Old World Charm

This little piggie …: Chef Juan Maneiro of Casa Botín serves up a suckling pig slow-roasted in the restaurant’s 18th-century woodstove.

A glimpse of Casa Botín: ‘World’s oldest restaurant’

By Paula Harris

WE’RE SPRAWLED in a small hostel room in the center of Madrid, listening to a rhythmic rumba gitana pulsating from the boom box we hauled over along with suitcases crammed with hip-hugging ruffled skirts and nail-embedded dance shoes.

It’s been an arduous journey, but we won’t unpack. This is a stopover. Tomorrow morning my friend Helen and I will catch the high-speed AVE train to Seville, where we’ll study flamenco dance. If we can revive in time.

It’s dark outside. We slowly crank open the balcony shutters in the modest pension room near central Puerta Del Sol and peer out into the sultry night.

Nocturnal Madrid glitters and swirls below.

Calle Marqués Viudo de Pon-tejos–a bustling street filled at 10:30 p.m. with honking traffic, unleashed dogs, and strolling pedestrians–beckons enticingly. We ignore the jet lag that prickles behind our eyes and join the evening throng.

Outside, the warm night air reeks of exhaust fumes, lemon cologne, black tobacco, and frying garlic. It’s intoxicating. We head to Plaza Mayor, the large colonaded cobblestone square in the old part of the city, filled with taverns and handicraft workshops. Our destination is Casa Botín, once a favorite haunt of Ernest Hemingway’s.

“We lunched upstairs at Botín’s. It is one of the best restaurants in the world. We had roast young suckling pig and drank rioja alta,” the author wrote of Jake and Brett’s visit to the venerable landmark, on the second to last page of The Sun Also Rises.

If Hemingway made the restaurant famous, the Guinness Book of Records further cemented its celebrity last year by proclaiming Casa Botín (founded in 1725) the World’s Oldest Restaurant.

Stepping back in time: The brick-lined dining room is steeped in history.

CASA BOTÍN is located on Calle de Cuchilleros (Cutler’s Street) in the heart of Madrid’s old commercial center. We pass through an ancient archway and descend stone steps that are illuminated by an old wrought-iron lantern protrouding from a crumbling wall.

The restaurant was once a small inn where weary muleteers and traders ended their journeys with a sumptuous roast dinner and a bed for the night.

Our first impression when we enter the four-story building with its four distinct dining rooms is of exposed beams, oil paintings, hanging copper pans, and crimson carnations against snowy table linens.

It’s like stepping back in time.

At the heart of it all is an open kitchen boasting the original 18th-century woodfire oven, fueled by aromatic green oak logs. It’s still used to cook the house specialties: traditional Castillian roast lamb and whole suckling pig.

Chef Juan Maneiro, a burly figure in a white toque, tends the flames. The heat burns slowly and constantly builds up layers of flavor. One roast takes 2 1/2 hours, Maneiro tells us, as he removes a shallow earthenware casserole of fragrant pork.

Casa Botín caters to a bustling mixed clientele. The Madrileños are well dressed and poised with their Fortuna cigarettes and sleek leather accessories. The tourists tend to wear thick-soled sneakers and fret about what to order.

Our table is downstairs in a cavernous brick dining room set deep underground and steeped in history. Here also is a an ancient wine cellar resembling a catacomb, where dust-encrusted bottles of rioja are taking an extended siesta.

We eat creamy triangles of tangy queso manchego, sheep’s cheese from La Mancha, with crusty fresh bread and a glass of chilled extra-dry fino sherry. The fino is so pale and ethereal, it’s been dubbed “the wine with a hundred souls.”

We could have dined on baby eels or stewed partridge, but how could we pass up the roasted suckling pig with its crispy bronzed skin and luscious meat? It’s a huge portion–actually enough for two. The slow cooking has rendered the meat sweet and tender and infused with olive oil, herbs, and garlic. Add some perfectly golden roast potatoes and a noble valdepeñas house red wine to wash it all down and we’re in hog heaven.

For dessert, we savor slices of cool fresh pineapple marinated in Dry Sack sherry, and smooth housemade caramel custards with whipped cream. The meal is capped with strong coffee and a small glass of pacharán, a sweet anise-flavored elixir made from sloes.

AT MIDNIGHT, a group of student minstrels, in black cloaks trimmed with colorful ribbons, serenades diners with old regional songs strummed on lute-type instruments. We watch as if in a dream while waiters in their white jackets flutter among the tables like graceful moths.

