How Jim Clendenen Nourishes His Winery

The Vintner as Chef How Jim Clendenen Nourishes His Winery

by Hi lary Dole Klein PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFFREY BLOOM

Jim Clendenen with his dog Emmy.

44 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA WINTER 2013

The Vintner as Chef How Jim Clendenen Nourishes His Winery

by Hi lary Dole Klein PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFFREY BLOOM

Jim Clendenen with his dog Emmy.

44 | EDIBLE SANTA BARBARA WINTER 2013

The staff of Au Bon Climat and Qupé gather for lunch.

I

n the 30 years since vintner extraordinaire Jim Clendenen started Au Bon Climat, he has played a major role in putting Santa Barbara County wines on the global map, while adding Clendenen Family Vineyards, Barham Mendelsohn, Ici/La-Bas and Vita Nova to his stable of labels.

Wine writers are crazy about him; his wines have been called “the most balanced and delicious this side of Burgundy.” Publications throw awards at him. He has been short-listed for “Best Wineries in the World” (Robert Parker 1989 and 1990); named three times “Winemaker/Grower of the Year” (Los Angeles Times, Food & Wine, Wein Gourmet). More recently he was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s “Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America.”

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Above: Jim in the winery kitchen. Below: the spread set out for lunch.

An award named for an iconic “foodie” is an apt one, for cooking is central to how Jim works, plays and shares his unique charisma. When he’s not traveling the world, promoting his wines and showing up for gala dinners, he can be found at the winery, cooking lunch for a dozen or more vineyard workers, cellar rats, interns, staff, visiting retailers, winemakers and friends.

When I joined them for lunch recently, I saw for myself how these meals enrich a sense of community and camaraderie and, inevitably, gratitude.

While the meal is a time for everyone to come together, it’s also a working lunch that involves a selection of wines, often with a theme, with focused tasting and assessing what works and what doesn’t. This marriage of practicum and a jolly good time has to be the envy of other wineries.

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The barrel-filled winery and warehouse—where Clendenen and Bob Lindquist, who produces highly respected wines under the Qupé label, have shared space for 30 years —is remarkably unpretentious except for its size. Known as “the Shed,” it’s sited on the Bien Nacido property, famed for its vineyards, where much of Jim and Bob’s grapes are grown to their particular specifications.

In a corner near the winery’s entrance, an open kitchen appears not at all ready for its Architectural Digest moment.

But it’s impressively equipped, with a huge range, rotisserie, chef ’s faucet with overhead spout, three-door refrigerator, tons of cabinets and every gadget a chef requires, all jumbled about an enormous wooden island that dwarfs Jim, who is a tall man.

Stackings of spice and herb containers and dozens of wine

bottles, including magnums and jeroboams, form a barrier that gives him a measure of privacy.

Along with today’s lunch, he’s simultaneously preparing a vat of spicy red sauce for a penne dish that will feed 400 people at the winery’s twice-yearly Open House. A hundred pounds of lima beans and four crates of cauliflower await his attention.

And while he’s cooking, everyone except his assistant, Doreen Simmons, knows to leave him alone.

I edge closer to see what he is doing. “I don’t want to talk when I cook,” he warns me. “This is my time to think. If someone enters my space, inevitably they want to chat and ask questions. So then I get irritated, and I say ‘get the !#*% out!’”

He pulls a mock sad face. “And then they don’t think I’m a very nice person.”

In fact he proves himself to be a pretty nice guy and a lot of fun when it comes time to eat the meal he’s prepared that day for the hungry souls who have begun to wander in, while Bob Lindquist affably opens a raft of bottles and places them in a row down the middle of the long wood-slab communal table.

An everyday lunch for the winery will soon prove to be a peak experience for me.

Finished cooking, Jim proves to be captivating and witty, and he likes to make people laugh. It’s easy to see why he hangs out with the famous personalities in the world of food and wine. As the others begin to serve themselves, Jim takes four containers of homemade hot sauces from the refrigerator, rapidly running through their ingredients. He uncorks a wine bottle and the surprising fragrance of a distinctive vinegar escapes. “We’ve had homemade vinegars for years, but this is really special,” he says with pleasure.

The lunch menu consists of tender slices of flank steak, a salad with beets and feta, and three vegetable dishes that vie for favoritism on the plate: Carrots and Russian kale with hazelnuts, thyme and caramelized onions; eggplant with non-spicy peppers; and summer squash with cooked tomatoes, basil, Meyer lemon, Turkish oregano, anise, green bell peppers and mushrooms. Jim slaps a bottle on the table of his Jolokin hot sauce, made with homemade vinegar, Meyer lemons and hot, hot, hot peppers.

A native of Ohio, Jim came to UCSB with the intention of becoming a lawyer. “I started cooking in Isla Vista in my first apartment,” he recalls. “Then when I went to Europe in my junior year, I bought a VW van that had a kitchen with a stove and I traveled around discovering regional ingredients and regional cuisines.” He had friends who were attending a university in Bordeaux, and he plugged his camper into one of the dorms and stayed put for a while, learning about wine and playing third-division professional basketball.

Asked to describe his style of cooking, he says, “I get fresh ingredients, and I cook.” He always goes with a theme — one lunch might be Northern Indian, another Thai. “Today I made a French meal; yesterday was Mexican. Whether I do it right is another question,” he says, adding, “I had an Italian-theme meal, and the Italians told me, ‘Your food is so good, where is it from?’ People don’t always understand the influence of contemporary cooking on their traditional food.”

