Here are my emotion-based awards for the four day event (I will add pictures later when I switch to my phone). I tasted maybe 100 California wines, all very good, but that’s not what I care about:
Best Timing of an Infrastructure Project
After many months of the heart of Big Sur being cut off in both directions, the Pfeiffer Bridge connecting all of the events to the north was finished ahead of schedule a couple of weeks before the Festival. On the South end a mudslide still blocks all traffic. If the Bridge had had any delays, no Festival, and Big Sur desperately needed the people, support, optimism, money from the Festival. That little bridge was an emoticon of joy. Amazing.
Best Winery News
Birichino, whose wines and winemakers were at Opening Night, is opening a tasting room in a couple of weeks in Santa Cruz, not far from my home. There is a God. Do not pass from this Earth without trying their wines.
Best Winemaker Discovery
I ran into Byron Kosuge a couple of times this weekend. He makes perfectly balanced wines with perfect acidity. I mentioned to him that his wines reminded me of the acidity of older Ridges. He said that’s where he took some wine lovers from Europe. I tried his Chardonnay, Gamay, his Pinot “lesser” blend, his Hirsch pinot (great wine), all perfect acidity.
Best Self-Validation
Last year and this year I never actually ordered wine from a winery while I was still at the Festival, it’s neither expected nor practical. Except this year at the Pinot Walkabout. One wine took my fancy. Never heard of the winery. The winemaker is about fifteen years old. He presented two pinots. One of them was light and pretty and real, among 70 wines poured I went back to it three times to validate my palate because it was exactly in my wheelhouse, and I bought six bottles at $60 per, which is not what the festival is about but I very rarely have these epiphanies with a new winery. I was certain it is for me. Certain. Knowing nothing about it.
I return to the Bay Area and there is one bottle of it on Winebid. 96 points Vinous! I am vindicated! Lutum Santa Rita Hills. Gentle perfect wine well worth $60.
Best Not-Ready Wines
2014 Calera Jensen Pinot
[vintage?] Kosuge Hirsch Pinot
Non vintage Laurent Perrier Rose Champagne, this might be my favorite Champagne house just because of my two years at Big Sur Festival (but I acknowledge that Taittinger Comte is the greatest high-end bargain in the world. I guess I have two favorites).
Best Event
Hiking With Stemware. This was on the Chappellet property Rancho Rico. It was a full and complete event with a mystical violinist on a mountain and Kosuge wines and on an ocean precipice. Done, right?
Not done.
Then there was the massive blowout-yet-dignified gourmet lunch in their home with musical interludes.
And that was before the wine auction in the barn.
All infected with the spirit of three Chappellet family members.
Most Pleasantly Surprising Event
Opening Night at Ventana. I’m not a Ventana (nor Highlands Inn) fan. Too corporate and obscenely expensive. But this event was a blowout of beauty indoors and out, great wineries around every corner, and the food purveyors were as good as it gets.
Best Place to Stay if Someone Else Drives
Instead of Big Sur, stay in Carmel at a B and B. Beautiful inns at a low price. But you have to drive 26 winding miles after a day at the Festival.
Best Serendipity Appearance (tie)
Naima Nascimento, a Chappellet granddaughter. First appearance at Pinot Walkabout. Second unexpected appearance was at the Rancho Rico lunch.
Edwin Huizenga, violinist. First appearance was on a hillside as we rounded the corner on a hike. Second unexpected appearance was at the Deetjens dinner.
Pix forthcoming.
Best Wine I Brought (for private restaurant dinners when both evenings’ Henry Miller Library events were cancelled because of possible rain)
1996 Vogue Amoureuses. Perfect complete and years at this plateau left to go. 1996 is a very unpredictable Burgundy year right now, acidity tannin earth dark fruit. This was thrilling. More luck than anything.
Other wines brought:
The 2003 Vogue Amoureuses after being bursting with red on release has gone into a slightly dark young shell. Wait.
1997 Togni surprisingly showed too young. Only a little bit herbal. 97 points. Bottle variation, each variation great.
2002 Bryant was a powerful Cabernet, not quite touching secondary, 95 tonight with upside.
2001 de Fargues, a great wine: a little sugary and outclassed tonight. 375 ml.
Best White Wine
Maybe not “best,”, but Chappellet’s Sangiacomo Vineyard Chard bridged the gap between my palate in the 1990’s and my palate now, and with air it got really good. To me it was the best dry white wine of the weekend.
Best Cameo
Bedrock!
Best Food
The smoked black cod at the Pinot Walkabout was the best food item at that event along with the chorizo-wrapped almost-rare rabbit. But the food at the Ventana Opening Night Event was mindblowing. Little bites but as many as you wanted. My fave was a tie between something from Home Restaurant in Santa Cruz, I don’t even remember, versus a New York Strip with Sweetbreads and Mushrooms thing from somewhere that had BBQ in its name. Really hard to make food this good.
Most Dangerous Station
Cocktail Mezcal thing Opening Night. Do not have one of these when you have had wine. Picture forthcoming.
Most Romance
Deetjens on the final night. I just wanted to go there, and I did not know that half the restaurant was set aside for a Festival Tablas Creek dinner so I saw many people I had met before, and Edwin and Rick were there to serenade that dinner but spent half the time in the main dining room serenading my table. Deetjens was actually physically hit by the mudslide in addition to being cut off from the world for eight months.
Why
When you attend multiple events at this Festival (you pay only for the events you attend), several things happen to you besides the admiring of the outpouring of creativity. Eventually:
You understand how hard it is to live in Big Sur.
You start to see the same people again and again and they become friends.
The unique beauty suffuses your soul. It isn’t unique at first, just pretty. But it becomes unique. There is no place like it.
If this intrigues you check out the Foraging Festival in January. I know little about it.
Better still, attend at least two Big Sur Food and Wine events next November (and stay in a Carmel B and B). See you there!
Wines tasted at home while writing this post
2007 Calera Mills pinot noir, open over a week but kept in a fridge each night
Started out a little old, After a week it was structured and earthy and not old.
1997 Dominique Laurent Vosne Romanee Les Beaumonts
The first rule of Laurent Beaumonts is, do not talk about Laurent Beaumonts.
1992 Domaine Moillard Chambertin
Back when they owned it. Great wine? No. Good auction purchase for one bottle? Yes. History value? Yes. Fine tannins coat the gums. Fruit brown but not old. Day Two is tomorrow.
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