Get Comfortable

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Get Comfortable

Jim and Michele Wimborough had a dream: Leave the
big city and move
to a small town where they could open a little restaurant of their own. They did it, and opened Hazel in Occidental six weeks ago. It’s a great addition to the West County’s dining scene.

The restaurant, located in what was Bistro de Copains, is an intimate, cheery place with large windows and a wood-fired oven focal point. As I walked up to the restaurant one night, smoke curled up from the chimney and rose against the backdrop of St. Philip church and the dense greenery of the western hills above, looking like a scene from New England. The nip of early fall was in the air. The cozy glow inside made Hazel an appealing place to be, a feeling that grew once the food arrived.

The menu of Mediterranean-inspired dishes reads the community well. I call it West County comfort food: wood-fired pizza, braised short ribs, roasted chicken and a variety of appealing starters sourced from local purveyors. The wines all come from Sonoma County. It’s familiar stuff, but quality ingredients and skillful execution elevate the restaurant above another “meat loaf and mashed potatoes” joint. A weekday meal doesn’t feel like a splurge but still qualifies as a special night out.

Starters are usually where the fireworks are, and that’s the case at Hazel. My favorite was the cured scallops draped with golden Calabrian chile oil and topped with sliced radishes, spring onions, lime juice and tiny, jewel-like Bronx grapes ($9). It’s a beautiful plate of food, with exquisitely balanced flavors. I also loved the roasted octopus ($11). Too often rendered as tough as surgical tubing, here I could have cut it with a spoon. The meaty flavor of the cephalopod is well matched with the creamy white beans, grapefruit and orange, fennel and olives.

Heirloom tomato salads are a menu cliché, but that’s forgiven when they’re as good as they are at Hazel ($8). For sheer comfort appeal, go for the fried Brussels sprouts tossed with bacon and a dusting of Estero Gold cheese ($8).

Pizzas are great. The corn pizza ($13) with cherry tomatoes, jalapeños and Pugs Leap chèvre is a standout. The crust is at once crunchy, soft inside and wonderfully rich.

Main courses hit their target, too. I’m a sucker for roasted chicken, and Hazel delivered with a succulent mix of breast, wing and leg that did time in the wood oven ($20). The crisp-skinned bird was stacked atop a satisfying cannellini bean ragout shot through with bacon, leeks and tomatoes. Best of all was the preternaturally juicy roast lamb loin ($27).

While Jim cooks, Michele runs the front of the house and turns out some great desserts ($7–$8). Pies and crisps sell out fast. Be sure to order the ridiculously creamy chocolate pot de crème.

There is outdoor seating in the front and back, but hold out for a seat inside. It gets chilly outside, and there are no heat lamps yet. And when it gets busy, which it usually does, it’s easy to feel a bit forgotten. Inside is where the action is.

Hazel, 3782 Bohemian Hwy., Occidental. 707.874.6603.

Say It Twice

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Say It Twice

A highlight of every summer is Petaluma’s “Live at Lagunitas” series at the Lagunitas TapRoom & Brewery. With this season coming to a close, the brewery has a special treat when experimental Philadelphia rockers Man Man take the stage Sept. 14.

In addition to a set of highly energetic grooves and infectious melodies, the concert will also feature a chance for the audience to participate in what’s being called the “Man Man Uke Uke Jam Jam.” This tongue twister is open to anyone with a ukulele who wants to get in on a jam session with the band and play a cover of their song “Deep Cover,” which will be filmed and no doubt uploaded to Youtube within the hour. Heads up, the Uke Uke Jam Jam is a separate ticket from the concert, both of which need to be picked up through the band’s website.

“Deep Cover” is from Man Man’s latest album, On Oni Pond. The record sees the band maturing from reckless abandon to rhythmic rambling. Light on the guitar squeals that defined their early output, Man Man are actually flirting with pop these days, though they still retain their unpredictable streaks of freak-folk weirdness, complete with psychobilly keyboards, dark funk jams and the occasional xylophone thrown in for fun.

BYOU(kulele) when Man Man rock
out on Monday, Sept. 14, at the Lagunitas Amphitheaterette, 1280 N. McDowell Blvd., Petaluma. 4:20pm. Free with RSVP. 707.778.8776.

