It's official: July 2012 was the hottest month on record for the lower 48 states. The
record heat wave hasn't abated, it is scorching our cornfields and pressing down on our roofs, blowing blasts of hot air inside when the doors are opened. One needs a
chilled glass of wine to soothe the overheated body and to pair with summer meals.
All hail rosé! It fits the bill exactly. Made from red wine grapes, but without the extended skin contact during fermentation that infuses red wine with deep color, rosé wines have all the fullness and range of tastes of a red wine, with the added summertime benefit of being properly served chilled. Jewel-like in color, cool and quenching, rosé is the ideal wine for blistering heat.
Not only does rosé
quench the heat of hot temperatures, but it pairs well with spicy food. Last weekend, my
chef friend Lila came over on a sultry afternoon to teach me how to cook
Thai food. She and her husband Jeff travelled around the world for a year studying regional cooking from experts in Mexico, Peru, Turkey, Greece, India, Thailand and Florence, Italy, where she graduated from culinary school in 2001. Wondrous ingredients were piled on my counter, including aromatic kaffir lime leaves, banana leaves, fiery Thai peppers, dried shrimp, red Thai chili paste, limes, pre-shredded green papaya, heads of garlic and purple-edged Thai basil.
During our afternoon preparation, we had sips of cooling
Buttonwood Farm Syrah Rosé--a brilliant fuchsia-colored wine with a silky texture, crisp acidity and perfumed cranberry and tropical fruit flavors--that I bought during my visit to the
sustainably farmed winery in the Santa Ynez Valley.
Lila showed me how to cut circles from the giant banana leaves using a very sharp paring knife and bowl for a template. The leaves have a dull side and a shiny side--one can feel the texture of the ribs of the leaf on the shiny side. Place the dull sides together and pinch the four corners together, securing them with half a toothpick to make a
banana "boat".
Chunks of firm-fleshed snapper--or in our case, sea bass--and coconut were stirred together with thinly sliced kaffir leaves, eggs, fish sauce, palm sugar, coconut cream and Thai red chili paste. We filled the "boats" with the fish mixture. For visual interest, a bit of rice flour was cooked with coconut milk to make a white paste to brush onto half the fish; sliced chili and Thai basil leaves were sprinkled on top decoratively before steaming the fish in a Chinese bamboo steamer.
Lila worked on mashing chiles and garlic for the
fresh green papaya salad using the traditional mortar and pestle called a
kruk, shown in the top photograph, while I made saffron rice and Pad Thai noodles. The green papaya salad is called
som tam which means "sour pounded" and has a balance of sour lime, sweet palm sugar, savory fish sauce and hot chili tastes mixed with the tangy papaya and salty dried shrimp. Garnished with cherry tomatoes and peanuts, it was a marvelous accompaniment to our meal.
We carried everything up to the outside deck to serve our families as the temperature cooled and the first comets in last weekend's
Perseid meteor shower streaked across the night sky. I had a nice bottle of
Castoro Cellars Marsanne from a previous
Touring & Tasting wine club shipment. Castoro Cellars was one of the first wineries in the Paso Robles area and they make terrific wines organically and sustainably from their
Templeton estate vineyards. It was interesting to note the difference in wine pairing between the Thai food and the two wines. Both were impressive--the Buttonwood Rosé highlighted the
savory shrimp and egg while the honey and melon-flavored Castoro Marsanne brought out the creamy coconut and chile heat.
A lovely evening with friends was capped by warm coconut pudding with chunks of mango and a plump and polished port from
Jessup Cellars. I had purchased a bottle of their
Cabernet Sauvignon Port at their friendly tasting room on our last trip to Napa. Not overly sweet as some ports can be the Jessup Port was thick with sensual chocolate, espresso and dark cherry flavor.
Click
here to view another recipe that pairs wonderfully with rosé.
A half hour scenic drive north on Highway 154 from Santa Barbara will drop you into the Santa Ynez Valley. Sunstone Winery is one of the closest to Santa Barbara, just past the turnoff to highway 246. Go past the "wild west" town of Santa Ynez and the mammoth Chumash Casino, undergoing renovation, then turn left on Refugio Road. You'll enter an area that feels like a world unto its own. Expansive hills slope gently towards the Santa Ynez River, with a dramatic backdrop of the Santa Ynez Mountains, completely unmarked by development. No wonder Fred and Linda Rice fell in love with the place when they discovered it in the 1980's and decided to purchase an abandoned horse ranch. Linda was known as "The Visionary" and what she had envisioned for the property was a palatial, but comfortable home in the style of the grand villas of Italy or the chateaus of France.
