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Wined Out but Eating Well at the L.A. International Wine Competition

Never have I eaten so well, and drunk so poorly, as at the Los Angeles International Wine Competition last week in Pomona.

The wines were fine. That wasn't the issue. I sat in as an observer on a panel (at top) judging 93 of them in a single day. Drinking that many would have been suicide. And if I liked a wine a lot, too bad. All of my tastes went into a spit bucket.

You can read the details of the judging and learn about related events you can attend in my story today in L.A. Weekly's Squid Ink.

Mercifully, at lunch the drink set out at each place was iced tea. During dinner, we could drink as much as we wanted from displays of last year's winners (above), and bottles were passed non-stop at the tables. The downside was, after dealing with so much wine during the day, I wasn't up for more.

The food was wonderful, though. The Squid Ink article describes what the judges ate for lunch. For dinner, we were almost overwhelmed by dish after dish prepared by Chef David Teig and his crew (above). Teig is in charge of McKinley's Grille at the Sheraton Fairplex Hotel & Conference Center, where the judging took place.

This salad combined gorgeous heirloom tomatoes with cheese and microgreens.

Spicy grilled octopus came with Anaheim chiles, fresh peaches and mint.

Here's a bowlful of asparagus, fresh morels and cheese.

Farm-raised squash and farm bacon accompanied king salmon (above), appropriate because we were eating outdoors in McKinley's Farm at Fairplex, site of the L.A. County Fair.

Meat eaters tucked into ostrich (above) and chicken.

Dinner ended with a choice of Moscato snow cones drizzled with port wine or hoja santa custard ice cream topped with saffron honey. Why choose? I had both--and caught the last trolley back to the hotel. 

Tasting with a Legendary Vintner

Even vintner Bernard Portet (above) seemed surprised at how well his Pinot Noir dealt with spicy flavors.

Portet was eating ceviche seriously spiked with serrano chiles. The place was Duplex on Third, where he had brought wines for a dinner tasting.

A legend in the Napa Valley, Portet co-founded and was head winemaker at Clos du Val in the Stags Leap District. After retiring in 2009, he founded Polaris Wines with a former colleague, Don Chase. Under the label Heritance, they are focusing on Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc but have added Pinot Noir. Their 2011 Pinot, from Stanly Ranch vineyard in Carneros, was released this January. It's a limited production, only 217 cases.

This is the wine Portet turned to when even the cool, crisp Sauvignon Blanc that he is holding in the photo above couldn't alleviate the fire from the ceviche.

The success of this unlikely pairing illustrates Portet's approach to winemaking."Wine is to go with the food, compliment food, go well with the food," he said. For Heritance, he is making "wines that are enjoyable, yet complex," more palatable and less austere than what he made at Clos du Val.

And they're not high alcohol bombs. "I'm not trying to make explosive wines, but wines that come gently into the mouth," he said. The Pinot Noir is 14.2 % alcohol. "Acidity shows more when there is lower alcohol," he said. 

Portet has responded to changing tastes. "The taste of people has evolved in 25 years," he said. "Consumers have gone from not being afraid of aging a wine for three to five years to, they want to drink it now." 

Born in Cognac, France, Portet is the ninth generation in a wine family. His early lessons in grape-growing and wine-making came from his father, who was vineyard and winery manager of Château Lafite. In 1968, he arrived in the Napa Valley.  "I have the privilege of having 44 years of wine-making behind me," he said.

The Heritance label sums up his background: 1 (for one family), 9 (for the number of generations) and 4 for the number of continents where he has made wine. 

Heritance is what Portet calls a "winery without walls." The partners don't have their own vineyards. They buy grapes, but not from just anywhere. "I do believe very much in the idea of terroir," Portet said.

The grapes go to a custom crushing facility where he supervises every step in the production of the wine. 

The 2011 Sauvignon Blanc, which didn't quite extinguish the flames of the ceviche, is blended with 12% Roussanne from Paso Robles. The result is a wine more tropical and California-like than the usual Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon blend, he said.

