Appetizers

According to the calculator with the software that powers this blog, this is the 760th entry I've written since Appetizers began in May 2006. What the calculator doesn't say is that this entry will be my last.

At the outset, I said I wanted Appetizers primarily to be the outlet where I could post observations, news and tips about wine, food and restaurants that might not find as timely a place in one of my dining or wine columns in The Bee. By and large, that's how it worked out.

Less successful was a secondary goal - to encourage readers to ask questions, take issue with opinions expressed here, and otherwise participate in what I'd hoped would be an ongoing dialogue. I suspect the primary reason things didn't work out that way was that I never developed a comfortable blog voice, one that compels and provokes.

But there were other reasons why Appetizers didn't become a kind of online coffee house where anyone could jump in with a question or comment, I sense. For various reasons, readers couldn't even post comments for the first several months it was up and running, and that delayed traction for the anticipated exchanges. I also now realize that blogs need promotion and marketing to develop a following, and that didn't materialize to any great extent.

If I were to stick around, I'd lobby more energetically for that kind of support for all the blogs emanating from 21st and Q. But that isn't why this is my last posting. After I hit the "publish" button I'll pack up the last of my tasting notes, the bumblebee rock paperweight my granddaughter painted for me several years ago, the photo of my wife, and head out the door for the last time. I've accepted The Bee's voluntary buyout, and look forward to eating at The Waterboy, Lemon Grass, Mulvaney's, Biba and other restaurants without fretting about whether the battery in my digital recorder abruptly will die.

I'm going away, but Appetizers isn't. My colleague Chris Macias, who also is assuming much of the food and wine writing at The Bee, will take over Appetizers. He'll bring a fresh and energetic voice to this space, and I look forward to his observations on the local culinary scene. I may even post a comment here now and then. But I'm taking the silhouette with me.

When reporter Blair Anthony Robertson wrote his introductory autobiography for colleagues as he joined The Bee nine years ago, he began:

"If I were going to the electric chair, my last meal would be a smoked barbecue sandwich from Country's in Opelika, Ala. Dessert would be chocolate cake and ice cream smushed together like I have been doing since I was 4. Then I would have a glass of 2% milk. I hear they put a $50 limit on the meals. If they didn't, I would also have six martinis from Morton's."

Robertson isn't going to the electric chair, but he soon will occupy another hot seat, as The Bee's new restaurant critic.

Cathie Anderson, The Bee's features editor, announced Robertson's appointment following a tryout dinner, sample review and interviews involving in-house candidates who had sought the position.

Robertson, a native of Ottawa, Canada, earned a degree in English at Augusta State College (now University) in Georgia before embarking on a career as a newspaper reporter in 1987.

He's an avid home cook, Frank Sinatra fan, book collector, cyclist and golfer whose preferred writing instrument is a fountain pen he fills from a bottle.

As The Bee's restaurant critic, he succeeds me, who has held the post from 1984 to 1989 and again from 1994 until today. I recently accepted The Bee's voluntary buyout offer and will leave the paper at the end of the week.

No wines from the Sacramento region qualified for the Wine Spectator's list of the top 100 releases for 2008, but a wine with a local connection did finish high in the roundup.

That would be the Mount Eden Vineyards 2004 Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay ($42), ranked 13th on the list. Only one California wine placed higher, the Seghesio Family Winery 2007 Sonoma County Zinfandel ($24), coming in at No. 10.

Neil and Bernice Hagen of Sacramento are the principal owners of Mount Eden Vineyards, long celebrated for chardonnays that are crisper, longer lived and more European in style than their riper, richer and more heavily oaked California counterparts.

Of the 100 wines on the list, 14 are Californian. For a full rundown, go here.

On the eve of its seventh anniversary, Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts in Napa again is reinventing itself, and no longer will be the culinary center envisioned by the late vintner Robert Mondavi.

According to an online report by Paul Franson for the trade magazine Wines & Vines - the full story is here - the name Copia will live on in "satellite campuses with wine bars and stores," but the future of the monumental center itself in downtown Napa is very much up in the air.

Franson reports that Copia CEO Garry McGuire plans to sell the building by the end of the year, then either lease back quarters in the facility or move to someplace smaller.

No events are being scheduled at Copia for after the end of the year, and the Mustard Marketplace scheduled to be at Copia during next spring's annual Mustard Festival has been moved to Robert Mondavi Winery, reports Franson.

With a debt of $78 million, Copia earlier laid off staff and cut back programs after failing to generate anticipated tourist traffic.

Relax, and continue to enjoy an occasional glass of wine, or two, scientists are saying as they take a closer look at the results of a British study that claims potentially hazardous levels of heavy metal ions could be contaminating many commercial table wines (see the earlier posting below).

The Wine Spectator, in a comprehensive follow-up to initial news reports of the research, quotes one authority as saying the study targets the wrong contaminants, and that drinking water often contains more metals than wines. That would be George Soleas, vice president of quality assurance for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which routinely tests the wines it sells in the Canadian province for heavy metals and other contaminants.

"I'm not trying to minimize the fact that contaminants get into wine, but they are targeting the wrong contaminants. Most people will drink two glass of wine a night, but eight glasses of water per day, and if they take a multivitamin tablet they get two milligrams of manganese on top of that, so how is the metal obtained from wine going to kill anyone?,"
says Soleas, who has degrees in clinical biochemistry and enology.

The French won't be making one of their more dramatic incursions into Napa Valley after all. Their deal to buy historic Chateau Montelena Winery at Calistoga has fallen apart. According to the winery's principals, their French suiter, Reybier Investments, which owns the esteemed Bordeaux estate Chateau Cos d'Estournel, "has been unable to meet its obligations under its contract with the Barrett family" of Chateau Montelena.

Jim Barrett, who acquired Chateau Montelena in 1972, is to remain the estate's owner and will not put it up for sale, according to a press release issued by the winery this morning. He wasn't elaborating on what went wrong with the sale, which in July he called "a dream marriage." "This is a perfect fit...We could not have asked for a finer team to carry on this legacy," Barrett said in July.

No price was disclosed, though at the time the British wine journal Decanter speculated that Chateau Montelena was fetching $110 million from Reybier.

Chateau Montelena, founded in 1882, shot to celebrity in the spring of 1976 when its 1973 chardonnay was judged the best take on the varietal in a blind Paris tasting involving comparable French wines and French wine judges.

More recently, it served as the storyline for "Bottle Shock," a movie about the 1976 Paris tasting that was released this past summer.

Despite the collapse of the sale, Barrett said in his statement that the winery's principals are "energized by the enthusiasm and vision expressed by all the parties who bid for ownership of Chateau Montelena."

His son, Bo Barrett, is to continue as a limited partner in the winery, specifically working on undefined "special projects." Greg Ralston is to remain as managing director, while Cameron Parry will continue as winemaker and Dave Vella as vineyard manager.

If you drink wine, you likely gather wine corks. When the bottle is empty, you could just throw out the cork. Too many, however, have stories to tell, memories to evoke, a funny drawing, a witty saying or a helpful telephone number. Someday, you're apt to think, you'll find a use for those corks. As a consequence, they gather in bags in the garage, basement or barn. And you still don't have a solution about what to do with them.

Now, the Whole Foods Market chain and ReCork America, a recycling program sponsored by cork producer Amorim, are teaming up to give wine enthusiasts another option to dispose of their stained and torn corks.

The two companies are launching a six-month trial program whereby wine drinkers can dump their old corks into recycling bins in the wine departments of 25 Whole Foods stores in northern California and Reno. The participating markets include the Sacramento store and the Roseville branch, which is to open Wednesday.

Wine corks, noted Roger Archey, program manager for ReCork, can be converted into a wide range of secondary uses, from floor tiles to fishing-rod handles. An estimated 13 billion natural corks are used by the world wine trade annually, Archey says.

Officials of Morton's The Steakhouse, who last summer revealed plans to abandon their branch at Westfield Downtown Plaza, now are announcing that their new nearby Sacramento location will open Nov. 18.

The expanded and more visible restaurant will be in the lobby of the US Bank Building at 621 Capitol Mall. The new site is to include floor-to-ceiling windows, a Bar 12-21, a patio, and lunch weekdays.

Bar 12-21, which takes its name from Dec. 21, 1978, when the first Morton's opened in Chicago, is to feature a "bar bites" menu of such snacks as crab cakes, cheeseburgers and filet-mignon sandwiches.

For nearly two decades, American thirst for wine has been driven in part by one study after another to show that a regular glass or two seems to have several far-reaching health benefits.

Now a report out of Britain suggests that that string of positive endorsements could be coming to an end. According to news reports, researchers Declan Naughton and Andrea Petroczi of Kingston University in South West London have found potentially hazardous levels of heavy metal ions in many commercial table wines.

In analyzing wines from 16 countries - but not the United States - they found that metal ions were of high enough concentration to pose potential health risks in wines from 13 of the nations. Only wines from Argentina, Brazil and Italy didn't jeopardize health because of their content of metals, say researchers.

The report, in the online Chemistry Central Journal, suggests that a daily 250-milliliter glass of white or red wine could expose imbibers to a potentially higher risk of chronic inflammatory disease, Parkinson's disease, premarture aging and cancer.

The researchers used as safe a value of 1 in calculating the "target hazard quotients" (THQ) of potentially toxic levels of metal ions in wine, a technique developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Monitoring by the English researchers generally found levels much higher than that, ranging from 50 to 200 for Hungarian wines and up to 300 for Slovakian wines.

Researchers focused specifically on seven metal ions, including vanadium, manganese chromium, copper, nickel and lead.

Naughton and Petroczi call for more research to pinpoint the source of metal ions showing up in the wine - grapes? soils? insecticides? fermentation tanks? - and to determine the upper safe limits for their consumption. They also found THQ levels above 1 in orange juice and stout.

At UC Davis, meanwhile, Dr. Andrew Waterhouse, intermim chair of the department of viticulture and enology, said the faculty is aware of the study and is analyzing what it may mean. "A couple of things seem a bit odd," says Waterhouse. "Their scoring system seems to have each metal equitable in risk. That's surprising. Lead is more dangerous than copper."

He also found some of the study's findings contradictory, questioned whether the consumption pattern on which it was based it realistic, and concluded that his own early analysis of the data didn't find any reason for alarm.

The university, adds Waterhouse, isn't monitoring heavy metal ions in wine, but that soon could change. "Chemists here would like to do a similar survey of California wines to see what is going on, so we'll talk with some industry folks to see if they want to pursue this or not," Waterhouse says.

The British researchers indicated that they aren't so concerned about the issue that they will stop drinking wine, but they are proposing that levels of metal ions be added to wine labels.

Sacramento restaurateur Randy Paragary is something of a history buff. That's evident at his newest restaurant, Cosmo Cafe at 10th and K downtown. He not only has dressed up lounge and dining area with magnificent photos of the city's business core during an earlier heyday, he's hauled out of storage the collection of political memorabilia that once brightened his Capitol Grill at 28th and N, now Ink Eats & Drinks.

And now he's nearly nailed down a deal that would give him and longtime business partner Kurt Spataro half interest in one of Lake Tahoe's more historic and iconic dining and drinking destinations, Chambers' Landing at Tahoma on the lake's west shore. The two plan to team up with old Tahoe hand Rick Brown to lease the seasonal hot spot, which includes a bar on the end of a pier and a restaurant just above the beach. The bar dates from 1857 or 1858 and has seen duty as general store, schoolhouse and post office as well as tavern.

The three plan to lightly remodel both structures over the winter and have them ready for their next incarnation by Memorial Day, when the facility customarily reopens for the summer. Paragary says seating at the bar on the pier will be expanded and its traditional burger menu will be upgraded along the lines of Taylor's Automatic Refresher in Napa Valley and San Francisco.

The menu at the shoreside restaurant, meanwhile, will be rewritten to offer more casual dining than Chambers' Landing has been recognized for in the past. The culinary style will be California Cuisine, says Paragary.

The three are sure to retain, however, the restaurant's signature tropical cocktail, the Chambers' Punch, which Brown is credited with creating in the 1970s.

Graham Rock, who had been running Chambers' Landing for 18 years, says he gave up the facility because of his concern that consumers are cutting back in dining out while they're in the Tahoe Basin, because of homeowner-association restrictions on what he wanted to do with the site, and because he wants to concentrate on his other restaurant, Graham's in Squaw Valley.

For the first time, Sacramento is included in Zagat Survey's guide to "America's Top Restaurants" (Zagat, 348 pages, $15.95). The 2009 edition, just rolling out to book shops, covers 1,516 restaurants in 45 cities. The guide's evaluations are based on the experiences of more than 145,000 volunteer surveyors who eat out more than an average three times a week.

This past spring, Zagat officials invited Sacramentans to send in their comments concerning the food, decor, service and cost of area restaurants. From that database, Zagat's editors chose 20 restaurants as the Sacramento area's best.

They include many of the usual suspects - Biba, Ella, Firehouse, Lemon Grass, Mulvaney's, Paragary's and The Waterboy - but also a few surprises: Boulevard Bistro in Elk Grove, Frank Fat's in downtown Sacramento, Kru in midtown Sacramento, La Bonne Soupe Cafe in downtown Sacramento, Osteria Fasulo in Davis and Tower Cafe along Broadway in Sacramento.

The top five restaurants ranked for their food only are La Bonne Soupe, The Kitchen, The Waterboy, Mulvaney's and Biba.

The five most popular restaurants, which takes into consideration surveyor comments concerning service, decor and cost as well as food, are Mikuni, Biba, The Waterboy, Ella and Mulvaney's.

The survey also found that Sacramentans tip an average 18.6 percent compared to the national average of 19 percent; that two-thirds of Sacramentans are willing to pay more for food that is sustainably raised compared with 59 percent for the U.S. average; and that Sacramentans rank second only to San Franciscans in considering locally grown or locally raised foods "very important" or "somewhat important;" in both cities, 40 percent to 44 percent of the people who responded said such foods are either "very important" or "somewhat important," while on the national average just 26 percent of diners thought such foods were "very important," while 43 percent thought them "somewhat important."

Nationally, 65 percent of those surveyed feel trans fats should be banned in restaurants, compared with 62 percent of Sacramentans who feel the same way.

Both nationally and in Sacramento, diners' favorite cuisine is Italian, followed by "American." Sacramentans are keener on Japanese and Mexican food than the rest of the country, and are in line with national preferences for Thai, Chinese and Indian cuisines, but aren't nearly as enthusiastic for French dishes as the rest of the nation.

The narrative for each restaurant is compiled from comments submitted by surveyors. For example:

Frank Fat's: "The oldest continuously running restaurant in Sacramento, this 'beautiful' 70-year-old is a downtown Chinese 'institution' where 'ghosts of legendary legislators linger' and 'you're likely to bump into state politicians' 'doing their deals' while being 'served whip-crack fast.'"

La Bonne Soupe Cafe: "'Sweet' French chef-owner Daniel Pont serves 'love between two pieces of bread' and what's possibly 'the best onion soup in the universe,' all 'artistically mde' to order."

Mason's: "The 'diverse, hip crowd' is as 'nice to look at' as the 'friendly, prompt' servers, but the real eye candy is in the 'schocking' bathrooms, which you 'must see' to believe ('don't do anything funny' - 'you're being watched!')."

Zocalo: "When the bar crowd arrives, 'you'll need a megaphone to talk to your date.'"

Nicholas Sampogna, a spokesman for Zagat, says the Sacramento section of "America's Top Restaurants" is a prelude to a stand-alone pocket guide for the area to be published after the first of the year. That guide is to include around 120 restaurants.

Sampogna didn't know how many Sacramentans participated in the survey. "America's Top Restaurants" is just starting to arrive at bookstores, but also can be ordered online at www.zagat.com.

Montevina Winery, which when it was founded in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley in 1970 led to the revival of the Sierra foothills as a fine-wine region, is going away, in a manner of speaking.

As of Jan. 1, the winery will be renamed Terra d'Oro, which since 1993 has been the brand Montevina officials have used for their most highly regarded wines. Montevina will remain as a brand, in large part for wines made with grapes grown elsewhere in the state. Terra d'Oro - Italian for "land of gold" - will become the name of the winery and will stay as the brand for wines made principally with foothill fruit, says Jeffrey Meyers, the winery's vice president and general manager.

Montevina, owned by Trinchero Family Estates in Napa Valley, produces around 250,000 cases a year, Meyers says. About 80 percent of that total is marketed under the Montevina label, 20 percent as Terra d'Oro releases.

"Terra d'Oro will focus on Amador and foothill wines, zinfandels especially, our heart and soul," says Meyers. "With Montevina, we want to do a lot of different things." Under the Montevina label, for example, the company just released a cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and merlot, all made with fruit from beyond the foothills. "Terra d'Oro will be the brand for this area."

A little more than a month ago I asked readers of this blog and The Sacramento Bee to let me know what my next wine or feature should be. I had five candidate stories, ranging from olive oil to absinthe. The topic that readers said they most would like to read about would be the one I'd pursue. Much to my surprise, they said they'd be most interested in a feature about proprietary blended wines - how they differ from varietal wines (the way wine customarily is labeled and marketed in the United States), why vintners make blended wines at all, whether blends are simply leftover varietal wines tossed in to a vat to get rid of them, which blended wines are the best, and so forth.

The resulting package of stories was published in today's Food&Wine section of The Bee. You can find it here.

I appreciate the questions readers asked, and hope they got answered. I enjoyed their comments about blended wines, and took advantage of their tips, especially the one from Neil Edgar, the Elk Grove resident who 20 years ago, when he was living in the East Bay, came up with the term "meritage" for a class of blended wines based on the traditional grape varieties of Bordeaux.

I think this approach to settling on a story has possibilities, but if I were to do it again I'd do it a bit differently. For one, I'd compress the time between deciding on the topic and getting it in the paper. For another, I'd more often post progress reports to the blog to keep readers up to date on developments. Both of these thoughts are prompted by my belief that more frequent interaction between reporter and reader would spur more helpful interaction. Overall, however, I was pleased by the response from readers, and in concluding want to thank those who participated so generously.

The 2009 edition of the Michelin Guide to San Francisco restaurants and hotels just arrived by FedEx, but if you have the 2008 book you may not need the new one. Though 55 new restaurants have been added to the directory, only five of the total 448 have been raised into the ranks of starred establishments.

Only one of the five, Coi, annointed with two stars, is in San Francisco. All the other new starred restaurants are outside San Francisco. They all got one star: Murray Circle in Sausalito, Plumed Horse in Saratoga, Trevese in Los Gatos, and The Village Pub in Woodside.

The French Laundry in Napa Valley's Yountville remains the only Northern California restaurant to receive Michelin's highest tribute, three stars.

In all, the guide lists 25 restaurants with one star, six with two.

Perhaps mindful of the nation's struggling economy, Michelin officials are playing down the starred restaurants, which also tend to be the more expensive, in favor of their "Bib Gourmand" category, which the company's inspectors have designated as their favorites for good value. This year, 55 qualified for the category on the basis that guests could expect to get two dishes and a glass of wine or dessert for $40 or less. The 55 include Aperto in San Francisco's Mission District, Betelnut Pejiu Wu in San Francisco's Marina District, Cook St. Helena at St. Helena in Napa Valley, Mirepoix at Windsor in Sonoma County, and South Park Cafe in San Francisco's SoMa District.

The guide, which sells for $16.95, doesn't include Sacramento.

Daron Rahlves, who in 13 years as a member of the U.S. Ski Team became one of the nation's more decorated skiers, is joinng a new team in a business with its own steep and tough terrain - restaurateuring.

Rahlves, who moved with his family to Lake Tahoe more than 20 years ago so he could hone his skiing, is teaming up with Mark Estee and JJ Morgan in their popular and acclaimed Truckee restaurant Moody's Bistro & Lounge.

"I wanted to become connected with something that is well-established," Rahlves says in a press release concerning the new partnership. He is to have a small but unspecified stake in the restaurant.

When he retired from competitive skiing in the spring of 2006, Rahlves, who during his career won seven national titles, including four in super-G, said he wanted to settle in Truckee to start a family with his wife Michelle, race dirt bikes, surf and appear in ski films. He and his wife have two children, and he continues to compete at X-Game and skiercross events.

Estee and Morgan could use the additional help, given their current expansion kick. In early December they are to open Baxter's Bistro & Lounge in The Village at Northstar. Also, Estee on his own recently opened a hamburger joint, Burger Me, next to Moody's.

Not much ground was covered this past week in gathering information for the blended-wines story, though I did attend a few tastings that gave me a chance to catch up on the current releases of such iconic California proprietary wines as Opus One and Insignia. I also went to the annual regional Fall Trade Show & Tasting of Southern Wine & Spirits at the Hyatt Regency Sacramento, and there focused almost solely on proprietary blended wines. Generations from Charles Krug Winery was impressive, and attractively priced at around $50, which is low by Napa Valley standards for proprietary wines based on cabernet sauvignon. The M. Coz Meritage from Cosentino Winery, Profile by Merryvale Vineyards and Trilogy by Flora Springs Winery also all showed the complexity and persistence that blended wines are intended to yield.

Yesterday, while at Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, I spotted another longtime personal favorite among blended proprietary wines, though it isn't from Napa Valley and it isn't expensive. It's Reds by Laurel Glen Vineyards in Sonoma County. Reds, however, is made with Lodi grapes. Patrick Campbell of Laurel Glen introduced Reds in 1995, marketing it from the start as "a wine for the people." He's kept the price at or below $10 ever since, even though the wine is made with fruit from some really old vines, including a stand of carignane that goes back 121 years. (Old-vine zinfandel accounts for the wine's foundation, and there's some petite sirah in there as well.)

To judge by the 2006 Lodi Reds ($10) I picked up yesterday at the Co-op and we had with dinner last night as a prelude to the vice-presidential debate, Campbell is sticking to his goal of producing an everyday wine of intriguing layering and uncommon grace. It's a wine out of the traditional European mold, which is to say it's wiry and dry, with measured sweet fruit, a stream of ticklish spice, a note of dust, and a spine that gives it the fortitude to stand up to a wide range of foods. It put me in mind of a fine Chianti Classico at a sidewalk trattoria in Florence, and all the joyous memories such a scene suggests. We had it with the thin-crust combo pizza from Chicago Fire Pizza, and found the wine didn't back down from the robust sausage while also not overwhelming the sweet green pepper. This is a wine for the "Joe Sixpack" that Gov. Sarah Palin soon was talking about. "Doggone it, that's a wine all the people can endorse," I imagined her saying as I finished my last glass.

Tomorrow, we'll be back on the trail, not the campaign trail, but the trail to find some more proprietary blends, this time during Amador County's "Big Crush" winery weekend. Rain or shine.

This notion of blogging about a story as it is reported and written has had one especially surprising result. The story is about blended wines, more specifically American-made proprietary blended wines, the availability of which looks to be on the rise. I knew going in I couldn't write about these wines without mentioning "meritage" wines. These are wines blended with two or more of the varieties of grapes grown historically in Bordeaux.

At any rate, the international Meritage Association is based in California, where it was founded 20 years ago, and since has grown to more than 200 member wineries. If you visit the association's Web site, you learn that the term "meritage" was the winning entry in a national contest. According to the association, "meritage" is a blend itself, a portmanteau word that combines "merit" (for quality) and "heritage" (for the Bordeaux tradition of blending wines).

That isn't how Neil Edgar remembers it, however, and as the person who came up with the winning entry, he should know. When the contest was held, Edgar was living in the East Bay and working as an assistant manager for the Alpha Beta chain of grocery stores. He now lives in Elk Grove, works as a consultant to waste-management and recycling companies, and got in touch when he saw our recent items here about blended wines.

A longtime wine enthusiast, Edgar says that in responding to the contest he got out his dictionary, several wine books and began to play with different possible names for the prospective association. Eventually, he pared down his two favorite candidates - "American montage" - into "meritage." He's more amused than irked by the association's spin on the term's history, and isn't at all peeved that the group also says it's to be pronounced "mer-eh-tij" instead of the "mer-eh-tazh" he envisioned. "I got over it, it's been 20 years," Edgar says.

His prize for coming up with the winning entry was to be two bottles of each "meritage" wine made by member wineries for 10 years. He figures he got about a fourth of the total due him, but he isn't complaining. He got plenty of "meritage" wines, enjoyed many of them, and gave others to family members, colleagues, friends and charities.

"I haven't gotten any in six months or so, but I don't know what I'd do with it all anyway. It's more than I can drink," Edgar says. He's still a "meritage" fan, but also is keen on zinfandel, sangiovese, shiraz, pinot noir, gewurztraminer and riesling. "Unfortunately, I didn't name any of them."

For lunch today, I stopped at Ocean King along Stockton Boulevard. The barbecued pork and chicken were just OK, certainly not as captivating as the Chinese newscast that played out across the large high-definition screen at the front of the restaurant throughout the meal. It was devoted almost entirely to today's launch of Shenzhou 7, a three-man spacecraft now hurtling about the globe.

China's third manned space mission, Shenzhou 7 is to include the nation's first spacewalk. Headlines of other news creeped across the bottom of the screen, alternating with even more information about Shenzhou 7 - it carries three astronauts, the spacewalk will last 30 minutes, the mission is to go on for three days, 30 emergency plans have been developed should the crew run into trouble.

But the one factoid I couldn't quite get over simply said that "80 food varieties" were aboard Shenzhou 7. The tidbit leaves observers wandering how big each portion is, how they will be shared, and, naturally, what they are. But no matter how you dice it, that seems like a heck of a lot of food for three men over three days. No wonder China is considered the crucible of one of the world's more revered cuisines, if not the most revered.

The first component upon which to develop a story about blended wines is to determine whether they indeed are increasing in number and popularity. So far, hard evidence hasn't materialized. At my request, The Nielsen Company is looking into its tracking of the sale of wines to see what it might have about the availability and performance of blended wines, but officials didn't sound too encouraging that their research goes that deep and specific. Other customary sources also don't have solid evidence concerning the sales of blended wines. Anecdotally, however, they all agree that they are seeing more blended proprietary wines on the market, evidence that winemakers see an opportunity worth capitalizing on.

One source is Paul Wagner, president of Balzac Communications & Marketing in Napa Valley. Though he doesn't have any figures concerning the sales of blended wines, he concurs that they do seem to be more common in the marketplace. Here's his explanation for the apparent increase: "Part of the trend is directly predicted by marketing theory. When the market is saturated, everyone is looking for an advantage - wine they can sell that nobody else can make. And with literally hundreds of cabernets and chardonnays on the shelf, a lot of wineries are making a proprietary blend that can't be copied: a wine the consumer has to buy from them, because she can't get it from anyone else."

Among other things, the Wine Market Council studies the attitudes and preferences of wine drinkers, but it doesn't break down its data into blended wines, says the group's president, John Gillespie. He concurs that more blended wines are on the market, and notes that the range is wide, from the first growths of Bordeaux to simple and cheap everyday wines, but he just hasn't seen any quantitative material to back up this hunch.

Next, I hope to check in with the Meritage Association, founded 20 years ago to promote wines that involve a blend of grapes grown traditionally in Bordeaux.

A footnote: One of the luxuries of working in the features department at The Bee is that I usually have some time to research a story. There are exceptions, but for the most part features writers don't have the daily deadline pressures of reporters in the newsroom on the second floor. What's more, I customarily juggle a few stories and columns at a time; right now, I'm working five I hope to finish over the next week. One of them isn't this story on blended wines, though I need to wrap it up within two weeks. This is just my way of asking your patience. In the meantime, any other thoughts or questions you have concerning blended wines would be welcome.

Sacramento culinarians can stop fretting about whether they will be able to buy their Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas panettone and even Easter ham at Corti Brothers, East Sacramento's longtime one-stop gourmet market.

For their Fourth of July hot dogs, however, they may or may not be able to get their picnic provisions at 59th Street and Folsom Boulevard.

In a bittersweet fall sequel to a drama that played out through the summer concerning the future of Corti Brothers, four major actors in the play confirmed today that Corti Brothers will remain where it's been since 1970, but not beyond next May 31.

A four-paragraph "publicity statement" by Sacramento attorney John M. Poswall, representing owners Darrell Corti and Allan Darrah of Corti Brothers, says little more than that an agreement has been reached for "an orderly move to a new location."

"It is expected Corti Brothers will occupy the current site through May 31, 2009, while they locate a new site in the area," says the statement.

Corti says he has no idea where the new store will be, but that he has retained a leasing agent to scout the community for potential settings.

Beyond that, he and other principals to the issue were largely mum, though in the prepared statement Corti pointedly praised his landlord, Nancy Cleavinger, for her "long-term support of our family-owned business."

Corti also thanked Michael Teel and his family for their "understanding" during the controversy and wished them "every success in the unique food concept they will bring to Sacramento."

The future of Corti Brothers became uncertain in July when Corti announced that the store would close this fall because Teel had leased the quarters for a branch of his proposed group of gourmet grocery stores, Good Eats.

But earlier this month, on the eve of a rally to protest the takeover, Teel said he was abandoning plans to occupy the premises.

The future of Corti Brothers remained uncertain, however, because Teel had signed a lease for the building and needed to renegotiate the deal before he could walk away from it.

"Yesterday, I signed documents to release me from my lease obligatons. I'm totally out of that project," said Teel today.

That doesn't mean, however, that another lease for a Good Eats at the Corti Brothers couldn't be drawn up, and Teel sounded amenable to that possibility.

When asked whether he might be interested in the Corti Brothers site after May 31, Teel said, "Yeah, if it's free and clear, vacant, and there's no deal with anyone else."

(Teel also said that the first Good Eats, which he originally had hoped to open this holiday season in Folsom Boulevard quarters formerly occupied by the restaurant Andiamo, won't be ready before April. The Andiamo site, said Teel, is intended to be primarily the kitchen to prepare foods to be stocked by the Good Eats stores, but without other sites ready to accept the dishes he isn't in a hurry to open the place. He also said he has a second Good Eats location "in the pipeline" but declined to be more specific other than to say it would be in midtown.)

Sacramento attorney William Roscoe, representing Nancy Cleavinger, who owns the building occupied by Corti Brothers, declined to comment on the Poswall document or to speculate on the future of the property. "I can't give you any further answers," said Roscoe. "Peace for the moment has been achieved. I'm not going to make any comment on what happens May 31."

Well, I'm surprised. Two weeks ago on this blog and a week ago in the Dunne on Wine column in The Sacramento Bee I asked readers to tell me which of five story topics would interest them the most. I'd then pick the subject that elicited the most responses and write here about the process of pulling the feature together. The potential stories concerned crowd-control issues at winery tasting rooms, an apparent rise in the number of American-made blended proprietary wines, the holding of a home olive-oil tasting, the resurgence of the liquor absinthe, and the status of the dessert wine port.

First, let me thank all those people who responded to my request. More readers expressed themselves than I anticipated, both by posting comments on the blog and in e-mail messages and phone calls. If I were a betting man, I would have gambled that the dubious behavior of some people at winery tasting rooms would have generated the most interest. It didn't. It actually got the fewest number of votes, which explains why I'm not often seen at a blackjack table.

The subject that readers said they are most interested in reading about is blended wines. Why am I surprised? It just doesn't seem as inherently colorful, unusual and personal as other topics. It's a subject that intrigues me, sure, but I just didn't expect so many others to be excited about blended wines. Incidentally, very few replies looked to be from sources with a vested interest in the subject.

So how do I start to write of blended wines? First, I'm using the remarks of readers to provide some direction. Among other things, they want to know just what goes into blended wines; several readers are suspicious, asking whether blended wines simply are made with leftover batches of wine for which the winemaker has no other use. I suspect so, but we'll see. People want to know what are the really good blended wines, which is a question I especially look forward to answering because it means I get to taste several of them.

I put the topic of blended wines on the list of potential stories in the first place because I sensed that more are showing up in the marketplace. If so, I find this curious because winemakers, wine merchants, sommeliers and the like have complained for years that they are tough sells. Throughout the country's modern winemaking era, American wines have been packaged and sold as varietals more than blends, and that's what much of the wine-buying public has come to expect and ask for - chardonnay, zinfandel, pinot noir and the like, not blends with fanciful names.

First, however, I need to learn whether more blends actually are being made, and, if so, why. That means checking in with the usual subjects - firms that track sales, such as The Nielsen Company; marketing consultants like Napa Valley's Paul Wagner; and wineries that recently have released new blended wines, such as Trinchero Family Estates of St. Helena, currently introducing a blend simply called Red. Phone calls have been made, e-mails dispatched. Now I'm waiting for replies. Here's one, from John Gillespie, president of the Wine Market Council, who in response to an e-mail query says to give him a call. Excuse me as I do.

I've heard that Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama has a pretty nifty wine cellar, but his people haven't gotten back to my people (me). His wine collection may be even more impressive than the cellar at the White House, which wouldn't be difficult to surpass, according to Elin McCoy's illuminating chat with Daniel Shanks, who for more than a decade has been overseeing wine service at state dinners. The White House has just 500 to 600 bottles in its cellar, notes Shanks, who provides McCoy with several other enlightening tidbits about how he goes about finding wines to pour at official functions. Her report was posted today at Bloomberg.com.

More depressing news has arrived from Decanter.com, which is reporting the death of the world's most outspoken, colorful and influential proponent of sauvignon blanc, France's Didier Dagueneau. He was killed yesterday while pursuing one of his other passions, flying. Among other things, he was celebrated for producing perhaps the planet's most complex and resonating sauvignon blancs.

Scott Smith, who in October is to mark his 21st anniversary as the general manager of the midtown Sacramento restaurant Biba, expects to return to work Thursday after being battered and robbed when he finished a late-night shift last week.

Smith says he was nearing his car in a parking garage at 29th Street and Capitol Avenue at about 12:30 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 7, when he was attacked by a man who beat him to the ground and retrieved his wallet before fleeing.

Smith drove himself to the emergency room at nearby Sutter General Hospital, and has since been recuperating at home from injuries that included a concussion, fractures to orbital bones, a lacerated lip, a chipped tooth, and abrasions and bruises. He had 13 stitches under one eye, five under the other. He may yet face surgery for damage inflicted about his eyes. His wallet contained "maybe $40," says Smith. "I'm usually cautious, but I walked out by myself that night," he notes.

No arrrest in connection with the assault has been made, say Sacramento police, who describe Smith's assailant as an African-American male, 18 to 26 years old, weighing 190 to 210 pounds, standing 5-10, and wearing a light-colored t-shirt.

Since the attack, Biba employees have been urged to park at a new garage at 28th and N streets, but a chef who heeded the advice had his car broken into a few days later, says Smith.

After you break a leg and get laid up for three months, what are you going to do? If you're longtime Sacramento chef Mark Helms, who for the past three years has been executive chef at Tapa the World along J Street in midtown, you use your down time to plan your own restaurant.

And come late October or early November, with his right leg virtually healed, he'll open it. It will be called Ravenous Cafe, and it will occupy quarters currently occupied by Plan B Cafe at River Lake Village in the city's Pocket neighborhood. "I've had nothing but time on my hands," says Helms. His plans for Ravenous call for the space to continue to be a neighborhood restaurant with a New American menu - "what I like to eat myself," says Helms.

So where does that leave Lionel Lucas, who opened Plan B Cafe in April of 2007? He's delighted, given that the restaurant has been popular since it opened and he's been eager to move into larger quarters. He'll get that early next year at Arden Town Center, Fair Oaks and Watt. He's closing Plan B Cafe Oct. 18 to let Helms move in and to prepare to relocate the business. "It will be twice the size, with a patio four times the size," says Lucas of the new site. He hopes to open there in January or February. Given the larger size and what he expects to be an upgrade in ambience, he's dropping "cafe" from the name.

Masque Ristorante, the posh regional-Italian restaurant that opened at La Borgata shopping complex at El Dorado Hills in the spring of 2004, has closed. Friday was its last day, says publicist Nancy Mallory.

From the outset, Masque was expected to challenge midtown Sacramento's Biba as the premier Italian restaurant in the region, and during its first two years was both immensely popular and critically acclaimed. Restaurant writer John Mariani of Esquire magazine named Masque one of his 21 best new restaurants in the country for 2004.

But early in 2006 executive chef Angelo Auriana, who after 18 years had quit the highly acclaimed Italian restaurant Valentino in Santa Monica to move to El Dorado Hills, left Masque, and it struggled to regain its early esteem.

Developer Roger Hume, a principal partner in Masque, was not immediately available to comment, and Mallory said she wasn't authorized to speak to the reasons for the restaurant's closure. "I hate to be useless, but I'm useless," said Mallory.

As newspaper managers try to staunch the draining of readers and revenue, one suggestion being debated within the industry concerns a restyling of the traditional gatekeeper role of the media. That is, editors have been gatekeepers, determining what news gets into the papers, the form it takes, where it's placed, and so forth.

Howard Weaver, vice president of news at The McClatchy Company, which owns The Bee, blogged not long ago that the gatekeeper role of editors has been diminished by the accessibility and speed of so much news and commentary elsewhere. Rather than rue this change, Weaver suggested that editors look at it as a chance to better connect with readers by engaging in more conversation with them - "learning what they think, sharing what they know and ultimately creating information that will be far more valuable and satisfying for them."

Weaver suggested that an editor list possible story assignments and ask readers to help decide which get covered first. He also proposed that a reporter blog about the reporting and writing of a story, "detailing what questions they need answered, taking advice and later telling readers in real-time about their progress (or obstacles) in learning answers."

Sounds fun to me. I have five story ideas I'd like to pursue. Before I get to work on any of them, however, I'd like readers to let me know which of the five mosts interests them. Feel free to tweak the story ideas here, and to suggest other topics. I'll go with the story that seems to have the most built-in interest, based on reader reaction. Then I'll blog about each step, from writing the "budget line" that goes onto an in-house list of potential or developing stories through the final editing and publication. That said, here are the five potential stories, in no particular order of my personal preference:

Blended wines have been the bane of wine merchants and sommeliers for decades. Though they're traditional in many of the world's wine regions, they've been relatively obscure in the United States, where wine marketing for decades has been based on the name of the grape contributing the most character to the bottle. Now there are signs that that's changing. More blended domestic wines are appearing in the American market, often with fanciful proprietary names like "The Prisoner" or the simple "Red." Blended wines still are a difficult sell, say merchants and sommeliers, but an increasingly adventurous American palate is showing signs of more willingly embracing them.

Winery tasting rooms, which not so long ago were quiet way stations where wine enthusiasts could sample wines, ask questions and learn to define their palates, seem to have become the modern equivalent of old roadhouses favored by biker gangs. Partying groups arrive by limo or bus, virtually take over the joint, and disrupt the leisurely and somber appreciation of wine. Is this a real or imagined issue? If there's some substance to it, how are wineries reacting? Is this why we see signs at more wineries saying that limos and buses aren't welcome?

Absinthe, an exotic and controversial liquor once banned in the United States, looks to be making a comeback, with at least one California distiller now producing it. It's an essential component of the sazerac, reputedly the country's original cocktail, and the official cocktail of New Orleans. The article would look into what absinthe is all about, how it got banned, and what might be different about it now to make it acceptable.

As winter nears, we take a look at port, both from Portugal and from the United States, where production is on the rise. We examine its history, talk with key producers here and abroad, find several in the local market to recommend, and outline how the beverage best is enjoyed.

More than 500 olive oils from around the world competed for honors at the Los Angeles County Fair in June. The three American olive oils to win the highest awards all were from orchards in the Sacramento Valley. As the year-end entertaining season nears, we tell readers how to stage a home olive-oil tasting.

Please vote and add your comments here, or e-mail me at mdunne@sacbee.com, and thanks for helping out.

Despite the soft economy, restaurants continue to open, though not at the pace of a few years ago. Nonetheless, before the end of the month two prominent Sacramento restaurant groups are to open new restaurants, though one won't be as easy to get to as the other:

- Cosmo Cafe, the latest concept to spring from the Paragary Restaurant Group, is to open to the public Sept. 30 in a former Woolworth's at 10th and K. The complex, called The Cosmopolitan, also is to house a cabaret run by California Musical Theatre, and the Social Nightclub. Inspired by traditional New York delis, Cosmo Cafe will feature lunch, dinner, takeout, cabaret and late-night service and menus. The opening dinner menu is to include such "small plates" as marinated hamachi with apple, ginger and radish ($12), duck-leg confit with endive, walnuts and raisins ($13), and house-cured salmon pastrami with rye toasts and deviled egg ($10), while entrees are to include a bread pudding of mushrooms and butternut squash ($16), corned beef and savoy cabbage with fingerling potatoes and a mustard sauce ($17), and a "Cosmo burger" with caramelized onions ($12). Scott Rose, a former Paragary chef who lately has been executive chef at Paul Martin's American Bistro in Roseville, returns to Sacramento to run the Cosmo kitchen.

- Just before Cosmo Cafe is to debut, Mikuni Japanese Restaurant & Sushi Bar is to open its seventh location, and its first outside California. This Mikuni will be part of the Park Meadows "retail resort" in Lone Tree on the southern outskirts of Denver. The "grand opening" is Sept. 27, though the restaurant could be operating earlier, says Derrick Fong, Mikuni's CEO. Other branches of Mikuni in the works are Davis next spring and Las Vegas in the fall of 2009. Company officials also are scouting Portland, Ore., for a prospective site.

Three classic pairings of food and wine showed why they are classics at yesterday's Lake Tahoe Autumn Food & Wine Festival, three days of cooking demonstrations, wine tastings, food seminars and even a pizza spinning contest, with almost all the events at the Village at Northstar outside Truckee.

As a prelude to Sunday afternoon's concluding public tasting of wine and food, six judges gathered several hours earlier to taste their way through 26 courses, each of which involved a dish by a regional restaurant coupled with a wine by a participating winery. The intent of the judges - Las Vegas restaurateur and chef Joseph Keller, Napa Valley master of wine Robert Bath, Culinary Institute of America instructor Lars Kronmark, San Francisco cookbook author Laura Werlin, longtime competition chairman Bill Ryan and myself - was to find the combination that most clearly enhanced both food and wine.

We started at 9:30 a.m. with deep-fried lobster corndogs with a sweet and soft riesling, an OK marriage, and finished about four hours later with a rich appetizer of blue cheese and pear preserve on a crispy gingersnap tile coupled with a dry medium-bodied red wine that showed some pairings just aren't meant to be, the fruit and cheese just too powerful for the modest wine.

By the time our votes were tallied, the winning combination involved seared scallops stuffed with crab pesto on a risotto cake in a beurre blanc aromtic with sage and zesty with lemon, coupled with a ripe and oaky chardoanny with enough spunky acidity to refresh the palate after a couple of bites of the concentrated scallop. The dish had been made by Sunnyside Resort of Tahoe City. The wine was the Rombauer Vineyards 2007 Carneros Chardonnay.

Full Belly Deli of Truckee and Dogwood Estate Winery in Humboldt County teamed up to win second place in the pairing contest with a substantial dish of sliced tri-tip steak wrapped around gorgonzola, caramelized onions and an ancho chile pepper sauce that was coupled brillitantly with a ripe, dense and sweet zinfandel.

Third place went to West Shore Cafe of Homewood and Anomaly Vineyards of Napa Valley for combining a spicy Moroccan-inspired lamb tagine with a supple and elegant 2005 cabernet sauvignon whose lush berry fruit was shot through with suggestions of herbs.

Restaurant 55 Degrees, Ali Mackani's sleek and shiny effort to help transform Capitol Mall into Sacramento's Champs-Elysees, will close Friday after a nearly three-year run. Like a competitor in the Tour de France whose bike suffers a blowout on the last leg, Mackani is exhausted and frustrated by stalled efforts to enhance the broad and potentially vibrant boulevard leading up to the Capitol.

"I thought other projects would come, especially residential condos, but it didn't happen," said Mackani, referring specifically to a proposed nearby high-rise condominum project that faltered. "After that, and the downturn in the economy, I couldn't see investing any more into a project without a return any time soon. Luc is one of the best chefs in Sacramento, but the best food and the best service don't necessarily mean financial rewards. Enough is enough. It's unfortunate. It's not the scenario I wanted on this project, but it's the hand I've been dealt."

"Luc" is his executive chef from the start, Luc Dendievel, who he said plans to leave the Sacramento area. "This town is going to lose one of the best chefs it's seen. He's in a class by himself, but he will move out," said Mackani.

Mackani now will concentrate on another midtown restaurant, Lounge on 20, which he recently opened at 20th and K.

About 30 people have been working at Restaurant 55 Degrees, which will remain open for lunch only through Friday.

Some 200 restaurateurs in the Sacramento area are scrambling to come up with a new source of bread now that word is circulating that a landmark Sacramento bakery, Muzio Baking Co., plans to turn off its ovens and close its doors a week from today.

"I'm sad, our employees are sad, our customers are sad," says Mervin Fahn, who joined the bakery in 1955 and subsequently became the owner. "It's the times. The restaurant business is soft right now."

Muzio is a union shop, and Fahn says he offered employees unspecified cutbacks to try to keep the business going but that they turned down his proposal. "Without concessions, we have to shut down."

The company employes 14 with an annual payroll of approximately $1 million, said Fahn. Because Muzio provides union wages and benefits, it can't compete effectively with non-union bakeries when costs for fuel, supplies and so forth are rising, said Mervin Fahn's son, David Fahn, also a principal in the business. "We aren't able to raise our prices to cover our additional expenses against competitors who don't have the same overhead," added David Fahn.

Muzio was founded in Stockton in 1882. Quiric "Joe" Fochetti opened the Sacramento branch in 1929. The Stockton bakery subsequently closed, but the Sacramento plant has been operating 79 years. It's at 108 34th St. in north Oak Park, west of the UC Davis Medical Center.

One of the bakery's first and more enduring customers, said David Fahn, has been the grocery store Corti Brothers, which faces its own uncertain future after the owners of the business were informed by their landlady that she is to lease the structure to another group.

Muzio sells its sweet and sourdough breads exclusively to restaurants. David Fahn says the bakery goes through some 20,000 pounds of flour a week.

Representatives of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 85 in Sacramento weren't immediately available to comment.

Random notes from this weekend's 20th annual Best in the West Rib Cook-Off at John Ascuaga's Nugget Casino Hotel in Sparks, Nev.:

- Before the cook-off, judges aren't to eat any ribs, despite all the inviting aromas in the smoke churning over the cooking stalls of the competing 24 teams occupying Victorian Square behind the hotel. Thus, our best friend - as well as the best friend of any vegetarians in the crowd - is Josh Polon, a Reno caterer, shown here beside one of his cookers. Instead of ribs, the constantly turning trays of his oven are loaded solely with ears of corn. This was Polon's sixth year to corner the corn concession at the cook-off. Before it was over, he expected to sell 44,000 ears of corn at $3 a pop. To prepare the corn, he and his crew pull the fresh ears from their crates, line them up in their husks on the racks of the roaster and cook them for 20 minutes at 500 degrees. All the corn is a sweet white strain from Biglieri Farms of Clements in the San Joaquin Valley. After the ears are roasted, they're shucked, desilked, dipped in a canister of melted margarine, and wrapped in foil to be sold. Customers have the option of dousing them will all sorts of condiments, from Tabasco sauce to lemon-seasoned pepper, but one of the more popular choices, curiously, is mayonnaise. But not for this judge.

- Supermarket shelves don't lack for jars of barbecue sauce, but when one of the country's more enduring brands, Woody's, disappeared about three years ago, Richard Janos of Roseville was especially upset. An uncle had introducted him to Woody's Cook-in Sauce in the 1980s, and since then it's been an essential component of the rib-eye steaks Janos likes to prepare. When he went online to see if he could find any remaining jars, he discovered some selling for up to $25 each on eBay. At that price, he figured a lot more people must be as keen on the sauce as he was. "I believed in the sauce, I saw its following on the blogosphere, and I saw what it was selling for on eBay," says Janos in explaining why he subsequently intensified his search for the product. His hunt led him to Reily Foods Co. in New Orleans, which had run into distribution problems with the sauce in part because of the turmoil following Hurricane Katrina. One thing led to another, and a year ago, Janos acquired the rights to the Woody's sauces, which also include a Sweet 'n Sour version. Woody Morse came up with the original Cook-in Sauce around 1946, says Janos, who now lives in Reno, where he's relocated Woody's, though he continues to work as a test manager for Hewlett-Packard in Roseville. He was one of several vendors at the Cook-Off enticing the crowd with samples of the sauces. In addition to the two original Woody's sauces, Janos plans to expand the product line, starting with a sauce fiery with either habanero or chipotle chile peppers, which he hopes to introduce next spring. As to the two traditional sauces, he says he's using the original recipes. "I haven't changed a darn thing," says Janos. The sauces now once again are widely available in the Sacramento area, where Janos has family members helping him revive the business. Look for the sauces at Safeway, Raley's, SaveMart, Nugget and Butcher Boy markets, says Janos.

- Dale Heiskell and his brother Lee, who own Texas Brothers' Bar-B-Q in Dalhart, Texas, form one of just five teams to compete in Sparks each of the 20 years the cook-off has been held. They haven't won since 1993, however. Why the long drought? "We compete in jut one cook-off a year, this one. Maybe we don't practice as much as these other guys," says Dale Heiskell. "This is the Masters Golf Tournament of Ribs," adds Heiskell. He also notes that while Texas Brothers hasn't won first place in 15 years, it also has finished second, third, fourth and fifth over the past two decades. "That's a straight flush." Not bad at all in a gambling town.

Famous Dave's BBQ of Minnetonka, Minnesota, sold plenty of ribs at this weekend's 20th-annual Best in the West Rib Cook-Off at the Nugget Casino Hotel in Sparks, Nev., as seen here by the stacks of seasoned racks about to go into the team's cooker, but for the first time in three years the championship trophy went to someone else.

That would be Bone Daddy's BBQ of Midland, Michigan, which hadn't won the 24-team showdown since 1999, though it placed fifth in 2006 and third in 2003. "I can't believe it. I'm shaking," said Bill "Bone Daddy" Wall, who with his wife Kim has been competing at the Sparks cook-off since 1991. "I've never been more tired in all my years of doing this. There's not another event like this, this big, in the country. I have to give all the credit to my crew. I'm gonna go buy them all a cocktail."

The judging was done blind Sunday, with the results announced Monday afternoon as the 2008 event neared the end of its run. As it happened, Bone Daddy's dark, sweet and juicy ribs racked up the most points on my scoresheet.

This year's cook-off, spread over six days, drew an estimated 500,000 rib lovers, said Michael Traum, publicity director for the sponsoring Nugget.

In other events, two-time champion Joey Chestnut defended his world rib-eating title by consuming 9.8 pounds of rib meat in 12 minutes. Also, in the first-ever "Running of the Pigs," a porker named Mabel topped a field of 20 pigs in a 100-yard dash, while in the same sprint the pig named McCain edged the pig named Obama "by a snout," said Traum.

First-place prize money for Bone Daddy's was $7,500. In the sauce competition, The BBQ Company of Phoenix, Arizona, took first place with a blend notable for its unusual complexity and distinctive note of what seemed to be coffee.

Famous Dave's, meanwhile, placed fourth, worth $1,000 in prize money, but owner Mike Bowar wasn't complaining, saying, "We've never seen more people at our stand."

