Hawk Wakawaka Wine Reviews

Return to California 5: Boheme, and Bodega Rancho

Hawk Wakawaka

-

Jul 17, 2012

Boheme & Bodega Rancho with Kurt Beitler, Occidental

These wines are solid across the portfolio. Katherine, you’d like both Chardonnays–one zippy, Eucalyptus infused, and crisp; the other a little rounder, with hints of butter and nut, smooth in the mouth but still with a refreshing acidity. The Viognier is vibrant, fresh, and interesting.

Here’s the news though: if any of you haven’t tasted the Bodega Rancho Que Syrah Syrah, you need to.

Thank you to Kurt Beitler, and to Alan.
Thank you to Chris Towt.

Return to California 4: (And now for something completely different) Florence Ave. and the Sculptures of Patrick Amiot

Hawk Wakawaka

-

Jul 17, 2012

1

How Wrong Turns Can Be Fortunate: Florence Ave. and Patrick Amiot

For lunch I tasted wines in Napa then had to drive an hour and a half into the Sonoma Coast to drink wines in Occidental. Occidental seems to be so small I hardly exist there, which I’m okay with, except that it’s hard to visit a tasting room when your palate lives in another universe from theirs. Not that I don’t want their wines. I very much do. Just, have you been to Occidental?

I’d made the appointment and was driving between the two when I took a wrong turn in Sebastopol. That is, according to Google maps. I’ve driven all over North America and am very comfortable with the idea that turning away from what the GPS demands could still get me there. My overall view is keep moving forward, and I’ll get somewhere I can learn something.

Today, I’d turned beyond Highway 116, and decided a drive right on a neighborhood street would certainly get me there. It did. But, not until after finding my way, accidentally, on Florence Avenue and a four block stretch decorated by the lively, expressive sculpture of Patrick Amiot.

It turns out, Patrick lives on Florence, and out of boredom and too much junk, one day he went into his backyard and made a junk-Sculpture. Placing it in his yard, his neighbor then said, if you ever make another one, I’d like it in my yard. Until, now, four blocks of neightbors have “if you ever make another ones” in their yard, and the shop, Renga, carries more examples of this folk art. I know because seeing the first three sculptures on Florence I declared, Holy Hell! and parked the car, determined to get out and take pictures. Then, there I was, happily surrounded, and, finally, face to face with Mister Patrick Amiot’s daughter, and the story of how her father got started. I should have taken a picture of her. And, I did, honestly, keep thinking that while talking to her.

It turns out, Sebastopol hosts more than 300 sculptures formed by junk and love. I bumped into a whole lot more of them. But here is a host of pictures showcasing the luster of Florence Avenue alone, the street on which Younger Miss Amiot lives.

Thank you to Sebastopol. Thank you to Patrick’s daughter–how did I not get your name?

Thank you.

Return to California 3: Vivier Wines, Stéphane Vivier

Hawk Wakawaka

-

Jul 16, 2012

1

Tasting Vivier Wines with Stéphane Vivier

I’m allergic to shellfish. The trouble is, I don’t know which shellfish I’m allergic to and when the allergy appears it’s threatening, and uncomfortable. So, by now I simply avoid all shellfish. Today, however, I was lucky enough to share lunch with Stéphane Vivier and two of his Pinot Noir based wines–a rosé, and a single vineyard red. We met at an excellent, ultra fresh oyster house to taste his wines outside, and after a while to share lunch. The wine project he’s started with his wife, Dana Sexton Vivier, carries with it a simple, elegant integrity I greatly appreciate–the wines taste with it too. So, when Stéphane asked if I’d like to start lunch with oysters. I honestly thought, you know, this whole meeting so far has been simple and lovely. If I have to die from shellfish, lord, let it be now (though I’d have to ask god to extra apologize to Stéphane for me if I did). This moment is so lovely, I figured, closing with it… what a way to celebrate life, you know?

Gratefully, I don’t seem to be allergic to oysters, and those were three of the best foods I’ve ever had. (Katherine, let’s come back here. We’ll bring our sisters with us.) Here’s the big truth though–I want to drink Vivier rosé as often as possible, and the Sun Chase Vineyards Pinot is some of the best California Pinot Noir I’ve ever had.

Write up to follow.

***

Stéphane, thank you for taking time to meet with me.

God, thank you for keeping me alive.

Dan Petroski, thank you for making the connection with Stéphane.

