Christina Waters

Like many inquiring wine-lovers, I found myself in the gorgeous back country of Corralitos last Saturday, tasting wine at a quartet of impossibly scenic wineries. Yes it was hot! At Pleasant Valley Vineyards, the grapes were within hours (HOURS) of being harvested, and at Alfaro Family Vineyards the grapes were coming in even during the afternoon festivities.

Seriously, you need to make sure you join next year’s Corralitos Wine Trail harvest taste-trek. Lots of music, good vibes, delightful finger food, and terrific new releases being poured. A delightful Syrah at Pleasant Valley, several notable Pinots at Alfaro, and a remarkable new release (more…)

Back by popular demand - the Westside’s largest block party will happen once again in the parking lot of Kelly’s (Swift & Ingalls). You know the deal. Local restaurants, farmers and purveyors will set up food stations. You bring all of your plates, stemware and table settings. Then you wander around, purchase your meal, add some wine, beer or whatever, and join everybody and her cousin sitting down at the long, long tables for a terrific early evening meal.

Details as they unfold.

Kawa Sushi - two words that spell instant oral gratification. Spacious interior, pristine, high-quality sushi and sashimi, friendly service, and a user-friendly sake happy hour for those who like to dine early and often.

Here’s our dinner last Tuesday - including our new favorite roll, the Santa Cruz roll. Mmmmm. Protein in the most gorgeous delivery packages human culture has yet devised.

Don’t complain about the awkward location - you can’t miss it. Corner of Bay & Mission. Kawa Sushi. Much more sophisticated than those places where you need headphones just to wade through the sonic konichiwas…..

You bet I absolutely believe that $7.99 is a true deal for a better-than-decent bottle of refreshing, low-oak French Chardonnay.

So I loaded up at New Leaf last week on my new favorite easy-sippin’ late summer white - a 2007 Loire Chardonnay from Domaine Roc de Châteauvieux. Light - 12.5% - but still nuanced, this minerally beauty offers nose of white flowers (maybe some jasmine, perhaps alyssum) followed by salt and a lemony finish. Completely likeable, it works equally well with halibut and aged sheep cheese.

HOWEVER - I went out today and checked the wine racks at New Leaf and…the price is now $9.99 for this lovely white wine.

Yes, it IS still a very good deal. But I think there must be some sort of pre-emptive cliché for this situation….something like “carpe diem,” or “she who hesitates pays two dollars more.”

Worth a try, even at $9.99.

No longer just a gorgeous place in Spain, Mundaka is also the name of a hot new tapas restaurant in the center of Carmel. Gabe Georis and his partners have worked interior design miracles with burnished, distressed and time-worn recycled materials, all of which give a distinctive patina to the two spacious dining rooms of this chic new spot.

Last week, armed with graceful tumblers of Spanish varietals — a white Txakoli and a mighty Rioja from M. de Legarda crianza, both loaded with minerals, fruit and a perfume of sea salt — we worked our way through several rounds of $2 pintxos. These tiny tastes, maybe three bites each, included a brandade on sliced potato, stacks of salmon, pink beets and caper berries, an outrageously garlicky baguette topped with fresh tomatoes and (I know, I just said it) garlic, plus duxelles topped with air-dried beef. Major flavor intensity in every bite.

The central room, with its upright piano, steep stairway to a mysterious (more…)

Big Basin Vineyards celebrates the crush of 2009 this weekend, September 12 & 13, from noon til 5pm at the scenic winery property above Boulder Creek.

Join winemaker Bradley Brown for the annual celebration of harvest at Big Basin Vineyards, famed for its Rhone varietals and earth-shaking Syrahs.

A variety of Big Basin’s new releases, along with library wines and barrel samples, will be available for tasting - seven syrahs, three pinot noirs and a few select blends! Plus taste treats from Vino Locale.
The Harvest event is free for Friends of the Vineyard (up to two passes), $10 for those picking up wines and $20 for others. Everybody gets a 22 oz. crystal Big Basin wine glass.

Music by 3hree Bro’s Down. Contact Big Basin Vineyards, or call 831-621-8028, for all details.

Paintings by the late Eduardo Carrillo are currently on display through November 22, in the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Carrillo was a true shaman of light and color — prepare to be dazzled.

A bravura practitioner of magic realism in hallucinogenic large-scale oil paintings as well as subtle watercolor miniatures, Carrillo cast a long shadow in his ancestral Baja, his early Los Angeles stomping grounds, and ultimately in the Bay Area. Two dozen of his major works - including his neon-hued masterpiece of mythic time travel, Los Tropicanos — fill the main Solari Gallery of MAH. Even the final unfinished painting — a searing self-portrait — is on display, next to his studio table, chairs, easel and palette, in this retrospective of one of California’s path-breaking, multi-cultural iconoclasts.

Public reception will be held this coming First Friday, September 4, from 5-9pm.

If you’re like us, you live for August and September — dry-farm tomato season! The best, the most intensely-flavored, the juiciest - tomatoes the way the Great Mother intended them to be.

And there are lots of terrific tomatoes out there at our farmers markets. But now I know the source of the very best.

Meder Street Market is a boutique stand open at the bustling (ha!) crossroads of Meder & Western Drive on the Westside.

Sundays from 10am until 3pm, you can find neighbors hanging out over bins of brilliantly-hued flowers, basils, onions, tomatoes, squashes, beans. It’s a charming, laid-back scene where the best tomatoes in the area go for a mere $3/lb.

Organic, home-grown, yeah baby!