‘City’ Falters

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‘City’ Falters

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than perhaps disappointment is the purest reflection of respect.

There are few theater companies in the Bay Area that have earned the level of respect and admiration that Cinnabar Theater has over its 43 years of presenting quality theater, opera and musicals. So maybe it’s because the company has built up such an expectation of artistic excellence that Cinnabar’s current production of Larry Gelbart’s

City of Angels ranks as such a baffling disappointment.

While the outstanding lighting, engineering and orchestral achievements of this technically challenging production do meet the high standards that Cinnabar audiences tend to look forward to, the woefully uneven cast, despite a few fine performances and some appealing voices, as a whole falls far short.

City of Angels, a clever, funny, supremely twisty story-within-a-story, takes place partially in the mind of a pulp-fiction novelist turned Hollywood screenwriter (Domonic Tracy, earnest but one-note), as he casually cheats on his long-suffering wife (an excellent Kelly Britt, among the show’s few standouts) while working to turn one of his novels into a Hollywood screenplay. When not in bed with a sweet, hard-luck Hollywood secretary (Cary Ann Rosko, also strong), the unlikable novelist locks horns with his imperious, gleefully amoral movie producer (Spencer Dodd, hollering every line like a cartoon character).

Intermingling with the “real life” story is the fictional tale being adapted for the film, a potboiler featuring a hardboiled gumshoe named Stone (James Pfeiffer, painfully stiff and vocally unsuited to the part), as he tracks down the missing daughter of a wealthy socialite (Maria Mikheyenko, strong-voiced and playfully fetching as the obvious femme fatale).

Most of the actors play dual roles. Director Nathan Cummings keeps the flip-flopping narratives clear, assisted by Wayne Hovey’s set featuring two rotating platforms and crisp projections, Robin DeLucca’s atmospherically double-duty light design and Lisa Claybaugh’s delightful costumes. The musical direction by Mary Chun is also quite effective.

If only the same care had been taken with the performances.

With the above-noted exceptions, the mismatched cast rarely rises to the level of surreal authenticity demanded by Gelbart’s oft-hilarious script, falling far short of the kind of harmonic theatrical magic we expect from Cinnabar.

Rating (out of 5): ★★½

Three Thousand Nights Later

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Three Thousand Nights Later

A few weeks ago, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors signed up to reverse more than 35 years of federal neglect and human suffering. Their remarkable plan to raise $110 million and build 2,200 homes over the next 10 years promises an end to widespread and chronic homelessness in the county.

County staff have developed a 91-page report, “Building Homes:
A Policy Maker’s Toolbox for Ending Homelessness,” with a multitude of ideas that include zoning changes, higher densities, remodeling of unused buildings, new fees, use of surplus land, allowance for smaller living spaces and more.

One hundred ten million dollars is a lot of cash. The supervisors expect to invest “substantial money” in the project and create a housing trust fund for the remodeling and building of the new homes. But without money from other government and private sources, this plan will flounder.

It isn’t just the money: the potential for 2,200 new homes for very poor people is likely to trigger widespread paranoia. Burbank Housing has demonstrated that small groups of low-income housing do no damage to property values or neighborhood culture. Despite this, people continue to show up at hearings with 101 reasons why living spaces for poor people simply won’t work near their homes.

Given all this, 10 years is a short window to fund and build 2,200 homes. But it’s a long window for those who will sleep on the street tonight. Ten years is 3,650 nights, nights that will destroy lives and forever wound those who have to live through them without shelter.

It is often said that the supervisors are beholden to developer and landlord money. This plan is an opportunity for them to demonstrate their even-handedness. And it’s an opportunity for you to be part of the solution.

Tell the supervisors that the homeless need to be deeply involved in the planning. Then tell them you strongly support these interim solutions: legal encampments, rent control and just-cause evictions and shelter at the former hospital site on Chanate Road. Hopefully, that shelter will only be needed for the next 3,650 nights.

Adrienne Lauby is a member of Homeless Action! and a producer-host of KPFA’s ‘Pushing Limits,’ which covers disability issues.

Open Mic is a weekly feature in the ‘Bohemian.’ To have your topical essay of 350 words considered for publication, write op*****@******an.com.

