Christina Waters

Side by Side: New Work by Jenny and Geoff Morten — opening September 7, at the Santa Cruz County Bank, 325 Soquel Avenue.

The Mortens, Jenny - she’s the porcelain sculptor - and Geoff - he’s the painter, came to California from their native England just a few years ago. But they haven’t simply been sitting around swilling Chardonnay. The absurdly gifted couple have created enough memorable artworks to fill quite few shows in the past two years.

Having said that, the current work about to unfold in three locations across Santa Cruz county, takes even the Morten’s most experienced collectors into new aesthetic terrain.

While Geoff’s oil-on-panel paintings explore multiple reflective imagery — hands, faces, patterns rife with time trips at the edge of memory - Jenny’s new work in thrown, fired, and sculpted wall pieces explores the strata of California, the land and its mineral infrastructure. (Detail below from her Ripple Wall series.)

Come see for yourself. Side by Side - an exhibition of new works by Geoff and Jenny Morten is on display at the Santa Cruz County Banks in Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Watsonville, from September 7 through November 9, 2007. The display at 325 Soquel Avenue in Santa Cruz is colorful, haunting and very smart.

Here’s what you’re looking at. A wine label written in Chinese. That’s interesting all by itself. But what’s even more interesting is that this is the back label on a bottle of River Run Vintners 2005 Carignane.

Blond, bearded and eternally boyish winemaker J.P.Pawloski knows how to do that voodoo with fine local grapes. And because he wasn’t born yesterday, metaphorically speaking, he knows an opportunity when he sees it. China is nothing if not a marketing opportunity. So the River Run wine wizard, who also moonlights making customized wines for wealthy clients who have grapes, but not necessarily winemaking skills, anyway Pawloski currently buys up substantial lots of otherwise undedicated central coast wines. Then he applies his blending touch, and voila! terrific wines emerge. The River Run label goes on the front – and the Chinese language label goes on the back — and the wines go to J.P.’s Beijing broker who sells them like mad. Awesome.

For us here at home, there’s much good news from River Run. Even though the entire 2005 vintage of RR’s stunning carignane went to China, this year’s vintage is staying here. Get ready to buy, buy, buy! As you read this J.P. and every other winemaker in California is out in the vineyards, checking sugar, rallying the crews, poised to pounce on the grapes the minute they approach the correct Brix. Then the vendage starts. Over to the next vineyard - checking sugars, picking like crazy, crushing - and then on to the next ripening varietal. (more…)

UCSC Farm & Garden’s Annual Fall Plant Sale — next weekend! — offers gardeners a major selection of organically raised vegetable seedlings, perennials, and California natives. Sponsored by the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems, the sale takes place on Friday and Saturday, September 7 and 8. The sale will be open from noon to 6 p.m. on Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, in the Barn Theater parking lot at the intersection of Bay and High Streets in Santa Cruz. (My orchid, Cassandra, posed for this quickie image.)

“Fall is a great time to plant fast-growing greens and other vegetable crops for late fall and winter harvest,” says UCSC Garden manager Christof Bernau. This year’s offerings include spinach, kale, lettuce and salad mixes, chard, collards, kale, and leaks, along with broccoli, and cabbage. Annual flowers available this year include sweet peas, larkspur, bachelor buttons, nigella, statice, stock and mignotte, which can be planted in the fall for late winter and spring blooms.The Farm & Garden’s plant sale is one of the largest all-organic events of its kind in the Monterey Bay Area. All of the flower and vegetable starts were propagated using organic methods. No chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides were used in growing the plants from seed. None of the hardwood cuttings were given artificial growth hormones. (more…)

The Santa Cruz Mountains Commercial Wine Competition for 2007 awarded its medals once again — thanks to the hard work of 50 judges sampling a field of 171 wines from 34 of our premium wineries. This definitely comes under the “hard work, but somebody’s gotta do it” heading. And once again, I didn’t mind helping out by sampling some truly fine red wines.

Along with wine buyers, restaurateurs, sommeliers and other experts, I spent the better part of last Monday in the spacious main dining room of Ma Maison restaurant, working through a four-hour tasting managed by John and Karen Hibble of the SCMWA & Aptos Chamber. And as usual I learned a lot from the assembled experts, including the highly knowledgeable Aaron Brandt from Bittersweet Bistro, former Wine Club buyer Anita Sjoberg, CAVA wine bar’s Cliff Livingston and Theo’s owner Roger Romano.

For the record, this is hard work. Sniffing, tasting, spitting - over and over again, through at least five flights of six wines each. Helped along with lots of bread and long breaks after every flight, somehow we managed to get through it with palates intact. The photo at right gives you an idea of the sea of glasses confronting us at any given moment. I was judging red wines and that means a temporary case of purple teeth and gums.

The field this year was packed with more terrific wines than I can remember at this annual competition, and most memorable were the outstanding red wines, notably the zinfandels cabs and the mixed blends. Ma Maison chef/owner Lionel LeMorvan provided terrific appetizers (more…)

One of the joys of wine judging each year at the Santa Cruz Mountains competition, is getting to meet some of area’s top restaurant owners and managers. But this year offered something special — Michel and Muriel Loubiére, natives of France, who have just completed negotiations for their own restaurant — Au Midi. After nine months in our area, the couple has acquired the space of the former Al Boccalino, in Aptos, (behind the Aptos Cinema). Muriel, the chef, and is quite passionate about developing a menu that will not be filled with fussy, heavy old-fashioned French clichés. Au Midi, which the Loubiéres expect to open in late September, will showcase the sunny, fresh, intense flavors of the South of France, which means more olive oil, less butter - more seasonal produce and a leaning toward seafoods.

