HOG ISLAND TO SONOMA, NAPA & SUISUN VALLEYS

An 1800's gold-rush recipe for "Boot Soup!"~grilled gorgonzola-fig-pancetta pizza~grill-baked cornbread~corn on the cob tips from Ruth Reichl

A FAMILY WINERY NAMED TOLENAS There, two daughters, a son, and a spouse are all working team members. One daughter serves as hostess for visitors touring the winery, while another actually works the vines. The son helped dad name their famous wine, "Eclipse," having observed the total eclipse of the sun on August 21, 2017. A 150-year-old pepper tree—call it the "Family Tree"— in front of their historic family residence where wines are tasted at tables on the lawn. And a "Barbie Porta Potty", perhaps in homage to the blockbuster movie of the same name.

A few years back, I took a trip to Hog Island, where the Kumamotos are buttery, with a lingering essence of cucumber and melon. The Totten Inlets have plump creamy meats, a medium brininess and a complex, full flavored seaweed taste. And Pinkerton's Loot, so rich and buttery with a lovely plump body, boasts a delightfully sweet melon flavor and a lingering mild brine on their finish. This is on the coast near wine country. These aren’t grapes, though from the descriptions, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were. Many know that every flavor in this neck of the woods has a symphony of modifiers that follow them around. After all, we’re in a food and drink paradise. And these are oysters.

I took another memorable trip. This time it was to a place you’d come upon by venturing from west to east from the coast over a range of hills as high as 4,200-feet high. You’d find a humongous valley. This is home to the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, a museum dedicated to the creator of the Peanuts comic strip. Celebrity chef Guy Fieri also calls this home. It’s Santa Rosa, a city in Sonoma Valley.

A century or more before that second memorable trip, back in the 1800’s in the mountainous North America, gold was on everyone’s mind. A few did strike it rich in the Canada’s Yukon, but many made the arduous journey for nothing. There are photographs of long lines of prospectors and their pack animals trekking through the snowy mountains, all of them heavy laden because the Mounties required everyone to bring a year's supply of provisions. Starvation was not uncommon. One man reportedly boiled his own boot so he could drink the broth. His story inspired the famous boot-eating scene in the 1925 Charlie Chaplin's silent film The Gold Rush.

I took a third memorable trip to another valley. While Sonoma Valley may boast quieter, more family-owned wineries, and more laid back wine tasting experiences, just over the next range of hills lies famous Napa Valley, which another gold rush put on the map. It’s now the anchor of wine country in the U.S. Napa has some of the world's most renowned wineries. Today, Sonoma may claim 425 wineries harvesting 63,000 acres of grapes, but more famous Napa has 450 wineries on 45,000 acres. Both valleys have what’s referred to as a Mediterranean climate—winters cool and damp, summers warm and dry.

So much for my past trips for now. Throughout the U.S. there are 11,000+ wineries. Many are eminently worth exploring. They’re in every state. Mississippi has two. California 4,400, where you’ll likely pay $40 for basic tastings, $75 for boutique tastings, up to $250 for elevated tastings and a tour. But many wineries throughout the U.S. are hassle-free and affordably priced. In the Finger Lakes Area in upstate New York, for example, you’re looking at tasting prices as little as $5. And in Door County, Wisconsin, a lovely bargain, is Stone's Throw Winery. It prides itself in being a “premium all-California grape winery” ever since 1997. Tastings there are $14 per person.

SUISUN VALLEY

Now back to my trips. This time I ventured 30 miles further east from Napa to Suisun Valley (sue-soon). Perched on the fringe of its famous cousins, Suisun once had been a massive producer of wines for Sonoma and Napa wineries that used its grapes in their own blends. Today, Suisun Valley is home to a only 10 wineries, on but 15,000 acres and covering a measly 8-mile-by-3-mile swath of farms. Locals say it feels like the Napa Valley of 50 years ago, with some top-notch wines only found at the winery or in some local stores or restaurants. Annual production here is such that many of the wines aren’t distributed nationally. That fact may ring a bell. You may have heard stories over the years of traveling to small French or Italian towns where in a ma-and-pa restaurant diners would be served a carafe of glorious, unheard of wine that couldn’t be purchased outside of that town. Such is Suisun, only in the U.S.

