BevMo's best Moscato: Cameron Hughes Lot 311

Moscato is the hottest wine on the US market. Sales have tripled in less than three years. People buying it aren't generally doing so at the French Laundry or some specialty wine shop. They're getting it as cheaply as possible, often at grocery stores.

But sometimes they're making forays into stores like Beverages & More. Recently I asked Wilfred Wong, BevMo's ebullient cellarmaster, if I could taste all of the Moscatos that BevMo has in stock.

Wong invited me to BevMo's new headquarters in Concord, where he has a freshly built WongCave that's perfect for all the professional tasting he does: multi-temperature fridges, wine glass-specific dishwasher. I'm jealous, and so is Christian Bale. But Wilfred takes better tasting notes than Batman. (Typical Batman note: "Cherry. Pyrazines. MegaPurple. A hint of strychnine. Alfred, antidote please.")

We tasted a lot of Moscatos, and friends, it was a grim business. Lots of sweetness with strong chemical notes. Let me be like Napa Valley Grapegrowers and be the first to call it: The Joker is behind this Moscato craze.

But this was the best of the bunch, clearly made at least by Catwoman and possibly even a member of the Justice League. It's also available at Costco, so pick it up for all those non-wine-drinking friends you're planning to convert. As for me, I would like it best after the meal, in place of dessert.


Cameron Hughes Lot 311 Moscato d'Asti 2011 ($10)
A pretty wine, with light floral notes and lychee fruit on both the nose and palate. Sweet and delicate, with a low level of fizz that's enough to carry the sugar.
I reached Hughes by email in Mexico (Me: "Are you sourcing a Tequila?" Hughes: "No, just drinking it and doing a wee bit of surfing.") and he says that even in a tight market for real Moscato d'Asti from Italy, he has two producers in Asti making the wine for him and expects to have plenty of it next vintage as well.

So that's what he looks like without the mask

Hughes adds: "The Italians laugh at the Moscato craze as they have been doing it for centuries. Nevertheless they're not above making a buck." And neither is he. I could almost hear him laughing in the email. Wait a minute ... could Cameron Hughes, a man whose livelihood depends on keeping secrets, actually be ...

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Napa Valley Grapegrowers issue earliest harvest report ever: 2012 is great!

I got this press release yesterday. In other news, the San Francisco 49ers announced a ticker-tape parade for their 2013 Super Bowl victory!

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Talking shit with Trey Fletcher at Bien Nacido Vineyards

Few vineyards in California -- or anywhere, really -- are as beautiful as Bien Nacido in Santa Maria Valley

Trey Fletcher, the new winemaker for Bien Nacido Vineyards, thrusts a pile of shit at my nose. "Take a whiff of that," he says.

Fletcher is creating single-variety compost for the large vineyard in Santa Maria Valley. He's got individual piles of cow, sheep, horse and goat shit, and he's experimenting to see which creates the best hummus for natural fertilizer for his vines. He may end up using horse shit on one Pinot block, perhaps sheep shit on the Chardonnay, just to see if it makes a difference.

Here, stick this in your nose, Blake! Straight from the horse's, um ...

The one he asks me to sample is horse. It's pretty early in the morning for this, but I lean forward to smell it, which is a lot less commitment than Fletcher, who enthusiastically plunged his hands right into the pile. It doesn't smell, er, horsey; it smells like rich dirt.

"Compost is a lot like wine," he says. "It ferments like wine, and you have to keep an eye on it. I love doing this. This shit is epic." Fletcher keeps sprinklers in his big piles of shit to make sure it doesn't dry out, because then it would turn to dust and blow away (and you wonder where house dust comes from.)

"You must go over big with the ladies," I say. Fletcher, 31, does have a girlfriend, but she doesn't share his love of manure. "The first time I did this, we inoculated a manure pile over 1/4 mile long. She wouldn't even let me in the bedroom."

Suckling vs. Miller: The difference between scandals

Jay Miller of the Wine Advocate and James Suckling of "I'm Here" have both been embroiled in scandals regarding payments for reviews in the last year. Miller resigned his position; Suckling can't really resign from being himself, though he could consider firing his hair stylist.

There's a tendency to lump them together, especially because as Evan Dawson points out, one of the reactions to media coverage of both has been to threaten groundless libel lawsuits in an attempt to shut up bloggers like myself. (Didn't work, nyah nyah.)

Moreover, the blogosphere generally dislikes both men for different reasons. Miller had been mocked for years for his overenthusiastic 100-point scores for big syrupy wines. I don't see as many people mocking Suckling for his palate or his ratings, but his personality ... well, take a look at the "I'm Here" video.



But there's an essential difference between the scandals, and it is this: If the worst thing Miller had been accused of, and has since been exonerated of, had been true, that would truly have been a scandal.