But this was a one-time experiment. The 2012 Sauvignon Blanc, which will be bottled in May, is blended with 7 to 8% Semillon.

You might ask why a winemaker would order a spicy first course at a wine dinner rather than a mild option such as oysters, a caprese salad or Maryland crab cakes, all of which are on the menu at Duplex.

The answer is, Portet has loved ceviche since first tasting it in Chile (his wife is Chilean, from Valparaiso).

And he's closely linked to South American wine country. Polaris's other label, Ñandú is a Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina. Portet goes to Mendoza two or three times a year to supervise the making of this wine.

The 2010 Malbec, which he brought to the dinner, is blended with 2% Cabernet Sauvignon. Malbec is a small black grape with not much acidity. "Cabernet is necessary for the balance of the wine," he said. "Even 2% makes a difference. With the Cabernet the tannins of Malbec reappear." 

Portet chose a more reliable dish to go with the reds that followed the Pinot--pappardelle with lamb ragout, maitake mushrooms and cherry tomato-garlic bread crumbs.

This was an easy pairing with the 2008 and 2010 Heritance Cabernet Sauvignons, which, Portet said, reflect the difference between a normal year (2008) and a cold vintage that resulted in green tannins and spiciness (2010).

Up next for Polaris is a single vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon that will be bottled in June. And Portet is thinking about a white or red Rhone blend with grapes from Paso Robles. 

If he does this, it will clearly be a Paso wine. "I try to make sure you recognize the variety [of the grapes] and the terroir," he said.

Food and Fun with Bordeaux Merlots

Having lunch with French winemakers means lots of bottles going back and forth, lots of clowning and fun, like in the photo above. And good food too.

This happened at The Peninsula in Beverly Hills, when Le Circle Rive Droite (The Right Bank Club) held tastings arranged by Learn About Wine.

Founded in 2002, the Cercle represents the best vineyards from the right bank of the Gironde estuary in Bordeaux, where Merlot is the top grape. Thirty-two châteaux poured their wines throughout the day.

After a morning seminar for sommeliers, the wine people headed outdoors to the sunny Verandah Terrace for lunch. French accents dominated conversation, and bottles covered the tables (above). When these had been tasted, more appeared as tables exchanged their bounty.

The wines were older vintages, from 2005, 2008 and 2009, and one from 2000--Château Moulin Haut-Laroque (really nice, above). 

Lunch started with a mixed green salad (above) with shaved vegetables, tomatoes and pine nuts. The dressing was acidic and salty, which I thought it would kill the wines, only that didn't happen. The two poured at my table with this course not only stood up to the salad but became even more delicious with it.

These salad-loving wines were Château La Rose Perrière and Château La Vielle Cure (above), Merlot blends from 2008.

Next came a dish friendly to all the wines, chicken on a bed of mascarpone polenta with tomatoes, zucchini and sweet corn (above).

Sitting at my table was Yseult de Gaye, whose family has been in the wine business for a century (above and at the top). She brought Château Grand Corbin Manuel 2009, a good match for the chicken.

Lunch ended with cheeses, bread and crackers and then a platter of cookies (above). The chocolate cookies at the left went well with the wines. The others were just plain good, like the remaining wines I tasted.

They were Château Fontenil 2005, Château Boutisse 2005, Château Fayat 2009, Château Montviel 2006, Château Rol Valentin 2009 and Château Bonalgue 2009.

At the end came two young wines. The first, Château Magrez Fombrauge, represented an outstanding vintage, 2010. The baby was the 2012 Château Cassagne Haut-Canon.

The 2012 vintage will produce "some of the best Bordeaux we've seen," according to Dr. Alain Raynaud, president of Le Cercle Rive Droite. Even better news from Dr. Raynaud: "The prices will be reasonable when the vintage is finally released, making it a great year for consumers."

