Inside Napa Valley - Holidays 2016 by Napa Register

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napa valley HOLIDAYS 2016

Napa Valley celebrates the season 1

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napa valley

In this Issue

Christmas in downtown Napa

Lighted tractor parade stays quirky

Yountville’s festival of Lights

Napa’s Holiday Faire

Family fun on ice

Cocktails to warm the season

Post-holiday workouts for everyone

Roasting with love

Lucky Penny’s new season

A family passion for conservation

Getting to Know You: Travis Stanley

Where in the Valley?

Great Estates

Napa’s gift to the world

The building of her dreams

Guide to winter dining in the Valley

Splendid season in the Napa Valley N O R M A KO S T E C K A Ad ve r ti s i ng Di re ctor

Norma Kostecka is the retail advertising director for the Napa Valley Register.

The holidays are a special time, from food and family at Thanksgiving to the color and gift-giving cheer of Christmas to the late-night celebration at New Year’s Eve. Napa County’s approach is timeless—a mix of downhome country tradition, sophisticated glamor, and quirky charm. In this edition of Inside Napa Valley, we’ll look at the Holiday season in Napa County, with stories of Calistoga’s increasingly popular Lighted Tractor Parade, Napa’s Gifts & Tyme Holiday Faire, Yountville’s Festival of Lights, and the many events in downtown Napa. We’ll throw in holiday cocktails from two of our local restaurants to take the chill off a winter evening.

We’ll take a look at that most classic of wintertime family sports—ice skating, of course. And we’ll offer some tips for cold-weather workouts to get back in shape after the indulgence of the season. But we have more than holiday spirit to share. We’ll look at the people who make this community special, including a family that has made a tradition of conservation and recycling and a family-owned coffee shop that is thriving in an increasingly globalized world. We’ll see how a design student from Napa helped revive a classic downtown building, and get a preview of the new season from a home-grown theater troupe. We’ll get to know the head of the Napa Chamber of

Commerce, and his interesting history. This month, we’ll debut a new feature known as “Great Estates,” where we look at the most interesting, unusual and grand homes that we can find. And we’ll continue our “Where in the Valley” visual quiz. On top of it all, we’ll continue to bring you some of the best of our recent food and wine coverage from the pages of our Napa Valley Publishing family of newspapers. So break out your Santa hat and join us for this Holiday edition of Inside Napa Valley magazine. On the Cover: Photo provided by Bob McLenahan of Bob McLenahan Photography. www.napasphotographer.com. 3

Christmas in downtown Napa

J.L. Sousa, Maria Sestito/Register

A month of celebration and fun

FOR INSIDE N A PA VA L L E Y 4

hristmas is many peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favorite time of year, the time when family and friends come together in celebration. Join your loved ones in Downtown Napa to shop, dine and enjoy these events. Visit donapa.com for more information. All events are free.

J.L. Sousa/Register

July parade.) The theme “Bright Lights, Christmas Delights” lends itself to all kinds of creative interpretations, as Napans build floats, decorate cars, animals and children, and march down the street. The jury will award $500 cash prizes in each of three categories: Best Use of Lights, Best Follows Parade Them, and the Best Musical entry. The role of parade Grand Marshal is shared by the team at Napa Printing, Design Studio and Mail Center. Their Holiday spirit is off the Holiday charts. And if all Napans have been good girls and boys, there is a chance that Santa Claus himself will show up. If he does, he’ll be in the Big Chair in the breezeway of the Napa Riverfront Building on Main Street, following the parade. It’s all free and all fun, thanks in part to Kiwanis Club of Napa, whose members organize the parade set-up, judge entries for the awards, and handle emcee duties. For a parade application, visit donapa.com

Raphael Kluzniok/ Register

Christmas Tree Lighting Wednesday, Nov. 23, 6 p.m. The kids are home from school and the family is in town to spend Thanksgiving at your house. Join your neighbors the night before in Veterans Park, at the north east corner of Main and Third, when Mayor Jill Techel and all the children light the 29’ tall Christmas tree. Free hot chocolate and cookies are the perfect accompaniment to enjoy performances from children’s vocal and dance groups. Of Carriage Rides course, it’s free and open to the Thursdays, Dec. 7, 15, and 22, public. from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Enjoy free horse drawn carChristmas Parade riage rides through downtown Saturday, Nov. 26, 5 p.m. Napa. It’s one of the best ways This year, the Christmas parade to enjoy the Holiday lights on follows a new route: from School all the buildings, check out the to Main on Second, right on Christmas windows, and just Main, right on Third, then back snuggle with the family. Carriages to school (same route as the 4th of depart every fifteen minutes from 5

the Napa River Inn at the Hatt Building on Main Street. Spend the time between rides shopping and dining in beautiful downtown Napa. If you enjoy it, come back the following week with your neighbors. Thanks to the 20/30 Club for their support with the rides. Holiday Trolley Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, from Dec. 2 through Christmas Eve, 3 to 6 p.m. Thanks in part to Beau Tours, who helped make the Holiday Wine Trolley available, everyone will be able to enjoy a free Trolley ride downtown. Bring the family, friends or anybody else you’d like. The Christmas-decorated trolley will be playing music of the season as it travels between four regular stops – the Oxbow Public Market, Historic Napa Mill, First and School Streets near the Andaz Hotel, and at Main and Pearl Streets. Signage will show you exactly where to get off and on. Enjoy the whole loop or get on and off as you wish. Napa Lighted Boat Parade Saturday, December 3, around 5:30 p.m. Members of the Napa Valley Yacht Club decorate their vessels with lights and ‘parade’ their way from the yacht club to the Third Street bridge. It all begins at the Napa Valley Yacht Club at 5:30 p.m. and will continue north to the 3rd Street Bridge. Festive holiday entertainment will be offered along Napa’s Riverfront promenade, the best spot to view the flotilla. Tuba Christmas Sunday, Dec. 4. Performances at 2 and 4 p.m. Veterans Park You cannot imagine how much the sound of a tuba can be until you 50 of them playing together. Traditional Christmas music is performed by over 50 tuba and euphonium players, organized by local musician and music teacher Alan Parks. A unique and wonderful way to get into the holiday spirit.

Maria Sestito , Raphael Kluzniok/ Register

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Lighted

Tractor Parade Calistoga’s quirky tradition expected to draw up to 10,000 spectators A N N E WA R D E R N S T e d it o r @weekl yc al istogan.c om The first year of the Calistoga’s now famous parade – and it was just called a parade in the beginning – organizers had to practically beg people to participate. This year, its 21st, the Lighted Tractor Parade has grown to the point organizers had to limit the number of entries. “Getting enough participants in the parade was hysterically funny,” said Jeri Arnold, one of the original organizers. There were four people putting it all together – Chris Layton, Arnold, Tim Petersen, and Sue Mauro — and “we called everyone we knew with tractors.” “It was a lot of work, but it was so much fun,” Arnold said. 8

Sylvia Marciano, better known to some back then as Blossom the Clown, remembers the first one in 1995. As Blossom, Marciano said she wore her giant yellow Mary Jane shoes with pink bows – she could alternate the pink bows for red ones, but chose pink that day — when she rode in a cart being pulled by a small tractor with her big orange long-haired dog who sported a large red Rudolph-like nose and phony antlers. Rolling alongside were five girls, a couple of them Marciano’s granddaughters, striding in roller skates. A smattering of other entrants rode along, too, but it wasn’t exactly a “lighted” parade back then, Marciano said. Well,

there might have been a few flashlights, she said. The next year, Blossom rode on a float with the man of the hour, Santa Claus. For the third year, her last as Blossom, she rode in a carriage being pulled by a horse. It was blustery and pouring rain that night. “And I was scared to death of horses,” she said. The carriage was covered overhead, but the wind blew in the rain sideways soaking Blossom down to her giant yellow Mary Jane shoes that Marciano said cost her more than $400 back then. “They were expensive,” the Calistoga native said. What started out as a struggle to get the parade off the ground and find entrants to participate now has a limit of 55 entries, accepted on a firstcome-first-accepted basis, said Chris Canning, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, which presents the parade. If they were to accept more entries the parade would take longer, and

right now at about an hour, it’s a perfect length for family entertainment. This is also heavily attended by adults who now make it an annual trip from all over the country, Canning said; they stick around town after the parade and go for dinner or drinks. For the 20th anniversary Canning, who doubles as Calistoga’s mayor, said there were an estimated 11,000 revelers on the sidewalk of Lincoln Avenue, the popular parade’s path, which now travels along a longer route and in the opposite direction of what it did for the first 19 years, done in part to accommodate the larger crowds, he said. He and other officials want to maintain a happy balance between attracting a large audience without getting too big so that it’s a turn off, or unsafe. In its inception it was a struggle to get the tractor parade off the ground and approved. Twenty years later the struggle is finding space to 9 9

stand and see the Lighted Tractor Parade amid a sea of revelers on Lincoln Avenue. The 2015 parade was the first time the route stretched, starting on Lincoln Avenue from Stevenson Street toward Cedar Street, adding an extra block for the throngs or parade lovers. The previous route started at Cedar Street, down Lincoln and turned on Fair Way. Marciano is one of those locals who stopped going to the parade because it was difficult to wade through the crowd on the sidewalk. The small group of people who worked together to start the parade weren’t thinking so big back then. Jeri Arnold was the mom who stood in front of the all-male City Council, with her hands on her hips, and declared that there was nothing for the kids to do for the holidays. “Chris (Layton) couldn’t make headway with the City Council. But Jeri did it,” said Adele Layton, wife of Chris Layton, who came up with the idea for the tractor parade. “Jeri was the one. She just put her hands on her hips and said, ‘There’s nothing for our children for our Christmas.’ They were all men, and she just shamed them,” said Adele Layton. Resistance to the parade included concerns about using the word “tractor” in it because it might sound too agricultural, Layton said, to worrying about tractors driving on Lincoln and chewing up the road. So, in the beginning they didn’t call it the Lighted Tractor Parade. They didn’t even call it the tractor parade. It was simply “the parade.” They “literally walked door to door to door talking to all the businesses” to ask them to put up lights and other decorations, Arnold said. One man, Bob Henry, who Arnold called “the nicest man,” helped by putting up lights on buildings and getting the town involved. Things now are pretty routine, but in the beginning guidelines 10

hadn’t quite been developed completely. Highlands Christian Church once brought a live camel as part of its manger scene with a baby Jesus. They said they were doing a religious theme, but never mentioned the little camel. “The poor little thing. We were afraid all the noise of the tractors would scare it,” Arnold said. The next year, a new rule went into place: No live animals. Chris Layton wasn’t sure anyone would even show up that first year, she said. They had 20 tractors signed up before the first parade, but it started to rain just before the parade and eight of them backed out. He was at the fairgrounds organizing things before the parade was to begin, and was delighted

to see throngs of people lining the road. “There were all these people lined up, all with their umbrellas,” Adele said. Last year sidewalk spaces were claimed two hours before parade time, with some in years past, setting out chairs a day ahead. The hot air balloon entry with gondolas on a trailer bed tends to be a crowd favorite when it lights up the sky with flames, Canning said. Santa, too, is one people wait for. What started as a small houror-so long event to give kids something to look forward to around the holidays has now grown into a day-and-a-half of activities starting with carolers on Friday night (Dec. 2) who stroll

Lincoln Avenue, merchants passing out cookies, cider or hot chocolate, and businesses competing in window decorations. The day of the parade this year, Saturday, Dec. 3, includes Breakfast with Santa (from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Fairgrounds), with photos for pets with Santa continuing until 1 p.m., during the Christmas Faire that presents artisans and crafters and activities. There is cookie decorating with Bella Bakery from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.; cupcake decorating with Kara’s Cupcakes from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.; kids’ crafts from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and holiday baking contest from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

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Festival of Lights

Jason Tinacci

F O R I N S I D E N A PA VA L L E Y

he season of light is never dim in the Napa Valley town of Yountville. On Nov. 25, the 28th Annual Festival of Lights will kick-off the holidays with flare. From 3-6 p.m., Yountville will be bustling with family-friendly activities for all ages. The entire town will be twinkling with merriment to rival any Dickens fantasy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a welcome diversion from Black Friday madness. Here are eight great reasons to jumpstart the season at this jovial event: 12

l sweeter in the town of Yountville. Several music ensembles will lend their voices, music and talent to the festivities.

Gourmet food and wine tasting This year, adults won’t be the only guests that can taste, sip and swirl their way through the event. Kids can also get their own passport to enjoy special kid-friendly snacks and activities geared just for them. Adults can partake in tastings poured by more than two dozen wineries and nibble on creative and tasty seasonal bites by some of Yountville’s award-winning restaurants. Tasting tickets are $30 for

Adult General Admission, which includes a tasting passport and GoVino glass. For $55, adults can purchase a Platinum Pass which includes unlimited food and wine tasting and a GoVino glass. Passports for children 12 and under are $5 for kids to enjoy childfriendly snacks and activities. Tasting tickets include access to all event activities. Joyful Music Yuletide carols are somehow

goods, Yountville’s local artists and artisans offer one-of-a-kind gift ideas for everyone on your holiday list. Following the town lighting, Yountville’s art galleries and boutiques will keep their doors open well past regular hours for convenient and enjoyable shopping experience. Many will have refreshments, too.

Romantic Carriage Rides Cozy horse-drawn carriage rides will be clip-clopping down the sparkling lanes of downtown Yountville starting at 6 p.m. It’s an opportunity to cuddle up, drink a glass of wine and savor a Tasting Rooms Stay Open Later special moment in Wine Country. Revelers can wine taste after Carriage rides are free for event normal hours during the festivities attendees. and each tasting room in Yountville sells unique and exquisite Photos with Santa wares alongside exceptional wine He’s making his list and check- selections to check gifts off any ing it twice and Santa will be holiday list. ready and waiting for the sweet whispers (and occasional tears) of Festival of Lights Schedule children eager to share their wish 3 p.m. – Food & wine tasting lists. begins, along with live music 3 p.m. – Santa and his elves Tree and town lighting arrive via fire truck (photos with Always the highlight of the Santa begin) festival, Santa and Yountville 5:30 p.m. – Food and wine Mayor John Dunbar will light tasting winds down the tree in the Community 5:45 p.m. – Town & Tree Center Plaza located at 6516 lighting by Santa & Yountville Washington Street promptly at Mayor John Dunbar 5:45 p.m. Townsfolk and visitors 6 p.m. – Carriage rides begin far and wide will gather round – down Washington Street, busisome perched atop the shoulders nesses stay open late with special of sturdy parents – to gaze upon holiday shopping offers thousands of lights in the brisk The Festival of Lights is sponNovember air. It’s a community sored by the Yountville Chamber moment that draws people close of Commerce, Town of Yountand collectively brings joy to the ville, Pacific Gas & Electric, season. MCE Clean Energy and Peak Productions. For tickets and furOne-of-a-Kind Shopping ther information on Festival of From hand-painted choco- Lights, visit yountville.com or go lates and exquisite jewelry, to directly to CellarPass to purchase local artwork and luxury spa passports. 13

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Gifts ‘n Tyme Holiday Faire

F O R I N S I D E N A PA VA L L E Y

Come be part of a long-standing Napa Valley holiday tradition. The Gifts ‘n Tyme Holiday Faire highlights 85 local and regional artists of original crafts, artwork, holiday pieces, and gourmet foods to sample – exhibited by the people who make it. Holiday music and spirit abounds as you stroll the hall and visit with the artists, with the smell of hot-cinnamon roasted almonds in the air. Sample a variety of gourmet foods as you go, and try the special treats and home-baked goods from the Greater Napa Valley Lion’s Club at their annual sale. The Faire also features a full gourmet kitchen, with a new menu this year, serving delicious hot, homemade breakfast,

lunches, dinners, and desserts. This is a great way to get your Christmas shopping done early, from stocking stuffers to works of art, with the personal touch. The ‘Gifts ‘n Tyme Holiday Faire’ is held Nov. 18-20 at the Napa Valley Expo at 575 Third Street, Napa, in the Chardonnay Hall. Hours are: Friday and Saturday: 10 a.m. -6 p.m., and Sunday: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Admission and parking are free. Traditions and holidays go together, so come celebrate our 44th year with us at ‘Gifts ‘n Tyme.’ Eat, shop, and be merry. For information, please e-mail Kim at: afterthegoldrush@sbcglobal.net or call (925) 372-8961.

Holiday on i Maria Sestito/Register

Skating offers inexpensive family fun for winter JESS LANDER

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tis the season that your social media feeds begin to fill up with snowy photos from the slopes, but as far as winter sports go, skiing and snowboarding can be a logistical and expensive hassle. Ice skating on the other 16

hand, is an inexpensive, family-friendly activity for all ages and abilities. Here are five fun, festive and photo-worthy outdoor skating rinks throughout the Bay Area to check off your list this winter.