Return to California 2 (pictures): Dirty and Rowdy Family Wines

Hawk Wakawaka

-

Jul 15, 2012

3

Dirty and Rowdy Family Wines with Hardy Wallace and Kate Graham

Do you see how beautiful these people are? Have I said recently how grateful I am for my life? In the midst of following stories about wine, people invite me to be witness to their honest passions, the intimacy of what they most value, and often too the beauty of what they share in love. Hardy Wallace and Kate Graham were kind enough to have me for dinner. Hardy cooks meat. I love meat. And, after ten days in remote Alaska they helped me remember the beauty of fresh produce. Kate made a wonderful salad. We reveled in odd ball commonalities. Almost peed laughing about the idea of wearing wigs (I need to hear more specifics on these stories, you two!). Hardy really does smile as openly and often as these photos indicate. Kate has a heart that glows like the light in the last photo. I’m not gushing. These things are true. Can’t wait to write up their Dirty and Rowdy Family Wines–such a great project. Keep an eye out for them–they’ll hopefully be released mid-August. Write up soon to follow.

In the meantime, thank you to Hardy Wallace and Kate Graham for having me. I’m grateful.

Thank you to Dan Petroski.

Return to California 1 (Pictures): Touring Durell Vineyards, and Dunstan Wines

Hawk Wakawaka

-

Jul 15, 2012

0

Touring Durell Vineyards and the Dunstan Wines Portfolio, Sonoma

Write up to follow.

***

Thank you to Chris Towt for giving me a tour of the beautiful Durell Vineyards property, and tasting me on the Dunstan wines, Pip, and your own “For the Friends” project. Thank you to Ellie Phipps Price for your generosity in hosting my visit to Durell, and sharing some of your wild horse rescue work with me. I’ve very much enjoyed my time with both of you.

Thank you to Johanna Jensen.

Reflections on a Tasting with Abe Schoener: Dancing through Family, Nietzsche, and Tragedy

Hawk Wakawaka

-

Jul 14, 2012

3

Abe Schoener and I had a conversation about tragedy.

My senior year of high school, my uncle Jay died of pneumonia. It was September. I had a cross country running race and we had to dress up for such days. I was up earlier than usual to put on an outfit I was uncomfortable wearing when my mom knocked on the door. She said my uncle was in the hospital. His friends had rushed him to the emergency room, then knocked on her window in the middle of the night. As a result, she was with him when he died. It took a while, but weeks later she told me the receptionist had brought her directly back to my uncle’s curtained room in the E.R. He couldn’t speak with his lungs too full of fluid but when she entered the room he turned towards her and cried. Within a few minutes he entered cardiac arrest, and in twenty minutes he had died.

In his book, Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche builds on his ideas already explored in his earlier text, The Birth of Tragedy. There Nietzsche considers the painful revelry he sees as peculiar to the phenomenon. In Nietzsche’s view, the pain of tragedy reveals to us our own limits. It is in losing someone we feel attachment to we come to recognize the finite nature of our power and our lives. We cannot save them. In the same moment, we are forced too to see we cannot save ourselves. We will die. For other philosophers, the reality of our mortality brings with it a burdensome pessimism. Schoepenhauer treated the negative as defining human life. Earlier in the history of philosophy, Aristotle took tragedy in art to be a kind of therapeutic for our countenance. In experiencing second hand feelings of grief, fear, and terror by watching the tragic hero (like, Oedipus or Agamemnon, as in the case of Ancient Greek tragedy), we are cleansed of some tumult associated with such feelings, and thus find ourselves more stable, and stronger after. For Nietzsche, such a view is naive, perhaps even damaging. Instead, the all consuming pain of loss, and fear of our own mortality found in tragedy reveals to us a strange duality. It is in facing the stirred up feelings experienced in the death of another that we discover reason cannot provide all answers. Some things are simply unexplainable. The sensuous pain of loss dominates us and we must face an inexplicable edge that defines the limits of human existence. At the point of death we have no knowledge. What is interesting in all of this, is that, for Nietzsche, it is precisely when we allow ourselves to go into these feelings that we come to recognize our own brilliance. Tragedy, for Nietzsche, carries in it a two-fold experience. We are thrust into a horrible pain, and find through it a defiant pleasure. Tragedy forces us to recognize the limits of our own powers, and yet in entering that feeling we come to see our own power of persistence. We will die. Surely. Yet, here we live our human lives, demanding they be more than our own mortality simply by persisting. This two-fold experience is the source of Dionysian revelry, for Nietzsche. It is only in our facing the realities of decay, and decomposition that are the death cycle, that we see then too how life is a perpetual process of defiant transformation.

