Carolyn Tillie

I'm in the Roussanne encampment... Viscous with a slightly oily feel on the tongue, it will hold up against the cured olives and the sharp citrus notes in the lemon, providing necessary contrast and depth.

Share with and on a friend....

Russ's suggestion for Uncle Al's is spot on -- also, there is the red tram that runs down to Belmont shore where I would definitely go just to wander. My favorites in that neighborhood are Open Sesame and Babette's.

Correct, they do not. But another one I thought of is Biale -- known for amazing Zins, their tasting room is only a few months old and well worth the visit!

Link doesn't work for me....

I adore Artesa for the architecture and artwork, but it is best to go during a week day. Neal is a good suggestion and if you want to spend an entire day doing great mountain wineries, you could literally line up appointments (from east to west) at; Lamborn (great Zins crafted by Heidi Peterson) Outpost (Zins and Rhones - under construction, unsure if they are actually taking any appointments) O'Shaughnessy (Cabs) White Cottage (Cabs) Neal (Cabs) Ladera (Cabs) Although I doubt you could hit them all in one day as they are all appointment-only, even though they are only a mile or so from one another.

I'm sorry I am no longer at Ladera or I would give you a personal cave tour with barrel samples -- however, you can still go and see them and taste some pretty good juice (they always barrel sample). My other favorites right now include Arger-Martucci, Havens, Dutch Henry, Lamborn, and Outpost. Also consider visiting Vintners Collective in downtown on Main Street. It is a great place to taste upwards of twelve different small producers who don't have tasting rooms.

I guess that's the rub -- like Rancho Gordo said, how much copper does one consume by cooking in a copper pot? I imagine it would be more over extended periods of time, but I'm sure that I have consumed more copper as a metalsmith than an average person would by using a copper pot in their kitchen.

I've kept some around in the back of my fridge for emergencies... the stuff doesn't ever really go bad and can be a nice kitchen helper.

In what context - and how much? I'm sure EVERYTHING is poisonous to some degree, but as a jeweler, I have been filing and sanding and inhaling copper for 20 years and have never heard this before...

You crack me up... If you stop in a Rose Pistola, you will see the exact same Chinese Sand Pots on their wood-fired stove, filled with beans... That was what convinced me the day I ate their beans and Paula confirmed the use of the Chinese pot. For $6.00, how can you go wrong? And they look so cool too! Actually, the one I bought is more like this, the shorter one on the right, with the handle sticking out the side.

I'm in this camp and promptly went to Chinatown for my $6.00 sand pot. Would never cook beans in anything else again....

Redondo is where I lived for nine years before I moved to Napa, three years ago... What type of food are you looking for? It is not big on Haute Cuisine but Chez Melange will do in a pinch. It is a bit cold in November, but still worth going down to the harbor. There, you order your crab, are handed a wooden hammer and a bunch of newspaper, and pound 'till your heart's content. Of course, coming from Maryland, you probably don't care a whole lot about west coast crab... Just north is Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach. Manhattan Beach has a few more upscale restaurants because a lot of Angelenos have beach homes there. I'm hoping Mr. Cognac will chime in with what's great these days as he is one of the local restaurant reviewers there. What I really miss about the area is the town of Gardena. Technically, it is about five miles away, but is home to the FINEST Japanese food outside of Tokyo. See, Gardena is home to the U.S. corporate offices of business such as Toyota, Mitsubishi, Honda, etc... It has a thriving Japanese community and during my dot-com/pre-9-11 days, I ate Japanese food in these restaurants five days a week. My personal favorite is a Yakitori restaurant called Shin-Sen-Gumi on Western, just east of the 405.

True - they are currently scheduled to open the week before Thanksgiving... However I'm one to stay away from a restaurant until it is in month three or four of operation and had time to iron out difficulties. My current favorite low-key restaurant in Yountville is P.J. Steak -- a new iteration of Philippe Jeanty's Pere Jeanty. Ostensibly a steakhouse, but not the kind that makes you order all of the sides separately with no thought to the personality of the meat. Heartily recommend the Kobe beef short ribs and quail frisee salad!

My bad misspelling... Tako the fish, not taco the Mexican sandwichy thing...