I simply don't see a scandal in the worst thing Suckling was accused of, until he started lying about it. If he would only be honest, we could all move on.

Bonny Doon Querry: hard cider from Randall Grahm

Randall Grahm can't help himself. Sometimes he's an astute businessman who foresees the Riesling boom coming and founds a company, Pacific Rim, to surf that wave. But more often, he likes to drink something and decides to make it himself: damn the logistics, full speed ahead.

That's why he's now in the cider business. He just likes the cider from Asturia, Spain, and decided to try his hand at making it.

For a guy who's one of the best promoters in the wine industry, he's not telling many people about his cider; heck, he hasn't even sent James Laube a bottle yet. I happened to be eating in the same restaurant as Grahm last weekend -- Oliveto in Oakland -- and saw it on the wine list. So I ran to his table and said, "You're making cider?" Without evicting his daughter from his lap, he told me the story.

For his first vintage, 2010, Grahm miscalculated how much pressure the in-bottle fermentation would cause and Boom! Half the bottles he filled exploded. Now he's worked out that problem, so fruit sourcing is his biggest issue.

Spain grows apples specifically for cider; they have more acidity and less sugar than eating apples. Those apples probably exist somewhere in California, but Grahm had a hard time sourcing them, so he decided to make the cider from apples, pears and quince.

The production may be a hassle, but the finished product is quite good. Bonny Doon Querry ($16) is very fruit-forward, yet dry and refreshing. Apple is the dominant flavor, but there's a waxiness to the aroma, possibly from the quince, that gives it good complexity. It's just 7% alcohol and is lightly sparkling.

The Spanish drink cider with mild blue cheese -- well, in Asturia they drink it with everything. I found Querry refreshing in the middle of a meal, as a change-of-pace palate cleanser. I can also see it as an interesting beer alternative with salty snacks while watching football. Maybe that's lowbrow, but in Asturia they're more famous for how they pour cider than how they drink it, so pairing with football might elevate it a notch. And it's nice to see Randall Grahm score another esoteric goal.

You can order Querry from the Bonny Doon website.

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Harris Ranch prime rib sandwich: Best lunch on I-5

If you live in California long enough, you will travel the culinary wasteland of I-5 between Los Angeles and northern California. It's possible that the obsession with In-N-Out's secret menu comes from the fact that there's almost nothing better on this heavily traveled road.

Harris Ranch stands out as the only real sit-down restaurant worth patronizing. It has its own passionate fan base, older than In-N-Out's and less likely to blog about its menu. Everything about Harris Ranch seems targeted at retired carnivores: the pictures of race horses (one named "Soviet Problem") on the walls, the benches upholstered in Holstein.

But there's a reason people brave the aroma of cattle farming to spend the night here: this place has great meat. I prefer to eat in the "Jockey Club," which is what they call the bar, although I never notice anyone there who could come close to making weight, nor would the menu help in that endeavor.

I'm too cheap to spend more than $30 for a steak for a highway lunch, which is how I discovered the "prime rib sandwich." For $18.95, you get a large slab of meat -- I get mine rare -- on a throwaway piece of bread. The meat is well-marbled, tender and flavorful. I get the wedge-cut fries, and they're well-seasoned, slightly crisp on the outside with a yielding center. You get small dipping bowls of au jus and a delicious horseradish sauce that I like on the fries as much as on the meat.

The CHP doesn't seem to hang out outside Harris Ranch, which is a good thing because they have a respectable all-California wine list, including about a dozen reds by the glass. My favorite of what's on there right now is Jenner Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, but that's because I like an edgier wine.

Leaving Harris Ranch, pulling back onto I-5 filled with beef and Pinot Noir: this is why cruise control was invented.

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Working man's lunch in the heart of Côte-Rôtie

The vineyards of Côte-Rôtie loom above the town of Ampuis

The steep vineyards of Côte-Rôtie are not only breathtaking; they were a relief to see, as they meant not only was I not lost; I was about to have lunch.

I drove into Côte-Rôtie from the west using only a GPS, with no map. The closer I got, the more winding and tiny the roads are. The GPS said "recalculating" at every hairpin turn. Big trucks occasionally forced me to drive my rental car into a ditch to get out of their way.

But finally the road dumps me into the town center of Ampuis. Two men sit outside a bar-restaurant-hotel across the street from the church, enjoying a carafe of wine with lunch. I wander in to discover the 10-table place nearly full, with a crowd of working men in stained jeans standing at the bar, most of them having a beer in the heart of the region that makes the best Syrah in the world.

This is a rugby fans' restaurant, with posters of regional champions on the walls. A big flat screen TV plays a cheezy British detective show, "Inspecteur Barnaby." A friendly brown and white spaniel pads over to check me out and spends a few minutes at my feet before looking for a better offer. The hostess is large and walks with a limp to my table, but she's pleasant.