The family I was born into was four generations strong into my early 20’s. My great grandparents raised us through their simple constancy. We were lucky enough too to have grandparents, my parents, my sisters and I. My senior year in high school, when my uncle died, began a five year period of dismantling what my family had been. He died, unexpectedly, followed by my grandmother, my great grandparents, my other uncle, and finally my grandfather–more than half those deaths sudden. Two generations gone from us, and half of a third also lost. In that same time period, my father’s brother, other more distant extended family, and two of my own friends all also died. Those five years marked what my mother calls a stripping to the bone. Any pretense, or room for drama was lost. In the midst of so much grief there is room for little else. In the same time period, my oldest sister was diagnosed with what was supposed to be a lethal brain tumor, given eighteen months to live. By god’s grace she is still alive, so beautiful. It’s been eighteen years. In the same time period my oldest niece, Melissa, was also born, my great grandparents, then, witness to the wonder of five generations–a family they put into bloom. One of the gifts of simply persisting.

Abe Schoener and I had a conversation about tragedy. It started over a barrel of botrytis infected petite sirah. The year had been suddenly wet, in the end, and the clusters were covered in mildew when harvest time came. It was a situation many faced by throwing out fruit, but the berries revealed there was still juice in their meat. So, Schoener and his team foot stomped them. The vats after were slicked by a film of off-white growth on top–the mildew pushed off the skin. The wine now carries the smoothly tannic balance possible with a petite sirah, alongside concentrated fruit and spice notes associated with a late harvest wine, both without sweetness. It was a wine I’d heard Schoener was working on and I couldn’t wait to taste it. Then, there we were meeting in person for the first time (both of us careful in selecting our outfits for the occasion hoping to impress the other), tasting from barrel a wine that was strange in its brilliance. It’s been two weeks since and from a set of around twenty wines, the petite sirah is the one I crave. It drinks like its been touched by the edge of spoilage and come back to tell its story. Like its structure is more than the damage it could have endured. The acidity knows what its capable of being, so it just goes ahead turning in the barrel. The fruit dances through stages of vibrant and concentrated, dusty and fresh somehow all there together. The wine is not sweet like sometimes associated with late harvest grapes, but it is deepened, darker, and more raisined than it would be otherwise.

Schoener’s wines are seen as strange for the American palate. Even if his wine making techniques have their analogues abroad–with the oxidative elements purposefully done in Jura, or traditional Rioja, as examples–still, Schoener’s wines work against what’s more common for the mainstream–fresh fruit, or fruit jam presentation–of a still young U.S. wine industry. I ask him to talk to me about his wine making choices, so he explains. He wants his wines to be a pleasure to drink, he says, but he also wants them to make you think. He’s unclear how to accomplish this purposefully, yet, sometimes by intention alone the motivation succeeds. He wants his wines to go ahead and get right to the edge of what it is to be wine–a way to prove they are no longer fruit–then, to find their way back from it. What he’s learned from wine making, he says, is that if you start with a healthy vineyard, and then give the wine its own time in the barrel, it will self regulate. It will have moments when you think it is undrinkable, and, from the perspective of a more traditional wine making style, when you think it may be flawed. But if you let it persist, on the other side you’ll find a wine ready to bottle that is still marked by that edge, yet full of pleasure. I ask him about that idea of the edge again. That edge, he tells me, that’s the analogue to tragedy–where the wines have come right up to the border of something, and shown they are more than it. In this way, he wants his wines to cause pleasure, to be fun to drink, and at the same time, he wants them to make you think, to make you think of tragedy.

***

Thank you to Burt Coffin, Paul Sutton, and Aaron Pinnix.

Last day in Alaska

Hawk Wakawaka

-

Jul 13, 2012

0

The drift fisherman were busy on the water through my time in Bristol Bay. So, no visits, and no pictures with them. Fishing works that way.

My uncle Smile and I hadn’t seen in other in at least eight years so on my last morning he docked the boat, raced to the airport and visited for five minutes before I had to board the plane. He brought with him a bag of Native style smoke fish, right from the smoke house. It takes about a month to make, and is so rich I fall asleep from just a few pieces. The bag I carried it in still smells of it.

Driving through California now trying to adjust to so much plant life after ten days in Arctic desert. Tonight I arrive in Sonoma for ten days in the extended area meeting with people in wine. Next Friday I also have a special media event to attend–hee hee. Can’t wait.

Love you, Smiley.

A Life in Wine: Melissa Sutherland, Striking the Balance, Accessibility and Food in Wine

Hawk Wakawaka

-

Jul 9, 2012

9

Thank you to Eric Asimov for including this write-up on Melissa in the New York Times “Diner’s Journal: What We’re Reading” July 10, 2012.