Anskuw, Dreamstime.com

ice

Napa on Ice Napa Expo Nov. 19-Jan. 8 You don’t have to go far to get your ice skating fix. Napa on Ice will open for its sixth season, and second at the Napa Expo. This is a smaller ice rink, but it’ll do the trick if you don’t want to make it an all-day adventure. Skate in the sun during the day or under romantic string lights at night. Cost: $13 for all day admission, includes free skate rental onicerinks.com Safeway Holiday Ice Rink Union Square, San Francisco Nov. 2-Jan. 16 Paired with Union Square’s giant Christmas tree, this rink is the closest thing you’ll get in the Bay Area to skating at Rockefeller Center. The ice rink opens up every year in the heart of the busiest hub of San Francisco, so expect it to be one of the most crowded and energetic rinks around. In addition to daily skate sessions, they’ve scheduled several fun events that appeal to all ages and interests, like the Tree Lighting Ceremony on Nov. 25, 80s-themed Flashback Fridays, Simba Saturdays (featuring songs from The Lion King soundtrack), and their adapted version of a polar bear plunge, the Polar Bear Skate on New Year’s Day. There are also a handful of Learn to Skate and Tots on Ice sessions for little ones and first-timers. Cost: $12, children (8 and under) $7, skate rental $6 unionsquareicerink.com

and Carnival, which features the lighting of four of the city’s tallest buildings with 15,000 lights, fireworks and a Disney on Ice show. Go between Nov. 18 and December 24 and take advantage of four hours of free parking at Embarcadero Center—a Holiday miracle in the city! Cost: $11, children (8 and under) $7, skate rental $5 embarcaderocenter.com San Jose Downtown Skate 120 S. Market St. Nov. 18-Jan. 16 This is one of the coolest-looking ice rinks you’ll ever skate. The downtown San Jose rink resembles an icy Hawaiian paradise: It’s round, with four islands featuring tall, lit up palm trees in the center, thus creating skating space in the middle, plus an extra outside lane for speedsters. Note: There are no lockers at this rink, so bring a backpack you can skate with. If you want to try a new icy sport, head down the street to the Oakland Ice Center and give curling a try. Cost: $17, children (10 and under) $15, $10 if you bring your own skates downtownicesj.com

Walnut Creek on Ice Civic Park Nov. 11-Jan. 16 This partially-covered outdoor rink is expertly family friendly, with a Frosty & Friends skate night on Jan. 7, Family Skate Night on select Tuesdays and the Children’s Winter Festival on Nov. 12. Have a newbie? Enroll your child in the Ice Skating Academy The Holiday Ice Rink at Embarcadero Center for once-a-week group lessons for ages 5-11 on SaturJustin Herman Center days or Sundays. Make your list and get your holiday Nov. 2-Jan. 8 shopping done while you’re in town. A 30-year tradition, the largest ice rink in the Bay Cost: $12 M-F, $15 Fri 5PM-Sun, $15 during Area is set up across from San Francisco’s iconic Ferry “Holiday Periods” Building and boasts views of the Bay Bridge. Plan your walnutcreekonice.com trip around the annual Building Lighting Ceremony

Winter

cocktails Drinks to take the chill off the season N A PA VA L L E Y B I S T RO

Holidays are a time for festive food and drink. Here are some suggestions from local mixologists on how to celebrate the holidays with a distinctive cocktail. The alcohols they use may sound exotic and unfamiliar, but they are available at area liquor stores.

with 1 teaspoon dried lavender buds. For the cocktail: Rim the glass with lemon wedge and lavender sugar Fill a mixing glass with ice. Add Soju, simple syrup, lemon juice, and lavender bitters. Shake well and strain into marLavender Lemon Drop tini glass. For its Lavender Lemon Garnish with lavender sprig. Drop cocktail, Napa Valley Bistro uses Soju, which is a Korean Authentic Brazilian Caipirinha spirit distilled from rice and Galpão Gaucho Brazilian barley. It is 24 percent alcohol steakhouse has brought a touch by volume, or 48 proof. It has of South America’s largest nation a flavor profile which is similar to Napa. Here is their recipe to vodka. for Brazil’s signature cocktail: 2 oz Soju 48 the Caipirinha. The secret is ½ oz simple syrup Cachaça, a distilled spirit made 1 oz lemon juice from sugarcane juice. ¼ teaspoon lavender bitters 1 whole lime 1 lemon wedge 2 tbs sugar lavender sugar 2.5 oz Cachaça lavender sprig for garnish Cut limes into small wedges; dried lavender buds add sugar and muddle (crush martini glass together to extract the juices Serve chilled. and blend the sugar) very well. For the Lavender sugar: Add Cachaça and shake for 30 Mix 1 cup granulated sugar seconds to blend.

Submitted photo

The Lavender Lemon Drop from Napa Valley Bistro.

A Brazilian Caipirinha (right) from Galpão Gaucho Brazilian steakhouse. Submitted photo

Winter workouts Six workouts to try for post-holiday fitness JESS LANDER The holiday season is a time of indulgence for most, who resolve to get back in shape as soon as January hits. But those resolutions often quickly fall away, as less than 50 percent of resolution setters are still on track after six months. By February, the gyms and fitness studios are already significantly less crowded. Oftentimes, fitness resolution failure is a result of pure boredom with oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stale workout routine. There are so many ways to exercise beyond the elliptical, and like dating, it can take a lot of searching to find the right thing for you. Here are six types of workouts for you to test out in 2017, and where to do so in Napa Valley.

HIIT If your main fitness goal is to torch fat and shed pounds, High Intensity Interval Training is your answer, and yes, it’s as intense as it sounds. HIIT most often consists of boot camp or CrossFit-style workouts in a small group setting, that utilize a mix of strength and cardio training to push you to exhaustion. You’ll find about a dozen local fitness centers and studios geared towards this type of training, where you’ll inevitably develop a love/hate relationship with burpees, but also find camaraderie with your fellow soldiers. Yoga Yoga has amazing health benefits, both physical and mental, like relieving stress, building strength, increasing flexibility and mobility, decreasing muscle and joint pain, and even assisting with digestion. But walking into a yoga studio for the first time can be both expensive and intimidating, so new non-profit Napa Valley Yoga in the Park is making yoga accessible and approachable for everyone. They’ve moved their Fuller Park classes inside for the winter, so you can find them at Newton’s Law of Fitness on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s at 9 a.m., or on Sunday’s at the Las Flores

Community Center. Check out their Facebook page for updates and additional times and days. Aerial Arts One of the latest and most unique fitness trends, aerial arts give you the chance to see what it would be like to perform on Cirque Du Soleil. Don’t worry, you’ll start low on the ground, testing your upper body and core strength to the limit as you learn the basics, like climbing and inversions, on giant silks that hang from the ceiling. There are two places to try out this fun workout in Napa Valley: Wine Country CrossFit and Studio 253. Biking The recent extension of the

Napa Valley Vine Trail is the perfect excuse to break out your wheels. You can now ride 12.5 miles from South Napa to Yountville, which makes for a hefty 25-mile round trip if you go all the way. Paired with beautiful Napa Valley views, it won’t even feel like work—but try to resist a pit stop at Bouchon for some macaroons at the halfway point. Running Because of Napa Valley’s gorgeous backdrop, it’s home to dozens of races a year, and If you register for a race, you’ll be much more likely to follow through with it because you made a monetary investment. Start 2017 off with a bang, by running the Napa Valley

Resolution Run (5k or 10k) on Jan. 1, or start training for a spring race, like the Napa Valley Silverado Half Marathon, 10k and 5k on April 23. Again, the Vine Trail is the perfect place to work up to some serious mileage. If you don’t want to go it alone, hook up with VineRunners at Napa Running Company. They do group runs on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings, plus track workouts on Tuesdays. TRX One of the biggest excuses in the book for not exercising is, “I don’t have the time.” Home workouts are designed to counter that excuse with optimal convenience, but they also require self motivation. If you’re looking for a home workout solution to try, consider the TRX Suspension Trainer. This portable piece of equipment can be set up anywhere (like at home or a park) and used to perform hundreds of bodyweight exercises for a total body workout. It also comes with workouts to follow, so you don’t have to make them up yourself. If you want to try if before buying, many of the local gyms have TRX trainers to use and both Exertec Fitness Center and Core Values offer TRX classes. 21

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TIM CARL

Visitors and locals alike treasure both the coffee and the community they find at the Napa Valley Coffee Roasting Co. With two locations, Napa and St. Helena, the company is the quintessential Napa family-run business, now in its second generation. “This is not just a business to me, but instead it’s more about the people,” said Nancy Haynes, president, co-owner and mother to Ben and Charlie Sange, who, along with

Haynes’ husband, Brouck, now run the 32-year-old business. “We are passionate about our coffee and believe it’s the best, but it’s really the connections between people — our customers and employees — that make the roasting company what it is.” Founded in 1985 by the now-deceased Leon Sange, the first location in Napa became an instant hit with many locals, prompting the opening of the second in St. Helena in 1991.

Rick Strathdee, a Napa resident and nurse at the Queen of the Valley Hospital, has been a customer at the Napa Valley Coffee Roasting Co. for 28 years. Strathdee, who helped clean up the shop after the 2014 earthquake, now stands ready to help baristas Michelle Sciambra and Caitlin Long at the Napa location. Tim Carl

I spoke with Nancy and her son, Ben, on a crisp fall morning at their St. Helena location. Ben had been up late roasting just a few feet away from their office door, using their impressive Probat L12 gas-fired drum coffee roaster, and the smell of freshly roasted coffee beans was still thick in the air. Music from the ‘80s and the chatter of customers mixed with the grinding, humming and whistling of specialty coffees being made. “Leon was still working as a lawyer when he started the coffee business,” Haynes said. “But by the mid-‘90s it had become his life, and by the time he was diagnosed with early onset

Alzheimer’s in early 2000, our son Ben was practicing law, but he and his brother Charlie came back to help us run the business.” Nancy and Leon had divorced years earlier, but even so she and her new husband Brouck helped; Charlie roasted the beans and Ben managed the Napa location, while Nancy continued to do the books and Brouck oversaw retail. Ben often helped out with the roasting, too, having learned to roast coffee beans in the Napa store when he was going to high school. He was attempting to balance his law practice with the demands of the coffee business and his father’s worsening condition.

“One night we received a phone call from one of our customers in St. Helena about Leon,” said Nancy. “They said that he was standing out in front of the coffee shop waiting for it to open. But it was 8 o’clock at night, so of course nobody was coming to open the store. So they called me and Brouck, and we came down and got him. He wouldn’t believe us that it was not daytime. That was one of the first big clues.” The family continued to pitch in, taking care of Leon and the coffee shop. “Taking care of Dad meant taking care of the coffee company, too,” Ben said. “It was

important to him.” When Leon eventually died from his disease in 2006, Nancy, Brouck, Ben and Charlie had fully taken over the operations. Ben left his law practice behind but still retains his license. “It was about doing what was the best thing for Dad,” Ben said. “I didn’t really think about it. But the company had just become a giant extended family to me by then anyway. I started to notice the people that had been coming into the store for the last 25 years and the second generation of baristas working, and that’s when it turned for me, becoming something more than just my Dad’s business.”

For many employees of the NVCR, the connection seems like family. “I started working there when I was a sophomore in high school and then worked there on an off until September of 2014,” said Tayler Petersen, a second-generation NVCR employee. “It really felt like family. My mother worked there, too, for at least 10 or 15 years. She always spoke so highly of it and how nice everyone was. She worked there until she passed from cancer in October of 2011. They even closed the stores so that the staff could attend my mom’s funeral which really reinforced the family aspect to me.” The customers feel connected to NVCR, too. “I’ve been coming in for 28 years,” said Rick Strathdee, a Napa resident and nurse at the Queen of the Valley Hospital. “I am a bit of a coffee snob, and their coffee is the best. I also like that it can be quiet and a peaceful place to sit and read and that they play live music a couple of times a week. But it’s really the people and the family who inspire my loyalty.” When the 2014 earthquake hit Napa, Strathdee headed downtown to assess the damage to his favorite coffee shop and to see if he might be of some help. “All the windows were broken and there was a huge mess, so I just grabbed a broom and started to help a few of the employees that were there already,” said Strathdee. “A few reporters came up to me and asked what I was doing, but I didn’t think much about it at the time. A couple of days later when I came in for coffee, Amber (now the manager at the St. Helena store) said, ‘Hey, look who’s here, the boss,’ she said and then laughed.” The barista was referring to an article in the New York Times that referenced Strathdee as the owner of the NVCR. “I never said I was the owner, but maybe they thought, ‘Who else would be helping clean the place up?’” Strathdee said. “Rick is one of our many wonderful customers,” Nancy said. “We feel honored that many of our customers and employees

feel a sense of place here. It’s what makes this place special, and we are so grateful to the whole community for their support.” Another time the community came out to support the coffee shop was when Starbucks built a store across the street from their Napa location. “Officially we have no comment about Starbucks,” she said. “Since they’ve opened our business has actually increased, but I can tell you that we are in complete awe and so appreciative for all those people who spoke out on our behalf. What we’ve found is that there are many locals and tourists out there that really value a local family-owned business that is making a hand-crafted product. I can also say that our ‘David and Goliath’ blend has been a big hit.” As a part of NVCR’s commitment to all things local, they’ve supported many causes over the years by creating special coffee roasts. “We donate 20 percent of the proceeds from the sale of our ‘Coffee for a Cause’ beans for various local charities,” Nancy

said. “A few of our current causes include the Vine Trail, police, firefighters, the Pathway House and Jameson Animal Rescue. There are many worthy causes, and we want to do our part.” Ben and Nancy are adamant about not moving beyond the Napa Valley. “We don’t want to do anything that will compromise our coffee or our Napa Valley hometown connection,” Ben said. “We do offer wholesales beans and many local restaurants serve our coffee, but we currently have no plans to expand beyond the valley.” Charlie has left the day-to-day business, now consulting while living in San Diego with his wife and two sons. Ben and Nancy continue their active involvement, as does Ben, each envisioning a day when a third-generation Sange might step in and lead the company forward. “The future is never certain,” Ben said. “But what I’ve learned is that this business is not just about making the best coffee we can make, but instead it’s really about making emotional connections with people.”

Tim Carl

Nancy Haynes, president and co-owner of the Napa Valley Coffee Roasting Co.

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New season for Lucky Penny Local theater celebrates its third year In September of this year, Napa’s very own Lucky Penny Productions opened its third full season of plays and special events at the Community Arts Center. This season began with the wonderful and hugely popular musical, “Big River,” based on Mark Twain’s timeless characters. Second in the lineup was, “I Wanna Be Bad,” an original musical work written by locals Shannon Rider and Lucky Penny Co-Founder Barry Martin and set in a Prohibition era speakeasy. Artistic Director and Co-Founder Taylor Bartolucci has said that one of Lucky Penny’s goals is to showcase original works written by local and regional playwrights and “I Wanna Be Bad” works toward fulfilling that goal. Next up in November is the wellknown story of Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan, “The Miracle Worker.” This work originated as a television play and was made into a movie and later a stage play. Her performance as Helen launched Patty Duke’s career and earned Tony, Academy, and Emmy awards.

This year’s December holiday shows include a reprise of the always popular, funny and outrageous “The Great American Trailer Park Christmas Musical.” This irreverent musical comedy is for mature audiences. Running at alternate times is a wonderful holiday story for the kids, “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” As we move into January of 2017 the company presents Stephen Sondheim’s beautiful and critically acclaimed, “A Little Night Music,” featuring some of the finest vocal performers in the region and well known songs such as “Send in the Clowns.” Then in February and early March Lucky Penny presents one of its most popular re-occurring events, the “8 X 10” Festival of 10-minute plays. This year’s theme is all about kids and each play must have at least one actor age 6-17. Over 150 plays were submitted from authors across the country and only eight of the best were selected for performance. The spring and early summer close the season with “Maple

and Vine” and “Clue the Musical.” “Maple and Vine” is about a modern day couple who give it all up to join a 1950s “idyllic” lifestyle group. Were the “good old days” really that good? “Maple and Vine” is followed by the wild and whacky “Clue, the Musical” based on the popular board game and features all of the well-known characters from the game. This is audience participation at its best so be prepared to help the cast figure out one of more than 200 possible endings. In addition to this robust season of plays and musicals, Lucky Penny is now presenting a variety of special events including “The Best of San Francisco Solo Series” produced by Brian Copeland; a short story festival featuring local writers and actors reading selected works; and comedy nights featuring well known comics such as Johnny Steele, Will Durst and many others. Variety and entertainment with a local flair are foremost at Lucky Penny. Dozens of local and regional actors,

writers, singers, artists, musicians, and directors have produced some of the best shows Napa audiences have seen. Locals can no longer say there is nothing to do in Napa after dark. If you check out Lucky Penny, chances are you will find something that suits your taste. Lucky Penny is a nonprofit organization so none of this is possible without financial support and most importantly, volunteers! If you have some time available Lucky Penny is looking for a cadre of volunteers to usher, run the box office, house manage, and more. Be a part of this exciting environment and get a peek behind the scenes. If you are a fellow nonprofit, ask us how we can help you raise funds for your organization by using the

Community Arts Center and our shows. The Community Arts Center is available for special events and meetings at low or no cost. Call the number below for more information. For show details and dates, season ticket deals, and more information on volunteering call 707-266-6305, email luckypennynapa.com or go online to www. luckypennynapa.com . You will be a part of something enriching, fun, and very special.

