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Food's Future is getting "Better Better", led by WhatIf Foods and Chris Langwallner
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Food’s Future is getting “Better Better”, led by WhatIf Foods and Chris Langwallner

By Joe Winger — 1 year ago

The Future of food is getting “Better Better” thanks to WhatIf Foods and Chris Langwallner.

WhatIF Foods believes in a better better.

Tasty, delicious foods that are better for our bodies, better for our taste buds and farmer buds alike. Better for degraded lands, our eco-systems and naturally… better for cows.

Today I had the chance to have a conversation (via zoom) with WhatIF Food’s Chris Langwallner to talk about inspiration, their foods, their flavors and the science and technology making it all happen.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.  For the full conversation visit our YouTube channel.

Today we are here with Chris Langwallner from What If Foods. Thanks for joining us today.

Absolute pleasure. I cannot thank you enough. It’s fantastic to be here and letting our story get out a little bit. So thank you very much. I’m excited because it’s gonna be a lot of fun.

 

 

We’re talking about plant-based foods, we’re talking about planet based foods and for a “better-better” world. I’m hoping you’ll clarify that for us.

 

I look forward to it. Yes, it’s all about a planet based food company. It’s all about regenerating. It’s all about reconnecting to communities, restoring the greater land, and making sure that we are replenishing the nutrients we need on a day-to-day basis.

 

What inspired you to get into plant-based food?

 

To be honest with you, as a planet based company I think what really inspired me to get into a better way of doing things is actually a call out of my grandfather.

He has been always saying, leave this planet a better world than how you found it. When I was a young boy, I couldn’t understand. It was too abstract. I couldn’t really get my head around. But as I was then working in the industry for 20, 25 years you look behind the scenes, and you see how food is being manufactured on large scale and how profitability over shadows a lot of decision making.

And on the other flip side of the coin, there is a community out there, about 2.6 billion people. This planet makes a direct income or an indirect income from farming activities. And the vast majority, more than two thirds of these people are the poorest of the poor. And we are leaving them behind. And that’s not fair to them because what we have on the plates has been harvested by them.

They take care of their land. And if we leave them behind in the current state of affairs We’ll see many tears in their eyes. And it doesn’t have to be that way. It can be totally different. And hence my strife was really to look at the planetary health and its affairs as well as humanity overall.

And thinking about that must be a better way of doing things and how can we improve it, not incrementally, but really make a system change. And here we are basically inspired by my grandfather. 

On your website, you take some very science-based heavy content and you make it fun and easy.  Talk about that process.

 

It’s a team effort. Honestly, there’s a huge team behind the scenes that works tirelessly on improving our communication and our style and our tone. But the essence of it all is that we understand that Gen Zs and today’s youth are essentially those consumer groups that are on this planet.

Probably the first sort of generation that is fully educated in sustainability. And they have their ability today by one click of a button to really look behind the scenes and understand whether or not there is BS or whether or not there’s transparency, there’s honesty, and there is a different approach to things.

So that is one aspect of things. So we wanted to really make sure we are speaking to the youth on this planet. The second aspect of it all is that, You open your social media feeds today, or you open a media channel, you switch on your television and you are bombarded with bad news, after bad news.

And quite frankly, I have worked in universities and with students and I have been shocked by the fact that people, young guys, talk to me, ‘Hey, I don’t care about sustainability. I don’t care about our planet because it’s so crappy. Everything is so bad. I might as well just enjoy the time span I have on this planet.’

 

And I was shocked in contrast to what my grandfather told me. Today’s youth, some of them, not all, a fraction of them think like that. Or in other words I met this young girl and she says, I don’t know if I want to have children. Because I don’t know whether or not I would like to give birth to people that then inherit a planet that is so hot.

And all of that together was just making me restless and I wanted to really change things and and take this finite time span that I have on this planet to try as hard as I possibly can to leave it better than I found it. And that’s what I strive for. Hence we’re speaking with a fun and engaging voice.

We are speaking with colors and we are speaking with cartoons so that we basically get this heavy message across in an uplifting way and saying, Hey, you can be part of something. That actually does the opposite. It’s not grim. Yes. If we change, we can make this. We’re a better place and here we are.

Thanks for the call out. The credit goes to my team.

 

As we segue into the products themselves, what I wanna highlight is this BamNut Is that the nickname for the Bambara Groundnut?

 

Yeah, so we came up with Bamnut as a short version, as an acronym for the Bambara Ground Nut, which in reality is a legume, a legume that helps us fix nitrogen organically in soils that are essentially degraded and left behind by intensive agriculture.

The Bamnut word came about in Singapore. We actually did not quite know when we started using it. We didn’t quite know how the Americans would pronounce it. And then we found out, alright, it’s the Bamnut. So it all turned out to be so witty and entertaining and just perfect fit for a “better, better” to be honest.

 

Because that’s a main ingredient in all of your food. Let’s talk about what is a BamNut. Why is it magical and unique?

 

I was walking through the world of agro food over the past 20 years, and I’ve always been hugely concerned about the massive speed of land degradation, particularly on arid land.

And that’s getting accelerated because of climate change; and the weather is changing; and the rains and the monsoons are not hitting regularly anymore. So it becomes increasingly more difficult to plant, the planting season to make sure that you are having the seeds in the ground before the rains hit them and so on and so forth.

So it becomes really challenging for folks. So land turpitation has always been a huge concern of mine because another, on the flip side of that, we are losing about 25 soccer fields worth of arid land every minute, while at the very same minute, the same amount of primary forests have been cut down.

So if you compare and contrast these two figures, what it tells me is that in order to make way for the old food industry, we actually cut primary forest and we leave land behind. And that is the wrong thing to do. That is one aspect of things. 

The other aspect of things is I had once the fantastic opportunity to have an interview with Dr. Roy Steiner of the Rockefeller Foundation. And he gave a casual shoutout and he said, nowhere in the world do we produce and consume enough legumes. And I was thinking, why does he say that? But then it’s quite obvious if you think it through, because we are depending so much on crops that the land that basically holds the crops is deprived from organic nitrogen fixing crops like the legumes, and in the absence of nitrogen being fixed through the legumes, we throw endless amounts of synthetic fertilizers on the ground in order to make up for it.

That’s an aspect of things that also worried me.  But today the input costs have gone through the roof is it unravels all over the world and it has gotten more and more expensive to do so the degrading of land in one pocket, I was basically going through my work with that sort of lens.

Then there’s this whole water issue. We are big time irrigating crops, but what does that do? It just slows down the loss of water tables because the moment we take water out of the ground, the water tables are collapsing. I have numbers for that. I had a business in India a long time ago, and it used to be 30 meters, and today it’s probably 90 to 120 meters.

So water is basically a huge issue. There was another lens through which I looked at, and then I was at a conference in Jakarta, and I happened to run into a scientist. He said to me that he works on the Bambara groundnut. It’s a complete crop.  I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting. So what does that mean?”

And I started to really explore that much more deeper. And a complete crop turns out to be essentially a crop that has all micronutrients in the sort of right balance that we need. On top of it, it has all nine essential amino acids that we need. It has rich fatty acids, quality fatty acids, as well as car complex carbohydrates.  So fiber. 

You remember the forgotten macronutrient fibers for our microbiomes? So I got really inspired. So I looked up the amino acid profile and I saw it is rich in plutonic acid or spartic acid. So these are very cool amino acids in terms of generating nice flavors. And off I was; I organized the first couple of five kilos and the trial started, and that’s years and years ago.

In the meantime, the Bambara groundnut actually taught us a few lessons because it’s a very hearty nut and it really takes an effort to make cool products outta it.

 

It’s called a complete product, is that correct?

 

A complete food.  A complete crop or complete food crop.

 

Right now all of the products on your website are based from BamNut. I see Bam Nut milk. I see noodles with seasonings, and then there’s bundles and swag and all kinds of delicious things.

In the future, are we expanding that beyond or what’s the scope?

 

We would love to explore new categories as we build our business. There are so many occasions throughout the day where we can actually incorporate the bambara ground in exciting products, and we look forward to doing that.

Our focus right now is definitely our milk portfolio. It’s a wonderful product. I encourage everybody to have a little taste and Judge for yourself. We have a client in Los Angeles, a coffee roaster, who said ‘This is the closest thing to cow milk that I’ve ever seen in plant-based milk.’ 

We call it planet based milk. I have to say again, shout out to my team in the R&D side of things because they have established a wonderful product essentially with just three ingredients: that’s water, the bambara groundnut, not coconut oil. The rest is essentially technology behind the scenes that actually makes it foam nicely, very stable foam, small bubbles. So you can do latte art. 

Our Airy [flavor] is essentially the one that I would use for a nice drink, like a shake.

In between there is the Every Day [flavor] that goes essentially into my cereal in the morning. 

What are the flavors?

 

Today we are in the market with three different products.

The first one in a slightly black sort of packaging is the Barista. It has the richest mouthfeel. It is the creamiest. We have designed it to perform fantastic or be able to perform fantastic latte art. So it really goes into the cappuccino sort of an experience rather nicely.

I personally take it also for Boba tea. I might as well use the bambara groundnut and foam it up. 

I have my little trick with the barista. I actually froth it in the frother and I put my espresso shot into the frother with the barista together. So I froth it together. But that is just me. I just like it that way. 

Then we have the purple package, which is our Everyday. My wife uses it in baking. We do make cakes, like traditional Austria style, and we totally use only the Everyday [flavor] for that.

Friends of mine [pour] it into their cereals in the morning. It’s a little bit richer, earthy, nutty in character because we do tend to roast the nuts a little bit stronger in the process of making it.

Last but not least, we have our Airy [flavor], which is the lightest one of it all. It is the mint colored package. It is the one that people take into milkshakes and protein shakes. 

 

Let’s move on to Noodles

 

We wanted to create technologies that help us regenerate what’s broken. And today a large portion of all ramen that is being consumed on a day-to-day basis globally is deep fried in palm oil. Palm oil leaves huge banks of land degraded behind, particularly after the third cycle of palm plantations being grown.

We see the aftermath of the palm plantation industry essentially now in Southeast Asia. Therefore we were alerted when we started this project to basically say no to frying and no to deep frying and no, to essentially dehydrating instant noodles or ramen using that sort of process.

So we invented a technology that actually took that sort of challenge away. We invented an industrial scale air frying technology. Once you actually don’t fry anymore, you save about 20% of the space because 20% of palm oil is [based] in the noodle product of classic ramen.  That’s what it absorbs in the frying process. 

So if you don’t deep fry, you save 20%. Now nutrients will survive. Now colors may survive.  Then we replaced all the palm oil with the Bambara. 

We started to actually say, how can we bring color and different flavors and textures on the plates of consumers? And we created these four different products with the four different colors, which is essentially the black one, which is charcoal driven, moringa is green, pumpkin is orange and the original is yellow.

So four different options, all the same philosophy. 

The backbone of making it is the same, but then we add different nutrients to it to have fun, and then we add fancy seasonings to it, which makes just a nice flavor experience as well.

 

 

Our audience is passionate, hungry, curious, foodies. What does it actually taste like?

 

I’m extremely proud of our Noodles because even without the seasonings, you can cook them up and eat them and you will have a wonderful experience.

Try and contrast that with other ramen that you find in the market, and you will come back to our offering immediately because they’re just tasting nice. 

So our starting point of then adding the seasonings to it, like hot and spicy, or the mushrooms is an easy undertaking. It is actually an easy sort of concept to work with because if you have a neutral and nice taste to start with from the noodle base, you can build interesting flavor profiles on top.

Rather than having to use heavy flavors to mask off-flavor from a product base, or not so nice processes or even crappy raw materials. We don’t have that challenge. 

