Left Coast Cowboys

I’m probably more excited about this than I should be. Our olive groves are very young and the yield was tiny. As I explained in this post, that relegated our crop to the community press at the local Olive Press. So this Two Terrier product is actually a blend of olives from all the small producers who contributed to this batch. This is not a fine filtered olive oil. If you’ve ever been to a country restaurant in Tuscany and had the strong, full-bodied, very olivey oil they use for bread dipping, this is it. There is a slight bitter aftertaste which we are blaming on someone else’s olives since our variety is supposed to be noted for their smoothness.

All I can say is something I learned from being a life-long Red Sox fan: Wait until next year!

Note to producers: no matter what you have to pay a good graphic designer, it’s worth it. This is the best I could do on short notice with Avery labels and Photoshop. Good thing we only got 12 bottles of oil and they’re all going to friends!

There is a fabulous little movie out now that should be seen by anyone who’s ever been to Northern California Wine Country, ever drunk Northern California wine, has any interest in wine or just wants to see a sweet little film with engaging quirky characters. It’s called Bottle Shock, named after the short-lived flatness that happens to a bottle of wine after it’s shook up.
In this case, the Bottle Shock wasn’t short lived. The film leads up to the historic Judgment of Paris in 1976 when France’s premier wine critics gathered for a blind taste test pitting the best they had to offer with the wines of Northern California. I won’t be giving anything away if I tell you that California won and won triumphantly. The event toppled the idea that only the French could produce good wine and opened the door for quality wines from all over the world. (And probably lead to the reverse migration of many UC Davis Vinoculture grads who suddenly found themselves in demand in French wineries.) Even in France, it may have precipitated the rise of the Garagistes, renegade French winemakers who made quality wines on a shoestring and thumbed their noses at the old Chateaus.

But I digress. I won’t attempt to review the movie. I’ll let the inestimable Roger Ebert do it. I’ll just tell you what I loved about it as an amateur winemaker with a fledgling vineyard in Sonoma.

First of all, don’t be swayed by the nitpicky critics who say there are some composited characters, fictional characters and key characters who don’t appear. For instance, the winemaker at Chateau Montelena — the winery that won the white category and the winery that is the main focus of this story — was the famous Mike Grgich. He’s not in it. He refused. So who cares? He would have been one character too many as the focus was on the rocky relationship between father and winery owner, Jim Barrett, and his hippie son, Bo, who has been for decades the winemaker at Chateau Montelena.

Alan Rickman, as Steven Spurrier, samples Napa wine in what was a not untypical tasting room back then.

What the movie DOES get right is the way Napa was back before all the gentrification and hoopla. The people who made the wines were first and foremost farmers, secondly unpretentious but passionate, and you could always find a world class glass of wine in the dustiest cowboy bar. Back in the mid Eighties when we first arrived in California and started visiting Napa, here was the typical tasting scenario (unless you went to Mondavi or Beaulieu Vineyards). You’d get directions at a convenience store and drive down some windy dusty road. You’d probably end up at a barn or the back door of a farmhouse. A guy on a tractor would come around the corner who would turn out to be the owner. He’s bring you into his kitchen, pour you some of his wine and chat about his “Cab”. There were precious few gift shops, no $40 dollar tastings (with the souvenir glass). You learned about the wine from the guy with dirt under his fingernails.

Things have changed. In Napa! I’m here to tell you that you can still find this down-to-earth farmer spirit alive and well in Sonoma. It’s no accident that in virtually every scene in Bottle Shock, Sonoma County stands in for Napa. In fact downtown Sonoma even stands in for Paris in one scene. Look closely at the wine shop run by Steven Spurrier (played by the brilliant Alan Rickman). It’s Della Santina’s Enoteca and Della Santina’s Trattoria just off Sonoma Square. The vintage cars were provided by one of Sonoma County’s many car clubs. (Note: if you are dragging along a gearhead who has no interest in wine, Sonoma’s the place to go to see cool cars.)

Chateau Montelana? Not. It’s Buena Vista Winery just down the hill from our property. In fact, we were convinced you could see some of our land in some of the shots. We’re in Bottle Shock!

But more importantly, the spirit of this movie is alive and well in Sonoma. While in Napa, you’ll sit in bumper to bumper traffic, be awed by fantastic multi-million dollar tasting rooms filled with art and fight through tourist buses full of people. In Sonoma, you won’t have to go very far to find yourself traveling down a dirt road to meet some guy on a tractor. If wine isn’t your scene, Sonoma has diversified to be one of the largest and most passionate proponents of organic and heirloom produce and artisanal products. So skip the wine and do a goat cheese, heirloom tomato, crane melon or Gavenstein Apple tasting. Or try any of the free-range beef, lamb or duck products made by people with the same passion and hands-in-the-earth attitude as the characters in Bottle Shock.