Last night, a stack of petitions materialized on my desk. They bear headlines like "Save Corti Bros." and "It's Not Christmas Without Corti Brothers." There are 91 pages of them, each bearing anywhere from as few as two signatures to as many as 23. The stack is a prelude to a Sept. 3 rally to marshal community support on behalf of Corti Brothers, the 61-year-old grocery company whose future is up in the air because it is being booted from its headquarters to make way for another market.

The effort is being coordinated by principals of the Sacramento public-affairs consulting firm California Strategies LLC. "This is like the Alhambra Theater and other institutions that have passed in Sacramento. We hate to see that happen here," says Devon Ford of California Strategies, referring to the razing of the city's venerable Alhambra Theater to make way for another grocery store.

California Strategies is heading up the preservation effort on a pro-bono basis, Ford notes. "There's so much community sentiment concerning this that it's easy to wrap a harness around it and let it go on its own power," says Ford.

Several of the Sacramento area's high-profile restaurateurs and chefs, including Biba Caggiano, Randall Selland, Wendi Mentink, Rick Mahan and Kurt Spataro, are to gather in chef jackets at 3 p.m. Sept. 3 at Corti Brothers to pledge their allegiance to the grocery store and to argue that it should be retained just as it is at least through the year-end holidays.

The group also just launched a Web site for people to sign on to the petition and to track developments in the issue.

Some of the petitions ask signers to jot down their favorite item that can be found only at Corti Brothers. They range from "salami" and "vino" to "Arrogant Bastard Ale and pickled anchovies." Separately or together?

The lineup for today's sweepstakes round of the 2008 New York Wine & Food Classic pretty much backed up a claim often made by the state's vintners: New York makes more kinds of wine than any other state. Fifty wines were up for the competition's highest honor, the Governor's Cup. Many of them were varietals you don't find made in California: traminette, vignoles, cayuga, vergennes and rkatsiteli, to name a few. Ten rieslings were nominated for the Governor's Cup, the biggest contingent in the final series of votes, but they represented four different styles of wine, from bone dry to an "ice wine" with 18 percent residual sugar, further reflecting the wide range of wines made in New York.

Incidentally, not a single gewurztraminer or pinot noir made it to the sweepstakes round, not because the varieties aren't grown in New York but because judges couldn't find any candidates worthy of nominating, a development puzzling to the competition's organizers. Nor was any zinfandel nominated for sweepstakes, which wasn't surprising at all given that the variety doesn't seem to be grown in the state.

The sweepstakes round involved whittling the field down to a handful of wines - best white wine, best dessert wine and so forth. From those last few nominees, the Governor's Cup winner eventually was singled out. This year's winner is the Swedish Hill Winery 2007 Finger Lakes Vidal Blanc, which sells for $11. Vidal blanc is the name of the grape, a French/American hybrid developed in Bordeaux by crossing the obscure variety ugni blanc with the even more obscure variety seibel 4986. A lot of this sort of breeding goes on in New York as vintners try to come up with vines that both yield the kind of fruity flavors people like in wine and possess the strength to survive in a hostile climate - humid in the summer, freezing in the winter. The winning Swedish Hill vidal blanc is a pretty wine, distinctly floral in smell, fruity in flavor and persistent in finish. It has nearly two percent sugar, but it didn't taste that sweet thanks to the crispness of its nicely balancing acidity. It has fruit qualities that invite comparisons with riesling, but its body felt rounder and fleshier than the rieslings. Just a little more than 100 acres of vidal blanc are grown in New York, so whether it ever will become a major player in the state's continuing viticulture development remains uncertain. In the voting for best white wine, which the Swedish Hill had to win to be up for the Governor's Cup, it just barely edged out the Hosmer Winery 2007 Finger Lakes Cayuga Lake Riesling, which sells for $12. Unfortunately for Californians looking for either a new kind of wine to explore or a riesling that delivers plenty of intense flavor at a bargain price, not much of either the Swedish Hill or the Hosmer is going to make it to the West, if at all. The Finger Lakes this time of year, however, is a great place to visit.

Winemakers enter wine competitions mostly because they know that gold medals sell wine. Beyond that, they see competitions as a way to measure the quality of their wines against releases of similar pedigree. They use the results to learn of their shortcomings and to make adjustments so their wines will be more competitive in both judgings and the marketplace. Most wine competitions focus on the gold-medal aspects rather than the educational side of judging.

For years, however, the New York Wine & Food Classic, a competition that this year drew a record 790 wines, all from the Empire State, has put as much emphasis on the second motivation as the first. It's done it quietly, and with a deviously simple approach, to wit: Several flights of wine include a "ringer," a wine not from New York but from a region widely recognized as doing well by a particular style or varietal. For example, a class of New York sparkling wines might include a Champagne, or a class of New York sauvignon blanc might include a release of the varietal from New Zealand.

Because the wines are judged blind, judges don't know where they are from. The competition's organizers see this approach as a way to let New York winemakers know how their wines measure up to wines that already have developed a following.

Our panel at the New York Wine & Food Classic today judged several classes that included "ringers" from elsewhere. A flight of riesling, for example, included a wine from Germany, we learned afterwards. Germany generally is seen as the region that does best by riesling. However, we gave the German riesling only a silver, while awarding two New York rieslings gold medals. Hooray for New York, which in recent years has gained much respect for its rieslings.

On the other hand, we also judged a class of chardonnay. None of the New York chardonnays won more than a silver medal. The only gold-medal wine in the class was the Simi Winery 2006 Sonoma County Chardonnay, from California. The message? New York vintners, get to work on improving your chardonnay.

We gave the wines fair deliberation, but I wouldn't make too much of these results. While they're intriguing and perhaps instructive, New York vintners shouldn't relax their vigilance in producing noble rieslings any more than they should lose sleep over the showing of their chardonnay.

The competition, by the way, is being held in one of the nation's more grand and celebrated resorts, Mohonk Mountain House, 1200 feet up the Catskills overlooking Hudson River Valley. It's so huge it forms its own ridge of Victorian turrets along one side of a 17-acre lake. Guests have at their disposal all sorts of opportunities for golfing, hiking, swimming, rock climbing or just lounging in rockers on one of the buildings several verandas. The competition's judges, however, barely have enough time to shower and change before dinner, their schedule of wines being so extensive (133 for our panel the first day). Poor judges.

Just as every Sacramento neighbohood has a Rite Aid Pharmacy, every New York neighborhood has an ice cream shop. There may be a message there, but short of contacting the Centers for Disease Control for demographic data I'm not about to claim that New Yorkers have fewer health issues than Sacramentans. I'm just going to go on eating ice cream as I roam about New York's Hudson River Valley, where I arrived Sunday for this week's 2008 New York Wine & Food Classic, the state's largest wine competition.

Earlier this year, New York legislators passed a law to allow the state's wineries to make wine ice cream. Haven't had any of that yet, but it sounds like it could be a new class for the competition. In the meantime, I'm stopping at old-fashioned ice cream parlors for a cone here and a cup there.

Last night in Hudson, which dates from 1785 and purportedly is the oldest chartered city in the United States, I dropped into one of the settlement's newer businesses, Lick, where partners Christopher Haupert and Michael Harris have been scooping up ice cream since just before Memorial Day. Their brand of choice is the Hudson Valley's highly regarded Jane's Ice Cream. In addition to the standard vanilla bean and milk chocolate, Lick's lineup includes such novelties as minced ginger, grapefruit sorbet and sublime lime. I went for the fig and sweet cream, which couldn't have been more convincingly true, both gritty and creamy, tasting so much like figs I left convinced it had done me a world of physical good.

Shortly before stopping at Lick, I was told by a Hudson resident that the town is "10 blocks long, 10 blocks wide, a Norman Rockwell painting in motion." The scene in front of Lick was that, all right, with residents taking a break from walking their dogs, children playing hopscotch on a grid chalked on the sidewalk, and grandparents relaxing on white benches. It was hot and it was muggy, which gives New Yorkers two reasons for two scoops.

As to the local angle, Haupert's parents were to arrive today from their home in...Auburn.

A poet I'm not, but inspired by The Bee's State Fair poetry contest, I went to Cal Expo last night in search of my muse (though tempted, I won't stoop to milking the shallow poet's weakness for limp puns by suggesting I was grasping for moo's).

At the Wine Garden, the most relaxing and convivial place on the fairgrounds, inspiration struck:

Red wine too hot
So white we bought
Silver it got
In State Fair lot

Its place was sought
On label spot
And there learned what
Chile had wrought

Because I'm about to leave for New York's Hudson Valley, I won't immediately have a chance to ask State Fair officials what a Chilean wine was doing in the commercial wine competition, which at least in the past has been limited to California wines. I have a hunch, however, about what happened. This Chilean chardonnay is imported by Don Sebastiani & Sons of Sonoma and is bottled under the brand of Pepperewood Grove, a label long associated with California wine. As I've written in the past, the rising popularity of wine in the United States has prompted many American wineries to look abroad for wine to market here. Sometimes the wine they find is marketed under new brand names, but often it's bottled under an existing label long used for domestic releases. That's what Sebastiani & Sons is doing. There's nothing especially duplicitous about the practice, as long as the source of the grapes is spelled out on the label, however small. The first clue we had that last night's chardonnay wasn't from California was the appellation on the label, Valle Central, which could suggest "Central Valley" of California, only Sebastiani & Sons hasn't begun to sell wines with bilingual labels, as far as I know. More to the point, Valle Central is an appellation long associated with Chile, as finer print on the back label verifies.

As a measure of the wine garden's popularity, incidentally, it's again been enlarged, providing much more seating at tables both to the back and front. The biggest change we experienced, however, was the eager persistence of pourers to give visitors small sample tastes of whatever wines intrigued them before they popped for an entire glass. Given the steep prices of many of the wines at the garden, this generous hospitality is especially welcome.

In kitchens about the Sacramento area, the Olive Center at UC Davis is best known for the campus-inspired commercial olive oils it's been releasing over the past couple of years.

Now it's adding the perfect complement to olive oil - vinegar. Made from French Colombard grapes grown on campus, the white-wine vinegar is simply labeled "dinny," in tribute to Dr. A. Dinsmoor "Dinny" Webb. Anyone who ever met the dapper Webb will be struck immediately by the appropriateness of his likeness on the label, from his meticulously groomed mustache to his trademark bow tie. Katie Hetrick, communications director for the building and grounds division on campus, did the portrait.

Why Webb, who retired more than 20 years ago after 40 years as a professor of enology at the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology? For one, Webb, who died five years ago, was a highly respected instructor and researcher. For another, he delighted in transforming wine made on campus into vinegar for his colleagues, especially red-wine vinegar from the university's stand of cabernet sauvignon in Napa Valley. A "dinny" red-wine vinegar from the same vineyard is to be released in the near future, says Dan Flynn, executive director of the Olive Center.

The vinegars are made by Katz and Company in a 150-year-old stone carriage house in Suison Valley, one of just three facilities in the country to use the "Orleans Method" of vinegar production. This technique requires the vinegar to age for 10 months in small French oak barrels, resulting in a vinegar "bright, smooth and fruity," according to Slow Food USA.

Though the campus bookstore currently is sold out of olive oils, the "dinny" white-wine vinegar is available for $10 per 250-milliliter bottle, either at the store or online.

Rebecca Reichardt has moved to the back burner her hopes of opening a steakhouse to complement her popular Woodland restaurant Tazzina Bistro.

"I couldn't handle two projects financially," says Reichardt. So instead of the steak place, she's expanding Tazzina Bistro by adding a 600-square-foot lounge. She plans to start construction any day now and have the bar finished for the bistro's fourth anniversary Sept. 27.

In January, Reichardt was one of 10 winners in a national business contest sponsored by American Express. Her proposal for the steakhouse and its potential to morph into a chain won her a $10,000 credit line, $20,000 in improvements, and coaching from established business experts. Still, she figures she'd need $600,000 more to get the concept off the ground. Today's economy isn't conducive to raising that sort of capital, she says, so she's concentrating on improving Tazzina Bistro.

The restaurant's current bar will be retained as a wine bar, while the lounge will focus on "vintage cocktails" and other drinks made with the 15 assorted gins and 28 vodkas she's lined up in anticipation of its completion.

Tazzina Bistro is at 614 Main St., Woodland.

The wine-grape harvest of 2008 is under way, earlier than usual for still table wines, reports winemaker Mitch Cosentino from Pope Valley on the east side of Napa Valley. While it's not unusual for the picking of grapes for sparkling wine to get under way in early August, a harvest this soon for still wines is unprecedented for Cosentino, who has been pulling grapes from Pope Valley since 1993.

"I was up here last Thursday checking on frost damage, walking the vineyard and tasting fruit from the young vines when I realized it had great intensity and wonderful flavors, so I decided we've got to pick this stuff," said Cosentino this morning as he oversaw the crush at his Pope Valley facility. The juice will go into the 2008 version of his proprietary wine The Novelist, bottled under his brand Cosentino Winery at Yountville. (The 2006 Novelist recently won a gold medal at the California State Fair commercial wine competition.)

"We usually start picking up here at the end of August, so this is three weeks earlier than usual and two weeks earlier than ever," Cosentino said.

This early start to the table-wine harvest is something of a surprise, given that spring was brutally chilly in spots and summer has been relatively benign. A spring frost is expected to reduce the size of Cosentino's harvest of cabernet sauvignon in Pope Valley from its usual 4.5 tons to 1 ton, but the sauvignon blanc looks to have weathered the freeze much better, he says.

In addition to his eponymous winery, Cosentino also markets wine under the brands Crystal Valley Cellars, CE2V (soon to be renamed Secret Clone Estate), Blockheadia Ringnosii, and Legends (a collaboaration with NBA great Larry Bird).

A couple of notes from the restaurant front:

- You know these are nervous times for the restaurant trade when a diner e-mails to ask whether the relatively new Greenhouse in Roseville is out of business. His concern was prompted by a sign taped to the door saying the restaurant was "closed for maintenance," a euphemism restaurateurs often use to shut the doors with no real intent to reopen. But not in this instance, says Greenhouse owner Cory Holbrook. A carpet cleaner put up the sign Sunday but forgot to take it down when he left, and there it remained until Monday morning, setting off an alarm for at least one prospective diner. The Greenhouse is Holbrook's locavore- and organic-oriented successor to the Town Lounge, which he originally opened on the site. He says he plans to stick around with Greenhouse, and currently is expanding the restaurant's line of organic beers and ales brewed on the premises.

- Just when I was starting to question whether any new restaurants ever again would debut in Sacramento along comes Ray Smith and Shalawn Smith, who will introduce their Table 260 at 6 p.m. Friday at 826 J St., on the ground floor of a high-rise loft development. It's to be a larger and more upscale version of the original Table 260 in Elk Grove, though the culinary concept, a "fusion of American and soul," will remain the same. In contrast to the Elk Grove site, the downtown Sacramento location will have a full liquor license. The hours also will be extended: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-1 a.m. Fridays, 9 a.m.-1 a.m. Saturdays, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Sundays.

Since the last Tony Baloney sub shack closed nearly two years ago, readers have peppered me for copies of the recipe for the cafe's immensely popular pepper-steak sandwich. Now they can stop. After a 15-month hiatus, Anthony "Tony Baloney" Recchia has reopened his eponymous hangout at 5059 College Oak Drive, with the pepper-steak sub on the menu at $6.55 for the small, $8.75 for the big.

When Recchia closed the cafe in the fall of 2006 he gave several reasons for his decision, ranging from difficulties in finding satisfactory employees to having cashed in an online horse-racing wager that won him $170,000. What's more, he'd developed a commercial line of Tony Baloney salad dressings, which he's continued to produce in the kitchen of the College Oak Drive restaurant.

"I was going broke again," said Recchia of his decision to reopen the restaurant. "I hit some horses, but I lost some, too."

Recchia opened his first Tony Baloney along Del Paso Boulevard in 1963 and grew the business to six outlets at its peak in the 1980s. Recchia, a Massachusetts native, began to make sandwiches for colleagues at Aerojet General in Rancho Cordova when he couldn't find any East Coast-style submarines to his liking here. Pending layoffs at Aerojet then prompted Recchia, an engineer, to go into the restaurant business.

Tony Baloney is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, though he keeps the place open to 7 p.m. Fridays.

Fans of Monticello Bistro in Winters have only August in which to savor the restaurant's seasonal Saturday-night dinners. After August, the place is history, reports Rhonda Gruska, who with her husband Tony has operated the bistro the past two years.

But get your chins off the floor, fans. The Gruskas are moving to a new venue that will allow them to extend their hours and expand their concept. They are teaming up with Aziz Fattahi, owner of Village Bakery in Davis to open Village Pizza and Grill in a converted house at 4th and G in downtown Davis.

In Winters, the Gruskas have been sharing space with the tapas cafe Ficelle, which has been operating weekdays. Now, however, Ficelle is to start serving dinners Saturday, which is when Monticello Bistro takes over the quarters.

At Village Pizza and Grill, the Gruskas and Fattahi at least initially will focus on pizzas to range in style from basic interpretations already available at Village Bakery to more contemporary versions that will emphasize the sorts of regional and seasonal ingredients the couple showcases at Monticello Bistro. The August menu at Monticello Bistro includes such dishes as grilled figs with goat cheese and honey, cold cucumber soup with wasabi, caprese salad with grilled bruschetta, a Yolo heirloom-tomato gazpacho, grilled Niman Ranch sirloin steak, and housemade pasta with cherry tomatoes, summer squash and parmesan.

Rhonda Gruska is uncertain when the new place will open. At best, it could debut in early fall, but six months or so also could be needed to get the place ready. "It's all up to the City of Davis," she says, noting that city officials are reviewing plans to remodel the house.

For more information on Monticello Bistro's schedule, call (530) 792-8066.

Though I met Tom Shelton years ago, I knew him principally through articles and columns he wrote for Spring Valley Times, the house organ of Joseph Phelps Vineyards in Napa Valley. In a place and during an era when representatives of wineries chose their words so carefully that they'd come off tired and bland, Shelton was refreshingly and colorfully blunt. Whether as president of Joseph Phelps Vineyards from 1995 until earlier this year, or as a vocal director of the trade group Napa Valley Vintners, Shelton left no doubt where he stood on wine issues, and for that alone his forthright character will be missed. Tom Shelton died of brain cancer over the weekend at 55. James Laube and MaryAnn Worobiec have more about Tom Shelton at the Web site of Wine Spectator.

The last of Sacramento's landmark Corti Brothers stores is to close this fall, but local gourmets may not long be without the specialty foodstuffs and exclusive wines that have distinguished the family-run grocery since 1947. Darrell Corti, the store's president, is vowing to remain in business at a new but undetermined location

"We haven't sold and we haven't been bought," said Corti a short time ago following early reports that the company had lost the East Sacramaento site it had occupied since 1970. Corti Brothers, founded in 1947 by brothers Frank and Gino Corti along 8th Street between I and J, had once expanded to four locations before cutting back to one large facility at 59th Street and Folsom Boulevard.

Corti said he just had been informed by his landlady that she'd signed a lease for the building with Mike Teel, an heir of the Raley's supermarket chain, who reputedly plans to use the site for a branch of his proposed group of Good Eats Grocery markets. Corti had been renting the building without a lease since 1988.

"We went to negotiate a lease and were informed by her lawyers that a lease (for the building) had been signed by somebody else," said Corti.

The search for a new site for the store will commence Tuesday, said Corti. He hopes to stay in the East Sacramento neighborhood, but will scout other areas for prospective locations. "We have a lot of old customers in that neighborhood," he remarked. Corti Brothers is to be out of its current site by Oct. 15, he noted.

A more comprehensive report on the pending relocation of Corti Brothers is being prepared by colleague Jim Downing for Tuesday's new Sacramento Bee.

With my list of prospective restaurants to check out, I began to stroll about downtown Los Gatos last night. At the top, of course, was Manresa, the proud bearer of two Michelin stars, one of only four such recognized restaurants in the Bar Area. I sure would have liked to try that salad of soft-shell crab with "gold dust" peach and basil, or the Monterey Bay abalone with a roast crayfish nage, or the veal breast and sweetbreads with the house boudin noir in an onion stew, but I was underdressed and underfinanced (four courses, $95; tasting menu, $145), so I moved down the list.

Vittoria Ristorante Italiano, however, was "closed for remodel," according to a sign on the door, and Cafe Marcella had closed for good this spring, said the hostess of the restaurant that succeeded it about three months ago, Cin-Cin, which translates as an Italian toast along the lines of "to your health." By this time, I was ready to give up. On top of that, a blackboard special on the back wall caught my eye and prompted me to take a seat. It was a flight of three rieslings, hardly Italian, but not something you run across in a restaurant very often.

While the lineup of rieslings was exceptionally solid, a couple of other pleasant surprises prompts me to move Cin-Cin to the top of my list for my next visit to Los Gatos - the speedy, chipper and smart service and the marvelously conceived and executed food. The menu is New American, with Spanish, Californian, North African and southern American influences as well as Italian. The menu talks seriously about using line-caught seafood, meats free of antibiotics and hormones, and produce from local growers who follow sustainable farming practices.

The food, however, is all fun, much of it listed as "nibbles," "samplers" side dishes and small plates. In short, it's a menu that invites grazing and adventure. Tuna cloaked with a delicate tempura and accompanied by both a Vietnamese mango dipping sauce and feathery and crispy fried baby bok choy ($13), and smoky flatbread topped with Fiscalini cheddar, dried apricots, hazelnuts and arugula ($9) both were vivid in flavor but perfectly compabile with the mostly dry rieslings. Not so much the restaurant's signature sliders, three fat, rich and juicy burgers with grilled sweet onions, a chow-chow of pickled cabbage and cauliflower, and a chipotle chile pepper aioli ($11), but I really didn't expect the wines to stand up to all that power, anyway.

If you're heading to the South Bay this weekend, consider putting Cin-Cin on your own list of prospective restaurants. At 368 Village Lane, Los Gatos, it's open for lunch Tuesday through Friday, dinner Tuesday through Sunday; (408) 354-8006. Here's a link for its Web site.

Marty Mathis was pretty excited about showing off his seven acres of cabernet sauvignon when I visited him yesterday at his and his mother's winery, Kathryn Kennedy, on the lower reaches of the Santa Cruz Mountains at Saratoga. But he kicked up the volume a couple of notches when the subject turned to his "chicken tractor," a large wheeled contraption he built to house his four chickens as he moves them through the vineyard to help keep down the weeds, fertilize vines and control insects. It's a portable coop, without a floor, but a compartment for roosting and buckets for depositing eggs.

Mathis acknowledges that his excitement over building a chicken tractor sort of got out of hand, and he ended up with the veritable Airstream of chicken tractors. The materials he used were so fine and the size so substantial that he figures every egg he's getting from his brood costs him $10. Nonetheless, he doesn't rue the investment. He figures those eggs, combined with produce from his garden, provide him with one home-grown meal a day.

Apparently a movement is afoot to convince city folk to build chicken tractors as part of the locavore philosophy. You can find a whole gallery of chicken tractors here.

Michel Reybier, owner of the Bordeaux estate Chateau Cos d'Estournel, has confirmed that he is negotiating with the Jim Barrett family to buy Napa Valley's Chateau Montelena. In a press release issued a short time ago, Reybier indicated the sale is near and pends only regulatory approval. No price was disclosed, nor did Reybier say what regulatory issues are involved in the transaction. One possible hitch could be that regulations in the United States prohibit wine producers from having a vested interest in distributing wines, including wholesalers, restaurants and retailers, and Reybier's properties include a resort in Geneva with three restaurants.

Jim Barrett, who acquired Chateau Montelena in 1972, is quoted in the release as saying: "This is a perfect fit - a dream marriage. We could not have asked for a finer team to carry on this legacy."

His son, Bo Barrett, who has made the wines at Chateau Montelena since 1982, "will continue to provide the essential knowledge and experience gained from 35 years of living and working on the estate," but the press release isn't clear on who will be in charge of winemaking once the sale concludes. "Michel Reybier understands that it takes time and continuity to learn the true qualities of each place. He understands the importance of continuity, commitment and experience in making world-class wine," said Bo Barrett in the press release.

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," the French seem to be saying with word this morning that the renowned Bordeaux chateau Cos d'Estournel is buying one of Napa Valley's more historic estates, Chateau Montelena.

Though Chateau Montelena has been around since 1882, it shot to celebrity in the spring of 1976 when its 1973 chardonnay was judged the best take on the varietal in a blind Paris tasting involving comparable French wines and French wine judges.

Speculation about the potential sale of Chateau Montelena surfaced last month when the magazine Wine Spectator reported that the father-and-son team of Jim and Bo Barrett had put the property on the market for a minimum $100 million, though the Barretts wouldn't confirm the rumors.

Today, the British wine magazine Decanter reported that Cos d'Estournel is purchasing Chateau Montelena, quoting Michel Reybier, the owner of the Bordeaux estate, as its source. No sales price was disclosed, though Decanter speculated that $110 million was being paid for the Napa Valley property.

Jeff Adams, media representative for Chateau Montelena, said a formal announcement concerning the status of Chateau Montelena would be made later today.

If the sale of Chateau Montelena is completed, it will come almost exactly one year after the Warren Winiarski family sold its Napa Valley estate Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, which had won the cabernet-sauvignon portion of the 1976 Paris tasting. Stag's Leap sold to Ste. Michelle Wine Estates in Washington state and Marchese Piero Antinori of Italy for $185 million.

On Aug. 6, a movie, "Bottle Shock," a romanticized and truncated version of the Paris tasting that focuses almost exclusively on Chateau Montelena, is to debut in American cinemas.

Michael Tuohy, an Atlanta restaurateur who grew up in San Francisco, has been hired to be the executive chef of Grange in the boutique hotel The Citizen, slated to open in downtown Sacramento in November.

To take the job, Tuohy is closing the Atlanta restaurant he opened in January 2002, Woodfire Grill. There, his Californian culinary style has emphasized "locally grown organic produce, responsibly raised meats, eco-conscious seafood and artisan-produced ingredients," the same kind of cooking that the operators of The Citizen, Joie de Vivre Hospitality of San Francisco, want to cultivate at Grange.

Though Tuohy has been in Atlanta for 22 years, he says his cooking philosophy developed under the auspices of longtime San Francisco restaurateur Joyce Goldstein, for whom he worked early on first at her highly regarded Square One Restaurant and then at its sister operation, Caffe Quadro.

In Atlanta, Tuohy helped start the Georgia Grown Co-op to provide city restaurants and markets with provisions from a dozen local certified-organic farms.

The latest edition of the Zagat guide to Atlanta restaurants says of Woodfire Grill: "Michael Tuohy 'puts his heart and soul' into the 'exquisitely prepared' and 'impeccably sourced' 'farm-to-table cuisine' that's paired with a 'top-notch wine list,' while the staff 'could not be more helpful or informed.'"

A frustrated Sacramentan has called to suggest that The Bee start to run a list of all the restaurants closing in the area. With the price of car fuel what it is, she's tired of driving up to a Blank Angus here or a Tahoe Joe's there only to find it no longer in business. Such a compilation would be helpful, and maybe our database experts can get on it. In the meantime, I'll do what I can to alert readers of closures as I become aware of them, though restaurateurs are notoriously shy about broadcasting their disappointments.

Just this morning I learned of another restaurant closing, but only because I was walking along J Street and noticed that the windows of the Vietnamese pho cafe Tamarind were covered over and a sign on the door said the place is permanently shut. The man who opened Tamarind two years ago this fall, Perry Yuen, who also owns the Chinese cafe Plum Blossom farther west along J Street, couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

As we wind up our visit to New Orleans, I'm wondering how editors for the Zagat guidebooks would distill our impressions of the two most memorable restaurants we visited:

- "Emeril Lagasse's noblest achievement" is the "rustic yet refined" former carriage house and root-beer plant he restyled into NOLA. Along "one of the more civilized streets in the French Quarter," NOLA combines "European flair with Southern hospitality" to an extent rarely found even in this earnestly friendly city. "Team service clicks with the rhythm and charm of a horse-drawn carriage at Jackson Square." "Expensive," but "portions must have been brought in on a Mississippi River barge." Take the "Parisian elevator" to the second floor and prepare to "shout like Mardi Gras revelers," given all the brick and wood. Follow "the smoothest Sazerac in New Orleans" with fried chicken with the "crunchiest buttermilk crust in Louisiana." "The kitchen struggles to accommodate vegetarians," but redeems itself with "cute butterballs," "the finest tomatoes in the South" and service that "doesn't make you feel like you're asking a favor." Shrimps and grits are "heady" with a chile-pepper butter sauce, apple-smoked bacon and tomato glaze, while the marbled pound cake salutes the building's heritage with a "refreshing" root-beer drizzle. NOLA has "a clear idea of what it wants to do and how it wants to do it." No wonder they call New Orleans "the city that knows chow."

- Two years after we visited one of the first restaurants to open in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, Donald Link's "bright and marvelous" Chocon, we checked out his original place, Herbsaint. "Amazingly, the very selective vegetarian member of our party ate the entire bowl of housemade spaghetti with summer tomatoes and spinach," while the rest of us savored "silken and smoky" duck prosciutto, gumbo with shredded pork and andouille sausage that came off as "thick as the humidity," and a poached and fried egg that broke "like sunrise" over more of that housemade spaghetti, this time with guanciale. "Avoid the back dining room," drab but for "the sexy mural" across the back wall. Prepare for service either "emotionally disengaged" or "severely professional" in contrast to quarters "sunny and humming with vitality." Just as the Sazerac here is "gripping," the rib-eye steak is "marvelously juicy and sweet." "Mother never made angel-food cake like this," nor did she top it with poached peaches. "Reservations strongly recommended."

Enough with Sacramento's notorious dry heat of the past week. Time for some wet heat. In New Orleans this weekend the highs are in the 90s, and with the humidity at 77 percent, that should qualify as wet heat. At least in New Orleans there's no more smoke than usual, and a welcome breeze coming across the Mississippi River.

And whenever you step inside, the air conditioning is cranked down to sweater optional. Mid-summer isn't the high season for New Orleans, but the place nonetheless is fairly busy, and no attraction we've visited has been more crowded than the new Audubon Insectarium, where this photo was taken, showing one of the facility's butterfly exhibits. The Insectarium is the first museum to open in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, and purportedly it's the largest freestanding museum devoted to insects in the United States. The building that houses it, the 1881 U.S. Customs House, is grand enough all on its own to warrant a visit. As far as the Insectarium is concerned, the galleries include one devoted to swamp critters, including American alligators and spotted gars, even though they aren't insects; another just for termites; another showing butterflies emerging from chrysalises; and an enclosed Asian garden with mature butterflies floating about and a pond stocked with the biggest and brightest koi I've seen.

I learned that the California trapdoor spider of my youth is one of the stronger insects on the planet, capable of bracing its door against intruders at up to 38 times its own weight; that the male horsefley can hit speeds of up to nearly 90 miles per hour; and that a Madagascar hissing cockroach feels just like an oily leather cowboy boot.

This being New Orleans, there's the Tiny Termite Cafe and Bug Appetit, the latter a demonstration kitchen where executive chef Kevin Robertson was whipping up salsa thick with mealworms, fried wax worms that tasted just like fried pork skin, and nachos of mealworms that were meaty and sweet. No "chocolate chirp cookies" were available today, but he had plenty of the most popular item on the menu, "crispy Cajun crickets," sauteed in butter and dusted with Cajun seasonings. Robertson tells the hesistant that they taste just like spicy sunflower seeds, but the consensus in our party was that they taste more like fried chicken skin, and that's a good thing.

If you're planning a trip to New Orleans, set aside for a couple of hours at the Insectarium. Check out its Web site.

A Sacramento couple instrumental in developing Mount Eden Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains have purchased a second winery in the appellation.

Neil and Bernice Hagen, who own Thunderbird Forest Products of Sacramento and the local branch of Poggenpohl Kitchens, have purchased neighboring Cinnabar Vineyards & Winery above Saratoga for an undisclosed price.

Cinnabar, founded in 1983 by the late Stanford research engineer Tom Mudd, has been producing about 20,000 cases annually in recent years. "Basically, I've doubled my production capacity," said Jeffrey Patterson, Mount Eden's longtime winemaker. At Mount Eden, he's been making around 15,000 cases a year.

Both estates primarily produce chardonnay and pinot noir, with some cabernet sauvignon. Cinnabar is to be renamed Domaine Eden. Most of its 30-acre vineyard is being replanted, with more pinot noir being put in and cabernet sauvignon being reduced, said Patterson.

Neil Hagen, whose mills produce molding in South America, New Zealand, Mexico and the southern United States, joined four partners in 1961 to buy Mount Eden Vineyards from legendary winemaker Martin Ray. Today, the Hagens control about 60 percent of the company, with Jeffrey Patterson and his wife Ellie owning around 30 percent. A half-dozen shareholders own the rest.

Mount Eden Vineyards also is about to join seven other wineries in a cooperative tasting room and wine bar called Press Club in San Francisco. Expected to open in two to three weeks, Press Club is at 20 Yerba Buena Lane between Market and Mission streets, near the new Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco. The other wineries include Chateau Montelena, Miner Family, Saintsbury, Pahlmeyer and Landmark.

Random notes from yesterday evening's Grape & Gourmet gala at Cal Expo, the annual bash where California State Fair officials reveal the major winners of the fair's commercial wine competition:

- Despite my aversion to crowds, this event is growing on me. Maybe they didn't sell as many tickets as they have in the past, or maybe they've expanded the space, but the tasting didn't seem as congested as it has been in earlier years. Also, more tasters have caught on to tasting etiquette, particularly the point about getting your taste and then getting out of the way so others can get their pour. Good showing, gang! On the other hand, too many winery representatives still think such tastings are their opportunity to kibitz among themselves, oblivious to why they are there, which is to make that all-important personal connection with a curious public. Next year, do your socializing among yourselves before or after, and during the event focus on the paying public.

- OK, the best-of-show red wine of this year's State Fair judging was the Castle Rock 2006 Mendocino County Pinot Noir ($12). I was more impressed with it during the State Fair judging than I was last night, but at a time when the popularity of pinot noir is prompting many producers to charge more for examples of the varietal than is warranted by their quality, the Castle Rock still is a remarkably good buy. It's true to the varietal, it's balanced, and it's sweetly fruity, with an emphasis on the sweetness. It's perfectly pleasant, and worth every cent.

- The most memorable wine I tasted all evening was the Calcareous Vineyards 2005 York Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon ($34) from Paso Robles, judged the best cabernet sauvignon in the competition. It's a wonderfully elegant example of the varietal. In contrast to so many cabernet sauvignons these days, it was fresh and lithe, with a clean cherry fruitiness, a touch of spice, a sinewy build, and a lingering minerality. It's made for the dinner table, not the competition circuit, and I'm encouraged that a cabernet of such refinement was recognized and acknowledged by the judges. What were they thinking? Refreshment and character, I suspect.

- A close second was the Jekel Vineyards 2007 Monterey County Riesling ($12), which tied for best riesling in the state at the competition. Despite one percent residual sugar, it tasted unusually dry for a California riesling, and certainly dryer than earlier vintages. It's shot through with apricots, peaches and an intriguing stoniness. The wine it tied with is the Loredona 2007 Monterey County Riesling ($12), which went on to be elected the fair's best-of-show white wine. If Loredona was represented at last night's tasting, I didn't spot its booth. In wine shops and grocery stores, the Jekel also should be easier to find; nearly 36,000 gallons of the Jekel were made compared with 12,000 gallons of the Loredona.

- The biggest surprise was a silver-medal wine, the Jeff Runquist 2006 Lodi Silvaspoons Vineyard Touriga ($22), a red table wine whose light color and lean structure were deceiving. It had wonderfully vibrant fruit, possessed of both juiciness and a tantalizingly subtle complexity. Touriga is a Portugese variety, traditionally used for Port, but here yielding a delightfully angular and zesty table wine that easily could play the role often taken by pinot noir. The release of the wine is pending, and when it is it likely will be available only at Jeff Runquist's winery in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley, given that he made only 118 cases.

- Wines weren't the only product recognized last night. The State Fair also has a commercial handcrafted beer competition, for which the best-of-show brew was the Drake's Brewing Co. Drake's Blonde Kolsch out of San Leandro. Wow, what a terrific beer - balanced, refreshing and mellow without being reserved. I liked its fastidious interweaving of freshness, nuttiness and maltiness, which actually tasted more of malt than sugar. The person doing the pouring wasn't sure where it would be available hereabouts, but suggested I look for it at Nugget Markets and BevMo.

- Other high honors bestowed last night were best-of-show dessert wine, the Navarro Vineyards 2007 Anderson Valley Mendocino County Late Harvest White Riesling ($39); best sparkling wine, the Mumm Napa Napa Valley Blanc de Noirs ($19); best value, the Castle Rock pinot noir that also won best-of-show red wine; and the Golden State Winery of the Year award, which went to South Coast Winery of Temecula for best overall performance in the competition, which it won by winning one double-gold medal, five gold medals, 13 silver medals and 12 best-of-class honors.

- State Fair officials also honored three veteran California winemakers with lifetime achievement awards: Mary Ann Graff, the first woman to graduate in the viticulture and enology program at UC Davis, now owner of the wine lab Vinquiry in Healdsburg; Mike Grgich of Grgich Hills Winery, who has been making wine in Napa Valley for 50 years; and Warren Winiarski of Stag's Leap Wine Cellars in Napa Valley, which he and his family sold last year after establishing the brand as one of the world's more esteemed producers of cabernet sauvignon.

- A searchable database of the State Fair's award-winning wines is available at this page of The Bee's wine Web site, www.sacwineregion.com.

I complain so often of the national food media ignoring the creativity of restaurateurs and chefs in and about Sacramento that it's only fair to draw attention to an exception. That would be the August issue of Food&Wine, which highlights a dish at the Granite Bay restaurant Hawks.

You have to flip through 120 of the magazine's 120 pages to find it, but there it is, a slice of the restaurant's homemade brioche topped with a cloud of lemon cream and scattered with shiny blackberries. Created by Molly Hawks and her husband Michael Fagnoni, co-owners and co-chefs of Hawks, the dessert is featured in the magazine's Last Bite feature. The recipe also is included. It takes three hours to make. If you time your drive astutely, you can get to Hawks in a little less than that.

Sacramento's Westfield Downtown Plaza may be about to get a splashy giant LED screen but it looks to be losing one of its brighter lights. Morton's The Steakhouse, a fixture of the mall for 15 years, is on the verge of relocating to the new U.S. Bank Tower at 621 Capitol Mall.

According to a succinct announcement this morning by Roger Drake, chief communications officer for Morton's The Steakhouse in Chicago, the chain's Sacramento branch is leaving Downtown Plaza to help make way for a proposed redevelopment of the mall.

"We have secured an alternate site...at 621 Capitol Mall," Drake said. "A more formal announcement will be made once plans are finalized with respect to the...mall," he added.

As Bee columnist Bob Shallit reported last month, Downtown Plaza is to undergo an ambitious update next year. Plans call for a large guitar outside the mall's Hard Rock Cafe at 7th and K to be relocated, a new indoor/outdoor dining area above the Hard Rock, a Target store, and a 20-foot-tall LED screen around the building housing the Hard Rock.

The U.S. Bank Tower where Morton's is to move also is big on LED displays. The 25-story office building is topped by one, called "Lumetric River," while the structure's atrium includes a second, called "The Rapids."

Officials of Downtown Plaza and David S. Taylor Interests, which developed U.S. Bank Tower, didn't immediately return phone calls for comment.

Bartholomew Gill, of course. I'd drawn a blank Friday night as I struggled to recall the name of one of my favorite writers of Irish crime novels. It only came back to me after we'd returned home and I scanned my collection of mysteries featuring Chief Superintendent Peter McGarr: "The Death of an Irish Tinker," "The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf" and "The Death of a Joyce Scholar," among others, all by the late Bartholomew Gill.

Now I've got to get word to Patrick Timothy Callaghan, the bartender who seemed so interested in Irish novelists. The subject came up as we sat in what has to be the smallest bar in Truckee, Callaghan's, tucked off to one side of the lobby of The Cedar House, a hotel we luckily stumbled across after learning that our reservation at another inn wasn't available after all.

That The Cedar House would have a vacancy on the Fourth of July has to be something of a miracle, but maybe that's because it only seems to cater largely to a winter-sports clientele. (The skis alongside the fireplace just inside the front door was my first clue.)

The Cedar House is a "sport hotel," drawing people just like us, dusty, sweaty and sore from hiking. But it's so classy we felt as if we should have checked into another hotel first just for a shower before walking into The Cedar House. With soaring timbers and steel bracing, The Cedar House is something of a post-modern Sierra lodge, inspired by inns of the European Alps, right down to sod with perennials blooming on the roof.

As attractively as it blends the rusticity of its generous use of wood, steel and concrete with the sophistication of its European furnishings, what's most appealing about the place is the unusual cordiality of its staff, from the clerk who avoided admonishing us for not having reservations and who graciously showed us a selection of rooms to the story spinning of Callaghan.

Though there's no restaurant on site, the owners, Jeff and Patty Baird, spread out a light but varied casual evening assortment of snacks - cheeses, guacamole, fruit, salami - which is but a preview of the generous continental breakfast they provide guests in the morning. Jeff Baird then steps behind the bar to proudly and happily prepare complimentary cappuccinos and lattes as guests debate between the wholesome oatmeal and the seductive pastries. Muffins, bagels, more fruit, smoked salmon and sliced tomatoes topped with wedges of avocado also help round out the selection.

Sacramentans already familiar with The Cedar House - this was our first visit - will be let down to learn that the resident border collie, Jake, died last week. A successor already is on the premises, however, the puppy Baxter. Guests also are welcome to bring their dogs.

For more information visit the hotel's Web site.

Fourth of July, 2008

Fourth of July, 2007

Fourth of July, 2006

Gastronomically, we have nothing significant to report from our almost-annual trek on the Fourth of July to Fourth of July Lake in the Mokelumne Wilderness Area just south of Carson Pass, other than our growing conviction that beef jerky is the best protein to bring along. It's lightweight, it's concentrated and it just tastes so darn good at the end of the five-mile hike to the gem that is Fourth of July Lake. This year's spicy choice was the "steakhouse" variety put out by Pacific Gold, at once sturdy yet fresh and easily chewable.

This isn't Fourth of July Lake, incidentally, but Lake Winnemucca, about halfway on the trail to and from Fourth of July Lake. Two years ago, we crossed snowfield after snowfield on the way in and out. Not so last year, and this year we encountered even less snow, passing over just one very small patch. Whether this is a sign of climate change or just another indication that we are in the midst of a drought, I have no idea, but I'm hoping that next year we come across more snow than we've found these two years.

Skiers at the Village at Northstar on the north side of Lake Tahoe this winter may have a tough time getting to the slopes, and snowdepth has nothing to do with that forecast. Rather, the resort's developers keep adding new and tempting places for visitors to linger over drinks and food.

The latest addition to be announced is Baxter's Bistro & Lounge, being developed by Mark Estee and JJ Morgan, owners of perhaps the most popular and highly regarded restaurant in Truckee, Moody's Bistro & Lounge, an occasional hangout for Paul McCartney.

Also scheduled to open at Northstar in December is a branch of Chocolate Bar, a cafe and lounge with two locations in Reno.

Northstar already has nearly a dozen other restaurants and bars, including a branch of the Sacramento-based Mikuni Japanese Restaurant & Sushi Bar.

Our Wednesday-morning reading brings us a couple of helpful tips for wine enthusiasts:

- When visiting wineries to taste and buy wines during summer heat spells, bring along an ice chest with frozen gel packs to keep the bottles at a cool temperature that will help preserve the wine's freshness and character during the jaunt, advises the July newsletter of Domaine de la Terre Rouge and Easton Wines in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley. That advice has been around for years, but the newsletter provides a newer tip: Wrap the gel packs with towels to keep moisture from damaging wine labels.

- Don't have a pen and notebook to record the name, vintage, varietal and so forth of a bottle of wine you just had at a dinner out? Don't fret. Just whip out your camera phone, snap a photo of the label and email it with your tasting notes to CorkSavvy.com, where the data can be stored in your own electronic cellar. "The Web site knowingly recognizes email addresses and automatically submits photos in users' virtual wine diaries," notes an announcement of the new application in today's MarketWatch.

These may not be the best economic times to open a restaurant, but Bill Taylor is pushing ahead with plans for his steakhouse Hibachi One Three in quarters long occupied by Fuji's at 13th and Broadway. Though he's run into more work than anticipated in remodeling the kitchen of the 6400-square-foot building, Taylor is hoping for a September or October debut.

He's hired his executive chef, Eric Stimson, and the two are working up a menu representative of a "casual neighborhood American steakhouse," says Taylor. Teriyaki steak is expected to be a signature dish, not so much in keeping with the building's previous incarnation as a Japanese restaurant but in tribute to a restaurant Taylor frequented when he was living in Manhattan Beach. That place also was named Hibachi, but without the "One Three," Taylor's sly way to avoid becoming too closely associated with the number 13.

"I think it will be a surprise to people - fresher and more open," says Taylor of his redesign of the place.

When he does open Hibachi One Three he will in one small way compete with himself. The restaurant will have burgers on the lunch menu, even though Taylor owns two Willie's Burgers, one just three blocks from his new place.

First, no beer on the rivers on the Fourth of July. Then, no fireworks. Now, reduced-fat hot dogs? That's what awaits guests at this year's Independence Day block parties if the hosts take the advice of the editors of AOL Food. The editors grilled and blind-tasted 50 brands of hot dog, narrowed the field to their favorite 20, and chose Hebrew National Reduced Fat Beef Franks as their No. 1 pick. The regular version of Hebrew National's beef franks didn't even rank in the top 20.

"Despite being a trimmed-fat version of their regular frank, our tasters didn't note a single shortfall," says Diedre Ayers of AOL Food. Tasters praised the reduced-fat frank with such comments as "best flavor yet," "fabuloso," "well balanced" and "full dog flavor." No condiments were added.

Runnerup was Nathan's Kosher Premium Beef Franks ("the ultimate expression of a Coney Island classic"). Ball Park Angus Beef Franks ("a most delectable weenie"), Nathan's Bigger Than the Bun Skinless Beef Franks ("It's so full-up on flavor it don't need no stinkin' epidermis") and Tony Packo's Hickory Smoked Authentic Hungarian Hot Dogs ("Fans of TV's M*A*S*H might remember Tony Packo's as Corporal Klinger's dream destination, and this snappy Toledo staple proves to be still in its prime") rounded out the top five. For a rundown on the results, including photos of the top 20, click here.

Incidentally, Hebrew National Reduced Fat Beef Franks each pack 120 calories, 10 grams of fat and 360 milligrams of sodium. Regular Hebrew National beef franks each weigh in with 150 calories, 14 grams of fat and 370 milligrams of sodium.

Jim Caudill isn't on the front line with crews fighting fires in Mendocino County, but as media representative for the Brown-Forman family of wineries he is on the front line of answering reporter and consumer questions about how the North State's wildfires could affect vineyards and the wines that will be made from them.

Thus, he's taken the initiative to canvas neighboring growers and winemakers about how they think fires, smoke and ash will affect this year's crop. In a press release a short time ago, Caudill says those he's talked with don't see smoke and ash clinging to the grapes to such an extent that it will leave the resulting wines with any sort of bacony, smoky or charred smell and flavor.

"The most interesting comment I heard was this: The ash and soot in the air will inevitably land on the grapes, and winemakers, at least, might like to turn on the frost protection overhead sprinklers, or fill up the spray wagons with water to mist and clean the grapes before harvesting them and bringing them into the winery for processing," writes Caudill.

Growers and vintners in the North Coast, however, face potential water shortages because of a near drought and because they turned on the sprinklers this spring to offset damage from a severe frost.

To the parched conditions and that frost, the fires are only the latest twist of fate to make the 2008 vintage quite possibly the most curious of the century. Or, as Caudill puts it: "After the coldest frost we've had in nearly 30 years, a near drought, and now this, you'll appreciate that many here on the North Coast are awaiting only the arrival of locusts."

The cabernet-franc bandwagon is picking up momentum in the Sierra foothills, to judge by an extensive tasting of the region's wines by the staff of the Web site AppellationAmerica.com. While the tasters handed out the most gold medals to zinfandel, their report raves at length about the region's cabernet francs, calling wines made from the Bordeaux black grape "one of the most exciting varietal winners" in the area.

Wednesday, I reported on the success that cabernet franc is having at the Placer County residential community Clos du Lac, and earlier this month I posted here a rundown of foothill cabernet francs doing well this year on the wine-competition circuit.

After four months of preparation, the old Horseshoe Bar Grill in Loomis is ready to assume its role as the New Horseshoe Bar Grill. That will be Friday, when it is to open to the public at 5 p.m.

The debut will mark the return to the front lines of hospitality of celebrated Sacramento restaurateur Eppie Johnson, who is teaming up with his nephew, Richard A. Bruce, most recently a restaurateur in Las Vegas, to take over the Loomis site.

They've brought aboard as executive chef Robert Facciani, whose upscale New American menu is based on seasonal, sustainable and organically produced ingredients. His opening dinner menu includes such starters as grilled Castroville artichoke with a lemon/pepper aioli ($6.95) and grilled asparagus with sauteed "tear drop" tomatoes, balsamic glaze and truffle oil ($6.95), while entrees include venison osso buco ($37.95), a Louisiana shrimp saute with andouille sausage over creamy grits ($23.95), and pan-seared Alaskan halibut cheeks with puttanesca sauce and squid-ink fettuccini in a butter basil sauce ($24.95).

New Horseshoe Bar Grill, 3645 Taylor Road (at Horseshoe Bar Road), Loomis, initially will be open for lunch and dinner 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Thursdays, 11 a.m.-midnight Fridays, 2 p.m.-midnight Saturdays, 2-8 p.m. Sundays; (916) 652-4100. A Sunday brunch is to be added in about a month.

Mon thru Wed 11-9, Thurs 11-10, Fri 11-midnight, Sat 2-midnight, Sunday 2-8
Brunch won't start for about a month

I don't like being badgered by supermarket clerks who ask if I want to donate $1 or so to this or that earnest cause, usually something to do with cancer research, so why didn't I mind when the bill at a restaurant the other evening included an optional $1 surcharge to help preserve wildland?

I suppose I gladly went along with the pitch because it was privately rather than publicly delivered. Also, we'd just hiked along one of the watersheds that would benefit, however slightly, from our small donation, and fond memories of the inspiring scenery during that trek left us in an appreciative mood.

Not all diners welcome the charge, however, concedes Buzz Crouch, manager and co-owner of New Moon Cafe in Nevada City, which is where we'd stopped for dinner on the way back to Sacramento. "That's why we provide a pen, so they can scratch it out," says Crouch. A few do, but other guests put the pen to another use, such as adding a zero to the $1 to increase both the amount of their bill and the amount of their donation.

"At the risk of being presumptuous, we added $1 to your bill to protect the spacious lands and emerald rivers in the northern Sierra foothills. If you object, we'll cheerfully deduct the amount. Simply cross it out," says a note with the bill.

New Moon Cafe began to add the levy about eight months ago, Crouch says, and so far has been turning over between $100 and $150 a week to the three conservation groups that evenly share the proceeds. The program is called "Bucks for Healthy Rivers and Trails," and the funds go toward restoring habitat, expanding trails, reducing sediment and the like of the Yuba River, Deer Creek, and Wolf Creek watersheds, says a statement on the Web site of one of the beneficiary organizations, the South Yuba River Citizens League. So far, the program has raised $5,720, says Dan Murnane, watershed education specialist for the South Yuba River Citizens League.