Celebrating Malbec Day at Lucques

What could be nicer than a glass of Malbec with a great lunch at Lucques?

The answer is, 14 glasses of Malbec with the same lunch. This happened at a master class presented by Wines of Argentina in honor of the third annual Malbec World Day April 17.

The "students"  were handed a glass of Finca Las Nubes Rosé of Malbec 2011 as they arrived. This dry rosé was made by José Luis Mounier at a high altitude winery in the Cafayate Valley in northern Argentina.

The rest of the wines came in three flights, poured into glasses that formed a cheery crowd behind the lunch plates. The first flight, at the top, included the 2012 Finca Flichman Reserva Malbec 2012, the 2011 Lagarde Malbec, the 2010 Alamos Winery Selección Malbec and the 2010 Ricardo Santos Malbec.

You wouldn't mind having any of these on your table, especially because the suggested retail prices are $20 or less, making them great buys.  At $12.99, the Finca Flichman was the lowest-priced wine at the tasting. Founded in 1890, this is one of Argentina's oldest wineries. 

You may see Alamos Malbec in markets for less than the Selección, which is $20, but don't get excited. It's a different wine at a lower price point.  

As Master Sommelier Tim Gaiser from San Franciso lectured on the wines, the class ate spiced lamb loin with roasted baby carrots, dandelion greens and black olives (above).

The hardest part of the session was pouring the wines into a dump bucket when it would have been nice to sit back and enjoy them. 

But they had to make way for the next round, composed of the 2010 Finca El Origen Gran Reserva Malbec (at right), the 2010 Don Miguel Gascón Reserva Malbec, the 2008 Navarro Correas Alegoría Malbec, and the 2011 Domingo Hermanos Domingo Molina M2 Malbec.

The Domingo wine represents the Cafayate Valley and the Rupestre Valley in Salta in the north.  The other wines at the tasting were from Mendoza, where the first grape cuttings were planted in 1853.

To go with these richer and more expensive wines (the Domingo Molina M2 is $35), lunch escalated into a hearty plate of chicken paillard with Swiss chard bread pudding, wild mushrooms and walnut butter (above).

The final round brought on the priciest of the wines, the 2008 Renacer Malbec ($70), which is a limited edition wine aged two years in new French oak and then 6 months in the bottle. At 15%, it was the highest in alcohol in this group.

The others were the 2009 Nieto Senetiner Nieto Reserva Malbec followed by three blends: the 2010 Salentein Numina Malbec Blend (61 % Malbec, 21% Cabernet Sauvignon and smaller amounts of Merlot, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc); the 2009 Luca Wines Beso de Dante Malbec Blend (60% Malbec, the rest Cabernet Sauvignon), and the 2008 Familia Zuccardi Zeta Malbec Blend (73% Malbec and 27% Cabernet Sauvignon).

At $45, the Zuccardi Zeta was the second highest-priced wine at the tasting. The Nieto Reserva sneaked into this round at only $14.99.

To pair with this elegant group, Lucques sent out plates of braised beef short ribs with turnip greens, roasted cippolinis and horseradish cream (above).

Sated with wine and food and hardly able to touch the platter of cookies that served as dessert, the tasters had to sit back and agree with Sommelier Gaiser, who said of Malbec, "Whatever you do to it, you really can't change its soul."

What's in These Truffles? Bacon!

An all-bacon party this weekend brought out an incredible assortment of food, from bacon spring rolls and bacon-infused vodka to more desserts than you ever thought could be made with bacon.

I took chocolate-peanut-bacon truffles (at top), around which I arranged bacon-chocolate bark. The bark is easy to make. All you do is mix crumbled bacon with melted chocolate, then spread it out on foil or wax paper to harden.

The truffle recipe came from Cakebread Cellars' culinary director, Brian Streeter. It's easy, too. Here are the steps:

First, grind peanuts, bittersweet chocolate chips and sugar in a food processor until very fine (above).

Next, mix in creamy peanut butter until smooth.

