Day #53 - 5/4/2011 - San Francisco to Chico, CA - 190 miles

It was 192 miles from San Francisco to Chico, California.  This is how we went.

After a wonderful week together, Susan and Russell were up at 4am this morning for the taxi ride to San Francisco Airport and the return to Florida.  I was sad to see them leave but glad that Susan agreed to take a taxi and not have me drive her at that ungodly hour.

When Lani finally pulled herself out of bed, we packed and hopped onto the bus for a final SF breakfast at Specialty Café and Bakery, which I blathered on about in yesterday's post.  It felt good to have a bowl of steel cut oats and raisins (with cinnamon and Nutrasweet...cutting calories here to make it up with some high-quality junk food).  It felt even better to follow that with a chocolate chip cookie (aka, high-quality junk food) and a cup of coffee.  They have one of the best baked goods sections I’ve seen.  Ever.  Anywhere.

We returned to our motel, cleared out and headed to the Haight.

The Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, named after two early San Francisco leaders, pioneer and exchange banker Henry Haight and Munroe Ashbury, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, both of whom are probably rolling over continually in their graves, is on the Eastern edge of Golden Gate Park.  The Haight rose to fame in the 1960's with the emergence of the hippie subculture, counterculture, psychedelic rock, drug culture and your basic bohemian lifestyle, a bit of which continue until today.  We, on the other hand, were there on business.  It's a heckuva place.

An anarchist collective bookstore?  What?  You've never been to one?  Me neither.  But, it's good to know
that anarchists still enjoy reading, even if it's about anarchy.

Lani wanted to stop here both to look for some Zines, as well as to see if the store would carry her zine on the shelf.

There were an incredible number of titles dedicated to the Left Wing Socialist Hippie Communist Agenda.  Who reads this?

 A Zine, from fanzine or magazine, is a small circulation publication (often in the 100s and occasionally a few thousand), with a real hand-made quality, often self-published using only a copier, home printer or the local copy store.   They can be autobiographical, comical, a comic, ribald, political, etc.  Lani is a big zine-fan and has volunteered at the Gainesville Civic Media Center, helping to organize their zine library.

The "anarchist section" of an anarchist bookstore has some unusual titles.

Lani has printed/published/made two zines, including the humorous, poignant, semi-raw,intelligent and endlessly witty Go For Broke #2: Klimbing Kilimanjaro, capturing the essence and raw human drama (my hyperbole) of our family effort to summit Kilimanjaro, the planet's highest free-standing mountain.

Lani peruses the zine section, most of which have nothing to do with anarchy.

 Speaking of Lani's zine, you can read it at the Gainesville Civic Media Center Zine Library, or, you can buy/order it from the Chicago store Quimby's, or order it directly from Microcosm Publishing Company for the ridiculously small price of $2.50.  Never has so little offered so much insight and entertainment...41 pages, lavishly illustrated.  Lavish.

Zine writers are an eclectic, independent free-spirited bunch.

 As Lani examined the offerings of Bound Together,  I stood outside, taking in the sights of the Haight.

Looking for a glass pipe in the $6-$1000 price range?  Look no further.

Lani picked up a few zines to read along the way.

Capitalists as well as anarchists, Lani had to pay up.  I guess you could run out with your merchandise and scream "Hey...I'm an anarchist!"

Walking in the Haight-Ashbury district, even if you knew better, you'd swear pot was legal.

The competition for like-minded customers here is pretty fierce.

We finished up in the Haight, fired up the Garmin and took off.

Heading Northeast from San Francisco, we arrived in Sonoma, one valley to the west of Napa and a great wine-making region in its own right.  Grapes were first planted in Sonoma Valley in 1812 and the region produces more wine than Napa.

From anarchist bookstore to an upscale boutique bookstore in an upscale home, no bookstore was safe from Lani. 

 While Lani was thinking about books, I was thinking about wine...my wine...specifically my 2009 Syrah, a barrel of which I was making at Crushpadwine.  Crushpad is a sort of you-do-it-with-our-equipment winery.  They have access to grapes from over 50 vineyards, from Chardonnay White to Zinfandel Red. 

Chanticleer Books had some real collectibles here, but as we've found in bookstores in more sophisticated locations, they are appropriately priced.  Lani moved on.

While you use the equipment at Crushpad, they will do pretty much everything for you once you've picked a grape if you're out of town during, say harvest time.  You still have to provide the wine plan, an approximate 30-point set of wine making directions.  These 30 questions, from the target alcohol (13.5%), whether to cold macerate (3 days) to whether to use wild yeast or inoculate (wild, baby, wild) were decided by me.  Well, I did have solicit input from my mostest favoritest of wineries, Chateau Beaucastel.  Beaucastel makes a complex wine blended from eight grapes, predominantly Syrah and Mourvedre, but including Grenache, Cinsault, Muscardin, Vaccarese, Counoise and Picpoul.  I only had, in addition to my Syrah, Mourvedre, Viognier and Petite Sirah, so Beaucastel was safe from me.