I wondered whether New Moon Cafe and other participating restaurants considered any alternative way to encourage diners to donate without upsetting them, such as saying that $1 of whatever tip they leave their server would go to the cause. Nope, says Crouch, he didn't, before reminding me that the tip option couldn't seriously be considered because it's illegal for a restaurateur to in any way tamper with a server's tips. That said, we look forward to our next meal at New Moon Cafe, and to using the pen only to sign the credit-card receipt, with the donation.

After more than a decade of cooking at restaurants in Minnesota and North Carolina, Robert "Bobby" Masullo, a 1988 graduate of McClatchy High School, has returned to Sacramento to open his own place, Masullo.

There, he's specializing in individual-sized Neapolitan-style pizzas fired in an Italian oven burning oak and olive wood. His opening menu is concise, but the selection of pizzas will be updated to stay current with seasonal ingredients. The first choices include a traditional margherita of tomato, mozzarella and basil ($9), a "brigitta" of potato, fontina, oregano and Niman Ranch bacon ($12), and a "mustapha" of mozzarella, granna, prosciutto and arugula ($10).

Other than the imported pizza oven, the restaurant's most unusual architectural feature is the tables and counter made from a single walnut tree that stood at 10th and Richards on the north edge of downtown.

Masullo, a 1992 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park, N.Y., visited Naples four times to study the city's famed way with pizza. "Fresh, regional flavor is an inborn quality there. People take a pride in their local cuisine," says Masullo in describing the sort of culinary awareness he intends to cultivate at his restaurant. As to the pizzas specifically, he says he will be baking them in the Neapolitan style - "at a much higher temperature than the average American pie is baked at."

Full disclosure: Masullo is the son of Bob and Eileen Masullo of Sacramento; Bob Masullo is a retired colleague from The Bee.

Masullo, 2711 Riverside Blvd., serves dinner only, 5-9:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 5-10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; (916) 443-8929. The restaurant opened a week ago without its beer-and-wine license, which Masullo hopes to get sometime this week.

Come Monday, the spigot that allows the esteemed wine Brunello di Montalcino to flow from Italy to the United States will be back on, officials of the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau decreed today. It's been off the past few months as federal authorities impounded shipments of the wine after Italian officials accused some producers of using unauthorized varieties of grape in Brunello di Montalcino. Under Italian law, only the black grape sangiovese is to go into Brunello di Montalcino.

Now, U.S. officials have determined that Brunello di Montalcino can be released from the custody of customs agents and resume its journey to American wine shops and restaurants - provided that importers secure a declaration from Italian authorities that the wine is acceptable for sale in Italy and that the wine's vintage date and brand name meet the requirements of the Brunello di Montalcino Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG).

Though Italian winemaking standards are more rigorous than American, U.S. law stipulates that it is illegal to market mislabeled wine here, and any wine labeled Brunello di Montalcino would be misleadingly labeled if the wine didn't adhere to Italian laws. For a more extensive report on the Brunello di Montalcino scandal, see Eric Asimov's wine column in Wednesday's New York Times.

Word out of New York this week is that Empire State lawmakers have approved legislation to exempt from the state's liquor-control laws ice cream made with wine. According to comments by New York legislators and winemakers, the demand for wine ice cream is rising. If so, it must be only in New York.

While ice cream made with wine isn't unheard of in California, it's more obscure novelty than trend here. Dr. Bob Small, a recently retired professor of wine and business in the school of hospitality management at California Polytechnic State University, Pomona, knows both ice cream and wine. For one, he's proprietor of the Dr. Bob's line of hand-crafted gourmet ice creams of Upland. He's also the longtime director of the Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition in Pomona. A few years ago, he teamed up with Don Galleano, proprietor of the historic Galleano Winery at Mira Loma in the Cucamonga Valley, to make an ice cream based on the old California style of wine called angelica.

Small also has made ice cream with a gewurztraminer ice wine from Canada, an ice cream with prune armagnac, and a sorbet with Champagne. He's also been experimenting with batches of tequila ice cream. Nevertheless, he doesn't see such ice creams going mainstream. He does them for special events and a handful of specialty stores and restaurants. He's learned that the best wine-inspired ice creams come from highly sweet and concentrated dessert wines, which are among the more expensive wines, thus boosting substantially the price of ice creams made from them.

He doesn't know of any California winery or ice-cream company making wine ice cream commercially, nor does the trade group Wine Institute. State alcohol-beverage-control and food-and-agriculture officials have yet to respond to my inquiries.

Small sounds more interested in completing a wine book he's writing than pursuing wine ice cream as anything more than a sideline. He's wary of producing a product that seems like it could invite censure because of ice cream's traditional association with children.

New York authorities also anticipated that reaction. According to news reports, wine ice cream isn't to contain more than 5 percent alcohol by volume, it isn't to be sold to anyone younger than 21, and labels and menus are to include warning statements.

For nearly two hours this morning, Darrell Corti, president of the Universita Di Corti, otherwise known as the storeroom at the rear of his Folsom Boulevard grocery store, Corti Brothers, lectured 14 gastronomy students from Italy on the history and culture of food in California.

I've no idea what he said. The lecture was entirely in Italian, except for the occasional "Conestoga wagons," "San Francisco," "mission fig" and "avocado."

Afterwards, however, I chatted with several of the students, all in their second year at the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo in the northern Italian region of Piedmont.

They said they were surprised by California's diversity, from the range of fruits and vegetables grown here to the breadth of the state's microclimates. They were impressed by the scale of the California State Water Project.

Anna-Lena Banzhaf, a chef from Stuttgart, Germany, said she was stunned that except for one variety of wild plum no one is making commercial use of any indigenous fruits that were exploited along the West Coast before the arrival of European colonists.

Lucia Lantero, a chef at two- and three-star Michelin restaurants in Spain and France, said she drew from Corti's lecture a better understanding of why Mexican cuisine is so prominent in California. As she strolled about Corti Brothers both before and after the lecture she was awed by the stretch of international foods on the store's shelves. "In Italy, Spain, Paris, you don't find so many products," she said, carrying two she just had to have, a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and a bag of wasabi-flavored roasted peas from Japan. "I haven't seen these since I first had them at a restaurant in Shanghai. I never found them again, until today; I went crazy."

Corti Brothers was the group's first stop after arriving yesterday in San Francisco from Milan. This afternoon they were to visit the department of viticulture and enology at UC Davis before returning to San Francisco. Over the next 10 days they are to visit Napa Valley, Sonoma County, take a baking class at a pastry shop in Larkspur, dine at the acclaimed Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, visit a brewery in Santa Cruz, tour Full Belly Farm at Capay Valley in Yolo County, and eat a lunch based on locally grown radicchio in Salinas Valley, among other stops.

The University of Gastronomic Sciences, just four years old, is a spinoff of the Slow Food movement, devoted to the international understanding of food production and biodiversity. Students customarily already are well seasoned in the culinary arts, but through further study in such broad topics as cultural anthropology, economics, nutriiton and the like hope to broaden their understanding of and influence in how people eat.

As reported in The Bee last week, for the first time in the five-year history of the Martha Stewart magazine Everyday Food something other than food is on the cover. Namely, people. Specifically, Martha Stewart herself and celebrity restaurateur Emeril Lagasse, who joins the publication with a regular column, Kick It Up.

Everyday Food has become my favorite culinary magazine for daily cooking, thanks largely to its pithy advice and concise, realistic, seasonal recipes. In recent days, from the June issue alone - Stewart and Lagasse are on the cover of the July/August issue - I've prepared tuna steaks with a salsa of grape tomatoes and red onion, spaghetti with pancetta, green beans and basil, pan-seared steak with spinach, grapes and almonds, a seared-chicken salad with cherries and goat-cheese dressing, and cheddar-stuffed hamburgers. The speed with which each could be prepared made them perfect for after a day at work. Except for the robust burgers, all were appropriately light and refreshing for the hot evenings lately.

Thus, I was a bit concerned that Lagasse's involvement in the magazine could change its practicality and helpful tone. Despite Lagasse's flamboyant personality, however, editor Sandy Gluck is sticking to the magazine's successful formula of providing recipes that are timely and respectful of today's pressures on time and finances. I not only look forward to Lagasse's recipes for grilled ribs and Caribbean chicken, but several of the July/August issue's other dishes, including broiled apricots with ginger whipped cream (though peaches may have to be substituted), gemelli with yellow squash, peas and basil, and the tomato, corn and avocado salad.

Most refreshing of all, I haven't spotted a single "Bam!" in the text.

Aside from the occasional baseball game or concert, I avoid crowds. Thus, I generally don't eat out on New Year's Eve, Mother's Day, Easter and the like. Yesterday was an exception. I've been hearing good things about South Pine Cafe in Nevada City, so a Father's Day excursion seemed in order. But then I remembered how much I'd paid to fuel up the car the day before. And then I remembered hearing that a branch of South Pine Cafe had opened recently in Auburn, not quite so far removed from Sacramento.

What we found was a bright cafe that might have been as busy even if it weren't Father's Day. The place was jammed with old bikers, young families, and the large Marc and Monica Deconinck party. (They own Le Bilig French Restaurant in Auburn, and it's almost always a good sign to find restaurateurs patronizing a neighbor.)

The South Pine Cafe's extensive menu takes advantage of a modern and global consciousness to bring new color and vigor to traditional breakfast and lunch dishes. Lobster and a hollandaise with jalapeno chile peppers muscle into the eggs Benedict, the chicken in a burrito is seasoned with a Thai peanut sauce, and chipotle chile peppers, grilled onions and bacon beef up the "smoldering pine burger."

But while there's a New Age vibe to South Pine Cafe - a tofu scramble is spiced with jerk sauce, a vegetarian burger is made with pecans and brown rice - there's also a streak of traditionalism, as represented by such dishes as old timey biscuits and gravy, buttermilk pancakes, and huevos rancheros.

Father's Day is no day to review a restaurant, other than to say we found the mimosa tangy and refreshing, the Southwestern corn cakes sweet and snappy, and we look forward to another visit. If we're lucky, maybe a Sacramento branch will open one of these days. In the meantime, the Nevada City original is at 110 South Pine St., a Grass Valley branch is at 102 Richardson St., and the Auburn outlet, which opened in May, is at 660 Auburn-Folsom Road. All are open 8 a.m.-3 p.m. daily.

For Sacramento's newest frozen-yogurt shop, Eric Heffel's timing couldn't have been better. It was hot Saturday night. Thousands of people were in midtown for the monthly Second Saturday art walk. And one of the stops for the new Second Saturday shuttle was right in front of his door at 19th and L.

Thus, the crowd inside Yogurtagogo was thick, happy and hungry, to judge by the number of people filling tubs of raspberry pomegranate, peanut butter, chocolate and mango tart frozen yogurt at 43 cents per ounce. Heffel had opened the shop at about 7 p.m. and within two hours it clearly had been discovered.

Heffel, of El Dorado Hills, who has been working in heath-care information technology, will be serving six flavors a day, including one non-dairy flavor for lactose-intolerant customers (pineapple Saturday night). The shop is the first of what Heffel hopes will evolve into a chain.

Yogurtagogo, 19th and L, is to be open 11 a.m.-11 p.m. daily, perhaps later weekends, said Heffel; (916) 346-4649.

Judges who predicted that the Dry Creek Valley in northern Sonoma County was the source of the grapes that went into the zinfandel that won the sweepstakes at the 2008 Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition were on the money.

When the competition concluded May 30 the judges knew only that they'd elected a 2006 zinfandel as the best of the 3,500 wines they'd spent three days evaluating. Late last night, however, at a gala on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona, competition officials revealed that the winning wine was the Armida Winery 2006 Dry Creek Valley Maple Vineyards Zinfandel. (The price wasn't available immediately, though the 2005 version sold for $36.) The runnerup, the best white wine of the judging, was the Penguin Bay Winery 2007 Finger Lakes Gewurztraminer.

Seven wines with ties to the Sacramento area won best-of-class honors, including two by Bogle Vineyards of Clarksburg, the 2007 California Chenin Blanc and the 2006 California Sauvignon Blanc. The others were the Chasing Venus 2007 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, a New Zealand wine made by Crew Wine Co. of Sacramento; the Jessie's Grove Winery 2005 Lodi Old Vine Westwind Zinfandel; the Crystal Valley Cellars 2006 Lodi Tannat; the McManis Family Vineyards 2006 California Zinfandel; the C.G. Di Arie Vineyard & Winery 2005 Shenandoah Valley Zinfandel; and the Michael-David Winery 2005 Lodi Lust Zinfandel.

For the Sacramento region, the most striking results of the competition may not be wine, at all, but olive oil. More than 500 olive oils from around the world were being judged by separate panels at the same time the wines and spirits were being evaluated. When the results of the olive-oil competition were announced last night, the top three American entries all were made with olives grown in the Sacramento Valley: The Olive Press Butte County Sevillano (best extra-virgin olive oil, domestic, delicate); Apollo Olive Oil Sacramento Valley Yuba County Mistral Organic (best extra-virgin olive oil, domestic, medium); and Calolea Early Harvest Yuba County Mission (best extra-virgin olive oil, domestic, robust). Italian and Spanish olives oils won the top honors in the international division. Olivas de Oro's rosemary flavored olive oil from the Central Coast won the top award as best flavored olive oil.

For complete results of the wine, spirits and olive-oil judging, visit the competition's Web site.

After five hours of tasting and voting, and then tasting and voting again, and again, and again, judges at the 2008 California State Fair commercial wine competition finally chose a best-of-show white and a best-of-show red at 1:55 p.m. today.

I wish I could reveal the two top wines, but I don't know their identity. They aren't to be unveiled until the evening of July 10, when the fair holds its annual Grape & Gourmet gala at Cal Expo.

This much I know: The best-of-show white is a riesling, the best-of-show red is a pinot noir. Both are terrific representatives of their respective varietals, the riesling fresh, fruity, and persistent, the pinot noir striking a rare balance between youthful fruitiness and mature complexity.

Each was chosen from a field of 12 candidates, which earlier had been elected the best wines of the regions into which the competition divides the state (Sierra foothills, Lodi, South Central Coast and so forth). The group of 12 candidates for best-of-show white was interesting in that three of the candidates were sparkling wines, two were viogniers and two were riesling, all varietals or styles for which California isn't especially noted; only one was a chardonnay. The 12 reds were almost as provocative, with only one candidate being a zinfandel, one being a sangiovese rose, and two being unusual blends; three, however, were cabernet sauvignon, helping restore a semblance of balance to the wine world.

Friday the 13th will live up to its notorious bum-luck reputation for fans of the Chinese cooking at the midtown Sacramento restaurant First Choice, 1313 21st St. Owner Kevin Zhang is closing the place tomorrow after a 15-year run.

The closure is to be short lived, however. The new owners, whose names Zhang didn't have at his fingertips when we chatted this afternoon, are to do some light remodeling in anticipation of a June 19 reopening, he said. He isn't sure what name the restaurant will use or what its concept will be, though he expected it to remain in the city's family of Asian restaurants.

Zhang says he's selling because he's tired of working seven-day weeks and because he wants to return to school, possibly to study acupuncture. First, however, could be a trip to China.

One of the more congested intersections during Sacramento's monthly Second Saturday art walk is likely to be even more crowded this Saturday evening. That's when Ali Mackani, owner of Restaurant 55 Degrees on Capitol Mall, expects to start introducing Sacramentans to his new project, Lounge on 20, at 20th and K in midtown.

While the wine bar and restaurant occupies spacious quarters on the southeast corner of the MARRS building (Midtown Art Retail Restaurant Scene), it won't be fully operational for another week or so, says Mackani. The menu still is being refined, but guests should be able to get a pretty fair idea of the design of the space and the restaurant's choice of wines by the glass, its cocktail selection, and its Champagnes and other sparkling wines. (Mackani and his wine director, Kassidy Harris, plan to have 30 available by the glass.)

One of their principal goals is to create a space that will become as well known for its convivialty as its food and beverages. That should be no problem Saturday night.

For our panel, the second day of the 2008 California State Fair commercial wine competition was a lot like the first day: We tasted almost nothing but zinfandel, and again found them difficult and uneven. We ended up handing out a few gold medals, but I wish we'd found more that we could agree were worthy of merit. After most judges posed for a group photo, we convened at 8:56 a.m. Here's how it went for our panel from that point on:

9:15 a.m.: We got our first big batch of zinfandels, 22 of them, all from 2006, the same vintage we judged the day before.

10:03 a.m.: We complete our joint deliberation of the first flight. We all seemed surprised to find that we'd agreed to give two of the 22 wines double-gold medals. A double-gold medal is awarded when all the judges of a panel concur that the wine warrants gold. Yesterday, we didn't give a single double-gold medal.

10:12 a.m.: We begin our second flight, 21 zinfandels. We aren't far into the wines when head judge G.M. "Pooch" Pucilowski interrupts all tasting to remind judges to specify the problem whenever a panel finds a wine thought to be so seriously flawed that a another round of pours should be requested from a new bottle. Such a problem almost always stems from a faulty cork, one contaminated with a chemical compound called TCA. One of two such "corked" wines from the previous day, says Pucilowski, came from a boxed wine, while another came from a bottle with a screwcap. Though his comment suggests that a corked wine can't come from a vessel without a cork, that's not so. A winery's timbers and barrels also can get contaminated with TCA, which then transfers to its wines, regardless of whether it is in a box, a bottle with a screwcap, or some other kind of container.

10:25 a.m.: Judges have been given an experimental solution for rinsing and reviving their palates between wines. Pucilowski isn't sure of the contents, but it tastes salty and citric. A similar solution was used this spring at the Lodi International Wine Competition, where I found it quite effective in washing away tannin and restoring some sort of equilibrium to my tastebuds. At Cal Expo, however, the solution seems watered down, not up to the job. I push it aside and return to nibbling on the unofficial olive of many wine competitions, a big, fleshy, sharp and sweet green variety put up by Graeber's. It's New World vs. Old World, and for the duration of the day I'm back to the Old World.

10:50 a.m.: Of the 21 zinfandels in our second flight, we give just one gold medal.

11:05 a.m. We start to taste our third flight, 21 zinfandels from 2005. One tastes exactly like the baby bok choy I grilled the other night; too bad there's no class for baby bok choy, grilled division. My notes from another asks: Will somebody please change this baby's diaper?

11:40 a.m.: We finish our deliberations of this class, giving just one gold medal

1:30 p.m.: After lunch, we taste and discuss another flight of 2005 zinfandels. This time, we don't award a single gold.

1:40 p.m. One distinguishing characteristic of the State Fair commercial wine competition is that it chooses a best overall chardonnay, zinfandel, pinot noir and so forth. This afternoon, those deliberations got under way. Our panel helped choose the best sauvignon blanc and the best riesling. Three sauvignon blancs were up for the honor, two rieslings. In both instances, every wine was worthy of being the best, I felt. It came down to deciding which style each judge individually preferred. Among the sauvignon blancs, for example, No. 7031 was made in the zesty, spirited style of New Zealand, No. 7038 was exquisitely balanced, and No. 7039 was unusually complex and elegant for the varietal. No. 7039 got my vote. We won't know the identities of the wines for another couple of weeks.

3:40 p.m.: After a lot of hanging around to see if we will be needed for any further deliberations - time for an oatmeal cookie and a cup of coffee - we're dismissed. We resume tomorrow morning, and by early afternoon should finish electing all the competition's top wines.

G.M. "Pooch" Pucilowski, who has been running the annual California State Fair commercial wine competition for more than 20 years, summoned his 68 judges to take their places at 8:48 a.m. today for the 2008 edition of the event, which continues through Friday at Cal Expo. Here's my first-day report as one of four judges on panel No. 9:

8:59 a.m.: The first carts of wine roll in. Almost all the wines are white or pink. This is the custom, lighter wines coming before heavier at the start of a competition. Not ours. All our wines are red, dark red. I check our tasting schedule. We're judging nothing but zinfandel, all from the 2006 vintage, 80 of them. The first flight consists of 27 wines.

9:17 a.m.: All 27 zinfandels are grouped before me. I stand and start to sniff each one. This is known as the "Peterson Method" of wine evaluation, named after veteran California winemaker Richard Peterson, also a judge at Cal Expo. This approach involves smelling and arranging the wines by their potential for a gold, silver or bronze medal. Only after we first smell the wines are we to start tasting.

9:25 a.m.: I taste my first wine, No. 2477, one of five potential gold medals I've set aside. It tastes of raspberries, but the flavor isn't as impressive as the smell. I move it to the silver group.

9:31 a.m.: The first glass of the competition gets dropped and broken. I didn't do it.

10:02 a.m.: I finish the first flight. I'm let down. Of the 27 wines, I have just five candidates for gold medals. I try to remember what kind of year 2006 was to have left so many zinfandels tasting so vegetal. Fellow panelist Richard Matranga, an attorney/vintner from Sonora, revisits the breakfast buffet, returning with a cinnamon roll. "After that flight I needed a reward of some kind," he says. This could be a long day.

10:10 a.m.: All four judges of our panel have finished going through the wines and convene for a joint deliberation. The other panelists are Mike Kerrigan of Sutter Creek, a cellar rat for Story Vineyards in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley, and Claudius Fehr, a wine educator from Toronto.

10:35 a.m.: We finish our discussion, agreeing on what sort of medal each wine should get, or whether it should get any medal at all. Rarely have I sat on a panel whose members were so little in accord. Of the 27 wines, just three get gold medals, and none was unanimous or easy to agree upon.

10:46 a.m.: We begin to evaluate our second flight of 27 zinfandels. Why do so many smell of burned rubber and charred wood, I find myself asking myself.

10:50 a.m.: We get word that our third flight already has been poured, and that we will be expected to judge them before lunch.

11:08 a.m.: Richard Matranga, the fastest member of our panel, revisits the breakfast buffet, returning with a wedge of Brie. "The key is that it be some kind of reward," he says, brushing aside the small plate of roast beef, celery, olives and bread that each judge is given to help refresh his palate.

11:20 a.m.: We finish our second round of discussion. Some of it centers on whether wine No. 2681 has too many or just enough bacon bits. Of this flight, just one wine gets gold.

11:50 a.m.: We start to evaluate our third flight, this time 26 zinfandels. I'm still struggling to remember why the 2006 vintage yielded so many disappointing zinfandels. The vibrant raspberry and blackberry fruit expected of the varietal just isn't there in a surprisingly high percentage of the wines.

12:38 p.m.: We end our deliberation of the third flight by giving just one gold medal. The wines are basically solid, we concur, but largely unexciting. We break for lunch.

1:15 p.m.: We return from lunch expecting to be dimissed for the day, but find 19 more red wines arranged at each of our spots. Without explanation, we've been assigned another class, perhaps to reward us for being so efficient, perhaps to punish us for not giving more gold medals. All we're told is that these are "sweet red wines, all types, .61 residual sugar and above." With no benchmark other than that, I try to picture the context in which each would be most appropriate as I make my way through the lineup. Thoughts that come to mind as I swirl, sniff, sip and spit: Mardi Gras party where the masks are really elaborate. Cribbage match. "Macbeth" recital. Pillow fight.

2:25 p.m.: We finish for the day without giving any wine in the final group a gold medal. Me thinks we may have been a bit harsh. Granted, many were peculiar, but a few were solid enough to add to the pleasure of beach party or backyard barbecue soiree. So it goes.

We resume at 8:30 a.m. Thursday. Let's look at what's ahead of us: 90 zinfandels. Where's my toothbrush?

We missed last night's 2008 SushiMasters competition at the Sacramento Convention Center - and you thought all those people around 13th, L, K and J were attending "Phantom of the Opera" - but we were able to catch up with the pageantry, tradition and artistry of the discipline this morning through Bee photographer Andy Alfaro's video of the event.

Best of Show honors went to Tomaharu Nakamura of Sanraku Four Seasons in San Francisco, who beat out five other sushi chefs for the trophy, including Sacramento's Billy Ngo of the midtown restaurant Kru, the defending champ.

After a nearly 24-year run, David and Diania Berkley are selling their David Berkley Fine Wines & Specialty Foods at the Pavilions shopping complex in Sacramento.

Though Berkley confirmed by email that he and his wife are "stepping aside from the day to day operations" of the small and perpetually crowded shop, he wasn't immediately available to discuss details of the transaction.

R&M Gourmet Foods LLC, a joint venture involving Ray Matteson, a longtime customer of the store, and Greg Rhategan, a specialty food and wine purveyor from the East Coast, are taking over. They will retain the store's name and concept, said Berkley.

Over the years, the store became celebrated for its selection of choice international wines, its lineup of chocolates, condiments and other specialty foods, its collection of cheeses and other deli items, and its modern menu of globally inspired dishes. Long before today's commercial emphasis on locally grown seasonal produce, Berkley was rounding up cherries, peaches, asparagus and the like from growers close to Sacramento.

Berkley had been a wine merchant with Corti Brothers for about 12 years when he left in late 1984 with plans to open his own shop the next spring at the Pavilions, then under construction along Fair Oaks Boulevard east of Howe Avenue.

During the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan, Berkley became the unpaid and unofficial but active wine adviser to the White House, delighting in selecting California wines with themes appropriate to honor the guest of honor at state dinners, such as as Prince Charles of England and French President Francois Mitterrand.

In thanking customers for their patronage, Berkley said: We have cultivated special relationships with our customers who have joined us along with our staff in an epicurean journey...It is our wish that the community will continue to enjoy our tradition of elevating a shopping trip to a memorable experience."

In case of turbulence, I'm not sure I'd want a bowl of the hot Vietnamese noodle soup pho in my lap while flying out of Sacramento International Airport, but a week from today travelers are to have that option.

That's when Mai Pham is scheduled to open a branch of her Lemon Grass Asian Grill & Noodle Bar in Terminal A. Easier to handle than the pho will be several other items on the takeout menu, including shrimp salad rolls, Thai beef salad, grilled Bangkok chicken, and jungle curry with tofu and vegetables.

The airport cafe marks the first time that Pham has agreed to a licensing partnership with a national company (HMSHost), and she sees the move as a possible step toward introducing the Lemon Grass concept to a much broader audience.

Pham, who has owned the Vietnamese and Thai restaurant Lemon Grass along Munroe Street for nearly 20 years, introduced Lemon Grass Asian Grill & Noodle Bar along Howe Avenue in 2006 as an outlet for more casual dishes representing Southeast Asian street food and market kitchens. Pho is her signature dish, but the Terminal A menu, an abbreviated version of her other menus, also includes the spicy Thai noodle soup kao soi, grilled lemon grass chicken and assorted curries and salads.

In addition, the menu includes breakfast paninis, oatmeal and pastries from La Bou Bakery and Cafe, the chain of croissant shops in which Pham also is a principal.

Tomatoes are being sliced from the menus of Sacramento-area restaurants as restaurateurs and chefs respond to an outbreak of salmonellosis linked to the most popular fruit of summer.

So far, however, chain operators with fixed year-round menus are being the most proactive in eliminating tomatoes.

Independently owned restaurants with seasonal and regional menus haven't yet started to use locally grown varieties and are waiting to follow the recommendations of public-health authorities, who already have advised that California-grown cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, tomatoes sold with the vine still attached, and home-raised tomatoes are safe to eat.

"It's a little early for the big fresh summer tomatoes," says Biba Caggiano, owner of the midtown Sacramento restaurant Biba. "We're using cherry and grape tomatoes from GreenLeaf Produce in San Francisco, and they're FDA approved."

At Bidwell Street Bistro in Folsom, chef Wendi Mentink is taking the same stance. While her new spring menu is heavy with asparagus, tomatoes aren't prominently featured, and won't be until local heirloom varieties start to become available in another two weeks or so.

At Luigi's Pizza Parlor along Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento, owner Frank Brida says he's so confused about the tomato issue that he's stopped topping his pizzas with the fruit until he gets some clarification from local public-health authorities. "The health department should put out a directive," Brida says.

(Alicia Enriquez, program manager in the environmental health division of the County of Sacramento Environmental Management Department, says local authorities are looking into that, but in the meantime are urging restaurateurs, shopkeepers and others concerned about the matter to follow FDA guidelines, which advise against eating raw red plum, raw red Roma, or raw round red tomatoes.)

As a precaution, chains such as Noah's Bagels and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers have pulled tomatoes from their sandwiches and salads in recent days.

"We just want to be on the safe side, providing the freshest and healthiest products we can," says Peter Jakel, communications manager for the Einstein Noah Restaurant Group in Lakewood, Colo., which has some 600 bagel outlets in North America.

Kevin Caulfield, director of communications for Red Robin Gourmet Burgers Inc. of Greenwood Village, Colo., says the chain discarded and withdrew tomatoes from its 400 outlets, including four in the Sacramento area, last Wednesday.

"We hope it will be of short duration, but it will last until we hear from an authoritative source, such as the FDA, that the tomato supply is safe," says Caulfield.

Workers at Produce Express in Sacramento, which supplies many restaurants, markets, delis and the like with vegetables and fruit, fielded between 300 and 400 calls Monday from customers concerned about the safety of tomatoes they'd bought, says sales manager Jim Mills.

"They're asking if they should continue to use them. We're leaving it up to them. We don't know enough. This is a warning, not a recall," Mills says. "Officials are saying there are bad tomatoes out there, but they can't find them, they don't know where they are from. A little information is dangerous."

In short, Produce Express is advising customers to follow the FDA guidelines. Also, as of Wednesday all tomatoes to be distributed by Produce Express will have been grown in California, Mills says.

So far, about two dozen customers have accepted an offer by Produce Express to exchange tomatoes or to receive credit for their purchases in recent days, Mills notes.

A few California restaurateurs and chefs won honors during this weekend's James Beard Awards in New York. Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco share the award for outstanding pastry chef; the Napa Valley restaurant Terra of St. Helena got the award for outstanding service; Craig Stoll of the San Francisco restaurant Delfina was named outstanding chef for the Pacific region; San Francisco cookbook author Paul Wolfert had her book "Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco" inducted into the Cookbook Hall of Fame; and San Francisco brewer Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing was given the organization's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Per usual, however, East Coast culinarians tended to dominate the awards, with Joe Bastianich and Mario Batali of Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca in New York being named outstanding restaurateurs, and Gramercy Tavern of New York designated the outstanding restaurant. Grant Achatz of the restaurant Alinea in Chicago was named outstanding chef.

Angie Tarbat's fast-pitch softball team was playing well but nonetheless struggling in a Modesto tournament Saturday. Her family's barbera, however, was cruising to an easy win in the Amador County Fair commercial wine competition at Plymouth.

The sweepstakes wine is the big and balanced Boitano Family Wines 2006 Sierra Foothills Shenandoah Valley Barbera ($24), just released. To get to the sweepstakes, the wine first had to be declared best of class, then top the most competitive round of the day, the voting for best red, which involved 18 wines, ranging from a sangiovese and a syrah to a meritage and a merlot. Then it went up against a sauvignon blanc, a port and a rose in the final showdown.

Bob and Erlene Boitano established Boitano Family Wines in 1999 at Mokelumne Hill, Calaveras County, starting with a sangiovese vineyard. They introduced the brand in 2001. The wines are made at Lockeford. The grapes for the sweepstakes barbera were grown at Dick Cooper's ranch in the Shenandoah Valley.

At last year's Amador County Fair, the Boitano Family Wines 2005 Shenandoah Valley Barbera also put in a strong performance, being named the best Amador County wine based on a traditional Italian grape variety. The 2005 barbera still is available at some Raley's supermarkets in the Sacramento area, but the 2006 has yet to reach the local market. The Boitanos bottled 350 cases of the wine, and have more in barrel.

Angie Tarbat's 12-and-under softball team, incidentally, finished third in the Modesto tournament.

In less than a year, Revolution Wines, believed to be the first commercial winery to put down roots within the city limits of Sacramento since the repeal of Prohibition, is outgrowing its P Street quarters and may move before this fall's crush.

The plan, however, is for Revolution to remain within the city as an urban winery, says partner and winemaker Jason Fernandez. He has his eye on another downtown/midtown site and is close to negotiating a deal, but no lease has been signed.

Revolution is looking to relocate almost solely because it needs more room, says Fernandez. He crushed 70 tons of grapes last fall, enough for about 4,200 cases of wine, and frets that he won't have room enough for the coming vintage without getting himself squeezed between barrels and tanks. If he gets the site he wants, he'll have enough space to crush up to 200 tons of grapes, though he doesn't expect to do near that much fruit this year. The new quarters also would provide the winery with more visibility. The current space backs up onto an alley behind other businesses, with access from the front puzzling to some first-time visitors.

Just in time for tomorrow's Amador County Fair homemade wine competition in Plymouth, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today signed legislation to assure that the judging can proceed without a cloud overhead.

Such competitions have been going on for years, but earlier this spring an official of the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control said a provision of the state's business and professions code made it illegal for home winemakers to share their wines with others, even including judges at county fairs.

No one but the winemaker - "not a judge in a competition, not your neighbor, not even your spouse if he/she did not participate in making the wine" - is to drink the wine, said Sen. Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) as she quickly introduced a bill to rectify the matter.

"Even though the provision banning home winemaker competitions had not been widely enforced in practice, the growing legions of home winemakers did not deserve to have an arcane section of state law hanging over them," Wiggins said Friday after the governor signed her bill as an "urgency measure," meaning it takes effect immediately.

More than 50 fairs hold homemade wine competitions, said Stephen Chambers, executive director of the Western Fairs Association.

Vintners in Nevada County often talk up cabernet franc as the grape and the wine that ultimately will set them apart from their brethern in the Sierra foothills. Rarely, however, do other grape growers and winemakers in the Mother Lode sing the praises of cabernet franc, a black grape commonly used to add complexity to cabernet sauvignon and merlot in Bordeaux and California, but developing a following in California as a varietal.

At yesterday's annual Foothill Grape Day at Sogno Winery of Shingle Springs, however, speaker Bill Easton of Terre Rouge/Easton Wines in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley said he sees a promising future for cabernet franc in the region, even though he doesn't grow any and only occasionally makes wine from the grape.

Easton noted that the Sierra foothills appellation not only is large but is characterized by an array of elevations, exposures and micro-climates that still have to be explored for their grape-growing potential. What's more, cabernet franc looks to be a versatile grape that can adapt well to a wide range of growing conditions, though he thinks its best potential is in cooler reaches of the foothills, 2000 feet and higher. Already, says Easton, he's tasted some "incredibly great" cabernet francs from the region.

Coincidental with Easton's remarks, I'd been reviewing the showing of foothill wines in several competitions over the past year, and have been struck by how often cabernet franc has performed well. Here's gold-medal foothill cabernet francs from six competitions I've tracked so far:

Conti Estate/Charles B. Mitchell Vineyard & Winery 2005 El Dorado Reserve Cabernet Franc ($25), which got a gold medal at the Calaveras County Fair and a gold medal and best of class at the El Dorado County Fair.

Crystal Basin Cellars 2006 El Dorado County Reserve Cabernet Franc ($25), gold at El Dorado, expected to be released in about two months.

Latcham Vineyards 2005 Fair Play Special RSV Cabernet Franc ($20), a unanimous gold-medal wine and winner of a chairman's award at the Riverside International Wine Competition.

Mt. Vernon Winery 2004 Placer County Cabernet Franc ($24), gold at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.

Nevada City Winery 2005 Sierra Foothills Cabernet Franc ($24), gold at the Chronicle.

Pilot Peak Winery 2006 Sierra Foothills Cabernet Franc ($25), gold at El Dorado.

Murphy Vineyards 2005 Sierra Foothills Cabernet Franc ($16.50), gold at the Chronicle.

Two other gold-medal winners from the Sacramento region, though not from the foothills, are the Cinnabar Vineyards 2004 Lodi Cabernet Franc ($35), best of class at the Chronicle, and the Jeff Runquist Wines 2006 Clarksburg Salmon Vineyard Cabernet Franc ($18), gold at the Chronicle.

In looking back over this list, one concern comes to mind. Vintners of the more expensive wines may want to review their pricing strategy. Cabernet franc is a relatively new grape and wine in the local area. Consumers aren't likely to spend big bucks for a varietal with which they aren't familiar. I've seen this kind of high pricing with sangiovese, viognier and syrah, all of which have struggled to develop a following. High prices could be one reason for their difficulties. If cabernet franc has a chance to establish itself as a distinguished member of the region's wine lineup, it would be more encouraging to see more releases made more accessible with lower prices.

I know alcohol levels in table wines have been rising, but a chardonnay with 18 percent alcohol? Sure enough, that's what the label said on a bottle of chardonnay we tasted a few days ago. The wine was big, all right, with a brassy yellow color, ripe fruit, fat body and a touch of sweetness, but it didn't taste all that warm.

Did it really contain 18 percent alcohol? Nope, says Hank Battjes, owner of Gold Hill Vineyard at Coloma in El Dorado County. His chardonnays are actually closer to 13 and 13.5 percent alcohol, says Battjes. So why the discrepancy? It was a printing error, says Battjes, who let the matter ride because of the cost in time and money to reprint the labels.

The error is on both Gold Hill's 2007 El Dorado Chardonnay and the 2006 Reserve Chardonnay.

"I've given up on that label outfit," says Battjes.

Macchia Wines of Lodi doesn't make bashful wines. Almost without exception, they're big and concentrated. By their names alone, Macchia Wines don't so must stand on the shelf as swagger: Bodacious, Outrageous, Infamous and so forth. They clearly impressed judges at Friday's El Dorado County Fair Commercial Wine Competition.

Macchia came away from the judging with two double-gold medals, three gold medals, and the sweepstakes honor, the latter for the Macchia Wines 2006 Amador County Cooper Ranch Infamous Barbera ($22), which also was one of the two wines to get a double gold, awarded only when all the judges on a panel concur that a wine warrants a gold medal. The other double-gold wine was the Macchia Wines 2006 Lodi Noma Ranch Outrageous Zinfandel ($18).

Macchia's other wines to win gold were the 2006 Lodi Mischievious Zinfandel ($18), the 2006 Amador County Bodacious Petite Sirah ($24) and the 2006 Lodi Rebellious Petite Sirah ($24).

Macchia's strong performance, perhaps unprecedented in the competition, also included four silver medals and three bronzes.

A few other wineries also turned in impressive showings - C.G. Di Arie Vineyard & Winery (two double-golds, a best of class, a gold, five silvers and a bronze), Jeff Runquist Wines (a double-gold, three golds, five silvers and a bronze), Mount Aukum Winery (four golds, a best of class, six silvers and five bronzes), and Toogood Estate Winery (a double gold, two golds, best organically made wine, six silvers and seven bronzes).

Results are to be posted tonight on the fair's Web site.

Today's lunch-hour wine tasting was all about sauvignon blanc, in particular the wide range of styles in which it can be made. They came from California, South Africa, New Zealand, Chile and France, and they ranged in price from $18.50 to $70. Most were dry, but a couple were unusually sweet for the varietal. All nine were enlightening, each representing with balance and polish the varied sources of their grapes and the varied aspirations of their winemakers. The thread that tied them together was their crisp acidity, their refreshing fruitiness and their potential compatability with food. They showed with backbone and zest precisely why sauvignon blanc is so friendly at today's dinner table, which, I presume, is one point the sponsors of the tasting, officials of St. Supery Vineyards & Winery in Napa Valley, wanted to make.

Afterwards, however, a totally unrelated wine was poured, which proved so spectacular it gave me another candidate for my next update of The 10 Best Wines of the Year, So Far. It's the St. Supery 2004 Napa Valley Elu, a fleshy and mouth-filling red based largely on cabernet sauvignon but also including a substantial portion of merlot and smaller contributions of petit verdot, cabernet franc and malbec. At $65 a bottle, it's dear, but it delivers enchanting aromatics, generous oak and a lush and spicy fruitiness that ranges from juicy blackberries to sunny cherries. We're more into sauvignon-blanc weather right now, but this is one wine to keep in mind for the year-end holidays, especially when you are looking for a gift for the cabernet enthusiast on your shopping list.

After three days and some 3,500 wines, judges at the 2008 Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition in Pomona concluded their deliberations today by electing a 2006 zinfandel the show's best wine.

Officials of the judging's sponsors - the Los Angeles County Fair and the supermarket chain Ralphs - won't release the identities of the wines until June 14, but judges began to speculate immediately about where the grapes for the sweepstakes wine might have been grown. Almost certainly California, given that zinfandel is cultivated here more extensively than any place else. Beyond that, a random survey of several judges found no consensus, though Sonoma County generally and either the Russian River Valley or the Dry Creek Valley were mentioned more often as the possible appellation of origin. Paso Robles also looked to be in the running. The winning wine is lithe, jammy and persistent, with a brightness of fruit and a lean structure that seemed to rule out Amador County and Lodi as the likely source of the grapes; in both those appellations, zinfandels customarily are riper and weightier. Curiously, no one mentioned El Dorado County or Napa Valley as the possible source of the zinfandel's grapes, even though zinfandels from both areas often are stylistically similar to the sweepstakes winner.

A total 47 wines were candidates for the sweepstakes. The final two hours of deliberation first involved selecting a best white wine, a best sparkling wine and so forth until 10 wines were left standing, one from each of the major divisions.

I'm looking forward to learning the identities of all 47, but especially the gewurztraminer that was declared the best white wine of the competition. It also was the runnerup to the zinfandel for the sweepstakes title. And then there's a spectacular sangiovese, a close second to the zinfandel when the best red wine was chosen.

A Moscato D'Asti beat out a Champagne, a Brut and a prosecco for best sparkling wine, while a sherry handily beat an angelica and a tawny port for best dessert wine.

After tasting more than 60 roses during today's session of the 2008 Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition, I'm having difficulty seeing why the sales of rose wines are so brisk. I don't have precise market reports at my fingertips, but I've been reading sales surveys and hearing plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that consumer interest in the sort of dry, lean, pink wines often associated with Provence and elsewhere in the South of France is on the rise.

For the most part, however, the roses we tasted just didn't justify the purported excitement. Too many didn't deliver fruit, finesse or finish. They often were pretty, but as a group they tended to be one dimensional and dispirited. Maybe it was the context. Roses are wines to be drunk outside, alongside the pool or under an oak tree on a picnic. We were in an exhibit hall at Fairplex, the grounds of the Los Angeles County Fair. At one point we were so discouraged by the few gold medals we were giving we asked if we could move our table outside in hopes that sunshine and the spring breeze would provide a friendlier environment for assessing roses.

In the end, two sub-categories of rose proved the most encouraging. One was roses blended from grape varieties common to the Rhone Valley of France, such as syrah, grenache and mourvedre. Of the 18 such wines we tasted, five got gold medals, a pretty high percentage for any class in any wine competition. I look forward to learning the identities of those wines. I'm also looking forward to learning the identities of the roses made from the grape sangiovese. Of the six we tasted, two got gold medals, and another two got silver medals, indicating that sangiovese may be more suitable as a rose than as a more traditional table wine. I'm assuming here that the sangiovese roses were mostly from California, where the grape has struggled to find its groove.

We will wrap up the judging tomorrow. The final round will be a tasting of an anticipated 40 to 50 wines nominated for sweepstakes.

Aside from the magnitude of the undertaking - about 3,500 wines, 510 olive oils and 126 spirits - the 2008 Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition got under way yesterday without major incident or development.

Everything is judged blind, and awards won't be revealed until June 14, so there's not much news to report at this time. The four-person panel I'm on judged 105 wines yesterday, including 45 barrel-fermented 2006 chardonnays priced $12 to $23 and 56 2005 cabernet sauvignons priced up to $15.

We agreed on five gold medals for the chardonnays, seven for the cabernets. While the chardonnays were enjoyable largely because winemakers seem to be lightening their use of oak, the cabernets were a much more exciting class, primarily because the wines were more focused. They had more to say, and they said it with surprising clarity at that price. "I'm surprised. They're pretty damn nice," said Jon McPherson at the end of the cabernet judging. He's the chair of our panel, and when he isn't doing that he's winemaker for South Coast Winery in Temecula. "They have depth of character, the oak is integrated, and tannins are in balance. They offer good value," he added.

The other panelists are Patty Held, an owner of Stone Hill Winery in Hermann, Mo., and Coke Roth of Richland, Wash., an attorney developing a vineyard in Washington's Red Mountain district. When we resume in a couple of hours we'll first face 61 roses, to be followed by 35 syrahs. Not a bad way to spend a Thursday

Well, that was interesting. I've just come from the opening reception of the 2008 Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition. As much of a mouthful as that is, it doesn't completely describe the competition that gets under way on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona tomorrow. One of the world's larger olive-oil judgings also will commence at 8:30 a.m. The chairman of the olive-oil judging is Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti. During this evening's reception, he introduced me to Dr. Gino Celletti of Milan, one of the olive-oil judges. Dr. Celletti had arrived in Los Angeles from Beijing, where in another month or so he will open Olive Oil Restaurant Cafe.

An Italian restaurant in the capital of China, home to one of the world's other classic cuisines, raises a question or two. Like, why? Well, explained Dr. Celletti, Beijing also is home to a huge number of millionaires, many of whom seem infatuated with interntional cuisines and have the disposable income to pursue their interest. What's more, they are particularly keen on European foods and wines. And then, of course, there's the upcoming Olympics, which will attract all sorts of Europeans and Americans who likely will welcome an opportunity to eat foods with which they are more familiar than traditional Chinese dishes.

These are all practical business reasons for opening a restaurant in Beijing, but Dr. Celletti, who is involved in the making and marketing of olive oil when he isn't launching restaurants in unlikely locales, has an artistic impulse that he's applying to dishes in the Beijing restaurant. The menu he showed me is as long and detailed as some textbooks at UC Davis, with each of the individual chapters devoted to the olive oils and dishes of individual Italian provinces. From Liguria, for example, the indigenous olive Razzola is used in a pesto tossed with pasta and potatoes. From Emilia Romagna, the olive Brisighella is used with sliced beef served with a cake based on the cheese Parmigiano and a sauce based on the grape sangiovese. And so it goes.

We read and hear a lot these days about economic globalization. Dr. Celletti looks to have taken that concept to heart, and if the Chinese realize as much joy from Italian olive oil and the Italian culinary arts as the rest of the world, well, that would seem to be an encouraging development for a broadened international consciousness.

Just before leaving for Pomona and the 2008 Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition this afternoon I had a brief chat with Kurt Spataro, executive chef of Paragary's Restaurant Group. I was trying to confirm speculation that his eponymous downtown restaurant may be about to change hands. When you write of restaurants in today's precarious economic environment that's what you do with a bit of your daily work time - chase down rumors about this acquisition and that closure.

In short, Spataro Restaurant & Bar still is a member of Paragary's Restaurant Group, said Spataro, with no change in ownership anticipated. About three or four months ago, however, representatives of OSI Restaurant Partners in Tampa approached Spataro and business partner Randy Paragary to talk about possibly taking over Spataro for a branch of Roy's, their Hawaiian fusion concept started 20 years ago in Honolulu by Roy Yamaguchi. OSI also owns Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar, a branch of which is planned for the old Firestone building being renovated just up L Street from Spataro. Part of the OSI philosophy, said Spataro, is to put a branch of Roy's in the same general vicinity as a Fleming's, thus the company's interest in Spataro. "We listened, but it didn't work out for them," says Spataro. "They cooled on this market."

While no change looks to be imminent for Spataro, Spataro did remind me of a long-enduring principle of the restaurant business: For the right price, just about any place can change hands. "As owners, you listen to anything," says Spataro.

We hadn't been to the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee for a couple of years, so we were surprised this weekend to discover what to us were several new venues, such as Pyramid Alehouse and Marilyn's, both on the K Street Mall. They were more intimate than traditional settings like Turntable Junction and the Hyatt Regency ballroom, but in the case of Pyramid Alehouse the jubilee's organizers might want to rethink their strategy.

While the acoustics were fine, Pyramid Alehouse wasn't the best environment to showcase a band like the blues ensemble Marshall Wilkerson and Smoked Sugar. Sightlines were poor, there was no dance floor to speak of, the game but short-handed staff couldn't keep up with fans who wanted to be seated, and restaurant guests who were there to eat and drink rather than to be entertained apparently felt put upon, leading to requests that the music be toned down.

Imagine that, at a jazz jubilee.

Pyramid Alehouse did have one advantage over other settings, however - a wider selection of beers, even if this weekend didn't provide the most beer-friendly weather.

After vacillating for weeks over the future of his Gianni's Trattoria in midtown Sacramento, Peter Torza is closing down the business and putting it on the market. Last call is this coming weekend.

"I gave this my all, but it jut didn't work. It hurts," said Torza Monday afternoon after dispatching a media email to announce his decision. "Rewards were many, but at my age this place takes just too much of my time. And time is pretty precious," wrote Torza.

He opened the sleek Gianni's in April of 2007 as a successor to his Black Pearl Oyster Bar in the same quarters. The Black Pearl had become too much of a bar scene for his taste and he hoped Gianni's would strike a better balance between restaurant and lounge, but that equilibrium never materialized. The restaurant was doing fine, but the bar business had fallen off. "You need the two of them."

He also speculated that Gianni's may have been hurt by the larger and splashier G.V. Hurley's restaurant and bar that opened recently next door, and by high gas prices that could be discouraging suburban residents from driving into Sacramento for dinner, especially midweek.

The final straw came this weekend, when business was "horrible," said Torza. "I loved doing it, but I don't want to work this hard this late in my life."

His plans are uncertain, though he indicated he'd be giving more of his time to nearby Harlow's, in which he is a principal. He's also thinking of relocating to Italy for a few months. He's also thinking of being a restaurant consultant, helping design new places but not operating them. "I feel my job is done," said Torza. "At this point, I think I'd enjoy building them more than running them. But I am going to miss the food here. I love that calamari."

Wine enthusiasts venturing into Amador County's Shenandoah Valley this Memorial Day weekend for a bit of tasting will have a new winery to check out.

Jeff Runquist, who honed his winemaking palate as an intern at the Shenandoah Valley's Montevina Winery while attending UC Davis in 1979, has returned to the appellation to put down permanent roots. Runquist just opened his striking Gold Rush-theme facility along Shenandoah Road, directly across the street from where he lived from 1981 to 1984 while making wine at Montevina.

The place is kind of bare right now, but Runquist, whose "R" wines consistently show up in the gold-medal column of various competitions, expects to have all his equipment and barrels on the premises in time for this year's harvest. He established his brand in 1995 and has been making his wines at McManis Family Vineyards south of Lodi, where he also is the winemaker and where he will continue to make many of his releases.

Why has he been eager to return to Amador County? "This is where I've produced my marque wine, the 'Z' zinfandel. And while I make wines with grapes from around the state, there's not another appellation that I make five wines from," says Runquist. On top of that, he's long enjoyed the valley's congenial atmosphere and support from other vintners.

Jeff Runquist Wines, 10776 Shenandoah Road, Plymouth, is open regularly for tasting 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday through Sunday, but the tasting room also will be open Monday this weekend; (209) 245-6282.

The recent death of Robert Mondavi may or may not revive a tribute proposed more than three years ago by former State Sen. Wesley Chesbro, a Democrat from Arcata. Though Mondavi was in fine form at the time, Chesbro drew up a resolution to name busy Highway 29 through the heart of Napa Valley the "Robert Mondavi Memorial Highway."