Tim Carl

Christy Pestoni Abreu, director of community outreach for the Clover Flat Resource Recovery Park.

Beyond a disposal society

Pestoni family makes a tradition of conservation TIM CARL

Roughly 800 homes in Calistoga are being powered by energy generated through the decomposition of garbage. For the last four years the Pestoni family, owners of the local landfill now called the Clover Flat Resource Recovery Park, have been transforming the valley’s refuse into clean, green energy, using state-of-the-art technology, innovative vision and local support. Methane gas is produced through the decomposition of discarded waste in landfills. To keep this noxious gas from entering the atmosphere the normal practice was to direct it to a chimneylike structure and burn it off. But the Pestonis had other plans. “My father (Bob Pestoni)

wanted to harness the fuel and turn the landfill into an alternative energy producer,” said Christy Pestoni Abreu, director of community outreach for the CFRRP. “To make it work, the money for this project came out of his own pocket, but he had a dream, and today we are witnessing the fruits

of that effort. Our power-generating facility is transforming gas that we used to just burn off, but now we’re converting it into a useful resource for the community.” Because of the structure of the local grid, Calistoga is the recipient of the power.

Tim Carl

Garry Lowe, Clover Flat Resource Recovery Park onsite manager in front of discarded wood that the Clover Flat Resource Recovery Park hopes will one day be the source of both clean energy and a byproduct called biochar, a carbon-sequestration material that can be used as a soil additive. Currently the wood is chipped and mixed within the landfill’s waste.

“The city of Calistoga is thrilled to actively support energy conservation efforts like those of the Clover Flat Resource Recovery Park,” said Calistoga Mayor Chris Canning. He also serves on the board of the Upper Valley Agency Waste Management. “Learning to live in a more sustainable manner is not only good for Calistoga but also good for the Napa Valley community and beyond.” A history of conservation Like his father and grandfather before him, Bob Pestoni would eventually come back to making wine, opening Rutherford Grove Winery in 1994. Before then, however, he and his brother Marvin departed from their family’s farming and winemaking heritage and instead, in 1963, created Upper Valley Disposal Service, becoming the refuse hauler for the upper Napa Valley. Three years later they took over the operations at Clover Flat Landfill, always with an eye toward conservation. By the early ‘70s the Pestonis had become pioneers of recycling winery byproducts such as glass, cardboard and wood pallets, separating the material for recycling. They also had been composting for years. “We’ve been composting ever since I can remember,” Christy 30

said. “At our Whitehall Lane upper valley disposal and recycling center, grape pomace (skins, seeds and stems) composting used a bucket loader in the1970s. In the 1980s we used the windrow method using a piece of equipment called a scarab, resembling an Egyptian beetle. By the mid1990s to today we used a method call ASP, Aerated Static Pile. We force air on timed aerators that blow air into the large piles of decomposing grape compost and green organic material. Our

permit allows us to compost up to 37,000 tons of organics.” When California passed such laws as the Integrated Waste Management Act (AB 939) in 1989, which, among other requirements, mandated that waste facilities divert a percentage of their waste to recycling and composting, the Pestonis had efforts already underway to divert what had been normally discarded and buried, and instead made it into something reusable and useful. “ We are currently at 72

percent diversion,” said Garry Lowe, CFRRP’s onsite manager. “The state currently mandates 50 percent, but we are ahead of that and have been for some time.” New mandates. New challenges “SB 1383 Short Lived Climate Pollutant is a bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown recently and it will have new impacts on how we operate,” said Christy. “This law will require us to find additional ways to reduce short-lived climate pollutants, such as wood and

Garry Lowe, Clover Flat Resource Recovery Park onsite manager in front of the G.E. Jenbacher engine that runs continually, processing the methane waste into 800kw of power used to generate power for 800 Calistoga homes. Tim Carl

other organics.” One of the options for reducing wood waste is to convert it through a process called biomass gasification, which results in both clean energy production and biochar (charcoal) that is potentially a carbon-sequestration material that can be used as a soil additive. However, the equipment for gasification is expensive and the future market is uncertain. “It used to be that there was a decent market for such things as recyclables, but that market

has softened,” said Canning. “It’s becoming more expensive to deal with many of the new requirements, and some of the material is stacking up, like wood waste. But the CFRRP and others in the valley are looking at different options.” “We are hoping to find a way to build a biomass gasification plant in the coming years,” Christy said. “The technology is available and there is a real need locally — we could potentially process all the discarded

vineyard vines, many of which are currently just burned in the field after they’ve been removed. We have the permit for the plant, but we need to find a way to bring the community together so that we can make this a sustainable decision for all of us. For example, if the county had an ordinance that kept the local wood waste in the valley, keeping it in a closed loop, then it’s likely this would make more long-term sense. We are still evaluating our options.”

Moving beyond a disposal society “When you come down to it, ‘garbage’ is really only the commingling of different types of potentially useful and reusable items,” Christy said. “We are no longer a disposal society, but we still need to reduce the amount of waste we produce. From where we are now we can continue to separate out and reuse as much as possible, using technology, human innovation and vision to drive the process forward.” 31

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

Chamber of Commerce CEO Travis Stanley

J.L. Sousa, Register

Last vacation I honestly can’t remember which means it’s been way too long. We do have a family trip planned for Hawaii next year that I’m very much looking forward to. Favorite meal My wife’s “personal garden to dinner table” three-course meal of fresh eggplant parmesan, garden salad (lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers) and sweet corn…. all grown just 40 ft. from the kitchen. If she and the kids happen to save me a little Strauss Family Dutch Chocolate or Three Twins Madagascar Vanilla ice cream (highly unlikely) then I’ll have dessert as well. Both are the closest thing to homemade ice cream we’ve ever had. Guilty pleasure Wine, wine and more wine! Beach read In case anyone hasn’t noticed, I have a very nice — and very deep — natural tan, and I can’t swim. I don’t spend a lot of time on the beach. Favorite San Antonio Spur Gregg Popovich — just an awesome human being. He’s also a big-time wine drinker who has his own private label called Rock and Hamme. It’s a very good Oregon Pinot Noir. I look best when dressed in a very nice suit and tie. I

“feel” best when dressed in t-shirts and shorts or sweats. Favorite day trip from Napa My wife and I feel very blessed that our day trips can be a simple ride up the Silverado Trail. It can be as far as Chateau Montelena (we’re members) or as short as Reynolds Winery (literally two minutes away) and have the same amazing, beautiful effect each and every time! Latest earworm Hope I don’t get myself in trouble with the “parents police” for this one: my kids know every pop song being played on the radio (from riding in my wife’s car of course). There is one in particular that they’ll sing in front of the mirror (just like in her video) called “Me Too” by Meghan Trainor. What’s with the Warriors logo? Long story short is it’s my logo design. I still wear it because I’m very proud of that fact. It pays homage to the team’s old “The City” jersey, one of the most popular uniforms in the history of professional sports. Editor’s note: Travis Stanley is president and CEO of the Napa Chamber of Commerce. Previously, he was senior executive vice president of marketing for the Golden State Warriors.

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Where in the Valley? How keen is your eye for Napa landmarks? Our photographer J.L. Sousa travels a lot of miles in pursuit of his images and along the way heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s taken some shots of interesting, quirky, and unusual objects, many of them in plain sight from major roads. But it can be surprisingly hard to identify these places when you zoom in just on the details, even if you pass by the spots every day. How many of these Napa County places can you identify? Answers are on Page 73.

Great Estates: Home as art St. Helena estate turns architecture into sculpture JESS LANDER

Past the gates of Meadowood Resort awaits the opportunity of a lifetime. One of four, extremely-secluded estates that reside far above the renowned resort is on the market, and it can be yours for the current listing price of $17.5 million. The 40-acre property at 680 Meadowood Lane thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s built into the hillside comes with far-reaching, unparalleled views of Napa Valley, a pool, tennis court, second dwelling, large detached barn, elevator and five beautifully, fully-landscaped acres.

Submitted photos

But this two-story estate is not your typical McMansion. It’s not necessarily impressive from a square footage standpoint (4,320 sq. ft.), but is also probably unlike any house you’ve ever seen. It’s more like a piece of art. One might describe the 3-bedroom, 3.5-bath fortress as modern industrial, constructed mainly with two starkly contrasting elements: steel and glass. Steel is present everywhere from the beams, to the front door and staircase, while oversized glass windows put the westward views on full display from every room. The design is extremely open concept, as you can move seamlessly through the upstairs loft to guest bedrooms on the top floor, and then from the kitchen to the master to the living area on the main floor. “It’s the kind of house that would last forever, but you have to appreciate art to understand that,” said Gail Lane, Realtor and

longtime friend of the estate’s owner. “There’s not another house in the valley like it and I’ve seen a lot of houses. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. The views are so distracting from the tennis court, that when I’ve brought friends up there to play, they can’t concentrate on the game.” The first person Lane showed the house to was none other than Ryan Seacrest, former American Idol host and the producer responsible for bringing the Kardashians to our televisions. In 2005, the house was completed after a five-year design and building process under architect Lewis Zaumeyer, a co-founder of Burning Man. It was a longtime dream of the owner and her late husband Peter Stocker, a founding partner of Pacific Union and Meadowood. Each of the founding Meadowood partners were allocated about 40 acres of land, but this is the only property still in the hands of its

original owner—at least for the time being. Peter died in a helicopter accident before the couple had the chance to build their house, and 15 years went by before his wife revisited their plans. The result is pretty spectacular. “It’s modern, but extremely comfortable and very easy to live in,” the owner said. “It’s open, very livable and warm; it’s not sterile and cold.” The owner’s fun and eclectic

taste in art is reflected throughout the property in its current state, from the recycled horse sculptures just beyond the gates, to a collection of rubber duckies by the pool and the light-up “Welcome to Homeywood” sign, a play on her Meadowood location. Walking through the property is like touring a modern art gallery, but as is goes with art, it’s not everyone’s taste, so potential buyers can buy the house as a blank canvas to make their own. 37

from the CUNAT FAMILY

We invite you to visit our vineyard and winery in the Oak Knoll District, a diverse winegrowing appellation of Napa Valley. From these unique soils, matched with our talented winemakers, we have created truly noteworthy vintages. We look forward to sharing with you the results of our passion for farming and our focus on making flavorful wines.

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Music, memories, Sounds of the past resonate in St. Helena’s Arietta wines TIM CARL

If you have been to one of the ubiquitous charity auctions around the Napa Valley during the last 30 years you have probably heard Fritz Hatton’s voice booming from the stage. His friendly and powerfully disarming demeanor have helped bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to the local community for worthy causes. You may know his voice, but you may not know that he and his wife, Caren, also have a wine brand called Arietta. “When our friend John Kongsgaard told me he had access to some amazing grapes and asked if we wanted to make some wine together, of course I had to say ‘yes,’” Hatton said. “Making wine sprang from our friendship and our shared love of wine and music.” Arietta was created in 1996 through a collaboration between Napa Valley winemaker John Kongsgaard, his wife, Maggy and the Hattons. But before becoming partners together in a wine business, the couples had been longtime friends, often sipping wine and listening to music into the early morning hours. One of their favorite composers was Beethoven. “John and Maggy loved Beethoven, and so did we,” Caren said. “We’d be together enjoying wine, and it could sometimes get very late. At 1:11 in the morning, John would call for Beethoven’s ‘Arietta, Opus 111,’ to be played.” Often on those late nights the couples were joined by a classical musician who would then sit down at the piano and play the piece. When such a guest was not in attendance, Fritz — who is an accomplished pianist in his 40

Tim Carl photo

Fritz and Caren Hatton, owners of Arietta wines, with their daughter, Hattie, congregate in the living room of their home in St. Helena with a few of their family pets.

own right — would play. “It was a magical time, being together, listening to Beethoven’s piano sonata,” Caren said. “It is just such a wonderful piece of music, starting out simply and then growing in complexity — just like a fine wine.” Although Beethoven’s “Arietta” was a prominent component of the couples’ friendship, naming the wine brand did not come easily. Prior to releasing the first vintage, they struggled to decide what the wine might be called. “We were going back and forth with names, but nothing seemed to fit,” Fritz said. “But at one point, Caren looked at me and said, ‘We have wine that needs to be bottled, so we need a name. Look in your music books; that’s where you’ll find it.’ And she was right. There in my lap was the music score for the Arietta. We all agreed

immediately that it was the perfect name.” The couples also agreed that the wine they’d make would not be your standard Napa Valley wine but would instead take its direction from the classical music they all loved, focusing on sourcing grapes that were grown only in vineyards that might create the depth and ethereal serenity they’d found together through music. They found what they needed primarily in Lee Hudson’s famous Carneros vineyards. In 2005, Fritz and Caren took over as sole proprietors of Arietta, and John handed over the winemaking reins to Andy Erickson, who has worked at such prominent Napa wineries as Dalla Valle, Harlan, Screaming Eagle and Staglin. Normally visitors to Arietta taste wine where it is actually made, at Chateau Boswell on the Silverado Trail, about

halfway between St. Helena and Calistoga. However, when I met the Hattons I was lucky enough to visit them at their beautiful home in St. Helena, where we sat out in their shady backyard sipping wine from the most delicate and expressive glassware I’ve ever used — hand-blown “Gabriel-Glas,” from Swiss/German wine critic René Gabriel — all while I became familiar with the family’s four dogs and two cats. The three wines that stood out on that afternoon were the 2014 Arietta “On the White Keys” Sauvignon Blanc, the 2012 H-Block red wine blend and the 2012 Arietta Merlot. The 2014 Arietta “On the White Keys” Sauvignon Blanc ($62 a bottle and 500 cases made) is blended with Semillon grapes in oak barrels, both of which provide the wine with an expansive and complex mouth

and wine The “Arietta” movement is from Beethoven’s last piano sonata, “Opus 111.” The label of each bottle depicts Beethoven’s actual handwritten script and a few bars of music from the piece. Tim Carl photo

Fritz and Caren Hatton are the owners of Arietta wines.

feel. The nose is of candied lemon-rind, beeswax, dried mint and white peach. The flavors mirror the aromatics but finish with a limestone minearality. The Cabernet Franc-focused 2014 H-Block red wine blend ($150 per bottle and 400 cases made) is Arietta’s first to have been commercially released. This wine is 50 percent cabernet franc that is co-fermented with merlot.

Tim Carl photo

Aromas of dried plum, shiitake mushrooms, fresh sage and new leather dominate this wine. Rich and creamy on the palate, its softness and surprising brightness are in intriguing contrast to the lingering flavor of beef broth in the finish. The 2013 Arietta Merlot ($75 per bottle and 300 cases made) was the standout of the tasting. This wine is complex and speaks

to the wonderful depth of Merlot grown in the clay soils of Carneros, which is similar in some ways to the most famous Merlot producer in the world, Pétrus, which is grown on 28 acres of blue clay on a piece of land called the “button” in the Pomerol region of Bordeaux in France. The Arietta Merlot has a blue-plum and cardamom -coffee aroma, and once in your mouth this wine expands in talcum-powder layers that include milk chocolate, dried blueberry and wet cedar. If you can wait long enough between sips, you might find the lingering flavor of dried violets. Fritz and his wife, along with their friends, the Kongsgaards, and winemaker Andy Ericson have created a wine brand that represents their love of music, friendship and the wines of the Napa Valley. The wines are wonderful, truly representing the best of what the area can produce. But what is the future of such wines? That is, will

such wines last more than the life of the founders? In California, we have an amazing knack for refining and improving things. Think of technology. Think of food. Think of wine. But what is less clear is what happens to these things over time. We are creative, passionate and generous. And Arietta exemplifies these values in both their wines and in the personalities of their founders. My hope is that such special wines and important values somehow find a way to carry on, presenting future generations with concrete examples of what it can mean to be true citizens of the Napa Valley and the broader world beyond. Arietta’s wines are well-distributed in California and are available in select states. Locally, you can find them at 750 Wines in St. Helena, Backroom Wines in Napa and retailers. Tastings are by appointment only. For more information or to order the wines, visit www. arietta-wine.com. 41

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Contributed photo

Rudy Boysen was overseeing this prune drying operation as well as a chicken ranch in Coombsville in the early 1920s when he created the boysenberry.

