BLOGSCHU

Blitzen Trapper

posted by Susan Sueiro

Apart from the great wine (and music), one of the reasons people tell us they enjoy visiting the Gundlach Bundschu tasting room is because the staff seems to enjoy being there as much as the guests do. It's true, fun is contagious.

That is what I enjoyed most about the Blitzen Trapper show last night at The Independent in San Francisco. The music was great - far more rocking than I expected from the folksy-indie tunes I'd heard. And the six guys on stage were having so much fun playing together, it was infectious. I love when a live show totally changes the way you listen to a band. I will always grin imagining these guys now when I hear their music.

A nice surprise too was the opener, Wye Oak. A great sound made from just two people, and the woman who sang & played guitar was super cool, I look forward to checking out more of their stuff.

Open to Interpretation

posted by Susan Sueiro

Four days before my husband's birthday, I hadn't even thought about a gift. (Shh, he rarely reads the blog). But thanks to the fabulous Shelley on Craig's List, I came off looking like a hero, taking him to the long-sold-out opening weekend of American Idiot at the Berkeley Rep.

Green Day's American Idiot is one of his favorite albums, but I wasn't sure how either of us would feel about a musical stage production of it (come on, is there a real difference between 'musical' and rock opera'?). And the first few numbers didn't dispel my skepticism -- the lead-off four songs of the album performed by an insanely well choreographed group of twenty with no interfering dialogue felt a bit like an American Idol production with vastly better music & talent.

But then it started to work. The character stories started to develop, simplistic but metaphorical, the staging was truly outstanding, and two things about the performances were particularly compelling to me: first, I have huge respect for the sheer bravery of these 'kids' to go onstage and interpret Green Day for an audience of primarily hard core fans. And secondly, I actually understood and listened to the lyrics more closely than ever, and gained new appreciation for the record's brilliance.  Though it was new song, 21 Guns, that made the most poignant moment of the whole thing -  a woman named Rebecca Naomi Jones sang it with a voice more full of the tender and tragic heartbreak of Billie Joe's lyric than he will ever pull off. Her version isn't online yet.

Fire and Figs

posted by Susan Sueiro

My husband & I took a spontaneous, dusty hike in Annadel over labor day foolishly without bringing anything to eat. So by the time we stopped at the Village Market to get something for dinner, I was too hungry to spend more than five minutes in the store, and five minutes cooking. Here is what I, in my low-blood-sugar-stupor, purchased:

Zoe's Meats calabrese sausage 
1 box couscous
one red pepper
a pint of figs

The figs really had no plan in the quick menu, but they were just too gorgeous to pass up. Small, dusky black and so perfectly ripe it seemed they'd bruise if you looked at them too hard.

We got home and threw the sausages & pepper on the grill and the couscous in some boiling water, all the while snacking on perfect figs.  I tossed a handful of raisins and toasted pine nuts into the cous cous and took one long look at the figs before heading out to check the sausages. On impulse, I grabbed a half dozen figs and put them on the grill next to the sausages. I wasn't sure how that would turn out, perhaps they would explode on me or fall through the rack, but after a minute or two, I rolled them over and they still looked fresh. Hmm. Oh well, time to eat, so I pulled them off.

I arranged on each place a scoop of couscous, strips of pepper, a sausage and a couple of figs. Still dehydrated from the hike, we had glasses of water only. After the first few bites, the combination of smoke, spice and intense syrupy warm fig sent me running to the wine rack wishing I had some of my favorite Chateauneuf de Pape on hand. Sadly, no, but the GB syrah did a nice job.

Falling to Earth

posted by Susan Sueiro

It was cool, clear and gorgeous this morning on my drive to the winery.  Coming up through the Carneros, the sky over Sonoma Valley was filled with four or five colorful hot air balloons, a vision from a postcard or travel brochure. As usual though, my thoughts turned to the time a few years ago that one landed in the middle of the winery driveway, nearly on top of a 120-year-old pear tree planted by Jacob Gundlach. Premonition?