Should you think going to Sonoma means you aren’t really at the epicenter of the wines that changed the world, I should also note that the grapes from that award-winning Chateau Montelana Chardonnay that shook up the French were actually grown in Sonoma.

So I’ll see you in Sonoma. And if you get up here quick enough, you can see Bottle Shock the way it should be seen: on the Sonoma Square, in the historic Sebastiani Theater, surrounded by locals yelling out: “I remember when that happened.”

(Got to reveal the best line in the movie, courtesy of Alan Rickman as Steven Spurrier, the priggish, English Francophile wine shop owner:

Jim Barrett: Why don’t I like you?

Steven Spurrier: Because you think I’m an asshole. I’m not. It’s just that I’m British. And . . .well . . .you’re not.)

Added bonus: great Seventies soundtrack.

For exact filming locations (and Google maps to find them), check out this site from the Sonoma County Website.

Have you been reading about how honeybees are disappearing at an alarming rate from “Colony Collapse Disorder”? No one knows for sure what’s causing it, but it’s starting to look as if it’s a combination of viruses, pesticides, perhaps global warming and maybe stress from being trucked hither and yon to pollinate agribusinesses. So essential is the honeybee for American agriculture that ice cream giant Haagen Dazs has gotten into the act kicking in loads of money for bee research. They say half their ice cream will be “extinct” if the bees go.

After reading how beekeepers are small entrepreneurs, often operating on a shoestring, I figured out how I could help. I’ve got land — including lavender fields — that I’m managing organically; beekeepers have bees who need a safe place to do their thing. Let’s get together. Seemed like a win-win situation all around. A beekeeper gets to expand without the expense of buying or leasing land; I get the pleasure of seeing bees and their pollinating efforts. I’d read that one of Sonoma’s most famous beekeepers, Hector of Hector’s Bees, had expanded his operation just this way. He put his hives on willing landowners land in exchange for some honey.

My landscaper contacted Hector and he came to see the layout. Seems he’s not a small timer any more. He really wanted a bigger lavender field and roads for his trucks that went up into those fields. But he said the layout was perfect for a smaller operation and encouraged us to contact some local beekeeper associations.

These are the lavender fields I thought no beekeeper and his bees could resist.
Apparently they can. However, swarms of bumblebees love it.

Just so happens, I’d stumbled across one recently (which shall remain nameless) that fortuitously had a Yahoo Group I could join. Perfect.

I crafted a quick post saying that I had 40 organically-managed acres in Sonoma, including a lavender field, and was looking for a beekeeper who wanted a low-cost way to expand. I said I was willing to host the hives for a trade in some jars of honey.

Then the firestorm hit! Increasingly angry posts flamed out on nottobenamedbeekeepergroup@yahoogroups.com. It started with this grammar-challenged post:

So! What is going on here? Are the large beekeeper who bring bees to the Almonds field are paying the almond grower? Or, is that an indication the, lage beekeepers are smart and, smaller are___________ you fill up the space.
Either big or small operators, bees provide a service, the owner on that hive or few hives deserve to get compensate for the service rendered. How the bees get from here to there? How we get there to check the bees? How many time? How they get from there to here? How far from us here to there is? For the exchange with a little honey. How generous they are to be happy to be compensate with so little especially when we have spent hundreds of dollars in gas back and forth without counting the time. What is going on here? Any opinions?

It continued with indignant charges that I wanted to “relieve them of their hives” ignoring all the cost and time they put into beekeeping. They railed that I was trying to skip out on paying the fee usually given to beekeepers for pollinating crops. Finally the original poster weighed in again, by saying I could do all the work and heavy lifting of his hives, spend my gas to get there, then stop by his Not To Be Named Store and he’d give me a stick of jerky and a bottle of water for my efforts. That would be the same sort of “fair trade”.

Whoah! Did I not word my post correctly or are the beekeepers grabbing on to the wrong end of the honeycomb?

I posted again, clarifying that 1) I wasn’t looking for free pollinating services. I have enough bumblebees, birds and hummingbirds doing my pollinating, 2) I didn’t want anyone’s hives or a piece of their businesses, and 3) I just wanted to make some land available for a beekeeper needing to expand. Oh, and it would be nice to have a few jars of honey for my efforts — like the work and expense of maintaining the land organically.