Napa’s gift to world The Boysenberry was developed in our own back yard K E V I N C O U RT N E Y k cour tne y@nap ane w s . com

Submitted photo

After creating what became known as the boysenberry in Napa in 1923, Rudy Boysen moved to Anaheim where he became city parks superintendent. Walter Knott of Knott’s Berry Farm popularized the new berry in the 1930s.

The wine industry being the juggernaut that it is today, it’s hard to appreciate that the Napa Valley — the city of Napa, specifically — was once indirectly famous for another berry. This wasn’t an import from the vineyards of Europe. It was created here in Coombsville. When it received its first splash of publicity, it was touted as the “sensation berry of the twentieth century.” In 1959, California’s governor, Edmund “Pat” Brown, declared a week’s celebration in its honor. In the southland, Los Angeles chose a young woman to represent this berry at festivals. We’re talking boysenberry! No one thinks much about boysenberries these days unless you’re the people at Knott’s Berry Farm, which introduced the berry to the world in 1934

Submitted photo

Rudy Boysen plays to the camera in 1922 on the chicken ranch that he managed on Third Avenue in Napa’s Coombsville neighborhood. It was there that his efforts to hybridize new berries resulted in the boysenberry in 1923.

and made it famous. For a brief time, America experienced boysenberry mania. The Los Angeles Times declared it the “king of the bush.” These days, most people have never tasted a fresh boysen. It lacks the toughness to survive industrial farming and shipping and thus has disappeared from market shelves. Today you’ll find it in pies, ice creams and, of course, Knott’s boysenberry jam. The boysenberry is plumper and juicier than blackberries with a complex flavor that combined sweet and tart. Its creator was Rudoph Boysen, a veteran of World War I who moved to Napa in the early 1920s to run an 18-acre chicken ranch and prune orchard on Third Avenue in Coombsville. Like many men of his era, Boysen dabbled with hybridization of berries, mixing pollen from blackberries, dewberries, loganberries and raspberries in multitudinous ways to see what might result. After more than 100 less-than-spectacular results, Boysen reported coming up with something unexpectedly tasty in 1923. His new, improved berry did not win immediate acclaim. There was no acknowledgement in the pages of the Napa Register. But for some unlikely developments, Napa is where the boysenberry might have been born and died anonymously, said Jeanette Boysen Fitzgerald, who came to Napa last month to research her

grandfather’s legacy to berry lovers. A year or so after propagating his new berry, Boysen moved his wife and young son to Anaheim, taking with him a load of vines in coffee cans, Fitzgerald said. He convinced a Southern California nursery to sell root cuttings, but there wasn’t much of a market, she said. To support his family, her grandfather took a job with the Anaheim parks department, where he worked for the rest of his life as a much-beloved superintendent, she said. Meanwhile, in 1932, hearing word of something special in the berry kingdom, a federal agriculture official from back East and a local berry grower, Walter Knott, visited Boysen who showed off some struggling vines from Napa. The rest is history. By the mid-1930s, Knott had geared up production and marketing, then turned the boysenberry into a cultural sensation. The Knott’s Berry Farm website acknowledges Rudolph Boysen’s role in a backhanded way. When Boysen was in charge of fate of the berry, they “kept dying on the vine,” the site says. But when Walter Knott took charge, he became “the first successful person to produce the boysenberry fruit. All boysenberries in the world can trace their roots back to Knott’s Berry Farm! How cool is that!” says Knott’s Berry Blog. In fact, all boysenberries in the world can trace their roots back

Contributed photo

Rudy Boysen lived in this farmhouse in Coombsville in the 1920s when he created the boysenberry. The house has long since been demolished.

to Napa, said Fitzgerald, who was on a heritage tour to dig up all the information about her forebear that she could find. In her swing through Napa, Fitzgerand and her husband, Tom, visited County Assessor John Tuteur to look at maps of where her grandfather did his botanical experimentation on Third Avenue She met for lunch at the home of Bill and Julie Griggs who own an acre-and-a-third of the 18 acres where Boysen farmed back in the 1920s. The chicken coops and prune drying yard are long gone and so is Boysen’s farmhouse. What Boysen would find familiar today is the creek in the Griggs’ backyard where a jungle of blackberries — the descendants of blackberries used by Boysen in his cross-pollinating experiments — continue to thrive. These blackberries are so vigorous and aggressive that she and her husband have to fight to keep them from taking over their backyard, Julie Griggs said. She wondered if perhaps a boysenberry vine or two had survived until today, hidden in the thicket. Indeed, her grandfather did leave behind a few vines when he departed for Anaheim some 90 years ago, Fitzgerald said. But in 1955, her Uncle Leland came to Napa, found the left-behind stragglers, and dug them out. Today, they’re growing at a relative’s place in Merced, she said. They’re direct descendants of her grandfather’s backyard ag experiment.

After lunch with the Griggses, and photos of everyone posed in front of the wild blackberries, Fitzgerald headed over to Sebastopol to visit Kokopelli Farms, one of the rare commercial growers of boysenberries in the area. “I was overcome with emotion just seeing all those thriving boysenberry vines,” she later reported. Today, most of the world’s boysenberries are grown in New Zealand. In the U.S., Oregon grows some. They’ve practically disappeared as a commercial crop in California. Fitzgerald said her grandfather died in 1950 at age 55, his life shortened by the injuries he received in 1928 when he fell 25 feet down a fire pole hole at a fire station. To the citizens of Anaheim, he was best known for park development and overseeing community celebrations, she said. His fame as the creator of the berry that bears his name was secondary. Boysen once tried to patent his discovery, Fitzgerald said, but his application was disqualified on a technicality. Knott’s Berry Farm won the fame and the money. Boysen never made a dime. Fitzgerald and her husband are now back in Las Vegas where they are hoping to raise more vines from cuttings taken from the Merced patch. If they succeed, they’re planning to come back to Napa and plant some on the Griggs property. The boysenberry will have come home. 45

Kathleen Heitz Myers, who came back to the family winery in 1978, became president and CEO in 1998. Tim Carl photos

Revisiting the legacy of Heitz Cellars TIM CARL

A wine that helped create Napa Valley

Harrison Heitz, the third generation of Heitzes, works at the winery.

Now in its third generation, Heitz Wine Cellars has helped define modern-day Napa Valley. Founded in 1961 by the late Joe and Alice Heitz, Alice, the winery has built a reputation for producing world-class wines of distinction, including one of Napa’s benchmark cabernet sauvignons, the Martha’s Vineyard, a wine that James Laube from the Wine Spectator has referred to as one of California’s “grands crus.” “My parents believed in the American dream,” said Kathleen Heitz Myers, daughter of Joe and Alice. Myers has lived or worked at the winery for nearly her entire life, becoming its president and CEO in 1998. Before that dream could be realized, the Heitzes needed to find their way to the Napa Valley. “Both of my parents were from the Midwest originally, and they met in California during World War II,” Kathleen said. “Dad was an inspector in the Air Force, stationed in the Central Valley and he got a night job at a winery near Fresno for some extra spending money. He’d always said that that experience

Laura May Harris, daughter of Tom and Martha May, owners of Martha’s Vineyard, hand-delivers grapes to Harrison Heitz, the third generation of Heitzes working at the winery. Tim Carl photos

had opened his horizons.” After the war, having become interested in winemaking, Joe headed to UC Davis, where he graduated with his master’s degree in enology in 1951. He worked at wineries in Lodi and Fresno before heading north, where he caught the eye of Napa Valley’s pre-eminent winemaker, Andre Tchelistcheff. He eventually joined Tchelistcheff at Beaulieu Vineyard and became his righthand man. By the late 1950s, Joe had bottled wine under the Heitz name, but not until they purchased a vineyard and pressed their own grapes did Heitz Wine Cellars begin in earnest. In 1961, when Joe and Alice founded their winery, there were only a handful of wineries in the Napa Valley. At the time, the belief that this sleepy agricultural place could become a globally recognized wine region had not yet taken hold. “My father’s focus was always on quality first — from the grapes he worked with to every step in the winemaking process,” Kathleen said. A central feature of Joe’s search for quality wine was finding the best grapes possible. Meanwhile, Tom and Martha May, who had just purchased a

Napa Valley vineyard, were seeking to sell the grapes from their new aquired land. “When Dad and Mom bought the vineyard, the previous owners had left of bottle of the Heitzes’ wine as a gift,” said Laura May Everett, daughter of the Mays and co-owner of the Martha’s Vineyard. “My parents loved the wine and went to go get more. That’s when they met Joe and Alice and became fast friends.” Joe Heitz first bought the Mays’ fruit in 1965 with the intention of adding it to his other cabernet wine. “Dad liked the fruit and approached Tom and Martha and asked if they’d like to make this a longer relationship,” Kathleen said. “Tom said ‘yes’ but asked if he could have a barrel of the wine for his family. My father responded, ‘Let’s even do better than that, let’s put your name on the label.’” “My wife and I were going to a luncheon one day and were following a few cars with sailboats on trailers headed to Clearlake,” Tom said. “Each of the boats had a girl’s name on it. And I thought, ‘There’s an idea,’ how about naming the vineyard after my wife, Martha? She objected wildly, but I overruled her on that one.”

Heitz cabernet sauvignon is one of the Napa Valley’s most famous wines.

In that moment, the course of Napa Valley wine-labeling shifted, not based on a slick marketing plan but instead based on friendship. “Sometimes things are planned out, but sometimes you have to just believe in fate,” Kathleen said. “This was done as a way to honor the grapes and to honor a friendship.” FAMILY WINEMAKING David Heitz received his degree in enology from Fresno State University in 1974. That same year, he was called upon to step into his father’s shoes at harvest when Joe was sidelined by an

injury. As winemaker, David did more than just keep things afloat: The teamwork he fostered crafted the 1974 Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet, one of the most highly collected Napa Valley wines of all time. T h i rd - g e n e r a t i o n He i t z , David’s son, Harrison, joined the winery team in 2012, with a focus on sales and marketing for the moment. He has also helped develop the winery’s solar-energy plan, but he hasn’t decided yet if he’ll eventually be involved on the winemaking side of the business. The Heitzes were also some of the first to farm grapes organically. 47

“We now have over 1,000 acres of land we farm in the Napa Valley, 425 acres planted in vine,” Kathleen said. “To do what we do we know we must be stewards of the land. We don’t bring grapes in from outside the Napa Valley and we practice sustainable and certified organic farming.” As a part of their commitment to the land, the Heitzes have also granted a conservation easement to the Land Trust of Napa County, restored riparian areas and provided wildlife corridors in their vineyards. “We were some of the first to start farming organically in the valley,” Kathleen said. “Mark (the vineyard manager) has done a wonderful job continuing what he and his father started.” Mark Neal farms the Heitzes’ vineyards as well as the Martha’s Vineyard for the Mays. “My father established our business in 1968, and we began working with the Heitz family just two years later,” said Neal, president of Jack Neal and Son, vineyard management. “I was only 9 years old when I started working in the vineyards alongside my dad, so I feel a real sense of pride about what we have accomplished. In the 1980s, I proposed that we begin farming organically. That idea was ahead of the trend at the time, but it was completely compatible with the Heitz and May philosophies of building family businesses that are sustainable for generations to come.” One element of the Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet is a distinct flavor profile, often including a minty element that has been attributed to the many eucalyptus trees that line the vineyard. “The Martha’s Vineyard is its own unique clone of cabernet,” Laura said. “There are many theories as to why the wine has a certain flavor profile, but it probably has to do with the unique clone and its interaction with the soil.” To determine that the clone was, indeed, unique it has been studied at UC Davis, but the information remains guarded. “We didn’t want others to just plant the Martha’s clone 48

Tim Carl photos

Tom May and his daughter, Laura, stand at the entrance to their Martha’s Vineyard in the Napa Valley. Some believe the many eucalyptus trees that line the property have something to do with the famously minty flavor profile of the Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet.

everywhere,” she said. “Then we wouldn’t be special anymore.” To make the wine business work, Joe was not only a fine winemaker, he was also an innovative businessman. “The first vintage of our cabernet, the ’61, was priced at $1.99 a bottle, whereas the chardonnay was $2.25,” Kathleen said. “At the time, chardonnay grapes cost about the same as cabernet, but the demand for chardonnay was stronger. Also, my father had won his first ‘Best of Show’ award at the Los Angeles Fair for his chardonnay.” By the time the 1966 Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet went to market in the early 1970s the price per bottle had risen to $7, but Joe had begun another innovation. “My father would hold back some of each vintage every year and then sell it in the subsequent year at a higher price, so by the third vintage of Martha’s Vineyard the pricing had gone to $9.50,” Kathleen said. “There was so much demand in that third year he decided to release a little more in the same year at $11.50 to keep his customers happy. So it was better to buy the wine in the first year of its release and just age it yourself. But if customers really liked the wine, we still had more, albeit at a higher price. We still do this, releasing our wines over a five-year period.” Another Heitz first was to personalize each bottle.

“It has been copied a lot, but we were the first to put individual numbers on the bottles,” she said. “We still do this for our single-vineyard cabernets. So for the Martha’s label you know the vintage, the bottle number, the total number of bottles made and when it was bottled. There’s a lot of information on these labels.” TASTING THE WINES The Heitz lineup of wines includes three cabernets, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, a zinfandel and a grignolino. All of the wines have their own special signature, but there is nothing quite like the Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet. The current release is the 2010 (the winery will skip the 2011 vintage as it did not meet their standards. The next Martha’s will be the 2012 released sometime in early 2017). Each bottle is $225, and there were 208 cases (25,000 bottles) made. The color is opaque dark ruby with a magenta-tinged edge. The aromas are of blackberries soaked in Chambord, sweet pipe tobacco smoke and licorice. The minty aroma typically associated with this wine is subtle in this vintage, but it’s there for those who search. In the mouth, this wine is full of texture and weight, with grippy tannins that portent long life and hidden stories. Cinnamon and butterscotch complement the dark-cherry flavors that accompany

Joe Heitz founded the tradition of numbering the bottles of his now famed cabernet sauvignon.

the long, pleasant finish. For the future, the Heitzes are intent on protecting and advancing their legacy. “No matter how much your heritage sparkles, ‘automatic pilot’ does not work,” Kathleen said. “Our business is thriving today because the Heitz team actively pursues and implements innovative farming and production practices without losing sight of our signature winemaking traditions.” Tom May is hopeful about the future of the vineyard. “Laura’s farming interest and passion for organic farming is wonderful,” Tom said. “I told both of our children that they can sell the vineyard as soon as we die — I don’t believe in leaving them something they don’t want — and both of them are being nice to us, both are interested in carrying on the vineyard.” When asked how subsequent generations might talk about his legacy as a vineyard man, Tom laughed before answering. “You mean that’s all he did? He went there not knowing anything about fruit. He was crazy,” he said and then paused and gazed over the vineyard before looking at his daughter, his tone turning more serious. “But look what happened,” he said and paused a moment more before adding, “Here we are.” Harrison Heitz, the third generation of Heitzes, works at the winery.

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Fifth-generation winemaker Aimée Sunseri is a direct descendant of the founders of Nichelini Winery. She is also the seventh consecutive family winemaker at the winery, here standing in front of one of only a few remaining Roman wine presses in the state. Tim Carl photo

generations of winemaking

Nichelini family preserves a touch of old Napa in mountain winery

TIM CARL

Finding the rare, unique and authentic is what many visitors to the Napa Valley long for, and they are sure to find it along Highway 128 in the eastern hills of the Napa Valley at Nichelini Winery. According to Doug Patterson, president of the winery and fourth-generation descendant of the winery’s founder, Nichelini Winery is the oldest family-owned and -operated winery in Napa County, this year celebrating their 126th harvest. “In 1884, traveling on horseback, my great-great-grandparents, Anton and Caterina Nichelini, became the first Swiss settlers in Napa County’s Chiles Valley,” said Patterson. “Once they arrived they planted vines, and four years later they’d had their first harvest. Since then the family have harvested grapes every year, with one of the family members making the wine.” By 1895 the Nichelinis had constructed a hand-hewn stone winery with a seven-bedroom house above it that provided a home for the 12 children they would eventually have. The winery, original Roman wine press and house still stand today. The Nichelini property is located in the Napa Valley’s Vaca Mountains, 11 miles east of Rutherford in the Chiles Valley appellation. If you have ever driven from St. Helena to Sacramento or gone to Lake Berryessa you probably passed the old winery as you twisted along an especially narrow section of Highway 128. And, if you are like me, every time you passed the old buildings you felt both 60

Photo is courtesy of A. Nichelini Family

Anton Nichelini on Oct 10, 1928, in his Alicante Bouche vineyard in Chiles Valley, during Prohibition.