Mondavi just had lost his iconic Oakville winery in a $1.36-billion buyout by Costellation Brands Inc. of Fairport, N.Y., and Chesbro may have wanted to be sure that residents and visitors in the valley didn't soon forget Mondavi's pivotal role in establishing the appellation as the nation's most prominent wine district.

Officially, the route would have remained Highway 29, but signs financed by private funds would have been installed on the shoulders to recognize Mondavi.

Early on, it looked as if the proposal would breeze throught he legislature, with both the Napa County Board of Supervisors and the Napa Vintners Association endorsing it. No organized opposition appeared, though some must have been working behind the scenes. The measure quietly drifted off, never to be seen again.

What happened? David Miller, press secretary to State Sen. Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa), chair of the Senate Select Committee on California's Wine Industry, said some opposition did materialize, principally from winemakers who felt that such public recognition would give the "Robert Mondavi" brand of wines a competitive edge in the market. Well, yes, that's conceivable, but such an attitude hardly seems in the spirit of cooperation that Mondavi so vigorously championed on behalf of the entire valley through his life.

Almost certainly, some sort of recognition for Mondavi will be forthcoming, but Wiggins isn't likely to bring up the highway proposal again, suggests Miller. "We're looking at potential things to honor him, but that (the highway naming) would run into the same kind of problems," he said.

To look at bunches of wine grapes just starting to develop on vines in the Sierra foothills, you might not realize the kind of beating they've been taking. They look perfectly fine. But that, however, depends on where you look.

While the vintage is young, it's shaping up as one of the more unpredictable in years, say growers and winemakers in the Mother Lode. There's been a spring frost, soon followed by an early and sustained spike in temperature, then high winds. All of these weather developments could pose eventual problems for the size and nature of this fall's crop.

Last night at the restaurant Latitudes in Auburn, however, where Placer County vintners gathered for their annual introduction of recent and pending releases, farmers and winemakers weren't whining. While the weather has set them back and left them scratching their heads, they more or less agreed that the year still is too young to begin talking about the quantity and quality of the vintage of 2008.

"They look fabulous," said grower Karen McGillivray of the 11 acres of wine grapes she and her husband William tend at Newcastle. Never mind that last month's sharp frost at the couple's Dono dal Cielo Vineyard reduced the potential crop by around 30 percent, or that the dry spring and the early heat prompted them to start watering vines more than a month earlier than usual. That's farming, and they've been doing it long enough - they planted their first vines in 2002, and this is the first year they're going entirely organic - to learn to roll with the periodic setbacks nature deals them.

Jim Taylor of Mt. Vernon Winery at Auburn said the frost hit his barbera "big time," at least "stunning" if not killing around half the crop. Still, he's optimistic that the year will progress more or less routinely. "It's a little early to figure out, but it probably will be an OK year," said Taylor.

Another Auburn vintner,Teena Wilkins of Vina Castellano, figures she lost between 15 percent and 35 percent of her eight-acre crop to the frost, including 60 percent of her one acre of barbera, the variety that sustained the most damage. Nonetheless, she was upbeat, noting that in the 10 years she's been farming wine grapes this was her first significant loss. "Next year we may have to put in some frost protection."

One pizza place closes (see below) and two open, isn't that the way it goes? In this instance, however, one may be enough. On Friday, what may be the region's largest pizza restaurant is to open in Roseville. Basic Urban Kitchen + Bar is the full and proper name, but it's such a pizza joint that that's all there is on the menu, other than a salad. But while the menu is concise, the place will be huge, seating 215 in a 6,000-square-foot former warehouse in Roseville's Old Town.

This will be the second location for Basic Urban Kitchen + Bar. The first, also in a converted warehouse, opened two years ago near San Diego's Petco Park, scoring $1.8 million in sales its first year, $3 million the next, according to a report in San Diego Business Journal.

Jon Magnini came up with the concept, inspired largely by the thin-crust, brick-oven pizzas he savored at Italian bistros as he was growing up in New Haven, Conn.

The concept is to keep everything simple, thus the barebones warehouse settings, the limited menu, and a wine list where every release is priced the same - $7 the glass and $26 the bottle for whites, $8 the glass and $30 the bottle for reds.

Magnini and his partners were drawn to Roseville by the size and naturalness of the building and its location in a redevloping industrial area of the city, says owner/operator Kenny Gowan.

Basic Urban Kitchen + Bar, 112 Pacific St., Roseville, is to be open 11:30 a.m.-2 a.m. Monday through Saturday, 5 p.m.-2 a.m. Sundays; (916) 749-4641.

Northern California's increasingly expensive and unsteady economy hasn't led to a shakeout of restaurants, but in another sign that restaurateurs are uneasy Peter Torza has closed his I Dragoni Pizzeria in midtown Sacramento and cut back the days that his adjoining Gianni's Trattoria is open.

I Dragoni, open only two months, just didn't catch on, and to cut losses and to focus on his primary restaurant Torza decided to quickly pull the plug. Over the weekend, he met with employees to discuss options for Gianni's. The group agreed to start closing Tuesdays effective tomorrow to reduce operating costs about 17 percent. While Gianni's has been busy at the end of the week and during weekends, business has slowed appreciably earlier in the week, said Torza. Gianni's already closed Mondays.

Torza also will be trimming some dishes from the Gianni's menu to reduce preparation time and to focus on dishes that already sell well.

"The staff is upbeat and we're trying to come up with better ideas to encourage business," said Torza.

Whoa, how about this heat? Come on, Delta breezes. And thinking of the Delta, it will be the setting May 31 for an ambitious day of culinary-related field trips and a concluding dinner to highlight seasonal ingredients of the greater Sacramento area, in this instance Sacramento, Placer, Solano and Yolo counties.

Called "Slow Down on the Delta," the event is being coordinated by the Slow Food convivia of the four counties. Slow Food is an international movement meant to encourage agricultural biodiversity and intimacy between farmers and consumers.

One tour will focus on California Vegetable Specialties in Rio Vista, the only producer of endive in the United States. Another will be a boat tour on the sloughs about Sutter Island to explore the area's early human history, reclamation projects and the like. A third will involve a trek about Tim Neuharth's 300-acre organic pear orchard on Sutter Island. Details on these and other tours, and the dinner, are at the event's Web site.

The chefs to conduct that night's dinner - Patrick Mulvaney of Mulvaney Building & Loan in Sacramento, Molly Hawks and Michael Fagnoni of Hawks in Granite Bay, Daniel Bell of Chef to Go Catering in Vacaville, and Pru Mendez of Tucos Wine Market and Cafe in Davis - are rounding up local seasonal provisions for the menu, which also is to include regional wines. The dinner will be at Vino Farms, 51375 S. Netherlands Road, Clarksburg. Tickets are $85 per person for the general public, $75 for Slow Food members.

Jeff Back, an early player in midtown Sacramento's surge of wine bars as a manager at 58 Degrees & Holding Co., has teamed up with his wife Gail to open what the couple is calling Folsom's "first upscale wine bar," The Back Wine Bar.

Half their inventory of 60 wines, about evenly split between international and domestic brands, is poured by the glass. "These are wines you can't find in supermarkets," said Jeff Back when asked about the stylistic focus of the couple's selections. Their list includes wines from such boutique wineries as Marelle in Sonoma County and Ancien in Napa Valley, as well as familiar brands like Rosenblum, Far Niente and Duckhorn.

Their chef, Matthew Nicolls, oversees a compact small-plate menu that includes Hawaiian ahi poke ($13), a shrimp-and-sole ceviche ($9) and assorted bruschetta ($9).

Jeff Back, a graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is a certified wine steward in the Court of Master Sommeliers and also holds a diploma from the International Sommelier Guild.

The Back Wine Bar, in the Raley's at The Parkway shopping center, 25075 Blue Ravine Road (at East Natoma Street), is open 3-10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; (916) 986-9100.

Aioli Bodega Espanol in midtown Sacramento is "a wonderful place to take a group out." Bistro 33 Midtown is "a great place to troll for the opposite sex or have a high energy night out with friends." Biba is "nearly up to SF standards." These are a few of the early comments being contributed to a survey of Sacramento restaurants by Zagat, publisher of a popular series of guidebooks. Whether this means Sacramento finally will be the subject of one of Zagat's popular burgundy-bound manuals remains to be seen.

Persons who visit the Zagat Web site have until June 15 to add their comments concerning the food, decor, service and cost of several area restaurants. Contributors must register with the site, a process that includes providing your email address and age. In response, they will get a copy of the 2009 edition of "America's Top Restaurants" when it is published.

As a nation eager to live better if not forever, Americans are hung up on the pyramid for guidance. First, there was the federal government's Food Guide Pyramid, remodeled three years ago as My Pyramid. Trouble was, those efforts were flawed and misguided for directing Americans to an honestly helpful diet, claim experts of Harvard University's School of Public Health.

As a consequence, they're introducing their version of the pyramid, called the Healthy Eating Pyramid. They've taken matters into their own hands, they say, because the government's versions were based on out-of-date science, didn't keep abreast of scientific discoveries, and were shaped at least in part by "people with business interests in their messages."

We likely will be hearing and reading a lot about the latest pyramid in the days and weeks ahead, but its message boils down to five key points:

- Regular exercise is the foundation, thus the running shoes and barbells along the bottom of the pyramid.

- Forget about tracking portion sizes, servings, grams and the like; the new pyramid is a simpler guide to what people should be eating, without fretting over the details.

- And what we should be eating is plants - vegetables, whole grains, fruits and healthy fats, like olive oil.

- Cut way back on the "American staples," such as red meat, salty snacks, sugary drinks, refined grains and potatoes; if you eat meat, pick poultry and fish.

- Take a multivitamin, and have a drink, but forget alcohol if you wonder whether it could be more potentially harmful than beneficial. "Those who don’t drink shouldn’t feel that they need to start," caution the Harvard authorities.

Petite sirah long has had its advocates, but its group of followers hasn't been particularly large or vocal. It's been called a "cult wine," though that suggests a following more limited than it actually is. What's more, petite sirah is showing signs of rising in popularity as wine enthusiasts discover how lush with floral aromas and blackberry flavors it can be. More consumers haven't ventured into petite-sirah land for two related factors: Petite sirah's inky color and rigid tannins are so intimidating they can scare off potential customers before they give it a chance.

Under his Quixote label, veteran Napa Valley vintner Carl Doumani makes one of those big, brooding petite syrahs. (Contrary to the approach of most other winemakers working with petite sirah, Doumani prefers the spelling "petite syrah," recognizing that the grape's parents are syrah and peloursin.)

Now, however, Doumani is releasing a more approachable petite sirah, the Pretense 2005 Solano County Petite Syrah ($15). Though its color is dense as night, the wine is immediately accessible. It's dry and medium bodied, with a smell of violets, a flavor that runs to both blackberries and raspberries, a satiny texture, and a finish that includes a snap of spice. The tannins are in full retreat. The alcohol is a modest 13.8 percent. And it comes in a screwcap bottle. The whole package, in fact, leaps off the shelf, thanks to Marin graphic designer Jim Moon's novel wrap-around label that looks like a crinkly brown-paper bag.

"We give you 'Pretense,' with the assurance that now even those of modest means can have 'Pretense' in their cellar and on their dining table," says Doumani in a press release.

Unfortunately, Doumani says Pretense is a one-time-only wine, the consequence of a series of serendipitous happenings that began with the availability of the grapes from Oberti Family Vineyard in Suisun Valley.

In Sacramento, Corti Brothers has received a shipment of the wine, which could be on the floor as soon as today.

We found the wine a perfect accompaniment, incidentally, to the first burgers off the grill this spring. They were sweetened with grilled onions and spiced with a catsup-and-mayo sauce seasoned with horseradish, mustard, wasabi and lime. But the meat alone was the big hit. For the first time, we made the burgers with Five Dot Ranch ground chuck from Taylor's Market ($4.49 per pound). This is good beef, coming from a famly that's been ranching in California since 1852. Today, the Swickard family's holdings stretch from Lassen County to Napa Valley. The mostly Angus cattle they run are raised on open range with sustainable, "holistic" and natural practices. They don't use antibiotics on the herds, and they don't add hormones to their feed.

Five Dot Ranch beef was sold wholesale until the family recently opened its first retail store at Oxbow Public Market in Napa. In addition to Taylor's Market, Five Dot Beef is found at Davis Food Co-Op, Ikeda's in Auburn, and Natural Food Selection and Briar Patch Co-Op in Grass Valley. Local restaurants that use Five Dot Beef include Ford's Real Hamburgers, The Waterboy and The Kitchen in Sacramento, Hawks in Granite Bay.

One wine on my list of the 10 Best Wines of the Year - So Far is the youthful and agile Greg Norman California Estates 2005 Lake County Red Hills Zinfandel ($15). Last night we opened another of the golfer's wines, the Greg Norman South Eastern Australia Sparkling Chardonnay Pinot Noir ($20). It won't make the cut, though it is a sound and pleasant bubbly.

A blend of 61 percent pinot noir and 39 percent chardonnay, it's an unusually subdued sparkler for coming from Australia. The fruit is dry and austere, the bubbles fine, the beads languid. It's crisp and refreshing, and low in alcohol (11.5 percent). For its lightness, it's closer to prosecco than Champagne in overall style. While perfectly enjoyable, it had a restraint that didn't let it interfere with our excitement and conversation.

Why would anyone open a bottle of sparkling wine on a Monday night, anyway? Aside from our conviction that sparkling wine is versatile enough to enjoy with a wide range of foods, we did have something to celebrate. We'd just received word that our first grandchild in nearly 16 years and our first grandson was born at 3:18 a.m. May 13 in Bangkok. Here's to you, Rayden Light Kanah-Dunne.

After a two-week closure for remodeling, the Cliff House of Folsom has been reborn as Sudwerk Riverside Restaurant & Brewhouse. No beer will be brewed on the premises. However, the four regular beers and six rotating seasonal beers that have helped make Sudwerk Restaurant and Brewery in Davis so popular will be on tap.

Tim McDonnell, a San Francisco restaurateur who acquired the Davis brewpub in 2006, bought the Cliff House from Paragon Steak House Restaurants of San Diego in February and continued to operate it until closing the business for remodeling about three weeks ago. (Ron Broward continues to own Sudwerk's brewing operations.)

The makeover includes a new menu, but McDonnell is retaining the prime rib and steaks for which the Cliff House was recognized. He's expanded the seafood, burger, pasta and salad selections, and added pizza.

This is the second restyling of the restaurant, which began life as Tosh's in 1977. In 1989 it was made over into the Cliff House of Folsom. The restaurant occupies one of the choicer dining spots in Sacramento County, overlooking Folsom, Lake Natoma and the American River bikeway.

Sudwerk Riverside Restaurant & Brewhouse, 9900 Greenback Lane, Folsom, is open for meals 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, brunch 10 a.m.-2 p.m. and dinner 4-10 p.m. Sundays; (916) 989-9243.

If I'd get my hair cut more often I might be more up to speed on Sacramento's culinary scene. When my stylist - go ahead, chuckle - asked what I knew of the new wine bar at Marriott's Residence Inn at Capitol Park at 15th and L I drew a blank. Hadn't heard of it, I had to confess.

Thus, over the weekend we dropped in to see what it was about. Actually, 3 Fires Lounge, which the place is called, isn't a wine bar so much as a casual cafe with a few international wines by the glass and several Belgian beers. While it's casual, it's also comfortable, with plush chairs and tall barstools spaced considerately through the dark and spacious quarters. Grab a table on the 15th Street side and you can watch joggers at Capitol Park, theater goers strolling to the convention center, and limos depositing prom attendees at Mason's across the way. There's also a whole lot of wide-screen plasma TVs. The name comes from the coalition of three Native American tribes that owns a substantial piece of the hotel.

The menu runs to modern bar food - barbecued duck-confit crepes ($13), risotto fritters ($6) and mango cheesecake ($6). The happy-hour menu 4-6 p.m. Monday through Friday includes a cilantro Caesar salad ($5), avocado egg rolls ($5) and a petite buffalo burger ($5).

When my stylist asks about the wine, I now can tell her to try the young and beefy malbec by the Argentine producer Gascon.

Let's wrap up the week with a lingering note from last weekend's Riverside International Wine Competition. Actually, the note has nothing to do with the competition per se, but with a ritual the night before. That's when the arriving judges are to bring to a welcoming reception and dinner a wine they'd especially like to share.

The wines were spread out on a table on a patio of the Mission Inn. Judges browsed the array, picked what grabbed their curiosity, and had a taste. Sometimes they talked about it, sometimes they looked for a potted plant in which to dump the rest.

I tasted one wine that so knocked me over I quietly grabbed the entire bottle and put it on the table where I'd be sitting when we convened for dinner. The wine was the wonderfully bright and fleshy Kelly Fleming Wines 2004 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. It was dark, juicy, sweetly plummy and perfectly balanced, with notes of both Napa Valley herbalness and hillside tar. And it lasted and lasted. It's my strongest candidate yet to be added to the next revision of my 10 Best Wines of the Year - So Far.

At about $85 a bottle, someone was really generous to bring and share the wine. I suspect that person was fellow judge Celia Welch Masyczek, a veteran Napa Valley winemaker now making the wines of Kelly Fleming. She didn't let on that she'd brought the wine, but she snagged a chair at the table where I'd put it.

In Sacramento, the wine is available for $86 at David Berkley Fine Wines & Specialty Foods. It's also available by the glass ($27), the bottle ($99) and the magnum ($199) at Paul Martin's American Bistro in Roseville. Why there? Could be because Kelly Fleming is the wife of Paul Martin Fleming, the entrepreneur behind several restaurants, incljuding Paul Martin's.

Chocolate, caramel and salt. Put them together and what's not to like? People who are discovering the "salty caramel chocolates" at Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates at 18th and L in midtown Sacramento are learning just how marvelous the combination can be. It's become perhaps the most popular item in her lineup of spring chocolates. To learn how she makes them, and to pick up some tips on how to work with chocolate, sugar, butter and cream, we dropped in to her shop the other day. Meet Ginger Elizabeth Hahn:

What in the world were Robert and Margrit Mondavi doing in Sacramento last night, other than the obvious, which was savoring dinner at The Waterboy with a couple I didn't recognize? Dinner at The Waterboy is reason enough for a trek from Napa Valley to Sacramento, sure, but I suspect more was on the agenda than a meal with old friends. Probably had something to do with the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science nearing completion at UC Davis, underwritten with a $25 million donation from the legendary Napa Valley vintner.

Then another thought occurred: Could the Mondavis possibly be scouting out Waterboy owner/chef Rick Mahan as a candidate for a Robert Mondavi Culinary Award of Excellence? Never mind that the awards haven't been given out for about a decade. Though Mondavi subsequently lost his pivotal Napa Valley winery, the awards conceivably could be revived by the corporate officials who now own the place. Up to now, however, they haven't picked up many of the threads that Mondavi so famously wove into the fabric of the nation's culinary consciousness. But we can hope that they again will be proactive in promoting the smart, artful and, yes, moderate consumption of wine and food, always one of the abiding principles of Mondavi's philosophy. Revival of the awards would be a savvy way to reemphasize that connection between food and wine while also recognizing Mondavi's many contributions to the state's wine industry, and why not start with Rick Mahan?

Quick, who is the only Sacramento chef ever to receive a Robert Mondavi Culinary Award of Excellence? Why, Biba Caggiano, who got the tribute in 1996, the same year that five other chefs were recognized, including Cindy Pawlcyn, who at the time had 10 restaurants in San Francisco and Napa Valley, including Mustards Grill and Fog City Diner; Nobuyuki Matsuhisa of Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills; and Norman Van Aken of Norman's in Coral Gables, Fla.

The honor included a 30-square-foot portrait of each chef by Santa Barbara artist Rise Delmar-Ochsner. Caggiano's still looms over the bar of her midtown restaurant Biba. Space for such large art is tight at The Waterboy, but if the awards are resurrected maybe Mahan could hang a portrait at his new place.

It's springtime, and the Dunnigan Hills in northern Yolo County are alive with the sound of...earth-moving equipment, concrete mixers, power saws and the like. Or if not now, Friday, when Sacramentans John and Lane Giguiere break ground for a $2.5-million winery capable of producing 150,000 gallons of wine a year when it is completely built out.

They expect to have the first phase of the facility finished in time for this fall's crush. They've had big plans before and succeeded. The Giguieres, with John's brother, Karl Giguiere, founded R.H. Phillips Winery in 1983, starting with 10 acres in the Dunnigan Hills and building it into one of the nation's larger wineries before they sold it in 2000, when it was producing 800,000 cases annually. By then, their first small vineyard had grown to cover 1,800 acres.

Their new venture is Matchbook Winery, to rise on a 320-acre parcel at the junction of Yolo County roads 92B and 15B three miles west of Zamora. The couple already tends 73 acres of wine grapes on the property.

Matchbook Wines is a winemaking operation the Giguieres created two years ago under the umbrella of their Crew Wine Company, headquartered in Sacramento. They have four brands - Matchbook, Mossback, Sawbuck and Chasing Venus; wines for the first three are made in leased facilities and will be consolidated at the Zamora site, while the wines of Chasing Venus are made in New Zealand.

The Giguieres won't have a tasting room at the new winery until they finish the next phase of construction, to follow in a year or two, says Lane Giguiere.

Word came in too late last night to make today's Bee story about challenges facing restaurateurs in Old Sacramento, but here's another sign of confidence in the city's historic district: Janie Desmond Ison is coming back to Old Sacramento.

In 1994 she opened Steamers at Front and K streets, built it into a popular coffee stop for tourists and locals alike, and then sold the business in 2000. It closed this past Dec. 31, but Ison and her husband Jim, who also own Cafe Vinoteca at Fair Oaks Boulevard and Watt Avenue, which they will continue to run, have been enticed to return to Old Sac and reopen Steamers.

When they revive it, expected between mid- and late-June, Steamers will be more varied and ambitious, though initially open just for breakfast and lunch. The Isons are putting in a full kitchen, they're getting a beer-and-wine license, and they'll be adding dinners on weekend nights during peak times for the district (watch for their striking interpretation of banana-cream pie).

Why the name Steamers? Janie Ison said it originally represented both the steam wand on an espresso machine and the steam trains of Old Sacramento, but after they get the new Steamers up and running they'll also at least occasionally serve steamer clams.

The Isons are so confident in Old Sacramento's dining scene they've signed a 15-year lease for Steamers. "We're very bullish on Old Sacramento," says Jim Ison.

After 35 years, a landmark restaurant site in Old Sacramento is dark. The Fat family has closed California Fat's Asian Grill & Steakhouse, which originally opened in 1973 as China Camp.

"It was a combination of things. Number one, the economy. Secondly, there's more competition in Sacramento and the suburbs," says Jerry Fat, chief financial officer for the Fat family's group of restaurants. "California Fat's had been on a marginal basis the past year and a half or so. We're all down as more restaurants come into Sacramento, so it seemed the prudent thing to do."

Old Sacramento is busy weekends and for special events, such as during the Jazz Jubilee over Memorial Day weekend, but on weekdays local residents tend to stay away, adds Fat.

The California Fat's space now is being used for events like receptions and banquets. The family is looking at its options for the building, but it isn't likely to again house a restaurant, indicates Fat.

This hasn't been an especially auspicious year for the Fat family's restaurant interests. The family also owns the building along Alta Arden Expressway that housed Romano's Macaroni Grill, which closed in late March, about the same time the Fats were shutting down California Fat's. On the up side, the lease for the building has another two years to run, and Brinker International, the parent company of Romano's Macaroni Grill, continues to pay rent, says Fat.

I'm all for recycling and reusing, but an incident in New Zealand shows that prudence may need to be raised with our environmental consciousness.

Two women in a restaurant had to be hospitalized after tasting what they thought was mulled wine. Instead, it was a dishwashing liquid with sodium hydrozide. The mixup apparently occurred because an emptied bottle of "Mountain Thunder" mulled wine had been filled with dishwashing liquid. Though a detergent sticker had been slapped onto the wine bottle, enough of the original label still showed to convince a server that the vessel still contained the requested mulled wine.

For more details, check out this article from The New Zealand Herald.

Sunday's final sweepstakes round at the 2008 Riverside International Wine Competition was long and chaotic, in part because it involved many more wines than I thought it would draw. After Saturday's tasting, when my panel and neighboring panels seemed to be nominating few wines for sweepstakes consideration, I figured Sunday's final round would include only about 40 candidates from the some 2600 entries at the outset of the judging.

We ended up with 64 sweepstakes nominees, however, which speaks well of the overall caliber of the wines in the judging, but raises the question of whether that big a field really allows enough time for the serious deliberation that should be given the wines the panelists concur are the very best in the field. Me thinks a better system needs to be created to trim the number of finalists so judges can more patiently and earnestly weigh and debate the merits of the very best wines.

Ultimately, the 64 wines were whittled to five sweepstakes winners, one each in five categories - sparkling wine, dessert wine, white wine, rose wine and red wine. The red-wine field was unusually diverse and tough, but when the votes were tallied the clear winner was a local wine, the warm, dense and bacony Michael-David Winery 2005 Lodi Earthquake Syrah ($28). It topped a field that included four stylish zinfandels, an unusual number of blends, a vivacious tempranillo, a shout from the past in a juicy alicante bouschet, and, curiously, only one cabernet sauvignon. I'm not sure what the weak showing by cabernet sauvignon says, but the first question that comes to mind is whether this is an aberration or crack in the varietal's standing as California's most highly regarded wine.

Today shouldn't be as long or as tough as yesterday at the 2008 Riverside International Wine Competition. Saturday, our four-person panel tasted through 137 entries, ranging from light chardonnays to weighty cherry wines. Today, we're scheduled to taste just 48; zinfandel, syrah and sherry for breakfast, anyone? And after that, we'll have the sweepstakes round, which traditionally involves about 40 wines, though it doesn't look as if we will face that many today. Our panel, for one, didn't nominate a single one of our gold-medal wines for sweepstakes consideration, and from what I've been hearing other panels also have been tight with coming up with candidates. Not sure what it means. A weak field? Stern judges? All that could change this morning, however.

My fellow panelists, incidentally, are Don Galleano, owner/winemaker of the historic Galleano Winery in Mira Loma, Riverside County; Carol Shelton, owner/winemaker of Carol Shelton Wines in Santa Rosa; and Doug Frost, a Kansas City wine and spirits consultant and writer. Galleano has an interesting shorthand comment when he comes across a wine he doesn't like: "Yuba City, I have no reason to go there."

By the way, if you find yourself hungry in downtown Riverside, consider Omakase, the only Japanese restaurant I've been in for some time that doesn't have sushi. What it does have is a boldly modern and creative take on Japanese cookery. A thick cut of seared steelhead trout, served on artichoke risotto, was spicy with arugula and tangy with lemon, while the sweet richness of roasted pork belly was intensified on one hand with a blackberry gastrique and mellowed on the other by potato gnocchi. And don't get me started on the light-hearted joy of the pineapple custard cake. Omakase is at 3720 Mission Inn Ave.

The bright side of a flight delay is that you finally have time to catch up on your reading. Fortunately, I'd tossed into my luggage a couple of new books as I headed for Sacramento International Airport yesterday. One of them is Gary Vaynerchuk's "101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World" (Rodale, $19.95, 236 pages, softcover). By the time I got to Ontario about two hours later than scheduled, I'd covered most of the book and strolled out of the terminal pretty much convinced that "101 Wines" is one of the more entertaining and, as the title suggests, inspiring wine books of recent years.

If the name Gary Vaynerchuk doesn't ring a bell, he's the wild guy responsible for www.winelibrarytv.com, where he simply sits down with a New York Jets spit bucket, a few glasses of wine, and walks viewers through a tasting. He's loud, confident and almost always entertaining. His descriptions often are hilarious. That spunk is seized adroitly in his book, which basically is a series of descriptions of 101 wines he'd recommend to his best friend.

"I have selected wines that break down barriers, create new styles, and ooze charisma," he says in the introduction. He likes blended wines over varietals, and tends to prefer wines with big, ripe, concentrated flavors. "Fruit bomb" is one of his favorite descriptors. His taste often isn't my taste, but I do like the freshness, bluntness, humor and color of his descriptions.

Unlike a lot of wine books that talk of specific wines, his selections generally are current. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean they will be easy to find. Vaynerchuk lives in New York City, and several of the wines he's chosen, being European, may be easier to find there than on the West Coast. What's more, several of the wines were made in small lots.

Nonetheless, I found the book's enthusiasm so infectious that as soon as I got to my final destination, Riverside, I headed to La Bodega Wine & Spirits, which locals told me is the city's best wine shop. I walked in with my Vaynerchuck book and with the help of a clerk attempted to find among the shelves 10 wines I'd marked as especially provocative. Unfortunately, the shop didn't have a single one. Maybe I'll have better luck back in Sacramento. I'd sure like to get my hands on his No. 90 wine, the Peirano Estate Vineyards 2006 Lodi The Other ($13), a "dark, dark, dark" blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah, and his No. 15 wine, the Topanga Vineyards 2006 Clarksburg Grenache Blanc Celadon ($28), which he says would "Buster Douglas" similar Rhone-style California wines priced much higher. (According to his Vaynercabulary, "Buster Douglas" means to unexpectedly destory the competition, and is taken from James "Buster" Douglas, who in 1990 knocked out undefeated world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in Tokyo.)

Why am I in Riverside? Not for the amazing hot-rod show under way just outside the hotel, though I do hope to tour it this afternoon, but for the Riverside International Wine Competition about to get under way. Like Vaynerchuk, I'll be looking for wines to bring some "thunder" to my palate.

Before long, Californians no longer may have to fret about getting busted if they have a glass of wine with their picnic at a winery. Not that people who do this actually look worried. Deep in state regulations governing the consumption of alcoholic beverages, however, is wording that suggests that wineries aren't to allow visitors to open and consume anywhere on the premises a bottle of wine they've just bought in the tasting room.

Under legislation drawn up by Assemblywoman Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) and Senator Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa), the law is being clarified so wine-drinking picnickers need not run the risk of being charged with a misdemeaner. The measure, AB2004, passed out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee yesterday and now heads to the Assembly floor.

To clear up another wine-related matter, Wiggins next week is expected to introduce legislation to allow home winemakers to share with others the wines they make. Many already happily do this, but Wiggins recently learned that the practice technically is illegal.

According to a section of the state business and professions code, homemade wine is to be for the winemaker's own personal consumption. No one else - "not a judge in a competition, not your neighbor, not even your spouse if he/she did not participate in making the wine" - is to drink the wine, says Wiggins in a press release issued today.

As it stands, the law jeopardizes long-running home wine competitions, including the California State Fair's, Wiggins suggests. She says she will introduce her bill with an urgency clause so it would take effect as soon as the legislature passes it and the governor signs it, perhaps in time for this year's State Fair homewinemaking competition.

The six contenders for the 2008 SushiMasters Finals have been chosen, and the lone Sacramento representative is bound to be one tough opponent. He's Billy Ngo of midtown's Kru Restaurant, who won Best of Show honors in dramatic fashion last year after slicing a finger early in the competition.

The other finalists are Koji Ogawa of Sakura Chaya in Fresno, Tomaharu Nakamura of Sanraku Four Seasons in San Francisco, Akifusa Tonai of Kyo-ya in San Francisco, Takuya Matsuda of Sushi Bar Nippon in San Diego, and Aung Soe of Geisha House in Hollywood. The finalists are chosen through a series of regional competitions about the state.

This year's finals will be earlier than usual, moving up to June 10 at the Sacramento Convention Center. Sponsored by the California Rice Commission, the finals will be open to the public and also will feature sushi and sake tasting. Tickets are $65. For more information, visit the commission's SushiMasters Web site.

A Lincoln reader just back from France says he found the best falafel ever in Paris. Falafel isn't a dish I associate with France, but given the country's shifting demographics it makes perfect sense that an outstanding falafel should be found in the city that still reigns as the capital of fine cuisine.

His appetite whetted, he wants to know where he can find a fine falafel around here. His question reminded me that many years ago the falafel was one of my favorite foods. Basically, a falafel is patties of mashed garbanzo beans mixed with herbs and various Middle Eastern spices, then fried and served with a tahini sauce. The patties, both wholesome and intense, can be served on their own or slipped into pita bread, which is the way I customarily have preferred them. In recent years, that's how we have prepared them at home, and only rarely have I gone out looking for falafel.

With my curiosity newly aroused, however, I've started a search for notable cafe falafels, and need your help. So far, I've sampled the falafel at Maalouf's Taste of Lebanon along Fulton Avenue (big, hot, fresh, rustic and about as salty as they were spicy) and at Cafe Morocco along Alhambra (rich, coarse, grainy, a bit dry). Both were fine, but I suspect better may be out there, and would appreciate some guidance.

Based on those visits, two things about the falafel sandwich seems to have changed over the years. For one, they're much bigger than they used to be. Secondly, the pita hasn't appreciably improved, and in fact seems to have exchanged some of its character and flavor for its more substantial size.

At any rate, if you have a favorite falafel, or have heard of someplace celebrated for the dish, please let me know.

The County of Sacramento's traffic-signal method of alerting diners about the health status of restaurants is being acknowledged with one of the nation's more prestigious honors in consumerism.

Officials of the county's Environmental Management Department announced this morning that the agency is receiving the 2008 Samuel J. Crumbine Consumer Protection Award for Excellence in Food Protection.

The agency is being singled out specifically for a program it began last year involving green, yellow and red placards at the entrance of restaurants to notify guests how the businesses measured up during their latest public-health inspection. A green sign indicates no major health issues were found, a yellow sign indicates violations were uncovered and corrections are pending, and a red sign indicates that violations were so severe the restaurant is closed. Last summer, public-health authorities reported that about 88 percent of the county's food establishments, which include grocery stores and school cafeterias as well as restaurants, were getting green cards; just one percent were being hit with a red card.

The award's 12 judges, all public-health practitioners, were impressed with how local officials brought the local food industry aboard in introducing the program, food-safety classes they started to help restaurant workers avoid health issues, and the publication of inspection guidelines in several languages, among other provisions of the effort.

"The County of Sacramento has demonstrated leadership, innovation and a commitment to food safety that transcends the boundaries of their county. It is a guiding light for local food-safety programs throughout the nation," said Gary Erbeck of the County of San Diego Department of Environmental Health, chair of the award jury.

Named for one of the country's more celebrated public-health sanitarians, the Crumbine award has been handed out over the past 53 years. It will be presented local officials at the annual Educational Conference of the National Environmental Health Association in June in Tucson.

Twenty years ago, a charming little restaurant occupied a converted Victorian at 24th and K streets in midtown Sacramento. It was called Pava's, a name that still resonates with oldtimers not just for its grilled lamb chops, housemade ravioli, fruit cobblers and hearty breakfasts but for its loyal following, which ranged from the powerful to people who still were being called hippies.

When fire destroyed Pava's in 1990 after a 14-year-run, a Bee editorial lamented its loss and fretted that both the initiative and homeyness it represented also would be lost. The editorial was prescient, for the lot that Pava's occupied has stood largely vacant for nearly 18 years.

Now, however, Sacramento developer Thomas Allan Roth and Bay Area restaurateur Matthew Engelhart are drawing up plans for a restaurant to revive the individualistic spirit if not the name and culinary style of Pava's. Both have confirmed that they've signed a letter of intent to bring a branch of Engelhart's Cafe Gratitude to 24th and K.

Engelhart opened his first Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco in 2004 and now is up to four branches in the Bay Area, with a fifth to open this summer in Healdsburg. "It's a school of transformation disguised as a vegan organic restaurant," says Engelhart of the restaurant's concept.

He says he is being drawn to Sacramento in part because of its proximity to Vacaville, where he has bought a farm to help keep his restaurants supplied with the seasonal, sustainable, organically grown ingredients on which his menus are based.

Lots of restaurants these days boast of seasonal, sustainable, organically grown provisions, but Cafe Gratitude takes the commitment a step further by using the ingredients in solely vegan dishes. The Cafe Gratitude menu is a study in positive vibes, with each dish bearing a name meant to be self-affirming: "I Am Present" is an appetizer of buckwheat flatbread with mushroom herb confit and cashew mozzarella, while "I Am Terrific" is the restaurant's version of pad thai - vegetable noodles with kale, cucumber, tomato, sprouts, teriyaki almonds and a Thai almond-butter sauce. Desserts include "I Am Amazing," lemon meringue pie in macadamia-nut crust.

"The restaurant's décor is derived from a board game developed by the owners and built into each table. It encourages diners to express gratitude for one another and for the bounty the universe has bestowed upon anyone likely to walk in the door. After seating us, the hostess looked in our eyes and asked, 'What's great about today?'” wrote Gregory Dicum in the New York Times last fall after visiting the Mission District branch of Cafe Gratitude.

Roth gives three reasons for wanting a Cafe Gratitude on his lot: His own vegan diet, his memory of Pava's as "a wonderful place to go," and Engelhart's style of cooking, which he has found "delicious" and "consistent." "Pava's was busy most of the time, so this seems like it would be a perfect fit," adds Roth.

He owns buildings housing two other restaurants in the neighborhood - Rick's Dessert Diner and True Love Coffee House - as well as a three-story 1926 structure on the northeast corner of 21st and L he is looking to convert into a restaurant. Though prospective operators have toured the building with the thought of putting a "high end" restaurant in the structure, the shaky economy has cooled their enthusiasm. In the meantime, he's moving ahead with hopes of opening a restaurant on the old site of the revered Pava's within a year.

Working with only the wire cage, label, foil and cork from no more than two Champagne bottles, artists created more than 500 miniature chairs for this year's Champagne Chair Contest sponsored by the home-decor chain Design Within Reach.

Now, the 50 winning chairs are on a national tour, which pulls into Sacramento May 6. From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., a reception for the exhibit will be at Design Within Reach's Sacramento studio, 1020 16th St. And, yes, Champagne will be served. Seating, however, could be a challenge.

To see a few of the winning entries, visit the Design Within Reach Web site.

Davis Ranch in Sloughhouse isn't expected to start harvesting its sweet corn until mid-June or thereabouts, and when it does there's to be something new at the popular roadside stand along Highway 16 - barbecued beef and pork ribs, tri-tip roasts, chicken and hot dogs.

Tom and Pam Krumbholz, who own Incahoots BBQ Pizza and Grill in Plymouth, will bring their mobile kitchen to Davis Ranch this summer to help round out the produce stand's menu. The unit is expected to be in place on weekends from late June or early July through the harvest, says Pam Krumbholz. In addition to the meats, the Krumbholzs will be experimenting with grilled produce, raising the possibility that hot corn on the cob will be available.

In recent years, Davis Ranch has been expanding its range of produce beyond the corn that first brought celebrity to the spot. In addition to beets, grapes, artichokes and a whole bunch of other fruits and vegetables, the current lineup includes Sloughhouse asparagus. The stand is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, though when the corn starts to come in the schedule will be 6 a.m.-7 p.m. daily, says store manager Jim Ayers.

As I ambled along backroads about Murphys in Calaveras County and Sutter Creek and Amador City in Amador County the past few days, I couldn't recall a splashier show of spring poppies in the foothills. Hardly hill or hollow was without a bright patch of the golden blooms.

The display made me thankful for at least two reasons: One, that the legislature in 1903 had the good sense to name the golden poppy California's state flower. Second, that Gov. Schwarzenegger wasn't in office way back then. I suspect he would have caved in to the lily, lilac and lupine lobbyists and vetoed the measure, just as he buckled to cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay partisans a couple of years ago when legislators voted to declare zinfandel the state's "historic" wine grape.

Yeah, I hold a grudge, but that isn't the culinary point of this item. Andrae's Bakery in Amador City is. No matter how many times we stop at the shop, the Andraes seem to be stocking their already crowded display cases with something new. This time around it was a zesty pistachio and orange brioche. We resisted the oatmeal cookies and Basque cake, but not that or the brownies and the cranberry-and-walnut sourdough bread.

If you stop, be prepared for a long line and claustrophobia. The shop, which also has extensive selections of cheese and housemade sandwiches, is small and almost invariably crowded. But that's going to change. The Andraes are drawing up plans for roomier new quarters in neighboring Sutter Creek. The new bakery could be open as soon as this fall, though they may hold off on the debut until after the busy year-end baking season. Whenever it's open, we'll be back, looking for poppyseed cake.

The celebrated jumping frogs of Calaveras County won't be jumping for fame until the third weekend of May, but preparations for the annual jubilee were in full swing with the fair's 27th annual wine competition.

The judging drew 274 wines from throughout the Sierra foothills, and when the final votes were tabulated the best-of-show red wine was the mouth-filling, peppery and warm Latcham Vineyards 2005 El Dorado Zinfandel ($20), while the best-of-show white wine was the sweet, floral and viscous Ironstone Vineyards 2007 California Obsession Symphony ($8).

I'll be writing more of the competition for a future Dunne on Wine column in The Bee.

A couple of notes about what's new on the Sacramento area restaurant scene:

- Earth Day 2008 has come and gone, but Cory Holbrook and Roderick Williams used the occasion to launch what they intend to be a longterm commitment to "sustainable," "organic" and "green" values. In February, Holbrook closed his restaurant Town Lounge in Roseville, redesigned the quarters, redrew the menu, and on Earth Day reopened it as The Greenhouse. He says 95 percent of the produce is organic, all of the seafood is sustainably caught, and all the meats are free of steroids, antibiotics and added hormones. Ideally, the restaurant would like to be 100 percent organic, but occasionally chef Roderick Williams has to use conventionally grown habanero chile peppers, parsnip greens and the like if organically grown can't be found. Coffees and teas are free trade, takeout containers are biodegradable, and the new carpet is made of recycled soda bottles, say Holbrook and Williams. The New American menu includes starters like Five Dot Ranch beef sliders (two for $8) and a salad of panko-crusted ahi and arugula with a wasabi caramel vinaigrette ($11), and entrees such as a small plate of seared sea scallops with agave-glazed baby turnips ($13) and a large plate of rib-eye steak with a leek, potato and morel-mushroom ragout ($29). The Greenhouse, 1595 Eureka Road, Roseville, is open for dinner Monday through Saturday, with lunch to be added Monday.

- Anthony Laub, most recently executive chef at the Folsom branch of Malabar, has moved to The Firehouse in Old Sacramento as chef de cuisine, where he will be working with executive chef Deneb Williams. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., Laub also has put in stints with Horseshoe Bend Country Club and Cherokee Town and Country Club, both in Georgia.

Results of the 14th Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition won't be compiled and released until Monday - the judging is spread over three days in three cities - but yesterday's round at the restaurant Sutro's of the Cliff House in San Francisco provided a few surprises:

- The Kumamoto oysters - more consistently firm, fresh, sweet and salty than they have been at the competition in recent years - weren't from the Pacific Northwest or even California, but Mexico. They again were provided by the competition's sponsor, Taylor Shellfish Farms of Shelton, Wash., which has expanded its operations to include a new aquafarm on the Pacific Ocean side of Baja California. Kumamotos, explained Jon Rowley, coordinator of the competition, thrive best in relatively warm water, thus the switch. Why Kumamotos for the judging? They're small, thus easy to slurp, chew and follow with a sip of wine to see how the pairing shapes up. I'm not sure if it was their size or their intensely briny flavor, but I had to eat four dozen to do the wines justice.

- Per usual, 20 white wines were in the finals. We didn't know the varietal or the producer of each until after the judging. For the first time in around six years, none of the 20 was either the Geyser Peak sauvignin blanc or the Dry Creek Vineyard chenin blanc, the latter made with grapes from Clarksburg. Both have finished regularly in the top 10 in recent years. Though I haven't tasted the latest vintage of either wine, I've a hunch that their absence from the finals says more of the intensified competition than any slip in their quality. This year's competition drew a record 200 wines. The final 20 are chosen during a marathon series of tastings in Seattle, then sent to panels in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. Rowley takes pains to assure that both the wines and the oysters are served at nearly identical temperatures in each venue.

- Regardless of producer or appellation, you likely will be on fairly secure ground if you order a sauvignon blanc or a pinot grigio/pinot gris when you're about to dive into a platter of raw oysters. Of the 20 finalists, 14 were sauvignon blanc, three were pinot grigio/pinot gris.

- Seven of the finalists are out of the Pacific Northwest, the rest from California, including two local representatives, the Lange Twins 2006 Lodi Sauvignon Blanc ($13) and the Lucchesi Vineyards & Winery 2007 Sierra Foothills Sauvignon Blanc ($16). (Lucchesi is in Grass Valley.)

I'll soon shove off for San Francisco and the 14th annual Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition, one of the more enlightening and entertaining judgings of the year. And filling. That's because the wines will be judged in a natural context, which is with food, a logistical impossibility for most competitions.

For this judging, however, coordinator Jon Rowley limits the wines to one style - cold, dry, crisp and, by my experience, white - and one kind of food, Kumamoto oysters. You eat an oyster, then taste a wine, looking for what Rowley calls the "bliss factor" - a clean finish and a crisp taste that doesn't get in the way of the flavor of the next oyster.

A record 200 wines were entered in this year's competition, but we'll be tasting just the 20 finalists. Earlier, five judges at Rowley's home base in Seattle spent a week tasting all 200 candidates with oysters, gradually narrowing the field to the final 20.

This week, individual panels in Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco will taste the wines with oysters, after which Rowley will tabulate all the scores to determine 10 equal winners of the 2008 "Oyster Award." Fellow panelists in San Francisco are to include KCBS Radio food and wine editor Narsai David, San Francisco Chronicle wine editor Jon Bonne, Wine Spectator editor-at-large Harvey Steiman, veteran wine writers Bob Thompson of Napa Valley and Millie Howie of Sonoma County, and John Finger, president of Hog Island Oyster Co. of Point Reyes Station.

If Rowley follows his usual pattern, he will kick off the competition by reading the passage that inspired the exercise, a poetic tribute to the savoring of oysters and wine, from Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast."

Tassina Nicole Placencia is in Paris right now, but her husband Ruben still is in Sacramento, working to add a coffee and tea salon to their 19th Street fashion and decor shop Le Petit Paris.

"We're trying to bring back community," he says of the project, which he hopes to have finished in time for crowds at the city's next Second Saturday, May 10. "We want a friendly place where people can sit and chat," he adds. "The coffee will get the chattering going."

At least at first, the salon will serve just cofee, tea and pastries. Eventually, the menu could expand to also include sandwiches and salads.

Thirty Champagnes by the glass? What is Ali Mackani thinking? Big, again. Mackani, who in the fall of 2005 opened the electric Restaurant 55 Degrees along Capitol Mall, is close to launching his next ambitious project, Lounge on 20, where the beverage menu is to include 30 Champagnes by the glass.

Lounge on 20, which Mackani hopes to open in early June, and possibly as soon as late May, will occupy the southeast portion of the MARRS building at 20th and K in midtown Sacramento. MARRS - Midtown Art Retail Restaurant Scene - already is home to the Solomon Dubnick Gallery, restaurants Luigi's Slice and Azul, and shops DV8 and Newsbeat.

Lounge on 20 is to be a hybrid restaurant and wine bar where the focus will be on socialization. "If you know the Redroom Room of the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, that's the kind of interaction we want," says Mackani. The conviviality will be fueled by the Champagnes, an equally extensive list of wines by the glass, creative cocktails, community tables, and a New American menu whereby dishes can be ordered in three sizes - "a taste, a small plate or a shared tray for three or four people," says Mackani. "We want to promote socializing over food and drink."

The place will be big, seating up to 170 inside, another 80 on the deck. Mackani is being assisted in putting together Lounge on 20 by two key principals of Restaurant 55 Degrees, executive chef Luc Dendievel and manager Kassidy Harris. Mackani hopes to finalize the hiring of a chef de cuisine for the new place this week. The opening of Lounge on 20 will mean no change for Restaurant 55 Degrees, he adds.

As reported here a week ago, the high-rise boutique-hotel The Citizen going in to the former Cal Western Life building at 10th and J in downtown Sacramento will include a large and stylish restaurant that the hotel's operators, Joie de Vivre Hospitality of San Francisco, hope will appeal to Sacramentans as much as to out-of-town visitors.

And as we also reported, we couldn't say much else about the restaurant because the folks of Joie de Vivre said they wouldn't release the name of the restaurant and its operator until later. What they should have said was that they wouldn't release the name of the restaurant to The Bee until later. They were quick to tell the Sacramento Business Journal that the name would be Grange, meant to suggest rural grange halls and to evoke images of local farmers and ranchers, which Joie de Vivre intends to use for its take on California Cuisine. (The Citizen's restaurant, says Joie de Vivre publicist Dawn Shalhoup, was almost named Tavern, but cooler corporate heads apparently concluded that that spoke more of old cowtown Sacramento than the fashionable new city.)

If anyone at Joie de Vivre was aware that Grange also is the name of the restaurant at the Hilton Hotel in Adelaide, they apparently didn't give it much heed, indicates Shalhoup. In all likelihood, the Australian Grange is named after Penfolds Grange, Australia's most noble and revered wine, not the homey symbol of the American West.

Either way, Joie de Vivre could have a problem on its hands. Given how quick so many corporations are to prevent what they see as trademark infringement, I have to wonder whether the Hilton honchos will simply look the other way while a competing hotel chain appropriates for one of its own restaurants a name they proudly adopted long ago. Nothing like a little citizen vs. citizen litigation to stir up publicity.

Monica Deconinck, who with her husband Marc runs the fine French restaurant Le Bilig in Auburn, has weighed in on a Washington Port article for which a link was posted here earlier this week.

The story tells how restaurateurs are coping with rising operating costs just as diners are cutting back on their own expenses during these tremulous economic times. A common maneuver among restaurateurs, the article notes, is to reduce portion sizes.

The Deconincks will have none of that. "We have never measured or weighed ingredients, and although it may be a poor business practice, it is not in our mentality to 'calculate' how much of something will go into a dish to make it financially rewarding. Cooking is and always will be about generosity for us," says Monica Deconinck in an email.

In acknowledging that restaurateurs are facing more challenges in trying to stay afloat financially, the Deconincks are taking approaches other than reducing portion sizes, raising prices and the like. They've expanded their hours, started to open on Tuesdays, introduced a fixed price ($22) dinner Tuesday through Thursday, more aggressively marketed their catering and takeout, and stepped up their slate of cooking classes and entertainment. Monica Deconinck long has taught Saturday morning cooking classes for children, while Marc Deconinck now is teaching "men only" and "bistro classics" cooking classes a few times each month. Their entertainment schedule includes a Spanish flamenco night May 16, with guitar music, student dancers, tapas and wine.

"No change in quality or quantity. We're just working more hours and being more available for our customers. (And never stopping to calculate our hourly wage!)," she concludes.

