California Summer - day one
We arrive in California for our week long trip to some old, lovely favourites from Mendocino all the way down to Santa Barbera. By Kate
We arrive in California for our week long trip to some old, lovely favourites from Mendocino all the way down to Santa Barbera.
California 2008. I have not been here for over 8 years, but I expect (I hope) that after this trip, it will remain one of my all time favourite wine regions of the world. Certainly, my favourite new world region. Sorry South Africa, but you have another, very special place in my heart. Europe will probably always come first, but the best of here seems to capture just the right amount of glossy opulence without losing that all important edge that all too many new world examples lack.
A completely hideous flight (Virgin really is the most superficial waste of time, both the trains and the planes – all style and absolutely no substance) and then after Jude and I had met everyone at the airport, the drive to Mendocino. We are 6 – the 2 of us, Rebecca, Emily and Amit in the Green & Blue party and Wade from the Grove. It is a very good group. Our first visit was to the Roederer estate in Mendocino right in the north of northern California, so the plan was to drive up there the night before and be close-ish to Anderson Valley for the visit the next morning.
Google Maps said 3 and a half hours, so off Emily, Rebecca, Jude and I went in our funny little Chrysler car, Wade and Amit having left slightly earlier, when our queue for Budget Car rental looked like taking several long years. A wise move since it did. What Google maps had not really bargained for was that we would be travelling during rush hour. So the journey was a very slow crawl around the Bay city, over Golden Gate bridge and then north, with the flow only really starting to move mid way past Sonoma. Emily Jude, and I were rather severely jetlagged, having been travelling for a stupid amount of hours (Rebecca arrived Monday so was considerably chirpier), so the more things dragged, the stranger everything began to feel and the further our destination seemed to stretch into the horizon.
Highway 101 eventually tailed off somewhat and we started travelling through Mendocino proper at which point it began to dawn on me that I had made a very fundamental error. On my last trip, I had not actually booked any motels. I was travelling alone and just found one as close as possible to where ever I happened to finish for the day. As there was a party of us on this trip though and it was August, I did not want to risk any nightmarish ‘no room at the inn’ scenarios and so had booked various places on-line. Budget was a huge concern as we have really had to scrimp and save to do this trip, with Jude and I financing ourselves throughout and Emily and Rebecca buying their own tickets.
The severe drawbacks to multi tasking, in this case, booking motels while simultaneously writing emails and speaking on the phone, again became apparent. I really must learn to stop doing that. It was starting to become horribly obvious that our motel in Fort Bragg wasn’t really at all close to our visit the next day, or indeed anything else for that matter. Also, the town lies at the end of an amazingly windy road through woods of towering spruce which closed in above us, rendering the dusk pitch black. On and on we twisted and turned, with the road signs bringing forth a collective groan every time our headlights illuminated them. When we had entered the wood, it had said 25 miles and these seemed to be counting down horribly slowly. We were very tired and very hungry and the completely lunacy of making Fort Bragg our base became more and more apparent with every mile.
Eventually though, the wood ended and we joined Highway 1 which bought us in over the wide bridge and past a fun fair which was in town. The fog for which northern California is so famous had settled like an enormous eiderdown over the town and the air was distinctly chilly. Fort Bragg is wonderfully simple to navigate, being really a single long strip which looks out to sea, cheap motels being followed by supermarkets, drive through versions of all the big names and then a strange assortment of shops and bars. Our motel was near the beginning of the strip, the sign very prominently and confidently displayed – Seabird Lodge. Free wifi and local calls, indoor pool and hot tub.
We parked up, all feeling faintly hysterical with relief at having finally arrived and passed the pool on our way to reception. This stopped us in our tracks. Through the misted glass, we could see what was really a very small pool. In it, an unfeasibly large woman, slowly and majestically, did a stodgy back stroke down its tiny length while a younger but no less rotund young man teetered on the edge, preparing himself for a dive. In the background, a paunchy, greying gentleman cavorted in the hot-tub with a lady who’s age, although indeterminate, was certainly considerably less than his.
We stood in silence, taking it all in while the fog, and a feeling that we had indeed come to somewhere at the very edge of the world as we knew it, swirled around us.
It was almost 9pm and mindful of the fact that Americans tend to eat dinner very early, we dropped bags and got straight back in the cars in search of sustenance. The receptionist assured us that the brewery on the main street served good food, so we tried there first but they had stopped serving and directed us to a place ‘just down the alley’. I don’t recall the name of this establishment but there, the feeling that the wall of fog we had passed through had indeed transported us to a strange and unearthly place persisted.