Antonio González, a gracious man with a courtly manner, tells us his family has owned Casa Botín for three generations. Another family member opened a Casa Botín in Miami last year. One of the partners of the Miami restaurant is from San Francisco, so a future Casa Botín may be slated for the Bay Area, says González.

What’s the recipe for Casa Botín’s impressive longevity? “Of course, the food must be the best we can offer, but there’s something about warm cordiality, even from the youngest waiter, so that you feel a little like you’re in your own home,” explains González.

“It’s not only the taste of the pig, but that you feel fine,” he says with a faraway look in his dark eyes. “Taste alone is not enough to remember–a restaurant is not only a place to have food and drink, it’s a place to collect moments in life.”

Hemingway would have agreed.

From the July 15-21, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Show Off

Local flavor: Mary Dee Morrison and Frank Spirarski of Gallo/Sonoma savor the sort of bounty that will be on hand at the upcoming food and wine showcase.

Sonoma County Food & Wine Showcase grows up

By Marina Wolf

YOU TAKE ALL your visiting relatives to the tasting rooms. You dutifully attend every farmers’ market. You eat at restaurants with cloth napkins when you can, except when the call of “Pink Palace” chow mein joins with the gravitational pull of the couch–you even know which Santa Rosa Chinese restaurant “Pink Palace” refers to. In other words, you think you know the food and drink of Sonoma County inside and out.

But you can’t really know it until you’ve tested the scope of your expertise at the 19th annual Sonoma County Showcase of Wine and Food, held July 14 through July 17.

This year, the word auction has been dropped from the title of the event; predictably, as reported in local media, some loose Napa lips are flapping away about how Sonoma County can’t keep up with Napa’s own annual wine auction. Of course, comparisons between the big wine-auction events of the two competing wine country counties are inevitable. Both have been running for 19 years, and represent regions that are widely recognized as producing some of the best wine in the nation. But comparing begs the question: Do we want to keep up, especially with a package price for the Napa auction of $1,800 per couple?

In terms of accessibility, the Sonoma County Food and Wine Showcase more than keeps up. Ticket prices are considerably lower here, and are available for separate events, even at the door in a few instances. It’s true, though, that the Sonoma County event will probably never be as financially lucrative as Napa Valley’s signature event, which this year collected a record $5.5 million. “The Napa auction has such a huge reputation, a whole life of its own, really,” says Bob Hobart, a senior vice president at Clos du Bois and this year’s local auction chairman. “There’s no way that we as a county and a viticultural region can compete with that.”

Sonoma County also has had to deal with the geographic ignorance of other Californians, who for years persisted in blurring together everything north of the Golden Gate Bridge into one big happy region. Michele Anna Jordan, a Sonoma County-based food writer who is organizing the authors’ booth at the Taste of Sonoma County Showcase, says that people used to ask her all the time if Sonoma is in Napa. But no more, she says. “Now I think Sonoma [County] stands on its own as a separate geographic region in the minds of people throughout the country.”

Accordingly, the showcase has been redesigned as a showplace for Sonoma County, with a full program of tours, meals, and meet-the-people-behind-the-wine events. For the first time this year, the word food is included in the title of the event, indicating an increased emphasis on edibles that both organizers and participants are hailing as an almost revolutionary shift. Of particular note is the July 17 showcase in which local food-industry folks will host cooking demos throughout the afternoon, and Select Sonoma County will staff a prominent booth to give some of its 360 members a chance to spread out samples of their products and produce.

THOUGH FOOD HAS stepped into the spotlight, the wine is still a driving force for this event. Terroir tours introduce visitors to the unique interaction between land, climate, and the resulting quality of the wine, while winemaker dinners bring guests into the heart of the action. And then there’s the auction itself. This year, it’s being held at two sites via an electronic bidding system.

The showcase is turning over part of the proceeds to benefit the national anti-hunger programs of Share Our Strength, a connection that is having a profound impact on the event. “Because of the hookup with Share Our Strength, the showcase has become much more national in scope,” says event coordinator Mary Dee Morrison, special events director of the Sonoma County Wineries Association. “We’re getting responses from across the country.”

Ten chefs from the SOS network will be joining local winery chefs to produce the lunches and dinners. Simultaneously, the showcase has attracted national sponsorship and the biggest, fluffiest feather in a food event’s cap: Food & Wine magazine.

Most local participants agree that broadening the national understanding of Sonoma County’s offerings is important, but they also are aiming for shifts on the local level. Hobart hopes that the showcase will be compelling enough to draw the Sonoma Valley auction (a completely separate event that started eight years ago) into the fold for one mega-event that includes the whole county. She believes the showcase also marks a new era of cooperation between the regions in the county. “People see us as separate, bickering appellation groups,” says Hobart. “That’s not really true, but the perception is reinforced by the separate events.”