Let's end the week with a couple of hopefully helpful notes for fellow wine enthusiasts:

- If you still have a bottle of the Shafer Vineyards 1986 Napa Valley Hillside Select in your cellar, this might be the weekend to pull it out and polish it off. To judge by one we tasted Wednesday night, it's showing well and isn't likely to improve. The fruit is more austere than concentrated, but it has wonderful aromatics and has hung on to its fine form. When the wine was released 20 years ago, critic Robert Parker Jr. predicted that "it should age nicely for up to a decade." It's lasted longer than that, and isn't showing signs of falling apart imminently, but in the future probably won't provide any more impact than it is right now. Decant and serve with lighter cuisine. The tasting included several other Shafer cabernet sauvignons, though no other Hillside Selects. The favorite in the rest of the field looked to be the 2002 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, largely for its fleshier blackberry and cherry fruit and softer tannins, though a current release, the 2005 Napa Valley Stags Leap District One Point Five, also had its partisans for the youthfulness and juiciness of its fruit, its complexity and its finish, the freshest and longest of the night. Though the alcohol levels of the wines rose over the years, from 13.5 percent for the 1986 Hillside Select to 14.9 for the 2005 One Point Five, Shafer remains a Napa Valley brand that still can be counted on for grasping with balance and style a sense of place and personality, which is the sunshine of Stags Leap and the focus and commitment of the Shafer family.

- I'm about convinced that the "Sideways" effect - a boost in the popularity of pinot noir at the expense of merlot, so lacerated in the movie - actually has been benefical for merlot. The film's dismissal of the varietal, coupled with other subsequent criticism and a slump in the wine's popularity, apparently has rattled vintners into paying more attention to merlot. At least, I've been more impressed by younger merlots I've been tasting this year. The latest evidence arrived last night during a dinner touting the wines of the Napa Valley's Beringer Vineyards at the Sutter Club. Not that Beringer ever has taken merlot lightly. Its Howell Mountain merlot long has been one of the valley's truly iconic wines. It, however, wasn't poured last night. But the Beringer Vineyards 2004 Knight's Valley Alluvium Red was. A blend of 74 percent merlot, 23 percent cabernet sauvignon and dashes of malbec and cabernet franc, the Alluvium was alluring in smell and captivating in flavor - fat with suggestions of plums, sprightly with refreshing acidity, and round and supple in feel. It had the structure and fruit to go with the challenging dish with which it was poured - spears of asparagus wrapped with strips of smoked duck prosciutto - but it also had the assertiveness and depth to stand up to rack of lamb crusted with black sea salt and pepper and accompanied with dried apricots and cherries. Indeed, the Alluvium went better with the lamb, I felt, than the wine chosen specifically to accompany the meat, the Beringer 2004 Napa Valley Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. That's no slam on the bright cabernet, generous with oak, just that the Alluvium was a more compelling companion for the busy huskiness of the lamb. The Alluvium, incidentally, generally is selling for between $18 and $22 in the Sacramento area.

Disquieting news out of Sutter Creek today: The convivial and homey Chatterbox Cafe again is quiet. "The cook quit abruptly yesterday, there's no replacement on the horizon, and I have other work commitments. It would be a great little business for an owner operator," said co-owner Joe Rohde in a brief email.

The Chatterbox has gone through rough patches in the past, though for the most part it's been a community landmark for more than 60 years, celebrated for its cinnamon rolls, burgers and pies, among other draws.

This closure also looks like it will be brief. I just got another email from Rohde, who says he's making progress in lining up a replacement cook and could have the place reopened as soon as tomorrow. Nonetheless, he and his partners are ready to give up the cafe's demanding hours and hope they can find an owner/operator to continue the Chatterbox tradition. That willingness and about $85,000 should get the job done. For more information, contact Rohde at jrohde@thinksmartinc.com.

With The Bee's cafe closed for the day, I headed out to weigh in on the latest raging battle in the burger wars. I only had to go as far as Broadway, home to both a Jack in the Box and a Carl's Jr.

The folks of Carl's Jr. are accusing Jack of ripping off their enduring Western Bacon Cheeseburger by introducing an almost identical BBQ Bacon Sirloin Burger. Naturally, I had to try them both.

Basically, each is a burger sandwiched with orange cheese, bacon strips, onion rings and barbecue sauce. And frankly, my palate had difficulty deciding which is the best. Jack's clearly has the superior patty, a thick cut of rich ground sirloin seasoned with just the right doses of salt and pepper. The onion rings were big, hot and sweet, the bacon thin but almost crisp. The Carl's Jr. by far tasted smokier and saltier, with a sturdier and more flavorful bun. The bacon also was thin, and limp. In both cases, the cheese was forgettable.

I began to ponder other factors to help me decide. The Jack in the Box has more parking. Carl's Jr. has a napkin dispenser on each table. The Jack in the Box burger costs $5.09 before taxes, $5.48 after. The Carl's Jr. costs $2.99 before taxes, $3.22 after.

Nutritionally, they're virtually in a dead heat. The Jack in the Box has 1,120 calories, 24 grams of saturated fat, 190 milligrams of cholesterol, and 2,520 milligrams of sodium. The Carl's Jr. has 1,130 calories, 28 grams of saturated fat, 150 milligrams of cholesterol, and 2,540 milligrams of sodium. No, I didn't run into anyone from the Center for Science in the Public Interest at either venue.

Carl's Jr., however, gets the nod for environmental consciousness. Its Western Bacon Cheeseburger comes wrapped in paper, and that's it. At Jack in the Box, the BBQ Bacon Sirloin Burger not only was wrapped in paper, it was in a box in a bag. (At both places I said I'd be eating on the premises.)

I'm not convinced that these occasional dustups between competing burger chains are anything more than a publicity stunt orchestrated by their advertising agencies, especially during economically shaky times like these. Still, the folks at Carl's Jr. sound not only unflattered by Jack's imitation but downright bitter. "Jack must have decided to turn their new $150-million 'Innovation Center' into an employee lounge," snorts Brad Haley, the executive vice president of marketing for Carl's Jr.

In addition, Carl's Jr. tomorrow will give customers a free Western Bacon Cheeseburger when they purchse any version of the burger, but you will have to get to Eureka, Redding, Chico or Reno to take advantage of the offer in this area; Sacramento branches of Carl's Jr. aren't participating in the promotion.

On a brighter note, Carl's Jr. has pulled from retirement its iconic mechanical-bull TV commercial from 2004, featuring the beat of Foghat's "Slow Ride."

That alone gives Carl's Jr. the edge in the burger sweepstakes this time around, but before I cast my final vote I'd like to hear what others think is the superior burger.

If you're a restaurateur squeezed between rising food expenses and guests looking to cut costs as fears of recession intensify, what you going to do?

Well, you can rewrite your menu so prices don't stand out so much. Or you could increase the price of a $7.95 dish to $7.99; who's going to notice that? Or you could start to use smaller plates so a smaller serving really doesn't look smaller.

These are a few of the tactics that restaurateurs are learning as they try to survive these challenging economic times. To learn more about penny-pinching changes that could be under way at your favorite bistro, take a look at this David Segal feature from The Washington Post.

It wouldn't be the choice of wine, would it? Pope Benedict XVI is skipping his scheduled 81st birthday party with President Bush at the White House tomorrow night.

Word of the unexplained change in schedule materialized as principals of Sebastiani Vineyards and Winery in Sonoma County were crowing that their 2005 Dutton Ranch Chardonnay would be poured for the bash in the East Room.

The wine has been described variously as a typical California chardonnay - rich, ripe and oaky. Maybe the pope's palate runs more to white wines lighter and more refreshling, like gruner veltliner, pinot grigio or riesling. Clearly, he isn't a teetotaler, according to a New York Times article early in his papacy. Quoting friends, cardinals, biographers and the like, the article says that while the pope is especially fond of lemonade and orange juice he also savors wines from Italy's Piedmont region and the German beer Franziskaner Weissbier. Quick, alert the White House cellar keeper, maybe this party can be saved, after all.

Sacramento's first high-rise luxury boutique hotel isn't to open until mid-November, but a couple of rooms already are basically finished, we found on a tour through the structure the other day. From one, you can look down on the Capitol as you shower. From virtually every room, in fact, the view of the Sacramento skyline is spectacular. Almost makes you want to move away so you can return to book a room.

The hotel is The Citizen, taking over the historic 14-story former Cal Western Life building at 10th and J streets. It will have 197 rooms, five penthouses and nearly 15,000 square feet of event space, including a seventh-floor terrace bound to become the hottest party-venue in town, and not just because it's on the southwest side of the 1926 building.

I joined the tour in hopes of finding out about the hotel's restaurant, but didn't learn much more than it will include a two-story glass-enclosed wine vault stocked with 2,000 bottles, a principal dining room with 22-foot-high ceilings, an industrial look but sophisticated feel, an adjoining lounge and mezzanine with a law-library ambience, and a towering "jewel-box" loggia along the 10th Street side of the building.

The principals of Joie de Vivre Hospitality of San Francisco, the hotelier pulling together the project, say they have an operator and a name for the restaurant, but for now they aren't revealing anything more. Joie de Vivre operates some 30 other boutique hotels, most of them with restaurants that are casual in attitude and contemporary in cuisine, including American Restaurant & Bar at Hotel Vitale, Cafe Andree at Hotel Rex, and Saha Restaurant at Hotel Carlton, all in San Francisco. Whatever the restaurant is to be called at The Citizen, it's to open with the hotel this fall.

Maybe it's going through a funky stage, I thought. "Is it a merlot?" asked my wife, who prefers to taste wines blind, then speculate on varietal and the like, almost invariably being spot on. We were off to an uncertain start with a wine that shouldn't be at all ambiguous, being a new zinfandel out of Amador County.

What's more, it was made by some of the more inventive characters in the wine trade, the guys of Rebel Wine Co. in Napa Valley, responsible for the Three Thieves and Bandit lines of value varietals. I'm a fan of their generally environmentally sensitive packaging, their bargain-oriented marketing, their unpretentious attitude, and their direct winemaking.

But their latest project, the Wingnut 2005 Amador County Zinfandel ($13), was leaving me baffled. It was coming off as if growers in Amador County had sent their grapes to a finishing school in Napa Valley. There, the usually swashbuckling attitude of Amador County zinfandel got wrung out of the fruit and replaced with a kind of politeness that while appropriate in some circles isn't customarily expected at a table where Amador County zinfandel is poured. With its typical brashness, Amador County zinfandel can be counted on to stimulate the really interesting dinner topics of religion, politics and sex, but this interpretation is too well-mannered for that. It's cleanly made, all right, with modulated fresh fruit flavors and a readily accessible texture, but it isn't going to interrupt any conversations with its authority.

Nonetheless, I look forward to trying another bottle. Maybe with a little time it will bloom with more color and drama. I do like the pricing, and even more I like the back story. The principals of Rebel Wine Co. recruited student designers at the Portfolio Center, a communication-arts school in Atlanta, to create the packaging. The striking label, by Dave Whitling, who won a scholarship for his efforts, captures the "loopy, weird, oddball" way the Rebels see themselves and the attitude they want to represent in a wine called Wingnut. Another Portfolio Center designer, Rachel Strubinger, came up with the notion of stamping the cork in each bottle with a bit of unconventional wisdom. Ours said: "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things," attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. I like the sentiment, but I think the Rebels may have missed another novel marketing twist by not putting the wine in bottles with wingnut screwcaps.

A reader wants to know why we don't write more about beer in The Bee's Taste section. While I try to think of a response I'll tip him off to some beer news:

- On Monday, Peter Hoey of Sacramento Brewing Company will tap a keg of a truly unusual beer, Saucerfull of Merkins, made by the Paso Robles brewery Firestone Walker. According to Rick Sellers of Pacific Brew News, only 80 kegs of the beer were made. It's a blended winter ale, mostly oatmeal stout with a portion of Belgian-inspired strong dark ale. It's been variously described as "a dark winter stout with light spicy notes, full silky body and bourbon accents" and "dessert in a glass." You can read more about it at Seller's blog. Hoey says the keg will be tapped when the Oasis branch of Sacramento Brewing Company - 7811 Madison Ave. - opens at 11:30 a.m. Monday. Plans to tap a second keg at the brewery's Town and Country Village site are uncertain. The beer will sell for $5 a pint.

- The new "lounge menu" at the restaurant Hawks in Granite Bay - housemade charcuterie with grilled bread ($12), macaroni and Gruyere ($8), onion beignets ($5) and the like - is complimented by an enticing beer menu. In addition to the predictable Bud ($4) and Stella Artois ($5), there's several brews not often seen hereabouts, like the Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar ($14), the Leyerth Urthel Vlaemse Bock from Belgium ($22) and the North Coast Old Rasputin Imperial Stourt ($6). Hawks is at 5530 Douglas Blvd., Granite Bay.

Rick Mahan is about to combine his twin interests in slow food and slow transportation, but to do it his life will pick up speed. Mahan, chef/owner of The Waterboy restaurant in midtown Sacramento, is preparing a second restaurant. He's signed a lease to open One Speed in Folsom Boulevard quarters occupied most recently by Cafe Milazzo, just east of East Lawn Memorial Cemetery.

The name One Speed was inspired by his long affection for old-fashioned Schwinn bicycles. Mahan also is keen on the principles and goals of the Slow Food movement, which favors the preservation of culinary traditions over fast food and fast living.

One Speed, which he hopes to open as soon as July, will be more casual and less expensive than The Waterboy. The menu will emphasize pizzas, pastas and antipasti, with just a few daily entrees. The restaurant will be open only for dinner and for weekend breakfast.

He anticipates no changes for The Waterboy, which will continue to emphasize the foods of northern Italy and southern France in an environment more upscale than what he sees for One Speed.

Is Gov. Schwarzenegger eating out less in Sacramento and more in San Francisco? As reported in today's Bee, the governor is urging state lawmakers to find imaginative new ways to draw in revenue without calling the sources taxes.

"Coperto," anyone? In Italy, you run into this term on dining bills; basically, it means cover or service charge. Since earlier this year the Italian restaurant Delfina in San Francisco has been appropriating "coperto" for a new surcharge levied on diners to help restaurateurs pay for a city-mandated health-care program. At Delfina, the coperto is a flat $1.25 per guest.

Other San Francisco restaurants are adopting similar tactics. A Sacramentan just back from dinner at the new Epic Roasthouse along The Embarcadero sent me a photocopy of his party's bill, which included a 4 percent "health care" charge of $14.42 on a total that without the levy would have been $392.37. "To provide the best health care for our employees a 4% health charge is included," noted the bill.

He dined with a San Franciscan who said similar additional fees are becoming common in the city's restaurants, with patrons often responding by deducting the cost of the health-care levy from the tip they otherwise would leave. If that's the case, don't expect such "copertos" to last for long. Inevitably, restaurateurs will respond to their additional costs as they always have, by raising across-the-board the price of their menu items, thereby not so obviously alarming guests.

Or, giving the governor any new ideas.

After an absence of about 10 years, legendary Sacramento restaurateur Eppie Johnson is returning to food service. Johnson, who during his 35-year career in hospitality owned 27 restaurants as well as hotels and tennis clubs, has leased Horseshoe Bar Grill in Loomis and hopes to have it reopened by mid-May.

"I kind of miss the business," said Johnson this afternoon. He's bringing in as the restaurant's manager his nephew, Richard A. Bruce, who he first hired as a 13-year-old to police the parking lot and tend sprinklers at his Eppie's Restaurant at 30th and N streets in midtown Sacramento. After that, Bruce became a fry cook, went off to study at the Culinary Institute of America (he graduated in 1972, the last year the school was at Yale University before moving to Hyde Park, N.Y.), and launched his own restaurateuring career, which has included startup roles and high managerial positions with such chains at Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Elephant Bar, Hilton Hotels and Muriel Hemingway's group of Sam's restaurants.

For the past nine years, Bruce has been involved in restaurateuring in Las Vegas, but now is relocating to Roseville. Horseshoe Bar Grill will be rechristened New Horseshoe Bar Grill, with a "California bistro" atmosphere and a menu that features "recognizable, sustainable, seasonal and organic" ingredients. "It will be good, basic, hearty food," said Bruce. His executive chef will be Robert Facciani, who has been working in Minnesota and Colorado, but more recently at Sacramento hotels.

Over nine years, Horseshoe Bar Grill evolved from casual bistro to destination dinner house, but two years ago, the owners, Dave Rosenaur and Karen Fox, who still own the building, closed the restaurant after they found themselves spending more time in San Diego County. "Running restaurants long distance is not a smart thing to do. It's difficult enough even when you are there," Fox said at the time.

This will be a busy spring for Johnson, who also is gearing up for the 35th running of Eppie's Great Race, "the world's oldest triathlon," to be staged July 19 on and along the American River.

By eating out one day later this month, Sacramentans can help raise awareness and funds in the fight against HIV and AIDS. On April 24, more than a dozen Sacramento-area restaurants will donate proceeds from their sales to the midtown agency CARES, the Center for AIDS Research, Education and Services.

In the past, Dine Out for Life - this is its 17th year - has raised between $10,000 and $15,000 for CARES, said Julie Kennedy, who is in charge of fund development for the agency. On or about April 24, restaurants in 47 cities will join the drive. They customarily donate 25 percent of their food sales for the day to a local agency involved in HIV and AIDS work, but some restaurants also donate a portion of their wine, beer and spirits sales, said Kennedy.

CARES will dispatch representatives to each participating restaurant to hand out information and to be available to answer questions about HIV and AIDS.

The participating restaurants in and about Sacramento include Mulvaney's Building & Loan, Paesanos, Dragonfly and Lucca. A complete list can be found here.

What with the grass getting taller, barns jutting up like Sierra peaks, and vines budding with new life, spring in the Sierra foothills provided the perfect backdrop for this weekend's 17th annual Passport Weekend sponsored by the El Dorado Winery Association.

I'll be reporting on some new wineries in the area in a forthcoming Dunne on Wine column in The Bee, but first a couple of quick impressions:

- The food was never better, with the most impressive fare of the day dished out at Busby Cellars along Grizzly Flat Road of Somerset, home to this grand old barn. Off the Vine Catering Co. of Cameron Park was dishing out smoked pork with a sauce of ancho chile peppers on blue-corn tortillas, red lentils with andouille sausage, and the big surprise, fried white beans scented with sage and spicy with chile powder and garlic. It was tough deciding which Busby wine was the best match, with the sweetly fruity 2005 tempranillo, the firm and spicy 2005 zinfandel, and the peppery and juicy 2005 petite sirah all possessing the build and depth to pair with the hearty foods.

- The two most impressive wines of the day fell at opposite ends of the style spectrum. On the light end was the Iverson Vineyards & Winery 2007 Sierra Foothills Grenache Rose ($18), austere in structure but all refreshing strawberries and pomegranates in smell and flavor. On the robust end was the Holly's Hill Vineyards 2005 El Dorado Patriarche ($30), a jammy, earthy, and complex blend of black Rhone Valley varieties.

- Holly's Hill Vineyards and Colibri Ridge Winery & Vineyard share the award for extra-step hospitality, the former for its complimentary espresso stand, the latter for Garrison Yeandle, who not only attentively directed traffic in the parking lot but quickly opened car doors for visitors and volunteered to take group photos under the oaks. We started the day at Colibri Ridge and ended it at Holly's Hill, and those considerate touches were perfect bookends.

Light wines before heavy, white wines before red has been a prevailing principle of wine appreciation for decades. Almost without exception, that's the order in which wines are poured when you visit a winery tasting room.

But no longer, at least not at Madrona Vineyards on Apple Hill in El Dorado County. For two months now, the Bush family that owns the winery has been pouring red wines before white. The switch, says Paul Bush, may be contrary to tradition but is based on scientific reasoning.

White wines typically are higher in acidity and pH levels than red, especially when grown at higher and subsequently cooler elevations; Madrona's vineyards, at 3,000 feet, are among the higher in the state. Red wines grown at such altitudes customarily have fairly substantial tannins.

When whites from such a microclimate are tasted first, they show well, but their residual impact on the palate help accentuate the tannins of the red wines that follow, says Bush. When the order of tasting is reversed, red wines will taste more balanced, while the reviving fruitiness and acidity of white wines will be put to a better test for showing off the cleansing ability of the wine. This red-before-white tasting approach, incidentally, is what Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti has been using for years during tastings at his store, Corti Brothers.

Visitors to Madrona's tasting room have been surprised by the reversed order, but game to give it a try, indicates Bush. If you are planning to visit some El Dorado County wineries this weekend you might just want to put Madrona on your itinerary to see how you find the order.

The dawn of Earth Day 2008 draws near. It will be April 22. Look at it as if it were a serious St. Patrick's Day; once again, we're obligated to go "green."

And like Christmas, the commercial exploitation of Earth Day starts earlier each year. Three days ago, a new boxed wine showed up on my desk. It touts itself as an "eco-friendly upgrade" to other 3-liter boxed wines, which already have an environmental advantage over traditional bottles, the cost of which to manufacture and transport accounts for about 45 percent of the carbon dioxide attributed to winemaking, according to calculations by UC Davis professor Roger Boulton.

At any rate, this latest boxed wine from Boho Vineyards, a brand of The Wine Group Inc. of San Francisco, reputedly cuts by more than half the carbon footprint of the wine if it were packaged in customary bottles, and slashes by 85 percent the packaging that will end up in a landfill. The plain brown box looks as if it's made out of recycled paper, and for the most part - 95 percent - it is. Not only is glass eliminated entirely, so is the use of corks, capsules and labels (appellation, vintage and the like are printed directly on the paper, and with soy-based ink, at that).

While boxed wines make environmental sense, they face a couple of marketing challenges. One is the popular perception that they are so small they couldn't possibly hold four bottles, which the 3-liter containers do. And because of their compact size, their price - about $24 in this instance - looks high. But for the Boho Vineyards 2006 Central Coast Chardonnay, that works out to just $6 a bottle.

So how's the wine? Actually, quite pleasant, representing with clarity and balance more the tropical-fruit side of chardonnay than the citric, melon and apple. It isn't a barrel-chested example of California chardonnay. It's more demure, intended to be taken at the table with light spring cuisine. It isn't an oaky, alcoholic monster meant for cocktail-hour sipping, pondering and discussing. It put me in mind of a carafe of the house wine that would be put on the table of a bistro in Burgundy, a small place in a cellar, so casual the dogs wouldn't be leashed.

In a press release, winemaker Adam Richardson is quoted as saying representative artisan winemaking went into the wine, including night harvesting of the grapes and aging of the wine in small oak barrels, which comes across with a smokiness and toastiness that is more intriguing whisper than intrusive shout. Overall, it's a refreshingly dry and complete chardonnay, worthy for a toast come Earth Day (that's another thing about boxed wines; once you open the spigot the plastic bag inside collapes a bit more with each glass, curbing the intrusion of oxygen and retaining the wine's freshness for up to about six weeks).

Nugget Markets and Corti Brothers carry the wine, which also is to be available at Raley's stores May 1, said a spokesperson for The Wine Group Inc.

Decanter, a wine magazine published in the United Kingdom, came up with the best April Fool's Day joke I've seen in publication - the making of a movie about influential American critic Robert Parker Jr. At least, I think it's a prank, but you can draw your own conclusion by giving the article a read here.

Sacramento Bee editorial writers have asked readers to send in questions they'd like to see the city's mayoral candidates answer. The invitation is here.

OK, I'll play along. I want to know what the mayoral candidates will do about that sorry downtown hole bordered by Capitol Mall and L, 3rd and 4th streets. Actually, I want to know which candidate will be the first to step up and endorse my proposal that it be filled in and planted to a vineyard of wine grapes.

This is the site where two high-rise residential and commercial towers were to be built, but since that proposal collapsed last year the lot has stood largely empty and abandoned. There's a piece of earth-moving equipment in there, scattered remnants of rebar, and tombstone-like rows of concrete pilings, none of which would present more than a momentary obstacle to planting a vineyard.

Why a vineyard? Well, Sacramento not only is the capital of California, it's the capital of the nation's most diverse and prosperous wine country. The city is virtually surrounded by vineyards admired by the nation's wine drinkers - Sonoma and Napa to the west, Clarksburg and Lodi to the south, the Dunnigan Hills to the north, and the foothills of the Sierra to the east. With many visitors arriving or leaving Sacramento via Interstate 5 or Tower Bridge, what better way to remind them of the state's and the city's pivotal role in the nation's agricultural bounty than with a prime piece of real estate devoted to a vineyard?

There are other reasons for planting a vineyard there. It would be educational. It would contribute to rather than take from the city's efforts to establish itself as a "green" community. It would be a natural and equally pretty counterbalance to the grandeur of the Capitol at the other end of the mall. Get the right winemaker and profits from the sale of wines made from grapes grown on the plot could be used to help shore up the city's weak budget. With few tall buildings in the neighborhood, it has just the exposure to sunlight that grapes need. A deer fence already is in place.

Which mayoral candidate will be the first to step up and offer to turn the first shovel of dirt to get this project going?

It may be April 1, but you won't find any pranks here. These items are the real deal:

- When officials of California's Democratic Party met in San Jose over the weekend they were poured the first wines to be released by the United Farm Workers' Union, reported KCBS News. Sure enough, the brand Black Eagle Wines is raising its profile this week with several tastings as the union commemorates the 40th anniversary of Cesar Chavez's first long public fast. According to the brand's Web site, the first three wines - cabernet sauvignon, sauvignon blanc, merlot - are being made by a Napa Valley winery with Napa Valley fruit. They can be ordered through the Web site.

- When a bottle of wine appears in a television show or movie it just doesn't happen to be chilling in a fridge on the set. Product placement is big business, of course, and Kevin McCallum of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat gives it an unusually deep and entertaining look by focusing on just how one small participant, the wine trade, is involved. His insightful read can be found here.

- Charles Bamforth, chair of the department of food science and technology at UC Davis, has a new book out, "Grape Vs. Grain," in which he explores the contrasting traditions, science and culture of beer and wine. I'm about halfway through it, and just came across this comment: "One of the biggest differences between beer and wine is that to make the former a huge amount of water is used, whereas for the latter, there is need for relatively little." This is apt to alarm more than comfort highly regarded wine writer Jancis Robinson. As she points out in a recent essay, it takes as much as 10 litres of water in the winery alone to produce a litre of wine, and that's just for cleaning the equipment. She provides other unsettling figures, some of them from vintner David Graves of the winery Saintsbury in the Carneros area at the southern reaches of Napa and Sonoma counties. Robinson is pretty frantic about the long-range consequences of climate change and thirsty vineyards, so it might not be the best time to offer her a beer.

A certain shady lady helped liven up the old Gold Rush settlement of Plymouth last evening. It was the Windwalker Vineyard & Winery 2005 Speed Vineyard Primitivo Shady Lady, the only entry to win a double-gold medal in the zinfandel and primitivo classes at the first Fiddletown Heritage Day Wine Competition. (A double-gold medal is bestowed on a wine when all judges on a panel - in this instance five persons - concur that an entry deserves gold.)

This was something of a surprise, given that the small and sparsely developed Fiddletown American Viticultural Area is known primarily for its zesty zinfandels, of which seven were entered in the judging. One did get a gold, the dense but sprightly Martella Vineyards 2005 Fiddletown Zinfandel, but as a group the zinfandels weren't as strawberry-tinged and light of foot as usually seen out of the appellation. Zinfandel and primitivo, incidentally, are two names for the same variety, according to DNA analysis, but most competitions continue to group them into separate classes.

The competition drew a total 22 wines, from sauvignon blanc to petite sirah. The Fiddletown Preservation Society sanctioned the judging to help promote both the fourth annual Heritage Day on April 5 and the area's wines. Most of the wines in the competition will be available for tasting at Heritage Day, also to include western music, cowboy poetry and talks about Fiddletown's history. Intent of the gathering is to raise funds to continue the restoration and preservation of the remaining buildings of Fiddletown's Chinatown.

I'll be writing more of the Fiddletown competition for an upcoming Dunne on Wine column in The Bee's Taste section, but in the meantime Windwalker's Shady Lady, which sells for $30, can be found only at the winery, which is along Perry Creek Road in the Fair Play district of southwestern El Dorado County.

Swap Sacramento for Maui? Who would make such a move? Philip Wang is. The executive chef at Mason's since the restaurant opened in the fall of 2005, Wang is leaving for Maui, where he's teaming up with celebrated chef/restaurateur Peter Merriman to open Merriman's Maui at Kapalua.

"I loved working for the brothers," said Wang of his time at Mason's, owned by siblings Mason, Curtis and Alan Wong, "but I have this opportunity to do my own thing." He also will join Merriman in building another new restaurant on Kaua'i, not scheduled to open until about a year from now.

At Mason's, meanwhile, John Gurnee, who has been Wang's sous chef since the restaurant opened, is the new executive chef. A Sacramento native - Jesuit High School, class of 1995 - Gurnee got his formal cooking training at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco and worked for Paragary's Restaurant Group before joining Mason's. He's bringing aboard another Paragary's veteran, Rob Lind, as his sous chef.

Gurnee says he will retain Wang's contemporary style of California and New American cooking, but he is working on retooling menus in a move to lower prices. "We will continue the same great food with the same pristine ingredients, but we'll also try to reduce prices to attract a wider audience with the economy the way it is right now," says Gurnee.

The Sacramento branch of Romano's Macaroni Grill has closed, and officials of Brinker International in Dallas, which owns the chain, are mum on the matter other than to indicate that the restaurant wasn't performing up to expectations.

Coincidentally, however, officials of Technomic Inc. in Chicago, which tracks and consults for the foodservice trade, have released the results of a consumer survey that could provide insight into Macaroni Grill's troubles.

Several casual-dining restaurant chains are facing "subtle and complex challenges that extend beyond the current economic climate," the survey found.

For one, chain restaurants look to be victims of their own success, having grown so fast in response to a perceived eagerness among Americans to eat out more and more often. "Many chains have overbuilt units, with expansion rates averaging five percent over the past four years even as sales growth was slowing," says Technomic president Ron Paul in interpreting the results of the survey.

"On top of that, many consumers tell us that traditional casual dining chains lack differentiation, that 'they all look alike,'" adds Paul.

On the other hand, more than a third of the consumers participating in the survey said they are turning to independent and fast-foot restaurants as a substitute for the casual chain restaurants they previously patronized.

Though other Romano's Macaroni Grills about the country also have closed, Maureen Locus, a spokeswoman for Brinker International, said the Folsom and Roseville branches of the restaurant are to remain open, at least for the near future. The Sacramento unit has been at 2001 Alta Arden Expressway.

Can an acupuncturist who has studied and practiced Asian medicine for a quarter of a century - aside from six years living off the land in the Alaskan wilderness - find happiness and success as restaurateur and chef in a remote corner of El Dorado County?

We'll find out starting April 18, which is when Dr. Giovanni Gaudio and his wife, Sheri Brown-Gaudio, take over the dormant Fair Play Bistro in Fair Play and reopen it as Bocconato Trattoria, specializing in the regional cuisines of northern Italy.

In recent years, the couple, who live in Mount Aukum, also part of the Fair Play region, have been teaching food and wine classes, leading culinary tours to Italy and consulting for restaurants under their company Gaudio Culinary.

In addition to his medical practice, Giovanni Gaudio, a second-generation Californian who grew up in East Sacramento's Italian neighborhood, has long studied the anthropology and practice of Italian cooking, including taking classes at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley. At Bocconato Trattoria - "bocconato" translates as "mouthful" - he will prepare dishes representative of Tuscany, Piemonte, Liguria, Veneto and other regions of northern Italy.

The extensive tentative opening menu includes such dishes as roasted duck breast and pancetta on rosemary skewers, turkey meatballs with a citrus ginger sauce, a timbale of Dungeness crab and avocado finished with housemade chili and wasabi oils, the classic bistecca Fiorentina, Venetian pork ribs with a spicy peanut sauce, and a whole boned chicken stuffed with sausage and glazed with apricot.

Sheri Brown-Gaudio, an educational psychologist and freelance writer, also is to be actively involved in the restaurant, which will be stylistically casual. Bocconato Trattoria, at Fair Play Road and Perry Creek Road, will be open 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Thursdays, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday through Sunday, and 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Mondays; (530) 620-2493 or bocconato@earthlink.net.

Grape vines are budding in the Delta, and so are opportunities to discover the region's wines. Clarksburg's landmark Husick Hardware & General Store, which stood idle for 18 years, is open again, but this time to cater to visitors meandering through the area in search of the appellation's growing number of wineries and wines.

Several of those wineries, however, are small and remote family operations without tasting rooms. That's where Husick Hardware comes into play. Business partners Dennis Sheya and Skip Seebeck have restored the massive structure, which dates from the late 1880s, and reopened it as a wine collective. Right now, it's open for wine sales only, with the releases of 10 Delta wineries stocked in bins. In two months or so they hope to have the licenses needed to also run it as a centralized tasting room. Not all the Delta's wines will be poured simultaneously, but the two expect to offer visitors themed flights.

By then, the store also is expected to be operating as a deli and coffee bar. The two want to be able to provide visitors with a glass of wine to go with a sandwich, but the menu will be limited to avoid conflicting with another Clarksburg landmark, Dinky Diner, which has opened for the season along the Sacramento River just a few paces north of Husick Hardware, which for now is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.

With two new additions, the block of J Street between 27th and 28th in midtown Sacramento has been given over almost entirely to restaurants.

One newcomer is Peter Torza's I Dragoni Pizzeria, basically a bright expansion of his adjoining Gianni's Trattoria. I Dragoni is more casual, concentrating on pizzas, salads, sandwiches and coffee drinks, initially for a lunch and late-night clientele. The opening menu includes meatball, caprese, muffuletta, turkey and egg sandwiches, as well as pepperoni, mushroom and seafood pizzas. Torza chose the name I Dragoni because his initial design plan called for twin wood-burning pizza ovens that were to look like fire-breathing dragons. That plan, however, didn't pencil out financially. He's now planning to install a wood-burning oven in Gianni's to provide pizzas for both restaurants. I Dragoni, 2724 J St., is open initially for Italian-style breakfasts 8 a.m.-2 p.m. daily, lunch 11 a.m.-2 p.m. daily, and pizzas 10 p.m.-3 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. The phone is (916) 443-4000.

On the other side of Gianni's Trattoria, the American-theme restaurant G.V. Hurley's will have a "controlled opening" starting Thursday. Reservations will be required through the weekend as the staff adapts to the new facility, though it may be able to accommodate some walk-ins, says general manager Erick Johnson. The restaurant's opening menu runs to traditional and contemporary American cooking with a Southern accent. Shrimp will be served with grits and tasso ham, barbecued pulled pork will be accompanied with cornbread, spring rolls will be filled with smoked brisket, and the fried chicken will be grouped with roasted sweet potatoes and red-eyed gravy. Despite the throwback aspects of several dishes, executive chef David Hill's menu also has an environmental and health consciousness. He's using only natural meats and sustainably caught fish, and no ingredients with trans fats. Starting next Monday, G.V. Hurley's is to be open 11 a.m.-midnight Sunday through Wednesday, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday. It's at 2718 J St.

Most every night when we eat at home, we open a bottle of wine, sometimes two. I take notes on these wines, and rank them on a four-star scale. Those that get three stars or more, I write about. Most, however, get two stars or fewer, then they get forgotten.

But last night's wines were surprising exceptions. I gave each three and a half stars. It was almost as if the luck of the Irish were catching up with me two days after St. Patrick's Day.

The white was the Ferrari-Carano Vineyards and Winery 2006 Russian River Valley Fiorella Chardonnay ($36). This is one aromatic and flavorful medium-bodied chardonnay. Smell and flavor ran to pears, lemons and a jolt of nutmeg, the latter probably from the mix of new and older French oak barrels in which the wine was aged. I'm not a big fan of chardonnay, but this one got my attention for its seamless blend of tradition, elegance and a California brazenness that was astutely toned down for a change. In a word, refreshing. It also was rare in having the fruit, structure and acidity to actually go with asparagus soup, a notoriously difficult wine match. The winery suggests it be poured as an aperitif or with mild cheeses, light pastas and light seafood dishes.

The red was the Greg Norman Estates 2005 Lake County Red Hills Zinfandel ($15). Fresh, lithe and youthful, this is one enthusiastic and immediately likeable zinfandel. The fruit is all fresh raspberries and blackberries, dusted generously with freshly ground black pepper. It's dry and medium-bodied, and its 15 percent alcohol isn't at all harsh. It has the backbone and fruit to stand up to kung pao chicken, which is what we had with it, and the winery recommends it be poured at brunch with spinach, mushroom and white Cheddar omelets, savory cranberry scones, and wedges of fresh melon wrapped with prosciutto.

This blog this week got some new bells and whistles, but the two I especially want to point out are the lists of links just to the right. One takes readers to wine sites, the other to dining sites. Blogs commonly have these sorts of lists, but too many are too long, and don't highlight the most interesting and helpful sites. I've tried to sidestep that issue by choosing those Web sites and blogs that I read most often and find the most provocative. Why should someone in Sacramento be interested in what Andy Perdue in Washington state (The Wine Knows) or Mark Fisher in Ohio (Uncorked) have to say of wine? Well, they don't write only of wines to be found in their backyards, but often take on issues of broader interest, and in ways not only enlightening but entertaining.

Also note that in the Dining list is a link to the page where readers can find out how a restaurant shapes up following inspection by the public-health officials of the County of Sacramento's Environmental Management Department.

March Madness just is getting under way, and already California is down to one contender. Hold on, this version of March Madness isn't about hoops, but hops. In a bit of inspired fun and interactive journalism, Washington Post beer columnist Greg Kitsock is overseeing Beer Madness, a bracketed tournament that started out with 32 competing beers, including three from California. After the first round, only one California brew remains in contention, Stone Pale Ale by Stone Brewing Co. of Escondido. The other two Californians, Trader Joe's Bohemian Lager and Anchor Liberty Ale, were eliminated early on, the Anchor by Stone.

The beers are organized in four brackets - dark, ales, lagers and "specialty and fruit." Kitsock has assembled a panel of judges to help him taste the beers to decide which move on and which get eliminated. Readers can weigh in with their own votes. Interestingly, in the head-to-head matchup of Anchor Liberty Ale and Stone Pale Ale, readers voted for the Anchor by a margin of 60.1 percent to 39.9 percent. Also in the popular voting, Trader Joe's Bohemian Lager lost to Raven Special Lager by a narrow margin of 51 percent to 49 percent. Raven is brewed by Baltimore-Washington Beer Works of Baltimore.

If the field looks heavily seeded with Eastern brands, well, the selection no doubt reflects the beers available in and about Washington, D.C. The Sweet 16 are to be whittled down to the Elite Eight this weekend. Go, Stoners.

Here's another reason I'm not a professional baseball scout: A year ago, when the Sacramento River Cats introduced their starting lineup of that season's concession foods, I picked the tall and muscular "Sicilian po' boy sandwich" to be Rookie of the Year.

I looked forward to becoming reacquainted with the big guy today when the River Cats unveiled this year's lineup of concession foods. Alas, it wasn't around. Though promising at the outset of play last year, the po' boy quickly faded, disappointed concessionaires and fans alike, and soon got shipped out, says Grant Miliate, executive chef for Raley Field's food and beverage operator, Centerplate. "The sales weren't there, so we dropped it." A cold and cruel game, baseball.

But spring draws near, and hope once again springs about the diamond. This year's food lineup at Raley Field is loaded with a whole bunch of other promising rookies. The "baseball burger" ($7.75), half a pound of ground chuck with grilled red onions and a red-pepper relish, looks like it could be around awhile, even if it is shaped as an oval. The "garlic steak sandwich" ($8), marinated with Italian herbs, served in a grilled bun saturated with butter, and finished with grilled red onions and arugula, looks like it has the power to last into extra innings. But despite my sorry forecast from a year ago, I'm putting my money on the hot pastrami sandwich ($7.75) as this season's Rookie of the Year. Despite the pastrami sandwich's noble lineage, I've never been much of a fan. Too much bulk, too little finesse, too often. But the one being introduced at Raley Field has more going for it than most - lean yet tender pastrami, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and thousand-island dressing, all layered with considerate balance between slices of fetching marble rye bread.

I'm sticking with the hot pastrami sandwich even though it wasn't generating as much buzz at today's lunch as the most highly priced rookie on the scene, a sweet and creamy crab sandwich that will sell for $12. A mix of Dungeness and rock crab, blended with mayonnaise and seasonings and served between slices of buttered and toasted garlic sourdough, the sandwich was inspired by a similar treat at AT&T Park in San Francisco. Though it costs $15 there, it nonetheless looked popular enough to draw a crowd here, especially at $3 less, figures Miliate.

Two themes characterize the dietary changes that baseball fans will find at River Cats games this year. One is the expanded beef offerings, as represented by the hot pastrami sandwich, the garlic steak sandwich and the baseball burger, among other choices.

The other is the park's new slate of "eco-friendly" menu items - dishes made at least in part with locally produced and either organic or naturally raised ingredients. One is a chicken-breast sandwich made with hormone-free meat from Fulton Valley Farms in Sonoma County ($7.50). Natural-raised chicken also goes into the new "Buffalo chicken salad" ($7.50), which gives diners two jolts of spiciness, one in the wing sauce on the chicken, the other the chipotle-chile-pepper dressing on the side. There's also a portobello-mushroom sandwich ($7.50), and a hamburger made with antibiotic- and hormone-free beef from Niman Ranch of Oakland ($7.50).

Raley Field's hot-dog lineup consists entirely of seasoned veterans, though a sausage infused with jalapeno chile peppers is expected to be ready to play by late spring. The park's weekly $1-hot-dog night, however, is moving from Thursdays to Fridays at the urging of parents who want to take advantage of the promotion on an evening not followed by a school day.

The River Cats will start rolling out the new concession lineup when they play a pre-season scrimmage with the Stockton Ports on April 2. The season gets under way in earnest at Raley Field when the River Cats play host to the Las Vegas 51s on April 11.

A few first impressions from yesterday's 11th annual Rhone Rangers Wine Tasting in San Francisco:

- A year ago, I came away from the tasting convinced that blends rather than varietals show best the efforts of American winemakers to use grapes long associated with France's Rhone Valley. While I tasted a few standout syrahs, grenaches, carignanes and the like yesterday, blends that used three or more Rhone varieties were the most consistently impressive wines. This is the way the grapes customarily are used in the Rhone Valley, by the way, with some wines consisting of up to 13 different grape varieties. American vintners prefer to market their wines more simply, by a single varietal name, but there looks to be something about Rhone grape varieties where when mixed together they produce much more intriguing wines, whether in France or the United States.

- That said, I also came away from the tasting with a new appreciation for syrah as a varietal, but with a caveat: You increase your odds of finding a memorable syrah if you stick to producers who have been working with the grape the longest and who seem to spend as much time in the vineyard coddling the fruit as they do in the cellar refining it into wine. Based on yesterday's tasting, those brands include Domaine de la Terre Rouge, Lagier Meredith Vineyard, Copain Wine Cellars, Holly's Hill Vineyards, Edmunds St. John, Domaine Serene, Peay Vineyards, Morgan Winery, Io Wines.

- Despite my belief that the future of Rhone Valley grapes in the United States will rest largely on blends, I also was pleasantly surprised by the rising number and the quality of varietal wines made with varieties other than syrah, most notably viognier, mourvedre and grenache.

- Though I don't have numbers to back up this hunch, I suspect directors of the Rhone Rangers were disappointed by yesterday's turnout. It was considerably lighter than what I've seen in the same venue lately for tastings by Zinfandel Advocates & Producers and by the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. The ease of getting up to the tasting tables because of the seemingly light turnout simply could have reflected poor marketing of the tasting, but sponsors also may be asking themselves a more worrisome question: Might consumers just not be much interested in the category? And if that's the case, why not? Another hunch: With few exceptions, producers of Rhone Valley wines have no hesitancy about charging surprisingly high prices for wines that many American consumers still are learning to understand. If that barrier were lowered, consumers stand to discover a class of wine that looks to be gaining strength with each year's tasting.

Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts is being rattled by another shift in focus and a reshuffling of key personnel.

Friday, Copia directors are to announce formally that the center's president for the past three years, Arthur Jacobus, is leaving, along with the chief of marketing and development for the past four years, Larry Tsai.

"His leadership has been great," says Garry McGuire Jr. of Jacobus. McGuire is Copia's newly named president and CEO. He praised Jacobus for his organizational skills, his ability to raise funds and his efforts to clarify Copia's mission.

"But any organization needs different leadership at different times," notes McGuire, adding that Copia is about to launch an ambitious new effort to become a more proactive presence on the country's food and wine scene.

Negotiations are under way with unspecified potential corporate sponsors to reinvent Copia so visitors can expect a more interactive experience when they visit the center, and the complex also will be developing a greater online presence, possibly involving e-commerce, says McGuire.

McGuire's background is largely in high-tech marketing in Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Europe. He recently sold his European marketing company, Gyro International, and stepped down as CEO of Icon Internet Ventures in San Francisco and Paris, which helps luxury brands increase their online presence. (He remains Icon's chairman.)

In its six-year history, Copia has struggled to develop both a cohesive image and an enthusiastic following. Conceived largely by Napa Valley vintner Robert Mondavi as a vibrant fulcrum to heighten the understanding, appreciation and indulgence of the American culinary arts, it never fulfilled that lofty aspiration.

About 18 months ago it terminated about a third of its staff, slashed its budget by $3 million and sold five of its acres on the edge of downtown Napa. At that time, Jacobus indicated the center henceforth would focus less on food and culture and more on wine.

That's the mission Copia will retain and enhance, says McGuire. Copia still remains $70 million in debt, but it realized a slight profit last year and no additional employe terminations are anticipated, says McGuire. "We're in a real healthy position financially."

Copia officials also are negotiating with a developer to build a boutique hotel that would connect directly to the center and to construct on the site a "lifestyle" shopping center featuring high-end branded merchandise, says McGuire.

Copia officials also announced that they have hired high-profile wine guru Andrea Immer to be the center's first "dean of wine studies." Since the inception of Copia, Peter Marks has been its "senior vice president of wine." Marks is leaving to become "vice president of education" for Constellation Brands Inc., which owns Robert Mondavi Winery, among other producers.

The guinea pigs had their tongues painted blue, the better to differentiate between their bumpy tastebuds and all the ridges, crevices and other stuff that makes up the organ that helps determine how we perceive this or that flavor.

Then the tongues were photographed, after which one of the coordinators did a quick and approximate count to see if the holder of the tongue likely is a "hypersensitive, sensitive or tolerant" taster.

This was all part of a grand experiment to determine whether a wine competition could be improved so the medals it awards would make more sense to consumers. The guinea pigs were wine judges at the first Lodi International Wine Awards, conducted yesterday at Hutchins Street Square performing arts center in Lodi.

The judging involved several other innovations. In contrast to the practice at most wine competitions in this country, judges didn't confer on the wines to reach any kind of consensus; their rankings were compiled individually and fed into computers for the final determination of awards. In most instances, they judged whole classes at a time, up to 40 wines, rather than flights of 10, as is the standard approach. They were given and urged to use a specially concocted solution to rinse their palates rather than nibble on the usual bread and beef. They were told not to take notes in hopes that this break from tradition would reduce mental fatigue.

"This is unlike any judging you've ever judged," G.M. "Pooch" Pucilowski, the competition's director, told the 30 judges at the outset. They agreed, with several indicating that they liked the novel approach, in large part because it speeded up the process and seemed to succeed at keeping them focused and alert.

How they - as well as consumers - react to the results remains to be seen; they're still being compiled today. In next Wednesday's Taste section in The Bee, I plan to report more on the competition, the physiology of tasting, and other aspects of wine appreciation.

Toasted at the outset as "a man for all seasons," Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti showed he also could be a man of surprisingly few words as he capped his hour in the Napa Valley spotlight last night.

As the evening's first inductee in this year's class of wine-industry luminaries to be enshrined in the Vintners Hall of Fame, Corti walked to the dais, said he was told he wouldn't have to say anything and wouldn't, gave a hearty "thank you very much" and returned to his table.

Just before that, Corti listened to Dr. Tim Ryan, president of the Culinary Institute of America, praise him for his contributions to the deveopment of the California wine trade since joining his family's Corti Brothers grocery store in Sacramento in 1964.

"Darrell Corti has been a catalyst in the re-evaluation and renaissance of zinfandel, a leader in advocating wider use of Italian varieties of grapes in California, and has been integral to the rediscovery of the Sierra foothills as a fine wine growing region," said Ryan.

"Corti is an internationally sought after member of wine and olive oil tasting panels and has mentored a generation of seminal food and wine professionals with his impeccable taste and articulate discourse," he added.

Ryan also called Corti "often controversial," but not on this night.

Some 180 persons, more than 50 of them from Sacramento, attended the ceremonies at the CIA's Greystone campus in St. Helena.

Aside from the Sacramentans, several prominent players on the state's culinary scene interrupted Corti throughout the dinner to congratulate him and reminisce, including Bay Area radio personality Narsai David, Los Angeles wine merchant Steve Wallace (born on the same day as Corti, April 3, 1942), and Paul Draper, longtime winemaker at Ridge Vineyards of Cupertino.

Draper also was one of the night's inductees, along with the late John Daniel Jr., a progressive Napa Valley winemaker for three decades immediately after the repeal of Prohibition; the late brothers Ernest and Julio Gallo, whose E.&J. Gallo Winery of Modesto is one of the world's larger wine producers; Miljenko "Mike" Grgich, a Napa Valley winemaker for 50 years; the late Louis P. Martini, a Napa Valley winemaker saluted for his several innovative contributions to the industry; and the late Carl Heinrich Wente, a pioneering vintner in the Livermore Valley.

While the usually loquacious Corti had little to say Friday night, he showed his characteristic graciousness in bringing to the dinner several magnums of a pinot noir made at his direction as a tribute to his late sister Illa.

Random thoughts on a few provocative reads that have come my way this week:

- It looks as if Amazon.com is going to make one of life's more enduring pleasures a little easier to realize. That would be a glass of Port on the table under the reading light while you're captivated by a finely honed novel. In addition to selling books, Amazon.com just may be gearing up to go into wine retailing, according to this report from the online version of The Financial Times.

- Italy is the fourth leading country in the consumption of Champagne. Italy has lost 2 percent of its vineyards over the past six years, enough to cover the region of Umbria. These are just two facts gleaned from VinoWire, an online news wire devoted solely to the world of Italian wine. It's just been launched by Italian wine critic Franco Ziliani and American blogger Jeremy Parzen. With Italian wines more popular than ever in the United States, their timing is perfect for enthusiasts who want to know more of the wine scene throughout Italy.

- Looking for some inspiration for some weekend cooking? Check out the new blog by columnist Mark Bittman of the New York Times, whose recipes in his many cookbooks and articles almost invariably are stimulating, reliable and timely. At Mark Bittman on Food he's posting a new recipe a day, along with reports on eating out in Liguria, preparing octopus, debating food issues and the like.

Sacramentans prefer restaurants that serve American food, steaks and Italian dishes, to judge by one narrow gauge of local dining tastes. Each week, the online restaurant-reservation service Open Table lists the top 10 local restaurants where diners are booking tables. In the Sacramento area, 53 restaurants use the system, most of them white-tablecloth destinations.

During the past week, diners who used Open Table clearly preferred to eat at Ruth's Chris Steak House. The two local branches, one in Sacramento, the other in Roseville, finished first and second in the top 10. In order of ranking, they were followed by McCormick & Schmick's, Ella Dining Room and Bar, Esquire Grill, Morton's The Steakhouse, the Sacramento branch of Il Fornaio, Paul Martin's American Bistro in Roseville, Spataro's Restaurant and Bar and Mason's Restaurant.

