4th and Swift, redividus

It's been too long. After being seduced by Atlanta Midtown's glitzy Empire State South, I drifted away from what might be Atlanta's most inviting, stylish, and inventive restaurant--4th and Swift. But its style and invention is not of the nature of a Kevin Gillespie enterprise. Rather, it is what I had always imagined as a kind of bedrock for good dining, something I would always return to and be able to be both comforted and surprised. After all, it was 4th and Swift that awoke me to the possibilities of the Cherokee Purple heirloom tomato. And their tomato salads are still on the menu when I return today, yet I learn new heirlooms when I arrive. Could one imagine a devoted spouse carefully presenting a Wednesday night meal with such a coquettish grin?

We had a bountiful harvest at meal tonight. Woodfire grilled octopus. Corn chowder with Tybee Shrimp. Sea Bass. Waghu steak.

And most impressively, a Smith-Madrone Cabernet. Rare to find so cultish a cabernet, so artisinal a production, in the sticks. It has the ruby texture, a nose of mountain wildflowers, and a palate of chocolate over fruit, followed by a textured acidity. A wine of great beauty.

So long live the restaurants that do it right.

Day 3 in Wine Country: From Spring Mountain back down the hill

The tasting trailer

After a picnic lunch at Smith-Madrone, we drove up the hill to the Behrens Family winery. Although Spring Mountain is a mom-and-pop place, Behrens does have a professionally landscaped garden, a beautiful view, and a dedicated tasting room. Well, tasting trailer. Their director of marketing is Robin Cooper, and she pours the wines as she unfolds the story of the Behrens Family Winery. The family history is complicated, and at times almost operatic. One confronts a bewildering array of names, both because several wineries operate off of the property, and because the winery itself changed names more than once. So, one might drink an Erna Schein, a Behrens and Hitchcock, or something with the word Drinkward in it and be drinking one of the Behrens wines.

OK then.

I chose to visit Behrens for two reasons. First, it was a small family winery, which appeals because they are not constrained by having to produce 10,000 cases of $20 pinot noir for the mass market. The small wineries can produce more distinctive wines. Second, the winery's reputation was for risk taking. They produced "rich" and "powerful" wines. This is usually a danger sign, signalling fruit bombs, but the welter of reviews online suggested that they made interesting wine. It is one thing to appreciate the hand-crafted elegance of Smith-Madrone; another, however, to be excited by experiment. My taste in most everything is driven by a terrible ambivalence. I lean conservatively towards tradition in my music, food, art, and wine tastes. But I am also attracted to the avant garde. The edge. Throw the rules to the wind. Take risks. Fail. This yin-yang between tradition and experiment informs an aethetic dialectic that keeps me confused about what really is beautiful. Or even just good.

Behrens was busy when we arrived. There were two different wineries running tastings (Behrens and some other one that operates on the space). But I should use busy in a qualified way--this was not the tasting room at Kendell-Jackson, with a long stretch of bar jammed with tourists just off the bus and "intimate tours" conducted every thirty minutes by some schlep. Or at least this is what I presume Kendell-Jackson's tasting room would look like--I've never been. Behrens-busy just meant that there was a terrace pouring going on and one in the trailer. We sat with a couple from Tennessee under the canopy and chatted about what we like about wine.

the gardens at Behrens

Robin (whom I recognized from her picture on the website), ushered the prior guests out of the trailer and told us she'd be with us shortly. I passed the time photographing the gardens. The midday heat was upon us, and the thermometer was quickly approaching the mid-nineties. This was a forty plus point swing from the morning, and I was beginning to regret my decision to forgo my fedora. So when Robin ushered us into the air-conditioned trailer, I suddenly felt sorry for the poor folks having their tasting on the terrace.

Robin walked us through a history of the winery that unfolded with each new wine. Her presentation was well scripted--clever and informative. This was someone who loved the wines she poured, and whose affection for the winemakers was genuine. It lent itself to a nice conversation in the trailer as we enjoyed pour after pour. We learned along the way that the husband-and-wife team that ran the winery had originally owned a restaurant, had started this as a hobby, and that they had been able to turn their attention full time to winemaking after Robert Parker had announced that Behrens' wines were "the next big thing."

Uh oh. Parker is the critic that everyone loves to hate. His famous 100 point scoring system and taste for big fruit favored the New World over the Old, the fruit-forward wine over the tanic-and-acid, and has prompted more than a few winemakers to urge more than a few grape farmers to delay the harvest, over-ripen their fruit, and otherwise make their wines bigger and bolder. Parker's oversized influence has, according to some wine writers, contributed to a "dumbing down" of wine by the creation of a mass palate. As more and more winemakers try to impress Parker, the argument goes, wine becomes standardized. It tastes more like every other wine and loses its sense of "terroir," or place.