Tim Carl photo

Inches off Highway 128 in the hills above Rutherford, the original 1895 Nichelini hand-hewn stone winery is just below the seven-bedroom house that provided a home for Anton and Caterina’s 12 children.

intrigued and charmed by the yellow clapboard house, rough-stone winery and small wooden Nichelini Winery sign, each so modest and unassuming that I hesitated to stop, imagining that I might be interrupting a family gathered to eat lunch and drink wine at long wooden tables covered with red-and-white checkerboard tablecloths. Those adventurous enough to stop will be rewarded with a wine experience that is unheard of in modern-day Napa Valley: a fifth-generation winemaker, Aimée Sunseri, who is a direct descendant of the founders and is also the seventh consecutive family winemaker, starting with her great-great-grandfather, Anton Nichelini, in 1890. “Our family has a great American story,” said Sunseri. “Growing up I was always proud that there was a winery built by my great-great-grandparents that was still being operated by family. Not everyone has that connection to a place. Especially around here.” Beyond learning winemaking from her family, Sunseri received her formal education at UC Davis in Viticulture and Enology. She became head winemaker in 2009 and personifies the winery’s

motto, “Generation to Generation,” with her wines showcasing a wonderful authentic flair that is in welcome contrast to many of the slicker wines made from only a few miles away. “Our old-fashioned attention to detail is complemented by our investment in the latest winemaking and processing equipment and the technical rigor and artistry of Aimée,” said Patterson. Beyond owning one of the last remaining Roman wine presses in the country, Nickelini also has the distinction of having a special winery bond number. “Our winery bond 843 is pre-Prohibition,” Patterson said. “Winery bonds stopped being issued during Prohibition. Post-Prohibition, when the winery bonds started up again, the government decided to start at the number 5000, as I understand it.” If you travel around Napa Valley long enough you will run across these old bonded winery numbers. Heitz Cellars still has their “Bonded Winery 967” emblazoned on their old stone winery and the Pestoni family, who own Rutherford Grove Winery, proudly remind people of their long heritage by referring to “Bonded Winery 935” that was

associated with their family’s Bell Canyon winery. “They (the Nichelini family) are from the same Ticino region of Switzerland and are old family friends,” said Gregory Pestoni, who now helps run Rutherford Grove Winery and the family’s Calistoga’s hotel D’Amici and ristorante. “They can rightly claim to be the oldest continuously operated family winery in the Napa Valley. They were founded in 1890, two years before Albino Pestoni founded his winery. You can see they had bond number 843 to our 935.” One of the reasons for having so few long-term winery families in the United States may be due in part to Prohibition, which was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933. It forced many such families out of the wine trade, some converting their lands to other crops or moving away. But the Nichelinis were not so easily dissuaded from processing grapes and making wine. “To get through Prohibition we sold grapes to the vinegar industry,” said Patterson. “We also

sold grapes that were shipped back to Chicago for the immigrant families that made homemade wine. The grapes were Alicante Bouche. Finally, the eldest son, Bill, was a wine distributor for Beaulieu Vineyards, who had a permit to sell altar wine to the Catholic Church. Independently, we had a wine-delivery system to individual households in Oakland and San Francisco. When pulled over by the authorities, Bill would say he was delivering wine to the churches and then showed his permit. It worked!” Nichelini is one winery that will reward those who are willing to take the time to slow down a bit and enjoy a depth and history that is refreshing. If you go, I’d recommend spending the afternoon, bringing a picnic lunch and touring the grounds, including the refurbished homestead cabin. You might not hear the whisper of Anton’s influence in the breeze, but you’re sure to taste it in the wines. “We strive to produce truly world-class, American wines that exhibit finesse, simplicity and individuality,” Sunseri said. “I will continue to work so that I can live up to our family’s heritage and make my family proud.” 61

Star power Renowned violinist Joshua Bell to headline 2017 Festival Napa Valley

Bill Phelps photo

International violin superstar Joshua Bell will return to the Napa Valley next summer as one of the headliners performing at Festival Napa Valley.

L . P I E RC E C A R S O N lp car s on@nap ane w s . com World-renowned violinist Joshua Bell has agreed to return to Festival Napa Valley next summer for what is certain to be an instant sell-out performance once tickets go on sale in the spring. The festival confirmed this summer that Bell will be one of next season’s star attractions. Bell is an internationally-acclaimed American violinist known for the versatility of his musical understanding as well as his technical skill. He has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras under such conductors as Charles Dutoit. A master of the classical repertoire, Bell has expanded his career to contemporary music and genres 62

such as folk and jazz. He has won several Grammy Awards and an Academy Award for his work with John Corgliano on “The Red Violin.” A native of Bloomington, Indiana, the 48-year-old violinist studied under Josef Gingold as a child and at Indiana University. Since appearing with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra at age 14, Bell has become a classical music superstar. In addition to his violin performances, he has begun to pursue a career as a composer and conductor. Bell has written cadenzas for the violin concertos of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart. He plays the 1713 Gibson

ex Huberman Stradivarius. Founded in 2006 in Napa Valley as Festival Del Sole, the annual 10-day music, dance, food, wine and art festival will take place from July 14 to 23, 2017. Over the past 11 years, festival performers have included, in addition to violinist Bell, Robert Redford, Renée Fleming, Sarah Chang, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, the Russian National Orchestra, San Francisco Ballet, Leif Ove Andsnes, Simon Trpceski, Nikolaj Znaider, Pinchas Zuckerman, Frederica von Stade, Audra McDonald, Kristen Chenoweth and Chris Botti. The festival changed its name to Festival Napa Valley in 2016.

An artist rendering of the planned Stone Brewing facility in the Borreo Building. Robert Becker with Digital Frontier for Napa Design Partners.

Building of her dreams Napa student helps redesign interior of iconic downtown structure VALERIE OWENS

As the long-vacant Borreo building comes back to life, Napa native Lindsey Griffin can take a certain pride in helping in the renaissance of her home’s downtown. As a recent Interior Design graduate from Northern Arizona University, Lindsey Griffin, had dedicated her final year of education to the 139-year-old Borreo building. “I did my senior project on the Borreo building, said Griffin. “I thought it would be a great tribute to my hometown. It’s in the coolest location and is so interesting. In the process, I fell in love with the building and admired it. ” During her final year, the budding artist drafted a design that would have remodeled the abandoned structure and created a restaurant space from start to finish. Following graduation, an article written by the Napa Valley Register inspired Lindsey to contact Napa Design Partners, a local Architectural firm. “After I graduated, I contacted Steve Cuddy and Sarah Marshall who are the lead architects for the project,” said Griffin. “I told them I was interested in this building and

that I would really love to play a role in the new construction.” Lindsey’s knowledge and passion for the Napa landmark drew her to pursue an opportunity of a lifetime. “With Lindsey just graduating from University and our firm needing to add another designer to our team, I would say that great timing brought us together,” Marshall said. Built in 1887, The Napa riverside Borreo building was purchased by West Pueblo Partners, a Napabased development group. With plans to revive the 10,000 square foot structure, craft beer giant Stone Brewing plans to rejuvenate the building by operating a tap room, restaurant and small brewery. Cuddy and Marshall from Napa Design Partners were chosen alongside Civil Engineer Ryan Gregory to design the project. “I feel quite lucky to work on this project with my partner, Stephen Cuddy at Napa Design Partners,” Marshall said in an email. “ It’s not every day that you get to work on a building that was built of stone, let alone a history of surviving fires, earthquakes, depressions and recessions. There

Submitted photo

Napa native Lindsey Griffin added her design skills to the rehab of the historic Borreo Building, which she had previously picked as a project as an Interior Design student at Northern Arizona University.

is just something special about this building. “ With the guidance of both Marshall and Steve Cuddy, Griffin has been given the opportunity to work on the Borreo project, utilizing her specific design experience on the building of her childhood. “Sarah has been such a good leader and coach to me. I am so thankful to Napa Design Partners who opened their doors and saw the potential in me. They have been so gracious to me,” said Griffin. Sharing both passion and “a common goal of bringing new life (and love) to an old historic

building,” said Marshall while describing the beauty of working collaboratively, is what makes the Borreo project so alluring. Joining Napa Design Partners and collaborating on the Borreo building as a young graduate has enabled Lindsey Griffin to stand next to her mentors and new colleagues on the footsteps of history. “I have lived in Napa my whole life and I have always admired the Borreo,” said Griffin. “Being a part of the project is a dream come true for me…I am the luckiest person in the world for this to happen. This is my dream job.” 63

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It’s a simple neighborhood restaurant. Utilizing the freshest seasonal produce from our local farms and growers, Market’s cuisine is flavor forward, visually stunning, and simply delicious. Whether you are planning your next wine release party, hosting a small elite gathering, entertaining your best clients, or planning a destination wedding, we look forward to collaborating with you to create a truly exquisite dining experience.

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Stephen Barber, executive chef of Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch, serves up refined comfort food at the popular St. Helena restaurant. Shea Evans photos

Comfort food, warm reception L . P I E RC E C A R S O N lp carson@na pa news.c om

Farmstead builds a loyal following in St. Helena For the past six years, Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch has built a loyal following of foodies, locavores, music lovers and anyone who enjoys seasonal fellowship. Located along Highway 29 at the southern edge of St. Helena, the popular open-fire restaurant is the centerpiece of Ted, Laddie and Chris Hall’s ag-centered estate that incorporates — along with restaurant and relatively new cafe — crops, farmstand, retail wine and food outlet, venues for food-and-wine-paired meals plus an inviting nook for late-night 68

drinks and hand-holding around a roaring campfire. Every November, one of the spaces on the site is converted to a small theater for screening Napa Valley Film Festival programs. Besides the family owners, one of the most visible members of the operation is executive chef Stephen Barber, who brings his Dixie palate and easygoing manner to everything from menu to management. Opening chef earlier for a pair of Napa eateries, the Q and Fish Story, Barber took on the mantle of chief cook and bottlewasher at Farmstead some four-and-a-half years ago, taking over for chef Sheamus Feeley who left to join the Hillstone restaurant group. Barber’s focus is just-picked

Tucked under a giant blue spruce adjacent to St. Helena’s Farmstead is the latest addition to the operation — a cafe featuring dine-in or grab-and-go goodies offered between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. daily.

fare from the ranch gardens, accompanying open-fire-prepared proteins — most of us would call it comfort food. The chef adds a more refined touch with the descriptor “modern farmhouse

cooking.” On a recent Tuesday evening, Farmstead was abuzz with a mix of locals and valley visitors vying for bar stools and tables where they could tuck into the evening’s

Shea Evans photos

When friends gather at St. Helena’s Farmstead, a great way to begin the meal is with an assorted charcuterie and pickle board.

special offering — heirloom tomato salad, Southern fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, followed by a diet-ending caramel-sauced apple bread pudding — apples courtesy of the current harvest, we were told. As one would expect, there was a juicy cut of grass-fed beef from Long Meadow Ranch’s nearby herd, lording over a small pile of roasted fingerlings. Or one could have opted for St. Louis ribs with green apple coleslaw, along with a side of cheddar biscuits and some savory Rancho Gordo beans with salsa verde. The menu also featured brickcooked chicken with heirloom beans, grilled wild King salmon as well as Passmore Ranch trout, plus a wood-grilled heritage pork chop with jalapeno grits and figs. Figs from the ranch also complemented an arugula salad studded with toasted almonds and goat’s milk feta. Starters included wood-grilled artichokes, caramelized beets with Skyhill Farms goat cheese crema, grass-fed beel chili, grass-fed beef meatballs with tomato marmalade and lip-smacking pimento cheese deviled eggs. Talking about the fare offered at Farmstead for daily lunch and dinner, Barber said he starts planning his menus “when we decide what we want to grow ... we create a growing plan each year (for all Long Meadow Ranch properties on both the valley floor and western hillsides).” That plan dictates

what’s on the plate for the year ahead, he said. Checking in with farm-to-table manager Kipp Ramsey — who worked with Barber at Fish Story — Barber asks for menu items to be harvested when told they’re ripe for picking. Menus come together in an instant. Long Meadow Ranch gardens include such staples as fava beans, cucumbers, melons, eggplant, radishes, espelette peppers, beets, lettuces, a wide range of heirloom tomatoes, garlic for spring and year-round dishes, along with apples, stone fruit and four varieties of figs. That’s just for starters. In addition, Long Meadow Ranch provides its own grass-fed beef and lamb, olive oil, honey as well as eggs that come from some

A popular offering at Farmstead’s Cafe is a the daily yogurt parfait.

500 free-range chickens housed in what staff calls the “Chicken Palace.” Long Meadow Ranch also makes use of a pair of greenhouses in which vegetables and all manner of produce are germinated. Each week, Barber and his culinary crew attract locals with specials that include meatloaf (Mondays), fried chicken (Tuesdays) and grass-fed lamb (Wednesdays). But it’s not just what’s on the plate that’s comforting at this popular St. Helena eatery. Adam Kim, Long Meadow Ranch’s genial director of operations, has brought together a hospitality team second to none. For example, waiter Kevin Smith — enticed to leave his family home in Richmond, Virginia, by the vibrant valley food and wine scene

Southern fried chicken, served with mashed potatoes and gravy, is the featured special at St. Helena’s Farmstead every Tuesday.

— not only spoke knowledgeably about chef Barber’s menu, he had a firm grasp of the extensive wine list, particularly those offered by the glass, whether it’s Ray Coursen’s Rhone blend from Elyse or Lang and Reed’s vibrant cabernet franc. Greg Neal — who’s torn between front-of-the-house and kitchen duties — not only kept a watchful eye on guests but pitched in to help with service flow. And what’s not to like when it comes to veteran bartender Becky Willems who not only keeps the drinks flowing but choreographs expertly the ebb and flow of bar stool fanciers. Farmstead opens for lunch at 11:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday, at 11 for Sunday brunch. The dinner menu kicks in at 5 p.m. daily, with reservations taken until 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, until 10 Friday and Saturday. Farmstead is located at 738 Main St., St. Helena. For reservations, call 707-963-4555. SPECIAL EVENTS, ADDED ATTRACTIONS This year’s inaugural guest chef series wraps up this month when New York chef/restaurateur Seamus Mullen teams up with Barber on Oct. 21 to cook a special menu over open fire. The 2016 guest program focused on American chefs, expanding to include international chefs next year. Johan 69

Long Meadow Ranch Grass-fed Beef Meatloaf

Shea Evans photo

Using freshly harvested heirlooms from Long Meadow Ranch gardens, chef Stephen Barber is serving fresh tomato soup at Farmstead into the fall.

Jureskog and Klas Ljungqvist, partners in AG, Stockholm’s hot spot for carnivores, have signed up to cook with Barber as has chef Matt Jennings, of the brasserie-inspired Townsman in Boston. Next year’s program fires up in the spring — usually a Friday night affair. The last Wednesday of each month is reserved for Farmstead’s “Champagne Campaign.” Slated from 6 to 9 p.m., the “campaign” features deeply discounted Champagne and sparkling wines by both bottle and glass, supplemented by chef Barbers’s menu relying heavily on oysters, caviar and ceviche. Every Friday, there’s music at the bar and during warm weather months, concerts are scheduled outside on Saturdays and Sundays. The seasonal agenda features pumpkin carving on Oct. 23 for all ages, with a $10 buy-in for a pumpkin and carving kit with safety knives. It’s scheduled between 10 a.m. and noon. Come November, a session on decorating gingerbread cookies is planned, and Farmstead offers heritage turkeys — for you to take home and roast — along with prebaked holiday pies. The Napa Valley Film Festival will screen films at a Farmstead venue, with added wine and artisan pavilions set up for ticketholders. Farmstead’s festive New Year’s 70

Eve celebration rounds out the year. Canning is on Farmstead’s fall agenda, with tomato puree, apple butter (taking advantage of the huge apple harvest), plum preserves and both peach and fig jam available for purchase at the site’s general store and year-round farmstand — open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays during the winter, with Friday added once the St. Helena Farmers Market ceases operations for the year. In addition to canning items, herbs, flowers, produce, eggs, honey and grass-fed beef and lamb are offered for purchase at the farmstand. Located under a giant blue spruce is the Farmstead Cafe, open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, featuring fresh pastries and muffins, Stumptown coffee, paninis and salads at lunchtime, for both dine-in and grab-and-go customers. Farmstead also offers a chefhosted Chef ’s Table daily for both lunch and dinner, with three- or four-course wine paired meals costing $145, which includes tax and gratuity. On the Hall family’s agenda is a plan to add lodging — a cluster of cozy cabins — on a site south of current operations in 2018. A new winery is planned on the family’s Rutherford holdings next year.