We also decided very early on to keep the salt at a minimum to stay away from any flavor enhancers. No MSG,  we’ve tried to keep it as clean as we possibly can.

We’ve tried to use as much spice as we can access.  No flavoring and stuff like that. I’ve been in that industry for over 20 years.  We thought let’s stay honest, to the product as well, to the noodles as well. And that has been a fantastic journey.

Our “Original, is a hot and sweet, hot and spicy pairing.  In Southeast Asia, it’s based on wok cooking. That’s my personal favorite. I eat it on salads with a little bit of a balsamico dressing

We have with Sesame Garlic, many kids who go for a green one. 

Pumpkin with the traditional Indian curry offer a great pairing. Watch out, it comes hot and spicy.  Typical Indian flavors. 

Last but not least is our charcoal with mushrooms. It’s fantastic for, if you go out to have a beer and come home and wanna have a bite, go for it. It’s a good one. 

How did you decide which flavors to choose? Was it a lot of trial and error?

 

There’s a lot of trial and error. There’s a lot of pairing up with our noodles.

What we have tried to do is really look into what are the best pairings for these sort of flavors.

From that point of view, we also wanted to stay with our seasonings. We wanted to stay essentially planet based.  None of our ingredients have any animal derived products in it.

You look at the charcoal, you cook it up, you eat it, you give it to a chef, let him experiment around. 

We had a Spanish chef take our charcoal and put it into a paella. All of a sudden there was a totally different sort of recipe.

The way we actually derived the final products has also a lot to do with people that actually use it day-to-day in the kitchen and learn from them.

 

What’s the future of WhatIf foods?

 

We are going to enter new categories of food and we are gonna expand our existing categories with new products. 

But I probably would love to use the opportunity to take you along on a more philosophical sort of journey for WhatIf foods and what comes hopefully in the next couple of years to come, because I think we have a better opportunity that needs doubling down now.

What I’m talking about is really the cost of the way we are making everything right from originating bambara groundnut, with partnering farming communities in all parts of Ghana. Encouraging them, making the ingredients ourselves, and then making the food applications, making the food, and then basically taking it to retail all the way through to Manhattan and other parts of the US.

So it’s that entire regenerative value chain that we have created and what that actually represents to us is an opportunity to really explore the intersection between soil health and restoring the soil that has been once degraded from intensive agriculture. 

It is that intersection of renewable energy because the Bambara groundnut now grows in a shell and hence the shell has energy in there and can be used in order to fire up essentially for power.

If you do that smartly, you generate biochar. With biochar, you then actually sequester carbon from the atmosphere into the soils permanently for hundreds, if not a thousand years to come.

 And last but not least, another intersection is wellbeing for consumers. We call them “Better Believers” as well as farming communities because we work with them directly.

We are proud of the fact that we have increased profit, not income; profit of farmers who work with us by 300%. 

At 2.5 acres, these farmers are permanently uplifted above the poverty line. That’s the intersection we really wanna double down to. Again, soil health, renewable energy, carbon sequestration.

Well-being for both the better believers as consumers, as well as the farming communities. Its possible and we’re looking forward to doing that on a large scale. If we wanna fulfill the demand that we hopefully can create, then we will probably need about 20,000 farmers to do that in the next five to ten years to come.

And then generate all the energy that we need internally to be there for carbon zero.  Even further carbon or maybe even participate in the carbon market through certificates. That’s our next challenge. That’s where we wanna go.

 

Find more about What If Foods on their website

Follow WhatIf Foods on Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

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Scott Augat, Sam Seidenberg Lead Cuyama Buckhorn’s Buckhorn Bar — Unlike any Roadside Cowboy Bar in High Desert Country

By Kelsey Ridley — 1 year ago

Cuyama Buckhorn’s Buckhorn Bar, led by Scott Augat and Sam Seidenberg is Unlike any Roadside Cowboy Bar in the High Desert

Bar Lead Sam Seidenberg is doing something twofold at the Buckhorn Bar – he is encouraging and creating cultural exchanges unlike perhaps anywhere else in the state, and he is taking the idea of outdoors-to-glass to the next level.

A high desert hideaway, Cuyama Buckhorn sits on Highway 166 between Santa Maria and Bakersfield, CA—an hour away from Santa Maria Airport, two hours from Santa Barbara Airport, two and a half hours from Los Angeles International Airport, two hours from Burbank Airport, and just over an hour from Bakersfield Municipal Airport.

The L88 airstrip, a privately-owned, public use airport is 2 blocks from the resort.

Nestled in what is referred to as The Hidden Valley of Enchantment—a fitting nickname for this hidden gem of a region—Cuyama Buckhorn neighbors small farms, ranches, wineries, and natural landmarks including Carrizo Plain National Monument, Los Padres National Forest, and Bitter Creek Wildlife Preserve. The area is a popular destination for motorcyclists and pilots.

Cuyama Buckhorn was originally a roadside motel built for oil executives to have a place to stay in the 1950s, and in the 70+ years since it opened, has since catered to everyone from local ranchers and cowboys to bikers and car buffs out for their Sunday drives.

Seidenberg brings a wealth of experience to the job, having worked in bars in San Francisco and Portland before discovering New Cuyama one day and realizing the town had everything he needed.

Today the bar’s motto “Come as you are” welcomes everyone from mountain bikers and outdoor enthusiasts to city folks looking to enjoy the resort for the weekend.

“This is essentially an American country bar and my goal is for us to meet the needs of everyone who walks through the door,”

says Seidenberg.

“We have a more diverse clientele here than I ever saw when I was working in the Mission District in San Francisco,” says Seidenberg of the scene.

What he has done with the cocktail program is create a way to tell stories through the drinks he’s created and thus encourage those drinking them to better understand where they are at that moment.

 

God’s Country, made with Rye, 3H Wagyu Beef, Coors Light and Corn

God’s Country, made with Rye, 3H Wagyu Beef, Coors Light and Corn

 

For example, his drink,  God’s Country, made with Rye, 3H Wagyu Beef, Coors Light and Corn is basically an homage to the ranch traditions of the Valley itself.

As with the layered stories behind each drink, Seidenberg, who has a deep personal passion for the area and the Los Padres National Forest in particular, focuses on layering ingredients from the region as well into each drink he develops.

Whether he be out for a mountain bike ride or a trek into the mountains, he’s always on the hunt for what he can bring back into the bar and ultimately the glass. While manzanita may be highly endangered elsewhere in the state, in the Cuyama Valley it grows abundantly and Seidenberg finds many ways to use it from harvesting berries to picking the flowers.

A drink such as the Prickly Pear, Manzanita Flower, Yerba Santa and Mezcal Spritzer is just one example of the fruits of his labor.

General Manager and Sommelier Scott Augat, who has spent his career at some of the best restaurants in Boston, Miami and Dallas,  is also passionate about both creating conversation and inciting curiosity with bar patrons.

Augat’s sourcing of draft beers includes some local favorites

Augat’s sourcing of draft beers includes some local favorites, including a beer from There Does Not Exist, a local San Luis Obispo brewery helmed by Max Montgomery, who worked at Firestone-Walker Brewing for many years.

The “Cans & Bottles” section features “usual suspects” and then there are the unusual suspects – outliers like Anchorage Brewing’s Sent By Liars, Oxbow Brewing Company’s Bramble On, and Fonteinen’s Sherry Lambikken Blend, to name a few.

Augat’s wine list of nearly 60 wines offers more than a few surprise-and-delight moments. While Augat recognizes that Cuyama Buckhorn is in Santa Barbara County, one of the country’s top wine producing regions, he also wants to introduce guests to wines from other regions that are making their best versions of particular grape varietals –think small regions of Italy and France, as well as Austria, Lebanon, and Slovenia. He’s focused on seeking out small producers and showcasing single vineyard wines from across the globe.

Between Seidenberg and Augat and their team, locals and hotel guests are in good hands where libations are concerned. Not only is everyone guaranteed a stellar beverage experience here, but they may get an education at the same time. Everyone who works behind the bar shares a passion for talking to people and sharing stories, which seems to create an environment where guests find themselves talking and learning, intentionally or unintentionally, about the area and each other.

 

Cuyama Buckhorn’s Buckhorn Bar Menu

 

The bar menu is divided into six sections – Farm to Glass, Barrel Aged Cocktails, Macerations, Draft Beer, Cans and Bottles, and Spirits Flights.

FARM TO GLASS is five enticing elixirs, all created to showcase the house-made liqueurs, bitters and seasonal syrups made from local produce and foraged herbs that feature prominently in each glass. Each cocktail is $18.

 

Done Deal

Aquavit, Amaro, Golden Beet, Lemon

Long December

Reposado, Carrot, Cardamom, Honey

Chelsea Cooler

Botanicals, Celery, Thyme, Red Peppercorn

God’s Country

Rye, 3H Wagyu Beef, Coors Light, Corn

Honeymooner

Grappa, Pineapple, Campari, y, Chartreuse

BARREL AGED COCKTAILS are served from a wine thief from one of four Rod & Hammer whiskey barrels. Each one holds a traditional cocktail such as a Manhattan, a Boulevardier, a White Negroni and a Nouveau Carré and all are made using the Solera aging process so that the flavor of each drink develops over time.  Each cocktail is $20.

MACERATIONS are visual delights and feature Tequila, Grappa, Rum and Whiskey

MACERATIONS are visual delights and feature Tequila, Grappa, Rum and Whiskey – each infused with a combination of flavors such as watermelon, hibiscus and black pepper corn or pineapple, tomatillo and arbol chiles. The watermelon and pineapple have both been smoked with Cypress wood from a felled tree on the property. These can be sipped neat, used in cocktails or  served over a large ice cube topped with a splash of Topo Chico. Macerations are $10.

The FLIGHT MENU is two flights of each spirit–Bourbon, Rye, Peated Whiskey, Brandy/Cognac, Gin, Mezcal and Tequila–with the choice of a Staple Flight or a Premium Flight. Flight mats are provided (staple flights on one side, premium on the other) with information about each spirit along with tasting notes.

Call (661) 766-2825 or visit https://www.cuyamabuckhorn.com/to reserve

E-mail: hello@cuyamabuckhorn.com

www.cuyamabuckhorn.com

Facebook

Instagram: @cuyamabuckhorn

LOCATION:   

4923 Primero Street, New Cuyama, CA 93254

A high desert hideaway, Cuyama Buckhorn sits on Highway 166 between Santa Maria and Bakersfield, CA—an hour away from Santa Maria Airport, two hours from Santa Barbara Airport, two and a half hours from Los Angeles International Airport, two hours from Burbank Airport, and just over an hour from Bakersfield Municipal Airport. The L88 airstrip, a privately-owned, public use airport is 2 blocks from the resort.

Nestled in what is referred to as The Hidden Valley of Enchantment—a fitting nickname for this hidden gem of a region—Cuyama Buckhorn neighbors small farms, ranches, wineries, and natural landmarks including Carrizo Plain National Monument, Los Padres National Forest, and Bitter Creek Wildlife Preserve. The area is a popular destination for motorcyclists and pilots.

ABOUT CUYAMA BUCKHORN

Cuyama Buckhorn is a timeless roadside resort, restaurant, bar, and coffee shop in the heart of California’s high desert within Santa Barbara County, approximately 2 hours north of Los Angeles.

First opened in 1952, Cuyama Buckhorn was remodeled by 2 Los Angeles-based designers who sought to bring the rich history of the resort back to life. The modern motel features 21 renovated Western-chic guest rooms, all with dedicated patio areas. Vintage accents and fixtures throughout the resort nod to the property’s rancher history and original mid-century architecture.

For dining, the property features a farm-to-table restaurant, bar, and coffee shop, along with spaces for hosting private events, weddings, or meetings.