As a measure of popularity, the list should be taken lightly. For one, it doesn't say how many diners actually made and honored reservations at the listed restaurants. And the sampling is small. While the 53 participating restaurants include several of the area's more critically acclaimed dinner houses, such as Mulvaney's Building & Loan and The Waterboy, it doesn't include many others, like Lemon Grass and Biba, which could have equal or higher reservation counts not measured by Open Table. But the list does seem to say that when Sacramentans eat out at higher-end restaurants they do like both traditional and contemporary American food, beef and Italian, at least they did this past week.

While tooling about the Shenandoah Valley in Amador County this past weekend, a local vintner suggested I give Iscander "Isy" Borjon a call. He's starting a winery, but with an unusual aspect, said the source.

When I called Borjon he gave me this rundown: His father Jesse arrived in Shenandoah Valley in 1991 from his native Guanajuato, Mexico, and began to recruit and send to the valley's vineyards and wineries the workers who do much of the industry's grunt work: pruning vines in and fog and chill of winter, running bottling lines, planting vineyards and the like.

Two years ago, Jesse Borjon retired, and turned over his prospering labor-contract business to his son Iscander, who not only plans to keep it going but to fulfill his father's dream of someday also having his own Shenandoah Valley vineyard and winery.

They're starting to take shape along Shenandoah Road near Bell Road. The younger Borjon hopes to have the winery finished in time for this fall's harvest. In the meantime, wines under the label of Borjon Winery are being made at nearby Charles Spinetta Winery. None is ready for release, but when Borjon Winery opens for business this fall a thousand or so cases of such varietal wines as zinfandel, sangiovese and barbera are to be in the tasting room. The younger Borjon is helping make the wine, but at least for the time being he's leaving much of that responsibility to consulting winemakers, several of them clients he and and his father have had in the valley over the past 17 years. Besides, he has his hands full right now managing eight crews working in the valley.

"This has always been my father's dream, to have the winery, but now he doesn't want that headache," says his son, already aware that winemaking isn't all just pretty rolling hills of vines and the promising pop of a cork pulled from a bottle. I guess it could be said he's showing a wisdom beyond his years. He graduated from Amador High School in Sutter Creek with the class of 2004, and at 21 just might be the youngest vintner in the state, if not the country.

March only has started, but the editors of Food&Wine magazine already are crowing about their list of the best American wines for $15 or less, to be published in the magazine's April issue. Ray Isle, the magazine's “Tasting Room” editor, tried more than 300 candidates to come up with 67 to recommend.

They include several local releases, including the Windmill 2006 Lodi Chardonnay ($12), the Dry Creek Vineyard 2006 Clarksburg Dry Chenin Blanc ($12), the 4 Bears 2003 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon by Sacramento wine negotiant Sean Minor ($15), the Lange Twins 2005 California Merlot from Lodi ($13), the Montevina 2004 Amador County Syrah ($10), the Bogle 2005 California Petite Sirah from Clarksburg ($11), the Vinum Cellars 2005 PETS Petite Sirah from Clarksburg ($14), and the Domaine de la Terre Rouge 2004 Tête-à-Tête Rhone blend from the Sierra foothills ($15).

Note that the only petite sirahs on the list both were from the Delta, which should be cause for pride in Clarksburg, but also note that not a single zinfandel from the Sierra foothills qualified for the roundup, which should be cause for concoern among vintners in the Gold Country, long seen as the Mother Lode of high-value, high-character zinfandel in the North State.

While driving about Amador County's Shenandoah Vineyards this past weekend I kept getting distracted by the area's older vineyards, now dark and bare as they stretched in neat rows up and down hills. Looking not unlike ballet dancers frozen in time, these are some of those bleak, scaly and gnarled old vines. In this case, they're Terri Harvey's hillside plot along Steiner Road, and they date from 1869.

They're head-pruned vines, meaning the trunk of the vine is trained to develop a big head, with canes growing loose and free through harvest, after which they are trimmed back, just as if they were getting an overdue haircut during winter dormancy. Then the cycle starts all over.

At any rate, not long ago I interviewed Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti about a range of grape-growing and winemaking topics in the nearby viticultural areas of the Sierra foothills, the Delta and Lodi. Inevitably, the subject of high-alcohol wines came up, a topic of continuing debate in California's wine trade, especially since Corti last summer said he'd no longer routinely stock table wines with more than 14.5 percent alcohol. Several high-alcohol wines, zinfandels especially, come from the Sierra foothills. At one point duiring our conversation, Corti wondered if the higher alcohol levels from super-ripe fruit could be tempered if growers only would return to the old practice of head training their vines rather than continue to adopt modern trellis systems that often expose clusters of grapes to more sunshine as they are strung high on various wire systems.

I'm no farmer, so I have no idea of the merits of his suggestion, but what struck me in the Shenandoah Valley was how many vineyards actually still rely on the old-fashioned method of head pruning vines. It would be interesting now to round up samples of zinfandel from head-pruned vines and samples from more conventional trellis systems to see how their alcohol levels and aesthetic attributes compare and differ.

My interview with Corti, incidentally, is the topic of tomorrow's Dunne on Wine column in The Bee's Taste section. It was occasioned by Corti's induction into the Vintners Hall of Fame, to take place Friday night at the Napa Valley branch of the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena. Corti, the first non-academic and first non-vintner to be inducted, therefore will have another forum for sounding off on his frequently provocative views on the state of California winemaking, maybe even high-alcohol wines and head-trained vines.

Over the weekend, we dropped into Gianni's Trattoria along J Street in midtown Sacramento, solely to try an unusual cheese that's been generating buzz among food enthusiasts on both coasts for the past couple of years. Only rarely is it found in restaurants around here, however, though I've heard that Rick Mahan of The Waterboy and Kurt Spataro of Spataro also at least occasionally serve it.

It's burrata, pronounced boor-AH-tah, and it's a cow's-milk cheese most closely identified with Italy's Apulia and Basilicata regions. It's a fresh cheese best eaten the day it is made, or within a day or two. Thus, versions from Italy aren't likely to show up here often, if at all.

Two California cheesemakers, however, have burrata in their lineups, Gioia Cheese Co. in South El Monte and Cantare Foods in San Diego. Peter Torza of Gianni's gets his burrata from Gioia. He has it shipped overnight and serves it as a $9 appetizer only on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The cheese arrives at table as a single slab that is long and a very bright white. It looks soft and it is, but with some substance to it. The flavor is delicately sweet and creamy to the extent that it rightfully can be called sensuous. At Gianni's, it's dressed up traditionally, with a sprinkling of a fine olive oil, leaves of basil and freshly ground black pepper. The Cantare Web site suggests: "Serve it sliced with ripe tomatoes, coarse sea salt, and basil for a classic antipasto, or melt it onto crostini and watch the cream bubble into rich little pools. Wonderful with smoked salmon and avocado or with prosciutto and fresh fig. Try tossing burrata into pasta, such as drained penne or spaghetti. For a truly rich caprese salad, encircle fresh burrata with slices of ripe red tomatoes and torn basil leaves, and drizzle with olive oil."

For the accompanying wine, Cantare recommends Montepulciano, or a light red wine such as Beaujolais Nouveau or pinot noir, or white wines such as chardonnay, pinot grigio, semillon, or sauvignon blanc, locorotondo, verdicchio, or a "riesling Italico from Oltrepò Pavese." We tried it with the Cuvaison chardonnay and a sanviovese-based Antinori blend from Tuscany. While both had their merits, I felt the fruit, spine and dryness of the Tuscan red was a better match for the cheese.

Burrata consists basically of leftover remnants of mozzarella combined with cream sealed in a bag of pulled curd. The exterior is somewhat elastic, the interior soft and creamy, even buttery. It's a fine cheese, but a whole lot of equally captivating cheeses are available in restaurants and grocery stores these days, and my overall impression of burrata is in line with what the owner of a cheese shop in Alexandria, Va., told Jane Black of the Washington Post last fall: "It's good and everything, but I'm not clear about why people are so insane over it...Part is probably the super-soft creaminess. Part is the romance: It comes from Italy and has this secret inner core. Or maybe it's the name: burrrrr-ah-ta."

The most comprehensive article I've read about burrata was Ross Parsons' feature in the Los Angeles Times about two years ago.

A reader from back east planning to visit Sacramento soon sent me an email a few days ago to ask if I'd recommend the hottest restaurant in town. In reply, I told him that would be Ella Dining Room & Bar, the Selland family's bright and cosmopolitan spread on the K Street Mall.

Now I'm hoping he isn't planning to get here before Thursday evening. That's when Ella tentatively is scheduled to reopen after a week's closure because of an electrical fire. The blaze, confined to a cabinet that stores a battery of large batteries to keep emergency exit lights going in case of a power outage, didn't do any serious structural damage, but it sure stunk up the place. Everything from large flowing draperies to every louver in the restaurant's extensive shutter motif has had to be cleaned to get rid of the stink, says manager Josh Nelson. He puts the cleanup costs alone at around $50,000. He doesn't even want to calculate the cost of lost business.

He praised firefighters for responding so quickly and for confining the fire solely to the battery cabinet. When a fire years ago damaged the restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, owner Alice Waters expressed her gratitude to responding firefighters by asking them to a free dinner. Looks like some local firefighters also could be in for a splendid meal.

Shame on me, I overlooked Bantam Cellars when writing last week's Dunne on Wine column about the white wine vermentino. My excuse: Well, the winery, which is in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley, is aptly named. At least I didn't run over any of the bantams scurrying about the grounds and the parking lot when we pulled into the place over the weekend. We were there to check out a report that Garth and Jonna Cobb also are gambling that vermentino could play a growing role in the region's limited lineup of refreshingly fruity and crisp white wines.

What we found was the Bantam Cellars 2007 Bella Grace Vineyard Vermentino ($16), the family's first release of the wine as a varietal. It's a terrific wine, a bit fleshier and richer than other interpretations of vermentino I've tasted, though it retains the grape's inviting aromatics and refreshing acidity even when grown in a warm area like Shenandoah Valley. That, and the wine's peachy fruitiness, should help it stand up to even the North State's spring asparagus that will arrive any day now. In fact, Jonna Cobb plans to pour the vermentino with a pasta primavera based on spring asparagus at her next wine dinner March 28. For more information, check out her lively blog.

Weatherstone Coffee & Trading Co., which opened in 1974 as Sacramento's first coffeehouse, will be officially rechristened Saturday as Old Soul at The Weatherstone, signalling a change in ownership, program and decor.

Tim Jordan and Jason Griest, owners of the young but prospering Old Soul Co. in a warehouse fronting the alley connecting 17th and 18th streets between Capitol Avenue and L Street, have bought Weatherstone and will open it in its latest incarnation at 6 a.m. tomorrow.

Guests can expect new lighting, new paint, new seating, longer hours and an expanded menu. And more changes are coming, including additional furnishings and possibly beer and wine, says Griest.

Jordan and Griest will continue to operate Old Soul Co. as a coffee roaster, lunch spot, bakery and casual hangout. At the Weatherstone, they'll be serving their organic coffees, specialty teas, pastries and breads, and gradually extending cuisine.

On March 8, Old Soul will continue its popular participation in Second Saturday, and Jordan and Griest also will add Weatherstone to the art stroll with music by Lovepile and art by James Cameron.

Old Soul at The Weatherstone, 812 21st St., will be open 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.

Five years ago, my son Justin and I had an amazing run of good luck while fishing in the Sea of Cortez off Cabo San Lucas. Within a few hours, we'd reeled in a husky blue marlin and a boatload of dorado, a.k.a. mahimahi. The marlin we immediately released, but the dorado that we didn't give the capitan we bagged and turned over to the chef at the resort where we were staying, Esperanza. We asked him if he could base each course of our dinner that night on the dorado, whose delicately sweet white flesh tends to the firm and lean, though not as dense as swordfish, with which it often is compared.

Under a nearly full moon, at a table on a ledge just above loudly breaking waves, and with glasses of poised and refreshing Mexican chardonnay in our hands, we savored a meal that included dorado ceviche, dorado dusted with the spice of habanero chile pepper, dorado sweetened with a mango salsa, and dorado prepared a couple of other ways now lost to memory.

We've had other successful fishing ventures in the Sea of Cortez since then, but we haven't again eaten at Esperanza, though we've remembered the name and talents of that chef, who at the time had been on the job just three weeks.

He's Flynt Payne, and after five years at Esperanza he's traded the sun and surf of Baja for the sun and snow of Lake Tahoe. He's just been named the new executive chef at PlumpJack Cafe Squaw Valley, a wing of the PlumpJack Squaw Valley Inn.

Payne grew up in North Carolina, studied cooking at the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vt., and has put in stints at such restaurants as Joy America Cafe in Baltimore, the Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe and Atwaters in Portland, Ore. Along the way he's gained recognition for quickly insinuating regional ingredients and techniques into his seasonally oriented dishes.

Over the years, PlumpJack Cafe Squaw Valley has been our most frequent Sierra dining destination, retaining a reputation for solid New American cooking through a succession of talented chefs. The current menu includes some PlumpJack staples, such as ahi tartare cones, barbecued venison and "duck two ways," but Payne looks to be adding touches stemming from his stay in Baja, like the agave-glazed prawns and grilled lamb with avocado pie. No dorado, however. But if I'm ever fortunate enough to land a mackinaw from Lake Tahoe, I know where to head.

Details are sketchy right now, but officials of Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets, a branch of the British-based retail giant Tesco PLC, are to reveal plans Thursday morning for a mind-boggling 19 stores in the Sacramento area.

At 10,000 square feet, Fresh & Easy stores are smaller than traditional supermarkets and boast of a narrower marketing strategy that emphasizes "fresh, wholesome food at affordable prices," including private-label products without artificial colors or flavors, hormone-free meats, cage-free eggs and date-coded produce. Stores don't sell cigarettes or anything in Styrofoam, but they do stock wines. (Six Fresh & Easy wines won medals at the recent San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition; most were bronze, though a Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon that sells for $11 got silver.)

Bee colleague Jon Ortiz is working on the story, scheduled to appear in tomorrow's Bee.

Let's catch up with Michael Chandler, who for five years was the popular general manager and wine director of Enotria Restaurant & Wine Bar until he left abruptly last fall. Since then, he's been one busy guy.

He's still living in Sacramento but working in Napa, where's an account manager for the online wine brokerage WineBid.com. In that role he's traveling throughout northern California and into Nevada, Colorado and Utah to appraise the wines of collectors who are thinking of listing all or part of their cellar for sale on WineBid.com.

He hasn't given up on the restaurant trade, and took the job in Napa in part to study with fellow sommeliers who also are preparing for the next in a rigorous series of exams administered by the Court of Master Sommeliers.

Through his Web site he also lines up clients as a restaurant consultant and wine educator. And he's also making wine under the label Chandler Cellars. He's to release his first commercial wine, a pinot noir from Sonoma County's Russian River Valley, in late spring or early summer.

At 8, Kevin James O'Connor was serving his parents breakfast in bed - eggs Benedict. At 14, he was washing dishes at Z's Bistro in El Dorado Hills. Today, at 18, he's the new chef at Balcony Bistro in Folsom.

"My family is really big on family meals every night. It's a four-hour process. I started to develop a palate at a very young age," says O'Connor, who already is retooling the Balcony Bistro's French-grounded menu to make it more contemporary.

"He's real smart, with a real passion for food, so I said let's do something together on a trial basis. So far, he's awesome," says Rhonda Renee Lynam, the restaurant's owner. O'Connor recently visited the restaurant for a job interview, and even though it wasn't open for lunch some guests walked in as if it were, so he stepped into the kitchen in dress shirt and tie to prepare their meal, which impressed Lynam.

He started just last week, and already I've received an email praising his scallop pot pie. "He’s going to be famous, this kid, just watch, he’s that good," says Lynam.

Aside from his family's influence - both parents are serious cooks, and tend their own young wine-grape vineyard in El Dorado Hills - O'Connor picked up his culinary acumen from reading cookbooks and working alongside several notable local chefs, including Jonathan Kerksieck when he was at Ristorante Masque and Kevin Nichols of Serrano Country Club. (Some of his kitchen stints had to be scheduled around his play as a defensive lineman with the Oak Ridge High School Trojans.)

When he isn't in the kitchen, O'Connor plans to start working toward a degree in business and hospitality management. He also hopes to spend a year or so in Paris working for a Michelin-starred chef. "To work and train under a chef there would be awesome," he says. Eventually, he'd like to have his own restaurant, a career move being encouraged by his parents.

In addition to the scallop pot pie in beurre blanc, O'Connor's new menu, to be formally introduced next week, includes such dishes as seared salmon paupiettes with caper-and-tarragon cream cheese; seared pecan-crusted sole with a roasted-grape and white-wine butter sauce; and duck breast with lardons, pearl onions, a sun-dried-cherry reduction and a root-vegetable gateau ("A gateau is a cake, but I didn't like the sound of 'cake' on the menu.").

Clarksburg vintner Patty Bogle is sounding upbeat as she looks forward to next week's Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, even if she has to catch events on television from her room at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where she is undergoing treatment for acute myeloid leukemia.

She reports her white blood-cell count is down, her third round of chemotherapy looks to have taken hold, and that a donor for a stem-cell transplant has been found. That procedure is another four or five weeks off. She's posting progress reports on her CarePage, where family, friends, neighbors and colleagues in the wine trade also are adding their support to a board that is nearing 400 messages.

To visit her CarePage, go here. For colleague Lakiesha McGhee's Bee report on Patty Bogle and a Valentine's Day drive in Clarksburg for blood donations and bone-marrow registration for her, go here.

The Sacramento region's slumping housing scene is affecting at least one dealer in high-end wine. Roseville wine merchant Marcus Graziano, customarily a big buyer at the Premiere Napa Valley barrel auction each winter, spent just $80,000 on unusual wines during this year's sale last weekend.

"Our business is still growing, surprisingly, but a lot of my clients are in home building," said Graziano in explaining why he cut back his bidding this year. A year ago he spent about $250,000 at the sale and the year before he invested $174,000. "I've been looking at the economy, and when you see those prices (for which auction wines sell) you go at it with a little different perspective," said Graziano, who owns Capitol Cellars Diamond Creek.

The four lots he bought are largely from "under-the-radar" wineries whose reputation for extraordinary cabernet sauvignon and Bordeaux-style blends will rise as they become better known, Graziano is confident. The lots he bought - five cases each - were from Roy Estate, Alpha Omega, Bressler and O'Shaughnessy. The wines won't be bottled and released for another year or two.

Sales at Saturday's auction totaled a record $2.2 million, up slightly from last year's total, but there were 200 lots this year compared with 192 a year ago. Gary Fisch of Gary's Wine and Marketplace with two stores in New Jersey was the day's top bidder, paying a total $429,000 for 30 lots. The top-selling lot was five cases of 2006 cabernet sauvignon by Shafer Vineyards in the Stag's Leap district; Susan Owens of Ultimate Distributors in Atlanta paid $62,000 for the lot.

Each lot is a one-of-a-kind wine available only at the auction.

Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti is in Portugal, searching for Port, but the trek was scheduled before a car tore into the wine department of his Corti Brothers store last week, destroying about 40 bottles, including some Port.

The damage could have been more extensive, but the driver, shoppers and staff all escaped injury. The driver thought she had the car in reverse instead of drive when she hit the accelerator. "This isn't the first time this has happened," says store manager Rick Mindermann.

As the car shot through glass windows alongside the front door it struck a large and ancient clay amphora once used to hold olive oil, sending it into stacks of everyday wine and lockers of rarer releases, especially Madeiras and Ports. The most valuable bottle lost was an 1869 Madeira with a price sticker of $869, said Mindermann. A $500 bottle of rum also was destroyed.

The store remains open, but it will take another several weeks for a new front door to be custom made, said Mindermann. By then, Corti is to be back and the shelves replenished with Port.

A sign indicating a change in ownership at Mulvaney's Building & Loan in midtown Sacramento has raised alarms among the restaurant's clientele that owner/chef Patrick Mulvaney could be moving on.

Not at all, says Mulvaney. The sign is an official formality stemming from his incorporation of the business in anticipation of an expansion into a neighboring former auto repair shop at 19th and L. Mulvaney has no plans to extend the restaurant into that site, but once parking and improvement issues are resolved with city authorities he intends to use the additional quarters as a banquet hall for special occasions, such as wedding receptions.

He's also toying with the notion of using the shop, which will be able to seat up to 100, for family-style multi-course dinners a couple of nights a week. The featured entree would change with each meal, such as fried chicken one time, roast pork another. It's a strategy that Napa Valley chef Thomas Keller has adopted with much success at his restaurant Ad Hoc in Yountville.

Mulvaney also said he's just hired pastry chef Kira O'Donnell, who recently closed her bakery The Real Pie Co., and given her a free hand with the restaurant's desserts except for one caveat - she must continue to make the popular Ding Dongs.

Weather wise, this doesn't look like the best weekend to tour Napa Valley. Nonetheless, the valley during a storm does have its advantages - less traffic on the main route between Napa and Calistoga, Highway 29; fewer people shouldering up to the winery tasting counters; easier parking for visiting boutiques and galleries along Main Street in St. Helena; and more open tables at the enclave's popular restaurants.

We were reminded of this yesterday, when despite frequent showers and cold winds we nevertheless spent a leisurely day among shops, wineries and restaurants, most notably Mustards Grill, the landmark bistro along the west side of Highway 29 just north of Yountville.

Mustards Grill was an early player in the evolution of Napa Valley into a diner's paradise. This June, it will celebrate its 25th anniversary. That's a heck of a milestone in an area so dependent on fickle shifts in tourism, especially during the winter months. Yet, it was pretty busy last night despite a steady downpour throughout our dinner.

More significantly, Mustards Grill is maintaining the high standards with which it began its long and happy run. The wine list still is enthralling, and the straight-forward contemporary grill food remains fresh, accessible and imaginative. (We won't quibble about the service, which was fine but a bit blunted compared to what we've experienced in the past.)

Some recommendations: The sweet, smoky and spicy chipotle-rubbed quail with cippolini onions ($22.75), the buoyant potato gnocci with a sweet dice of roasted celery root ($18.95), the sunny sweet-corn tamales with wild mushrooms, pumpkin seeds and a salsa of tomatillos and avocado ($10.50), and the substantial grilled-swordfish tostada ($24.95).

Some other recommendations: Take an umbrella, make a reservation at (707) 944-2424, and if you can't get into Mustards Grill consider another of Cindy Pawlcyn's Napa Valley restaurants, Go Fish, the subject of my dining column in this Sunday's Ticket+ in The Bee.

Cooking Light magazine is smart, lively and helpful, but my confidence in its reporting is rattled. Or maybe it's my confidence in Sacramento that is rattled. I've been convinced that Sacramento is a pretty healthful place to live. We've got all kinds of farmers markets, a long riverside trail to invite year-round exercise, several natural-food stores, supermarkets with large departments devoted to produce and organic foods, a growing network of metropolitan bike lanes, and so on and so forth.

But to celebrate their 20th anniversary, editors of Cooking Light decided to compile a list of the 20 cities in the United States that best fit the magazine's philsophy to eat smart, be fit and live well, and Sacramento didn't make the cut. Seattle tops the list, largely for its "abundance of fresh local foods, walker-friendly streets, and inclusive attitudes." I don't know what "inclusive attitudes" means, or how the editors measured them, but isn't Sacramento reputedly the country's most diverse city?

Other cities rounding out the top 10 are Portland, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, San Francisco, Boston, Denver, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Tucson. Even Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Las Vegas made the full list, but not Sacramento.

Cooking Light's editors include with their online report the 15 criteria they used to compile the list, such as relying on the James Beard Foundation to tell them whether a city has any "critically acclaimed food professionals." As someone who has followed the James Beard Awards for years, I can tell you the foundation has trouble recognizing anything west of the Mississippi River. To determine whether a city has any notable restaurants, Cooking Light's editors relied on the Zagat Survey, which doesn't know Sacramento exists.

To determine how many farmers markets a city has, Cooking Light relied on the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmer's Markets Directory and LocalHarvest.org. When I visited the USDA site and punched in a request for farmers markets in Sacramento I got this response: "There were no farmers markets found matching your criteria." In a similar search at the Web site of LocalHarvest.org I was told of farmers markets at Sun City Lincoln Hills, Sutter Creek, Capay Valley and Sonoma, but not a single one in Sacramento.

Something's light at Cooking Light, all right, but it isn't necessarily the cooking.

"Cedar hope chest, all memory and hope."
"Smoky sunset but no need for alarm."
"Hey, zinfandel doesn't own all the raspberries."
"Here's the mushrooms, now get the pappardelle."
"Monumental, but built of redwood, not granite."

Oh, excuse me, I was continuing an exercise I began while at a tasting of cabernet sauvignons at Trefethen Vineyards & Winery in Napa Valley earlier today. Just before heading over that way this morning I read an online commentary in which Andrew Barrow of Guardian Unlimited challenged himself and readers to describe a wine in just seven words.

How Barrow settled on seven words isn't clear to me, but I suspect the number is irrelevant to his greater goal, which seems to be to get wine enthusiasts to tell him what they expect of tasting notes. Do they simply want to know whether the wine tastes good, whether it's ready to drink now and the kind of food for which it is best suited, or do they also expect a rundown of all the grape varieties in the wine, the kind of oak barrels in which it was aged, the nature of the vintage, the level of acidity and so on? He challenged readers to come up with their own seven-word wine descriptions, which are being tacked on to the end of his commentary. My favorite so far probably should be disqualified because it's only four words, but it does provide basic information: "Good, riesling, immediately, fish." Basic, but just how helpful and inspiring is it?

I'll be saying more of the Trefethen tasting down the road, but to sum up in seven words the overall nature of the 20 cabernet sauvignons we sampled: "At 40, Trefethen's sharp, nimble and centered."

In this photo, incidentally, that's Matt Kramer, wine columnist for The Wine Spectator and the Oregonian in Portland, and Janet Trefethen, a member of the family that established its Napa Valley estate in 1968.

Napa's rise as a city where you want to stop and eat rather than bypass as you drive to and from wineries will be further enhanced this fall when Ken Frank moves his seamless La Toque restaurant from Rutherford to the Westin Verasa Napa hotel nearing completion along Napa River.

La Toque was one of 23 Bay Area restaurants to be annointed with one star when Michelin critics released their first California guide in 2006.

Frank, one of the state's more acclaimed chefs for his contemporary if classically grounded interpretation of French cooking over the past 35 years, moved La Toque from Los Angeles to Napa Valley 10 years ago.

He is to have more to say of the pending relocation late this month, though early indications are that the Westin will give him a more spacious and luxurious setting than the quarters La Toque occupies at Rancho Caymus Inn in Rutherford, where the restaurant is to remain open until September.

The new Westin is a short stroll from another new Napa culinary attraction, Oxbow Public Market, featured in The Bee's Taste section this past Wednesday.

At any gathering of Napa Valley's wine elite over the past four decades, the woman who invariably inspired the most favorable comparisons to the tradition, grace and glory of sparkling wine was Jamie Davies, who with her husband Jack built Schramsberg Vineyards into California's most highly regarded producer of Champagne-style wines.

After struggling with Parkinson's disease in recent years, Jamie Davies died Tuesday afternoon surrounded by family at her historic Calistoga estate. Writer L. Pierce Carson gives an early tribute to her in today's Napa Valley Register.

The most imaginative Valentine's Day menu we've seen from a local restaurant is the five-course prix-fixe dinner to be served at Folsom Bistro in Folsom. It's broken down by his and her dishes for each course. Aside from the predictable asparagus for him, executive chef Matthew Newton and sous chef Michael Goularte avoided gender typing while assembling the menu. She, for example, will get braised beef short ribs, while he will get the risotto croquette.

Newton says their intent in providing five dishes for him and another five for her is simply to expose the style and range of their food on a day when the relatively new restaurant is likely to draw a fairly substantial audience. The real Valentine's Day twist is that with different dishes for each course a couple will be encouraged to share what they get. For the third course, for example, he'll get a duck-confit crepe with caramelized apple and goat cheese, while she'll get puff pastry with black truffles, chanterelles and Gruyere. Ultimately, how much they want to share could be a test of their romantic commitment.

The cost is $69 per person. Newton says the restaurant isn't completely booked, though the only seatings left are early or late. For more information: (916) 990-0630.

For every two steps forward, K Street Mall seems to take one step back. It happened again this weekend when Michel Bloch abruptly closed his Crepe Cafe at 9th and K, open only since August, a time when several restaurants bloomed along the struggling mall.

"It's better to have a painful end than an endless pain," says Bloch, recalling advice handed down by his father.

Bloch hung up his creperie and raclette for two principal reasons: Business didn't materialize as he anticipated, and he needs to tend to pressing family matters in Europe. While the restaurant was busy at lunch, breakfast and dinner were so slow he couldn't afford to hire the help he would have liked to give him a break. His work schedule was complicated by living on a ranch at Cool in El Dorado County, making for a long commute.

"I couldn't make it," says Bloch, who introduced crepes to midtown Sacramento three decades ago when he set up a trailer along P Street between 19th and 20. He then took the trailer on a circuit of county fairs, music festivals and the like, established crepe cafes in outlying areas, and created the Crepe Institute to train prospective crepe entrepreneurs.

His immediate plans are to visit his mother in France and to pay more attention to his horse, which he says he's been neglecting since opening the cafe.

If you thought the weather in Sacramento this weekend was pleasant, you should have been in Dallas, where temperatures rose into the 70s under skies blue and still. Unfortunately, I only got to enjoy spring's early tease as I walked between the Magnolia Hotel and the Dallas Convention Center, where along with about 60 other wine judges I was sequestered in a ballroom staring at a large white screen where our scores were projected for debate and tabulation.

This was the setting for the 24th annual Dallas Morning News Wine Competition, which drew nearly 3,500 wines, a record high. Our panel was assigned about 240 wines, including large classes of cabernet sauvignon, Bordeaux blends, pinot grigio and zinfandel.

We won't get our coded results for a week or two, so I have no idea of the identity of the wines that we gave gold medals. I do know that there weren't many of them. The most surprising class was the pinot grigios, which as a group showed more refreshing and alluring fruit than I've generally associated with the varietal.

A few days ago, a reader emailed me to ask what I thought of zinfandels from the 2006 vintage that I tasted at the recent Zinfandel Festival in San Francisco. I haven't answered because I didn't taste many zinfandels of any vintage that day. At Dallas, however, the 37 zinfandels our panel tasted were almost solely from the 2006 harvest. We weren't awed by the category, and ended up giving just three gold medals. It was an unusually uneven group, with a bright and clean zinfandel often followed by a string of muddled and clumsy releases. An unusually high number had funky smells and flavors. Based on this experience, I suggest zinfandel partisans approach the 2006s cautiously. Taste before you buy; short of that, look for wines that rank high either at several competitions or are scored high by several critics whose view you tend to share.

Nearly 40 years after it was released, could the Paul Newman and Robert Redford vehicle "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" still resonate with an American audience?

The folks at Rebel Wine Co. in Napa Valley are counting on it. "Newman's Own," a brand long associated with salad dressings, pasta sauces and popcorn, now is a wine that in its packaging and marketing hopes to capitalize on the enduring appeal of the movie. There are two wines, actually, a cabernet sauvignon and a chardonnay, both bearing California appellations, and both with the sketched likeness of Paul Newman on the label, designed to resemble a strip of celluloid.

Unlike the principals in the popular "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," a likeable and amusing sendup of oldtime Westerns, these aren't wines you need to chase down and wrestle to the ground to get a grip on what they have to say. They're smack in your face, with hefty builds and lush ripe fruit. There's no hole in the wall here. Both seem to have a trace of residual sugar, qualifying them as candidates for a People's Choice award if not an Oscar.

The chardonnay is true to type, its ripe fruit running to pineapple and apple, with unusual complexity for an example of the varietal more at home as an aperitif than a companion at the dinner table.

The cabernet sauvignon is dense in color and thick through the middle, its herbal and cherry fruitiness shot through with suggestions of port. It's a stew wine, or better yet a wine to pair with saltena, the beefy, fruity and spicy Bolivian version of an empanada.

Both wines are from the 2006 vintage and each carries a suggested retail price of $16. As with Newman's other culinary products, all profits from sale of the wines are donated to educational and charitable programs.

Rebel Wine Co. is a collaboration of the St. Helena wineries Three Thieves and Trinchero Family Estates, which also releases the Bandit line of wines. Newman's Own wines just are starting to be distributed, with the first wave available at Nugget Markets along Florin Road, in West Sacramento and at El Dorado Hills.

Patty Bogle, doyenne of the Delta wine trade, has been hospitalized in Houston since November to fight acute myeloid leukemia, but her family, friends and neighbors in and about Clarksburg are arranging an unusual Valentine's Day tribute for her.

They are teaming up with BloodSource for a blood drive from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. next Thursday - Valentine's Day - in the gym at Delta High School in Clarksburg. Sign-ups also will be taken for the national bone-marrow registry. Those unable to get to the gym at that time can schedule a donation elsewhere through the organization's Web site. Her donor-club number is P572.

Since being hospitalized at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Patty Bogle has been receiving blood transfusions and platelets about four times a week. She's gone through two rounds of chemotherapy and is expected to be hospitalized another four months, said her daughter, Jody Bogle VanDePol. "We’re very hopeful her body will respond to these drugs and we’ll have her home," said VanDePol. Once the cancer is in remission, she will be up for a stem-cell transplant, she added.

Her mother's most difficult adjustment has been not being able to be around her three grandchildren, who must stay away because of her suppressed immune system. Other family members and friends, however, have been making frequent trips to Houston.

Bogles have been farming the Delta for more than a century, but only in 1968 did they start to cultivate wine grapes. Today, the family tends 1,200 acres of wine grapes about Clarksburg. In 1978, they established Bogle Vineyards, which with annual production at nearly a million cases is ranked the nation's 18th largest winery by Wine Business Monthly. Patty Bogle has overseen the winery since 1989, assuming even more responsibility for the family's farming operations since the death of her husband Chris Bogle in 1997.

She's also a prominent player in the state's wine community, particularly with respect to the understanding and appreciation of petite sirah, the winery's flagship varietal and one of the more historical varieties to be grown in California.

Grape growers and winemakers who gathered in Sacramento last week kicked off one day of speeches and workshops with an appreciative chuckle. Their amusement was triggered by the debut of a 30-second commercial that is to start appearing today on cable TV networks. The spot touts California as the ideal destination for visitors who like wine tasting and eating out to play a significant role in their travels.

Toward that end, the commercial calls upon several culinary and winemaking celebrities - restaurateur Pat Kuleto, chef Guy Fieri, winemakers Kathy Joseph, Jill Davis and Paul Draper, among others - to make a series of rapid-fire plugs about the joys to be found in California wines and foods.

Developed by the California Wine Institute and the California Travel and Tourism Commission, the spot isn't likely to be seen much in California itself because Californians already are familiar with the wines and foods the state has to offer, reason the sponsors. However, MeringCarson, the promotional agency responsible for pulling together the marketing campaign, has made this clip available for local residents to see what amused last week's conventioners.
For the kicker, however, stay tuned until the very end of the spot, when Maria Shriver and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger make a cameo appearance that has nothing to do with Barack Obama and John McCain.

The commercial, incidentally, is just one segment of a broader effort to promote California's wine and food culture. Another is "The Land of Wine and Food" Web site, where additional videos, an interactive guide to California wine regions and the like is available.

Charles B. Mitchell isn't giving up on the wine and food potential of southwestern El Dorado County after all. Two weeks ago I reported here that Mitchell, who'd been instrumental in developing the stature of the Fair Play appellation, was selling the second of his two wineries in the area, Winery by the Creek, and its neighboring restaurant, Fair Play Bistro, to Michael Conti.

Both Mitchell and Conti agreed that the deal was as good as done. Conti already had purchased Mitchell's original winery, now known as Conti Estate/Charles B. Mitchell Vineyards. That will remain in Conti's hands, but Mitchell will continue to hang on to Winery by the Creek and Fair Play Bistro, currently closed.

Mitchell says Conti apparently had second thoughts about investing more enthusiastically in the area and told him he no longer was interested in buying the second winery and the bistro. Conti says he withdrew his offers for the properties for "personal reasons" and declined further comment.

Mitchell isn't interested in resuming a hands-on role at the two sites. He says he's seeking a manager to run Winery by the Creek and an operator to reopen the bistro, which he hopes to see again running this spring.

In the meantime, he's planning a blowout of his wine inventory at both the restaurant and the winery over President's Day weekend, Feb. 16-18. He has some 200 cases of wine at the restaurant that he will sell for a flat $7.50 per bottle from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. He'll also be serving food. At the winery just across the creek from the restaurant he'll also be selling his stock for $7.50 a bottle during the same hours.

People who frequented Fair Play Bistro will recall that its wine list included some Chateau Lafite. Mitchell, however, is keeping that for himself.

The award season is under way, and one of the more eagerly anticipated tributes in the wine trade early each year is Jon Fredrikson's unveiling of his Winery of the Year, which he reveals during the annual Unified Wine & Grape Symposium now going on in Sacramento.

Fredrikson, a veteran Bay Area wine consultant and analyst, bases his honor on a winery's robust sales the previous year. For 2007, his Winery of the Year is Ste. Michelle Wine Estates in Washington state, which during 2007 saw wine sales leap by 25 percent to a record $354 million, says Fredrikson.

Ste. Michelle also made headlines last year when it teamed up with Italy's Marchese Piero Antinori to pay $185 million for Napa Valley's Stag's Leap Wine Cellars. Ste. Michelle now owns about 20 brands, including two other California wineries, Conn Creek and Villa Mt. Eden, both also in Napa Valley.

Fredrikson chose Ste. Michelle from a large field of candidates that also had revenues rise substantially last year, including four in the Sacramento region - Michael-David Winery in Lodi, Bogle Vineyards in Clarksburg, Gnarly Head in Manteca and McManis Family Vineyards just south of Lodi.

Fredrikson also indicated that the industry should keep an eye on a player that just entered the field last year, Oak Leaf Vineyards, a brand of The Wine Group in San Francisco. Oak Leaf sold around 500,000 cases in its short time on the market, said Fredrikson. The wines are available at Wal-Mart, where they sell for $1.97 a bottle.

Just try to get into a downtown or midtown restaurant this week. With 10,000 grape growers, winemakers and other members of the wine trade in and about the Sacramento Convention Center for the annual Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, the nation's largest gathering of vintners, most restaurants on the grid should be humming. If there's one thing this crowd enjoys as much as making wine it's drinking it, preferably with fine food.

Nonetheless, they got down to business today with workshops on grape diseases, sustainable farming practices, unwanted aromas that can develop during fermentation and the like.

The opening session dealt with how wineries and wine-related businesses, like restaurants, can build their brand to assure a longterm relationship with their customers. There I heard something that made me wish the room was filled with local restaurateurs. Marian Jansen op de Harr, wine buyer for Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar, said the chain's highly regarded wine program stipulates that red wines be kept at 60 degrees Fahrenheidt, whites at 45 degrees Fahrenheidt. Nor are bottles of wine to be left standing on the back bar, where they are bound to warm up. Take the hint, local restaurateurs: Store those wines at proper temperatures so they won't be too hot when served, and just maybe your wine sales will pick up.

She had a couple of other insightful remarks. For one, while 70 percent of the wines at Fleming's are American, 30 percent are foreign, and that segment is growing, in large part because Americans are taking an interest in grape varieties not grown extensively here, such as riesling, malbec and albarino. Curiously, the market looks to be cooling for sauvignon blanc, she said. "A year ago I thought sauvignon blanc would take off," she remarked, "but it seems to be going down. I don't know what's going on."

Australian viticulturist Peter Hayes, of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), based in Paris, sounded more ominous in his speech, saying winemakers generally aren't preparing consumers for changes in wine styles due to climate change. Already, he remarked, German rieslings are showing more alcohol and less of their characteristically steely nature because of how global warming is altering grape-growing and winemaking practices, yet few vintners are taking a proactive role in explaining the changes to consumers, said Hayes. Something for his fellow conventioners to chew over besides the steak they'll have for dinner.

Saturday's 17th annual Zinfandel Festival drew its usual crowd of thousands to two massive pavilions at San Francisco's Fort Mason. I spent a portion of my day there interviewing winemakers about the topic of old-vine zinfandels for this Wednesday's Dunne on Wine column in The Bee and for a video to be posted on sacbee.com the same day.

Naturally, these mimes representing Paul Dolan Vineyards didn't have a thing to say on the matter.

After the interviews I got down to the day's serious business, tasting some zinfandels. Can't say I found a whole lot to turn my head, but those that did included the bright and brisk Amador Foothill Winery 2004 Esola Vineyards Shenandoah Valley Zinfandel ($17), which showed that the varietal doesn't need a whole lot of color to be characteristically fruity; the aromatic, spicy and long C.G. Di Arie Vineyard & Winery 2005 Shenandoah Valley Zinfandel ($25); the ripe, lush and touch sweet Dogwood Cellars 2005 Mendocino Zinfandel ($28); the firm, robust and pepperty Howell Mountain Vineyards 2005 Bear & Lion Old Vine Napa County Zinfandel ($24); the concentrated and persistent Opolo Vineyards 2005 Paso Robles Reserve Zinfandel ($38); the swaggering Rotta Winery 2004 Paso Robles Giubbini Estate Vineyard Zinfandel ($27); and the spirited yet elegant Rodney Strong Vineyards 2005 Sonoma County Knotty Vines Zinfandel (20).

We spotted longtime zinfandel specialist Kent Rosenblum wandering through the crowd, seeming to look happier than usual. This morning I learned why. He's selling his 30-year-old Alameda winery, Rosenblum, Cellars, to Diageo Chateau & Estate Wines for $105 million, according to Yahoo! Finance. That kind of dough would bring a smile to anyone's face, though Rosenblum, a veterinarian when he isn't making wine, always has been one of the more cheery vintners in the California trade.

Steve Zeigler is the latest restaurateur to recognize that location, location, location can be crucial in the dining business. Two years ago he moved his Zigatos Bar & Grille from the suburban Howe 'Bout Arden shopping center to the Canterbury Inn and Conference Center off Highway 160 near the Woodlake neighborhood.

Now he's moved Zigatos again, this time back to the suburbs, to the Clarion Hotel at Fulton Avenue and Auburn Boulevard.

"I was convinced we could make that place work," said Zeigler of the Canterbury Road site. "But I learned Canterbury Road is too far out for people who live downtown and too far in for people who live out."

He also said some anticipated improvements to the Canterbury Road site didn't materialize as he'd hoped, also prompting his decision to move.

He's more optimistic about the Clarion Hotel site, where he also has relocated his Capital City Catering. "We've been welcomed with open arms here," says Zeigler of his new landlord and members of the Arden Arcade business Council. "It's good to feel the love."

Colleague Ramon Coronado had a more comprehensive look at the Zigatos move and the revitalization of the restaurant's new neighborhood in an article in the regional Arden section of yesterday's Bee.

With no NFL game this weekend, what's a sporting fellow to do for his wagering amusement? If he's a wine enthusiast, he could guide a pal to the new Total Wine & More in Roseville and bet that he or she can't get out of the place without buying at least a half-dozen bottles of wine, beer and spirits.

With little fanfare, the first California branch of Total Wine opened yesterday in Fairway Commons Shopping Center along Five Star Drive just off Stanford Ranch Road. We were on our way to dinner in Rocklin when we decided to swing by to see if we could find out when the place would be ready for customers, only to discover the lights on, the doors sliding open, and a fair number of people pushing carts between boxes and bins.

Total Wine, based out of Potomac, Maryland, bills itself as "America's Wine Superstore," and the 25,000-square-foot facility lives up to that claim with some 8,000 wines, 2,000 spirits and 1,000 beers. I couldn't pass up a Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a Gigondas and a couple of rieslings, one a vineyard-designated release from Washington state, the other from New York's Finger Lakes district, customarily virtually impossible to find hereabouts. Interestingly, 47 percent of the chain's sales are imported wines.

"Team members" wear white shirts and ties, and two we saw are newly hired veterans of the Sacramento wine scene - Harry Fisher, former sommelier at the long-gone Horseshoe Bar Grill in Loomis, and Carrie Boyle, formerly of The Wine Merchant in Roseville and Folsom.

Coincidental with the opening of the Roseville store, the chain's 51st, Beverage Dynamics magazine named Total Wine its Retailer of the Year for 2008. The accompanying article notes that Total Wine moves more than 24 million bottles of wine per year through its doors, employs more than 1,500 persons, and encourages its wine clerks to enter the rigorous Master of Wine certification program.

The article also notes that the chain gives away 300,000 copies a year of its nearly 200-page Guide to Wine, a sweeping and smart survey of grape varietals, food and wine pairing, wine regions and related topics. In March, the store also will start a series of wine classes for consumers.

Total Wine is at 5791 Five Star Blvd., Roseville; (916) 791-2488. It's open 9 a.m.-10 p.m. daily. As soon as you enter, grab a map of the layout; you'll need it, I'm wagering.

Michael Conti, descended from a family of longtime grape growers in Italy, subscribes to the wine-country maxim that "it takes a lot of beer to make good wine." Trouble is, the remote Fair Play area in El Dorado County, where Conti and his wife Michelle settled 18 months ago, is short of places for vineyard workers, cellar rats, winemakers and the like to gather for a cold brew.

This spring, Conti plans to correct that by converting the recently closed Fair Play Bistro into a microbrew and small-plate pub. The restaurant is in escrow, along with the neighboring Winery by the Creek, where Conti is negotiating to bring in noted Napa Valley winemaker Phil Baxter as his consultant.

Conti is buying bistro and winery from Charles Mitchell, who almost a year ago sold him his Charles B. Mitchell Vineyards, which eventually is to become known as Conti Estate. Mitchell arrived in the Fair Play area in 1994 after a decade of being a self-described ski bum at Mammoth Lakes. At Fair Play he became recognized for innovative wine marketing and the steady growth of the winery.

Mitchell, who now lives on Bethel Island in the Delta, says he is selling the wineries because he accomplished what he set out to do 14 years ago and because his children aren't interested in pursuring the business. He's selling the bistro, he added, because it was a disappointment. "I wanted to have fine dining in a casual manner with French flair. We had duck confit and foie gras, but who ate the foie gras? I did. Frankly, I thought that people who enjoyed wine would enjoy that cuisine, but they didn’t. I was out of touch with the locals," says Mitchell. He hasn't ruled out returning to the wine trade, and is eyeing a parcel at Steamboat Slough for a possible new venture.

"I have many, many, many fond memories of my time in El Dorado. I met many wonderful people there, and I have so many memories of challenges, successes and events. I'm not the least bit disappointed with El Dorado, but I am disappointed with myself that I didn’t do it right with the restaurant," Mitchell adds.

Conti knows the restaurant business. Two years ago he sold his share of Cheeseburger Restaurants, a seven-unit group with outlets from Hawaii to Florida, and retired to the foothills. "We had $6 million in sales per unit. They were the highest volume cheeseburger-style restaurants in the United States," Conti says. But he got bored, and let the wine business lure him out of retirement, and now he's edging back into the restaurant trade.

Friday, I got a glimpse of the future, or what I'm starting to hope will be the future. It's blue, for one. More significantly, it puts the emphasis on the person rather than the product in wine appreciation.

We were at Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts in Napa. A handful of prospective judges for the inaugural Lodi International Wine Competition in March had gathered for the first step toward having their palates calibrated to determine where they might land on a spectrum of sensitivity. The experiment is too involved and too tentative to explain in detail here, but if Tim Hanni's vision of how people taste continues on track, the entire world of wine judging, rating and communication will be shaken and quite possibly radically revised.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, Friday's participants had their tongues painted blue. It was just food coloring, meant to help distinguish tastebuds from the rest of the flesh and stuff that forms our tongues. This was important because our tongues then were photographed to help Hanni and his fellow researchers gauge how many tastebuds we each have. The total will help determine whether we can be categorized as a tolerant, sensitive or hyper-sensitive taster. Despite the unfortunate choice of nomenclature, no one classification is superior to another, but is meant to help determine whether we might be more astute at evaluating one broad field of wine than another. (One of the participants, Lily Peterson, a Copia wine educator, is shown here having her painted tongue photographed by Hanni.)

A word about Hanni: He's a longtime veteran of the California wine scene, one of the nation's first two Masters of Wine, recognized for his incisive palate, his development of the "progressive" wine list used by several restaurants, his development of the condiment Vignon to add to foods to make them more compatible with wine, and his intense research into why people react to wines as they do. (A profile of Hanni, in fact, appeared in this weekend's Wall Street Journal.)

At any rate, Friday's exercise included a few other procedures, such as smelling, tasting and ranking a flight of wines, and an introduction to the "budometer," an online tool to help people define their taste preferences. The "budometer" analyzes the respones to predict the kinds of wines the participant is apt to like. The questions ask about how much salt you like, how you would describe the perfect cup of coffee or tea, the style of beer you favor, and so forth.

My results summed up quite neatly the kinds of wines I see myself preferring, but the list of specific wines recommened by the "budometer" didn't include many with which I'm familiar, and most were outdated, not likely still to be found in stores. There were no pinot noirs, zinfandels or rieslings recommended for me, customarily my favorite varietals, but the tool is just being launched, and its database is to be gradually expanded. The results of the Lodi judging, in fact, will be the first major import of data from a competition. In the meantime, anyone can go to the "budometer" Web site to answer the questions, have their taste preferences analyzed, and be pointed to the kinds of wines likely to please them.

"Sacramento wine merchant and forager supreme" Darrell Corti -- that's how officials of the Culinary Institute of America see him -- is one of eight Californians who are to be inducted into the Vintners Hall of Fame in March.

CIA representatives announced their second round of selections this morning. Corti, president of the Corti Brothers grocery store along Folsom Boulevard, was one of 30 nominees described as individuals who have made a significant contribution to the California wine industry and who still are alive or who died recently. The four others in that category to be inducted this year are the late Ernest and Julio Gallo of E&J Gallo Winery in Modesto, Paul Draper of Ridge Vineyards in Cupertino, and Milijenko "Mike" Grgich of Grgich Hills Winery in Napa Valley.

The three other inductees were voted in as "pioneers" -- people who also have made significant contributions to the trade but who have been dead at least 10 years. They are John Daniel, who restored the historic Napa Valley winery Inglenook after the repeal of Prohibition; Louis P. Martini, the progressive head of Louis M. Martini Winery in Napa Valley during the middle of the past century; and Carl Wente, who founded the Livermore winery Wente Vineyards in 1883.

This is the second year for the Vintners Hall of Fame. Last year's inductees were Napa Valley vintner Robert Mondavi, UC Davis enologist Maynard Amerine, UC Davis grape breeder Harold Olmo, Christian Brothers Winery cellarmaster Brother Timothy, Beaulieu Vineyard founder Georges de Latour, longtime Beaulieu Vineyard winemaker Andre Tchelistcheff, vineyard pioneer Agoston Haraszthy, and Napa Valley pioneering vintners Charles Krug and Gustave Niebaum.

Last year, CIA officials kept the nomination process in house. This year's candidates were nominated and elected by wine writers W. Blake Gray, Toni Allegra, John Olney, Sara Schneider, Leslie Sbrocco, Paul Wagner, Alder Yarrow and myself.