***

Melissa Sutherland: Wine as Food, The Aesthetics of Entertaining

At the center of a simple act, like entertaining in one’s home, rests an understanding of the incredible power of straightforward choices to shape the pace and balance of an evenings’ chatter, joy, and excitement. In his Third Critique, Kant considers the dynamics of a social dinner. According to his account, each aspect of the meal from how courses are designed, and moved one to the next, to the size of the party, and, most importantly, who is invited, are relevant to generating the Aesthetic balance that makes the dinner a success. What is implicit in Kant’s analysis is the understanding that a successful event, like a dinner well-planned, has the capacity to relax, to enliven, and to help create something new between the people within its influence. What becomes interesting here, is in considering how the choices necessary to such an occasion fundamentally rest in the meal itself, including the types of food and wine served. It is perhaps, first, with whom the evening is shared, that is most important for setting a mood of possibility for an event. But that mood is very closely next found in what food and wine is served.

Raised in Texas with parents that enjoyed having people over, Melissa Sutherland grew up well-versed in the experience of cultivating Aesthetic balance for an evening of entertaining. In their practice, wine operated as an integral feature of any meal, another ingredient in the dinner served. It wasn’t necessary for fine wine to be selected, but wine was understood as elemental to the process of cooking, and sharing food with others.

After leaving a career in politics, working both for Senators and on campaigns, Sutherland chose to return to Houston and enter a career in K-12 teaching. During her tenure in public schools, and having already cultivated a knowledge of both Italian and French wine, Sutherland chose to further develop her understanding of food and wine through purposeful study and note taking. In doing so, she was seeking to deepen her own knowledge, but also to return to her experiences from childhood, now as the adult in charge.

In talking to Sutherland about the insights she gained from both her own practice, and her parents’ in entertaining, she clearly names at least two. First, in Sutherland’s view, wine is far more than a commodity to be traded and sold. It is a food. This is not to say that it is enough to live on (just as any one food is not enough for a balanced diet or sustenance), nor that everyone needs to have it. It is to say that a foundational relationship with wine sees it as just as intrinsic to the Aesthetics of a meal as the food of the meal. Further, in taking this foundational relation with wine, it can be seen as a sort of vehicle through which relaxation, transition, and even elixir can be found. That is, when well timed and placed, wine can lead to things.

Coming from such a view, focusing on a life in wine retail reveals certain limitations to be wrestled with. Most primary of these is the simple fact that wine shops separate the food from the wine, thus structurally treating the two as different in kind. What Sutherland witnesses, however, from working with customers in wine retail, is that most enter with food in mind. That is, the bigger portion of the time, customers select wine based on an idea they have for a meal. In other words, (whether considering philosophy or not) they’re there in shop striving to cultivate the Aesthetic balance Kant considers by picking the perfect bottle of wine for enjoyment alongside the food they have planned.

Melissa Sutherland: Accessibility and Commodity, Wine’s Availability

After several years in public teaching, Melissa moved to New York and in so doing also stepped into a career in wine. Having established a strong base of wine knowledge, and experience in the analogies of marketing through her political career, Melissa was asked to help start the first retail + wine bar in Manhattan, Vino Vino in Tribeca. The several years of experience there led to her being brought into a position in the fine wine retail location Italian Wine Merchants (IWM) as their Creative Director at a time when the establishment was reshaping itself. There she helped redevelop IWM’s brand to reflect the shop’s new direction, and worked directly with fine wines from Italy. After several years with IWM, Melissa decided she wanted to take a new direction to learn more about wine from another angle. The change led to her position with the more volume focused wine shop, 67, serving as a wine buyer for Italian White Wines, and Sherry, as well as their Director of Marketing.

The move from fine wine to volume stands in opposition to a view common in wine, where such a change might be seen as a kind of downgrade in focus. In asking Melissa to discuss her experience in working with 67, it quickly becomes clear that the choice actually advances multiple goals and interests she carries in relation to wine. The easier of the two answers here is simply that Melissa wanted to learn about the realities of selling volume in wine retail. The more involved answer is found in the way that understanding how to sell volume also makes it possible to better increase the accessibility of wine for more people.

In thinking about her own career goals, Melissa plainly states that one of them is to put wine in the hands of more people. In doing so, she describes such a process in relation to the question of accessibility, but it quickly becomes clear that her idea of the term includes multiple prongs. When thinking about how to make wine more available to more people the question of volume becomes essential, but alongside volume rests questions of communication.