Place the mixture in the refrigerator until firm, then form it into 1-inch balls and return to the refrigerator. 

Cook bacon until crisp and drain it well on paper towels.

With a heavy knife, chop the bacon into fine crumbs.

Melt chocolate chips in a heatproof bowl over simmering water, stirring occasionally as the chocolate softens. Mix in the chopped bacon and let the mixture cool slightly. 

Coat the peanut-chocolate balls with the melted chocolate mixture and then with cocoa. The shape will be irregular, but that's the way truffles are in nature. 

These are only slightly sweet. Perhaps that's because they're meant to go with red wine--Cakebread Cellars Syrah. No one brought that to the party, so I substituted a Spanish Garnacha, and that was a good pairing too.

If you don't plan to serve the truffles with wine and want them sweeter, you could use semisweet chocolate chips instead of bittersweet. I had a little coating left over, and that's how I got the idea of making bacon bark.  I liked it so well that I cooked more bacon and melted more chocolate in order to have enough bark for the party. 

PEANUT BUTTER AND BACON TRUFFLES
Cakebread Cellars

1/2 cup salted dry roasted peanuts
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips
1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
6 slices bacon 
1/4 cup cocoa for coating, plus additional cocoa

Combine the peanuts, 2 ounces of the chips and the sugar in the work bowl of a food processor and pulse until the mixture is ground to a medium fine texture. Transfer to a bowl, add the peanut butter, and stir until evenly combined. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the bacon until crisp, drain on paper towels and chop fine. Set aside.

Remove the chilled peanut mixture from the refrigerator and form into 1-inch balls. There will be about 24. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt the remaining 6 ounces of chocolate chips in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water over medium heat. Stir occasionally, until smooth.

Remove the bowl from the heat, stir in the chopped bacon and set aside to cool until just warm to the touch. Sift the cocoa into another bowl and set aside.

Working with a few peanut balls at a time, coat them evenly with the melted chocolate mixture, then place in the bowl of cocoa and coat completely. Add more cocoa if necessary.

Transfer the truffles to an airtight container sprinkled with additional cocoa. Repeat with the remaining balls. Refrigerate up to a week. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Makes 2 dozen.

Sauvignon Blanc for "Breakfast"

Ah, breakfast in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. What a treat, to relax in a serene dining room facing a sunny patio abloom with greenery.

Shall we start with coffee? Certainly not, because this is going to be a morning wine tasting. The wines are from Napa Valley's Cakebread Cellars, brought by brothers Dennis and Bruce Cakebread, who had just landed at LAX.

If morning seems an odd time to taste wines, it's routine at Cakebread, where tasting for blending gets done between 10 and ll a.m. "It's noon somewhere," jokes Bruce Cakebread, winery president. 

First up was the sprightly Sauvignon Blanc 2011, a better eye-opener than a shot of caffeine. If you were having goat cheese on an English muffin, this fresh, acidic wine would be a good match.  

Next came the oaky, complex Carneros Chardonnay Reserve 2010, a fine companion to Brie, perhaps melted over toast.

Eggs benedict with smoked salmon? Cakebread's 2011 Anderson Valley Pinot Noir could work there. And if you wanted a chorizo omelet or a carnitas breakfast burrito, both of which are on the breakfast menu at the Polo Lounge, the Dancing Bear Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 could stand up to either one.  

On the other hand, this elegant Cabernet deserves to be appreciated on its own, with bread and cheese, which is what we did.

The Polo Lounge assembles a handsome cheese platter (above), complete with a label that names each cheese. Our platter had Nicasio Square cow's milk and San Andreas sheep's milk cheeses from California, Wisconsin's Moody Blue, and chevre from Oregon. Because it was morning, the platter included rolls and jams as well as fig bread, dried fruits and almonds.  

At Cakebread, wines aren't necessarily paired with the same old safe stuff. The Cakebreads like the Sauvignon Blanc with chicken in mole verde, the Chardonnay with fresh corn pozole and the Cabernet Sauvignon with red mole.