Art Beyond the Glass (ABTG) returns for its eleventh annual event on Sunday, June 25, 2023, at the legendary Catch One nightclub!
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Art Beyond the Glass returns for its eleventh annual event on Sunday, June 25 at the legendary Catch One nightclub

By Rebecca Feinstein — 1 year ago

Art Beyond the Glass (ABTG) returns for its eleventh annual event on Sunday, June 25, 2023, at the legendary Catch One nightclub!

Dozens of LA’s top bartenders will make cocktails and showcase their artistic talents, with proceeds donated to Outfest.

Since its inception, ABTG has raised over $250,000 for arts-based nonprofits across the country.

   

Co-founded by Daniel Djang (Thirsty in LA) and Zahra Bates (Global Head of Education, Courvoisier), ABTG is the original celebration of bartender artistry and widely regarded as one of the country’s premier cocktail culture festivals. From painting and sculpture to photography, live music, DJs and more, every ABTG showcases the creative pursuits of bartenders when they’re not behind the bar.

“It’s hard to believe that what began as a casual conversation at Sunny Spot in November 2011 has grown into this extraordinary event,”

says Djang.”

“The cocktail creativity and artistic talent of the bar community in LA and beyond never ceases to amaze me. We are so grateful for the generosity of our sponsoring brands and the numerous venues that have welcomed us into their spaces. Can’t wait to see the extended ABTG family that’s coming to LA for ABTG XI!”

Art Beyond the Glass is taking place for the second time at Catch One, which is graciously being donated to ABTG XI for this exclusive event. Located on Pico Boulevard in the heart of Los Angeles and celebrating their 50th Anniversary, this landmark nightclub was opened by Jewel Thais-Williams in 1973 as Jewel’s Catch One, a pioneering LGBTQ disco. Featuring state-of-the-art sound and lighting, the massive venue spans two floors and multiple indoor and outdoor spaces.

For its eleventh LA event, Art Beyond the Glass is honored to be raising funds for Outfest. Outfest invests in youth, education, representation, and exhibition – supporting and empowering the LGBTQIA+ community to discover their voice, tell their stories, and become the next generation of artists driving change in the entertainment industry.

ABTG is once again partnering with thier fiscal partner Another Round Another Rally, a nonprofit financial resource for the hospitality industry. ARAR co-founder Travis Nass: “It is an honor to be a part of one of the most creative, innovative industry events across the country. We have always loved ABTG, and it is such a pleasure to be able to work with them again this year. Another Round Another Rally is excited to help build ABTG into an official nonprofit as their new fiscal sponsor. We could not be prouder to work with this wonderful organization.”

ABTG will feature dozens of LA’s top bartenders, including Adam Kloos, Anica Amato, Colby Sue, Crystal Mendoza, Brendon Bos, Cody Roehrig, Davey Sarantos, Edwin Rios, Katya Kiyaeva, Kristina Hemphill, Philip Ly, Raul Pool, Sol Luongo, Stacy Noi, and Yered Zotea.

“Art Beyond the Glass has become so important to the bar community,”

says ABTG Head of Production Clare Ward

“Bartenders are makers. We make drinks. We make art. We make community. This is the perfect event to celebrate everything we do.”

 

Guests will also be able to buy bartender art, shop handmade items by bartenders, and bid on silent auction items.

ABTG XI is being made possible by our generous Sponsors:

Accomplice, Bacardi Portfolio – La Gran Familia, Balcones Distilling, Beam Suntory, Black Lagoon, Brand, Callisto Rum, Casa Azul, Casa Lumbre, Casa Noble Tequila, Tequila Mi Campo, Compass Box Whisky, Del Maguey, Diageo, Diplomatico, Empirical, FERNET-BRANCA, Fords Gin, Gray Whale Gin, Jack Daniel’s, Mezcal 33, Mezcal Amaras, Mezcal, Campante, Mr Black Spirits, Mulholland Distilling, Redemption Whiskey, Ritual Zero Proof, Silvergrin Vodka, Slane Irish Whiskey, Spiribam, St. George Spirits, Starward Whisky, Tequila Herradura, Tequila Tromba, and Woodford Reserve.

About Art Beyond the Glass Ticket information

 

ABTG XI will take place from 3pm to 7pm on Sunday, June 25, 2023, at Catch One. General Admission tickets are on sale at ABTG XI Tickets – Another Round Another Rally for $55 per person until noon on June 25. If still available, tickets will be sold at the door for $65 per person. Tickets to this event are only available for guests 21+ and over.

The all-inclusive ticket includes cocktails, art, entertainment, and bar bites. In addition, guests will be able to purchase bartender artwork, buy raffle tickets and bid on silent auction items such as artwork, photography, rare spirits and more. All proceeds from ABTG XI will be donated to Outfest and ARAR.

 

Art Beyond the Glass was founded in 2011 by Daniel Djang and Zahra Bates

 

Art Beyond the Glass was founded in 2011 by Daniel Djang and Zahra Bates as a special event for bartenders to showcase their artistic talents when they’re not behind the bar. From cocktails to paintings, photography, live music, DJs, spoken word and more, ABTG is a celebration of bartender artistry inside and beyond the glass. Proceeds from every ABTG event are donated to a local arts-based nonprofit – to date, ABTG has donated more than $250,000 to these vital community organizations.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Art Beyond the Glass

 

Dropbox link to Outfest Photos:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/j8sqlk6x63mti1tcz2i8q/h?dl=0&rlkey=x2f12idjkphivm9iwy2u0wr1r

 

FOLLOW ART BEYOND THE GLASS ON:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtBeyondTheGlass

Twitter: @ABTGLA

Instagram: @abtgla

 

Catch One

4067 W. Pico Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90019

https://catch.one/#/events

Summertime Wine: Trivento launches #TheFirstWhiteMalbec on Iconic NYC Sunset Cruise with Winemaker Maxi Ortiz
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Summertime Wine: Trivento launches #TheFirstWhiteMalbec on Iconic NYC Sunset Cruise with Winemaker Maxi Ortiz

By Joe Winger — 1 year ago

Summertime Wine! Trivento launches #TheFirstWhiteMalbec on Iconic NYC Sunset Cruise with Winemaker Maxi Ortiz

There’s plenty of “other” product launches and then there’s Trivento’s Sunset Cruise launch for The First White Malbec.  Clearly, Trivento is very excited.

NYC wine and food experts board the luxury yacht, from 1919, at Manhattan’s North Cove Premier Mega-Yacht Club & Marina.

 

A handful of NYC and East Coast wine and food experts board a luxury yacht, built in 1919, at Manhattan’s North Cove Premier Mega-Yacht Club & Marina.  On-board, best-selling wine authors, top wine media, and NYC’s food and wine critics.

 

 

As we set sail, our wine glasses are filled with The First White Malbec in the world, produced by Argentina’s Trivento and Winemaker Maxi Ortiz.

 

 

It’s easy to be taken by the moment.  You look up and see the majestic NYC coastline.  Look around the yacht, even the most local New York cynics have their jaws agape.  It’s just breath-taking to see.

 

 

Moments later, the crew aboard the Ventura Sailing Team are passing out delicious seafood and chicken-based appetizers to pair with Trivento’s White Malbec.

 

Ventura Sailing Team at NYC for Trivento what malbec launch

Ventura Sailing Team are passing out delicious seafood and chicken-based appetizers

 

We sail through the bay, passing the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance, coming up on Governor’s Island and of course, The Statue of Liberty.

 

Passing along the Brooklyn Bridge

Why Trivento’s White Malbec is a world-class Innovation

 

For over 150 years, Malbec has been grown widely throughout Argentina. Its deep purple color, rich aromas of plums and red berries.  It’s perfect for smooth, supple red wines.

The fact that Winemaker Maxi Ortiz dares to take an incredible red wine and turn it into a white wine, shows world-class innovation, confidence and vinification prowess.  But as we’ll learn further below, it wasn’t an easy process.

Ortiz later explains in detail, it took 4 years of trial and error.  Getting closer and closer, but not perfect enough for him.  What we taste today is a culmination of his efforts and lessons.

 

What does Trivento’s White Malbec taste like?

 

By now most of us on the yacht have had a second taste of the wine.  It’s opening up and blossoming beautifully.

The color is surprisingly clear, crystalline.

The nose has aromas of white peach, grapefruit, subtle hint of red fruit.

It’s a very easy-drinking wine.  Especially in the summer.  The mouth has a refreshing acidity, light body. Notes of green apple.  Pairs beautifully well with the seafood and light chicken dishes served here.  I could also see it with a garden salad, caprese or sushi.  Be daring and try it with BBQ as the acid will cut into the fatty meat.

Hearing from Trivento’s Team, Juan Jose Gil

 

Juan Jose Gil directs the Trivento brand in the United States. 

He explains that Trivento was founded in 1996 by the group Concha y Toro.  It was the first time they left Chile to make an investment outside of their origin when they chose Mendoza, Argentina.

They started with a very small vineyard of 154 hectares. Today these Malbec experts have 12 vineyards in four different valleys and over 1,764 hectares of vines.   They offer Malbec at every price point and every value tier.

The company has three pillars: Innovation. Sustainability.  Excellence.

From Juan Jose Gil’s explanation, all 3 pillars are thriving together as we sip their most innovative wine, from grapes farmed on their sustainable vineyards, enjoying its excellent quality.

Trivento Winemaker Maxi Ortiz playfully posing with the Statue of Liberty

Winemaker Maxi Ortiz playfully posing with the Statue of Liberty

Winemaker Maxi Ortiz Reveals His White Malbec Process

 

Ortiz has been working at Trivento since 2006, helping to build it into the fourth biggest winery in Mendoza.

2019 was their first vintage of Trivento White Malbec.  But it’s come a long way from what the world is tasting today.

However, for him, it’s a very special wine for more that just the innovation it represents, but also a positive impact on society:

“Sales from this wine

go to a scholarship program that helps students

with low economic resources and high academic performance to finish schooling.”

 

How did he create the white Malbec?  

He revealed parts of his 4-year process.  He picked the grapes the last week of January, 40 days earlier than regular.  Then they quickly pressed the grapes in order to separate the skin from the pulp.  However it’s not “white” yet.  Then it was more of a rose.

Then he revealed the biggest secret of the process.  A winemaking method that is common with red wines, but not whites.  Ortiz got creative, invented and daring – and it worked.  And unfortunately, we’re not going to share it here today.  As competition is already growing!

“We were the first winery [back in 2019] to make a white wine with a red grape, which is the Malbec.

And it’s fantastic because nowadays you can see at least 10 different wineries making White Malbec.

So this is the first White Malbec and

in a way Trivento creates a new category of wine in Argentina.”

The quality is clearly there,  As Ortiz explains further:

“The grapes came from the same region, from the same vineyard,

from the same places that we use for our [traditional Malbec] Reserve.” 

For those who follow NYC weather, it was supposed to be thunderstorms the day of the Sunset Cruise.  Bravely and happily, the launch decided to move forward anyway!

The weather was dramatic and cloudy (but dry) all throughout the cruise.  Then, as if anointed by a higher power, just as Ortiz finished speaking, the rain started.

A slow, steady rinse that grew stronger.  By the time we returned to dock, it was a heavy downpour.  But no one was complaining.  Wet smiles all around.

If Trivento White Malbec has a way of brightening your day even amidst a heavy thunderstorm, imagine what it can do for your backyard barbecue?

Find more on the Trivento website

Follow Trivento on Facebook and Instagram.

Heraclea Olive Oil delivers award-winning flavor, along with health and heritage, reveals Berk Bahceci
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Heraclea Olive Oil delivers award-winning flavor, along with health and heritage, reveals Berk Bahceci

By Joe Winger — 1 year ago

Heraclea Olive Oil delivers flavor, health and heritage, reveals Berk Bahceci

We are here with Berk Bahceci from Heraclea Olive Oil.

