by Christina Waters | Oct 31, 2007 | Home, Wine |
Exploring local, Santa Cruz Mountains white wines is always a garden of forking paths. One sample leads to another and it’s easy to get lost in a malolactic maze.
To demystify, here are two terrific ideas in the category of substantial white wine — wine with enough distinction and identity to partner whatever your holiday table plans to hold.
The Ahlgren Semillon 2002 Рas fine a semillon as this legendary house has made, and full of the perfume of lilacs and jalape̱o. $16.99 at most enlightened wine and food shops.
Windy Oaks Estate Chardonnay 2005 One-Acre –
lighter than California-style, but freighted with enough pear and caramel center to thrill the palate – this beautiful white wine shows off the intellectual and very light touch of winemaker Jim Schultze. Available from the winery or on-line, for $35.
by Christina Waters | Oct 31, 2007 | Home, Wine |
Thinking locally is a delight for Santa Cruz wine lovers. Drinking locally. After all, we don’t live in Dayton. Here’s an example of what I mean – the bodacious, multi award-winning Hallcrest Pinot Noir 2004 Belle Farms. Showing elegance as well as the exuberance of new world Pacific Rim terroir, this gorgeous garnet-hued wine is laden with allspice and raspberry. At least to start with. It opens into a supple encounter with leather, lemon grass and black cherries before finishing up with pure plum. The structure holds nicely all the way through.
Winemaker John Schumacher loves discovering foods that heighten the varietal potential of his wines. And I have to thank him for this stupendous wine and food pairing — tamales (chicken with red sauce), hot salsa colorado and Hallcrest Belle Farms Pinot Noir.
A serious partnership — the earthy sweetness of the masa, the pungent bite of the red chiles and the berryish wine. Sounds like holiday party food to me.
by Christina Waters | Oct 30, 2007 | Home |
Even if you know someone who makes great tamales, you want to be prepared for those sudden emergency tamale needs.
For those moments, run on over to El Rosal Bakery & Panaderia at 21513 E. Cliff Drive (462-1308). Three kinds of freshly-made tamales ready to choose. $1 each. And if you like to make your own fillings, El Rosal will sell you the authentic masa. You do the rest.
I know what I do with El Rosal tamales. I throw some medium fire-power green sauce on them and eat them. Fast. Remarkable with pinot noir.
by Christina Waters | Oct 24, 2007 | Home |
Every now and then something occurs to melt the mediocrity of 21st century concerns clean into oblivion. Almost any dance created by Mark Morris can achieve this effect. But even the MacArthur fellow has outdone himself with his latest creation – Mozart Dances, a trio of movement ephiphanies set to two concertos and a sonata, by Mozart. Commissioned to celebrate 250 years of the baroque wunderkind’s brilliance, Mozart Dances premiered last year in New York, bringing critics and mere mortals to their knees with joy and gratitude.
I joined them on Sunday, flying down to Los Angeles just for this chance to see what inspired imagination can do with sixteen brilliantly tuned human bodies, a full orchestra and two grand pianos. The short version of my experience is this: Mozart received the homage he deserves. The long version will take a lifetime – so I’ll provide only a few comments about the experience (which has left me breathless).
A bouquet of three abstract dances – with occasional moments of narrative implication – the groupings seemed to channel the secret heart of this vivacious music. The effect was to hear Mozart for the first time. Or if not for the first time, at least to hear it made new. Legs, arms, fingertips and toes flicking and kicking the notes into the stratosphere with surgical precision, stormy muscularity, breathtaking delicacy and poetic abandon. All of these contradictory moods and attitudes came together and pulled apart, like an intricate crochet of tides surging in and out, and all to the insistent pulse of Mozart’s music. (more…)
by Christina Waters | Oct 24, 2007 | Food, Home, Travel |
Granted this is high-end tourist dining, but still…when in the belly of the downtown LA art scene — I refer to the splendid, if self-congratulatory performative smorgy known as the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Mark Taper Forum, the Disney Hall, yada yada — you will invariably find yourself with few dining choices. Of course you could always buck the worst traffic this side of the East Bay and head to some chi-chi hot spot on Melrose, or in Santa Monica. But let’s say that like me you’ve got only one day and one location — the Music Center complex. Your options are limited – and pricey. But you know that going in. So. Last Sunday, armed with a ticket for a 2pm matinee of Mozart Dances, I needed a light lunch, and a light post-performance dinner, before heading back to LAX and the flight home.
Kendall’s Brasserie obliged with the lunch part – Kendall’s is very 
conveniently located in the street-level front of the Dorothy Chandler, i.e. downstairs from the huge plaza and performance hall itself. Right across the street, the Frank Gehry crumpled spaceship that is Disney Hall blazed in the late morning sun. The huge boulevards were largely empty, it was already 85 degrees out — a typical Sunday in downtown, Civic Center Los Angeles.
Kendall’s — part of the spiffy Patina empire of performing arts caterers — is a comfortable, generic grill with a no-brainer menu of crowd-pleasers. I chose a ballotine appetizer ($13.95) of Long Island duck, studded with pistachios, foie gras and a violet mustard sauce. A fluff of lettuces, and an entire jar of cornichons (I counted 14 of them) topped the tasty, if uninspired creation. Wonderful grainy bread and a too-chilled, but generously poured Covey Run 2005 Sauvignon Blanc rounded out my meal. Maybe the glut of little pickles signaled that this was a dish for a man? But in the same generous spirit, there were at least 20 pistachios in the delicious duck paté. Service was perfunctory, but given the convenience of the whole thing, it wasn’t exorbitant. I left half the wine so as to be able to soak up more of the amazing dance performance.