TOLENAS: FINE WINES & CHARMING STORIES

This summer my wife, Sara, and I traveled with fellow wine adventurers Craig and Mary Dennis, plus J.D. DeLacy and his partner Ruth. He’s an award winning winemaker from the DeLacy mini-boutique winery with production of fewer than 500 barrels a year. All of us were on the road to give Tolenas a try. When I asked Craig how he picked this winery, he said Yelp made him do it. We had a grand time tasting some mighty fine wine!

The Howards

Winemaker Lisa Howard grew up in the Suisun Valley. These days, Lisa, her winemaker husband, Cliff, and their children bottle 2,000 cases a year. As a frame of reference, the world’s largest winery is in nearby Sonoma Valley, E. & J. Gallo Winery, clocking in at 75 million cases per year with 20,000 acres in plantings. The comparison isn’t David vs. Goliath. It’s more like one diminutive grape vs. Goliath. But Lisa and Cliff have goals for their winery, 10,000 cases a year for starters. It surely must help that the Howard’s say when you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.

Tolenas is located in a red barn and standing next to a picturesque white Victorian home. This home belonged to Lisa’s parents. It was where Lisa and her siblings grew up sorting cherries and peaches for their family fruit stand. Lisa moved away after college but got married, had children, and decided to move back to her childhood home.

“We love raising our children here and believe that our community has made our family stronger,” she says. “Our properties are our home, the vineyards are our backyard, and our children are growing up among the vines. Three generations of our family tend to these grapes, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Tasters Tasting On The Lawn

“When you come tasting, chances are you are going to see one of us,” says Cliff. “We grow the grapes, make the wine, and tell stories to our guests. That’s what people miss about Napa. It used to be that.”

White Pinot Noir

Among their wines, Tolenas makes a noteworthy White Pinot Noir dubbed “Eclipse.” It’s their signature wine. Those grapes are grown on one side of the family home, gingerly carted to the other side of it not 100 yards away, and lightly pressed to extract the juice without imparting the dark color of the skins. At Tolenas, a small family run business, you may get personalized pours from Lisa and Cliff or a lively chat about life on the farm, making a stop here for $20 weekend tastings—including white pinot noir—beyond a joy and a delight. Also well worth mentioning is the 2022 Lot 38 Dessert Wine, a novel, unaged fresh and fruity port.

It’s like a Sunday afternoon visit to a dear old friend’s home.

GRILLED PIZZA

Having recently moved to one of the few foodie heavens in the U.S., I soon happened across gorgonzola-fig-prosciutto pizza. That was after doing my restaurant research and learning about longtime world pizza making champ Tony Gemignani. After tasting his, I became enchanted with making my own, on a grill to boot.

Gorgonzola-fig-prosciutto Pizza

GRILL-BAKED CORN BREAD

I’m enchanted by cornbread. When I happened upon grilled cornbread in the summertime, I found it captivating. The bread comes off the grill lofty and golden, with a delectably crisp bottom, charred edges, and a tender crumb. It’s neither Southern nor Northern in style, but its hearty wedges hold its own on dinner table throughout the U.S..

CORN ON THE COB

La Briffe is a spectacular newsletter! Ruth Reichl, one of the preeminent food journalists in the U.S., is its creator. In a recent issue, she offered a corn pudding recipe. How appropriate for this time of year! But what grabbed me was her simple, helpful talk about corn on the cob.

Ruth Reichl says, “Corn is simple, right? You buy it. You shuck it. You boil it. You eat it.” Then she goes on to tell us how to “improve your pleasure” with corn.

Choose corn with bright green husks and damp white silk. If the silk is brown and shriveled, it’s not fresh. Look at the stem, where the corn was cut from the stalk; if it’s turned brown, the corn has been off the stalk too long.

• Shuck the corn. To get all the silk off the cobs, run a damp paper towel across each ear: it will come right off.

• I’ve tested adding salt, sugar and milk to the boiling water, and none of it makes a bit of difference. So just use plain water, at a good rolling boil.

• Don’t cook the corn too long; if you want juicy kernels that pop against your teeth, a minute or two in boiling water is plenty. 

• Butter the corn while it’s still hot, add some salt, eat at once.

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