Berk joined me for a conversation (via zoom).  Below has been edited for length and clarity.  Find the full conversation on our YouTube Channel.

I’m excited because I’ve tasted your olive oils and they’re subtle, they’re flavorful, and there’s a great story behind them. And today I wanna touch on all of that and a little bit more.

 

Tell me a bit about your background and how you got into olive oil

 

Berk:  Sure. I moved to the United States approximately 10 years ago for college. Actually. That’s how my story here started. I studied economics at UCLA and then I went to law school at UC Berkeley.

But the day I started law school, I realized something was off. I started questioning whether I was the material to be an attorney. Three years passed by.  I took the bar exam and started working. In my first year I realized, I don’t want to be a lawyer anymore.

I started looking for an exit plan. So I reflected back on myself, my life, my childhood. What is one thing that would  make me wanna wake up every day with excitement?

I realized olive oil is out there. My family owned some olive groves before, but we were never doing this with a business mindset. It was just produced and consumed within family and friends. I came up with the idea to tell my family, why don’t we turn this into a business, create a brand around it, and sell it here exclusively in the United States.

The market itself is very dominated by a couple big players from certain countries. 

I did more research and realized that Turkey is the fifth largest importer of olive oil into the United States, but you are not seeing any Turkish brands on shelves.

What’s the reason for that? It’s probably because producers in Turkey don’t have the means to come here, establish a distribution center like channels, and move product. Selling in bulk is the easiest and most convenient way for those people.

But I wanted to bring a new way for the Turkish olive oil in the United States with Heraclea that’s how we found it.

 

 

We’re definitely gonna get into Turkey in a second.  A lot of the people watching this are wine lovers.  Region is very important.  So tell us about the region that you’re farming

 

Berk: Region has an impact on olive oil as well. That’s the reason why the European Union has a scheme called Protected Designation of Origin. I’m sure wine lovers and cheese lovers will know, when I say PDO, the red and yellow emblem that you see on certain products sold in specialty food stores.

 

PDO is basically a stamp given by the European Union, to distinct products. What do I mean by that? So the variety of olive that we work with is called Memecik. There are over 2000 olive varieties  in the world. 

 

Do me a favor, say that variety again and spell it for us.

 

Berk: It’s called Memecik. It is very unknown, very rare because it is specific to the region that we produce. 

And that’s why the European Union has given a couple years ago to this region and this olive variety, A P D O certification. For example, in California most growers are bequia, right? If they were to plant Memecik, which they can, in California, they won’t be able to have this PDO certification.

So PDO only comes if Memecik is grown in Milas. That’s a very special thing for us and we are very proud to be working with a very rare variety. So when you buy olive oil, it is for certain that you won’t taste it with any other brand because it’s distinct to Milas.

Just the same way that champagne only comes from the Champagne of France.

Berk: That’s exactly what I was going to say. 

 

When did you realize the magic and the power of the Memecik varietal?

 

Berk: This PDO certification is so new that we did not found this business upon that, that certification. It was just an added value with the PDO, but we always knew that our olive oil was distinct in its quality.

It has actually recently been approved by International judges in New York International Olive Oil competition, Japan Olive Oil Competition, Istanbul Olive Oil Competition. We got gold and silver medals from all of these. And this is the first year that we are actively participating in these competitions.

It’s a really good moment for us because usually these things don’t happen in the first or second year. [Usually] you’re a producer for multiple years or maybe generations.  So we’re really proud about that.

 

Congratulations. And just to give someone listening or watching an idea, the scale of these competitions.

Can you estimate how many different olive oils are in that competition?

 

Berk: I would say in the thousands, 2000.  Maybe a hundred companies are winning these awards. You’re in the select field of the top 5-10% in the entire world.

The panel is composed of people from all around the world, from all producing regions, Italy, Tunisia, Greece, Turkey, Chile, Argentina.  Experts. So it’s a good indication that the product is at a certain level of quality.

 

So let’s talk about the behind the scenes and the process of making this award-winning olive oil.

 

Berk: We have around a hundred acres of land with over 10,000 trees that we take care of with a team of seven full-time on the field every day. We don’t use any fertilizers, we don’t use any pesticides. We don’t use any chemicals.  One reason is our grows are literally on the on mountains. They’re not plantations. 

Many olive oil brands have what people call “olive farms” where the companies do intensive and super, super high density farming, which means that where maybe 10 trees would go. They plant a hundred trees. So it’s very compact, producing very high yield olives, but lacking taste because they’re fed with irrigation all the time.

So the olives get really big when they’re given water every day, whereas our olives don’t have irrigation because it’s on the mountains. Our olives, in comparison, are relatively smaller, which keeps the aroma very vibrant. That’s actually the secret behind it.

A lot of people who taste our early harvest olive oil say that it’s a little bit bitter, especially right after the harvest.  That comes from the antioxidants that are loaded in it. Because our olives are very small. The density of antioxidants is higher, so that’s why the bitterness comes in. 

We just prune the trees, cutting the excessive branches because we’re working in a very scarce,  nutrient environment. Like I said, no fertilizers, so you have to keep the trees very optimal by cutting the unnecessary trees and branches so that whatever there is in the soil goes to the fruit.

That’s why our team of seven constantly does these kind of things. These kind of physical touches, no like chemical alteration or anything. Around October we start  walking  around the grow to determine the day of the harvest. That is the most exciting time of the year

Due to not using fertilizers, we really have to optimize the day of the harvest to maximize our production. So when we determine that day, which is mid-October, usually we start harvesting.

We hire local men and women who are living in nearby villages. We go in with a team of 20 to 30.

We keep it for 90 days until January. We don’t want to go into January. Because fruit flies, conditions and a lot of other things impact the quality. 

So we try to finish everything from mid-October until January. We work with a local mill to process our olives. We take two batches every day, one in the afternoon and one at night because we don’t wanna wait in between.

If you start harvest at 8:00 AM and harvest until 4:00 PM the olives that you have harvested at 8:00 AM will have waited nine hours before going into the processing machine. We don’t wanna do that because as the olive waits, fermentation starts and the quality decreases.

So we do two deliveries every day to the local mills, one in the afternoon, and one later in the day. This way we ensure that our olives go right into production within two to four hours of harvest.  Believe me, we’re working really hard to maintain that.

Then we store our olive oil in stainless steel tanks in temperature and humidity controlled rooms with nitrogen gas used as a buffer between the olive oil and the rim. 

Think of a five ton tank.  You fill it out, but there’s always some portion of the tank that is left empty and there’s oxygen in that empty part. When olive oil touches with oxygen in the stainless steel tank as it is stored, oxidation starts, which leads to rancidity, which decreases the quality of the olive oil. So we take that oxygen out by pumping in another gas – of course, food grade safety, no worries there. 

That’s the level of attention and care we give to our olive oil. 

 

Let’s switch to the the tasty part. Let’s talk about the flavor of your two bottles.  Flavor profiles, aroma, anything you’d like.

 

Berk: So we have two products right now. We’re bringing in a third one soon.

Olive oil is the white bottle which is made from olives that we harvest starting from October until mid-November.

And the moment that we switch from early to mature harvest is when the olives start turning into this purplish color. As months pass the green olives start to ripen and then change in color. When we see that change into purple, that’s the moment we say, okay, early harvest is done.

Now we’re doing mature harvest and then everything else that we harvest mid-November, till January, is considered mature harvest. That’s the distinction between the two. 

The mature harvest is the black bottle. And when it comes to flavor profile, there’s one disclaimer that I wanna make, uh, in general about, uh, these, uh, like.

Flavor profiles.  I think to really understand and feel and get this smell. In any olive oil, you have to have a sensory memory, have that experience in your mind, I still remember it.

Here’s an example from my sensory memory:

We had a walnut tree right across the street by our house, and there was a fine paper-like cover, outside of the walnut. Right before they mature, we would take from the tree and taste it and it’s bitter. So that [bitter] taste is in my sensory memory right now.

Same as tomato stems. Like if you touch a tomato plant with your hands and play around and then smell your hands, you’re going to get a very unique tomato stem smell, and that’s like embedded in your mind now. So from now on, every time you taste an olive oil, if there is that distinct smell or taste in it, that’s how you recognize it.

So in our olive oil, early harvest, for example, I get the notes of freshly cut grass, tomato stems, walnuts, banana.

What I was told in this olive oil school that I went to in Spain is, get your hands out there. Touch everything, smell everything. Taste everything. That’s how you develop your sensory memory.

And that’s how you become, as people say, familiar. But you know, like you don’t have to have a certificate to be one. You know, you just go out there and taste stuff and try to. Memorize and remember those smells and tastes.

I was talking to somebody earlier this week about food pairings and he had a similar answer, which was be curious.

Exactly. Taste things, touch things, smell things, and be curious. 

 

I know your website has a cookbook, let’s talk about some of your favorite food pairings with your olive oil

 

Berk: I love  drizzling our early harvest on cheese plates. That’s my favorite thing. Early harvest is more for finishing dishes because it has a bitter aroma to it.

If you cook with it, you may have a bitter taste in the food. Actually, I know people who cook with our early harvest. I know people who drizzle with our mature harvest, so it’s not set in stone.

It really depends on what you like, but generally, early harvest is better for drizzling over salads. Hummus, cheese.  Sometimes  I dip my bread in it. 

That’s a tradition we have in Turkey sometimes, find a piece of bread and dip that into your olive oil, and that’s a good breakfast. 

Mature harvest is for everything else. Cooking, baking, marinating. A lot of people are saying that they use it for marinating.

 

Anything else you want us to discover about olive oil?

 

Berk: Our goals are twofold.  One is, olive oil is a very healthy product for human consumption, There is research showing that the positive effects on health of olive oil, daily consumption of olive oil. We believe that a product that is so healthy for humans should do no harm to the environment.

It’s production should not cause any more trouble to our Mother Nature. That’s why we’re not using fertilizers. That’s why we’re not using pesticides. We think there’s a solution in nature to resolve any problem that these things claim to be curing. That’s number one, producing as environmentally friendly as possible.

Number two is to introduce to the world the intricacies of Turkish cuisine. It is beyond  just kebab. It is just one meal in thousands of distinct and unique recipes. And the way that we treat these recipes are not just a list of ingredients.

To us, these are stories from past generations and that Turkish cookbook has 550 very distinct recipes. Each recipe is associated with a specific region or maybe sometimes even a village. 

 

It almost sounds Farm To Table.

 

Berk: Exactly. That’s the goal. We’re small batch and we have really certain values and principles.

 

Are there any specific health benefits that you wanna cover?

 

Berk: There are a lot.  There are a lot of research.  I’m not a scientist. I’m not a doctor. But consuming olive oil daily helps with chronic diseases. Cardiovascular diseases. Type 2 diabetes, and many more.

We have lab reports showing the amount of antioxidants in our olive oil, which is around 500 milligrams per liter, which is a high amount. Consuming antioxidants is healthy. Olive oil has anti-inflammatory effects as well. 

When you consider all of these things and if you consume fats, why don’t you switch to a healthy alternative where research shows that its consumption helps you.

That’s why as a layman I recommend consuming olive oil on a daily basis. 

 

Berk, you’ve given us a lot of good information. You’ve given us a lot of tasty ideas.

Let’s talk about how to buy and how to, how to where we can buy your olive oil.

 

Berk: We’re available online at heraclea.co. There is no “m” at the end. 

We will very soon be available on Amazon.

If you are in New York, we will soon be available in NoHo. Manhattan. Then if you are in Seattle, very soon we will be available in a grocery chains in Seattle.