I'm not sure I buy the argument. The development of a larger market for wine would necessarily include the production of large-scale, inexpensive quantities to satisfy its burgeoning middle, but that would only seem to multiply the niches of anti-Parkerites out there. I am investigating this phenomenon now, and will post on it later.

But I digress. If I rewind back to the trailer at Behrens, to Robin's announcement that Beherens wines were once (some ten years ago, I believe) christened by Robert Parker as "the next big thing," I can report that I felt the mental equivalent of a fight-or-flight response. I detest jammy wines, especially when they come advertised as claret. I associate Parker with jam, so now I was associating Beherens with it. And this doubtlessly colored the rest of my tasting. Association is a powerful phenomenon, and I could not get over the fact that the fruit was now just a little too big. The alcohol a little too high. These were hot wines. Not quite jammy, but definitely big.

But then we tried the Cab Franc. This is a wine that I have never tasted properly. The grape usually finds itself rounding out a Bordeaux in my glass, rather than standing alone, so I didn't know what to expect. And it tasted ... vegetal to me. Almost stewed. But these are words typically used to describe Cabernet Sauvignon grapes that have soaked up too much water and nutrients on the valley floor. But if a Cab Franc is supposed to taste different, then, well, vegetal might not be the word to describe it. All of which is to say, I was tasting the wine expecting a Cabernet Sauvignon. Which is like tasting pork when you think your tasting steak and then complaining that the flavor is not rich enough.

By now I was confused and petulant. Each wine we tasted came from a different winemaker somehow associated with Behrens. The $100 Cab Franc reminded me of V8. I was losing patience even with the labels, which were small paintings and sported names like "The Road Les Traveled," a tribute apparently to Les Behrens's favorite poet, Robert Frost. Except with the bad pun. ("The Road Les Traveled.")

I honestly have no clue what this was.

I'm fairly certain that the marketing director was losing patience with us as well. The couple who shared our tasting was quite nice, but knew absolutely nothing about wine. The woman kept telling us how much she loved the stories, and it was clear after several wines that they were not going to buy anything. I didn't think we would either, but we ended up leaving with six bottles.

Which, I think, was fitting. The wines were creative. Feisty. Surprising. This was the experimental side of the wine world. Even if the mess of labels, absence of adequate branding and occasional lack of focus was annoying, it was still intriguing.

We made our way down Spring Mountain, hit Lava Vine, and then collapsed back in our room. We had a big night planned at a fancy Yountville eatery, but after drinking too much wine at Jolé while we ate our nightly helping of Padrones peppers, we decided to stick to Calistoga and put the car keys on the shelf.

Day 3 in Wine Country: Smith-Madrone triumphant

Curly, the official winery greeter

Our third day in wine country began much the way the others had. The weather was almost sweater-worthy. The fog obscured the mountains around Calistoga. We pointed the car south on the St. Helena highway, picked up some picnic items in St. Helena, then took the right turn to head up a narrow, windy road to Spring Mountain. Our destination: Smith-Madrone. Finding the winery was a bit of a challenge, but the directions the winery provided us were helpful ("when in doubt, turn right!"). Smith-Madrone is a working winery with no tasting room, no dedicated pourers, and about as little pretension as one might imagine. We parked the car in what looked like a parking ... area and were greeted by an English setter (I think). He led us down the walk to the winery. Stu Smith, one of the two owners, was up on a ladder tripping the hedges. "That's Curly," he told us. "The official winery greeter." I knew it was Stu Smith because of his distinctive facial hair, a full beard and walrus mustache. He eyed me steadily from the ladder. "Are we expecting you?" he asked. Indeed you are, I replied. "Then Curly will take you around the way," he said. Then he went back to work. Curly was as good as his word. Stu's older brother Charles was in the winery, working when we pushed open the enormous sliding door and stepped inside. He turned and greeted us, and asked if we could wait a few minutes. We assured him it was no problem. "Let me pour you something," he said, and promptly poured a glass of Chardonnay for each of us. We walked out, past the holding tanks, and into the vineyards, which start literally right outside the winery's doors.