Looking first at volume, a simple increase in quantity means there is more product available for more possible people in terms of potential numbers. But greater quantity also works to lower the overall price of a product, thereby making it more affordable to more people. What is truly interesting about the role volume plays in wine accessibility though appears through a kind of tricky planning. By wisely targeting affordable trends in wine sales, Melissa has the capacity to use already established market leaders in wine (like the ever popular, lighter versions of Pinot Grigio, for example) to leverage in lesser known wines she hopes to help more people discover. That is, by selling more popular ‘high volume’ wines, she can use the guaranteed income of those labels to purchase and sell wines that are harder to get, thereby increasing a different sort of accessibility to labels that may be less readily brought into the United States otherwise. In doing so, she is able to expose those fine wines, or more obscure wines to more people.

But genuine accessibility depends upon better communication as well. In wanting to increase more people’s connection to wine, Melissa invests her time in expanding the conversation. In this way communication happens through multiple levels, and via layered differing vehicles. The simplest examples appear just through different ways to make contact with customers. Conversations on the retail floor with people that have walked through the front door of a shop’s brick and mortar location is one way. But today getting people in the door depends not only on the street front shop view, but also on online presence happening through a website, twitter, and other forms of social media.

In addition to considering the vehicles through which conversation occurs, Melissa also considers how communication happens. With the speed of online communication, focusing on something like having a well focused brand becomes essential. As such, she dedicates herself to developing coherent brand presentation as a way to generate quickly recognizable avenues for wine consumers. That is, a wine brand, whether it is a particular wine shop, wine label, or wine personality, serve as a vehicle through which individuals can make contact with a wine (or not). Whether an individual understands and feels comfortable with a particular brand identity determines whether that individual will approach and later return to develop a relationship with that brand. In the case of a wine shop, the brand serves as a way to give customers a sense of what’s available for sale. The brand offers a quick sense of if the shop feels right, or looks like the most reasonable choice for the customer. In the case of a wine label, the brand helps generate a feel for what the wine has to offer–again, if the presentation of the wine will suit the customers’ palate. A brand, then, operates as a kind of fast symbol for what a customer might want.

Ultimately, what is found throughout Melissa’s discussion of wine, including the more technical aspects of juggling smart budgeting of wine sales, or developing coherent wine brands, is a passionate desire to invest in wine as a vehicle both of sharing, and generating possibility–an elixir for a more beautifully lived life.

***

Thank you to Melissa Sutherland for taking so much time to talk with me! I’m so grateful, and thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.

Turning Home 9: The Vehicles of Bristol Bay, for Cathy

Alaska

Hawk Wakawaka

-

Jul 8, 2012

1

Cathy asked me to do a series on the crazy vehicles of Bristol Bay.

Getting any cars, trucks, or work equipment to the area depends on the machinery being brought across the ocean by enormous barge. As a result, people put a lot of effort into keeping cars and trucks running for extended periods. The unique work of the area also demands a big range of equipment so that between the older cars, and the enormous cranes, you end up encountering a huge range of vehicles.

For Cathy, here’s a selection. They give an interesting picture of the place.

Some of these cars start with a push button rather than a standard key ignition. Many are held together in places by rope, wires, or clamps.

the truck I learned to drive on. A 1976 F-250 converted into flatbed.

cork toothed stationwagon, sometimes also wears moose antlers

the fishing crew calls this the chicken wagon

the local fire truck, sourced from the old Air Force base

they honestly still drive this thing

this volvo is attached to a massive trailer for towing boats

this stationwagon has the back door torn off and the backseat plexiglassed in so that it sits like a car but can be loaded in back like a truck.

this is the only vehicle in this series not still actively running and driven

these dump trucks are used to pick up salmon from the set net sites

Melissa, Cathy, and I had a great time looking for vehicles together one day. Melanie and I the day before. Thanks!

Turning Home 8: Family Photos

Alaska

Hawk Wakawaka

-

Jul 7, 2012

1

Life Long Friends

Cathy, Melanie, and I have been lucky enough to grow up together, and grow up together fishing too. Commercial fishing is such a peculiar way of life, there is a kind of relief in being close to others that have shared in it while also experiencing life else where. Cathy went to high school in Anchorage, and started fishing with our family around her sophomore year. We all grew up cross country running and ski racing together too.

little man, Oliver, took these two pics of Cathy, Melanie, and I

Family Photos

We haven’t had all the grandkids with each of the three sisters together out in Naknek ever–two of the grandkids are younger than the time since my last visit out here. So, we made a point of getting family photos. Hopefully some with my mom and dad later too.

The Grandkids