SLO road trip report
WineMaker Magazine Conference rocks!
I may not have ended up where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. — Douglas Adams
It took three tries to get Bodhi, our obstreperous cat, into his kitty carrier—the first two attempts were followed by Houdini-like, claw-flashing escapes and maniacal chases around the house just as we thought we had him zipped in.
Finally captured, he was pissed.
Bodhi never developed a bona-fide meow. Instead, he mews and trills, chortling and chittering like a raccoon, or perhaps an extraterrestrial. But imprisoned in his carrier he let out a low yowl that grew in frequency and volume, and could still be heard even as Deb and I drove away from the kitty hotel after dropping him off for a week. I’m not sure who was more traumatized, us or the cat.
Beyond the breathtaking scenery, three things stood out for me about this trip down Highway 1 from Sonoma to San Luis Obispo for the 13th Annual WineMaker Magazine Conference, and then on to Santa Barbara in search of California chill.
First, the surprisingly toothsome moments, from the huge bowl of outrageous cioppino at Phil’s Fish Shack in Moss Landing, to the coconut-encrusted shrimp fried in a hot chili oil and served with a ginger sesame sauce at the Fishwife in Pacific Grove, to the Ambrosia Burger on the deck at Nepenthe with its big view of Big Sur, and to all the great bites in Santa Barbara proper, including a perfectly grilled fish sandwich on the pier served with sweet white onions on a cloud-soft brioche bun, the huge, hot, just-baked almond croissant at D’Angelo Bakery, served with poached eggs on kalamata olive bread that had been smeared with artichoke puree, and the piles of pasilla pepper, queso and spiced pork heaped on one-minute-old masa tortillas grilled to order at La Super Rica—without question the single best taco dive on the planet.
The second thing I noticed were the trees—a symphony of native and ornamental flora all the way down the coast coming to an extraordinary crescendo in Santa Barbara. Monterey pines, cypress and coast live oak vied for majesty with stately sycamores and figs, jacaranda trees waged color wars with red gums, and dozens of species of palms accented everything else. I was constantly asking, “Whoa, what’s that tree?!” Well, there are apps for that. Picture This and Leafsnap
The third thing that stood out for me on this trip was the wine—of course! No, really. Once we left the kingdoms of Napa and Sonoma and reached the central coast wine regions of Monterey, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara—and their celebrated AVAs like Salinas Valley, Paso Robles and the Santa Rita Hills—we traded Cab-centric stuffiness for Rhone-driven freshness and an innovative new spirit. There just seemed to be more of an even playing field here with a plethora of small, boutique wineries taking center stage.
We got a very up-close and personal sense of this at the wine sharing dinner the second night of the WineMaker Magazine Conference, where the organizers had arranged for a dozen local wineries to pour samples of their wares for a very appreciative audience of several hundred home winemakers eager to share their own elixirs as well.
A few of the local wines I tasted that were memorable (and there were many!) included a carbonic Grenache Gris from MCV Wines, a Graciano and Syrah blend from Dialect Wines, the Rhone blends including a carbonic Cinsault from Lone Madrone, the Albarino and a Syrah/Viognier blend from Brecon Estate, and the carbonic and whole cluster Pinot Noirs grown just 1.2 miles from the ocean by Sinor-LaVallee.
The most remarkable wine I tasted from a home winemaker at the conference was made by Kent Nienaber from Ham Lake, Minnesota. It was a dessert wine made from maple tree sap fortified with brandy! Not normally my kind of “wine” but I have to admit, it was truly delicious.
The conference
WineMaker Magazine is an outstanding print publication and digital platform aimed at amateur winemakers. Launched in 1998, it has built a library of backyard viticulture and home winemaking resources that honestly rivals anything out there. Every year it hosts an annual conference for its readership in a different wine growing region of the country. This year it was San Luis Obispo, California; next year it will be Eugene, Oregon.
The 2022 conference, just a week ago in SLO, was sold-out to 250 attendees. It featured a small trade show, pre- and post-conference winemaking Boot Camps and winery tours, and two days of workshops and seminars culminating with the popular WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition Awards Dinner. As I mentioned in my last post, I was invited to the event to screen my Tiny Vineyards movie and to give a seminar entitled “Lessons Learned from Tiny Vineyards & Going Pro.”
I screened the movie at the small historic Palm Theatre in old downtown San Luis Obispo to a wonderful sold-out crowd of 125, made up of conference attendees and members of several regional winemaking clubs including Wines & Steins and the Central Coast Home Vintners Association. We opened the event with a special wine tasting for the audience and went through 25 bottles of the original wines seen being made by the home winemakers in the movie. That was a big hit!
A couple of days later I gave my seminar at the conference to a small but very attentive group of home winemakers who were all curious about their own prospects for going from hobbyists to professionals. My talk was pretty much a distillation of this newsletter and my own ongoing experience, and I was grateful that these folks showed up given that it was the very last presentation of the conference just a few hours before the Wine Competition Awards Dinner.
Aaah, that dinner! Without question the highlight of the conference for those attendees that had entered wines. There were 1,772 entries into 50+ categories featuring wine from 48 states, 4 Canadian provinces and 5 countries. The organizers kept it lively and fun and blessedly only announced the medal winners from those folks who were actually at the dinner. That still took a couple of hours to get through, but everyone was in a festive mood and the theatrics employed by some winners when they collected their medals and certificates, and posed for a photograph, were hysterical.
I am thrilled to say that two of my 2020 vintage wines earned some bling—a silver medal for my Heritage Red Blend and a gold medal for my Trois Beautés GSM. This was especially good news as both of these wines are precursors to blends I’m making for my upcoming commercial releases. It was also a little bittersweet as this was probably the last “amateur” contest I can legitimately enter—2021 being my first year as a commercial winemaker.
But it’s been a good run as an amateur, with 13 total medals won for my wines since 2018, including five golds and one Best of Class. I’ve got a feeling though that it’s going to get a whole lot harder going forward!
So, it was a very satisfying road trip. We drove up through the central valley going home—still lots of grapes everywhere we looked only this time they were raisin grapes, and juice grapes, and table grapes, eventually giving way to the old vine Zinfandels and Petite Sirahs of Lodi and the sandy vineyards of the Sacramento delta.
We picked up Bodhi at the kitty motel, and although he was once again profoundly displeased with being in his carrier he somehow knew that this time he was headed in the right direction. His yowls were halfhearted and subsided well before we got home. A few hours later he was sitting in his favorite place in the window watching his world go by. He seemed to have forgotten everything that had happened, as cats will do.
I enjoyed meeting you in SLO and am now working on the first class in the UC Davis program. My 3-year old tiny vineyard is producing grapes this year for the first time. Exciting.