I'm here for my blending session, trying to decide what, if anything, I'll blend with my 2009 White Hawk Vineyards Syrah.  To help and guide is Kian Tavakoli, one of the Crushpad winemakers.  In the glass is the 2009 White Hawk Syrah, fresh from the barrel and only 7 months old.

Kian poured some of the my 2009 White Hawk Syrah, fresh from the barrel, for me to sample for the first time; it was great! and stood alone as an excellent wine.  Still, it was light in tannins and lacked the complexity of a great Rhone or GSM (Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre, a common 3-grape blend)  Kian had three potential blenders: a Mourvedre, Viognier and Petite Sirah.

The glass in my right hand is some Viognier, also fresh from the barrel.  Viognier is the only permitted grape for the French wine Condrieu in the Rhone valley.  It had a wonderful bouquet with floral and citrus overtones, as well as a nice tannic bite.  As you can see, I found the whole process pretty painful.

Tasted separately, all three potential blenders were excellent, though I didn’t see the Petite Sirah as belonging in the final mix.  We started with a 5% Mourvedre blend and the improvement was clear: greater complexity in the nose with the addition of earthy scents with a nice tannic backbone in the finish.  Next, we tried 2% Petite Sirah which I felt was a step in the wrong direction.

Even though Kian and I had exchanged a few dozen emails over the past 3½ years regarding wine making, this was our first sit-down.

We moved on to the Viognier, a white wine grape grown primarily in the Northern Rhone and the exclusive wine of Condrieu.  It had a wonderful bouquet with floral and citrus overtones, as well as a nice tannic bite.  We started with 1% Viognier blend, which definitely added to the complexity, but was too overpowering.  Kian prepared a 0.5% Viognier blend, which we both agreed was more desirable.

With expertise, Kian wields the two major tools of wine blending: a pipette and a graduated cylinder.  This makes it easy to do blends with ½% accuracy.  When I do this at home, I use small syringes.

 At that point, Kian suggested a little Petite Syrah to offset the intensely floral nature of the Viognier. 

Glasses proliferate on the table as we try different permutations.  There was a lot of swirling, spitting, rinsing and repeating....but no swallowing.

The final blend we agreed on was  92% White Hawk Syrah, 5% Mourvedre, 2.5% Petite Syrah and .5% Viognier.  It was, IMHO, outstanding.   I can’t wait for it to be bottled and expect it to be the best Syrah I’ve yet made.  While it is not available in any store, you will eventually be able to order in once I get the store front up and running through 2redwinery.  Go ahead...click on that link...it won't hurt you and you can't buy anything...yet.  That's the web page I designed, but its going through a professional overhaul.  I've been making Zinfandel (cleverly name Zinpiphany) and a Syrah since 2007.  Each wine has been a success, though a few have been real standouts.

As I shove my nose as far into the glass as humanly possible, Kian ceremoniously points to it, the One Syrah to Rule Them All.

Crushpad started off in a San Francisco warehouse, moved last year to a winery in Napa and now is at home in Sonoma.

From outside the Crushpad facility...I'm thinking of a winemaking degree of UC-Davis, then a second career.

Leaving Crushpad, we stopped in the downtown Sonoma for lunch.  It was a charming area, one that I'll plan on returning to.

Downtown Sonoma had a nice mix of shops and eateries.

We headed North towards Chico and covered about 160 miles of farmland.   People may think of L.A. and San Francisco when they think of California, but the amount of farmland in the state is incredible.

Chico, population 86,187 at the 2010 census, up from 59,954 in 2000, is a cultural, economic, and educational center of the northern Sacramento Valley.  It is home to both Chico State University and Bidwell Park, one of the country's 25 largest municipal parks.  I have to be honest, though, what I saw was pretty underwhelming.  Why Chico?  Easy...Lani had a friend that she wanted to see.

We arrived where Lani's friend lived.  You're thinking: it looks like an industrial park with pre-fabricated steel spaces?  True dat.

Lani's friend, Mateus, lived in a commercial industrial park in a commercial building, along with a roommate.  Their dwellings were…umm…utilitarian. 

I sorta felt like I was back in the Haight.

 As it was meant as commercial space, there was no bath or shower.  Mateus and his roommate cleaned up by pouring hot water over themselves…or something like that.

There was a unique glass flower vase on the desk.

 Lani had met Mateus through a high school acquaintance and crossed paths with each other serendipitously in Gainesville.  They had last seen each other about two years ago.

Lani, her friend, Mateus.

Lani was inclined to spend the night there with Mateus while Bob – having long outgrown living in industrial spaces - sought out a Motel 6, America’s lowest priced national chain.