Letters to the Editor: September 9, 2015

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Letters to the Editor: September 9, 2015

Up a Creek

Time to remove all pumps along the creeks and rivers. Absolute greed and damage to the river has occurred due to pumping for grapes. Withdraw all grape pump stations now! Not printed was the number of residential developments demanding water from wells located within 30 feet of Green Valley Creek.

—Brad Pipal

Via Bohemian.com

It’s time for responsible local growers who truly care about the long-term viability of Sonoma County’s wine industry to part ways with reactionaries like Tito Sasaki and others who still defend a status quo that has led us to this point of crisis (“Coho vs. Pinot,”
Sept. 2). Millennials won’t buy wine that was paid for in fish blood.

—Wine Party Patriot

Via Bohemian.com

I thought your article “Coho vs. Pinot” was an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue in this county about the wine industry. As a member of the wine industry, I would have appreciated two additions. First, it would have been useful to compare the water usage of vineyards to other crops that could take their place. Second, it would have been of great benefit to show the heterogeneity of water usage within the wine industry. How do the big three wineries in Sonoma County stack up? I would bet that Kendall-Jackson is more sparing with water than Constellation and Gallo.

And what about the many growers I see at seminar after seminar learning how to reduce water usage? It’s great that we have seen large-scale, voluntary water-use reduction in certain areas, but there are many individual farmers quietly cutting supply (and often their own profits), with no fanfare, marketing benefit or monetary return on that investment.

Gabriel Froymovich Healdsburg

Twenty-five thousand steelhead did not die. The estimate you cited in your recent article is not factually based. It’s amazing how people continue to regurgitate this number without ever examining its validity.

—Sean White
General Manager, Russian River Flood Control District

Mendocino County

Will Parrish Replies: National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) staff members who investigated fish strandings on the upper Russian River generated the estimate of some 25,000 steelhead mortalities in the spring of 2008. They explain the rationale for the estimate in a March 2011 memorandum titled “Biological Context of the Spring 2008 De-Watering Event in the Upper Mainstem of the Russian River.” In a 2012 interview with Wine Business Monthly, NMFS biologist David Hines notes that he and other federal biologists produced the estimate at the request of Rep. Mike Thompson, and it was based on the best information available at the time.

Write to us at le*****@******an.com.

Holds Up

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Holds Up

Possessing a mane of long, blonde hair and a blazing alt-country sound, Danny Click is an immediately recognizable figure in Marin County’s music scene, fronting his popular band the Hell Yeahs! and releasing acclaimed albums of original tunes since moving to the North Bay in 2006.

Click’s new record, Holding Up the Sun, is due out Sept. 18 on Dogstar Records. It’s a solo release from Click, and the San Rafael songwriter celebrates with a solo acoustic concert on Sept. 12 in Mill Valley. Copies of the album will be on hand, as will many of Click’s close friends, like guitarist Stevie Coyle and vocalist Elliott Peck.

Before moving to Marin, Click spent 20 years as the best-kept secret in Austin, sharing stages with legends like Stevie Ray Vaughn and Lucinda Williams, and touring extensively with Jimmy LaFave. He first visited the area as a member of LaFave’s band and eventually moved to Marin County.

“Marin County’s kind of like the Kryptonite of Austin,” Click says. “Texas, not Austin as much, but Texas is really a backwards-thinking state. It’s the polar opposite that way here, but it’s very simpatico in the art and music scene. It’s a wonderful melting pot of talent here.”

Since relocating and forming the Hell Yeahs!, Click has become a staple at venues like Terrapin Crossroads and has jammed with Carlos Santana, Elvin Bishop and Phil Lesh. Click’s last studio album, 2011’s Life Is a Good Place, spent more than a year on the country, pop and Americana charts; his 2013 single release, “Baptize Me Over Elvis Presley’s Grave,” even got airtime on the country cable channel CMT.

For the new album, Click enlisted another music legend in Los Angeles producer Jim Scott, whose credits include engineering for the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and Johnny Cash.

“It was really an amazing experience,” says Click. “He’s a big believer of playing it live, and the sounds we got were fantastic.”

Click and friends, including members of the Hell Yeahs!, spent two weeks in Scott’s PLYRZ Studios, a quick turnaround for any band. “That’s all we had money for,” laughs Click. “Jim really did bring out the best in us.”