Serves: 12 to 15 5 pounds ground grass-fed beef 1/2 gallon whole milk 1 French baguette 2 cups grated parmesan 2 Tbsp. fresh rosemary 1 1/2 Tbsp. fresh oregano 1 cup flat leaf parsley 2 Tbsp. garlic, minced 1 tsp. cayenne 3 Tbsp. smoked paprika 4 eggs 3 Tbsp. salt 12 slices bacon (optional) For the tomato sauce: 1/2 cup ketchup 6 Tbsp. brown sugar 1 tsp. dry mustard 1 tsp. hot sauce 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce Pre h e a t ove n t o 3 5 0 degrees. Cut and soak bread with milk for 30 minutes. Strain off milk and blend bread in a food processor with all of the spices, garlic,

herbs and eggs. In a large bowl, mix the ground beef with the parmesan. Slowly mix in the bread mixture with your hands or a wooden spoon (I wear gloves and fold it in until the mixture becomes homogenous and slightly tacky). In a small bowl, mix ketchup, brown sugar, dry mustard, hot sauce and Worcestershire until combined. Divide the beef mix in half and form two loaves on a foillined broiler pan (allowing the fat to drain). Lay the bacon slices over the loaves, tucking the ends under each loaf. Ladle 1/3 of the tomato sauce over the top of each loaf. Bake for 35 minutes, then brush with tomato sauce. Bake for another 15 minutes. Allow to rest for 10 minutes before serving. Slice into two-inch slices. Serve with remaining tomato sauce.

Bourbon and Honey Roasted Carrots Serves 4-6 2 pounds baby carrots with tops 2 tsp. olive oil 3 Tbsp. butter, divided 1/2 tsp. kosher salt 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper 1 shallot, finely chopped 2 Tbsp. bourbon 2 Tbsp. honey 1 Tbsp. chicken broth or water 1/4 cup pistachios, toasted and chopped 1/4 cup goats milk feta Maldon salt Soft herbs such as tarragon, basil, cilantro and chives Bee pollen Cocoa nibs Place a small roasting pan in oven. Preheat oven and pan to 500 degrees.

Cut tops from carrots, leaving 1 inch of greenery on each carrot. Stir together olive oil and 1 Tbsp. butter in preheated roasting pan. Add carrots, salt, and pepper; toss to coat. Bake 10 minutes. Meanwhile, melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Add shallot and sauté 1 minute. Remove from heat, stir in bourbon, honey and chicken broth. Return to heat and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to medium and cook 5 minutes or until mixture thickens. Drizzle mixture over carrots, toss to coat. Bake 5 to 7 more minutes or until carrots are crisp and tender. Transfer to a serving dish, top with goat feta, toasted pistachios, and soft garden herbs. Finish with Maldon salt, bee pollen, and cocoa nibs to taste.

FRIDA’S

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New culinary team

L . P I E RC E C A R S O N lp car s on@nap ane w s . com

Blue Note Napa has announced its culinary team for the first West Coast outpost of the legendary jazz club. Celebrated for earlier culinary efforts here, chef Christophe Gerard has been named Blue Note Napa’s executive chef. He brings an elegant, yet comfortable and approachable California Provençal-style to the Blue Note Napa menu. Dylan Torcoletti has been hired as general manager. A native of Chartres, France, Gerard earned his culinary certificate from the Centre de Formation d’Apprentis “Les Chaises”, and has honed his craft over several decades at celebrated restaurants in France, New York and Florida before arriving in the Napa Valley in 2002. His culinary journey led him through some of the France’s most notable restaurants, including René Delplanque’s Relais des Hussards in Coulombs, and the Michelin threestar Taillevent in Paris. By 1990, Gerard was showcasing his talent at celebrated U.S. restaurants that include Lespinasse at the St. Regis, Café Pierre of the Pierre Hotel, and René Pujol in New York City, along with Dux at the Peabody in Orlando and 1220 at the Tides in Miami Beach. He moved to the Napa Valley in 2002 to open Angéle, which rapidly earned a spot on Food and Wine Magazine’s top new bistros in North America list. In 2005, Gerard and three colleagues opened the avant-garde 55 Degrees in Sacramento, and soon after was recruited by master sommelier Larry Stone to help elevate the guest experience at Francis Ford Coppola’s estate winery, Rubicon Estate. In 2007, he joined Farm Restaurant at the Carneros Inn. “I am thrilled to be at Blue Note Napa — music and food are perfect complements and we hope to create an upscale, yet comfortable and casual dining experience for our guests,” said Gerard. “My culinary philosophy is to use fresh, quality, locally-sourced ingredients and keep it simple, allowing the food to speak for itself. We are incredibly lucky to live in the food and wine capital of America and will strive to create an experience that reflects the Napa Valley.” Heading up the front of the house will be Dylan Torcoletti, Blue Note Napa’s general manager. A graduate of North Idaho College, Torcoletti’s hospitality experience includes The Coeur d’Alene Resort in Northern Idaho, and the classic Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. He played an intricate role in the hospitality team at Langham Huntington, heading Christophe Gerard is executive chef of the new Blue Note Napa that opened in downtown Napa this up the successful re-opening of The Tap Room fall. Bar and The Royce Wood-fired Steakhouse. The venue will also operate the second story Opera House Ballroom, featuring top national acts, spanning many musical genres, as well as a private event space available for large groups.

Blue Note Napa names kitchen leaders for revamped Opera House

Photos by J.L. Sousa, Register

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Warm and simple Soups and one-pot meals for the cool of the fall L . P I E RC E C A R S O N l pca r so n @ n ap an e w s.c om When it comes to cooking for the family, more often than not there are time constraints — getting home from work in time to prepare a meal before family members scramble off to evening events, or, in the case of youngsters, to nearby bedrooms to complete homework assignments. For everyday weeknight dinners, who doesn’t love the idea of a simple, hearty meat and vegetable dish. Most like the idea even more when it leaves just a single pot or pan to wash at the end of the meal. There are fast meals, and then there are one-dish meals. Most people love eating, quite a few enjoy cooking, but almost nobody gets their kicks from washing a tower of dirty dishes. Skip the sink full of dishes tonight and let one of these one-dish dinners do all the heavy lifting. We’ve also included a couple of hearty soups that would suffice when served with a big, fresh salad and some crusty French bread. With soup and salad, you could also plan a nice dessert. Hearty and fulfilling, a onepot meal is the quintessential comfort food. Flavor-infused broths, rich sauces, tender meats and vegetables — they warm and nourish us body and soul. And, they’re perfect for casual family dinners as well as entertaining. Plus, they’re simple to make. We looked to the culinary bookshelves to find a half-dozen recipes that should make both cook and family happy in that they’re easy to prepare and quite tasty. Okay — maybe a couple of them call for a second saute pan which you can suds up, rinse and put away while the main attraction is cooking. 82

Winter White Bean and Potato Soup is a perfect one-dish meal as the fall season sets in.

Dreamstime

Winter White Bean and Potato Soup STEVE SANDO ‘Sup p e r at R ancho Gord o’ I’m a big fan of soups all year long. In the summer, clear broths and seasonal vegetables seem the obvious choice, and in the winter — especially if you live in a place where you can come in from the cold and be greeted by an incredible bowl of soup — you want something a little more substantial. This soup from Kathy Hester is almost a prescription for curing the chill and providing fuel to go back out and brave the beautiful winter weather. Serves 6 1 1/2 cups dried Classic Cassoulet, Alubia Blanca de San Jose Iturbide, or other white beans, picked over and rinsed 8 cups water 2 Tbsp. olive oil 1/2 cup minced yellow onion 4 garlic cloves, chopped 4 cups peeled and diced russet or other baking potatoes 2 vegetable bouillon cubes 2 bay leaves 1/2 tsp. dried rosemary, or 2 fresh rosemary sprigs 1 tsp. dried thyme For the cashew cream (optional): 1 cup cashews, soaked in

water to cover for at least 4 hours or overnight 1/4-to-1/2 cup water Juice of 1 lemon 1/4 tsp. salt To finish: Few drops of liquid smoke (optional) Salt and freshly ground pepper Minced chives for garnish (optional) In a pot, combine the beans and 4 cups of the water and bring to a boil over high heat. Remove from the heat and let sit for 30 minutes. (This has the same effect as soaking the beans overnight, so feel free to soak them if you prefer.) Drain the beans, discarding the soaking water. In the same pot, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for 3 minutes longer. Add the drained beans, potatoes, bouillon cubes, bay leaves, rosemary, thyme and the remaining 4 cups water. Raise the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Reduce

the heat to low, cover and simmer until the beans are tender, 1-to-1 1/2 hours. While the soup is cooking, prepare the cashew cream. Drain the cashews and transfer to a blender. Add 1/4 cup of water, the lemon juice and salt to the blender and puree until smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides of the blender as needed. The mixture should be the consistency of sour cream. If it is too thick, or if the blender is not powerful enough to create a smooth puree, add up to 1/4 cup additional water. Transfer to a bowl, cover and set aside until ready to use. When the soup is ready, smash some of the potatoes with the back of a wooden spoon to make the broth creamier. Mix in the liquid smoke, if using, then season with salt and pepper. Remove and discard the bay leaves and the rosemary sprigs. Ladle the soup into warmed individual bowls and garnish with the cashew cream and chives, if using. Serve immediately.

Spaghetti with Sicilian Green Tomato Sauce J A N E T F L E TC H E R ‘ Fre sh f ro m the Far me rs Market’ When frost is imminent, growers will often pull the green tomatoes still on their vines and bring them to the farmers market. San Francisco restaurateur Carlo Middione, an authority on southern Italian food, once told me that Sicilians make a pasta sauce with them, chopping them fine and mixing them with olive oil and garlic. I was intrigued enough by his description to try my own version. It is an exceptionally refreshing dish and one of the few pasta preparations that I enjoy at room temperature. Serves 4 1/3 cup pine nuts 1 pound green tomatoes, preferably with some pink blush, very finely chopped 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil 2 large garlic cloves, minced 1/4 tsp. hot red pepper flakes 1 pound spaghetti Salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 dozen fresh basil leaves, torn into small pieces Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Toast pine nuts on a baking sheet until they are golden brown and fragrant, 12 to 15 minutes. Cool. In a wide, shallow serving bowl, combine tomatoes, olive oil, garlic and hot pepper flakes. You can make this mixture 1 to 2 hours ahead and let stand at room temperature. Do not add salt at this point as it will draw out the tomato juices. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add pasta and cook until al dente. Just before spaghetti is ready, season sauce generously with salt and pepper and stir in basil leaves. Drain pasta and transfer to the serving bowl. Toss to coat with sauce. Scatter pine nuts on top.

Veal Blanquette in Dill M A RC U S J E R N M A R K , AQUAV I T, N E W Y O R K ‘Of f the Me nu— Staf f Me als f rom Ame r i ca’s Top Re s ta u ra n t s’ Chef Marcus recommends serving this dish with boiled fingerling potatoes and a good salad with apples and carrots. The vinegar and dill make the stew cheering in winter and appropriate in other seasons. Serves 4 to 6 2 pounds veal stew meat 1 medium carrot, peeled and diced 1 medium parsnip, peeled and diced 1 medium yellow onion, peeled and diced 1 bouquet garni: fresh parsley, thyme and bay leaf tied together

4 cups vegetable stock 1 cup chicken stock 1 cup heavy cream 3 Tbsp. white wine vinegar 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 Tbsp. cornstarch 1/2 cup chopped fresh dill Fill a large bowl with water and ice and set aside. Fill a medium saucepan halfway to the top with lightly salted water and bring to a boil. Add the meat and blanch until water returns to a boil. Transfer the meat to the prepared ice-water bath. Drain the meat and set aside.

In a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat, combine the meat; chopped carrot, parsnip and onion; bouquet garni; and stocks, and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for 45 minutes, skimming off fat that rises to the surface at regular intervals. Then add the cream, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper, and continue to simmer until the meat is tender, about 1 1/2 hours longer. Add the cornstarch and cook the blanquette until thickened, about 5 minutes; the sauce should coat the back of a spoon. Adjust seasonings to taste. Add the dill, stir through and serve.

Autumn Potage YA N K E E M AG A Z I N E ’ S N E W E N G L A N D I N N K E E PE R S ’ C O O K B O O K

A favorite at the Churchill House and chopped pot, add the stock and bring to a Inn, Brandon, Vermont, this squash, 4 cups chicken stock boil. Reduce to a simmer and add apple and carrot soup is spiced with 1 whole cinnamon stick the cinnamon stick, ginger, nutmeg cinnamon and ginger. 1 tsp. minced fresh ginger and maple syrup. Simmer covered 2 pounds butternut squash, 1 tsp. ground nutmeg until the vegetables are tender. peeled, seeded and diced 1/4 cup maple syrup (or to taste) Remove the cinnamon stick 2 medium-sized apples, peeled, 1 cup heavy cream and puree the mixture in a food cored and quartered Salt and pepper, to taste processor. Pour the puree into the 1 medium-sized onion, chopped 2 Tbsp. sliced almonds, toasted soup pot, add the cream and salt 2 large carrots, peeled and 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon and pepper, and heat through. chopped Place the squash, apple, onion, Garnish with almonds tossed in 2 medium-sized parsnips, peeled carrot and parsnip in a large soup cinnamon.

Chicken and Winter Vegetable Terrine A N D R E W C A R M E L L I N I , LO C A N D A V E R D E , N E W Y O R K ‘Off the Me nu — Staf f Me als f rom Ame r i ca’s Top Re s t a u ra n t s’ Tagine is the word for a Moroccan stew and also the special clay dish it is prepared in, which has a round or square bottom with a tall, cone-shaped top. This recipe is a suggestion, as well as a finite thing — make this recipe once, as is, and then experiment or use it as a culmination for all the stewable vegetables skulking in your produce drawer. Serves 6 to 8 2 Tbsp. olive oil 2 pounds onions, chopped 2 pounds chicken legs, cut in half 1/2 pound tomatoes, diced 1 Tbsp. salt 1 Tbsp. freshly ground black

pepper 1 Tbsp. ground cumin seed 1 Tbsp. ground coriander seed 1 Tbsp. cinnamon 1 Tbsp. dried ground ginger 1-to-1 1/2 cups chicken broth 1/2 pound carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces 1/2 pound turnips, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces 1/2 pound butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces 1/2 pound sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces 1/2 pound zucchini, cut into 1-inch pieces Heat the olive oil over medium

heat in a tagine or other heavy ovenproof stew pot or Dutch oven. Saute the onions until golden, about 5 minutes. Add the chicken, tomatoes, salt, spices and 1 cup of the broth. Bring to a simmer, then cover and cook over medium-low heat for 30 minutes. Uncover the pot and stir in all of the vegetables except the zucchini. Add the remaining 1/2 cup of broth if needed. Reduce the heat to low and cover. Add the zucchini after 10 minutes and adjust seasoning. Cover again and cook until vegetables are tender and chicken is just starting to fall off the bone, about 30 minutes longer. 83

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Heart in Philly, head in Napa L . P I E RC E C A R S O N lpc a rson@napanews.c om Elijah Milligan may have left his heart in Philadelphia but his head is definitely in the Napa Valley. A native of the City of Brotherly Love, Milligan has taken charge of culinary operations at downtown Napa’s Angele, one of the valley’s popular, enduring restaurants. Inspired by both grandmother and parents — who today own a couple of in his homeEast Coast chef brings eateries town — Milligan has long been tempted by his talents to a West the thought of taking his talents to the Left Coast local favorite Coast. He got that opportunity nearly a year ago when chef/restaurateur and native of France Dominique Crenn invited him to help her with a project in the East Bay. Crenn, of San Francisco’s Atelier Crenn, is the first female chef in the United States to earn two Michelin stars. With the first assignment outside his hometown completed, Milligan began searching for a home for his talents. He learned Bettina Rouas and her father, Claude, partners in Angele for the past 15 years, were looking for a chef to take charge of culinary operations. He met with them and they were impressed with his skills. Since joining the Angele team last July, the 27-year-old Philadelphian has “developed a great relationship with Bettina ... she’s so passionate (about hospitality and her restaurant).”

Please see Chef, Page 88 Philadelphia native Elijah Milligan came from the City of Brotherly Love to serve as the new executive chef of downtown Napa’s popular French bistro, Angele. Sasha Paulsen, Register photo

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Sasha Paulsen photos, Register

Enjoying a spare moment at the start of lunch at Angele are, left to right, sous chef Josue Alvarado, owner Bettina Rouas and executive chef Elijah Milligan.

