We first stumbled upon this brew at the Pasadena Whole Foods – and then after that first time, tracking it down again proved harder. Each time the beer guy either at that Whole Foods or the Glendale location would say, oh, come back on TUESDAY – we might get some more in then, or, oh yes, we’re sold out, that one is quite popular, or worst yet, you know that’s only a seasonal brew, it will be gone completely one day. There’s a reason it’s flying off of shelves – the Anderson Valley Brewing Co. Summer Soltice Cerveza Crema is kind of like a Corona and a Fat Tire made a baby. It has the lightness of a Mexican brew coupled with the spicy creamy lightly fruity quality of a Belgian-influenced beer. It’s so smooth and so easy to drink that you and your loved one(s) can easily decimate a 6 pack, thereby sending you back into the world on a crazy beer-goose-chase. The last time I had a chance to buy this I bought 2 12-packs and should have bought the 3rd one left on the shelf. I should start hoarding them now.

Anderson Valley Brewing – Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema

I have a thing for these wheels of soft, rather bland French cheeses in the wedge-shaped packaging. Maybe it’s just the little wedges I like; there’s also the round Baby Bell cheeses for which you pull the red string to remove the casing – eh, not so into those. I picked up this cheese at Super King Market. If you live in the 90065, you might be familiar with this dangerously-packed ethnic grocery store on San Fernando near the 2 freeway. It carries extremely low-priced produce with some oddities interspersed (recent nabs: oyster mushrooms, green almonds, sunchokes) and all kinds of Middle Eastern food products, including some from countries I’m not even sure we’re supposed to trade with (like SYRIA.) The emphasis does seem to be on Persian and Armenian foods, so when I saw this French cow face, it jumped out at me. It’s nothing super special. It’s a young cheese with a tiny bit of tang, good to smear on a salty sunflower-seed covered cracker. I paired this very nibble with some of the $2 Chardonnay you can buy at Fresh & Easy, the Big Kahuna. Entire snack + wine pairing = less than $10. Vive Le France.

I’ve been attempting flexitarianism lately. I am down to about 1 or 2 meat meals a week. That’s right. 2 out of 21. I used to be one of those bacon people, what gives? Just cutting back. Been watching one too many scary food documentaries (note: Food Inc. is available on Netflix’s watch now service.)

Anyhow, all this abstaining and sadness has suddenly lead me to different restaurants. Gone are my glory days of K-town meateries. Now I find myself sitting in Silver Lake’s little Cru restaurant, wondering what’s going to happen to me, and that little part of me that nearly wept when I ate a Skooby’s cheddar bacon dog a few weeks ago. (Oh god. Best hotdog in the city. Fuck Pink’s.)

But enough about the magical bacon hot dog. Cru’s creative kitchen serves up an extremely satisfying meal. We shared a bruschette app (photo above) and I had a “pizza” – it had a sunflower seed cracker crust, vegan cashew cheese, incredibly fresh and firm crimini mushrooms, and lots of greens. It will never REALLY be a pizza, but it’s an interesting simulacra.

Dessert was the most memorable part of this meal. Look at this lemon cheesecake. How the hell do they make vegan raw cheesecake? What voodoo powers does it take to make something so creamy and so dairy-free?

These people must be wizards.
Cru Restaurant
1521 Griffith Park Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

Quick side reverie: I am not one of those people that feels the least bit funny about buying a wine in one of these tetrapacks, or a wine with a screw top, glass enclosure, or even one of those milk-gallon pull tops. I do however still feel weird about a cheap plastic-y cork though. It’s just so. Target-feeling!

Anyhow, this wine is such a pallet cleanser. I was walking around the kitchen snacking randomly on differing items like a spaz, a little nibble of a rye cracker, some of those Spanish marcona almonds, even a wacky cheddar/jalapeno-stuffed olive from Cisneros Farms (a damn fine olive). Then I take a big sip of this crisp, lime-y Sauvignon Blanc and it just cleared it all out – not in a harsh way, but in a light, summery breeze across my mouth. It’s super pale and clear in the glass with a nice acidity that went perfectly with our dinner that night: grilled vegetables & fruit (leeks, red peppers, tomatoes, zucchini from our backyard, pineapple) and a few slabs of tofu, marinated in sesame oil and garlic.

People always talk about CAT PEE smell when it comes to Sauvignon Blanc. Having two cats, that’s not a smell I welcome in a wine. This one was thankfully cat-pee-clear. Wheee!

($11.99 at Colorado Wine Company)

Bandit 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon
Yes. This thing is an adult juice box, the very kind Buster Bluth would have gotten into trouble over – but much, much better than his Franzia. It will set you back $8 a bottle (but it’s not a bottle? a package? a tetrathingy?) which is a gooood price point because I’m often inclined to buy a few of them at a time and treat everyone to a friendly sipper. Yes, friendly! Friendly how? It has a very-berry-ness that isn’t very heavy or complex or ponderous – just vivacious and open. It would be welcome at BBQs going well with your smoky meats and that ubiquitous potato salad. It’s certainly going to show up at the Bowl this summer with me, for sure. No worries about breaking the bottle, or needing to jam the cork back in. You just put the cap back on. Brilliant. Good for the planet too. Brilliant. I’m drunk! Brilliant.