I ate at Restaurant Budo on Tuesday. They have a menu if you like those things. There is also an 8-course chef's tasting and a 16-course chef's tasting (with wine pairings, of course). Here's a re-cap of the 16-course tasting: Amuse of Japanese melon with olive oil and micro cilantro. Sounds simple - tasted amazing. 1. Taco salad (the fish) with donburi and octopus and a Thai basil oil served with 02 Domaine Chandon Brut. 2. Hearts of palm with quince paste, avocado puree, and micro basil. Servd with a Gruner Veltliner. 3. Soy-poached duck on slices of squash with micro bok choy, pomegranate glaze, and pomegranate seeds. Served with an 8-year Kijosh Hanahato sake that was like a dark, tawny sherry making the combination in one's mouth like an erotic hoison sauce. Outstanding. 4. Lobster tuna roll with micro bok choy and sturgeon caviar. Served with Villa Wolf Vin de Pinot. 5. Panko-fried oyster on a paintbrush-smeer of reduced strawberry and beet juice with candied ginger. Served with a '99 Wunncsh d'Mann Gewurtztraminer. Astonishing. 6. Roasted Chinese chestnut puree with Marin chanterelles and shaved Himalayan truffles. Served with Lustau dry Montillado. Erotic. 7 - 10. Seafood sampler; Sashimi fluke with OVOO, Hamachi with mango and yuzu, big eye tuna belly, and Thai snapper in lemon juice. served with Haru Totai sake. 11. Miso-crusted foie gras on top of a big eye tuna with black truffle ponzu. Served with '03 Piesporter Treppchen Riesling. 12. Thai-style lobster bisque with uni foam and a American sturgeon caviar. Full of lobster chunks and a few scallion spears and thin slivers of shiitake. Served with 01 Spelletich Carneros Chardonnay. 13. John Dory with potato puree and sake bueurre blanc. Served with '3 Cote Broville. 14. Black pepper squab, pan seared, with pomegranate glaze, roasted beets, and Japanese sweet potato puree. Served with 03 Smith Wooten Syrah. 15. Dry aged Summerfield Farm New York Prime, soy-marinated with garlic choy and verjus puree. Served with '02 Mi Sueno Cabernet. Palate-cleanser. Verjus sorbet with ripe Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. Served with Gramans 10 year-old tawny port. 16. Sharffenberger fallen chocolate cake with Saigon cinnamon ice cream. Served with Elio Peroni Bigaro. Mignardise of cashew cookies with caramel, prickly pear pats de fruit, and orange-chocolate truffles rolled in cashews. The 16-course taster menu is $115 -- $125 if you want all seafood. An extra hundred for the wine. That made this dinner for two to be around $500. Personally, I prefered all the fish courses best, especially the earlier ones. The John Dory, squab, and steak courses seemed pretty standard for haute cuisine. Perfectly prepared and all that, but after the subtleties of the earlier Japanese-influenced fish courses (mostly raw), the later courses actually seemed heavy. By and large the wine pairings were brilliant with the exception of the Syrah and Cab but ONLY because the wines were too young. Don't get me wrong - they are great wines... or will be in 5 years or so.

Recent 2004 barrel samples from Napa are showing quite nicely, thank you very much... It was an odd year because everything happened early (80 degree heat in February with a harvest that started shortly after the July 4th weekend) and ended well before the end of September. I'll be buying Petite Sirahs, Syrah, and (usual for me), wines from mountain vineyards that didn't see as much heat spiking as the valley floor wineries saw. I'm already setting my sights on Outpost Rhone varietals, Lamborn zins, and Carneros Pinot Noirs (but probably not from THIS year!)

As a side note, from many of the other wine chat lists, there is an unorganized effort by collectors to help some of the wineries build their lost libraries. I grassroots movement seems to be building for wineries like Saintsbury, who lost their ENTIRE library of wines, where a collector might have a a bottle or a case of an older vintage and are giving it back to the winery. It obviously isn't much and will never replace all that was lost, but for many wineries, their entire histories are gone. It is though someone has lost their family photos in a fire yet someone across the country just happens to a duplicate of one of the photos. I have been unable to acquire a complete list of the 82 wineries that suffered in the blaze but I know I have a bottle or two from the few I have spoken with and have already offered my single bottles back to help them rebuild their library. I have suggested to several prominant bloggers that wine bloggers would be the perfect medium to facilitate this, but the whole scenario is just too knew to figure out exactly how to manage it. Will keep you all apprised... In the mean time, if you think you might have an older bottle or two from a California winery and are interested in donating it back, you could simply call the winery in question and ask they suffered a loss from the blaze.

Stupid me. My desperation and impatience for Japanese food kept me from making my own in my kitchen, to trying one of TWO located in Napa. For shame, for shame, I know... - The tempura was greasy and <gasp!> had powdered sugar in the flour, making the pieces taste like donuts! - The sashimi was thick and flabby and worthless. - The miso was concentrated, making it hideously salty. - Lastly, the sukiyaki had SUGAR in the broth! Horribly sweet, I had two bites and could eat no more. Being the silly, frugal girl that I am, I brought it home with the idea that there must be something I could do to fix it. I hate to see food go to waste and I'm willing to experiment before just throwing it out. Open to suggestions!

I actually ate at the Red Pearl on my last drive down there -- very nice, cute Oriental interior that reminded me of Madame Wong's of the 1930s. The food was decent enough, but I found it overpriced for what you got. Actually, it is extremely typical of the QPR ratio of the neighborhood (a lot of money for not a lot of food that is just "okay). I doubt I will go again.

BTW, for those of us that frequent the wine boards, there is a growing movement of die-hard collectors who are donating some of their own libraries BACK to the winery owners and winemakers in an effort to help them re-build their lost history.

In this morning's Chronicle.... Warehouse fire destroys huge wine collection I could see the plumes of smoke but had no idea what was burning! Early reports indicate that one of the wineries who stored their wine there was Realm Cellars. Obviously insurance will cover losses, but how does a winery recoup from such a loss????

Ouch! I would have given anything to be there and can't wait to hear the rumble of the repercussions from the guests who did attend! Thank you for sharing.

LAME...

Vinegar...