The winery has an active culinary program, and these dishes are specialties there.  As I was salivating at the descriptions, the recipes were on their way to me from Brian Streeter, culinary director. 

We didn't taste the Cakebread Syrah, but this wine is suggested with chocolate-peanut butter-bacon truffles. You'll get that recipe soon, because I'm making the truffles this week for a party. The other recipes are more complex, so I can't test them in a day. 

To taste in person at the winery, consider attending Cakebread's 27th annual American Harvest Workshop Sept. 7 through 10.  Dinners, cellar tours, grape harvesting, seminars and farm visits are just some of the activities. Top chefs from around the country are coming to cook.  

If you're really ambitious, you could apply to be one of 10 guests who will shadow the chefs throughout the festival and cook alongside them. The qualifications are stiff, like trying out for a reality TV show. "Culinary bootcamp," is how Dennis Cakebread, winery vice chairman, describes the experience.  "It's not for the faint of heart."  

If you don't make the cut, you can still take cooking classes at Cakebread. And if you can't get away, you can still taste workshop food. Streeter,who is program manager for the event, drew on recipes from 60 participating chefs for "The Cakebread Cellars American Harvest Cookbook" (Ten Speed Press, 2011), which is available online, in bookstores and at the winery. 

Maximiliano's Hair of the Dog Dinner

Only a handful of people were able to get in on one of the rarest food and drink experiences in Los Angeles--the first Hair of the Dog beer dinner held here in 15 years.

The restaurant where this took place was Maximiliano in Highland Park. The organizers were Andre Guerrero, Maximiliano's owner/chef, and Alan Sprints, founder of the Hair of the Dog Brewing Company in Portland, Oregon.

Guerrero's job was to match food to distinctive beers that are difficult to obtain. Some are brewed every other year, others every few years. Some are vintage-dated.

The hardest to get is "Michael," a Flanders red style ale that is aged in American oak and sherry casks for two and a half years. "It's like trying to get Romanée-Conti, the most rare red burgundy in France," Guerrero said.

Nevertheless, Michael was poured at the dinner with braised pork belly, sweet corn polenta and a dry fig and cherry gastrique (above). The sweet, fruity flavors of the dish echoed the fruity, cherry tones of the beer. Sipping it was like drinking beer candy.


The most striking pairing was butternut squash soup (above) with "Greg," a golden beer brewed with Queensland Blue winter squash. The flavors were so similar, it was like pairing squash with squash. Like other Hair of the Dog beers, Greg develops flavor as it ages in the bottle, becoming sweeter, Sprints said. 

The dinner started full force with "Adam," a dark beer that weighs in at 10 % alcohol. "I was trying to recreate a beer made hundreds of years ago," Sprints said. Because he recommends Adam with oysters, Guerrero came up with a variation on oysters Rockefeller--baked Fanny Bay oysters with bacon confit, fennel and spinach (above).

Dark, with some sweetness, Adam is also "a very nice dessert beer," Sprints said.  

Hair of the Dog's best seller is Blue Dot, a dusky double India pale ale with strong citrus notes. Guerrero matched this with cold smoked organic Scottish salmon (at top), which he presented with aromatic "forbidden" black rice, grapefruit pico de gallo, yuzu lime and lemongrass.

"Fred" was another powerhouse, at 10% alcohol. This sharp and tangy ale came with a soft and soothing dish, beef short ribs cooked sous vide, with sage, wild mushrooms, potatoes and glazed carrots and finished with a splash of crème fraîche (above).

Fred gave way to an even more potent beer, the 2011 Doggie Claws, which, at 11.5%, was the highest in alcohol at the dinner. A barley beer, it went with pastry chef Jan Purdy's mocha cake filled with roasted almond and malt semifreddo and, on the side, butterscotch sauce. "It's a really big, intense beer. It's like finishing off with a dessert wine," Guerrero said.