As I neared the winery, two balloons rose over ridge from the Napa side of the Mayacamas. One was high above the mountain, but the other looked awfully close to the treetops. As I parked and walked up to the Bundschu house, it seemed just over the roof, and I could hear the pilot feeding gas to the flame in an attempt to gain altitude. But by the time I reached my desk and looked west at the vineyard, he was dropping fast and the Tempranillo vines looked a little scared.

The pilot somehow managed to hit the narrow row between the vines and a giant oak lining a creek. While the crew pondered how to take down the massive balloon without damaging anything, the second balloon started dropping fast, landing in the thankfully fallow block 12!

Too bad those rides are so early in the morning, long before the tasting room opens - those poor tourists looked like they needed a drink badly.

 

Victory Rose

posted by Susan Sueiro

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the rarity of foreign-language hits in the US, asking readers for songs you can sing in a language you can't speak. There wasn't much beyond Frere Jacques.

Chatting in the chair the other day with my incredibly music-savvy Irish hairdresser about our disappointment with the choice of Outside Lands headliners, he suggested a better choice would have been Sigur Ros. Huh?

Apparently this Icelandic band is huge in Europe, but I've never heard of them, (though I now recognize Staralfur from The Life Aquatic). He raved about their unique sound and the singer's incredible voice, so of course I had to check them out. While I certainly won't be pulling off karaoke of any of their tunes anytime soon, but its great morning-coffee music.  Very ethereal. And long - they hardly have a song under seven minutes.

What do you think of it?

Yeast Serenade

posted by Susan Sueiro

If you were to walk through the cellar this week, you'd have a good chance of catching a member of our production team singing his or her heart out to a bucket.

This is not simply an expression of contentment with one's work, true as that is.  This is actually a critical step in our quality winemaking process.  Our winemaker insists, in fact, that all yeast be serenaded.

If you've ever made bread, you know it can be a tricky process to ensure your yeast is happy and healthy. It's an even trickier process to innoculate a tank of grape juice. 

After crushing the grapes, the juice is chilled for several days before yeast is added, to allow whites to settle and reds to soak on the skins. Yeast are started in a warm bath around 104 degrees, and once they are happily brewing away, you can't shock them by tossing them into 52 degree juice. The temperature of the brew needs to be lowered slowly, incorporating cool wine one cup at a time to drop ten degrees every ten minutes.

So in order to keep the yeast happy, and ensure the cellar crew doesn't rush the process, they sing.

What do they sing, you might ask? (At least that is what I asked.) Here are the go-to songs of a few members of the crew, but in kindness I give you the professionally recorded renditions. 

Tell us below, what would you sing?

Gewurz Harvest & the Potluck Jackpot

posted by Susan Sueiro

The 2009 Harvest began on Monday, August 31st, with the first of the gewurztraminer grapes. The crew has been bringing in just gorgeous fruit for three days now, and the winemaking team says the young vines on block 7a are rivaling the old block 1 for quality. Pretty exciting stuff.  Makes me want a glass of the yummy '08 Gewurz. And I know just want I want to have with it, in this scorching heat!

A few weeks ago at a potluck maternity shower for Norma in the winery office, our Associate Winemaker Anne Dempsey made a super delicious quinoa salad with lime, mango, ginger, mint and feta.  It was refreshing and satisfying, with lots of different flavors expertly combined (leave it to a winemaker!), and a great combination with the gewurztraminer.

I loved it so much, I asked Anne for the recipe, and then forgot all about it until just now, looking out the window of my sweltering hot office in the old Bundschu house, at the bins of gewurztraminer being carried out of the rows of gnarled old vines, fantasizing about a cold glass of wine and wondering what to make for dinner...

Quinoa with Mango and Curried Yogurt
1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
2 teaspoons curry powder
1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/3 cups quinoa
2 cups firm-ripe mango,cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 red bell pepper, roasted and diced
1/3 cup chopped fresh mint (or half mint, half fresh basil)
1/2 cup salted roasted peanuts chopped
crumbled feta

Whisk together yogurt, lime juice, curry powder, ginger, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Add oil in a slow stream, whisking until combined.

Rinse & drain quinoa, then cook in pot of boiling salted water 10 minutes (or as directed on packaging). Drain and rinse under cold running water.

Toss quinoa with curried yogurt and remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Serve warm or at room temperature.