A rather drunken, middle aged party apparently celebrating a birthday were at the bar when we entered, but the restaurant was almost empty. The very welcoming lady behind the bar though assured us that we were not too late for food. ‘Willow!’ she called, to someone behind us, “please take these folks to a table’. We turned and I am afraid that the sight of Willow was the final straw as far as my tenuous grasp on social niceties were concerned. I was starving, jetlagged and exhausted and Willow was a waitress too far.
She was a tallish, slim, really very attractive young lady but the combination of the flower- child name and extraordinary outfit was too much for me. Willow was dressed in a short dress of red cotton with a pattern of small sprigs of yellow flowers. It was really very little house on the prairie around the neckline and sleeves and this theme persisted in the pantaloons, completed with white frilling around the edges which protruded from her skirt. Brown cowboy boots and bright green revolver shaped earrings completed the look . She too smiled at us warmly while I turned and fled to the furtherest corner of the room I could see, utterly paralysed by an entirely overwrought fit of the giggles.
Emily, concerned, came to see what the matter was. I think the others had taken my heaving shoulders and shuddering gasps for breath to be an extreme, grief stricken reaction to having to have dinner in a place which, while very friendly, was pretty unprepossessing. All I could really get out, was the strangulated word ‘Willow’ and every time I did, it bought on a fresh wave of histrionics. I really did feel bad as she was really completely lovely and did not actually look at all bad – highly individual (which is a great thing) but not awful by any means. I’m afraid that I remained insensible until well after our orders had been placed though, barely managing to squeak out what I wanted. Willow took it all completely in her stride, bless her.
Dinner was very jolly despite the highly mediocre food, with our attention held by the artwork on the walls – a series of collages featuring as centrepieces, photographs of ladies reclining on beaches, their bottom halves having been painted over in order to turn them into mermaids. These were utterly hideous although strangely compelling – the rather buxom mermaid, ecstatically sniffing a clump of raggedy seaweed being a personal favourite. Everyone else drank beer and I had a glass of Roederer Quartet which, as it was to be our first visit of the trip the next morning, felt particularly appropriate.
We really were completely exhausted after this, so went straight to bed. The swingers and portly swimmers had all deserted the pool which looked, if anything, even seedier, when it was empty. The rooms were actually very good – clean and relatively huge and certainly better value than we would have got closer to Anderson Valley. Also, after Willow, I would not have missed Fort Bragg for anything.
We arrive in California for our week long trip to some old, lovely favourites from Mendocino all the way down to Santa Barbera.
California 2008. I have not been here for over 8 years, but I expect (I hope) that after this trip, it will remain one of my all time favourite wine regions of the world. Certainly, my favourite new world region. Sorry South Africa, but you have another, very special place in my heart. Europe will probably always come first, but the best of here seems to capture just the right amount of glossy opulence without losing that all important edge that all too many new world examples lack.
A completely hideous flight (Virgin really is the most superficial waste of time, both the trains and the planes – all style and absolutely no substance) and then after Jude and I had met everyone at the airport, the drive to Mendocino. We are 6 – the 2 of us, Rebecca, Emily and Amit in the Green & Blue party and Wade from the Grove. It is a very good group. Our first visit was to the Roederer estate in Mendocino right in the north of northern California, so the plan was to drive up there the night before and be close-ish to Anderson Valley for the visit the next morning.
Google Maps said 3 and a half hours, so off Emily, Rebecca, Jude and I went in our funny little Chrysler car, Wade and Amit having left slightly earlier, when our queue for Budget Car rental looked like taking several long years. A wise move since it did. What Google maps had not really bargained for was that we would be travelling during rush hour. So the journey was a very slow crawl around the Bay city, over Golden Gate bridge and then north, with the flow only really starting to move mid way past Sonoma. Emily Jude, and I were rather severely jetlagged, having been travelling for a stupid amount of hours (Rebecca arrived Monday so was considerably chirpier), so the more things dragged, the stranger everything began to feel and the further our destination seemed to stretch into the horizon.
Highway 101 eventually tailed off somewhat and we started travelling through Mendocino proper at which point it began to dawn on me that I had made a very fundamental error. On my last trip, I had not actually booked any motels. I was travelling alone and just found one as close as possible to where ever I happened to finish for the day. As there was a party of us on this trip though and it was August, I did not want to risk any nightmarish ‘no room at the inn’ scenarios and so had booked various places on-line. Budget was a huge concern as we have really had to scrimp and save to do this trip, with Jude and I financing ourselves throughout and Emily and Rebecca buying their own tickets.