CHEF FROM PAGE 86 Milligan enjoyed spending time in the kitchen when he was young, especially the kitchen where his grandmother prepared meals and where he got his initial opportunity to cook. He has fond memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts and the tasty cobblers she baked for him. “She impresses me now ... today she feeds off my energy,” the respectful grandson adds. “When I was in high school, I was not into vegetables ... but she got me to love broccoli. She prepared it with soy sauce, some brown sugar and brown butter — it’s remarkable. I prepare it that way myself now.” A sports enthusiast who played basketball, football, baseball and soccer all through his school years, Milligan said cooking was at first only a means to feed himself. While Milligan was in high school, his father opened his initial soul food restaurant and asked his son to help. “Of course, I started by washing dishes but before long he let me cook on the line. That’s 88

when I said to myself, ‘I like this.’ “I liked giving people good food ... making people happy through food. I’d always cook for my friends. One time, I went to my friend’s house for an outdoor barbecue and his father handed off the grill to me.” Milligan’s family was most supportive when he decided to enroll in a small culinary school in Philadelphia two weeks after picking up his high school diploma. He felt he’d get more one-on-one time with instructors by signing on at the JNA Culinary Institute rather than a larger facility. He’d read through the firstterm workbook well before the first classes started; his parents knew their son had made the right decision based on the fact that he wore his chef jacket in the house seemingly nonstop. “My first taste of a kitchen my dad didn’t run was Rae,” Milligan points out, referencing a fine dining spot from chef Daniel Stern that was proclaimed best new restaurant in the city when it opened a decade ago. He was told he’d be a prep cook for six months to a year before there’d be any promotions. “I made

it to the line in three months,” he adds with infectious grin. He spent two years in Stern’s kitchen. Next, in order to broaden his culinary horizon, Milligan went to work for a master chef at a country club in nearby Haverford, a Philadelphia suburb, where he spent another two years. A sous chef and friend with whom he’d worked at Rae informed Milligan there was an opening in the kitchen at Le Bec-Fin, the

city’s best known, fabled eatery that attracted diners from all over the world. Hometown media maintained Georges Perrier — who opened Le Bec-Fin in 1970 and went on to win every culinary honor imaginable over the restaurant’s 40-plus-year run — wasn’t a typical chef. Demanding, driven, schooled in the French traditions, the native of Lyon landed in Philadelphia way-back-when, opened his elegant

Sasha Paulsen, Register photo

A classic dish at Napa’s Angele is this duck rillette accompanied by Mission fig jam and seasonal pickled vegetables.

eatery (first on Spruce Street, then on Walnut), tormented his kitchen staff, and charmed his moneyed clientele — businessfolk, politicians, movie stars, gourmands. A film, “King Georges,” chronicles the life of the owner and his restaurant and was screened at last year’s Napa Valley Film Festival. Milligan can be seen in that documentary. “I was the youngest person in the kitchen ... that job really opened my eyes,” says Angele’s executive chef. “I think he fired me three times every day ... but he taught me so much. I spent nearly three years at Le Bec-Fin.” FOCUSING ON THE GARDEN Like many chefs who come to the Napa Valley from other regions of the country, Milligan is impressed with the product of area gardens. Working with Juan Esteban Restrepo, of Von Greiff Organic Gardening, Milligan and sous chef Josue Alvarado make use of a wide variety of produce from the half-acre garden in Rutherford. Lettuces, arugula, herbs, tomatoes, radishes, kale, Brussels sprouts, beets, carrots, turnips and more grace the Angele menu. More than 60 percent of the restaurant’s requirements are met by the restaurant’s garden, the chef says. With more than three months of menu planning under his belt, Milligan is providing diners with a fall menu that has a decidedly French accent. “Our goal (in asking Milligan to head up the culinary team) was to get back to our French roots,” says owner Bettina Rouas. “His training was in classic French cuisine. We’d veered away from that ... (and) in this valley our identity (as a French bistro) is important.” “We kept the burger and the (classic) French onion soup,” Milligan says of his latest menu. The last of the season’s tomatoes are basis for both special salad and soup the other evening. Starters on the dinner menu ($12-$22) range from garden lettuces with cherry tomatoes, radishes, pickled

shallots and avocado mousse to foie gras terrine with green apples, candied pecans, honey glazed brioche and Calvados. Tomatoes from the garden get textural lift with the addition of fromage blanc and whey granita, while roasted bone marrow is dolled up with wild mushroom marmalade and crispy garlic. Duck rillette comes with Mission fig jam, wild mushroom tartine with fromage blanc and purslane, crispy veal sweetbreads with chanterelles and celeriac. A toothsome Coho salmon crudo gets a flavorful boost from cucumber consomme and seaweed; kale sprouts and brown butter almonds complement crispy pickled cauliflower; classic steak tartare is served with fresh horseradish and cornichons. Angele’s dinnertime “plats du jour” range from Manila clams with pork belly crepinette ($26) to pan-roasted ribeye with sauce Bearnaise and pommes frites ($49). Additional main courses ($28-$39) include crispy chicken roulade with wild mushrooms and black kale, house-made tagliatelle with Burgundy truffles and wild mushrooms, roasted turbot with farro and truffles, whole roasted wild striped bass with garden squash, lavender honey glazed duck breast with white figs and very tasty rabbit meatballs with sauteed Parisienne gnocchi. Ice creams and sorbets are made in house. A seasonal dessert that hit the spot with a couple of diners is the seasonal pumpkin pot de creme. If you order after-dinner coffee, you’ll find an addictive sugar cookie comes as lagniappe. As always, Angele offers diners a mix of craft cocktails and distinct wines by bottle and glass from both Old and New World cellars. Angele serves lunch Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:45 p.m., and until 5 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday. Dinner hours Sunday through Thursday are 5 to 9 p.m., until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Angele is located at 540 Main St., Napa. For reservations, call 707252-8115.

Sasha Paulsen, Register photo

Angele’s culinary team is making diners happy with a new offering, Roasted Brussels Sprouts on a Stalk with Sherry Glaze and Cashews.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts on a Stalk with Sherry Glaze and Cashews ELIJAH MILLIGAN, EXECUTIVE CHEF ANGELE BRUSSELS SPROUTS STALKS Cut down Brussels sprouts stalks into 3-4 pieces. Submerge in brine for up to 6 hours (recipe follows) Heat oven to 325 degrees, then roast stalks in oven for 25 minutes. Turn oven up to 400 degrees and roast until you achieve desired color. Season to taste with salt and brush with sherry glaze (recipe follows). Toast 1/2 cup cashews at 375 degrees until lightly brown. Toss toasted cashews over roasted Brussels sprouts stalks and serve. FOR SHERRY GLAZE 5 cups sherry vinegar 2 cups granulated sugar 2 1/2 cups hazelnut oil 2 tsp. salt Over medium heat, reduce sherry by half. Add sugar, allow to dissolve. Cook for another 3 minutes. Place reduction in blender (handheld blender works as well) and slowly emulsify in hazelnut oil. Season with salt and sugar to taste. BRINE 2 galllons water 8 cups apple cider vinegar 14 ounces kosher salt 1 cup sugar 1/2 bunch thyme 1 orange, halved 4 star anise pods Bring water, salt, and sugar to a boil. Add apple cider vinegar, orange, thyme, and star anise. Allow to simmer for 10 minutes , then allow to cool down before using.

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J.L. Sousa photos, Register

Galp達o Gaucho Brazilian Steakhouse executive gaucho chef and assistant manager Rudimar Rech, right, serves Melinea Hinchey, center, and her husband Jacob Fredrick during a recent lunch service. The Suisun City couple had been planning the trip after hearing the restaurant had recently opened.

Beef ribs are readied for service at Galp達o Gaucho Brazilian Steakhouse which recently opened in Napa.

Skewers of meat cook in the rotisserie grill at Galp達o Gaucho Brazilian Steakhouse.

hits the spot Brazilian steakhouse fare is a perfect fit for Napa wines PAU L F R A N S O N

Galpão Gaucho Brazilian Steakhouse is like no other restaurant in Napa, but its menu is tailor made for Napa Valley wines. Inspired by the gaucho culture of southern Brazil and the dining tradition of the Brazilian cowboy, one similar to the life of the gauchos across the border in Argentina, the new restaurant occupies the site at Trower and Highway 29 that was once Marie Callender’s and most recently Oventi — but it’s far removed from those origins. It’s been redecorated with the warm masculine feel of a classic American steak house but its menu goes far beyond steaks and baked potatoes. The restaurant is owned by Alberto Wachholz, who grew up in the cattle-raising Rio Grande do Sul state of Brazil. The restaurant uses a special rotisserie designed for this type of restaurant in Brazil, and serves 14 different cuts of meats including beef, pork, chicken, lamb and fish, each brought to your table by a server on its skewer and sliced to your desired size and doneness. The specialty is the picanha (‘nh’ in Portuguese is like ‘ñ’ in Spanish, pronounced ‘ny’) or top sirloin cap, a piece little known here and often called the rump cover, rump cap or coulotte. The menu also includes a massive salad bar — really an appetizer bar — with almost 40 items like Brazilian hearts of palm, artichoke hearts, beets, asparagus, imported cheeses, smoked salmon and cured meats. It does include some salads including Wachholz’s mother’s potato salad from Brazil. Traditional side dishes like garlic mashed potatoes, caramelized

bananas, traditional rice and black beans are also part of the meal. Wachholz says that black beans is a typical dish from Brazil. “It’s part of the everyday meal of the workmen, especially in the rural areas of Brazil. The main item is black beans, and we add different pork meats like sausage, ribs, bacon and pork tenderloin and other special ingredients for the typical flavor.” He adds, “The black bean ... has its origins in South America and is rich in iron. There is a saying in Brazil ‘if you want to grow and be strong you need to eat beans’ because it is rich in vitamins.” If you can imagine eating dessert after all that food, they have flan, crème brûlée, chocolate lava cake and papaya and strawberry creams. Wachholz says, “Papaya cream is the pairing dessert that we like to offer our guests. It’s made with fresh papaya and vanilla bean ice cream blended together and topped off with a dash of crème de cassis. It’s very refreshing and light as the papaya has natural enzymes that help digest the meat so it’s the perfect combination.” The whole meal costs $37.50 for lunch or $57.50 at dinner. That seems a lot until you realize that top steak houses can charge that for a single steak without any side dishes or appetizers. “We believe we have a strong value proposition given what is offered for the price,” Wachholz said. Wachholz also has a successful Galpão Gaucho in San Antonio, where, he reports, Texans typically eat two pounds of meat. He recognizes that Californians

J.L. Sousa, Register

Galpão Gaucho Brazilian Steakhouse executive gaucho chef and assistant manager Rudimar Rech presents a cut of picanha during a recent lunch service.

are more moderate, so in place of the full menu, you can have the impressive buffet for $23.50 at lunch or $25.50 for dinner. Or try the lounge happy hour menu: you can order a lamb chop, chicken, salmon or the traditional picanha or cheese platter at the bar and in the comfortable adjacent lounge for modest prices. Wachholz says that he plans to expand the happy hour menu with more option and maybe a late-night happy hour. NAPA WINES THE PERFECT FIT The meat-centered menu calls for Napa red wines, and 70 percent of the wine list is from Napa with some Argentine and Chilean wines. He offers big name steak wines like Caymus and Dunn. “Most people buy Napa wines,” he noted.

Brazil does make wine, by the way, but it’s hard to come by here, as is Brazilian beer. Galpão Gaucho serves beer on tap; one will be the restaurant’s own. Corkage is $25 and waived if you buy a bottle from the list. Galpão Gaucho has a happy hour Monday to Friday starting at 4 p.m. that has proven to be a great success among locals with discounted drinks like the Brazilian nation drink, the caipirinha made with cachaça (a clear spirit made from sugar cane), lime juice (or passion fruit or strawberry) and simple syrup. Wacholz worked in restaurants to pay for college back home, then got a job with a big chain that transferred him to Chicago to help open a restaurant there. “I served as a server to chef to general manger,” he said. He was transferred to Denver and then to 93

Galpão Gaucho Brazilian Steakhouse gaucho chef Wagner Santos rotates skewers of meat during a recent lunch service. The 17 kinds of meat are cooked over a southern Brazilian rotisserie grill using mesquite wood. J.L. Sousa, Register

the company headquarters restaurant in Dallas. In 2015, he joined a partner to open a Galpão Gaucho restaurant in San Antonio. Over the years, he made many trips to Napa both for business — tasting wines — and leisure. “It makes great wines that are perfect with great steaks,” he exclaimed.

He decided it would be a good place to open a restaurant. Wachholz commented, “We didn’t know what to expect exactly since Napa is a food Mecca, and the location had its challenges in the past, but we were confident we had a strong concept and great experience to offer to an already amazing restaurant area.

“We have a different concept but we were very well received by the community. We are really happy that we surpassed our initial budget. We found that Galpão Gaucho is looking like it’s going to be a great fit for the valley and its restaurant scene.” He added, “We are especially happy that 90 percent of our

customers are local, and we are getting very positive feedback from them. We have a lot of regular customer dining with us on a regular basis, some for the full experience and some for the happy hour menu.” He noted that people from wineries are finding their way to the restaurant, including for lunch. He now plans to upgrade the exterior of the restaurant, including adding a palm tree or two to suggest Brazil. Galpão Gaucho, at 1990 Trower Ave. in Napa, is open Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. for lunch and Monday-Friday 5-10 p.m., Saturday 3-10:30 p.m. and Sunday 1-9 p.m. for dinner. The restaurant is quite large, with 200 seats including a large private area that would be ideal for parties. It is broken up, however, and seems more intimate. Call 255-5121 for reservations.

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Great food, great fun

J.L. Sousa, Register

Itamar Abramovitch, left, and Nate Smith are partners in Blossom Catering.

S A S H A PAU L S E N sp aul sen@napanews.c om

CIA grads set simple goals in launching Blossom Catering It’s a long way from Haniel, Israel, to Santa Cruz, California, but when Itamar Abramovitch and Nate Smith met as new students at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, a team was born. In July 2015, during their second week at the CIA in St. Helena, the Israeli Abramovitch and the Californian Smith were assigned to the same group. They decided to volunteer together for bASH, a food and wine pairing competition hosted by Appellation St. Helena. Not long after, when a friend was looking for a caterer for special event, they used a camp stove to produce a 96

12-course dinner for 18 people. They decided they might be able to work together. Now, after their graduation, they are celebrating the launch of their catering business. They pooled $500 between to start. “Catering was a natural choice, a way to begin without massive overhead,” Smith said. “We chose an optimistic name, Blossom.” “Our approach is having fun, getting creative, and taking catering to a higher level,” Abramovitch said. “We’re partners in crime,” Smith added as the pair showed off their new cooking headquarters, elegant digs in the former Cuvee restaurant on Soscol Avenue in Napa. They are using the space for prep and cooking, and hosting pop-up dinners, where they can experiment with ideas and menus.

Sakhon Nhek from Sakhon Nhek Photography

Diners gathered for a Blossom Catering pop-up dinner at the company’s new work space, the site of the former Cuvee restaurant on Soscol Avenue in Napa.

Most of all, they said, they’re having fun. “The question we ask the most often of guests and and our staff too is ‘Are you having fun?’” Abramovitch said. “We both grew up with images of chefs throwing pots and pans,

but there’s no point in doing this if you aren’t having fun. When you’re having fun, the food is good. Happy cooks make happy food.” Smith, who grew up in Santa Cruz, was 18 when a trip to

Sakhon Nhek, Sakhon Nhek Photography

Olive-oil poached San Francisco halibut is served with Pommes Anna, butter-poached radish and black truffle sauce at one of Blossom Caterings’ recent pop-up dinners.

Australia fortified his interest in cooking. He subsequently worked in restaurants and for catering companies in San Francisco, Napa, Monterey and Boston before enrolling at the CIA. Abramovitch was born and raised in Israel in “a small agricultural community 20 minutes north of Tel Aviv,” he said. “It’s called Haniel, but no one knows it — even in Israel.” He discovered a love for hospitality and cooking from Bedouins while traveling in the desert during high school. He served the the Israeli army and went to work for the government before deciding to become a chef. Living in San Francisco, he worked under chef Roland Passot while waiting to begin his studies at the CIA. Together, their cooking style is a flexible blend of their CIA training and high standards, adapted to “what people want.” They’ve cooked for events around the Bay Area, from corporate board meetings to backyard barbecues, from foodie weddings and galas for 200 to small dinners for friends. “A whole roast pig? A taco bar? We aim for wonderful food and outstanding hospitality. This means we’ll do what it takes to make our guests happy.” “Our focus is fresh, local,” Smith said. “We’re still looking for gardeners, small, local producers who put quality over everything else.” They’ve also supported charitable causes like Meals on Wheels and Winemasters, a fundraiser for cystic fibrosis research organized

Sakhon Nhek from Sakhon Nhek Photography

“Duck, Duck, Goose,” a Blossom Catering creation is composed of seared Liberty duck breast, crispy duck confit, foie gras steamed bun and served with carrot sauce, turnip purée and glazed turnips.