Hillside vineyards

The vineyards at Smith-Madrone sit on a steep slope. The mountain loam seems fertile enough, but the tough vines look dry and haggard. They practically scowl at you from the roots. The Smith brothers used drip irrigation to establish the vines but now dry farm the vineyard. So the roots dig deep into the mountainside in search of water and nutrients. If the Chardonnay in our hands was any indication, the minerality was apparent, as were subtle flavors past the usual Chardonnay tropical fruits. Here were wines of complex flavors and a round quality.

Charlie, meanwhile, had opened up the doors and called us back in. Curly trotted along after us. We talked for a few minutes, getting to know one another, before Stu came in for some reason or another. He talked briefly with Charlie, who introduced us all around. The Smith brothers were particularly keen to learn that my wife was from western Canada, as part of their clan was located out there. They all talked briefly about how beautiful Banff was. "Watch out for the elk during mating season," my wife said. "They have been known to go after cars." Stuart Smith was unimpressed. "Not if I have my gun," he remarked. If the boar's head on the wall was any indication, we had stumbled across an avid hunter. 

the tough mountain vines

Stu left to go back to work, and Charlie began pouring other wines. Smith-Madrone is famous for their Riesling, which may well be the best in North America. That, of course, is a loaded claim for which there will be no definitive proof, but even the great Steve Heimoff, whose affection for Sonoma County vineyards is no secret, pays homage to the Smith brothers' grapes. I loved the Riesling. It is a wonderful wine, pairable with spicy food, and good on a hot day when a sip or two brings memories of drinking from a mountain spring, with that hint of limestone especially in the back of the mouth. 

As if we needed any reminder that this was a working winery, or that it was the owner who was talking to us, Charlie kept having to take phone calls during our visit. They were always quite short, and it allowed me a chance to take photographs or pet Curly, who had taken up residence under the casks. We tasted the Cabernet and the new Cabernet reserve--Cook's Flat, which is only the fourth varietal that Smith-Madrone produces. It is also four times the price of their Cabernet. This is a wine made for collectors, not for drinkers. It was noticeably different from the Smith-Madrone cab, both by its elegance and range of flavors.  It carries the promise of ageability, if that is even a term. I am obviously out of my depth here.

A barrel in the storage room

"I don't like to describe a wine before you taste it," explained Charlie, apropos of nothing in particular. But it was thrilling to taste a wine that didn't have a paragraph of praise written by the winemaker instructing the taster to find "kiwi, strawberry, and hints of passion fruit" followed by a palate of granite and a "touch" of asphalt. It reminded me of how poor my palate really is, but it also allowed me to explore and expand it. What struck me immediately and has stuck with me ever since my first taste of their wines was just how elegant and, well, European, they tasted. Charlie and Stu prefer balanced wines, not the heavy fruit bombs lobbed into the market by the unthinking producers searching for strong Robert Parker reviews. I got the distinct sense that the Smith brothers make the wine that they want to make. Reviewers be damned.

Curly in the vines. Chewing on a rock.

We shook hands at the end of the tour. Although another group was waiting, he let us hang around to talk about our respective childhoods and, of all things, the Civil War. He wrote down a few of my book recommendations. We said our goodbyes. Charlie told us both to come back to the winery if we were ever back out in Napa Valley.

All of which sounded quite good.  We walked up the hill to the winery's picnic spot. Curly dutifully trotted after us. As I trained my camera lens on vines and olive trees and circling red-tail hawks, I couldn't help but feel like I'd seen something special. As Stu said to us, "once you've seen the top of Spring Mountain, nothing else compares." It was definitely a hidden part of Napa. Perhaps not too hidden, but away from the investment bankers and oilmen who prowled the tasting rooms looking for $1000 Cabernets to show off and the half-in-the-bag bridal parties coasting the wineries in slender sundresses before the big send off. It was quiet up here. And the wine was ... beautiful.

The view from Spring Mountain

Spring Mountain invoked for me memories of growing up in the cattle country of southern Arizona. The Smith Brothers could easily have been ranchers and the community of Sonoita back in the 1970s probably bore a lot of resemblance to Napa, at least in terms of the characters it attracted.  But the economic dynamics were worlds apart. Cattle take more resources than grapes, and that industry was doomed for the small producers, at least in the water-parched desert where 15,000 acres was needed to run 500 head of cattle. When the federal government contemplated tripling grazing fees in the 1980s, the last of the small ranchers headed out, and ranches became land-investment properties for the über-wealthy. Corporatization has also taken Napa and Sonoma. But small producers still have a niche to fill, so we still get to enjoy Smith-Madrone wines. And we are better for it.