Hopefully by end of this year we will be in over a hundred physical locations 

 

LA is Ready for a New Champagne, Give Jeepers Champagne a taste
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LA is Ready for a New Champagne, Give Champagne Jeeper a taste

By Joe Winger — 1 year ago

LA is Ready for a New Champagne, Give Champagne Jeeper a taste.

It’s easy to fall in love with champagne.  Life celebrations.  Work success.  Life’s best memories (hello weddings, anniversaries, babies, birthdays).  If you’re ready to try a new champagne, this is for you.

 

 

Today we had the amazing opportunity to talk (via zoom) with Jeeper Champagne’s Camille Cox.  This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.  For the full conversation, visit our YouTube channel.

 

 

Can you share a favorite memory where you celebrated with champagne?

 

Oh, there’s, God, there’s so many. I can’t even begin to tell you. But the one thing I can say is that you always should carry champagne because in victory you deserve champagne and in defeat you need it. That was Napoleon Bonaparte, if I’m not mistaken? 

I think my most memorable toast with champagne are personal victories  And, of course, business victories as you can imagine. I’ve been selling champagne for a very long time, and I can name a couple that come to mind. One of them a few years back was getting business at the Delta Airlines lounges. Putting another maison there.   At the time, the house that I was working for at the time that was a big victory in itself. And just little victories in life each and every day. Every day is a celebration. 

It’s all relative in how you look at it and how you live your life, but I think every day calls for champagne, to be completely honest with you.

 

I love that,  ‘Everyday calls for champagne’. Jeeper has an interesting story behind it based on the end of World War II.

Can you give us just a very brief history lesson of Jeeper that brings us up to present day?

 

So, as you know, many champagne houses have great stories, and that’s the great thing about Champagne. Every Maison has their story and the fact that you get to go back and find out how it became is super fascinating to me.

When I had the chance to join Jeeper, I went back to look at the story.  A family started  making champagne in the 1800s.  It had its heyday and then it floundered. It changed hands for quite some time. Then a gentleman by the name of Armand Goutorbe, who was working his family vineyards, had to be called to war and ended up in a house in an undisclosed location because everybody was fighting against the resistance at that time.

He happened to be holed up in a place with some American soldiers and they were being bombed and consequently they were all trying to help save each other’s lives. History tells us that Armand was a gentleman who took it upon himself to risk his own life, to pull some American GIs away from the building that was going to be bombed, possibly losing their lives.

In doing so, he impeded his leg and went back to looking over his vineyards in Champagne. The hills aren’t high, but they’re steep. His leg impeded his day-to-day operations. The US army got ahold of the story and some of the soldiers that he saved wanted to pay tribute to him and in all humbleness to thank him for saving their lives. So the US military gave him a Willie’s Jeep, and he rode around in the villages and he became known as “Mr. Jeeper Man”. Two years later, he said, I think I’m just gonna name my vineyards Jeeper. So there it was born Jeeper in 1949 because of a wonderful gift that the US Army bequeathed to him.

We still have the Jeep today on property.

 

 

 

Can we talk about the terroir of the region?

 

We are located in Faverolles et Coëmy, a commune near Reims in the north-west of the Champagne region.  In the Montagne de Reims, the Côte des Blancs and the Marne Valley.

We are mostly a chardonnay house and we use Chardonnay as our primary grape.

We make eight different wines under the Jeeper label. We  have two great certifications for being biodynamic and organic.  Our flagship for the winery is our Blanc de Blanc. Our bottles are color coded in terms of the labels so that they stand out significantly to consumers.

That area has cool nights. A little bit of frost, but beautiful, pristine, crisp grapes from those regions, from the sub regions in Champagne. We own about 80 hectares. We don’t buy any grapes. We use our own grapes. We have the capacity to make 3.5 million bottles, but we hope to make more with some partnerships that we’ve kind of acquired.

Having Michel Reybier as a new partner with Nicholas, the current owner of and partner, who makes the wines too. Nicholas Dubois makes us stand apart from that we’re not right in the middle of Reims. We’re out there, believe it or not.

So when you come to Reims, you’re not gonna see us. You’re gonna have to get on the train or take a little cab and make it to Jeeper. 

I love talking about process.  Our audience is a mix of very basic drinkers up to connoisseurs.

So can you share a little bit of the process and how, how, what, what makes your champagne so unique?

 

What makes us a little bit more unique is a lot of champagne houses only use steel vats. We’re still kind of old school. We do use some Burgundy barrels.  We have one of the biggest barrel rooms behind Krug and Bollinger. We have about 1200 barrels that we use. So for instance, our Grande Assemblage, which happens to be our brut non vintage, we age 20% of the chardonnay that we use in that blend for two years in used burgundy oak barrels and then we do the aging of the lees. We lay it down for about four years. So that’s two years for the 20% Chardonnay laying down for two years. Then the four years makes it a total of six years. So you get a totally different taste. There’s a little bit of maturity there with the oak barrels. 

It’s something completely different. I’ve worked for houses that were stainless steel, so this is something new for me as well too. The aging process, there is some lactic, it just depends on which cuvee we’re speaking about.

Withholding our wines a little bit longer. We’re not big production, we’re not a grower champagne house by any means. We’re just over the hump as a boutique champagne house. We’re just getting started here in the United States. Our biggest production and where we sell the most champagne is in France.

But opening up the United States, it’s tough to build a champagne brand in the US, believe it or not. It’s super tough.

You have to find a way to differentiate yourself, what makes you stand out. I think that’s Jeeper having the name and the story and the total difference of not having stainless steel aging, and that we’re malolactic and that we do use oak barrels in some of our cuvee’s.

 

One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is a few weeks ago when I had the chance to actually taste through the bottles, they did have such a unique taste.

 

So let’s talk about the actual bottles.

 

I’ve mentioned the Grande Assemblage, which is our brut non-vintage. It’s a green label, and I just told you a little bit about that. But the one that is our flagship is our Blanc De Blanc.

I think our bottles are beautiful. We have a patent on the bottle.  People notice how easy it was to take off the foil.

So there’s still a little label underneath the foil that says Jeeper, which is kind of neat for us and it speaks volumes because it doesn’t leave you a mess or end up getting paper cuts from the foil cuts. 

The Blanc de Blanc is big, full-bodied, rich.  Also super elegant. It’s clean. It’s crisp, even though it has a big mouthful. 

Our champagnes are the categories in the last 7 to 10 years that have really ended up getting some traction. I think people are walking away from the norm. They’re walking away from big commercial houses because they wanna see what else is out there. 

Their curious is curiosity’s sake and I think it’s really helped the champagne business. I think the champagne business has always been cyclical, but in the last 7 to 10 years, it’s really gotten a hold and people are really embracing champagne to great success 

Because there’s so many beautiful wines out there, so many different styles and so many cool things that you can learn. I think the more the people, because of the terroir, I always say that champagne is a reflection of the mood of the terroir.

Champagne, the terroir from where we are, its chalky soil limestone. It lends itself to so many different characteristics in the wine. We’re not a big vintage champagne house. 2008 was probably one of the best vintages of the century.  It was gone in a flash. With our 2008, we age it for 12 years on the lees. It’s 88% Chardonnay and 12% Pinot Noir. So there’s that wonderful characteristic and it has a little maturity on it, a little oxidation. 

I’m a vintage champagne girl and a no dousage champagne girl so this one fits the bill for me, but it may not be for everyone’s taste profile. 

I can always tell at the beginning when I’m doing a tasting with the two lead wines that you start off with in Champagne, what someone is gonna like in the rest of the range.  It never fails me. It’s always about 95% full proof. 

It’s so subjective. The 2008 for me is interesting. We’re getting ready to release a new release of Blanc de Blanc coming in May, which I’m super excited about. It’ll be no dousage.

We also now have a partnership, as I mentioned, one of our owners, Michel Repier. There’s a gentleman by the name of Tony Parker, who’s a former four-time NBA champion. A hall of famer. I was just with him a couple weeks ago. Super, super person. He told us his story about where he came from and how much he loves gastronomy.  He’s French.  A lot of people don’t realize that.  He’s from Lyon, and I’m sure the Parisians would beg to differ, but Lyon is supposedly now the gastronomy capital of Paris. So we have him as an ambassador; a gentleman who really loves wine and is very enamored with it, wants to roll his sleeves up.

He’s helped us with our Rose project that we have in Provence, but helping me with Jeeper as well. It’s a great collaboration. It’s been great for me, for the brand, for helping us build the brand here in the US because we’re building our distribution network.

Which is not an easy thing to do, as I can tell you having done it for many years. So we’re looking for new partners that want to build a brand with us who we want to be on the ground floor with.  I feel like the people that bring you to the party are the people you need to stick to.

It’s easy to be a fair weather friend, but I am all about loyalty and building a brand with someone. And making it happen. The wine business is exploding, so there’s a lot of opportunities out there. It’s just finding our niche and letting people know the story and taste the wines.

 

I don’t know that champagne gets enough love when it comes to food. Let’s talk about food pairings.

 

A previous maison I worked for didn’t want us to suggest pairing champagne with chocolate or strawberries.  I think that fallacy of Pretty Woman when she’s having her “floor picnic” as she called it in the movie.  She’s drinking champagne and having strawberries – they are very acidic. But I think it’s really what you want to do.

Do I think it’s the best pairing? Absolutely not. 

I’ve gone through this with many chefs in the past where I’ve asked them not to use chocolate or strawberries, and [while they weren’t happy with that] luckily they did talk to me at the very end of it, but they weren’t very happy. But there’s so many great things out there that you can pair champagne with and the new thing is, Champagne and chicken fried chicken.

As a southerner, I’m a fried chicken lover. It’s an incredible pairing. 

I also think sea salt potato chips with a non-dosage champagne are absolutely fabulous. But let’s look at the classics. What about ratatouille from France? You know, something that you don’t really ever think about. It’s always the ones that are there that you can think about.

Gratin potatoes are an amazing pairing if you’re a big potato lover as I am.  It’s just great. So I think the sky’s the limit depending on what it is you’re drinking. Of course, no dosage champagnes aren’t gonna be great with everything. I also love Dim Sum and champagne, to be completely honest with you.

So all the pairings that are non-traditional, if you will, kind of thinking outside the box. Really making it an opportunity to see: where you can take it? Are you gonna push the limit? I’m all about pushing the limits on a lot of things.  Nobody should be chastised for that on any level.

So if somebody likes what they like, they like what they like. I think the traditional [concept] many years ago: Are you having chicken for dinner? You can only have white [wine]. I love the fact that that’s out the door now.

People learn more and more about wine every day. They’re so enamored with it.  I think the pandemic gave us all an opportunity to stop, take a minute, take a breath, slow down, maybe enjoy things or get into things that we didn’t have the time to do. I think gastronomy is one of them.

People now love to make food at home. People love to drink wine at home. We saw that with the pandemic. There’s a lot of opportunity, everywhere you look. I like the classics.  I’m a foodie.

But I love food and I think drinking it the way you want to drink it and the way you want to enjoy is paramount. Paramount. I don’t think there should be any rules put around that on any level. 

As everyone’s hearing the Jeeper story and getting to know your bottles, what can our audience do for Jeeper Champagne?

 

Helping Jeeper is to buy some [bottles] where we’re distributed. Give something new a chance. Wherever you buy wine, take an opportunity to just treat yourself to something completely different because you never know what’s gonna happen.

It could end up being your favorite wine and you just don’t realize it. Expand your opportunity and your horizons, and that’s what life is all about. 

Think outside the box. Live a little, okay. You, you bought a bottle, but there’s some great champagnes out there that are really economical. We know we’ve taken a little bit of a price increase, but treat yourself, you’ll be glad that you did. I think it, it expands your horizons and makes you see so many other things you didn’t see

 

Where can we find Jeeper Champagne on social media to follow?