Only dinner wasn't finished. Sprints threw in an extra, wine glasses of Matt, which is as close as you can get to Port in a beer. This Matt was brewed in 2008, aged in wood barrels and released in 2010. 

Matching beer with food gave Guerrero more leeway than a wine dinner. "There are actually more flavor components in beer than you find in wine," he said. This is especially true of Hair of the Dog beers. Founder Sprints, who was born in Culver City, started the brewery in 1993 and released his first beer, Adam, in 1994. Production is now 800 barrels a year. 

Catching Up With Santa Barbara Wines

Three courses and eight wines--that was quite a lunch. It wasn't an invitation to overimbibe, though, but an opportunity to check out what is happening with Santa Barbara wines.

The lunch--salad with nut-crusted goat cheese, beef tenderloin or chicken and a cheese and cracker plate--was paired with four whites and four reds brought by four Santa Barbara County winery figures, who then talked about their products and industry trends.

It was a prelude to LearnAboutWine's 10th annual STARS of Santa Barbara tasting at The Peninsula Beverly Hills.

The first of the whites was Buttonwood Farm Winery's Zingy, a Sauvignon Blanc brought by winemaker Karen Steinwachs. Designed to be highly aromatic, it's "not everyone's Sauvignon Blanc," she says. And Buttonwood makes two more for other tastes.

The 2012 Zingy was bottled just two days before the lunch. It's $20, and only 246 cases were made. So if you want something fresh, light and affordable, grab Zingy while it's still around.

Buttonwood was the 17th winery to start up in Santa Barbara County. The 40 wineries that took part in the tasting are only part of what is there now. The area is vying to be "the very best wine region in the New World," says LearnAboutWine founder Ian Blackburn.

Winemaking styles there are changing. Tim Snider, president of Fess Parker Winery, says Parker wines used to be bigger, bolder and heavier. Now, like other Santa Barbara wines, they're lightening up and relying less on oak.

Freshness, purity and balance are the standards for Parker's Epiphany Cellars line, which focuses on Rhone varietals and wines for "people interested in trying something differen," says Snider.

He brought Epiphany's 2011 Grenache Blanc, a bright, brisk wine, most of which spent time in stainless steel. Only 20% was placed in older French oak barrels. It's $25.

Kenneth Volk, owner of Kenneth Volk Vineyards, is espcially interested in Iberian grapes, and his 2011 Albariño was the first produced in the Santa Maria Valley. Volk can't figure why there haven't been more plantings in the area, because the colder climate is congenial to the grape.

This first bottling came from 2 1/2 tons of grapes. Heavy rains before harvest resulted in "rockin' acidity," he says. The Albariño is $24 at the winery.

Clarissa Nagy, winermaker of Riverbench Vineyard & Winery, which is across from Volk's headquarters in the Santa Maria Valley, contributed the 2010 Estate Chardonnay.

Riverbench is known for its Chardonnays, and this one was barrel-fermented and aged in oak for 11 months, making it more oaky than the other whites at the lunch. It's $26, a bargain if you like well made, oak-accented Chardonnays.

The vines at Riverbench were planted in 1973. Nagy is new. She joined the winery a year ago.

Riverbench focuses on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Moving into the reds, Nagy offered the 2010 Pinot Noir. Fermented with native yeast, it's a luscious wine compared to other, leaner Pinot Noirs and well worth the $48 price tag. (All of the reds poured at the lunch are in the photo above.)

Volk brought his 2009 Santa Maria Pinot Noir, based on grapes from three vineyards. There are less than 3,000 cases, and the wine sells for $30. At the tasting later, Volk poured three Pinot Noirs and brought out a Mourvedre that wasn't on the list. It's one of his Iberian varietals--the grape started out in Spain and then went to France, he explains. 

Buttonwood contributed the 2009 Santa Ynez Cabernet Franc. "It's the fussiest, most finicky thing to grow," Steinwachs says of the grape. "It's the Pinot Noir of the Bordeaux family."  She babied the wine along, putting 20 % of it into new French oak.