At that point, a few brave beekeepers started emailing me privately to offer support. However, no one seemed willing to put that support online with a published post. Did I find a beekeeper? Well, not exactly. The letters of support were mostly to encourage me to get into beekeeping. Beekeeping? I’m struggling with growing crops! I don’t want to add “Clueless Beekeeper” to my current title of “Clueless Farmer.” I was looking for the no learning curve solution.

Now I’m getting very nervous. Forget about that invasion of that aggressive Africanized Honeybee that we’ve been warned about. The beekeepers are mad as hell and they’re not taking it any more!

And me, I’ll be tip-toeing very quietly past the honey stands at the local farmer’s market this summer.

There are way more than ten reasons, but these are the very top reasons that come to mind.

1.) It’s not Napa. Sonoma is larger, arguably has more great wineries, but is a world away from the glitz and glamor of its trendier cousin. Sonoma is more Wild West than it is Hollywood. You still find wineries here where the tasting room is someone’s shed. And the winemaker hops off a tractor to give you a tasting.

2.) Sonoma is just as much if not more about growing food than it is about grapes. That’s food as in heritage, sustainable, organic and tasty!

3.) Case in point, a major bridge in Sonoma is named after a famous local cheesemaker (The Ig Vella Bridge.)

4.) Sure you’ll find trendy capuccino joints, but early in the morning, it’s guys with manure-spattered cowboy boots who are lining up for their morning “joe”.

5) The kind of issues that spark intense controversy are things like whether the local diner has too many statues of bears outside it.

Those of you who know me know I hate shopping. I’m dragged kicking and screaming out shopping once a year WHETHER I NEED IT OR NOT! One of the reasons I hate shopping is that clothing manufacturers do not design clothes for my figure. A figure that I think is a fairly typical woman’s figure. As opposed to the figure of a 14 year old boy with breasts.

Yes, I have what my more generous friends would say is a “curvy” figure. Not fat, but with a big differential between waist and hips — say more than 10 inches. So most clothes, especially pants, don’t fit me. Clothing designers can’t seem to fathom that someone with my hip size would have this small a waist. Or that someone with my waist size wouldn’t have “snake hips.”

Before you shout, “Well, lose weight, Fatso,” let me say that I’ve had a similar problem since I was 104 pounds and on the high school cross-country running team. So there.

Which should make it all the more surprising that I am devoting a whole post to The! Best! Pants! Ever!

Yes, I found the perfect pair of pants. Soft cotton. An elasticized drawstring waist that is teeny tiny and stretches. As opposed to most drawstring waists that are huge and have to be gathered in like a bunched paper bag. Plus the legs are roomy and full enough to be comfortable even in Sonoma summer weather. But not so baggy that they look like clown pants. And there are numerous pockets for storing car keys, USB drives, bits of string or whatever else you might carry.

The best part: they magically seem to make you look about ten pounds slimmer. And by you, I mean men AND women. Yup. These are “Unisex Pants” (that’s the official name) because they fit men and women. Andy and I each tried a pair on and thought they were so flattering that we immediately bought a black pair each. Then I ordered additional pairs in almost every color they had (chocolate, natural and red). They weren’t in stock because these pants are WALKING OUT THE DOOR.

They don’t look like much off.
But on they seem to make you
look 10 lbs. slimmer!

Which door is that? Well, here’s the best part. They are in a great store on the Plaza in Sonoma called South American Secrets. This is a fantastic clothing, jewelry, hat, etc. store featuring products from South America, especially Ecuador, where the owner’s wife is from. Andy got a great Panama hat and was eying the case of fine cigars. (Note: free cigars are given to servicemen in uniform!)

Even better: a large majority of the profits of the store are being used to fund underserved communities in Ecuador. (Read about it here.) And most of the products are manufactured in Ecuador in fair trade workshops.

That’s right. You can shop for great products — at great prices — and also do good. What’s better than that? It’s like hitting the Trifecta.

Owners Fred & Janneth Johnson
donate most of their profits to help
underserved Ecuadorian communities.
And Fred mixes a mean Martini at his
other job at The Girl and the Fig!

So take this from a non-shopper. Go to South American Secrets on the Plaza in Sonoma and BUY, BUY, BUY. And be sure to get a pair of Unisex Pants.

NOTE: The pants are made out of cotton, not Alpaca wool, but the picture of the pants wasn’t as cute as the Alpacas. And I once saw a lady with two Alpacas hanging out at the door of this shop. So the Alpaca shot is in.