The Vintners Hall of Fame induction dinner will be March 7 at the CIA's Greystone campus in St. Helena. Tickets are $250. Proceeds endow scholarships for the Rudd Center for Professional Wine Studies at the CIA. For more information, visit the center's Web site, e-mail events@balzac.com or call (707) 255-7667.

Darrell Corti is in San Francisco today foraging for Austrian wine and wasn't immediately available for comment.

Midtown Sacramento's thriving culinary scene got two bright additions in recent days - Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates and Azul, a Mexican cafe and tequila bar. Ginger Elizabeth Powers, shown here in her small but busy L Street shop, is cranking out all sorts of exotic chocolates, but tequila enthusiasts will have to wait until Friday before they can belly up to the Azul bar for a margarita. That's when Carlos Ulloa, also seen here, and his brother Jose Ulloa are to get their tequila inventory and their liquor license. In the meantime, however, their kitchen is going full blast.

At Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates, Powers, former dessert chef at Masque Ristorante in El Dorado Hills, is producing chocolate treats that range from the everyday (bittersweet chocolate bar, chocolate-chip cookies, chocolate covered candied almonds) to the esoteric (gianduja cake, cafe cremeaux, Parisian macaroons in flavors like espresso and almond). Sometimes, she combines the familiar with the unfamiliar, as with her hot chocolate, available in four versions, from milk chocolate to "Oaxacan spicy." On any given day, she will have a dozen or so individual chocolates, including such flavors as lychee rose, raspberry, peppermint, creme brulee, toasted coconut, Meyer lemon and peanut butter. And she's already putting up Valentine's Day gift baskets.

At Azul, the brothers Ulloa, born in Jalisco but longtime Sacramento residents, are calling upon traditional family recipes for many of the dishes on their sweeping menu. They're counting on their tortilla soup with pasilla chile peppers, the carne asada with grilled red onions and a chile ancho sauce, the chile relleno, the housemade tamales and a ceviche of red snapper and shrimp to quickly emerge as signature dishes. And just wait, says Carlos Ulloa, until you get a taste of the margarita made with ancho chile powder and blackberry. The brothers will be stocking around 30 tequilas, all based on blue agave.

Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates, 1801 L St., is open 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sundays; (916)706-1738.

Azul, 1050 20th St., is open 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 11 a.m.-1:30 a.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 9 a.m.-1:30 a.m. Saturdays, 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Sundays (breakfast is to be served 9 a.m.-noon Saturdays and Sundays); (916) 447-4040.

The higher the price of a wine, the better it tastes, right? A lot of people think that, and now a study verifies that if people think an expensive wine tastes better than a cheap wine it will. The operative word here is "think." The study, to be reported in tomorrow's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and reported today by Bloomberg.com, involved volunteers who overwhelmingly said they enjoyed wines they were told were expensive rather than wines they were told were cheap, even though the prices were fake. "Preference shown by...brain patterns were highest for wines with the most-inflated prices," says the report.

This got me to wondering whether judges at last week's San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition gave proportionally more gold medals to wines that were more than less expensive. Let's run the numbers: Of the 102 cabernet sauvignons to get a medal in the category where their price was up to $14.99, 12 got gold. Of the 100 cabernet sauvignons priced $45 or more, 17 got gold. That's not much of a disparity, indicating that judges weren't much influenced by the price of the category they were evaluating. And, of course, a higher-priced cabernet sauvignon should taste better than a less-expensive version. It also shows that some mighty fine cabernet sauvignon at attractive prices is out there. Two of them are local wines, the Bogle Vineyards 2005 California Cabernet Sauvignon ($11) and the McManis Family Vineyards 2006 California Cabernet Sauvignon ($10). Two Buck Chuck didn't fare badly, either, getting a silver medal for the Charles Shaw Winery 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon ($2, at Trader Joe's stores).

With 75 wines in front of each of them, Luigi Velo, owner of The Italian Importing Co. in Sacramento, and Ralph Kunkee, professor emeritus of enology at UC Davis, joined other judges of the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition in Cloverdale earlier today for the event's final task, selecting the sweepstakes wines.

With a record 4,235 wines, the Chronicle competition is the largest judging of American wine in the country, at least until other commercial wine competitions get under way in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Houston later this year.

At any rate, here are the sweepstakes winners from the Chronicle judging:

Sparkling wine: A tie between the Gloria Ferrer 2000 Carneros Royal Cuvee Brut ($32) and the Mumm Napa non-vintage Napa Valley Blanc de Noirs ($19).

White wine: Merryvale Vineyards 2005 Carneros Chardonnay ($35).

Pink wine: Barnard Griffin 2007 Columbia Valley Rose of Sangiovese ($12).

Red wine: A tie between the Rodney Strong Vineyards 2005 Russian River Valley Jane's Vineyard Reserve Pinot Noir ($45) and the Savannah Chanelle Vineyards 2005 Sonoma Coast Armagh Vineyard Pinot Noir ($40).

Dessert or other specialty wine: S3X 2006 Russian River Valley Late Harvest White Riesling ($38).

The 75 wines qualified for the sweepstakes round by being declared the best in their individual classes. The Chronicle crowns more best-of-class wines than most competitions because it groups varietals and styles by price brackets, such as zinfandels up to $14.99, zinfandels $15 to $24.99, and so forth. Of the 75, six were from wineries close to Sacramento. I plan to report on those and on other aspects of the judging in the Dunne on Wine column in The Bee's Taste section this coming Wednesday. Right now, I have to try to scrub all this purple from my teeth.

Didn't I say just yesterday that I'm a zinfandel partisan? I did. And I still am, though our panel at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition in Cloverdale just finished judging Class 413, zinfandels priced $35 and higher. Zinfandels $35 and higher? My gosh, zinfandel long has been the wine of the people, easily accessible both economically and stylistically. If Berkeley were to declare a wine of the city, it would be zinfandel. So how did we get to this state where you can go to a wine competition and find so many zinfandels so expensive? Greed? Perhaps, but I'd rather think these high prices more likely reflect the prevailing marketing belief that consumers increasingly equate quality with cost. I'm not convinced that if that's the case today it will last long, especially as consumers get burned out by the harsh tannins, burning alcohol and dubious ageability of many of these powerhouse zinfandels. I also worry for the wherewithal of zinfandel producers who still turn out commendably accessible wine at an accessible price. I fret that they will get lost in the dust stirred up by the masses clamboring for excessively expensive zinfandels under the mistaken notion that if they cost more they must be better.

But I digress. Just let me say that the price wouldn't bother me if only the substance were there to justify it. In too many instances, it wasn't. Too many wines were excessively tannic and alcoholic, without inviting and caressing smells and flavors, the grace and charm that long has made zinfandel such an appealing wine. We tasted 52 zinfandels in this category. Out of that group, we gave 17 gold medals. To me, that's an astounding number for the overall quality of the group, but I plead guilty to finding several gold-worthy wines in the lineup, though not all the wines I thought deserved gold got it, and several that did just didn't seduce me. I guess that's why you have five-person panels, each member of which has his or her experience and perspective to draw from.

I'm looking forward to learning the identity of the zinfandel that won best of class from our panel. Right now, we only know it as wine No. 54. It won on a 3-2 vote. The wine that got the two votes was No. 1. As fellow panelist Kent Rosenblum remarked, how many times does the last vote for best of class come down to the first and last wines tasted? Not to say that we wasted our time tasting all those zinfandels in between. We learned, among other things, that too many zinfandels are just too massive. Once again, buyer beware.

So, I check in to the 25th annual Cloverdale Citrus Fair Wine Competition, now known as the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, and find that I'm on a panel assigned chardonnays and zinfandels this first day of the judging. I'm pumped, not only because I'm a zinfandel partisan but because the chardonnay class our panel has been assigned is the category priced $30 and above.

OK, at that level the chardonnay not only should be drinkable but downright forceful and elegant. We weren't disappointed. Of the 64 chardonnays we tasted, 18 got gold medals, one of which ultimately was voted best of class, qualifying for the sweepstakes round Friday. It's a blind tasting, so at this time we have no idea who made the wine. To us, it's just No. 67 in Class 213. Here are my notes on the wine from the first round: "Smoky, ripe, wiry, kind of thin but nonetheless with varietal character." I didn't think it warranted more than a silver medal, but it got a gold.
In the best of class round I said, "Dry, elegant, Chablis-like, fitting for a dinner party where all the guests are open, non-defensive and highly literate; I'm not there, of course, but I can dream." Remember, we were spitting throughout the judging, but still....

For the record, my fellow panelists are Bob Foster, assistant editor of the wine newsletter California Grapevine and recently retired deputy attorney general for the State of California; Kristi Mohar, wine manager for the Pacific Market group of grocery stores in Sonoma County, Kent Rosenblum, owner/winemaker of Rosenblum Cellars in Alameda; and Mark Chandler, executive director of the Lodi/Woodbridge Winegrape Commission.

Tomorrow, we start off with rieslings, followed by more zinfandel. People who live in Cloverdale call it heaven. I'm almost convinced.

En route to Cloverdale this afternoon for the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, I stopped in Napa Valley for a taste of...tea.

With casual ceremony, David Campbell, shown here, steeped a sample of the Chinese tea "da hong pao" (scarlet robe) in his newly opened shop, TillermanTea, one of the first tenants of Oxbow Public Market, a massive collection of specialty food shops next to Copia: The American Center for Food, Wine & The Arts on the edge of downtown Napa.

Steve Carlin, who for 20 years ran the successful Oakville Grocery group of markets before he put together the popular Ferry Building Marketplace in San Francisco, is the driving force behind the $11-million Oxbow Public Market. He also was on the premises today, showing off the tenants who have been moving in since the building opened in mid-December.

In addition to TillermanTea, the first Oxbow businesses include Anette's Chocolates (where else you going to find "chardonnay brittle"?); Pica Pica Maize Kitchen, a Venezuelan fast-food concept that includes corn in virtually every dish; Whole Spice, with about 250 herbs and spices imported and often ground by owners Shuli and Ronit Madmone; Five Dot Ranch of Susanville, purveyors of naturally produced beef; photographer Steven Rothfeld's Kitchen Library, devoted in large part to food books (he did the photos for Biba Caggiano's "Biba's Italy," as well as for books by Frances Mayes and Patricia Wells); Heritage, specializing in culinary antiques; Fete (entertaining accessories); The Olive Press (olive oils); Three Twins Ice Cream from San Rafael, where the offbeat flavors include "dad's cardamom" and "lemon cookie;" and Michael Mondavi's Folio Enoteca & Winery, a combination wine shop, cafe and working winery, which at 80 square feet is believed to be the nation's smallest bonded winemaking facility.

And there's more to come, including a massive branch of San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant, an offshoot of the Santa Barbara seafood supplier Kanaloa; an expansive version of the modern diner Taylor's Automatic Refresher; the butcher shop Fatted Calf; and a south-valley wing of St. Helena's enduring Model Bakery. Starting this spring, regional farmers will occupy 10 outside bays to sell whatever they've grown.

Wait, there's more: Carlin is talking with the developers of Sacramento's railyard project to put an even larger version of the public market there. Nothing's been committed to paper, but he's one assured guy who has pulled off a long string of successful projects in unlikely settings. "I'm very confident we'll work it out," he says of his prospects for a similar public market in Sacramento.

In the meantime, he has his hands full with finishing Oxbow Public Market, open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily until Feb. 1, when the hours will be 9 a.m.-7 p.m. weekdays, 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sundays. It's at 610 First St., Napa.

After a four-day drought, fans of the pretzels and breads at Freeport Bakery may be able to resume getting their fix tomorrow. Friday's storm, which left thousands of people in the Sacramento area without power as winds toppled trees across power lines, also interrupted the bakery's regular routine.

As the seriousness of the situation dawned on baker/owner Walter Goetzeler, he retrieved an emergency generator he and his wife Marlene had in storage, hooked it up Friday, fired it up that night and got back to business on a limited routine. "We can't run the dishwasher and brew coffee at the same time," said Marlene Goetzeler Monday afternoon as SMUD crews continued to try to restore energy to the popular bakery. Nonetheless, the Goetzelers and their crew, which relied on flashlights and cell phones to keep customers abreast of the status of their orders, successfully baked and delivered six wedding cakes Saturday.

The store closed Friday, but reopened Saturday and has remained open despite the restricted baking. The Goetzelers hope full service will be restored sometime this evening, with the complete inventory back in production early Tuesday.

In other Freeport Bakery news, the Goetzelers are to break ground this spring on new quarters at 19th and Broadway, but it may be two years before the site is ready for them to relocate.

David Trone expects to sell three million cases of wine this year, many of them in Roseville, where he doesn't even have a store.

That will change in two to three weeks, when he opens the first California branch of Total Wine & More, the largest priviately owned group of wine retailers in the nation. The country's 51st outlet, it will be at 5791 Five Star Drive just north of Highway 65 and west of Stanford Ranch Road in Roseville, as reported here Friday.

Since then, I've talked with Trone, president of Total Wine, who with his brother Robert founded the chain in Delaware in 1991, to get a better handle on what wine enthusiasts in the Sacramento area can expect at the Roseville store.

"We offer the lowest prices in the market. Wines will be priced at Costco levels, which traditionally are the lowest. On top of that, we'll have the best selection, with over 8,000 wines, 2,000 spirits and 1,000 beers. We'll offer a better choice than anyone else in the market. But the real key will be the service. Our men and women on the floor will be in white shirts and ties, and they can talk about the right wine with the right food at the right price," says Trone in explaining the company's business strategy.

He said he and his brother have been scouting California for sites - up to now the group has been concentrated largely along the Eastern seaboard and in the South - and were drawn to Roseville because of its fast growth, high family incomes and the choice location, which he anticipates to be as attractively accessible to residents of Sacramento, Marysville, Elk Grove, Lake Tahoe and Reno as well as the immediate vicinity.

Sometimes pictured as the Wal-Mart of wine merchandising, though more upscale and personable, Total Wine could pose a threat to small independent wine shops springing up in and about Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln, but Trone doesn't see it that way. "The small stores will continue to do a great job and succeed. They often have locations with an advantage, and if the owners know their patrons and give great service, they will continue to succeed," he says.

Total Wine's stiffest competition likely will come from the six branches of Beverages & More (BevMo) in the area, but Trone is undaunted by the challenge. "BevMo is more a party store than a wine store. That's where you go to get what you need for a party, like gifts, foods and accessories. They don't have our selection, and they have no service to speak of. We have lower prices across the board, and our stores are twice as big as theirs. We're a fine-wine store, not a bare-bones party store like BevMo. We're America's wine superstore, with 8,000 (individual choices) of wine. BevMo has less than 3,000. Our whole ambience is more upscale. Our interior is more like Whole Foods Market."

Residents in and about Roseville soon will find out for themselves.

Wine merchants have all sorts of ways to find the wines they stock. They tour wine regions, they attend industry tastings, they meet with distributors and winery representatives to taste samples.

Every month or so, Sacramento wine merchant Darrell Corti gathers up all the samples he's been sent, lines them up on a table in the back of his Folsom Boulevard store, and invites his staff and a few fellow wine enthusiasts to taste through the assortment. Big buckets for spitting are scattered on the floor about the table, a forklift is apt to be parked nearby, and every once in awhile a staff member not involved in the tasting will crank up the machine that flattens cardboard boxes. It's a cold space in winter, hot in summer, but the lighting is adequate and the range of wines almost invariably is provocative.

All participants are given a typed list of the night's wines. They pour themselves a taste, spit, maybe doublecheck the bottle for more information, and then jot down some notes. Ultimately, however, it's Corti's decision alone on what he will order.

Last night's tasting included slightly more than 100 wines. I didn't taste all of them, but I did many. I liked several, but especially hope that Corti decides to stock the glorious Terralsole 2001 Brunello di Montalcino, one mouth-filling and persistent sangiovese (if he does, expect to pay between $60 and $70, its price elsewhere); the rich and powerful Patz & Hall 2006 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir ($42 at the winery); the expressive and multi-layered Hamel Wines 2005 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir (price uncertain); the floral and fleshy Boeger Winery 2005 Reserve Petite Sirah, about as pure a statement of the varietal as you likely are to find ($30 at the winery); and the first California wine from the 2007 vintage I've tasted, the sunny and refreshing Vino Noceto 2007 Rosato di Sangiovese (not yet listed on the winery Web site, but usually around $13).

After that, I feel primed to join the first major wine competition of the year, the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition at Cloverdale, which gets under way Wednesday.

Total Wine & More, one of the country's larger and faster growing wine chains, is expanding into California for the first time with a store about to open in Roseville.

When it does, it's likely to be the 800-pound gorilla on the local wine-marketing scene. The new store, to be at 5791 Five Star Drive just north of Highway 65 and west of Stanford Ranch Road in Roseville, will cover 25,000 square feet. The inventory will include more than 8,000 varieties of wine, more than 1,000 beers and more than 2,000 spirits, says company spokesman Jeff Bartlett. The opening is anticipated in two to three weeks.

The Roseville store will be the 51st in the chain. The company originated in 1991 when brothers David and Robert Trone bought two small retail wine stores in Delaware. Total Wine & More, whose headquarters now are in Maryland, has concentrated its growth up to this time along the East Coast and in the South.

Bartlett deferred questions about why the company chose Roseville to president David Trone, who isn't to return to his office until Monday. Stay tuned.

Sometimes, too much success can be, well, too much. That looks to be the case with downtown Sacramento's Real Pie Co. A hit since it opened last February, Real Pie Co. will sell its last "seasonally inspired pastry" on Saturday, Jan. 19, says proprietor Kira O'Donnell.

In what she acknowledges was an "agonizing decision," O'Donnell is closing the shop to devote more time and energy to her family, which includes two youngsters. The success of the shop, she indicates, was drawing too much of her attention to the potential detriment of her family's well being.

"It has been an amazing, exhilarating, fulfilling year, and I have never been happier in my professional life," says O'Donnell. "But my involvement in this project has taken a real toll on my family, and now I have to take responsibility for repairing the damage." Over the past year, the success of the shop allowed her to add seven employees, but the workload, which included finding locally produced fruits and other ingredients to feature in her pies, was too much.

On the up side, she plans to return to commercial pie baking in three years, when her children are older. "I'm keeping all my equipment. I will do it again," she vows. In the meantime, get your Shaker lemon, chocolate pudding and Cazuela pies now.

The first big raindrops of the first big storm of the season didn't deter dozens of hamburger enthusiasts from lining up this noon for the first big restaurant opening of the year.

Suzie Burger, the latest culinary adventure of brothers Fred and Matt Haines, opened at 11 a.m. today in a former Orbit gas station at 29th and P. Within an hour, virtually all 86 inside seats were occupied.

Benny Ogata, son of the founders of the original Suzie Burger in south Sacramento, now a partner in the new venture, was one of the cooks filling the immediate neighborhood with the scent of sizzling burgers. The Haines brothers, inspired by the Suzie Burger they frequented while growing up in Land Park, have been working on the project for more than a year. As proprietors of 33rd Street Bistro, Riverside Clubhouse and several other restaurants in the Sacramento area, they are better known for more upscale and pricier fare.

Their goal with Suzie Burger, the prototype of an anticipated chain, is to tap into the area's ravenous hunger for hamburgers, but at modest prices. The basic Suzie Burger is $1.95, the basic cheeseburger $2.95. All are served with dill pickle and carrot sticks. In addition, diners have the option of adding grilled onions, pickled jalapenos, sauerkraut, pastrami, chili and a fried egg, ranging from 45 cents to $1.95 each.

The menu also includes hot dogs, chili and five cheesesteak sandwiches, all made with either steak or chicken, except for the vegetarian version. Beverages include "lemon squeeze" and milkshakes. Soft-serve ice cream cones also are available.

The cafe's red-and-white color scheme is brightened with colorful "Suzie" caricatures by Sacramento graphics artist Matt Rallens.

Suzie Burger is to be open 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-midnight Fridays and Saturdays.

I spent part of the holiday weekend reading 64 articles, columns, essays and blog postings from aspiring wine writers across the country. This was all part of the process to see which of them will be granted fellowships to attend the 2008 Symposium for Professional Wine Writers in Napa Valley next month.

The exercise wasn't far removed from evaluating wine itself in a similarly structured blind competition. As I went through the writing I found myself asking whether I should judge this writer on the basis of this performance alone or look for its potential as it matures. And how much value should be given the long, weighty and complex writing compared with the light, pleasant and easily accessible?

The material ranged from a scholarly dissertation complete with footnotes and bibliography to casual blog postings. I sat back several times to reflect on what the pieces seemed to say of the future of wine writing, and couldn't come to any confident conclusions. The most encouraging sign that it will improve was the earnest tone, inquisitive attitude and selfless intent to empower readers that characterized much of the writing. On the flip side, flashes of humor were rare, enterprise reporting was scarce, and several pieces had an oddly distant voice, with little intimacy or personality. Refreshingly, however, arrogance and smugness were virtually non-existent. Overall, the outlook for more vibrant and diverse wine writing is encouraging.

For more information on this year's symposium, visit its Web site.

Midnight tonight will be our last chance in 2007 and our first in 2008 to show that all the concern expressed about global warming this year has had some impact on our lives.

If you are here and you toast old and new with a California sparkling wine, you're doing good. If it's Champagne or Spumante or Cava or some other sparkling wine from Europe, shame on you.

This is the conclusion I'm drawing from an opinion piece that appeared in yesterday's New York Times. In the essay, wine blogger Tyler Colman urges New Yorkers to celebrate New Year's Eve with bubbly from the immediate area or Europe. He calculates that a bottle of sparkling wine making the trek by truck from California to New York or Connecticut is responsible for contributing 5.7 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. By comparison, a bottle of Champagne from France adds only about three pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, he suggests. Somewhere in Ohio, he calculates, the traveling wines meet a break-even point, meaning that west of the Buckeye State wines from California have the "green" edge, while to the east the French have the advantage.

His essay is brief - read it here - and he doesn't substantiate his figures, but this is the New York Times, after all, so there must be some substance there. And in the new year I suspect we will be able to learn more of Colman's reasoning. He's to publish a book with the intriguing title of "Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink."

In the meantime, I've got my bottles of sparkling wine on ice. I chose them before I read the Colman column. I'm feeling good both are from California.

The fun-loving folks of Downtown Sacramento Partnership have cooked up a scheme to ruin everyone's New Year diet. For the third straight year, they will be orchestrating a promotion called Dine Downtown Restaurant Week.

Here's the game plan: Starting Jan. 12 and continuing to Jan. 18, 22 downtown restaurants will offer special three-course prix-fixe dinner menus for $30 per person. The participating restaurants include The Broiler Steakhouse, Fat City Bar & Cafe, Mason's at the Park and Restaurant 55 Degrees. If you've never been to one of the participating restaurants, it's a great opportunity to be exposed to their style.

Sakura Sushi & Teppan Grill, for example, will offer diners a first-course choice of tuna sashimi or shrimp tempura, a second-course choice of nigiri and roll or "splash and meadow," a combo plate of filet mignon and shrimp, and for dessert mochi ice cream. Morgan's at the Sheraton Grand also offers diners a choice, including butternut squash soup or Caesar salad for an appetizer; grilled filet mignon, penne pasta Romano or thyme-basted sea scallops for an entree; and caramel cheesecake or vanilla-bean creme brulee for dessert.

More restaurants and menus are at the organization's Web site.

Just about everyone likes a good tamale, but former Sacramentan Ed Murrieta is downright passionate about them. Now the restaurant critic at The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., which like The Sacramento Bee is a member of the McClatchy Co., Murrieta has put his affection for tamales to song. His "My Lady of Tamales" has been recorded by Tacoma singer Dave Barfield and posted to Murrieta's blog, Ed's Diner.

Murrieta told Editor & Publisher that the song began to materialize in his head last month as he worked up an appetite for tamales while walking his dog. "I was in a song mood and in the mood for tamales," Murrieta said. Within a month, the song was written, recorded and sold to HGI Publishing.

You don't have to be a music credit to identify the sentiments and enjoy the lyricism; just give a listen.

I look forward to each issue of the food magazine Saveur, but especially the year-end edition in which editors list their 100 favorite restaurants, drinks, foods and the like.

A few generally are from Northern California, and occasionally even Sacramento. This year, however, the North State pickings are slim. Rancho Gordo, a Napa company that sells heirloom beans, chilies, spices and herbs indigenous to the Americas, was singled out at No. 2. But beyond that any mention of a Northern California culinary discovery or icon is in fine print, including Taylor Boetticher of the butcher shop Fatted Calf in Napa, included in a tribute to the reemergence of independent butchers in the United States (No. 60).

Several items are generic enough to be found most anywhere - chopped liver (No. 4), the Latin American dessert pastel de cuatro leches (No. 9) and wonton soup (No. 30). Some selections are over the top, such as the entire state of Maine (No. 55), hand-washing dishes (No. 36) and edible weeds (No. 33). Other choices include the classic New Orleans sandwich muffuletta (No. 89), New Mexico road food (No. 18) and Bronte pistachios from Sicily (No. 75). At any rate, they all make for provocative reading, and they're all in the January/February 2008 issue.

Man, I knew there'd be something I'd forget to get in Mexico, but until I just watched Harry McWatters open a bottle of sparkling wine with a machete I didn't think it would be one of those long, wide-bladed knives. McWatters, president of Sumac Ridge Estate Winery in Summerland, B.C., makes the loping off of the top of a bottle look so easy I can just see all sorts of celebrants trying to emulate his touch with a sabre this New Year's Eve. Be forewarned, however, that the maneuver is more difficult than it looks, taking practice, patience and precision.

Andy Perdue and Eric Degerman of Wine Press Northwest called upon McWatters to demonstrate the ancient art of sabrage to celebrate the 100th episode of the weekly winecasts they launched two years ago. To view the McWatters video, visit the complete list of their winecasts here and click on the Dec. 11 episode.

We're ending our sojurn in San Jose del Cabo just as we started, by looking for the best shrimp tacos in the region. This search took us back to La Playita and the city's new marina along the Sea of Cortez on the northeast edge of town. There, at La Marina Cafe and Bar, Benito Fernando Collins and Lupita Zumaya Collins just were opening for the day's business, which developed rapidly. Word must be getting around that their hamburgers, fajitas, ceviche, octopus - and shrimp tacos - offer fine quality and value in a bright setting overlooking the marina and the pangas trolling the sea just offshore.

La Marina is the place our friend Connie claims makes the best shrimp tacos in the area, and she's a year-round resident who tirelessly searches out the region's treasures. The shrimp tacos of La Marina are good, the shrimp big, fresh, sweet and tender, their coating dark, seamless and unusually toasty. The coating reminded me of the batter used for a good corndog, though not as thick or sweet. A serving of three, accompanied by beans, rice, pico de gallo, peppers, limes and assorted other condiments, costs 60 pesos, about $6 in U.S. currency. The beer is 20 pesos. The view, which included a starfish atop the Christmas tree, is colorful and calming.

But are they the best shrimp tacos in the area? They are very good, but I'm not ready to side with Connie on that. We've found several splendid takes, and leave knowing there are many more we didn't get around to trying. All the shrimp have been plump, fresh and sweet - almost invariably they are from Matzalan - but the coating has been so variable it calls for a dissertation of its own by an industrious student of the culinary arts. Naturally, we'll have to return for more research.

In the meantime, I read in the local Daily News that the Baja California Sur National Restaurant Industry Chamber has declared the seafood dish "discada de mariscos" the most typical dish of Los Cabos, which includes Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo. "Mariscos" I recognize as Spanish for "seafood," but "discada" throws me, and our Spanish dictionaries here are no help. I wonder if it should be "deshidratado," as in "tomate deshidratado" for "sun-dried tomatoes," which I have seen on a local menu. But soon we have a plane to catch, and for the time being further exploration of "discada de mariscos" will have to be suspended, giving us one more reason besides shrimp tacos to return to San Jose del Cabo.

I'm not big on collecting souvenirs, but I got one last night I just may have to frame. It's receipt No. 0001 from the newest restaurant in San Jose del Cabo, Restaurant H. It opened last night, and we were the first paying customers, said chef Luis Herrera, left, who with his father, Luis Herrera Blanc, right, own the small but exquisitely designed restaurant in the heart of the community's art district. We happened upon it largely because it's adjacent to El Moro, my favorite cantina in a town with just a handful of bars (another is just down the street, Baja Brewing Co., also brand new, the first brewpub in Baja California Sur).

We didn't know it when we walked into Restaurant H, but father and son are well poised to further enhance San Jose del Cabo's reputation as the dining epicenter of Los Cabos. Cabo San Lucas about 20 miles to the southwest is the better known of the two towns, in large part because it's much bigger and because that's where the cruise ships tie up (48 are scheduled to pull into port in January alone, reports a local newspaper). Cabo San Lucas has its Ruth's Chris Steak House, Johnny Rockets, Cabo Wabo and the like, but San Jose del Cabo is where diners in search of individual artistry head when they are hungry.

Restaurant H is the 38th restaurant the elder Herrera has opened. He's been in the business 43 years, playing key roles in establishing such signature restaurant groups as Carlos O'Brien's and Senor Frog's throughout Mexico. The younger Herrera started his culinary training in Mexico City, then attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. He put in stints with restaurants in New York City before returning to Mexico about a decade ago, first to be executive chef at the exclusive golf club Querencia, then at the equally posh Club Ninety Six of the One and Only Palmilla.

At Restaurant H, the junior Herrera describes his food as "modern rustic." By that, he means he's applying traditional Mexican techniques and ingredients to foundations with which they customarily haven't been combined, such as putting a yellow mole sauce to sliced sirloin. His dinner entrees also include pan-fried chicken with a curry of tomatillos and poblano and jalapeno chile peppers, grilled pork chop with a green herb sauce, chorizo and a white-bean puree, and my favorite from last night's menu, local sea bass crusted with sunflower seeds over a sweet and creamy sauce of corn, potato and peppers.

The first night a restaurant is open isn't the time to judge its long-range prospects, but that dish, a tall and bright salad of tomatoes and roasted beets with a gazpacho vinaigrette, and the definitive flan strongly indicate that Restaurant H will be a serious player on the San Jose del Cabo dining scene.

And the elder Herrera isn't finished. He's scouting the town for a site for his next project, an Argentine restaurant where salads and pastas will be as emphasized as the steaks.

The local angle: Herrera senior's wife is the former Gay Thatcher, who grew up in Yreka. They met on a blind date in Los Angeles more than 40 years ago. Herrera junior also is familiar with Northern California. He has good friends in Fair Oaks, and spent a vacation this summer around Sacramento. He's still raving about the city's proximity to San Francisco, Napa Valley and Lake Tahoe, but don't hold that against him.

Restaurant H, 1505 Calle Alvaro Obregon, San Jose del Cabo, is open daily except Sunday, 12-4 for lunch, 6-10 for dinner.

Geoff Petrie, the Kings could use this guy, Mario Martinez. Right now, he's working at Las Guacamayas Taqueria in the Pescador neighborhood of San Jose del Cabo. There, he performs many tasks, but is recognized mostly for his agility and timing while carving with lightning speed and laser precision thin slices of marinated pork at the rotisserie. Atop the column of pork is stuck a fresh pineapple. When he finishes filling a taco with meat he flicks his long knife at the pineapple, cutting off a chunk that sails far from the rotisserie. Uncannily, the piece of pineapple almost invariably lands flawlessly atop the taco, without him looking at either. When not doing that, he's bolting about the restaurant, clearing tables, serving platters of quesadillas, flank steaks and the like. He may not know a basketball from a soccer ball, but he has all the skills the Kings could use - quick hands and feet, passing acumen and a teamwork consciousness. He may have to grow a few more inches, however, before boarding a plane for Sacramento.

Incidentally, we left Las Guacamayas last night again convinced that it offers the best value of any restaurant in the greater Cabo area. For $20 we had some sort of scramble of steak and poblano chile peppers (it's on the menu as "no que no" - didn't you say no?), tacos of martinated pork and steak, a quesadilla of the black corn fungus huitlacoche, and certainly enough beer. No tortilla chips greet diners, but a couple of fiery salsas, pico de gallo, grilled white onions and jalapeno chile peppers, sliced cucumber and wedges of lime arrive as soon as you are seated, if they aren't already on the table. Keep it in mind if you are headed south for the year-end holidays.

While I haven't moved permanently to Mexico, I do need to announce an address change. It concerns this blog, the previous address of which was www.sacticket.com/appetizers. The new address is www.sacbee.com/appetizers. Not a big change, but if one of your new year's resolutions is to update important sites on your computer, you have been advised. Thanks for continuing to check in here.

Deep into Cactimundo, a botanical garden on the south edge of San Jose del Cabo, a sign warns visitors not to smoke, eat, drink, bring their dog...or touch the plants. As the garden's name suggests, all the plants are cacti and succulents from throughout the world. While some do look soft and cuddly, many more appear so lethal you don't need a sign to advise you not to touch. We've passed the garden many times, but only today stepped in for the first time. Signage to tell you what you are looking at could be better, but aside from that quibble it's a fascinating place for a leisurely stroll under the bright winter sun. I'd no idea so many unusual looking cacti were native to Africa, though most of the specimens, naturally, are from Mexico. The culinary angle? In the far reaches of the garden, not visible from the road out front, is a small cafeteria. While you aren't to meander the garden's paths with food and drink in hand, you can sit inside and savor a margarita. We'd just had breakfast, so we can't speak of their quality.

We interrupt our search for the best shrimp tacos in Baja California Sur for this important public-service announcement: If your celebration of the year-end holidays includes a trip to Los Cabos, be sure to pack your fishing gear. The yellowfin tuna are running in dense schools in the Sea of Cortez just off San Jose del Cabo. Much to our astonishment, our party of four discovered just how thick the run is this morning. Within two hours we landed 40 of them. This is my brother-in-law Ed Schmidtmann, an accomplished Wyoming fly fisherman who caught three of them with flies, much to the amusement of our capitan. The more successful bait was sardines.

I may not eat another shrimp taco during the duration of our visit in San Jose del Cabo. The freezer is jam-packed with cuts of tuna, along with several filets of the dorado we also caught.

As to the search for shrimp tacos worth recommending, the biggest surprise so far was the substantial size, freshness and sweetness of those we sampled at the gringo-oriented Zipper's Bar and Grill on the beach just on the south edge of San Jose del Cabo. It's a real tourist spread, but they aren't taking advantage of their splendid location to give less than fair value for their shrimp tacos.

We're looking for the best shrimp tacos in San Jose del Cabo at the southern reaches of the Baja peninsula. Our friend Connie pointed us toward the new marina along the Sea of Cortez on the north edge of town. We ended up at Mariscos La Playa, wherein Malena Arista Costellanos, shown here, was frying up a batch of tuna and shrimp tacos. We stuck around to try them, and found them darn good - plump, fresh and coated with a cornmeal, oregano, pepper, mustard and beer batter. The cafe's owner, Cuauh Temoc, said the tuna just had been caught in the sea we could readily see from our table. The tacos, however, practically were upstaged by the spirited pico de gallo, vibrant with onion, tomato and cilantro.

Mariscos La Playa has been open only about a month, one of the first small businesses hoping to capitalize on the residential and golf-course development about to spring up about the new marina, no doubt forever changing the small-town character of San Jose del Cabo. Nobody's said Donald Trump has his eye on the landscape, but one of the yachts already berthed in the new marina looks big enough to accommodate his entourage.

At any rate, as good as the shrimp tacos were, we weren't sure we'd found the right place. Our doubts intensified after lunch, when we wandered next door to another restaurant, La Marina, which until recently was George "Doc" Armstrong's La Playita Resort. The name and menu looked closer to what Connie had described. We'll be back.

Our friend, Connie, who sells real estate in and about San Jose del Cabo at the southern reaches of the Baja peninsula, says she's found the best shrimp tacos in the area. She'd actually found them years ago, but then the family responsible for making them dropped from sight. Now they're resurfaced in a new location. We trust Connie's judgment, but we have to check out these tacos for ourselves, so we'll catch the next plane out. Stay tuned.

In yesterday's dining column in The Bee's Ticket+ - here's the link - I mentioned that to the best of my knowledge David English, executive chef at the new downtown restaurant Ella Dining Room and Bar, is the first in the Sacramento area to adapt the sous-vide method to his style of cooking.

The result, a breast of chicken with a remarkably wholesome and resonating flavor, coupled with the attention sous vide has been drawing in other parts of the country, makes me think other chefs in this area will be at least experimenting with the technique, if they aren't already.

I'd like to learn more about sous vide from other chefs, whether local or distant - their experience, their concerns, the pros and cons, and so forth - for a possible future article on the method. Please get in touch by adding a comment to this blog or by emailing me direct at mdunne@sacbee.com. Thanks in advance for your help.

When the January issue of Bon Appetit magazine hits newsstands soon, a Sacramento treasure will be getting some long overdue national recognition. The magazine's "dish of the year" is Asian noodle soup, and to illustrate the rising popularity of ramen, udon, soba and pho, the magazine's editors called upon Sacramento restaurateur and cookbook author Mai Pham to prepare her "spicy curry noodle soup with chicken and sweet potato."

The soup is so stunningly photographed the scent of lemongrass, ginger, shallots, garlic, coconut and curry practically simmer from the page.

At Pham's Lemon Grass Asian Grill and Noodle Bar inside La Bou along Howe Avenue, the dish is listed as the selections "chicken kao soi" and "tofu kao soi" ($7.25 each). After pad thai, they are among the cafe's more popular dishes.

At her Lemon Grass Restaurant along Munroe, the sauce in the dish in Bon Appetit is basically the same sauce in "monk's curry" ($12.75), the restaurant's most popular vegetarian entree.

Not often does national media picture Sacramento at the forefront of a culinary development, but maybe this is just the first sign of more recognition to come in the new year.

Is it just me, or does anyone else sense that the Sacramento area has a disproportionate number of artists obsessed with food themes in their work? I've noticed it before, but paintings and sculptures involving food, restaurants and the like really jumped out at me during the Second Saturday art walk this weekend.

You really didn't have to visit any place other than 20th St. Art Gallery to get your fill. From Carol Marine's "Cabbage" and Kathleen Stock's "Artichoke" to Parker Carson's "Waitress" and Martha Stewart's "Pumpkins and Cranberries," many of the works celebrated food and dining in ways colorful, dynamic and refreshing. Martha Stewart? Well, she's not the media doyenne, but an actual Sacramento artist whose intense watercolors focus to a large extent on kitchen art, say the folks at 20th St. Art Gallery.

At any rate, is all this food art an offshoot of Wayne Thiebaud's impact on the area, or does it reflect either the diverse cornucopia that is the Sacrmamento farm scene or our current infatuation with culinary matters?

At least Jim Ferry and his 20th St. Art Gallery were ready for art patrons whose hunger was fueled by the exhibit. He had on hand Michael Sampino of Sampino's Towne Foods at 16th and F, overseeing a veritable buffet line of first-rate pasta and salad.

Galleries and boutiques, in fact, seem to be upgrading their food and wine offerings during Second Saturday. At his Hawaiian-apparel shop Swanberg's on J, owner Lauren Lundsten was passing around a tray of sushi from Tamaya down the street and pouring glasses of the splendid Gnarly Head zinfandel, while over at Solomon Dubnick Gallery platters of thick and nutty chocolate-chip cookies by Jules Westreich were being snatched up as quickly as they were spread out. She's baked them for Bette Midler, Bon Jovi and others as part of her day job in the entertainment business, but even without word of that background getting around they were immensely popular.

Which raises the question: With all this food and beverage in galleries and boutiques, does Second Saturday help or hinder midtown's restaurant scene? I'd say it helps, priming appetites for a more balanced and heftier meal afterwards, and exposing the restaurants that cater the foods to a wider audience. It's a win-win pairing. If January is as chilly as it usually is, that's what I'll be looking for, chili.

The duck-confit competition in Folsom is heating up. For years, Bidwell Street Bistro pretty much had the market cornered with a version that has evolved into the restaurant's signature dish.

But duck confit also is on the introductory menu of Folsom Bistro, which just opened quietly in quarters formerly occupied by the Mexican restaurant Cuevitas along Folsom-Auburn Road.

Matthew Newton, who with his wife Atasha owns the restaurant, most recently was chef-de-cuisine at The Firehouse in Old Sacramento. Prior to that he was executive chef for more than two years at Jeanty at Jacks in San Francisco, during which the restaurant was named one of the top 50 restaurants in the Bay Area by San Francisco Magazine. Before that he was sous chef at Bistro Jeanty in Napa Valley.

Michael Goularte, also recently of The Firehouse, joins Newton to oversee a compact opening menu of seasonally oriented dishes such as braised beef short ribs with parsnip puree, crepes filled with oven-roasted tomatoes, goat cheese, carrots and leek, and grilled hanger steak with Bearnaise, in addition to the duck confit with warm potato salad. The most surprising appetizer is fried smelt, accompanied with a whole-grain mustard aioli.

The restaurant doesn't yet have a beer and wine license, but until it gets its permit guests can bring their own wine without facing a corkage fee, says Newton.

Folsom Bistro, 6608 Folsom-Auburn Road, Folsom, is open for lunch 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, for dinner 4:30-9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 4:30-10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; (916) 990-0630.

Brush up on your Portuguese. Come next summer, a churrascaria is to move into a former fitness center at 14th and H in downtown Sacramento. Basically, a churrascaria -- pronounced shoo-ras-ka-ria -- is a Brazilian steakhouse inspired by Portuguese methods of barbecueing. Meats on skewers customarily are cooked over charcoal or gas, then carved tableside directly onto plates. Service is "rodizio" style, or all you can eat for one fixed price.

Taka Watanabe, who is teaming up with Peter Kwong to open Viva Rio, says the restaurant will be true to the traditional churrascaria, right down to the customary grilled chicken hearts, gizzards and liver. One unusual touch, however, will be the sushi that is to be on the menu. Watanabe and Kwong are partners in Taka's Sushi in Fair Oaks, Kru in midtown Sacramento, and Ju Hachi, another Japanese restaurant to open in midtown Sacramento early next year. Though Watanabe is closely identified with Japanese cooking, he grew up in Brazil, not leaving Rio de Janeiro until he was 26. He's long talked of opening a Brazilian steakhouse here, a dream he expects to fulfill with the debut of Viva Rio in June or July, though restaurant projects are notorious for running behind schedule.

People have asked, so here's some updates on changes under way on the Sacramento dining scene:

- Tuli Bistro, under construction for nearly a year at 21st and S, is to open for breakfast, lunch and dinner this coming Tuesday, Dec. 11, reports owner/chef Adam Pechal. Breakfasts will be simple, consisting of chalkboard items such as a Cheddar and chive waffle sandwich, but lunch and dinner will be more extensive. Pechal's largely Mediterranean- and Southern-inspired dishes include pasta carbonara ($14.50), bouillabaisse ($16), wood-roasted quail stuffed with jambalaya ($15), pizzas, salads and sandwiches such as the monkfish po'boy with "Southern slaw" and chipotle remoulade ($8.95). It's small, seating just 16 inside, most along the counter, but the patio will accommodate 36, weather permitting. Pechal, a 1997 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park, N.Y., has put in stints with Bistro Don Giovanni and Bouchon in Napa Valley and at such local restaurants as River City Brewing Co. and Esquire Grill. He's also been catering. Tuli Bistro is to be open 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m.-11 p.m. Fridays, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Sundays.

- Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates, taking shape next to L Wine Lounge and Urban Kitchen along L Street at 18th, now isn't expected to open until early January, though chocolatier Ginger Elizabeth Powers may be able to pull it off between Christmas and New Year's, thereby capturing a bit of the important holiday traffic. "Basically, we're running 30 days late. The building permit took a long time," says Powers. She's not discouraged, however, vowing to have the shop open in time for another important chocolate holiday, Valentine's Day.

- Ju Hachi, Taka and Susan Watanabe's Japanese restaurant at 18th and S in midtown Sacramento, under construction for a year, now is expected to be ready for sushi enthusiasts in January.

- G.V. Hurley's, a restaurant with an "American comfort food" focus, moving into quarters formerly occupied by Radio Shack along J Street between 27th and 28th, now is expected to open sometime between Feb. 1 and March 1, says manager Erick Johnson. In a display of neighborly cooperation, the restaurant's executive chef, David Hill, formerly of Horseshoe Bar Grill in Loomis, has been using the kitchen of Peter Torza's nearby Gianni's Trattoria to test dishes.

- Sofia's on 11th, formerly Sofia, at 11th and H, has reopened after a brief closure, complete with liquor license, something initially in doubt.

Time for a break from work? Get yourself over here. It's "The Key to Reserva," a nine-minute film directed by and starring Martin Scorsese, produced for the Spanish sparkling-wine firm Freixenet. The pretext is that Scorsese has discovered the manuscript for an Alfred Hitchcock movie that never was made, though Scorsese is to correct that, even though a crucial page of the plot is missing.

The resulting film, a homage to Hitchcock, is dramatic and hilarious. The wine angle is that Scorsese fleetingly portrays the Freixenet sparkling wine Carta Nevada Reserva as a cultural icon involving mystery and romance, but the sale is understated, enhancing rather than distracting from the momentum of the film. See if you can pin down all the Hitchcock films that inspired specific scenes.

Though I'm not as nuts about chocolate as a lot of people, I did find the Devil's food cake at Paul Martin's American Bistro in Roseville the other night outstanding. Then I rechecked the dessert menu to make sure I'd read it correctly. The chocolate, says the menu, is from Dorado Chocolates of Grass Valley.

This was news to me, but it didn't take long to connect with Ken Kossoudji, who after a career in high-tech sales and marketing in Silicon Valley returned to his family roots as a chocolatier. For nearly four years now he's been making two basic lines of chocolate - Signature-D for dark European-style chocolates, American Classics for more traditional confections.

This time of year, says Kossoudji, two of his more popular items are thin slices of pear that have been dried, soaked in Key-lime juice, and coated with dark Venezuelan chocolate, and his hot-cocoa mix - housemade marshmallows encased in dark chocolate for dropping into a cup of hot milk until the chocolate melts and the marshmallow becomes creamy. I may not be very enthusiastic about chocolate, but those marshmallows tempt me to jump in the car for a trek to Grass Valley this very moment.

Dorado Chocolates, 104 E. Main St., Grass Valley, is open 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sundays. Call (530) 272-6715 or visit the shop's Web site.

Tuscany's standing as a fine-wine region has soared in recent years on the strength of its Chianti Classico and Super Tuscan wines, so it's easy to forget that the province still also is home to humbler and less pricey but nonetheless agreeable representatives of everyday Chianti.

We were reminded of this in pulling the cork from a bottle of the newly released Ecco Domani 2006 Chianti ($11), a blend of 92 percent sangiovese, 8 percent merlot. It's light and lean, but with sangiovese's typically floral scent, cherry fruit, teasing spice, refreshing tang and hint of walnuts. It isn't a blockbuster, not with just 12.5 percent alcohol, but it does have the spine to accommodate all sorts of pasta, poultry, seafood and red-meat dishes, especially if they are in a lighter vein, without a lot of creamy richness and hot seasonings.

This has been one peculiar year on the Sacramento dining scene, if for no other reason than that Randy Paragary hasn't opened, closed or relocated a restaurant. In 2007, Sacramento's most expansion-oriented restaurateur stood on the sidelines, though he wasn't exactly benched, just planning for 2008.

Next year, Paragary again will be shaking up diners, not only in Sacramento but Stockton, where in early spring he is to open his long anticipated Paragary's Bar & Grill in the restored 1910 Hotel Stockton, a fixture of the city's surging downtown revitalization. The restaurant is to be completed in February, with a debut expected in March, says Paragary. He describes the concept as a hybrid cross between his casual Paragary's Bar & Oven and his more upscale Esquire Grill, with a more extensive menu than either.

Back on his home turf, Paragary in September is to open Cosmo's, a deli-inspired restaurant in the Cosmopolitan Building, formerly Woolworth's, at 10th and K in downtown Sacramento. The concept was inspired by the restaurant's proximity to another tenant in the building, Cosmopolitan Cabaret, a 208-seat venue run by California Musical Theatre, which in September is to launch a series of musical comedies in the space. Paragary's concept for Cosmo's is being inspired largely by theater-district delis in New York, but will be more than a sandwich shop, he notes. Paragary's executive chef, Kurt Spataro, is starting to research and assemble the restaurant's menu, including a formula for the establishment's own housemade pastrami. "We hope to be a real presence in the middle of K Street," says Paragary.

Also on his agenda for next year is to determine what to do with retail space he is to control on the ground floor of the massive new parking garage nearing completion at 28th and N, close by his Paragary's Bar & Oven and the neighboring restaurant Ink Eats and Drinks, which occupies quarters he owns. "We've been thinking of moving Ink over there, but so far no concept has flown into my head that I think will work there," says Paragary.

Hmmm, what's hot in food and beverage right now and could work there, especially with the neighborhood's growing influx of doctors, nurses and hospital visitors? Cupcake bakery? Creperie? Wine bar? In the meantime, Paragary is starting to plan an intriguing spring benefit on the roof of the parking structure. It's to be a fundraiser for B Street Theatre, which is looking at possibly relocating to the area.

Downtown Sacramento's Texas Mexican Restaurant, closed for more than a year in the fallout from the city's staggering efforts to redevelop the lower stretch of the K Street Mall, is back in business at its original site and will celebrate its revival with a grand-opening party from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 3.

In late summer of 2006, owner Griselda Barajas closed the business after the city's redevelopment agency pressured her to leave or face legal action as officials were on the verge of revitalizing the area, plans that have since stalled.

Now, however, Barajas has arranged with the building's owner, Moe Mohanna, a month-to-month lease that allows her to return to the quarters the restaurant occupied for 14 years before it closed, says her husband, Mike Keolanni. The restaurant quietly reopened about two weeks ago, and the crew now feels ready to handle a larger influx of customers, thus Monday's kickoff.

The restaurant has been expanded and remodeled slightly, says Keolanni. The original menu is back in place, and after the first of the year the family hopes to add dinner as well as several new Tex-Mex plates, including buffalo fajitas, roasted quail and seafood soups.

Barajas also operates Griselda's Catering & Event Planning at the cafe Tex Mex in the Capitol, which she will continue to run.

Texas Mexican Restaurant, 1114 8th St., is open 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday through Friday.

In a move believed unprecedented in the American wine trade, Bonny Doon Vineyard of Santa Cruz next year will start to list ingredients on the back label of its wines.

Randall Grahm, the winery's owner, is making the move because he wants to make his winemaking more transparent and because he is aware that some consumers are concerned about allergic reactions to elements used to produce wine, says Burke Owens, spokesman for the winery.

Grahm's ingredient label, recently approved by federal authorities, will consist of two parts, one listing ingredients known to be in a wine, such as grapes and sulfur dioxide, the other outlining products used to process wine that may leave behind trace elements, like yeast hulls and bentonite, a fining agent, says Owens. Unlike some wineries, Bonny Doon uses no animal or dairy products in its winemaking, so none will be listed, says Owens.

The first wines with the new labels, under the Ca' del Solo brand, are to be shipped to markets in February. Ingredient labeling will be affixed to all wines released from the 2006 vintage forward.

Grahm is taking action voluntarily, though federal officials are weighing a proposal to require vintners to put on their bottles a warning that major food allergens have been used to help make the wine.

The rising popularity of California wine abroad had UC Davis viticulturist Dr. James Wolpert, far left, standing in a Napa Valley vineyard earlier today explaining to three European wine distributors how viticultural practices affect the nature of zinfandel.