Others are hoping for increased local awareness of the interconnection between food and wine. This linkage may seem obvious, but strangely has been underemphasized at auctions past. Chef/caterer Barbara Hom, for one, is excited that the food of Sonoma County is finally getting the limelight that it deserves. “We need to learn that the wine doesn’t stand alone anymore,” says Hom, who has been cooking at the auction/showcase for almost a decade. “The wine can’t exist without the food.”

From the July 8-14, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Old Gold

Michael Amsler

White wine worthy of respect

By Bob Johnson

IF THE CHENIN BLANC grape were a department store, it would be Kmart. If it were a sport, it would be bowling. If it were a comedian, it would be Rodney Dangerfield, or at least the persona Rodney portrays. When it comes to respect in the modern wine world, dozens of grape varieties garner greater degrees than chenin blanc.

Until chardonnay exploded in popularity during the 1980s, there was more chenin blanc planted in California than any other white wine grape. It remains ubiquitous today, but only a small percentage finds its way into varietal bottlings; most is blended away, often used to “stretch” more expensive white wines, including chardonnay.

Sometimes the most dependable, hardest-working laborers are overlooked by their supervisors, who bestow promotions upon more gregarious, if less productive, workers. And so it is with chenin blanc, which one winemaker has described as having “the personality of a well-behaved child.”

The grape is cooperative in a number of ways. It tends to ripen smack in the middle of harvest season, necessitating neither early call-ups of the troops nor brow-furrowing over sufficient ripening. It is easy to pick, growing in compact clusters. And its tough skin allows it to make the trip from the vineyard to the crusher with minimal damage. It’s a grape that does not require a great deal of thinking on the part of winemakers, so most vintners simply turn the grapes into wine and save their brain cells for the more cerebral pursuits of crafting world-class cabernet sauvignon and similarly flashy varietals.

Those who know of the grape’s heritage are more likely to appreciate its distinct and delicate nuances. In the Loire Valley of France, chenin blanc is the exclusive ingredient of wines labeled Vouvray, Savennieres, and Coteaux du Layon, all highly acclaimed and much sought after.

In California, a handful of knowing vintners have embraced chenin blanc as both a wine of distinction and a viable commercial product. And at least a couple of them practice their craft here in Sonoma County.

Perhaps the most consistent local purveyor of quality chenin blanc is Dry Creek Vineyard, which has been sourcing grapes from the Clarksburg appellation of the Sacramento Delta region for years. The winery’s chenin blanc from the 1981 vintage included Clarksburg grapes, and the recently released 1998 vintage is 100 percent Clarksburg.

Winemaker David Stare–whose vintages of chenin blanc have garnered more than 30 gold medals from esteemed wine competitions–says the reason his bottlings stand out is that he takes them seriously. He handles them with the same attention to detail accorded other wines that command prices three or four times higher.

INDEED, for the consumer, another lure of quality chenin blanc is its price. Dry Creek’s 1998 vintage carries an SRP of $8.75. Another outstanding maker, Alexander Valley Vineyards, asks just two bits more for its 1997 rendition. Purchase by the case, and the customary 15 percent discount offered at the wineries makes either wine a strong candidate for one’s “house white.”

When it comes to California chenin blanc, the names that tend to get the most press are Chappellet, Chalone, and Ventana. Dry Creek unquestionably deserves to be in the same strata, with Alexander Valley perhaps one notch below. Other California wineries that take chenin blanc seriously include Durney, Husch, Pine Ridge, and Mirassou.

While chenin blanc can be made dry, off-dry. or sweet, the most memorable versions are dry, floral, and fruity. They’re also versatile, making palate-pleasing companions to fish and chicken dishes, as well as refreshing aperitifs.

In the early ’70s, David Stare raised the eyebrows but ultimately garnered the respect of old-time county farmers when he decided to buck the trends of the day, uproot a productive and profitable prune orchard, and plant grapevines. Similarly, Alexander Valley Vineyards’ Hank Wetzel has gained a reputation for making wines true to their varietal and geographic character.

Respect can’t be bought; it must be earned. Any Davis or Fresno grad can forge a reputation with the right cabernet grapes, but it takes a true pro, a consummate vintner, to gain acclaim via chenin blanc.

This reality may not be fair, but as Walter Cronkite–a journalist who knows a thing or two about respect–would say, that’s the way it is.

From the July 1-7, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.