Wine Pairing Recipes...and more

I think we can all agree on this proverb: "Vin skal til vinar drekka".  I would have been scratching my head, too, except Clay Thompson, Ph.d, former professor and department chair of Nordic Studies, expert in the esoteric study of runology, plus co-founder and first winemaker of Claiborne & Churchill Vintners, clued me in on the meaning of the runes found on his Runestone wine label. There are three things I love about this bottle of wine. First, the label. The full inscription on the runestone reads: "Claiborne ok Fredericka gerdu vin that. Vin skal til vinar drekka.", which means "Claiborne and Fredericka made this wine. Wine should be drunk with a friend." How cool is that!! Dora in Finding Nemo speaks "whale", but Claiborne speaks "rune". Secondly, "vin" means "wine" in Old Norse and "vinar" means "friend". A great connection.
The third thing I love about this Runestone bottle is that it contains terrific Pinot Noir. The winemaker notes include this: "…there’s no such thing as a “best” wine. However, if there were such a thing as a best wine, this would be it! Put it this way: take the other Pinots we make, add a few layers of complexity, and multiply by six. That’s our 2007 Runestone!" Take a sip of this barrel select pinot and you can understand why Claiborne & Churchill Vintners is known for great pinot--one of theirs won “Best Pinot Noir in California” at the California State Fair. Best Pinot Noir in California! In a state with so many premium pinot producers and regions--that is a stratospheric achievement.

Claiborne & Churchill Vintners also won "Grand Winner" at the international Pinot Noir Summit, where over 200 pinots were tasted by a panel of experts over a 3 month period, as well as many other medals and awards. But, you won't see the acclaim splashed across their website or sense any "attitude" in the tasting room. Claiborne & Churchill Vintners exemplifies everything wonderful about a family owned winery: the friendly staff and owners, the delicious handcrafted wines, the care taken to produce wine sustainably, the "ground-up" success story and the sense of community. While we were there, a wine club member stopped in to pick up his monthly shipment and we had the chance to witness this sense of community and the personal touch that a family winery provides. As Claiborne (or Clay as he is known) explained, "we live here, we party here, you walk in and chances are you get us".

My Inside Wine - Santa Barbara co-founder Lila and I had driven up to Edna Valley for a day. (read about Edna Valley's unique terroir). We stopped into the Claiborne & Churchill Vintners tasting room and had the opportunity to meet Claiborne and his lovely wife Fredericka Churchill and to hear their fascinating story. Clay was a professor of Nordic Studies and Fredericka taught German at the University of Michigan. Despite his success in the academic world, he was not happy with the politicking involved. In 1981, they were driving up from UCLA to Berkeley on an academic trip, when they stopped to taste wines at Edna Valley Vineyards.  As they toured the winery, he was amazed to see that the workers there liked to go to work, rather than dreading it. They seemed to like each other and he got the sense that they felt their life had meaning.  Clay "got the bug" for winemaking that day and determined to make a career change. A Ph.d from Harvard in Nordic Studies was not the usual background for winemaking, but the winemaker and founding partner at Edna Valley Vineyards, Dick Graff, was a Harvard music grad who hired Clay for $6 an hour. Clay went from department chair to "cellar rat" without hesitation.

Clay worked his way up to producing his own wines inside the Edna Valley Vineyards winery to renting a warehouse where he and Fredericka began buying premium local grapes and crafting Alsatian style dry Riesling and Gewurztraminer. Americans tend to think Rieslings are sweet but in fact they can be quite dry with very little residual sugar. These are not sweet dessert wines; they are crisp, fruity, refreshing whites great to pair with food. Their 2001 Dry Riesling is the only American wine to win a Gold Medal at the French Riesling du Monde competition. Besides the aforementioned wines, they produce small lots of Pinot Gris, Dry Muscat, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon (from grapes grown in the warmer Paso Robles), a Syrah, interesting blended wines, a Sparkling Brut Rosé made every other year, and a number of sweet dessert wines. These small lots sell out quickly as they become available during the year. They still buy 90% of their grapes with long-term relationships with vineyards with their estate vineyard fulfilling the rest of their need.  As Clay said, "it's fun to not be restricted to what you grow".

In 1995 Clay and Fredericka built their winery using straw bale construction. This innovative building is environmentally responsible and energy efficient. The 16" thick walls have four to five times the insulation factor compared to traditional construction. This allows the winery to operate without mechanical heating and cooling. Peer into the tasting room's "truth window" to see the straw bales behind the plaster.

In 2007, Clay promoted his assistant winemaker Coby Parker-Garcia to winemaker, but he, his wife and daughter are still hard at work at the winery. As he said, "there's a lot of pride that goes into to being a family owned winery". Perhaps delegating the winemaking into capable hands leaves Clay more time for another area of expertise--being a "cruciverbalist".  An avid crossword fan, Clay has published his crosswords in the Los Angeles Times and on his "Clueless" wine labels. His latest, the "Clueless White" is sold out. It had a crossword on the label that listed the varietals in the blend when the puzzle was solved.
Here's a puzzle clue of my own: what 3 word name starts with a "C" and denotes a great place to taste well-balanced, beautifully crafted wines? Guess right--and you win!