The three, from left, were Carin Widoff and Kajsa Ekman, both of Stockholm, and Eric Remlinger of Nuits-Saint-Georges in Burgundy. All three distribute imports throughout northern Europe, where sales of California wines are increasing, thus their visit here to get a better grip on releases they are adding to their portfolios.

Their visit to the UC Davis Oakville Experimental Station in Napa Valley included a tasting of California zinfandels as well as a trek through the station's Heritage Vineyard, devoted to zinfandel vines grown with budwood gathered from some 90 vineyards about the state, several of them ancient and endangered.

Like some Californians, the three Europeans were taken aback by the high alcohol levels of a few of the zinfandels they tasted. In Sweden, noted Ekman, consumers just don't find such potent wines unless they are dessert wines; the government, she added, restricts table wines with more than 15 percent alcohol.

The three, however, quickly warmed to the heftier zinfandels. "I was surprised that the wine I felt was most balanced and elegant had more than 16 percent alcohol," said Remlinger. "The French view is that too much alcohol is a problem, but here the alcohol belongs to these wines. This is a very sunny and warm climate."

Their next stop, San Francisco, where the climate also may be sunny, though probably not as warm as what they found in Napa Valley today.

News to me...

...Under the new ownership of Renee Nash and Carol Morehouse, the Granite Bay restaurant Spoons has a new executive chef, Jess Millborn, a new menu, and a new program of special events, which includes wine tastings on Friday nights, jazz on Saturday nights, and pizzas on Thursday nights, when they fire up their outdoor oven. On Dec. 9 they are to add Sunday brunch, and in January they are to resume cooking classes. In keeping with their "American bistro" theme, they've revised the menu to offer dishes both traditional and fashionable, the former including a grilled cheese sandwich ($6) and meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy ($12), the latter including grilled rib-eye steak with a housemade steak sauce ($24), a wild-mushroom risotto ($11.50), and a soup of roasted butternut squash and apple ($4.50 and $6.50). Spoons, 8230 Auburn-Folsom Road, Granite Bay, is open 7 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; (916) 797-2233.

...Dunni Iredia, a registered nurse and longtime avid home cook, has opened Taste of African Cuisine in a former furniture warehouse in south Sacramento. Though the restaurant has been open since earlier this fall, she and her husband Osato will preside over their "grand opening" from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. Iredia says her "natural, fresh, home-style" cooking draws inspiration largely from West Africa, Nigeria in particular, where her mother and grandmother both ran restaurants. The menu is divided primarily into rice, bean, yam and plantain plates, plus several combination platters. Individual dishes include rice with a choice of curried chicken, beef or goat ($9.95), yam porridge with African spinach ($10.95), and a plantain stew with a choice of chicken, beef, goat or fish ($9.95). She expects the restaurant's signature dishes to include "jollof rice" seasoned with habanero chile peppers, tomatoes and garlic, served with a choice of chicken, beef, goat or fish ($9.95); "suya," a kebab of chicken, beef or goat rolled in a spicy peanut-based flour before grilling ($5.95); and black-eyed peas prepared in several ways, such as with plantains with a choice of chicken, beef, goat or fish ($9.95). Taste of African Cuisine, 75 Quinta Court (off Stockton Boulevard south of Mack Road), is open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 1-8 p.m. Sundays; (916) 525-2600.

...Sacramentans look to be as hungry for crepes as they are for cupcakes. Murad Bshara opened his Crepe Escape along Freeport Boulevard only in October, but already he's working on a second location, this one to be at 5635 H St., quarters that have been housing the coffee shop Gino's, and before that Muffins Etc. That site, however, isn't expected to be ready for customers for another three or four months, says Bshara. In the meantime, anyone with a hunger for crepes savory or sweet, as well as omelets, salads, sandwiches and pasta dishes, can find them at the existing Crepe Escape, 3445 Freeport Blvd. It's open 7 a.m.-10 p.m. daily; (916) 444-6579.

Emeril Lagasse, arguably the most popular of the nation's television chefs, is losing his principal platform, The Associated Press is reporting. Lagasse's "Emeril Live," a fixture of the Food Network for 10 years, is ending production in two weeks, a network representative has confirmed to AP. "All good things must come to an end," publicist Carrie Welch told AP without elaborating on the impetus for the change.

The Food Network will continue to produce a second Lagasse show, "The Essence of Emeril," and he is to be involved in specials and other possible programs. Also, reruns of "Emeril Live" are to continue.

A little more than a year ago, Mandy Johnston was a Chico magazine editor. She worked reasonable hours, and she dressed fashionably. Today, she's a farmer, working 14-hour days, milking 35 cows, and wearing rubber pants and a hairnet while she makes cheese at her family's Pedrozo Dairy & Cheese Co. of Orland. "Before, my mornings were leisurely. Here, the mornings are cold and dark," says Johnston.

Concerned about losing her feminity because of her career change, she dashed off an email to TV cooking and talk-show maven Rachael Ray to ask Ray how she seems so feminine after a day in the kitchen. Ray invited her to New York for a makeover, and to appear on "The Rachael Ray Show." Johnston's appearance is to be this Wednesday, airing in Sacramento at 3 p.m. on Channel 3 (KCRA).

(I asked for before-and-after photos to go with this posting, but the show's publicist said they wouldn't release any until after the show is telecast to preserve the "surprise" for viewers.)

"I'm now an ash-blonde cheesemaker who still works 14-hour days, but with a little more confidence and a little less boyishness," says Johnston, who before the makeover was a brunette.

To prepare for the makeover, the show's fashion consultant, Steven "Cojo" Cojacaru, visited the family dairy to check out Johnston's wardrobe and to get a lesson in cheesemaking. "He dug through my closets and labeled my best dresses 'placemats' and 'aprons,'" says Johnston.

In New York, the show's producers took her to a fashionable boutique to select a new wardrobe. "I saw labels there I'd only dream of trying on. The pricetags were equivalent to a load of hay," recalls Johnston.

The biggest change, however, was switching from being a brunette to being a blonde, a transition that continues to throw her, especially when people at the Sacramento farmers market don't recognize her. "They do say blondes have more fun, but I'm still working so hard I haven't had a chance to test it, though I do feel more brassy."

On the farm, she makes between 800 and 1,100 pounds of cheese a month in nine styles. With Cojocaru, she made Northern Gold, a traditional semi-firm cow's-milk cheese. On the show, she hands out samples of Stout Cow, a creamy cheese aged in Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. stout. One of her other cheeses is the light but buttery Blondie's Best, which predates the makeover and takes its name from Johnston's pet cow.

In Sacramento, Johnston sells Pedrozo cheeses at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, Taylors Market and the Sunday morning farmers market under the Capital City Freeway at 8th and W. Cheeses also can be ordered online.

Paramount Pictures and Shangri-L

If only the principals of "Beowulf" had used the "royal dragon horn" as it was intended, as a vessel for drinking mead, poem and now movie would have been shorter, though less interesting and less symbolically meaningful.

The horn's periodic appearance in the new film, however, did remind me that Northern California is home to an award-winning meadery, Mountain Meadows Mead at Westwood, 5,120 feet up the eastern slopes of Lassen County east of Chico.

So far, however, the movie "Beowulf," despite its numerous references to mead and the beverage's contributions to wanton wassails, hasn't boosted sales of the several styles of mead made by Mountain Meadows Mead, says Ron Lunder, who in 1995 founded the company with Peggy Fulder.

Instead, they're relying on their usual sources for sales - tourists who pass through the area in the summer, a spike in interest in meads during the year-end holidays, publicity from awards their meads regularly win in international competitions, and outlets in a few far-flung metropolitan areas, especially Portland, Ore., where mead is increasingly popular among a younger-skewing clientele. The couple's meads also are available in Sacramento at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, Nugget Markets and Corti Brothers.

Lunder and Fulder produce a half-dozen styles of mead, totaling about 1,500 cases a year. Often called "honey wine," mead basically is an alcoholic beverage of fermented honey and water frequently seasoned with herbs and spices. Their signature mead is "Honeymoon Nectar," a traditionally sweet mead made with wildflower honey. "I read somewhere that a pound of honey represents four million wildflowers, so we like to say that there are a million wildflowers in every glass," says Lunder.

Other popular meads are the sweet and tart cranberry, made with Oregon cranberries; the semi-sweet Spice, seasoned with ginger; and the semi-dry Trickster's Treat Agave, made with nectar from the same plant that produces tequila.

Over the past decade. Lunder and Fulder have been tweaking their meads to be lighter and drier, hoping to attract more wine drinkers. It could work, but they also might want to consider retaining a goldsmith to hammer out a line of "royal dragon horns" to give their meads a more romantic and poetic flavor.

Vintage dates on bottles of California wine don't mean much. While rainfall totals vary from one year to another, and a freak freeze or surprise hail storm could affect yield, the growing season from one year to another in California is fairly steady. Thus, vintage dates only rarely amount to a helpful buying guide. Not so in several of the world's other wine regions, where fluctuations in weather can have more profound impact. As a consequence, the quality of the vintage can vary relatively dramatically from one year to the next. Then, vintage dates mean something.

I was reminded of this over the weekend while browsing through the wine section of a local supermarket. A sign over one bin boasted that the 2005 vintage of this imported malbec had received 91 points from the critics of a prestigious American wine magazine. As I dove into the bin, however, all I could find was 2004 and 2006 vintages of the wine, not a single bottle of the 2005.

I suspect this was simply a case of sloppy stocking, not an intentional attempt to mislead consumers who might not pick up on the difference in vintage between what was on the promotional sign and what actually was in the bin. If I remember correctly, supermarkets have been slapped with fairly stiff fines for misguiding consumers with this sort of promotional ploy, whether intentional or not. At the least, consumers currently caught up in the year-end frenzy of wine buying should pay close attention to whether the wine in a bin is the same wine promoted in the placarb above the bin.

Yesterday's Thanksgiving dinner reaffirmed my feeling that no two varietals are more flexible at the table than riesling and pinot noir. It helps when the wines are ample in build, complex in flavor, and sharp in acidity, as these were.

In addition to a traditionally roasted turkey, the dinner included a stuffing rich with bacon and sweet with caramelized pearl onions, two kinds of cranberry relishes (one spicy with jalapeno chile peppers, the other zesty with orange), mashed sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts with coffee-glazed macadamia nuts, carrots with Moroccan spices, a spinach salad with persimmons, and whipped white potatoes with a gravy I oversalted. That range of flavors and textures is a lot to ask of any wine, but both the riesling and the pinot noir had the muscle and fruit to not only hold their own but enhance each dish, except for maybe the gravy.

The wines were the peachy and applely Madrona Vineyards 2005 El Dorado "Black Label" Riesling (sold out; just 23 cases were made) and the Merry Edwards Wines 2005 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir ($39). That was a very good year in Northern California, to judge by the complexity and balance of both these wines. In fact, as I flip back through my tasting notes for 2005 pinot noirs from California appellations - Santa Lucia Highlands, Anderson Valley and Carneros, as well as Russian River Valley - the vintage looks to have been especially strong throughout the North State, something worth keeping in mind by anyone looking to please a pinot-noir fan with a year-end gift.

Last night's wine couldn't have been opened at a more appropriate time. It was the Parducci Winery 2004 Mendocino County "True Grit" Petite Sirah ($25), and we savored its dark and meaty fruitiness just as Gov. Schwarzenegger was revealing his Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards for 2007.

One of the 18 recipients was the Mendocino Wine Company, Parducci's parent company, recognized by the governor as the first carbon-neutral winery in the nation, which it achieved with such measures as installing solar-power and wind-energy systems, converting company vehicles and farm equipment to bio-diesel, and switching to soy-based inks for its packaging. The company's efforts to go "green" were outlined in a Sacramento Bee article last month.

The company's "True Grit" petite sirah, incidentally, is just what fans of the varietal appreciate - inky color, floral smell, solid structure, and juicy berry flavors accented with a note of licorice. Company officials chose the name "True Grit" for the wine to represent the determination, optimism, patience and vision represented by Mendocino County's immigrant grape growers in the 1800s.

Local recipients of the governor's environmental awards were the Sacramento Tree Foundation and the Leonardo da Vinci School in Sacramento.

If your Thanksgiving dinner traditionally includes fresh Dungeness crab, you can just about forget tradition this year. In the wake of the Cosco Busan fuel spill in San Francisco Bay, Gov. Schwarzenegger closed commercial and sportfishing seasons in the potentially affected area until Dec. 1. That zone includes all of San Francisco Bay west of Carquinez Bridge and three miles off the Golden Gate from Point Reyes Lighthouse south to San Pedro Point just north of Half Moon Bay.

San Francisco's crab season, customarily just under way, is on hold until late next week as state authorities collect and analyze marine samples for chemical contamination. Almost 1,000 crabs, mussels, herring and Shiner surfperch have been gathered in the bay and along the coast and are being tested for the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, says Sam Delson, spokesman for the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, the science arm of the California Environmental Protection Agency. Results are expected next Wednesday.

"We plan to complete our evaluation within a day or two of receiving the results and hope to make an announcement before the end of the month," Delson says.

At the request of commercial crab fishers, the agency will collect additional samples this weekend from beyond the three-mile limit of the defined spill zone, he adds.

In the meantime, a San Francisco Chronicle article today reported that nearly 100,000 pounds of live Dungeness crab caught by Oregon fishermen near the Farallones had been offloaded in Monterey. The crabs reportedly were bound for sale in San Francisco, though buyers contacted by the paper said they weren't buying any.

Unless consumers know for sure that the crab they plan to serve tomorrow is from the unaffected waters of the Pacific Northwest, they should exercise caution, indicates Delson. "It's better to be safe than sorry," he says. "It's best to err on the side of caution until we can remove all doubt."

At least two El Dorado County wines travel well. After being shipped to Italy, they just won medals in the Third International Barbera Competition in Alessandria, a city in the northern province of Piedmont, the area most historically identified with barbera.

The wines are the Charles B. Mitchell Vineyards 2005 El Dorado Reserve Barbera ($28), which won a silver medal in the non-Italian class, and the Latcham Vineyards 2005 Sierra Foothills Barbera ($25), which won a bronze medal in the same category. They were the only California barberas to medal in the judging, which drew 313 entries, all of which had to be at least 50 percent barbera. The gold-medal wine in the non-Italian category was the Chalk Hill Wines 2006 McLaren Vale Barbera from Australia.

The El Dorado wines were two of 49 to receive the Diploma Monferrato Festival, awarded only to entries that receive at least 85 points out of a possible 100 on the competition's scoring sheet.

The sweepstakes winner was the Malabaila di Canale 2006 Mezzavilla Barbera D'Alba.

Well, what's it going to be - "locavore," "localvore" or "loctarian"? To the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary, it's "locavore" as the most fitting word to define eating locally grown foods in season. They've declared "locavore" their word of the year for 2007.

"The word 'locavore' shows how food lovers can enjoy what they eat while still appreciating the impact they have on the environment," said Ben Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press, in a prepared statement. "It's significant in that it brings together eating and ecology in a new way."

In preparing meals or eating out, locavores tilt toward dishes made with ingredients grown close at hand, thereby reducing storage and shipping costs seen as detrimental to the environment.

Oxford editors trace the origin of "locavore" to four San Francisco women who two years ago introduced the term to describe people who try to eat only food grown or produced within 100 miles of where they live.

Locally, locavores often can be spotted shopping at farmers markets, tending a garden in their yard, or eating at such restaurants as Mulvaney's Building & Loan, The Waterboy, Monticello and Hawks. They may or may not be in the company of a "cougar," an older woman romantically pursuing a younger man, which Oxford editors chose as a runnerup to locavore for word-of-the-year honors.

Whiskey Wild Saloon, the prototype of an anticipated chain of entertainment-oriented, country-style bars, is to open Saturday night as midtown Sacramento's latest dining and drinking venue.

But don't drop by expecting the joint's regular menu, which likely won't be introduced until after Thanksgiving, says general manager Kirsten Look. Then, it will be "high-class pub grub with some Southwestern influence," including a pulled-pork sandwich, burgers, salads and wings. In the meantime, the bar's casual fare will be catered.

By day, Whiskey Wild Saloon is to be a "fun and casual" bar. By night, it will be more entertaining, she says. The staff has been hired in part for its skills at singing, dancing and the like as well as its ability to be hospitable. Think Max's Opera Cafe with a twang.

Larry Wycoff and Jon Glover are the owners. The saloon's Web site describes Wycoff as a drag-racing and hot-rod enthusiast, Glover as "modern-era biker." The bar's hours initially will be "spotty," says Look. Eventually, it's to be open 11 a.m.-2 a.m. daily. Whiskey Wild Saloon is at 1910 Q St.

With a historic Napa Valley ranch for a backdrop, officials of UC Davis revealed one of the larger gifts in the institution's history this afternoon. They announced that $12.5 million has been earmarked for the rising Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science from the estate of Napa Valley native Louise Rossi.

The money, from the sale of the Rossi family's 52-acre Rutherford ranch to Frog's Leap Winery earlier this year, will be used to underwrite research focused on improving sustainable farming practices and on enhancing the flavor of grapes and wine, said university authorities.

Early expenditures are to be for equipment in the new institute, the first phase of which is to be finished next June.

Louise Rossi died in February at 99. She and her brother Ray, who in 1930 earned a two-year degree certificate in agriculture on the Davis campus when it was called the Northern Branch of the College of Agriculture, had been longtime supporters of UC Davis. In 1979 they'd established the Rossi Prize to help viticulture and enology students from Napa Valley. Ray Rossi died in 1997 at 91.

To honor the gift, university officials said they will name the terrace to overlook the institute's central courtyard after Ray and Louise Rossi.

Their parents, Ferdinando (Fred) Rossi and Rachel Sculatti, immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s from Switzerland and Italy, respectively. Ferdinando's brother, Antone Rossi, had bought property on the east side of Napa Valley and begun to grow grapes and run a wine cellar in 1879. Eventually, the winery closed and the family concentrated on growing grapes and selling the fruit to Napa Valley wineries.

"Wines have been made from this piece of earth for more than 100 years, and my family and I were very pleased that Louise saw fit to allow Frog's Leap to acquire it," said the winery's owner, John Williams, in a prepared statement.

The power of California cabernet sauvignon has just been reaffirmed with the release this morning of the results of this past weekend's Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo International Wine Competition. For the fifth straight year - as long as the young competition has been running - a wine based on California cabernet sauvignon has won Grand Champion Best of Show, the judging's highest honor. This year it's the Stag's Leap Winery 2004 Napa Valley Stag's Leap District Cabernet Sauvignon ($45).

The competition drew 1,969 wines from 606 wineries in 16 countries.

The Reserve Grand Champion Best of Show - basically, runnerup to the Grand Champion - also was a California wine, the Orogeny Vineyards 2005 Green Valley Orogeny Vineyard Pinot Noir ($36). (Green Valley is in Sonoma County.)

Two local wines did exceptionally well. The Michael-David Winery 2004 6th Sense Syrah ($17) was named top red wine (aside from the champions), while the Montevina Winery 2005 Sauvignon Blanc ($10) was named the champion sauvignon blanc.

The top white wine was the Pacific Rim 2006 Chenin Blanc ($10), while the top value wine was the Marquis Philips 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon ($15).

Now that the Wine Spectator has completed its countdown of the top 10 wines for 2007, what are the surprises? None, really. As usual, high-priced wines dominated the list. And as usual, the roundup was spread rather fairly among the regions seen as the globe's top wine producers - France, Italy, California and Australia.

The magazine's editors really like the 2005 vintage from Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Two of the top three wines were from the appellation, the Le Vieux Donjon at number three, the Clos des Papes at number one. Even if those two can't be found hereabouts, any of the 2005s from Chateauneuf-du-Pape might be worth seeking, especially if you aren't already familiar with the robust and complex wines of the appellation.

For Californians, the big surprise on the list is the number-two wine, the 2005 Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay from Ridge Vineyards, a winery customarily recognized more for its cabernet sauvignon and its wide range of zinfandels. The chardonnay also may not be easy to find, with just 2,000 cases made, but the $35 price makes it appealing to enthusiasts of the varietal.

The top-10 list can be found here.

To Turks, it's pide. To Italians and Americans, it's pizza. Pizza is all over the Sacramento landscape these days. Pide, not so much. That's changed with the opening of Anatolian Table Restaurant in Rocklin, where I stopped in for lunch today and where I couldn't pass up the "kusbasi pide" ($8.95).

The menu described it as "chunks of tender lamb meat mixed with spices on crusted dough." What I got was a long boat-shaped vessel of baked bread with deftly rolled up edges. The small chunks of lamb were tender, all right, as well as sweet and mildly seasoned. Also crowding the boat were cauliflower, broccoli, red pepper, squash, onion and mushrooms. On the side was a zestly seasoned salad partitioned into three segments - shredded greens and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, slivers of salty red onion, and crunchy red cabbage. Diners are greeted with a plate of hot rustic bread and a gentle hummus glistening with an exceptional olive oil. Be forwarned that the black olive in the middle of the hummus hasn't had its pit removed.

Anatolian Table Restaurant is bright and casual, with service that while a bit slow in my case was cordial and proud. A couple of surprise touches: The classy metal tray on which individual glasses of dark Turkish tea are served, and the decorative box with hinged lid in which the bill is delivered.

The menu is extensive and varied, with several fish and poultry selections in addition to lamb kebabs in numerous arrangements. Anatolian bills itself as patisserie as well as restaurant; trays of traditional Turkish pastries in and on a display case along the exhibition kitchen emphasize that point.

Anatolian refers to a peninsula of Turkey. The restaurant opened six weeks ago, and its grand opening is to be this weekend. It's in Blue Oaks Marketplace at 6815 Lonetree Blvd.; (916) 772-3020.

The holiday season, which began with Halloween, picked up speed today with the release of this year's Beaujolais Nouveau. According to French tradition, the quality of Beaujolais Nouveau purportedly reflects the quality of the vintage overall, but it's always "great," so that marketing scheme pretty much has lost its impact.

Nowadays, Beaujolais Nouveau is seen more realistically as just what it is, a youthful, fruity, zesty and easily drinkable wine best suited for casual harvest parties, including Thanksgiving.

I just tasted three releases at David Berkley Fine Wines & Specialty Foods, and the wines are just what Beaujolais Nouveau should be - fresh, buoyant and unchallenging. My favorite was from Domaine DuPueble ($16 regularly, $14.50 on special), which won me over for its bright cranberry color, fruity fragrance, slim build and earthy flavor, which ran to beets, cranberries and spice. I wouldn't, however, refuse a glass of the other two being poured, the frisky and cherry-accented Louis Tete ($13 and $11), put up in a traditional Beaujolais "pot" bottle, and the fleshy, firm and noble Georges DuBoeuf ($16 and $13.50).

As he poured the wines, David Berkley said that drinking Beaujolais Nouveau on the day it's released assures the consumer of "fun, frolic, good will and prosperity" in the new year. Could be another marketing scheme, but we'll suspend judgment until this time next year.

In The Bee's Taste section yesterday, I vowed to serve just two wines at this year's Thanksgiving dinner, a riesling for the white, a pinot noir for the red. My resolve is weakening, especially after tasting two new zinfandels last night. Zinfandel long has been my first choice with turkey, stuffing and the like, even if I do believe riesling and pinot noir are more adaptable companions at the table.

Last night's zinfandels, poured with a vegetarian pizza, were far different stylistically, even though they were from the same producer, Montevina Winery in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley. "Our single-vineyard zinfandels are a paradox and a pleasure," says Montevina winemaker Chris Leamy in a press release with the wines. "They are varietally true to zinfandel, yet distinctive from each other. Clonal selections, vine-age, field blending, unique micro-climates and terroir produce fruit with such interesting, distinctive, delicious character I cannot be physically forced to blend them away. This makes my job a little less interesting, but I have plenty to do." (I usually don't like to quote so extensively from a press release, but these comments are unusually enlightening and to the point.)

Of the two, the Montevina 2005 Terra d'Oro SHR Field Blend Amador County Zinfandel ($30) was my favorite. It's a throwback to the old California practice of planting different grape varieties in the same field, then picking and fermenting the grapes together rather than separately. In this case, the vineyard and the wine is 80 percent zinfandel, 13 percent petite sirah, and 7 percent barbera. The result is an unsually floral zinfandel, but the smell of raspberries and blackberries also is forthright. On the palate, fresh cherry as well as berry flavors come across brightly. It's a graceful zinfandel, with readily tolerable tannins and a refreshing finish. The alcohol is a reasonable 14.5 percent.

The Montevina 2005 Terra d'Oro Home Vineyard Amador County Zinfandel ($30) is a far different and much bigger cat. It's also a throwback, not to the days of field blending but to the jammy, spicy, oaky and sweet style of Shenandoah Valley zinfandel. It's all about fully ripe fruit in which the summer sun still blazes. A lot is going on in this wine, including suggestions of chocolate, cinnamon and walnuts seasoning its core of jammy red fruits. The alcohol is a warm 15 percent.

Either would grace the Thanksgiving table, and, yes, I'm wavering.

When I opened my email this morning I was really sorry I fell asleep last night during my favorite food show, "Kitchen Nightmares," starring the irascible chef Gordon Ramsay as a shining knight who rides to the rescue of foundering restaurants. I'm getting messages from restaurant critics around the country who are mightly upset about the restaurant critic featured on last night's show. Apparently she announced herself at the outset, appeared on camera, and got in a tiff with one of the owners, none of which any respectable critic would do.

Once I catch up on my sleep I'll have to check out the episode on the show's Web site, here. I've already checked out the snooze of a review by the critic who appeared on the show, Sabrina Mashburn of Dan's Papers in the Hamptons.

Freeport Bakery has been a Sacramento institution for 20 years, but there's still things to learn about the people who run it. One is that co-owner and head baker Walter Goetzeler makes a mean vanilla-bean ice cream, according to his wife Marlene Goetzeler. She raves about the ice cream, and provides a bunch of other inside stuff about Freeport Bakery in an interview with a group of Seattle bloggers who track the country's baking scene, Cakespy. Maybe when the Goetzelers move their bakery to larger quarters they'll consider adding ice cream to the menu.

Michael Chandler, who as sommelier and manager at Enotria Restaurant & Wine Bar has been hugely responsible for building up the restaurant's popular wine program over the past five years, is out of a job. "It was time for me to move on," said Chandler, indicating that he sensed he wouldn't be able to develop the restaurant's wine list and ambitious tasting program beyond its current level.

Chandler was the second key person at Enotria to leave this year. Earlier, executive chef Christian Sieck left the restaurant after a 10-year tenure; he's now at the Placerville restaurant Sequoia.

Chandler's plans are uncertain. A fifth-generation Sacramentan, he expects to stay in town, and as soon as this Saturday hopes to launch a Web site - www.sacsommelier.com - to set himself up as a personal wine adviser and as a consultant to corporations creating or retooling their beverage programs. "I don't know what's in store, but I'm looking around and getting a lot of offers. I'm eager to work."

Enotria owner David Hardie wasn't available to discuss Chandler's departure and the transition under way at Enotria.

In the world of wine, fall is the silly season. Not only does the release of Beaujolais Nouveau 2007 occur tomorrow, the Wine Spectator is in the midst of its countown of the top 10 wines of the year, which is a teaser to its top 100 wines of the year, which will be revealed after the world's best wine is revealed Friday.

Best, that is, to the esteemed palates of the Wine Spectator's editors. They have dear tastes. The average price of the six wines revealed so far - 10 through 5 - is $126. Their roundup isn't doing much to dispell the illusion that people have to pay big bucks for an outstanding bottle of wine, though they do say that by the time the identities of all 100 wines are released the average price will fall to $42, down from last year's $49, an encouraging trend.

So far, just one California wine is in the top 10, the Robert Mondavi Winery 2004 Napa Valley Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. It sells for $125.

This year's roundup, incidentally, includes videos of Wine Spectator editors commenting on each of the top 10 wines. You can find the countdown and the videos here.

As the waterproofing of New Orleans continues, the Big Easy has something new to fret about. Its reputation as one of the nation's top three cities for dining out - New York and San Francisco are the others, right? - sustained a critical blow Sunday night when Michael Symon defeated John Besh to win the Food Network's "The Next Iron Chef" series.

Besh is from New Orleans. Symon is from...Cleveland. Besh owns Restaurant August, which seems to be topping every visiting critic's list of the city's best restaurants. He also owns La Provence just outside New Orleans, Besh Steakhouse in the New Orleans branch of Harrah's Hotel Casino, and his newest restaurant, Luke, at the Hilton Hotel along St. Charles Avenue in the Central Business District, on the edge of the French Quarter.

Luke is where we ended up last night, savoring Besh's French-inspired and modern-oriented take on Southern cooking. Watermelon pickles endure, but the pates they accompany are apt to be made of wild boar or Louisiana rabbit. The chicory salad was spiced up with lardons and Creole mustard. My jumbo Louisiana shrimp came on creamy white-corn grits enriched with andouille. Long before you get to desserts like housemade butter-pecan ice cream and a tangy and toasty "tarte Tatin" of apples, pears and red currants, you recognize that Besh goes in to for a muscular style of Southern cooking, at least at Luke.

He conceived the restaurant as a throwback brasserie, with ceiling fans turned by an oldtime pulley-and-belt system, wooden newspaper racks arranged tidily across a front partition, big gleaming bowls of oysters on ice at the entrance, and even its own lineup of beers. The wine list is strictly German and French, and wines are poured into tumblers rather than stemware. The place is comfortable, boisterous and loud. My only serious complaint abut Luke was that service was way too slow. Now that Besh is finished with the TV series he can get back home and get his staff at Luke into more attentive shape.

Anyone planning to visit New Orleans in the near future also should be aware that the city's restaurant scene again is buzzing. Even on a Monday night last-minute reservations were nearly impossible to book, at least at restaurants of the kind rated by Zagat. The earliest we could get into Luke was 9 p.m. I wonder if visitors to Cleveland have the same problem.

As reported everywhere over the weekend, the celebrated St. Charles Avenue streetcars in New Orleans again are clattering and swaying from the French Quarter out to Napoleon Avenue, about the midway point of its total 6.5 miles. That's long enough to appreciate the stone and brick mansions that line the broad route and to see plenty of evidence that New Orleans is continuing to heal since Hurrican Katrina more than two years ago.

When the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo International Wine Competition ended Sunday afternoon, I hopped over to New Orleans for a visit with the son who lives here. I got in too late to really want to eat, though a cafe au lait and beignets at Cafe de Monde perked me up for a balmy evening stroll about the French Quarter.

Besides, on the way out of Houston we stopped at Luling City Market for some hot links, brisket and ribs. Luling City Market was the barbecue joint several Houstonians recommended as we left the judging. It specializes in "Central Texas" barbecue, which must mean intensely smoked brisket and ribs not as juicy as I prefer. Thankfully, the joint's mustrard-based barbecue sauce juiced up the meat with welcome tang.

On the other hand, the spicy beef and pork hot links didn't need any seasoning at all, other than some Shiner Bock to tamp down the heat. They're outstanding links, and on the way out the door the bartender said they, along with the sauce, ribs and so forth, can be ordered online.

I'm not sure where I'll be eating in New Orleans, though I'd better decide soon to judge by the crowds I saw last night in Stella!, Bayona and other hot spots. I'd been wanting to check out the city's best-known restaurant for Creole cookery, Dooky Chase, but when I called owner Leah Chase a few days ago she said she isn't likely to open for anything but takeout until around Thanksgiving. The place has been refurbished after being swamped with four feet of water during the hurricane, but she said she's having trouble getting servers of the caliber she prefers. Elsewhere, many of the city's signature restaurants are back in business, so I'm not likely to go hungry.

They tell me that fall is the best time of the year in Houston. Among those telling me that are these four Houstonians. From the left, they are John Saladino, a wine broker; Robert Gilroy, the Texas sales manager for California's Kendall-Jackson Vineyards & Winery; Guy Stout, a Master Sommelier and director of beverage education for Glazer's, a chain of wine, spirits and malt stores; and Rich Ogle, a retired environmental consultant who now teaches technical writing at the University of Houston.

The five of us just spent eight hours judging wine for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo International Wine Competition. That whole time we were in these curtained quarters inside the massive Reliant Center, next door to the even more massive Reliant Standium, home of the Houston Texans. Fourteen other panels were similarly sequestered. I know the weather outside is wonderful only because the temperature gauges in the vehicles shuttling us from hotel to judging have been telling us that the highs have been fluctuating between the upper 70s and low 80s.

Our panel judged 134 wines today, 101 of which were a single class of cabernet sauvignons priced $15 or less. This is an important class, given the popularity of cabernet sauvignon and the appeal of inexpensive wines. As a group, they were pretty impressive, offering a generally bright drinkability if not a whole lot of weight and complexity. We won't get the results until Friday, but I suspect we gave an unusually high proportion of silver and bronze medals. While we didn't award a whole lot of gold medals, I look forward to seeing the winners, knowing that we were patient and focused in our deliberations. There was little unanimity in our group, but our differences were more narrow than wide. The characteristic that stood out among the wines was their virtual flawlessness, which speaks to the technological advancements that have been made in grape growing and winemaking over the past three decades or so.

Amazingly, not a single wine we had today was "corked," which is to say spoiled by a bad cork. When I remarked on my surprise at the end of the day, another judge said that could be because the competition has someone smell each wine before it is sent out to the judges to make sure it isn't tainted. I haven't confirmed that, but if that's the case I haven't heard of another wine competition on the planet going to that extreme.

Much to my surprise, none of these Houstonians was wearing cowboy boots. One even wore sandals. The only judge I've seen with a pair of boots on is from...Bordeaux.

At 7 a.m., the wine bar Vino Volo in Terminal A of Sacramento International Airport isn't open. No matter. Soon enough I'll have plenty of wine early enough. I'm en route to Rodeo Uncorked!, the commercial wine competition of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. For the next two days I'll be sequestered with other judges at Reliant Center to appraise an anticipated 2,000 or so wines.

Whenever I tell someone I'm going to Texas to judge wine, the reaction almost invariably is smarmy. Texan wines? Do they even know what wine is in Texas? In fact, Texas is one of the nation's major wine markets, and while there will be Texan wines in the judging, this is an international competition, so we can anticipate releases from Latin America, Australia and Europe as well as the United States.

Rodeo Uncorked! has been good to California wines. In each of the four years the competition has been held, a California wine has won the judging's top honor, Grand Champion Best of Show. Last year it was the Clos du Bois 2003 Alexander Valley Marlstone, a blend of black grape varieties common to Bordeaux.

They do a couple of things different to set apart the Houston competition from other judgings. The major winners get saddles, chaps and buckles in addition to the usual medals and ribbons. Also, each spring, when the livestock show and rodeo is held, they'll have an auction of oversized bottles of the major award winners. Earlier this year, a 9-liter bottle of the Clos du Bois Marlstone sold at the auction for $125,000. Despite skyrocketing fuel prices, the oil economy of Texas must be hurting. The year before, a 9-liter bottle of the Grand Champion wine - a cabernet sauvignon from Raymond Vineyards in Napa Valley - sold at the auction for $200,000.

Paul Newman - actor, race-car driver, philanthropist, organic-food enterpreneur and now, vintner. Next spring, the Newman's Own brand of specialty foods will add two California wines to its lineup, a 2006 chardonnay and a 2006 caberent sauvignon. The wines are to sell for $16. Though Newman has a line of organically made products, the wines won't be organic, says Mira Bieler, spokeswoman for the project.

Newman is teaming up with Rebel Wine Co., a Napa Valley collaboration of the Three Thieves and Trinchero Family Estates brands, to make the wines. They will bear a California appellation, and are being made from grapes grown in coastal vineyards, says Bieler.

In a press release, Newman notes that the wines will bring his 25-year-old food company full circle. His first product, a salad dressing, was put in old wine bottles with parchment labels. "We are back to wine bottles, but this time we are filling them with a wine that will complement my salad dressing and pasta sauce. Wine was the only thing missing at dinner time. Now the meal is complete," says Newman in the press release.

As his other products, all profits and royalties from the sale of the wines are to be donated to educational and charitable groups.

Struggling restaurants try desperately to hang on during the year-end holidays, counting on extravagant soirees to give them a last chance at solvency. They sure don't like to give it up on the eve of the holiday season, but that's what has happened with the Italian restaurant Sofia along 11th Street in downtown Sacramento.

The closing, however, may be just temporary. Though Sofia owner Jim DiPinto couldn't be reached for comment, Evan Elsberry, Sofia's most recent chef, and Chris Tucker, who had been managing the restaurant, said a partnership has been formed in hopes of reviving the place within the next few weeks. In the meantime, they are continuing with banquets that had been booked long before the closure, provided the revelers don't want alcoholic beverages; the new group hasn't yet been granted a liquor license. Tucker says he's one of the new operators, along with Jeremy Bennett and a third, silent partner.

When the restaurant reopens, it will be renamed Sofia's on 11th. Elsberry will remain the chef, though the menu will be redrawn to feature more traditional Italian dishes, says Tucker.

For years, the building housing Sofia was home to the steakhouse Bull Market, but since it closed no restaurant has flourished for long on the site.

Thanks to a tip from Andy Perdue, I now know the answer if anyone ever asks, "If you were a wine, what kind of wine would you be?" Intuitively, I long have been ready with a reply, and that would be zinfandel, simply because of longtime consumption. But now I have a more scientifically grounded answer, which is pinot noir. I have no quibble with that. While pinot noir is generally fickle, unpredictable and often a letdown, when it's at its best it's complex, strong and noble, and those aren't bad qualities.

In his blog, The Wine Knows, all about the Pacific Northwest wine community, Andy a few days ago posted a link to Vintage Sentiments, where another Washington state resident, Maureen Kelly, invites readers to take a quick test to define their wine personality. About an hour later, your wine profile appears in your email.

Kelly, who writes greeting cards, designs Web sites, teaches yoga, and leads Myers-Briggs seminars, also has written a book on wine personalities, "Wine Types: Discover Your Inner Grape," which she hopes to soon sell through Amazon.com.

Also a consultant in human behavior, she says her wine profiling is based on Myers-Briggs principles, a personality questionnaire inspired by the research of Carl Gustav Jung, but that the results are to be taken lightly.

So what's a pinot-noir personality expected to be like? He or she is a visionary and perfectionist who can appear cool or aloof. Pinot noirs also prefer to be convinced; they're reluctant to accept claims on blind faith. Say, give that guy a gold medal.

La Provence Restaurant & Terrace, Roseville's classy outpost for Provencal dining, is underoing a major shift in personnel following the departure of opening chef-partners Bernard Brun and Joshua Rabbie. Brun left in July to return to his native France, while Rabbie left a few weeks ago to join the Bella Bru group of restaurants and bakeries.

Stephen Des Jardin, the owner of La Provence, said in an email from France that Shane McMahon has moved from sous chef to executive chef and that Derrick Sand now is chef. Both have been at the restaurant almost from the day it opened in early 2004. No change in the restaurant's concept is anticipated, says Des Jardin. Brun was "horribly homesick" and wanted to return to France to help his mother recover from a knee operation, while Rabbie was eager to tackle a new challenge, adds Des Jardin.

Rabbie acknowledges that while he was up for a new challenge other factors also influenced his decision to leave La Provence. "Mr. Des Jardin was going one way, we were going in another. It became a matter of false hopes and false promises. I never put my heart into a project like I did with that restaurant, but it became more about real estate than the restaurant," says Rabbie.

He joins Bella Bru as executive chef and director of operations just as owners Steve and Liz Mishler are putting together an ambitious upgrade of their four restaurants, starting with the Carmichael site, where they recently added Luna Lounge, a bar with a small-plate menu. Rabbie is retooling the Carmichael restaurant's dinner menu to give it a modern Mediterranean tone, a change expected to be introduced in a few weeks, says Liz Mishler. The Folsom site is to be remodeled to include a kitchen, while other changes eventually will be added to the El Dorado Hills and Natomas branches.

"I didn't want to leave Sacramento," says Rabbie. "That would have been easy. Las Vegas is out of control, and there are a lot of opportunities in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but I wanted to continue pioneering Sacramento."

Not even the California Energy Commission is immune from a problem that can mess up any homeowner's holiday soiree - plug in too many electrical appliances all at once and you are apt to blow a circuit breaker. It happened today at the California Energy Commission's headquarters in downtown Sacramento just as the staff's annual chili cookoff was getting under way. Some 30 hot pots of various sizes and shapes were lined up on tables awaiting the appraisal of the competition's eight judges when someone realized the plugged-in pots weren't staying as hot as they should be. "The power is out. It sounds like a bad joke," said one cook.

As representatives of the State Department of General Services tried to trace the source of the problem and restore power, the judges pressed on undaunted, hoping to finish their assignments before the pots of chili turned cold.

Chilis were divided into three classes - vegetarian, traditional and gourmet, the latter the group to which I was assigned as a judge. The gourmet class included traditional Cincinnati chili, smelling and tasting strongly of cinnamon, a soupy Thai chicken chili sweet with coconut milk, and a turkey chili. The interpretation of "gourmet" was left to the competitors, most of whom seemed to think it meant chili considerably milder and simpler than the traditional bowl of red.

My favorite was entry No. 303 - "This Ain't No Girly-Man Chili" - which although in the gourmet division was more along the lines of a traditional chili because of its resonating meatiness, spiciness and sweetness. No. 303 also turned out to be not only the overall favorite of all the judges but the winner of the peoples' choice award, determined by commission staffers (who each paid $3 for a bowl they could refill as often as they liked until the pots were empty). In the four years of the competition, this was the first time that judges and voters agreed on the most deserving chili, which was made by Liz Shirakh, a commission analyst specializing in energy efficiency.

The best traditional chili was made by Kathy Hennigan, while the best vegetarian chili was made by Harriet Kallemeyn, also both commission emplyees.

Proceeds from the event - $800 was raised this year - go to two charitable programs, the commission's Gifts from the Heart, which provides year-end holiday gifts to the impoverished, and Loaves & Fishes' Sleeping Warm Project, which provides sleeping bags, plastic tarps, knit caps and ponchos for the homeless.

Power in the building, incidentally, was restored in time to provide employees with appropriately hot chili. "I could say that it left egg on our face, or maybe I should say chili," said the commission's information officer, Adam Gottlieb. Well, it was Halloween.

The 500th posting to a blog, which this is, calls for something especially notable, but all I have to offer is this little note of disappointment.

I've just returned from L Wine Lounge and Urban Kitchen at 18th and L in midtown Sacramento, where representatives of Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant of Berkeley were introducing to buyers for local restaurants and retail wine shops their current lineup of wines.

I went hoping that Kermit Lynch himself, who has been importing wine for 35 years, would be on hand to answer a few questions, like what rock band he played for back around the Summer of Love, how he gets the esteemed novelist and poet Jim Harrison to contribute essays to his wine shop's newsletter, and how California wines based on grape varieties most closely identified with France's Rhone Valley compare with wines from the Rhone Valley, from which he draws many of his wines and which was the topic of his first book. Alas, those questions, among others, will have to wait for another day.

Thus, I had to fall back on Plan B, which was to taste through many of the more than 60 wines Lynch's associates brought with them. All of them were from Europe, mostly France. As a group, they showed why California vintners fret about the slow but steady rise that imported wines are grabbing of the domestic market.

The principal attribute that stood out about the wines was their individuality, though drinkability was a close second. Each wine had a distinctive character, and each tasted and felt as if it had a story to tell about the person who made the wine, about the site where the grapes were grown, and about the history of the appellation. They weren't "international wines," which is to say wines of a similar fruitiness, fleshiness and oakiness, regardless of region of origin. Instead, they drew you in by their singular but not bombastic personality, though they could be eccentric, in a charming more than threatening way.

Big local retail supporters of Kermit Lynch wines are David Berkley Fine Wines & Specialty Foods and Taylor's Market. Each had representatives at the tasting, and if their palates were aligned with mine they will be stocking up on the wonderfully aromatic Domaine Comtesse Bernard de Cherisey 2004 Meursault-Blagny "La Genelotte," an exceptionally creamy, minerally and citric white Burgundy ($76); the full-blown and multi-layered Domaine de La Grange des Peres 2004 Vin de Pays de L'Herault, a luscious blend principally of syrah and mourvedre ($75); the exuberant Domaine de Terrebrune 2004 Bandol Rouge ($30); and the amazingly inky, bacony, smoky and floral Domaine Gramenon 2006 "Sierra du Sudd" Cotes-du Rhone ($30). And if local merchants don't order them, there's always Lynch's shop at 1605 San Pablo Blvd. in Berkeley.

What's wrong with this picture: Sunday brunch at Capitol Garage, the most luxurious of meals at the grungiest of restaurants? Or so it would seem to anyone who remembers the original Capitol Garage at 15th and L, a dark and laid-back spot favored by police officers and skateboarders in search of a quick and casual bite.

Three years ago, however, business partners Jerry Mitchell and John Lopez moved to nearby new digs at 15th and K, then brought chef Jonathan Clemons into the mix to retool the menu.

Today, Capitol Garage retains the youthful mood and bold grafiti graphics of its original incarnation, most notably the large, round and battered old Signal Gasoline sign now mounted on the back wall.

The menu, however, is much expanded and much more diverse and ambitious, and is available from early breakfast through late-night dinners, when the joint also converts into an entertainment venue.

Clemons got his culinary training in Oregon, and several of his brunch dishes reflect the Pacific Northwest's affinity for hearty dishes bright and abundant with regional ingredients - chopped hazelnuts and fresh raspberries with the buttermilk pancakes, French toast filled with creamed cheese and topped with a warm peach compote, an omelet of smoked salmon with sun-dried tomatoes and a black-pepper parmesan hollandaise.

Capitol Garage had a 15th birthday party last week, which we missed, but we stopped in for brunch yesterday, where we opted for two signature dishes, the "garage gourmet," a large toasted croissant filled richly with bacon, scrambled eggs, Cheddar and hollandaise, with fried potatoes on the side, just the sort of substantial meal you should have when you're combining breakfast and lunch at one sitting. Hours later, we still were so full we skipped dinner except for some popcorn during the final World Series game.

The other was the "garage omelet," hot and fluffy eggs enclosing portobello mushrooms, tomatoes astonishingly flavorful for this late in the season, sausage, havarti cheese and a pesto cream sauce that tasted as if it almost certainly had been made from scratch with fresh basil. Two unexpected delights with the omelet were the small old-fashioned packets of grape jelly with the thick and wholesome toast and the quality of the fresh fruit on the platter - strawberries, pineapple and orange chosen and displayed with the same care given the rest of the plate.

Service was gracious, attentive and upbeat, but it took more time than usual for our dishes to emerge from the kitchen, which I suspect is fairly small given the size of the rest of the quarters. The crush of the crowd also likely contributed to the slow pacing (expect a 30-minute wait if you show up around noon). The wait was allayed by three TVs tuned to football games and stiff Bloddy Marys with pickled green beans and pimiento-stuffed olives, not only a bargain at $2 but a refreshing departure from the exorbitant prices other restaurants charge for this relatively cheap libation.

Assorted burgers, an Italian meatball sandwich, a crab-cake sandwich, a grilled steak sandwich, several pastas, jambalaya, beef tamales and quiche are just a few of the other selections for lunch and dinner dining.

The place is getting so fancy that the next thing you know Clemons will add wine dinners to the program, and sure enough they are commencing.

Capitol Garage, 15th and K, is open daily 6:30 a.m.-1 a.m.; (916) 444-3633.

Mmmm-mmmm, just one red-velvet cupcake with vanilla-bean icing was left a short time ago when I stopped by Babycakes Bakery in east Sacramento. The place won't open until Tuesday, but today's promotional preview gave neighbors an inkling of what's to come.

Veteran Sacramento chef and cooking instructor Teresa Urkovsky is opening Babycakes with her husband Gerald Collins and their business partner Kristine Bertram. While the display cases are waiting to be filled, the menu board is ready for customers, listing cupcakes such as pumpkin pecan, coconut lime, banana split, lemon meringue and caramel apple.

The threesome plans to offer four or five types a day, about 400 total if sales are as strong as anticipated. They'll sell for between $2 and $2.50 each.

Babycakes also will be selling a smoked chicken salad and roast beef, turkey and ham sandwiches. At 3675 J St., it's to be open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily except Monday.

Northern California's wine-grape harvest is winding down, but for the first time in 35 years the dean of the Sacramento area's commercial winemakers isn't joining the fun.

Charles Myers, who made his first wine at his Harbor Winery of West Sacramento in 1972, is sitting out this crush. "I'm feeling the wear and tear," says Myers, who retired more than a decade ago after teaching English at Sacramento City College for 38 years. "I'm absolutely not thinking of selling the winery," he makes clear.

Though Myers is on the sidelines this harvest, winemaking continues at Harbor. Myers has a custom-crush agreement with longtime Sacramento home winemaker Mateo Munoz, an attorney with the State Department of Justice who is going commercial with his label Vina Dos Rios, but he won't have any wines to release until after they've aged in barrel for two years. Munoz and his winemaking partner, Martin Giampaoli, crushed and fermented a ton each of syrah, sangiovese and tempranillo at Harbor this fall.

In addition, Myers has wines in barrel yet to be bottled and released. One of them is his signature dessert wine Mission del Sol, made with the state's historic mission grape. Grapes for the wine were picked in 1986, and the wine has been aging in barrel ever since. "I’m in no particular hurry to bottle that wine, it's only getting better, it's not getting woody," Myers says. (The 1984 version of the wine still is available at Corti Brothers.)

The future of Harbor Winery is uncertain, but Myers cherishes the citrus and walnut trees and the vegetable garden he tends out back and isn't about to give it up. "Nobody in my family is interested in taking this over," Myers says of the winery. "I don’t want to sell the place, but the obstacles to making wine myself are huge."

En route to Cameron Park this afternoon I swung off Highway 50 at El Dorado Hills to grab a bite and to see what's new at Town Center, the community's commercial village. My timing was off by about four hours.

At 5 p.m. today, the Sacramento region's newest wine bar is to open. It's Wine Konnection, and it's right next to the new El Dorado Hills branch of the restaurant Bistro 33.

When I came across it, manager Patrick Seymour hurriedly but calmly was filling shelves with bottles of wine while chef Dani Luzzatti was putting her potato chips through one last trial run. The place just may be the region's largest wine bar and shop, occupying a 3,500-square-foot space overlooking the shopping complex's pond. Seymour will be pouring 68 wines by the glass, and coordinating 20 flights of three wines each for guests to compare producers and styles. The wine inventory runs to 280 different releases, including high-profile brands like Col Solare, Dominus, Sea Smoke, Siduri and Ramey.

Luzzatti's small-plate menu draws inspiration from Latin America (empanadas filled with pork-belly confit and roasted peppers), Southeast Asia (cakes of Dungeness crab and skate wing seasoned with Thai spices and accompanied by a red curry coconut dipping sauce), the Mediterranean (barolo-braised lamb shank on creamy polenta) and California (wild salmon poached in olive oil and served with a navel-orange confit).

Intel executives and wine enthusiasts Bill Ramsey and Chuck Welsh are the principal partners, said Seymour.

After today, Wine Konnection, 4364 Town Center Blvd., El Dorado Hills, is to be open 10 a.m.-midnight Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Sundays; (916) 941-1555.