 

Jeeper is on most major social media channels.  Please give us a follow and visit our website at: https://www.champagne-jeeper.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ChampagneJeeper/

https://www.instagram.com/champagnejeeper/

https://twitter.com/ChampagneJeeper

Camille, thank you so much for your time. I loved hearing the stories.

 

Thank you so much!

Oregon Wine shares a Tasty, New Release, with Winemaker Aaron Lieberman from Iris Vineyards
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Oregon Wine shares a Tasty, New Release, with Winemaker Aaron Lieberman from Iris Vineyards

By Joe Winger — 1 year ago

Oregon Wine shares a Tasty, New Release, with Winemaker Aaron Lieberman from Iris Vineyards

Sure, Oregon Wine is world-famous for its Pinot Noir.  And rightly so, as the area produces incredible expressions of the varietal.  But that’s not all they can do. 

Award-winning winemaker Aaron Lieberman wants the world to taste and discover all of the incredible wines from the area including Iris Vineyards’s new Pinot Gris which has won acclaim several years in a row.

Oregon Wine

 

Today, Winemaker Aaron Lieberman from Iris Vineyards sits down over zoom to talk about his inspirations, his favorite wines, food pairings and what’s next for Oregon Wine.

 

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.  Find the whole conversation on our YouTube channel.

 

There’s so much to go over with you because you’re in a great area of Oregon.

Last year we had the privilege of covering the 2022 McMinnville Wine Classic, your Pinot Gris won Best in Show and Best White varietal.

 

According to press announcements it’s the first time ever for a Pinot Gris. What was it about that bottle and that year that brought you so much acclaim?

 

The vintage we won that on was the 2020, and I think our Pinot Gris is fairly consistent. So I actually personally felt that the 2021 vintage was better than the 2020. What I think is going on there is that in our growing area Southwest of Eugene we have our vineyard in what’s called the Lorane Valley. We’re a relatively high elevation vineyard compared to the rest of the Willamette Valley. We get a lot more hang time on our Pinot Gris, which allows more flavor development and preservation of acidity, as well as slower and lower accumulation of sugar.

So we ended up with a higher acid, lower alcohol wine that’s very expressive in terms of fruit flavors.

 

I wanna let our audience know a little bit about your background and what brought you to where you are today. Your education in soil and winemaking, but I hope you’ll touch on your Peace Corps time, and your work in Guatemala with soil education.

 

As I was finishing up my Bachelor’s Degree at Oregon State University, I became involved with a couple of different grad students, helping them with their research projects, basically. At the beginning of my junior year [I had already] switched my major from Pre-Vet to Crop and Soil Science.

So the projects I was working on with these grad students involved soil research. One of these grad students had been in the Peace Corps and talked about it frequently and also had a professor who had been in the Peace Corps. They both inspired me to look into it and do it.

I ended up going to Guatemala. The project I worked on was called Corn and Bean Seed Improvement and Post Harvest Management. We were trying to counteract the invasion of commercial corn seed into Guatemala and Latin America. It’s replacing the land raise varietals or the traditional varietals of corn. We were working with those traditional varietals to improve their performance in the field by selecting the plants that were growing well and were the most disease resistant.

The program started four years before I got to Guatemala, so I was the third volunteer and we were really showing some really good results.

 

Something I love about winemaking is such a mix of science and magic, or science and artistry. And it sounds like science is very strong with your background and the magic that you bring to the bottle.

 

Yes, I would agree with that.

 

 

So let’s switch back from Guatemala. You’ve got some great soil types. Let’s talk about how you use the soils in your region to bring such delicious flavor, characteristics and aromas.

 

In our vineyard, we do have some Jory soils, and I think most people who know about the Willamette Valley know that Jory is the preferred soil in the region particularly for Pinot Noir.

Our vineyard is dominated by Bellpine soil. Bellpine is kind of an analog of Jory, but it’s formed in sedimentary rock rather than basaltic rock or volcanic rock. So there’s some significant differences in the chemical makeup of the soil that contributes to the flavor difference in our Pinot Gris compared to some others.

 

The last time I visited, what I heard overwhelmingly from the winemakers is you have to be okay with inconsistency year after year.

 

I want my wines to represent the area that they’re from and the varietal from which they’re made and different weather during each growing season as part of that representation.

So based on the weather and the level of ripeness of the fruit and what we’re tasting in the grapes before we bring them in, we will make some adjustments to how we do the vinification to try to push it in one direction or another, to be at least somewhat consistent.

 

 

Let’s talk about the wines themselves. 

 

Let’s start with the Pinot Gris. The comment I hear the most is white peach. That’s new. I usually hear pear, red apple peel, quite a bit of citrus.

iris vineyards

 

Commonly I get stone fruit comments on our Chardonnay. Whether it’s our still Chardonnay or our Blanc de Blanc.

 

Then there’s the Brut Rose, the Pinot Noir 2021, the House Red Blend. A lot of people will remember 2020 and how that vintage went for us. I refer to that year as the worst year of my life.

 

Let’s talk a little bit about what made it such a bad year.

 

We had beautiful weather during bloom. I started to feel like it was going to be a really great vintage. We’re seeing a really modest crop load and smallish berries, which leads to more fruit forward. Right around Labor Day, the major fires started. Smoke came into the valley for about two weeks which was extremely disheartening.

 

In the Willamette Valley that was really our first experience with that level of damage to the fruit. So a lot of people were scrambling, worried, and ultimately didn’t produce Pinot Noir in 2020.

We made less than we had planned. We applied some techniques to mitigate the smoke effect.

 

Can we talk about what you did to mitigate?

 

Well, there are two things that helped the most. One, we sent some grapes to California to go through a process called flash.  It’s a kind of thermovinification method where the must is heated to 80 degrees celsius and then pumped into a vacuum chamber that boils at a much lower temperature. The water and the skins of the grapes “flashes” to steam in the the vacuum chamber. That steam carries away a lot of bad things. Those things are responsible for the bulk of the smoke effect that you might find in a wine.

 

Then following vintage and some aging, we did some reverse osmosis to remove the smoke effect from the rest of our wine.

 

At the tail end of vintage, I had surgery for appendicitis. As I was about recovered from that, I got covid right at the end of 2020.

 

Fortunately ’21 and ’22 were very similar to 2020 and how the vintage started and ended up, we had some really beautiful fruit and beautiful wines. I’m really excited about ’22 based on what we have in barrel right now.

 

Some people approach wine from a food and wine pairing point of view. I’m not sure if you are a chef or a home cook, but do you have any suggestions for great food pairings for some of your bottles?

I think with our Pinot Gris, I really enjoy seafood.

It’s really good with salad. Brut Rose, I always say if you’re making a dinner and you’re not quite sure what wine to serve with your dinners sparkling wine is always a a crowd pleaser. It’ll go with dishes from salad to steak or pizza. The acidity of sparkling wines makes them really versatile in any kind of food. Fatty foods in particular pair well with more acidic wines, kind of a palette cleansing.

For our Pinot Noir, traditional pairings like salmon and chicken.

 

When you’re going through a year, from growth to harvest, what are the traits or elements that get you excited saying it’s gonna be a good year?

 

Last spring we had a couple of fairly severe frosts after bud break and it was an interesting year because of that. We ended up, to everyone’s surprise, with a vintage that was quite nice and yields that were not really affected by the frost. The vines bounced back with their secondary and tertiary buds set fruit, set a really good crop. We got a nice batch of wine out of it.

If we get into harvest in the rainy season, sometimes your hand is forced and the grapes start to get ripe, the skin softens an they become more susceptible to botrytis and other bad things that you don’t want.

 

But ’22 was nice. We weren’t really forced right up until the end. Around October 20, we had the first big rainstorm come in. 20% of our fruit still hanging. We brought most of it in before that big rain.

But I think we had really good ripeness even at that point.

You’ve been doing in-person and zoom wine tastings, do you have a favorite part of that wine tasting process?

 

My favorite part, without a doubt, is just when I see somebody tasting my wine and the look on their face shows me that they’re really enjoying it. That’s a big reason why I’m in this industry, what we do makes people happy.

 

Do you have a certain memory of including either your wine or someone else’s wine in a great celebration?

 

Several memories. My father and I had a wine business of our own from 2002 to 2015. [A few years in] we had a celebration at a steakhouse in Portland. I ordered a Puligny Montrachet off the menu. I still remember that wine quite vividly and how impressive it was. That changed my mind about chardonnay in some ways.

 

In Oregon, there’s a lot more chardonnay coming out of the Willamette Valley now is a good thing, but it’s still been an uphill battle for producers to get that chardonnay wine passed the gatekeepers, the distributors.

You go to a distributor and they’re like, “Everybody drinks California Chardonnay or white burgundy. They don’t know about Oregon Chardonnay. And when you say Willamette Valley, everybody thinks Pinot Noir, which is great. But we’ve kind of pigeonholed ourselves with that. There are a lot of other nice things that can come out of this valley like Pinot Gris and Chardonnay. So we have some work to do on the marketing and publicity to let people know.

 

Any lessons your winemaking team has learned this past vintage that you can share?

 

 I think that happens every year. Let’s not assume that I know everything because I learn stuff every year as well.

One of the things that I really stress with people who are working for me during harvest, is the importance of fermentation temperature.

 

It’s with white wine, with aromatic whites in particular. You really have to keep the temperature under control. Yeast likes to get hot and ferment fast, so you have to keep those ferments cool, whatever the method is if you’re in stainless with jacketed tanks or if you’re in barrel and you’re taking the barrels outside at night or wetting them down to keep the temperature down. It’s super, super important.

 

With the white wines, you get a temperature or a fermentation that’s too hot and you end up with a wine that’s like generic white wine. It doesn’t have varietal character left in it, that’s something I stress a lot.

 

Then when you talk about red wines, the style of red wine that you’re making is so dependent on a lot of things, but temperature is a big thing. So if you do a cool ferment on a red wine, you’re going to have a red wine that’s fruit forward and aromatic, but it’s not going to be very extracted. It’s not gonna have a big tannic backbone to it. In that way it would be out of balance.

 

Like with our Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, we do a couple of different fermentation methods that end up having different peak fermentation temperatures and then we blend them together to get a wine that is crowd pleasing, easy balanced. So one of my big things is temperature.

 

Are there any topics in winemaking that you wish got more attention? 

 

The fact that I don’t do this alone. If I didn’t have a team behind me doing the right thing and supporting production in the winery, starting with our vineyard and our vineyard manager, who is amazing, grows amazing fruit, all the way through to the marketing team selling the wine or promoting the wine and the sales team selling the wine. I think it’s really important for people to understand that it’s really a team effort. I’m the winemaker, I get the publicity, I get the recognition but there’s no way I could do it by myself.

 

I’m sure you talk to young winemakers all the time. Is there one huge piece of advice you would give a young winemaker from all your experience?

 

A big thing would be, and I’ve made this mistake when I was a young winemaker, if you’re about to do something to a wine and you think you know what you’re doing, but you’ve never done it before, make a phone call.

 

Ask another winemaker that maybe has had the experience and has done that. You’ve got a 5,000 gallon tank of wine and you’re gonna do some kind of adjustment that you’ve never done before. Get some information first.

Building network, building community, reaching out to those with either more experience or more diverse experience.

 

Yes. And in most wine regions, it is a community and people are happy to share their information to help the next guy out. Because ultimately, if we’re all making really good wine in the Willamette Valley, that enhances our reputation as a region. So I think it would be a big mistake for us not to share information.

 

Let’s talk about where people can find more information. 

 

On Iris Vineyards website and social media. Our website is IrisVineyards.com and our handle on every social site is @IrisVineyards.

So thank you again for your time, and it was, it was great to have this conversation. 

Thank you, Joe. I really appreciate your time.