Holding up the Sun is one of Click’s most wide-reaching albums yet, full of lush Americana melodies and Click’s serene, but sizzling guitar work. The album’s title track, a ballad, was co-written with singer-songwriter Jessie Bridges (daughter of Jeff Bridges).

“We came up with the song in about 20 minutes,” says Click. “It’s not what I typically do, but it’s one of my favorite songs that I’ve ever written.”

The Red Menace

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The Red Menace

Every summer, recreational oyster and shellfish harvesters brace themselves for the period from May through October when red tides prohibit recreational shellfish harvesting in coastal waters along the California coast.

“Red tides” (or “harmful algal blooms,” as scientists prefer to call them) occur when colonies of phytoplankton, a form of algae, begin to rapidly reproduce. The result: millions of cells per gallon of water. As the name implies, the bloom turns the water red because of a pigment present in each cell.

Phytoplankton is present in ocean waters throughout the year, but blooms occur only when ocean temperatures and salinity are favorable, usually May through October on the northern California coast.

But that may be changing.

The Pacific Ocean is a vast body of water whose relatively constant temperature moderates the climate and provides a stable habitat for marine life. But the coastal ocean in Marin and Sonoma counties is actually getting warmer.

The Bodega Ocean Observing Node at UC Davis’ Bodega Marine Laboratory in Sonoma County has been tracking ocean temperatures along our coast for decades. Ocean temperature at the lab in August 1988, as reported on its website, was 58.1 degrees. At the same location on Aug. 30 of this year, the temperature was 61.8 degrees.

A 3.7 degree gain is significant and troubling. In warmer waters, algal blooms will begin sooner and last longer, and with this longer growing season, they may begin to produce biochemicals not previously seen.

Dinoflagellates, a type of single-celled phytoplankton, produce a biotoxin called saxotoxin, which has been the primary concern during red-tide season. Saxotoxin accumulates in filter feeders such as mussels and oysters. Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP), which can be fatal to humans and marine life, is caused by the ingestion of saxotoxin.

According to the Alaska Division of Public Health, saxotoxin is 1,000 times more potent than cyanide. And PSP toxins are not destroyed by heating or freezing, so cooking contaminated shellfish does not make it safe to eat.

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) ensures that, with thorough and regular testing, all commercially available oysters and other shellfish are safe for human consumption year-round. But recreationally harvested oysters and shellfish can be very high-risk.

Historically, PSP was the problem during red tide season. But in 1998, the Marine Mammal Center in Marin County diagnosed the first case of domoic acid poisoning in marine mammals. Domoic acid is a biotoxin produced by diatoms, another type of single-celled algae which blooms as seawater warms. Domoic acid causes amnesic shellfish poisoning as it accumulates in shellfish, sardines and anchovies, which may then be eaten by larger marine mammals.

On Aug. 26, the CDPH issued a warning to consumers in Humboldt and Del Norte counties to avoid eating bivalve shellfish because of dangerous levels of domoic acid. That warning was already in place in Santa Cruz, Monterey and Santa Barbara counties. According to John Largier, professor of coastal oceanography at the Bodega Marine Lab, the same warning may be issued for Marin and Sonoma counties in the next month.

“The Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin county coastal waters will become warmer in the next few weeks to a month as our cool ocean upwelling system weakens” says Largier, “and it is very likely that the diatoms will then begin to bloom and the same warning will be issued here as well.”

There may also be a third biotoxin, not previously present in significant concentrations on the north coast. “Okadaic acid, which causes diarrhetic shellfish poisoning, may become a problem as our coastal waters continue warming and we begin to see more temperature gradient stratification,” says Raphael Kudela, professor of ocean studies at UC Santa Cruz. Produced by several species of dinoflagellates, okadaic acid also accumulates in shellfish.

It’s possible red tides could last all year on the North Coast, and that could mean trouble for local shellfish lovers. Will there be a recreational shellfish harvest in Marin and Sonoma in 10 or 20 years?

The commercial oyster industry in Tomales Bay is already grappling with problems caused by ocean acidification. How will the industry cope with higher temperatures and the presence of multiple biotoxins in the coastal ocean environment?

As climatologist Nick Bond put it, “This may be a dress rehearsal for climate change.”