The severe drawbacks to multi tasking, in this case, booking motels while simultaneously writing emails and speaking on the phone, again became apparent. I really must learn to stop doing that. It was starting to become horribly obvious that our motel in Fort Bragg wasn’t really at all close to our visit the next day, or indeed anything else for that matter. Also, the town lies at the end of an amazingly windy road through woods of towering spruce which closed in above us, rendering the dusk pitch black. On and on we twisted and turned, with the road signs bringing forth a collective groan every time our headlights illuminated them. When we had entered the wood, it had said 25 miles and these seemed to be counting down horribly slowly. We were very tired and very hungry and the completely lunacy of making Fort Bragg our base became more and more apparent with every mile.
Eventually though, the wood ended and we joined Highway 1 which bought us in over the wide bridge and past a fun fair which was in town. The fog for which northern California is so famous had settled like an enormous eiderdown over the town and the air was distinctly chilly. Fort Bragg is wonderfully simple to navigate, being really a single long strip which looks out to sea, cheap motels being followed by supermarkets, drive through versions of all the big names and then a strange assortment of shops and bars. Our motel was near the beginning of the strip, the sign very prominently and confidently displayed – Seabird Lodge. Free wifi and local calls, indoor pool and hot tub.
We parked up, all feeling faintly hysterical with relief at having finally arrived and passed the pool on our way to reception. This stopped us in our tracks. Through the misted glass, we could see what was really a very small pool. In it, an unfeasibly large woman, slowly and majestically, did a stodgy back stroke down its tiny length while a younger but no less rotund young man teetered on the edge, preparing himself for a dive. In the background, a paunchy, greying gentleman cavorted in the hot-tub with a lady who’s age, although indeterminate, was certainly considerably less than his.
We stood in silence, taking it all in while the fog, and a feeling that we had indeed come to somewhere at the very edge of the world as we knew it, swirled around us.
It was almost 9pm and mindful of the fact that Americans tend to eat dinner very early, we dropped bags and got straight back in the cars in search of sustenance. The receptionist assured us that the brewery on the main street served good food, so we tried there first but they had stopped serving and directed us to a place ‘just down the alley’. I don’t recall the name of this establishment but there, the feeling that the wall of fog we had passed through had indeed transported us to a strange and unearthly place persisted.
A rather drunken, middle aged party apparently celebrating a birthday were at the bar when we entered, but the restaurant was almost empty. The very welcoming lady behind the bar though assured us that we were not too late for food. ‘Willow!’ she called, to someone behind us, “please take these folks to a table’. We turned and I am afraid that the sight of Willow was the final straw as far as my tenuous grasp on social niceties were concerned. I was starving, jetlagged and exhausted and Willow was a waitress too far.
She was a tallish, slim, really very attractive young lady but the combination of the flower- child name and extraordinary outfit was too much for me. Willow was dressed in a short dress of red cotton with a pattern of small sprigs of yellow flowers. It was really very little house on the prairie around the neckline and sleeves and this theme persisted in the pantaloons, completed with white frilling around the edges which protruded from her skirt. Brown cowboy boots and bright green revolver shaped earrings completed the look . She too smiled at us warmly while I turned and fled to the furtherest corner of the room I could see, utterly paralysed by an entirely overwrought fit of the giggles.
Emily, concerned, came to see what the matter was. I think the others had taken my heaving shoulders and shuddering gasps for breath to be an extreme, grief stricken reaction to having to have dinner in a place which, while very friendly, was pretty unprepossessing. All I could really get out, was the strangulated word ‘Willow’ and every time I did, it bought on a fresh wave of histrionics. I really did feel bad as she was really completely lovely and did not actually look at all bad – highly individual (which is a great thing) but not awful by any means. I’m afraid that I remained insensible until well after our orders had been placed though, barely managing to squeak out what I wanted. Willow took it all completely in her stride, bless her.
Dinner was very jolly despite the highly mediocre food, with our attention held by the artwork on the walls – a series of collages featuring as centrepieces, photographs of ladies reclining on beaches, their bottom halves having been painted over in order to turn them into mermaids. These were utterly hideous although strangely compelling – the rather buxom mermaid, ecstatically sniffing a clump of raggedy seaweed being a personal favourite. Everyone else drank beer and I had a glass of Roederer Quartet which, as it was to be our first visit of the trip the next morning, felt particularly appropriate.
We really were completely exhausted after this, so went straight to bed. The swingers and portly swimmers had all deserted the pool which looked, if anything, even seedier, when it was empty. The rooms were actually very good – clean and relatively huge and certainly better value than we would have got closer to Anderson Valley. Also, after Willow, I would not have missed Fort Bragg for anything.