Discover Great Wines with Wine Pro's Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen's new book White Wine Book, available on Amazon now.
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Discover Great Wines with Wine Pro’s Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen’s new book White Wine Book, available on Amazon now.

By Joe Winger — 1 year ago

Discover Great Wines , Wine Pro’s Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen’s new book White Wine Book, available on Amazon now.

Summertime is hot weather, light meals and adventures outside.  All of which pair incredibly well with white wines.

That’s why Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen decided to write a book featuring 1000s of white wine grapes that wine lovers should try.  Some are very common, some are very obscure. But they’re all worth a taste – seriously.

Mike DeSimone, Jeff Jenssen's new book White Wine Book

Mike DeSimone, Jeff Jenssen’s new book White Wine Book

 

Today Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen sat down (over zoom) for a conversation about wine, travel, food and more!

Note: the below interview has been edited for length and clarity.  The full interview is available on YouTube, with clips in this article.

We’re talking about your new book “White Wine” today, available now on Amazon and we have a lot of questions. But first, welcome to the conversation and thank you both for being here.

Thank you. Thank you. We’re thrilled to be here.

For anyone who’s new to wine, these two are absolute wine GOATs. They’re the experts. They’ve written some great books in the past, and their new book is absolutely amazing. Over the past week I’ve had the chance to show it to a lot of people in my life and what I’ve loved about it is everybody from the wine geek all the way down to people who are barely wine drinkers, have all found really interesting reasons to love the book.

In the book you mention the word “invitation” several times. You include casual tasting instructions, the food pairing index, the white wine checklist. You do such a good job of making the wine approachable.

 

 

How important was it when you were building this book, the idea of making it approachable?

 

Wine always is very mysterious to people. And it doesn’t have to be. We really believe it. It’s kind of like our mantra. Open up a bottle of wine, sit around a table together, and there’s some conviviality and communal, you know, and, and communality in that bottle. So when you sit down in a circle and you’re having a glass of wine together, all of a sudden, we’re not so different.

So one of the things that we really wanted to speak to is to make wine approachable. One of things I really appreciate what you just said, is that people from all levels, from wine geeks to wine novices, we specifically set out to write this book with enough information that the geek will be really happy and enough information to intrigue the novice to wanna learn more.

We’ve always said this is the kind of book that you would buy for your Dad who happens to like wine, or you would buy it for yourself or buy it for a girlfriend or a buddy that wants to learn more about wine.

But I will tell you that we’ve been honored; our last book, Red Wine (amazon.com), was actually suggested reading list for people who were studying to become Masters of Wine. So we wrote this book with that idea in mind because we’d like this book to be a reference for Master of Wine students.

 

 

I think a lot of people may not realize just how much wine you might taste in an average year.

When we are tasting wine, whether it’s for a book like this and we’re trying to decide what gets include, or when we’re writing our articles, it’s very easy for us to open up 30 bottles in a day.

But there’s also traveling, going to wine regions, and walking into a winery and visiting four wineries a day where people can pour you anywhere between 3 or 4, up to 20 glasses.

One of the things that we have to make a distinction is how much wine do we taste and how much wine do we drink.

Because when we taste wine, we may open 30 bottles, but you just have a sip, you swirl it around your mouth, you get your impression, and then you spit it out. So you can actually taste 30 or 40 wines in one sitting. The alcohol that you actually absorb in your mouth is probably equal to one glass of wine.

We really have to maintain our wits about us when we’re writing books and tasting notes. And then out of those 30 wines, we’ll choose one or two to put in the fridge and drink with dinner.

So the difference between drinking the wine and tasting the wine is a big difference. Our neighbors absolutely love us because we have these bottles with [2 inches] out of it and put the cork back in and give it to them. So they’re very, very happy. But I think one of the things that we had to do for this book is taste.

There’s about 2,000 recommended wines. I’m gonna say we we tasted close to 5,000 [wines]. Not everything made the cut.

 

 

That’s incredible. So speaking of those 5,000, how do we prevent palette fatigue?

 

One thing for both of us is we both drink sparkling water.

Also, we eat very simple things just to clear the palette, wipe some of the tannins from it. We’ll eat sliced baguette or plain water crackers. That kind of thing. Also, try to break it up. Don’t drink the same style of wine over and over, because you’ll stop noticing the subtleties between them.

It’s training too. I can’t run a marathon tomorrow because I haven’t trained for a marathon, but I can taste 30 wines or 40 wines tomorrow because I’ve trained my palette to discern the differences. So it’s kind of like an athlete, it has to do with training to prevent fatigue.

 

 

So staying on the idea of tasting for a second, how do we talk to a winemaker? Any tips for a less-experienced wine drinker?

 

One of the first, and an easy question to ask, is how much did you make of this wine? Because that actually gives you an indication of how special the wine is, right? If somebody says, ‘Oh, we make a million bottles of this every year.’ Maybe it’s not so special.

If they say, ‘Oh, we only made 2,000 bottles of this and it comes from one special vineyard, that sometimes opens up the question of how special it is.

Another question is, if it’s a blend, if it doesn’t say on the bottle that it’s Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio, and you just know that it’s a white wine, you can ask what grapes are in this.

But people who visit wineries should ask questions. Take that as an opportunity to learn. Read the book White Wine, get some knowledge, and then you go to a winery, go out to California, go to New York State, go wherever you go, and visit a winery and talk to the winemaker and talk to the people who are responsible for making the wine. They’re very generous with their time. They want you to be informed and they want you to enjoy their wine. So do your homework and then learn some more in person, and then go back and read our book again, because you’ll learn a little bit more.

 

Your White Wine book is a mammoth undertaking. There’s a lot of information in there. How did you create all of this?

 

I think actually we were lucky in that we’d already written Red Wine. We worked with our publisher. We actually walked in, knowing that some of our prior books were a little bit text heavy, and said, ‘Hey, we want to do some graphics. For the flavor profile, there might be a picture of a peach and a rose and a lemon. For the food pairing, you’ll see a little plate of pasta and a pig and a steak.’

We worked with the same editor again. We had the structure already so that was a blessing.

When our editor came to us and said we want to publish this book, we were so excited. But then we looked at each other and said, we don’t have a lot of time to write this book. Let’s let, how, how are we gonna do this? You know? So we divided and conquered.

If you love wine, you’re gonna love this book, whether you’re a novice or above.

 

 

My old boss used to tease me because back then I enjoyed white more than red. Why doesn’t white get the respect that red does?

 

You know, you’re very right. We had to fight for this book.

I’m an equal opportunity white wine and red wine drinker and rose, because there are wines for different occasions. Sometimes when you’re having a big heavy steak, you want a red wine, but a lot of times we’re trying to eat lighter, more vegetables, lighter cuisine. It’s summertime now.  Lighter white wines really go with those foods.

 

There’s so many grapes in this book. Is there one lesser-known grape that you want the world to know about because it’s an amazing discovery?

 

We have a holiday coming up this weekend. By the time this is posted, it will just have passed. This coming Sunday is International Pošip Day, and Pošip is a wine from coastal Croatia. It grows in Dalmatia and on some of the islands. It’s this wonderful, delightful, fresh, crisp, citrusy white grape from Croatia that we don’t see a lot of in the US. It’s in more major urban markets. It’d really worthy of attention.

Were there any unexpected surprises as you created this book?

 

When we did Red Wine, we did single varieties and regional blend styles, like Rioja which can have three or four different grapes in a bottle and Bordeaux can be up to six different grapes. That actually includes sparkling wine we covered in Red wine.

We covered only nine regional blend styles and 41 single varieties in White Wine. I just did account. I believe we have 14 regional right grape styles. So things like White Bordeaux, White Rioja fall under a style that’s not necessarily one grape.

Is there a message that you haven’t been asked that you would love to share with a wine loving audience?

 

You can always learn something. Keep learning, keep asking questions.

Sometimes there are some really interesting questions that people come up with.

We are wine experts, we’re authors of six wine books now. We write for different publications. We’re mast head at two different magazines, so we really kind of know what we’re talking about, but we don’t know everything.

So, being able to understand that and admit that, wine is a continuous, ongoing journey and learning about wine is what makes it very exciting. So I’m really happy to have been on the journey so far and I hope have a lot more years on this journey to learn more about wines I’ve never tried.

So thank you so much for your time. Tell us where to find you, where to follow you, your social media websites.

 

We are on Facebook and on Instagram as World Wine Guys. We have a website, www.WorldWineGuys.com for a lot of our articles and videos we’ve done over the last 13 -14 years.

Go to www amazon.com and put in three words, white wine book, it’ll pop up.

And then as you scroll down under, ‘Usually bought together.’ It’s our white wine book and our Red Wine book.

We have some friends that have written some great books, Wine Folly, Jancis Robinson.

We’re not the beginning and the end of wine knowledge. There are so many of our colleagues that we respect deeply. So there’s a lot to learn from everybody.

All I can say is that’s what we’d like for people to learn more, enjoy wine, open a bottle of wine with your family and friends and you know, we kind of drop all of our guards, we drop all of our pretenses and the world will be a lot better place.

Executive Chef Michael Hung and his celebrity chef friends Annc The Colony Palms Hotel Club Guest Chef Series
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Executive Chef Michael Hung and his celebrity chef friends Annc The Colony Palms Hotel Club Guest Chef Series

By Joe Winger — 1 year ago

The Colony Palms Hotel is thrilled to announce the highly anticipated “Join The Club Guest Chef Series” at The Colony Club, featuring renowned Executive Chef Michael Hung and his esteemed celebrity chef friends.

Taking place throughout the month of June 2023, this exclusive culinary event promises an extraordinary dining experience for guests seeking exquisite flavors and a touch of glamour!

Colony Club's The Club Guest Chef Series

Colony Club’s The Club Guest Chef Series

The Colony Club, The Colony Palms Hotel’s signature restaurant, is renowned for its innovative California Fare served throughout the day, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Nestled in the heart of Palm Springs, guests have the option to dine in the main dining room, where they can indulge in Steve Hermann’s modern take on Art Deco glamour or choose the al fresco poolside dining patio with breathtaking views of the mountains.

The “Join The Club Guest Chef Series,” hosted by Executive Chef Michael Hung, will bring together a curated collection of celebrity chefs for four special evenings of culinary excellence. Each event will feature a delectable Five-Course Prix-Fixe Menu, Optional Wine Pairing, and selection of Specialty Handcrafted Cocktails created by The Colony Club, SO.PA, and Hermann’s Bungalows Bar Manager, Kelly David.

Chef Brittany Cassidy

Chef Brittany Cassidy

The series kicks-off on Wednesday, June 7th, 2023, with Chef Brittany Cassidy, Head Chef at Violet Bistro in Westwood. Born and raised in San Diego, Cassidy’s culinary journey spans from Le Cordon Bleu in Hollywood to some of LA’s top kitchens, including Rustic Canyon and Birdie G’s. She will showcase her affinity for crave-worthy comfort food and transportive French Bistro fare in a menu that includes dishes such as her Roasted Beet Salad, and Confit Duck Leg, along with Hung’s Local Halibut Carpaccio and Sauteed Petrale Sole, finished with Cassidy’s Vegan Chocolate Mousse ($89 per person, does not include tax and gratuity).

 

Chef Isaias Peña

Chef Isaias Peña

On Wednesday, June 14th, 2023, Chef Isaias Peña, Caruso Regional Executive Chef of Hank’s and Qué Padre in the Pacific Palisades at Palisades Village, will take the stage. With a deep appreciation for Mexican cuisine and fusion, Chef Peña’s culinary creations at Hank’s and Qué Padre captivate diners with their extraordinary flavors and striking presentation.

