Rain in Southern California
African white, Alpine Red
Don’t believe the song, it does rain in Southern California. Our youngest son is still in high school and Mrs. Wine Box and I booked a trip for his March break last week to see his Godfather and our good friend. We booked it months ago, before the Great Trade War™, dreaming of lounging around the Godfather’s swimming pool and sipping Santa Barbara Chardonnay between bites of smoked salmon pizza on the patio at Spago*.
It didn’t play that way. We arrived on the first of five nights to see the sun set into the Pacific as we touched down at LAX. For the following five days, it was cool and rained for most of three. One day, in the middle of the holiday, it rained in the morning but cleared up at noon, which was great except that the temperature plunged to Canadian single digit readings. One day was gloriously sunny; our last. I have never been so happy to have my flight delayed twice.
In any event, LA still shines in the rain, and we amused ourselves indoors in a few of LA County’s great museums: The Getty, Norton Simon in Pasadena, the newish Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and the classic La Brea Tar Pits Museum.
This is a wine and food Substack, not a travel one, so to stay in my lane I’ll single out two 19th century French paintings we spied on our visits. Both Caillebotte’s Floor Scrapers that’s presently part of a retrospective at the Getty, and Degas’ Women Ironing which is part of the Norton Simon’s permanent collection, are depictions, radical then, of the labours of the working class. Both also feature a big (possibly magnum) bottle of red wine on hand for periodic refreshment. Next time I worry about my afternoon productivity after a glass of wine at lunch, I’ll try and draw inspiration from these paintings and soldier on.
The other great indoor activity on our stay was eating. The Godfather had gone to the farmers market in anticipation of our visit, and we were greeted with baby asparagus as well as fresh citrus. Fruit and vegetables are wlways in season and local in LA. All the salads, at home or out, were superlative.
The best salad I have had for a long time was at the Fairfax loction of gourmet pizza microchain Jon and Vinny’s. Under a snow drift of pecorino lay shaved zuchino, arugula, fennel and hazelnuts in a white wine vinaigrette. Perfectly matched with a glass of Sicilian Catarratto that had just enough skin contact to be deep yellow, like a ripe lemon rind.
We had Mexican wine at dinner at with modern Mexican food at Mírate, in Los Feliz east of Hollywood. The 2023 Casa Jipi Nebbiolo comes from Baja. I think the joke is that in Spanish the winey’s name is pronounced “hippy”, and the wine was definitely on the low intervention, natural end of the spectrum, though without flaws.
The Godfather found the Jipi Nebbiolo a little too bubble gum fruity for his tastes; I think it goes through carbonic maceration. The rest of us didn’t mind the juicy fruits served chilled. It paired well with the tomato salad garnished with ground grass hoppers.
More serious Nebbiolo, from Valtelina then Barbaresco, was found on the list at Stella in West Hollywood. The former light and prefumed enough to go with sea urchin and raw salmon, and the former sturdy enough to handle cheesy pasta and a giant chop of Wagyu. We ate and drank well.
Stella is the second LA hit restaurant opened by Torontonian Janet Zucharini’s Gusto 54 group. It was packed and full of people having fun. Only when we left, and saw a couple of young ladies dressed to kill walking out of another door, did we realize we had been sat in the grown-up section. There’s half submerged basement bar section of the restaurant where they seat the pretty young things. So very LA.
*Full disclosure: the only Spago I have ever been to is the one at LAX near the Air Canada gates. It has no patio, but the Chardonnay is okay, and so is the pizza.
NEW WRITING AT THE HUB
More about California this week in my column at The Hub, which is a guide for Canadians to US Wine Alternatives while we fight The Great Trade War™. It’s essentially a survey of what’s going on in warmer climate Southern Hemisphere wine regions, especially in the $20 or so range. I look at Argentina, Australia, Chile and South Africa. Read it here.
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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS
PLANETA LA SEGRETA GRILLO 2023
Price: $19.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages
Producer: Planeta
Country: Italy
Region: Sicily
Appellation: Sicilia DOC
Grapes: Grillo
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: N/A (very low)
La Segreta means ‘the secret’. It refers to the woods on the ridge behind the original Planeta winery at Ulmo, where outlaws would hide. La Segreta is also the prestigious house of Planeta’s entry level line of wines. They used to be regularly stocked at the LCBO, but for whatever reason that stopped for a while and they were only available ‘on consignment’ from their importing agent, Noble Estates. They were (maybe still are) a sommelier secret for wines by the glass.
Luckily we civilian consumers can pick up a bottle of the 2023 Segreta Grillo while they last at our local Vintages section. The Grillo grape variety’s parentage is the fruit forward Sicilian grape Cattarato and the super aromatic Muscat of Alexandria (or Zibibbo as it’s known on the island). It tends to come out somewhere in between. I think the closest analogue among popular international grapes is Sauvignon Blanc.
Look for for crisp grapefuit citrus notes that disolve into tropicals like pineapple. An ideal pairing might be fried calamari, but that might be difficult on Friday evening at home. Plain potato chips or salted almonds will do fine, as would scallops or a pasta with shrimp.