Rourke McNamara

REALM CELLARS VINTAGE 2004 RELEASE PARTY - Nectar Wine Lounge, San Francisco (5/24/2006)

As usual, a great event. All the wines were awesome, and I’ll be buying a bunch. In trying to differenciate, below are my notes.

• 2004 Realm Cellars The Tempest - USA, California, Napa Valley
  Nose of dark fruit and chocolate. This seemed a little soft and hot to me. I enjoyed the wine, but there didn’t seem to be enough tannin and structure to hold up to the alcohol and fruit. I tend to like hugely tannic beasts, though, so it might just be me. (89 pts.)

Mitchell’s Ice Cream in San Francisco sells the best ice cream I’ve ever had. San Francisco has more “microbrew” ice creams than anywhere I’ve seen (eg: Tuckers, Double Rainbow, Lappert’s) and Mitchell’s is easily the best of them. I highly recommend the Thai Tea.

Jen and I stopped over on Sunday night after dinner because it was a rare warm day in San Francisco. We saw the above as we got there. This crowd continued down the street and around the corner. Mitchell’s calls people by number — we were #88 and they were calling #12 when we arrived. We just grabbed some prepacked ice cream and were in and out within ten minutes. Mitchell’s is good, but not an hour good.

DASHE AND JC CELLARS OPEN HOUSE - Oakland, CA (5/7/2006)

We went to Dashe and JC Cellars’ open house in Oakland with Jimmy on Sunday afternoon and tasted through some of the Dashe and JC Cellars releases. There were excellent finger foods that all paired well with these big Zins. Jen particularly enjoyed the sausage in puff pastry.

There was live music, food, water, coffee and lots of indoor and outdoor seating. A great little event.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH IN NAPA WITH SLAVA AND JIMMY - Napa, CA (5/13/2006)

Slava had been to Napa before, but only seen Route 29, so we decided to take him to some wineries a little further from the crowds. We ended up at highly recommended places all just off the Silverado Trail and had a nice, relaxing day in Napa.

Outpost

I’ve been meaning to post a couple of related things, so this is going to be a combined post. First, chocolate waffles, then the various toppings I tried. Making a compote turned out to be surprisingly easy, and really worth the effort. Warm berry compote is a really healthy alternative to maple syrup. I think. I don’t really know what’s healthy.

Start by making the waffles. This is similar to normal waffles, but the dry stuff is:

3 cups all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons sugar
1 cup ounces cocoa powder, natural sweetened
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups chocolate chips