Chef Walter Nunez

Chef Walter Nunez

The Guest Chef Series continues Wednesday, June 21st, 2023, with Chef Walter Nunez, Executive Chef of The Rex – Seaside Steakhouse in Redondo Beach. Chef Nunez’s refined approach to cuisine has elevated The Rex’s dining experience, showcasing his expertise in traditional and contemporary culinary techniques.

Chef Chris Oh

The final event of the series will be held on Wednesday, June 28th, 2023, featuring the multi-talented Chef Chris Oh (Seoul Sausage, Escala K-Town,Um.Ma SF, Kamu Ultra Karaoke) and Executive Chef Michael Hung presenting an evening of Traditional Korean Barbeque spotlighting Prime Beef and Japanese A5 Wagyu Beef served on The Colony Club’s poolside dining patio. Chef Chris Oh is known as the founder of Seoul Sausage Co and a winner of multiple TV competition shows, Chef Oh’s innovative culinary creations bridge cultural traditions and redefine the boundaries of gastronomy.

For more information on The Colony Club’s “Join The Club Guest Chef Series” coming up on Wednesday, June 7th, 2023, Wednesday, June 14th, 2023, Wednesday, June 21st, 2023, and Wednesday, June 28th, 2023, please call 760.969.1800 or to make your reservations now, please visitOpenTable.com.

 

The Colony Club at The Colony Palms Hotel is open for Dinner every Sunday through Thursday from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm, and every Friday and Saturday from 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Lunch is server every Monday through Friday from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. Breakfast is offered every Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 11:00 am, and Brunch is served every Saturday and Sunday from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm. For more information about The Colony Club restaurant at The Colony Palms Hotel or to make reservations, please call 760.969.1800 or visit www.ColonyPalmsHotels.com.

 

 

ABOUT THE COLONY CLUB AT THE COLONY PALMS HOTEL

The Colony Club is The Colony Palm Hotel’s signature restaurant where Executive Chef Michael Hung showcases his innovative California Fare for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Guests of The Colony Club can dine inside the main dining room while enjoying Hermann’s modern take on Art Deco glamour or enjoy the warm breezes while dining al fresco poolside with a stunning view of the mountains.

 

ABOUT EXECUTIVE CHEF MICHAEL HUNG:

Chef Michael Hung, a culinary virtuoso, brings his innovative vision and wealth of experience to The Colony Club at The Colony Palms Hotel and SO.PA at L’Horizon Resort and Hermann Bungalows as their newly appointed Executive Chef.

With an impressive career spanning from apprenticeships at Daniel and Aquavit in New York City to working alongside renowned chefs in San Francisco, including Chef Traci Des Jardins at Jardiniere and Chef Roland Passot at La Folie, Chef Hung has solidified his reputation as a rising star.

Notable achievements include his acclaimed restaurant Faith & Flower in Los Angeles, which garnered numerous accolades, and the highly praised Viviane at the Avalon Hotel, recognized by food critics and publications alike.

Now in Palm Springs, Chef Michael Hung is poised to elevate dining experiences, fusing vibrant flavors, local ingredients, and his own creative flair to create unforgettable culinary journeys at these esteemed establishments.

 

ABOUT THE COLONY PALMS HOTEL

Opened in the 1930s, The Colony Palms has a colorful history involving mobsters, athletes, politicians, and Hollywood stars. This Spanish colonial gem, updated by celebrated designer Steve Hermann, blends Hollywood glamour with an art-

deco aesthetic. Located in the heart of Palm Springs, it provides a lush escape just steps from the city’s design district, complete with boutiques, restaurants, and nightlife. With fire pits and intimate alcoves dotted throughout the property, the exclusive and elevated setting features 57 exquisitely designed rooms and suites, unrivaled poolside dining, and a wellness spa with all the latest offerings.

This upscale adults-only boutique hotel and its inviting palm tree-lined pool are set against the backdrop of the San Jacinto Mountains. The perfect place to savor the ultimate Palm Springs experience, The Colony Palms is a laid-back yet upbeat retreat that brings a dash of Hollywood glamour to the desert.

ABOUT STEVE HERMANN:

Steve Hermann is a celebrated designer of high-end homes and hotels. As one of the most prolific designers within California, he is known as the design guru for the Hollywood elite, captains of industry, and foreign royalty.

His innovative and imaginative homes are owned by A-list celebrities, entertainment executives and members of the Forbes top ten wealthiest list. His designs have been featured on Architectural Digest, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel and Leisure, E!, MTV, ABC, as well as in hundreds of magazines and websites worldwide.

One of his projects, called The Glass Pavilion, was published in over a hundred magazines and newspapers and was the third most Googled house in the world. Steve has established a world recognized luxury hospitality company, Steve Hermann Luxury Hotels, of which L’Horizon Palm Springs served as the initial flagship property. L’Horizon has won dozens of awards including the #1 Resort in the world by the readers of Conde Naste Traveler.

Steve has followed up his success by adding The Colony Palms Hotel to his portfolio, which he has transformed into another spectacular luxury resort. When Steve is not designing residences and opening hotels, he spends his time collecting post war, European sports cars, which he enjoys driving with his wife and two young daughters. After 15 years of living in Los Angeles, Steve currently calls Montecito, California home.

Social Media: 

Follow @colonyclubps on Instagram and @colonypalmshotel on Facebook

Follow Executive Chef Michael Hung @chefmikeh on Instagram

The Colony Club at The Colony Palms Hotel

572 N. Indian Canyon Drive

Palm Springs, CA 92262

T: 760.969.1800

www.ColonyPalmsHotel.com

Incredible A. O. C. Dinner! Critically Acclaimed Winemaker Raul Perez Curated by Caroline Styne are Paired with End-of-Spring Menu by Suzanne Goin
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Incredible A. O. C. Dinner June 15! Critically Acclaimed Winemaker Raul Perez Curated by Caroline Styne, Paired with End-of-Spring Menu by Suzanne Goin

By Joe Winger — 1 year ago

Critically Acclaimed Winemaker Raul Perez hosts wine Dinner June 15, curated by Caroline Styne, paired with End-of-Spring Menu by Suzanne Goin.

A.O.C. by Chef Suzanne Goin and Business Partner / Wine Director Caroline Styne, 3rd Street, Los Angeles, California, and Winemaker Raúl Pérez, Bodegas y Viñedos Raúl Pérez.

A.O.C. Chef Suzanne Goin and Business Partner / Wine Director Caroline Styne

A.O.C. Chef Suzanne Goin and Business Partner / Wine Director Caroline Styne

A.O.C., Los Angeles’ ground-breaking small plates restaurant at the forefront of the city’s best dining since 2002, presents an extraordinary evening celebrating the wines of the revered Raúl Pérez on Thursday, June 15, 2023. The wines are curated by Caroline Styne and paired with Suzanne’s end-of-spring menu which is inspired by her love of the Pérez collection. Raúl Pérez will be in attendance to meet and greet guests.

Raúl Pérez Pereira is highly regarded as one of the world’s most visionary winemakers. He gained recognition for his winemaking skills and innovation from an early age. Born in Valtuille de Abajo, a village in the Bierzo region of Spain, Pérez comes from a family with a long history of winemaking. He produced his first vintage for his family’s winery in 1994 when he was just 22 years old, showcasing his talent and passion for the craft.

In 2005, Pérez decided to venture out on his own and established Bodegas y Viñedos Raúl Pérez, a winery that quickly became renowned within the Bierzo appellation. Bierzo, located in northwestern Spain, is known for its distinctive and high-quality wines, particularly made from the Mencía grape variety. Pérez’s wines gained critical acclaim for their unmatched quality, capturing the essence of the Bierzo terroir. Over the years, Pérez expanded his winemaking activities beyond Bierzo to other appellations in Spain. He ventured into Rías Baixas, known for its Albariño wines, Ribeira Sacra, recognized for its steep vineyards along the Sil River, and Tierra de León, an emerging wine region. Despite his expansion, Valtuille de Abajo remains close to his heart and serves as his home base.

Pérez’s winemaking approach is characterized by a deep respect for the land, a commitment to organic and sustainable practices, and a focus on expressing the unique qualities of each vineyard and grape variety. His wines are often described as terroir-driven, showing a sense of place and reflecting the distinct characteristics of the regions where the grapes are grown.

With his innovative techniques and dedication to quality, Raúl Pérez Pereira has significantly impacted the Spanish wine scene. His wines continue to be highly sought after by wine enthusiasts and collectors worldwide, cementing his reputation as a visionary winemaker.

Caroline is enthusiastic about introducing these exceptional wines to their guests. “I discovered Raul’s wines when opening Caldo Verde, and I haven’t turned back,” states Caroline. “His wines are so well made and diverse with a through-line of beautiful minerality and balance.”

Pricing for the four-course dinner with paired wines is $150 per guest, excluding tax and gratuity. Guests dining à la carte can experience a flight of three Raúl Pérez wines to pair with their dinner selections. Prepaid reservations can be secured via OpenTable Experience; limited availability for this exclusive event.

A Celebration of Raúl Pérez

June 15, 2023

kanpachi & bay scallop ceviche, stone fruit, urfa & pistachios

endive, radishes, meyer lemon cream & oil-cured olives

2021 la vizcaina, la del vivo, godello, bierzo

***

spring greens, broccoli kibbeh, avocado, favas & feta

spanish fried chicken, romesco aïoli & chili-cumin butter

2022 los arrotos del pendón, rosado, leon

***

scottish salmon, fennel-potato gratin & beet chutney

sugar snap peas, pea shoots & green butter

2020 castro candez, mencia, ribiera sacra

***

grilled hanger steak, braised leek butter & fried leeks

italian broccoli, green harissa & douro almond dukkah

2020 la vizcaina, las gundiñas, bierzo

***

bittersweet chocolate torta

pecan cookie brittle & coffee syrup

$150 per person, including wine pairing

WHEN:

Raúl Pérez Winemaker Dinner at A.O.C.

Thursday, June 15, 2023

5:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.

Pricing for the four-course dinner with paired wines is $150 per guest, excluding tax and gratuity. Guests dining à la carte can experience a flight of three Raúl Pérez wines to pair with their dinner selections. Prepaid reservations can be secured via OpenTable Experience; limited availability for this exclusive event.

WHERE:

A.O.C. 3rd Street

8700 W. 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90048 – 310.859.9859

ABOUT RAÚL PÉREZ

In addition to numerous other accolades, Raúl was named “Winemaker of the Year” by German publication Der Feinschmecker in 2014 and “Best Winemaker in the World” in 2015 by the French publication Bettane+Desseauve. In the February 2018 Decanter, Master of Wine Pedro Ballesteros wrote, “Raúl Pérez is the archetype of the intuitive winemaking genius.” A picture of Raúl in that same article is captioned, “Is this the best winemaker in the world?” Raúl would certainly not self-apply any of these superlatives. His humility and generosity of spirit far exceed his genius, and that humility comes through in his wines. These are not “winemaker” wines so much as they are unadulterated expressions of the villages and vineyards they hail from.

ABOUT THE LUCQUES GROUP:

With the opening of Lucques, their flagship restaurant, in 1998, James Beard Foundation award-winning Chef/Author Suzanne Goin and award-winning Restaurateur Caroline Styne planted the seeds for The Lucques Group, a Los Angeles hospitality company that comprises two fine dining restaurants – A.O.C. in both Los Angeles and Brentwood. Along with these culinary enterprises, the company also owns the Larder Baking Company and oversees Hollywood Bowl Food + Wine, which curates all the food and beverage outlets at L.A.’s iconic music venue. The duo also operates two new restaurants – Caldo Verde and Cara Cara, and the new Dahlia cocktail bar at the Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel. The Lucques Group is dedicated to seasonally influenced cooking and focuses on sourcing local, organic produce from which Goin creates soulful dishes that are bold in flavor, vibrant, layered and complex.

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