, and strength from this natural world that surrounds us, supports us, and waits for us to accept it, acquiesce to it, embrace it. And therefore I want to teach others to watch, listen, observe, and feel Nature. Indeed, we can all gain strength from feeling Nature’s continuity, diversity, magnitude, and intelligence which are all around us every day.

We just have to choose to feel.

It is for these reasons that my love affair with the natural world is very much like a love affair with wine.

~winehiker

“Decant today, and you will smile tonight.”

I don’t seem to have a lot of time to write a lot of blogwords lately, so this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday assignment appeals to me. It might have appealed to me anyway, seeing as how I fundamentally love the mental challenge of wordcraft.

This month’s assignment? Describe an Italian red wine in just seven words.

Our host this month for Wine Blogging Wednesday is Andrew Barrow, author of the Spittoon blog, based in Wallingford, England. Writes Andrew:

The theme for Wine Blogging Wednesday #42 is Just Seven Words. The wine should be an Italian Red. It matters little really for this exercise what type; but try and find something new, interesting and thought-provoking. And get that thesaurus out!

JUST SEVEN WORDS. The finished tasting note must make sense, be grammatically correct(ish), punctuation will help of course. The wine name, type, producer, vintage do not have to be included in the 7. But a reference to aroma, flavour, length, food matching etc etc should be considered. Inventiveness is the key.

Inventiveness? I think I can do it. Grammatically correct(ish)? Well, OK – if I must. But golly, how will I condense my tasting notes into such a short passage and still offer something tangible and worth reading, something that will make you also want to try the wine? It may take a few glasses to find out. But that’s OK – I simply love il mio rosso di vino.

First I’ll have to pour the wine, which I’ll do tonight. I uncorked it this morning; after all, the wine is a Barolo, a.k.a. the King of Wines, the Wine of Kings, and it requires such deference. Tomorrow’s post will describe it in Just Seven Words.

[Editor's note: I paid $37.99 at BevMo for the 2000 Boroli Barolo I reviewed; my Just Seven Words post is available here.]

~winehiker

• The Cattleman’s Stress Test.
  Are you stressed? If you’re not sure, here’s how to determine if you should begin a regular hiking program.
  (tags: stress test health)
• Concerned about your health? Go take a hike.
  Hiking can help you lose weight, improve your physical well-being, reduce tension, enhance your mental health, and above all, help you manage stress.
  (tags: health hiking stress well-being longevity winehiker http://www.californiawinehikes.com)
• Hiking benefits health
  From Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington: “Your body will feel better, your head will feel clearer, and your stress level will have decreased. You’ll want to hike again.” I believe it.
  (tags: body stress health benefits hiking walking)

I admit that I have a problem with stress. In fact I have for years, ever since Santa Clara Valley first became Silicon Valley.

I’m sure you can imagine. But I’ve learned to manage my stress with a regular balance of meditation, stretching, preventive chiropractic, healthy diet, plenty of sleep, and a regular devotion to walking and hiking. Oh, and at least one glass of red wine per evening if I can.

Ha! – you’d think that with all that going on, I wouldn’t have time for stress.

“In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.”
~Lee Iacocca. Image source: Shane Conder, KF6NVR.

Stress always seems to find me, though, especially when I haven’t worked my bod – and most especially over the dark days of Winter. I know I’m hardly alone, which is why I find hiking – either by myself or with others – to be such a pleasurable and stress-free pursuit on more than just a physical level.

It’s been widely proven that regular exercise can increase a person’s physical and mental health which, it stands to reason, can be strong factors in support of one’s longevity. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that only 15 percent of the U.S. adult population engages in sufficient physical activity; perhaps that’s because the idea of sweating in a gym or running around the local city park seems daunting or unappealing to most people. However, vigorous exercise doesn’t have to be boring or painful. Hiking can help you lose weight, improve your physical well-being, reduce tension and enhance your mental health.

My experience has shown me that hiking can help with all of the above as well as stimulate appetite and thirst. “Hike to eat, eat to hike!” has been a common mantra in my cycling, backpacking, and hiking circles since who flung the chunk, though I might modify that sentiment to “Hike to eat, eat to drink!” on occasion. After all, hiking and food go together, as do food and wine. Certainly these are wondrous rewards for deeds well done.

By extension, I believe winehiking is its own reward.

But surely the mental health benefits of hiking are just as bountiful as the physical. Exposure to natural bright light, which you certainly can’t get in a gym, increases levels of serotonin, which is a naturally occuring mood-lifting chemical secreted in the brain. Because exercise also boosts serotonin production, the benefit is twofold.

For women, regular hiking can even help prevent osteoporosis. Working against the force of gravity helps increase bone density and slows calcium loss, thus strengthening bones and making them less susceptible to breaking. And take it from me: trails are gentler on the joints than pavement is.

I am of the mind that the greater San Francisco Bay Area has more miles of hiking trail per capita than nearly anywhere else on Earth. But almost everyone has a hiking trail near their home. The Appalachian Trail, for example, runs about 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine and is within a one- or two-hour drive from any city on the East Coast outside Florida. Even New York City has a number of groups that organize hiking trips every weekend. You have only to search Google to find a hiking club local to you that can help you find where the trails are.

Hiking is as easy as you want it to be. Plus, you most likely have everything you need to embark on a healthy hiking program. But if you don’t, I’ve put together a hiking checklist that can get you started.

The important point here is that you get out there on the trail. With a steady pace – and even a companion or two to support your hiking endeavors – not only will you be amazed at how quickly your stress will melt away, but you’ll feel relaxed and you’ll feel glad you made the crucial decision to hike in the first place. Done regularly enough, and at a level that you can manage, you will realize how favorably your body responds to hiking or walking. Perhaps subsequent hiking experiences will lead you to the next chapter in your purposeful life: learning about the amazing variety of living things that surround you in your own backyard.

With Spring just around the corner, now’s a great time to get started. See you on the trail, my friend.

~winehiker