The preview menus included mussels, scallops, duck magret, pistou, quiches, brandade and pissaladiere, as well as sumptuous salads and tarts all involving local specialty produce. This is exciting news and I wish all bon chance to Muriel and Michel!

The first Thursday of every month, Theo’s hosts a Brown Bag Wine Dinner beginning at 6:30pm. A specific wine varietal is featured each month and Chef Nicci Tripp prepares a 3-course meal to complement the chosen wine. The price is only $45 per person, all inclusive, and you need only bring a bottle of the featured wine or purchase one from the wine list to share. Of course, there’s no corkage fee.

Enjoying a cult following among connoisseurs for over a decade, the Theo’s wine evening is a great place to get started learning about wine. As exciting as the chance is to taste a huge range of wines, and to enjoy a fine dinner as well, for my money the big draw is expert commentary by Anita Sjoberg, who knows more about wine than any ten people you’d care to name. (more…)

Wrapping up our tour of this year’s SSC festival, we bundled up for a nighttime performance of The Tempest, an atmospheric bit of surrealism-in-the-redwoods. Thanks to ingenious visuals by costume designer Brandin Barón and lighting design by David Lee Cuthbert, this Tempest sparkled with eye candy. And once again, the most interesting part of seeing all the plays this year is the chance to experience the deep texture created by the repertory casting. As Prospero, the shipwrecked Duke of Milan, James Winker reminds us, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” But just last week, I’d been regaled by Winker as the linguistically inept Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. The same dramatic resonance occurs in the case of Prospero’s daughter, Miranda - played by Barbara Suiter, who also plays the much maligned Hero in Much Ado. The Tempest’s splendid Caliban is played by Omar Ricks, whose singing enchants Much Ado audiences. The repertory casting lets us watch the range of the actors across at least two separate dramatic scripts. And the glen, as always, more than earns its reputation as a magical performance space — a softly hooting owl high up in the trees added a touch of “brave new world” fantasy during last Saturday’s performance.

Wanting to sink into Shakespeare’s strange saga of humans, gods, beasts and spirits, I found myself distracted by uncertain direction and a few casting issues. (more…)

Gabriella Raises the Bar: And for the record there were plenty of grown men in the packed house at Gabriella last Saturday night — so you can get over that tired cliché that Gabriella is a “chick place.” Just get over it! Especially with the innovative young Sean Baker in the kitchen, Gabriella is on its way to becoming the best restaurant in town. Proof was everywhere, from the new crisp Prosecco that greets dinner guests, to a sensational wine special that evening, a split of Windy Oaks 2003 pinot noir, Santa Cruz Mountains ($38). If you haven’t been to Gabriella in the past six months, you’re in for something more than the casual style of its past cuisines.

Angela and I started off with demitasse cups (above) of dry-farmed tomato soup, inflected with saffron. Floating on top of the creamy, crimson liquid was a foam infused with fennel and dusted with fennel pollen. Each bite brought forth the flavors of summer – yet exquisitely light, not over-the-top. Witty in presentation, as you can see by the photo, it wasn’t the least bit tricky.We next sampled two evening special appetizers – both knock-outs and both going to the heart of Baker’s emphasis on unusual fresh harvests. A thin wrapper of zucchini held a stuffing of fresh Dungeness crab. The pretty cylinder lay on a pool of aioli, with a polka-dot of mint watercress salsa verde on the side. The salsa had plenty of kick, so that we could add as much to the cool, mild flavors of cucumber and crab as we liked. But even better was a tour de force creation of halibut tartare, highlighted by a brilliant vinaigrette of smoked paprika and lemon, and garnished with delicious, crisply-textured purslane. Sitting on a nest of avocado salsa, the halibut is a clear front-runner for the “Better-than-Sex” title. (more…)

Hot and fast enough to pierce full body armor, The Bourne Ultimatum locks on and doesn’t let up for almost two hours. Utterly jet-propelled, this flick delivers rock solid movie licks and then some. Don’t even think about waiting until it’s out in DVD — you gotta see this one on the Big Screen so that you can go for what amounts to one Very Big Ride.

I promise that you will be glued to your seat, unable to breathe, during this intense and intelligent flash cinema spectacle. Let’s just say that Bourne makes James Bond look positively lethargic. (more…)

Attic View: Interesting news about The Attic changing hands. It’s high time the place got spruced up a bit. It’s so, well, listless. And hopefully someone will toss the revolving display case with all that plastic-wrapped cake. . . . Went to May’s at the former Takara site on Soquel Avenue, where the hand-written sign assured us — “We Now Open.” Well, may be, but may be not. The sushi wrappers kept unwrapping, the server insisted that we “Enjoy,” and the beer and wine license has not yet arrived. . . . The new Batik Cafe, at former Parwana site next to the Rio Theater, is slated to open on Aug 18. . . . Wish I could tell you that Oswald would be opening soon. According to Eric Lau, things are taking, well, longer than they wanted. “But this is going to be a real restaurant,” he assured me, “with real restroom facilities, ” he laughed. And two and a half times the space of the late, great bistro. “We’re making progress, but there’s a lot of progress to be made,” Lau said. Realistically, “we’re looking at the first of the year,” for a new, revamped Oswald (at the corner of Soquel and Front Streets).