Fortunately, as a successful contractor, Fred had the means to build their dream. As the couple travelled in France, they found architectural treasures in reclamation yards: limestone blocks, heavy hand-carved beams from Queen Victoria’s lavender factory, hand-formed roof tiles, a prison cell door from Normandy constructed during Napoleon’s reign. They shipped forty-five containers, each containing 40,000 pounds of material, from Europe to build their dream home.
I was able to tour the Villa thanks to the friendly Sunstone Events Director Annamarie Kostura, whom I met at the Santa Ynez Valley Visitor's Association new member mixer. Due to a combination of the hit movie "Sideways" and the high ratings awarded Santa Ynez Valley wines, tourism has been booming in the Valley. Wineries, hotels, and business owners formed the SYVVA to promote managed growth in the Valley. As Board President John Kochis pointed out, "Growth will happen; you can't keep people away from a beautiful place like this, but we are looking at quality, not quantity growth".
"Stunning" is not hyperbole when describing an architectural marvel that is castle-like due to its grandeur, the interior and exterior limestone, the soaring ceilings and the immense windows through which light streams. All I can say is if you live the lifestyle of the 1%, the entire 8,500 square foot Villa can be yours for $15,000 a night: all five spacious suites, the ample grounds, the outdoor wood-burning pizza oven, bocce court and the kitchen with a 1,000 year old stone sink from France and floor-to-ceiling windows leading to a Tuscan-style courtyard with bocce ball court, hedged with lavendar and rosemary. Or, for considerably less money, you can stay in one of the enormous suites, each with a separate entrance, which Bion's wife Anna has decorated in comfortable luxury, with big puffy couches to sink into while reading a book by the fireplace, big soaking tubs, and luxury linens. As I was there, workers were readying an expanse of lawn for an outdoor wedding, which will be picture-perfect with the Villa and the spectacular views of vineyards and mountains.
I hadn't visited Sunstone before; I didn't realize a place like it existed outside of Napa. To enter the tasting room, you walk through a natural wall of towering oaks, then walk past a classic Provençal French kitchen with copper pots and braided garlic hanging over a rustic wood table, to a long bar cheerfully lit with candles and wall sconces. Two stone barrel-aging caves, over 5,000 square feet in size, have been carved into the hillside, and a private tasting room displays racks of verticals of Sunstone's wines. The long bar opens to a sunny patio with a view of the lower half of the 28-acre vineyards and the spectacular mountain backdrop. It's no wonder Sunstone Winery was named “Best Tasting Room” in the Santa Barbara Independent reader poll.
Sadly, Linda Rice passed away in 2010. The Rice family continues to run Sunstone, one of the few family-owned and managed wineries in the Valley, as many others have been bought by corporations. Fred and Linda's son Bion is President and CEO of Sunstone. The family has moved from the Villa and it is now being transformed into an exclusive event destination for wine pairing dinners, wine country accommodations, weddings and corporate events.
From the beginning, the vineyards have been grown without pesticides, herbicides or synthetic fungicides. The Rice family have been careful stewards of the land, guarding the health of the vineyards, workers and consumers by being certified 100% organic. Taste Sunstone's wines at their tasting room, especially their rich Rhone varietals, including their award-winning Merlto, Viognier and Syrah. By the way, I was happy to see a copy of Touring & Tasting in the Villa's kitchen!
I rummaged through one of my three wine coolers to find a wine to pair with a simple dinner of black bean soup, chips, 
Being a backyard farmer has its surprises. The hen's soft cooing and clucking noises have turned brutal now that the hens are laying. Loud squawking declarations of success follow egg delivery and there is loud, vocal complaining, accompanied by frenzied wing flapping, after what seems like territorial disputes. The worst noise comes at dawn. As of yet, there are no cock-a-doodle-doos, but the increased noise level has Paul wondering if there might be a rooster developing in the bunch.
Eggs are one of the foods that are difficult to pair with wine. Some say it is because the yolk coats the inside of the mouth, preventing one from tasting the wine. I think the taste is one that is difficult to complement, though specific egg dishes can be paired with specific wines. In our recipe section, we have several delicious egg recipes with well-matched wine suggestions. For example, the 
In Santa Barbara, "June gloom" normally settles in for the first part of summer--maritime fog moves takes up residence in town for weeks. But, this year, the record heat experienced by most of the country has translated to outstanding June weather in Southern California, with abundant sun but moderate temperatures. Kitchen gardens have flourished and tomato plants are pumping out a record crop. My kitchen counter has been overflowing with an ocean of shiny red fruit and I've been chopping, roasting, and stewing tomatoes into nearly every dish. Salsa fresco has been on the top of the list--served with chips and guacamole and a nice glass of Syrah.
The Aztecs were the first civilization to cultivate the tomato--a plant native to South America. It's unclear whether Christopher Columbus or the Spanish explorer Cortés first brought the tomato to Europe, but its popularity is indisputable. Imagine Italian cuisine without it!