Steinwachs admits that it's not for everyone. "You either like it or you don't," she says. If you want to find out, the wine is $26.

Snider (above) ended up with the 2009 red Rhone blend Revelation from Epiphany. "It's the most popular wine we have," he says. "It's a showy wine, a big wine." This striking, fruity red is composed of two grapes that were at their best in 2009--Grenache, which is the lead grape at 51%, and Syrah. They spent 22 months in French oak before blending. The price is $40.

Revelation's companion at the tasting was the 2009 Gypsy, composed of Grenache, Mourvedre, Counoise and Cinsault. It's an everyday wine, lively as a gypsy and good with spicy foods, Snider says. It's $25.

Robert Mondavi's Toast to the Coast

It was a very meaty night at The Tasting Kitchen in Venice. Butchers Lindy & Grundy (Amelia Posada and Erika Nakamura) were showing what they do with beef, raw and cooked, working with Tasting Kitchen chef Casey Lane to turn out a seven-course dinner that lasted almost four hours.

The food was delicious, but its real purpose was to show off Robert Mondavi's Private Selection wines, made from Central Coast grapes. The media types who had been invited gathered upstairs at tables so elaborately decorated that they almost stole the show from the wine and food.

It looked like a florist's shop had contributed everything in stock to line the center of each table, some of the greenery stuffed into huge squash bowls.

Candles were in wine bottles (Robert Mondavi, of course) that dripped streams of wax. More were in flower pots and other imaginative holders.

One wall (at top) was covered like a blackboard with a chalk map of the Central Coast and the theme of the evening, "A Taste & Toast to the Central Coast." It must have been a lot of work to create that. Too bad it was for one night only.

The menu offered a couple of reprieves from meat, but the focus was on beef--filet, chuck ribs and raw, sourced from Rancho San Julian in Lompoc.

The prettiest came first--carpaccio (above) cut so thin that you could sweep the slices up in a single forkful. In the center, a dark swath of Nicoise olive tapenade contrasted with the rosy color of the meat. On top were the thinnest imaginable breadsticks. 

The tastiest was the simplest, just two small slices of seared filet, one balanced on the other.

The heartiest was a dark braise of rib meat and onions (above), accompanied by bowls of polenta soaked with gravy and topped with Parmesan.  

It was a relief to end with barely a mouthful of semolina crosta (above) and braised grapes, just two of them, cut in half.

The wines, all from either 2010 or 2011, were four whites, starting with a Sauvignon Blanc and ending with a slightly sweet Riesling to go with dessert. 

The reds were a Merlot, a Cabernet and a Meritage, which the people around me seemed to like as much as I did. A blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot, it was poured with one of the meatless courses, melted robiola cheese over romanesco broccoli.  

San Antonio Winery Has a Big Birthday

San Antonio Winery is celebrating its 95th anniversary this year, making it the oldest producing winery in Los Angeles.

What better way to honor this achievement than with a party? You can read what I wrote about that fun evening (above) for LA Weekly's Squid Ink by clicking here.

There were three birthday cakes, all of them produced by the Los Angeles Baking Co., which is not far from the winery in downtown Los Angeles. One was a black forest cake shaped like a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Another was topped with winery photos. The third was a tiramisu cake.

The food was Argentinian barbecue prepared by The Gauchos, who grilled the meats in the winery parking lot, where the party took place, and wore gaucho costumes.

Obviously there was plenty of wine, served from two bars. Among them was one of my favorites, the Heritage red blend. The Chardonnay above was very good too. 

So go down there and celebrate by having lunch and a glass of wine in the Maddalena Restaurant, named for winery doyenne Maddalena Riboli (above), who is almost 90 years old. 

San Antonio Winery, 737 Lamar St., Los Angeles, CA 90031. Tel: (323) 223-1401.