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I could never drink.” And with the holidays coming, “Why buy a $40 wine that is seven years from drinkability, when you can buy a $40 wine that is ready to drink?”

Jim sources mostly from Bien Nacido, which he considers the iconic vineyard that put Santa Barbara on the map, although he buys from other vineyards that he loves, too. The movie Sideways did its own version of Santa Barbara map-making, and Clendenen admits the movie changed his life. The folks who came to scout and research for the movie discovered him. Naturally, he ended up cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the cast and crew.

I myself will never again take a sip of one of Jim’s great wines without wondering, “What’s for lunch?

Hilary Dole Klein spent her early years in Santa Barbara under the impression that the only restaurant in town was a Chinese one. She has since written about travel, restaurants, food, wine, artists, bugs, health and family. A new dish, a new restaurant or a big personality has never failed to enchant her.

RECIPES Roasted Garlic Roasted Garlic is a staple of Jim Clendenen’s kitchen.

This recipe is for 4 bulbs, but he says, “I usually make a whole bag at once and use them for the next few weeks.”

Jim holds a pan of his Ravioli with Butternut Squash, Brown Butter and Sage.

4 bulbs garlic

When asked to name his favorite tool in the kitchen, he says: “I’m a blender guy.” He likes to throw together Meyer lemon juice, roasted garlic, basil and wine to make a sauce to finish a dish. “A lot of chefs use immersion blenders, but I love the real thing.” He also loves the knives he bought in Japan. “When I touch my Japanese knives I’m dreaming. When I go back, I’m going to buy every kind they have.”

At the moment he’s enamored with tomatoes. “But I will only cook with them in season.” He always has on hand a supply of garlic cloves that he roasts himself, his homemade vinegars and hot sauces, and fresh herbs from his garden. His huge garden in Los Alamos has supplied the lunch with most of its vegetables.

“I have 24 laying chickens, turkeys, pheasants and some red-tailed deer,” he boasts. He does all the cooking for his family, too.

“I think my wife only cooked one meal the whole time we were together,” he jokes.

Snippets of conversation flow around the table: “2001 might well have been the greatest vintage in Bien Nacido history…”

“New York is a great market for us…” “We had two 19th-century wines from Inglenook—unbelievable and not fake…” “I love this wine; it’s a wine I sent to every critic in America…” “Mario wants me to celebrate my birthday in Hong Kong…” “If you make the style of wines we make, it’s a no-brainer to market them in France…”

Although still waiting for the Syrah to ripen, most of the harvest is in. Really, really good fruit, everyone agrees, although the tonnage is almost too much to handle. Au Bon Climat’s new tasting room in downtown Santa Barbara is going well, inspired

by Jim’s decision to start selling his massive library. “I’m such a compulsive hoarder,” he says. “I have all that wine put away that

4 tablespoons olive oil

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Preheat oven to 350°. Take as much dry papery skin off of the bulbs as possible and snip off the top so the cloves are exposed.

Put the bulbs in a small baking dish or pan, close to each other.

Drizzle oil over bulbs— about 1 tablespoon per bulb. Seal pan with foil. (I sometimes add 1 or 2 tablespoons of water.) Bake about 45 minutes or until soft. Let cool. Remove garlic cloves from skins into a bowl. Spread on toast, put in soups, stews, sauces, mashed potatoes, etc.

Ravioli with Butternut Squash, Brown Butter and Sage Jim says: “This is a simple and fun dish that has become very popular at Au Bon Climat/Qupé Winery for some unknown reason, maybe deliciousness. There can be endless short cuts — frozen squash, etc.— depending on the self-esteem of the preparer.”

Makes about 16 –25 servings 2 medium-size butternut squash 1

⁄4 –1 ⁄2 pound butter

15 cloves fresh garlic 1– 2 cups white wine 1 bunch fresh sage 1 quart vegetable stock 2 Meyer lemons 2 (24-ounce) packages of cheese ravioli

Salt, pepper, red chili flakes, lemon zest Crema Mexicana Agria or Mexican-style cultured cream 2 cups grated white Italian cheese (4- or 6-cheese blend) Endless olive oil

Cut open and seed the butternut squash. Roast in the oven, covered with foil, at 375° for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until soft.

A little water can be added to the pan.

In a large Dutch oven, brown ¼ pound butter. Add 10–15 cloves of diced garlic, cooking until browned. Add 1 cup wine puréed with 10–15 sage leaves, 1 butternut squash (cooked, peeled, and chopped), 1 quart vegetable stock, and the juice of 2 Meyer lemons. Cook into a sauce, adjusting with wine or stock for texture. Correct seasoning with salt, pepper, chili flakes, butter, garlic and lemon zest to taste.

Oil a large baking pan (a full-size stainless steel hotel pan works well) and place 1 layer of ravioli in the bottom. Layer sauce mixture over the ravioli and then place a second layer of ravioli. Cover with cheese and drizzle generously with the Crema Mexicana. Add remaining squash (cut into small cubes), salt and pepper and artfully apply sage leaves to the top. Moisten with olive oil. Finish by baking uncovered in the oven at 350° until the surface is melted, gooey and aromatic.

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Boil enough lightly salted water to cook ravioli as per directions.

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