Crispy Duck Confit Gyoza with Tangerine Glaze

Sakhon Nhek, Sakhon Nhek Photography

A playful take on pizza, this Blossom creation is made from heirloom tomatoes, tomato conserve, burrata mousse,a Parmesan crisp, tomato water foam and basil oil.

in Los Angeles by Allen and Barbara Balik of Napa. Just now, they’re preparing for their next pop-up dinner taking place on Sept. 24. while getting ready for the busy holiday season too. “We love pop-ups,” said Smith. “We like trying new concepts and techniques. We love to make delicious, exciting, adventurous foods.” Their long-term goal is to have

Makes 30 gyoza 2 each duck legs confit, available@Dean and Deluca and The Fatted Calf ) 1 tsp. chopped garlic (about 2 cloves) 2 tsp. chopped ginger 2 Tbsp. hoisin sauce 1 tsp kosher salt 2 Tbsp. chopped chives 1 package of gyoza or won-ton wrappers 1/2 cup water for sealing the gyoza 1 cup of freshly squeezed tangerine juice 1 cup of freshly made chicken stock 2 bunches of chives 2 oz butter, diced, cold Salt, pepper, champagne vinegar to taste 1 quart canola oil 2 Tbsp. chopped chives (for serving)

into a small mixing bowl. Mix in garlic, ginger, salt, hoisin and sprinkle in some chives. Take a single gyoza wrapper in your palm and place a small pinch of the confit mix in the middle of the wrapper. With your finger, line the rim of the wrapper with water and seal it up (making sure that there is no empty space. Crimp the edges with a fork on both sides, and repeat until there is no more mix. FOR THE GLAZE: Reduce the chicken stock to 1/4 cup, add the tangerine juice and reduce to a thick syrupy consistency, pull off the heat and whisk in the butter, season with salt, pepper and champagne vinegar

TO SERVE: Fry the dumplings in 350 degree canola oil until crispy and golden, drain on paper towels and toss in a bowl with some FOR THE GYOZA: Shred the duck confit with of the glaze, salt and pepper and your fingers and put the meat chives. Serve hot!

a restaurant, Abramovitch said, but they don’t plan to lose sight of the fun factor. “At the end of the day, you have to love (the work),” he said. “If you’re not enjoying it, it’s not

your best. If you’re not having fun, why do it?” For more information about the catering services or the Blossom pop-up dinners, visit www.blossomcateringcompany.com. 97

Brandon Sharp leaves Solage’s Solbar

Brandon Sharp is leaving Solage’s Solbar restaurant to take the role of executive chef at Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to be closer to family. Sharp, who grew up in North Carolina, earned a Michelin star for Solbar consecutively since 2008. Tim Carl

any chefs have worked and lived in Calistoga over the years, but none has had the impact of Brandon Sharp, former executive chef at the Solage resort’s Solbar Restaurant. Now Sharp has left Solbar and will be moving to North Carolina, where he will be taking over the role of executive chef at the historic Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill. Sharp will keep his ownership stake in another Calistoga restaurant, Evangeline. “The tug of home was getting strong,” said Sharp. “So my family and I are moving back to my home state and I’ll be working at a place that I’ve wanted to work at since attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But I’ll still be involved locally, coming back a few times a year to work with my friends and business partners at Evangeline.” Sharp’s departure represents a real loss to both Calistoga and the broader Napa Valley, which is losing a culinary visionary whom Michael Bauer, the influential restaurant reviewer at the San 98

TIM CARL

Francisco Chronicle, wrote had finally brought the first destination restaurant to Calistoga since Jan Birnbaum closed Catahoula in early 2004. Bauer may have forgotten to mention the many other culinary institutions that have had their own special draw in Calistoga, but Sharp provided something that all the others did not: a Michelin star, which has become the litmus test for judging restaurants. “The star was a really big deal,” Sharp said. “It was gratifying to have people come just for the food, but it provided external validation that we were legitimate and respected. The star is only one metric of success, but its impact is hard to overlook. As cooks in Calistoga, we wanted that because for years Calistoga felt brushed aside a lot of the time.” Ironically, one of the original draws of Calistoga for Sharp was that it did not have the culinary recognition of other Napa Valley towns. “There was very little pressure to conform,” he said. “Not being Yountville meant we had the

freedom to explore, which was fantastic because when we first opened Solbar the menu was vastly different — ribs, burgers and Caesar salads — but I was given both the support and freedom to figure out exactly what seemed to work, evolving Solbar into what it is today.” Sharp eventually created a whole new type of Napa Valley cuisine, combining farm-to-table regional ingredients with a French and southern flair. According to Sharp, the urban myth that the Michelin star leaves with the chef is just that, a myth. “The star stays with the institution, and there is both a system and culture in place at Solbar to ensure that quality remains intact,” he said. “In fact, I am very excited that Auberge has taken over the management of the property. Their reputation and experience will likely only enhance the experience.” Before coming to Calistoga 10 years ago, Sharp had been the sous chef at Gary Danko in San Francisco. Before that, after graduating

from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, Sharp had worked at the French Laundry in Yountville, Restaurant August in New Orleans and in the world-renowned Arzak restaurant in San Sebastian, Spain, learning the ropes and how to conduct a star-worthy operation. Growing up in North Carolina, Sharp’s culinary influence included eating cheese biscuits at his grandmother’s house. “My grandmother did not make fancy food, but what she did with food was impart it with a spirit of generosity and hospitality,” he said. “Those experiences are probably where my desire to have people enjoy my food comes from.” Calistoga and the Napa Valley have lost a great chef. Sharp might not have been flashy, with a TV show, a trove of cookbooks or a chain of restaurants with his name on the door, but maybe that’s why his food never seemed to be about him or some ego-driven quest for ratings or status, but rather a desire to delight.

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A taste of authentic Japan Three-star Michelin chef Hiroyuki Kanda will guide Kenzo restuarant

SASHA PAULSEN spaulsen@napanews.com The city of Napa got its first threestar Michelin chef when Kenzo restaurant opened in November. But more than that, Chef Hiroyuki Kanda, and Kenzo and Natsuko Tsujimoto are planning to bring to Napa an experience so authentically Japanese that it is as close as you might get to experiencing Japan without a passport. Chef Kanda was in Napa last week, and, with the Tsujimotos, gave tour of the restaurant still under construction in the former Pearl space at 1339 Pearl St. and a view of their plans. The Tsujimotos are the owners of Kenzo Estate Winery in Napa, as well as four restaurants and tasting rooms in their native Japan. They have long been friends with Kanda, who spent five years honing his skills in Paris. After returning to Tokyo, he opened Kanda restaurant in 2004. It promptly garnered three Michelin stars and has retained them for nine consecutive years. Kanda traveled to the Napa Valley for the grand opening of the Kenzo winery, and the idea of opening a restaurant in Napa has been been in the works ever since. Submitted photo

Kenzo and Natsuko Tsujimoto, owners of Kenzo Estate Winery in Napa, will bring the dining traditions of Japan to their downtown restaurant in Napa.

100

Submitted photos

Chef Hiroyuki Kanda will oversee the new Napa restaurant. His Tokyo restaurant Kanda was awarded three Michelin stars shortly after opening and has maintained them for nine consecutive years.

Fresh fish and seafood, like this abalone, is a foundation of Japanese cuisine

as 15 courses. Renowned for its meticulous preparation and exquisite presentations, the sophisticated kaiseki tradition is often compared to French haute cuisine. According to Japan-talk.com, “There’s no formula for kaiseki. Each kaiseki meal is the creation of a master chef. Presentation of kaiseki dishes is guided by Japanese aesthetics.” Kanda described his food as “contemporary kaiseki.” Jude Radeski, president and CEO of Kenzo Estate, said he has

happily served as “guinea pig” for the Napa restaurant, traveling to Japan to dine at Kanda and offering his viewpoint as an American diner. “It’s been great,” he said. The authentic Japanese dining experience, however, encompasses more than food, Kanda explained. “It is not just to feed the customers but to entertain them.” Dining Japanese-style, he said, is an entire experience for the all these senses. Every element, “the counters, walls and ceiling,” is important, he said. “The total is the art.” To this end, Natsuko Tsujimoto, who said it has been her dream to introduce these traditions in Napa, has closely participated in the design of the restaurant. She and Kanda traveled to Kyoto, Japan, to choose the dishes for the Napa restaurant. The stone for the floors has been imported from Japan, as has the pale gold Japanese cypress for the construction of the counters, which craftsmen came from Japan to construct on the site. Speaking through a translator, she showed the details of the chairs, which, along with the tables, are being made in Japan. “I have the utmost respect for the philosophy and approach of chef Kanda and I admire his

“A restaurant needs two things: a philosophy and investment,” Kanda said in an interview at the restaurant taking shape on Pearl Street. “Kenzo is providing the investment, and I have the philosophy.” Kenzo Tsujimoto was the founder of Capcom, a Japanese developer and publisher of video games. His interest in wine brought him to the Napa Valley, where he purchased a 4,000-acre property to build a winery on Mt. George in eastern Napa. Until now, most of the wines produced at Kenzo have been shipped to Japan, although visitors can taste and purchase Kenzo wines at the Napa winery. It was important, he said, to have a place in downtown Napa, where guests will be able to taste the Kenzo wines, but most of all they want to share “the true essence” of Japanese culinary traditions. The small restaurant will seat 10 at tables, and 10 more at a sushi bar; an additional private tasting room will accommodate 10. The restaurant will offer both a traditional pre-fixe kaiseki menu as well as sushi, which, in accordance with Japanese tradition, will be prepared at the bar as guests watch. Kaiseki is a multi-course meal, Peach Mint Jelly is one of Chef Hiroyuki Kanda’s in some instances serving as many creations.

incredible passion and craft”, she said. “It is of course a challenge to recreate the same level of quality, authenticity and beauty of his cuisine outside of Japan, but I believe with our vision and his talent, we absolutely can achieve the goal we set out to accomplish with Kenzo.” She said that the late Margrit Mondavi, who had traveled to Japan with them, had urged her to go forward with the Napa project. “We will have a seat here for her,” she said. “Her spirit will dine here.” Kanda, who will oversee the menu, has been training a culinary staff at his Tokyo restaurant to ensure that “performance, preparation and presentation” all meet his exacting standards. He plans to close his Japanese restaurant twice a year for two-weeks at a time and bring his staff to Napa to ensure that the “quality and mindset — the essence” of his philosophy is maintained. “We can do this because of Kenzo,” he said. “Not many people travel to Japan,” Kenzo Tsujimoto said. “I want people to be able to have a taste of Japanese culture. That is the important thing.” Kanda added, “I want people to say, ‘I did not have to get a ticket to go to Japan.”

Kenzo will serve both sushi and kaiseki menus. Shown above is shiraae, a dish made with tofu.

101

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Winemaker Julien Fayard in the newly opened subterranean tasting room at Covert Estate, located east of Napa in the Coombsville appellation. Tim Carl, photo

New vision in Coombsville Vintner sets sights on next era in Napa County wine 104

TIM CARL

Winemaker Julien Fayard believes the next chapter of Napa Valley winemaking will shift the focus from producing big, powerful cabernet sauvignons to instead crafting a variety of wines that highlight the complexity and finesse of the region. To do that, he and his wife, Élan, along with their business partners, St. Louis residents Cal and Pam Nicholson (owners of Nicholson Jones Winery) and Dave and Laura Nestor, have

recently completed construction of Covert Estate winery located in the Coombsville appellation. “When my wife and I moved here from France in 2006 we discovered a new environment, new techniques, new weather, new climate,” Fayard said as we toured the 4.5-acre hillside vineyards on the 12-acre property in the hills east of downtown Napa. The Covert Estate property boasts sweeping views of rolling hills that are dotted with

Tim Carl, photo

Winemaker Julien Fayard and his wife, Élan, stand at one of the Covert Estate winery cave portals. The entire winemaking facility is underground.

ancient oak trees and expansive horse ranches, with only a few other vineyards in sight. To the south San Pablo Bay shimmers in the distance. Fayard explained that the bowl-like geology of the area, coupled with its nearness to the bay, provides lower daily temperatures when compared to other Napa Valley appellations. “The grapes here ripen steadily and evenly, making for rich wines with complex nuances,” he said. “We often pick later than vineyards that might be just a few miles away.” Fayard grew up in the town

of Saint-Etienne and spent time working at his family’s winery and vineyard, cru classe Chateau Sainte-Marguerite, located in the village of La Londe-les-Maures near the French Riviera. For generations, the Fayard family has grown grapes and produced their own expression of the region’s signature wine, Provençal rosé. By the age of 16, young Julien had blended his first wine. After obtaining a masters in agriculture and winemaking he worked at renowned French wineries such as Château Lafite Rothschild and Château Smith Haut Lafitte.

“I met Élan in the south of France while she was studying wine and the French language,” Fayard said. “After we married, we moved to California so that she could be nearer to her family and I could explore making wine outside of France.” With more than a decade of experience making wine in Bordeaux, the duo moved to the Napa Valley in 2006, intent on eventually starting their own wine business in the United States. Elan, a Bay Area native, was thrilled to be home. “We both love Napa Valley and the community,” she said. “We moved here with little more than the shirts on our backs. Everything we owned or moved from France fit in 4 large boxes. It was a leap of trust.” Fayard teamed up with influential Philippe Melka, a fellow French winemaker behind some of Napa’s most sought-after Cabernets, including Dana Estates, Vineyard 29 and others. “Julien is immensely talented,” Melka said. “Between his French roots of winemaking, his adventurous spirit and his great knowledge of the business, he has all the

tools to be the next superstar of the industry. He understands the new generation of wines: stylistically pure and fun.” “Working alongside winemaker Philippe Melka taught me how to work with the multiple climates and complexities of the Napa Valley,” Fayard said. “Within most of France (except in Burgundy, for example) winemakers work with fairly well-defined sites that are often large. Here in Napa, winemakers work with multiple sites that can be very, very tiny. So I consider winemaking here in Napa to be much like winemaking done in Burgundy. And so having a winery where we are able to tightly control every aspect of the winemaking, down to even single barrels, is important.” To achieve this level of control, Covert Estate has built a state-ofthe-art winery that is completely underground, as Juancarlos Fernandez, partner at Signum Architecture and lead architect on the project, explained. “Because of the underground layout, the winery maintains a constant ambient temperature throughout the facility, including 105

Tim Carl, photo

Winemaker Julien Fayard in the Covert Estate winery’s tank room showcases specially made tanks that only a few other facilities have, one of which is the famed Château d’Yquem in France.

the tank room and the barrel storage,” Fernandez said. “This gives Julien full control of ideal temperatures for the grapes during crush all the way to the final bottling of the wine.” As we toured the site, it became apparent why they adopted the name Covert — the winery is nearly completely hidden from view. “The winery is fully integrated with the surrounding landscape and heritage oak trees that cover the property,” said Fernandez. “Visitors to the winery may notice the unique curved tunnels that originate from each of the outer portals, expanding and contracting in response to the winemaking process they accommodate. Also look for the framed views of the surrounding valley from inside of each of the three portals.” Within one of these portals is the winery’s tasting room, which, in contrast to the simplicity of the winery, looks like a bachelor pad with leather and fur- covered chairs and industrial-looking 106

modern furniture, much of which is made from reclaimed wood. An enormous volcanic rock topped with a thick glass slab serves as the central tasting table. Above, a twisting and tangled chandelier of metal hangs in the center of the room, providing stark contrast with the soft-rolling hills visible through large glass doors at the cave’s entrance beyond. During our tasting, three wines stood out: the 2015 Azur, a Provencale-style rose; the 2013 Covert Cabernet Franc; and the 2012 Empreinte Cabernet Sauvignon. The 2015 Azur ($32 a bottle and only 850 cases made) speaks to Fayard’s deep family history of producing rose wines in Provence, France, for generations. This wine is stunning, starting with its salmon hue and aromatics of rose petal and wet sea stones. In the mouth, this wine is breathtaking, with a mix of refreshing subtle citrus notes that blends flawlessly with flint and a whisper of dried mint. The Covert Cabernet Franc ($195 and

only 100 cases made) highlights Fayard’s skill as a winemaker. This wine showcases how Cab Franc can display a blend of blue fruit (plum and blueberry) highlighted with red-fruit elements (raspberry and dark cherry). The wine has a wonderful blend of both jammy and bright elements, and the texture is smooth and full on the palate. Fayard makes a few wines under the Empreinte label, and the Empreinte 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon from the Martineze Vineyard on Pritchard Hill ($225) was a show-stopper. This is a cabernet in which anyone familiar with cult-cabs around the Napa Valley will find comfort — full of dark fruit such as blackberry and cassis but also spicy with nutmeg and cloves blended together with layers of toffee and sweet oak, creating a super-rich mouth feel and a finish that lasts for minutes. It is interesting that during our tasting, we sipped on three different wine brands: Azur, Empreinte and Covert. Each of these had

their own label and if you saw them on a shelf you’d never know they came from the same winery. Additionally, the winery also produces the Nicholson Jones brand and Solace. Each brand represents an opportunity for visitors to explore different wine styles, but this unique business model also highlights a possible shift in the nature of wineries, from producing single-brand-focused wines to crafting collections of different brand concepts, providing flexibility within an ever-changing and highly competitive marketplace. Covert indeed. “I think since the 1940s the Napa Valley has shown that it can make world-class wines of power and structure,” Fayard said. “I believe that the next phase of winemaking will show a different side to this place, making wines that highlight complexity and refinement.” Tastings at the winery are by appointment only. For more information or to schedule a tour, visit www.covertestate.com.

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