The Icario Rubi Delle Pietrose 2005
This is a bit pricier than the Bandit, at $20 a bottle, but I find this one a consistently delicious guzzle when I feel a little extra change in my pocket. It’s a mouth-watering blend of Sangiovese (70%), Teroldego (20%), and Merlot (10%) and I feel like the presence of those second two grapes have mellowed out that sometimes-rather-aggressive Sangiovese. It’s smooth but not totally flabby and un-tannic, tasting like pleasant cherries with an herbal sage-y note going on in there. “Very pretty” in the glass, a dark ruby red. A wine to ruminate with. Or wash down so many pieces of Casa Bianca pizza covered in sun-dried tomatoes. Jesu Christo, amigos, do you know how good life can be?

(Purchased locally at my two favorite wine shops).

(Extra points – did you spot the Johnny Depp?)

We hit up the deli and store after eating. I bought olives and a bottle of white wine called a Retsina. The man behind the counter, boasting an awesome giant Greek mustache told me Retsina was an acquired taste, and was also quite good with the olive mix I was taking home. I found this odd right away. Olives are often not served at wine tastings because they can overpower the taste of delicate wines and here was this guy recommending that very practice.

He was right about one thing, Retsina is different from other white wines and it may not be for everyone because of its uniqueness. This Retsina from Kourtaki was deep golden yellow in the glass, with a slightly oily mouthfeel – not silky or slippery like so many other white wines. I would say it felt heftier than the oakiest of California chards but it didn’t have an oaky thing going on at all. In fact what it had going on was PINE: pine on the nose, pine on the aftertaste, with a touch of dirt or something vegetal. The pine note is no accident, the bottle specifically says “resin from the Aleppo pine is added to the must during fermentation to produce the distinctive resinated style.” I think some American palates might find this odd. Pine is the scent of so many of our cleaning products, it’s odd to reposition it in your sense memory as something delicious. Well, not so for the boyfriend. He loved it, quaffed it down with roasted cauliflower and olives. It stood up well to a black truffle and mushroom pizza I paired it with on another occasion. Because Retsina is no wuss in the glass, it can go with lots of strong foods. I bet some stinky stinky cheese can survive a pairing with this. Hmm! The man with the Greek mustache was correct about his olive pairing then! Trust the man behind the counter with a mustache.

I’m not sure I’m going to be curious about Retsina again, but I am curious about the Greek reds. Are they as unique as their whites?

NO WAIT. NOT UNTIL NOW HAS THE WINE DOODAD COLLECTION FELT COMPLETE.

OH JOY OF NERDY JOYS. The only thing that would be better than this Obi Wan wine bottle
stopper…would be an R2D2 stopper. (Get it at the Colorado Wine Company in Eagle Rock!)

Sorry, I got a little ramble-y there. Here’s a plate of bruschette I made, with bread I baked at home (Pane Pugliese, from Carol Field’s The Italian Baker book), and de-seeded tomatoes I actually blanched to get the skin off (I’m usually too lazy and skip BOTH those steps). Making it and eating it was a little PAUSE in my morning. A little perfect pause. And yeah, I did eat it for breakfast!

Great fonts, great everyday sipper. Last time I opened this at a party I didn’t even get to have a glass, it went pretty quickly.

I’ve blogged about this one before. This is a favorite bottle to give to girls for presents. Works out because most of my girlfriends are legitimately bitchy.

When digging through my wine photo archive, I knew I had to choose this one. I was definitely taken with the Billie Holiday painting AND the smooth rich blend inside this bottle. “So nice I bought it twice” is the original photo title.

Spotted this at a Santa Barbara Vintner’s Festival all the way back in 06. I believe you could nab it at Trader Joe’s but I haven’t seen it since. It was a vivacious Syrah with a clever little label.

For a while I was heading to Silver Lake Wine to pick this affordable and easy to guzzle bottle up on a nearly weekly basis. The label’s purty too.

I’ve been in the Seghesio wine club for nearly 3 years now, probably heading into my 4th, and this is one of my favorite bottlings from them, usually a blend of Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, and Carignane – it’s always dark, dreamy, elegant and bold. An Isabella Rossellini of wine, dare I say it? The library card design is one of my faves.

We here in this maison are fond of Mosby’s Teroldego bottling. Every single one of their labels is a work of art.

This is a bottle I dream about, a sparkling Shiraz from Australia, so jewel-like in the glass, full of black cherry splendor. I’d buy it again, over and over. And the fox is awesome too.

Another instance of “so nice I bought it twice”! This 2005 Pinot Noir was an LA Times Wine of the Week and consequently all the boozehounds in LA were snatching it up left and right. The pretty blue reminds me of Tiffany’s blue. Nice clean font. We drank these pretty quickly…yet, I don’t remember much about them except I wanted more, and it was allllll gone.

I’ve saved my most recent favorite for last. This is, hands down, the prettiest winery I’ve been to in Santa Barbara wine country, pouring some of the most elegant small production wines I’ve tasted in a while. The Cuvee Papou was as light as a dream, made up of Marsanne, Grenache Blanc (they don’t grow a lot of this in CA in general), Roussane, and Viognier and a total orange blossom thang going on in the glass. The label on this is classic and art-nouveau feeling, and I highly recommend every single one of their bottles, and not just for their looks either.

Do you have a favorite wine label? Show me!