Laguna Legacy

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Laguna Legacy

‘The Laguna
de Santa Rosa watershed
is a huge part of what makes Sonoma County so special,” says Kevin Munroe, the new executive director of the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation.

This weekend, the foundation celebrates 25 years of ecological conservation by throwing its largest party of the year, the Laguna Garden Gala, on Sept. 13 in Sebastopol.

“The Laguna is why we have fertile soil, it’s why we have so much fantastic food here; it’s why we have drinking water,” says Munroe. “But when I’m talking about the Laguna, that word means different things to different people.”

For some, the Laguna de Santa Rosa is a trail out in west Sonoma County that runs from Highway 12 to Occidental Road. For others, it’s that plain near Sebastopol that floods every year.

There is an actual water channel, a 22-mile network of streams that begins near Petaluma and runs into the Russian River. When heavy rains overtake the streams, the water runs back and floods into the 30,000-acre Laguna Wetlands. But even larger is the 254-square mile Laguna watershed that stretches from Windsor to Cotati, and from Sebastopol to Oakmont in east Santa Rosa.

Formed in 1989, the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation works with county and city agencies, private landowners, agricultural businesses and schools in the area to lead restoration projects that remove trash, replant native trees and care for endangered animals, as well as provide educational programs at the foundation’s Laguna Environmental Center in west Santa Rosa.

As the foundation celebrates 25 years of ecological conservation, Munroe is celebrating 25 days on the job, hired just last month by the foundation’s board of directors.

Munroe’s earliest memories are of holding turtles and beetles while exploring the creeks and fields of Fairfax County, Va., where he grew up. Early in his career, Munroe became interested in the connection between ecological education and conservation. “They’re inseparable,” he says. “I feel you can’t talk about one without talking about the other.”

As a nonprofit, the Laguna Foundation relies on volunteers as well as grants and donations to suppourt educational and conservational programs. Now in its 12th year, the annual Laguna Garden Gala is the foundation’s largest fundraising event, and this weekend looks to be the biggest to date.

The gala boasts work by over 60 local artists available for sale in a silent auction. Additionally, a live auction offers packages like whale watching and kayaking.

Artisan food, local wines and craft beers, live music and more fun await at the gala, though if you’re not able to attend, you can still donate online and help keep the Laguna and Sonoma County healthy and thriving.

Think Pink

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Think Pink

The next time you’re tempted to roll your eyes on the topic of White Zinfandel, consider this: it was meant to be a bone dry wine with distinctly Gallic pretensions.

In 1972, Bob Trinchero made a truly white wine from Zinfandel, according to Sutter Home. He called it “Oeil de Perdrix,” a florid French term for such wines. It was not a success. In 1975, the wine ended up sweet, and the rest is history—it really is: an original bottle sits pink and pretty in the Smithsonian, along with the Chateau Montelena 1973 Chardonnay. Sounds like a party in there.

Sutter Home 40th Anniversary California White Zinfandel ($6) This starts off on a note of powdered raspberry and strawberry, finishing up with lightly fruity flavors of watermelon and raspberry. Low pH keeps the medium-sweet sugar profile in check, and at just 9.5 percent alcohol by volume (abv), it’s a reasonably refreshing rosé you can knock back without much harm done.

Buehler 2014 California White Zinfandel ($10) Bold and unafraid is the Napa Valley Cabernet producer who also makes White Zin, truly a misnomer for this bright pink version. With sweet notes of dried cranberries and raspberries, this gets to the bottom of what the Sutter Home only hints at: maraschino cherry. Simple, irresistible and just sweet enough to wake up that sleeper sweet tooth you didn’t know you had and make it clamor for another sip. Keep away from the grill master if you don’t want your burgers burnt. (11 percent abv)

Pedroncelli 2014 Dry Creek Valley Dry Rosé of Zinfandel ($12) Although the winery has been making pink Zin since the 1950s, Pedroncelli has sought to distance itself from White Zinfandel in more recent years by emphasizing a “dry” style in both name and practice. This deep pink wine is indeed dry, and signs off with a little grip on the palate, but I wish I could find the fruit in the haystack of its aroma. (13.9 percent abv)

Bucklin 2014 Sonoma Valley Rosé of Old Hill Ranch ($20)
A different approach to rosé of Zinfandel: throw it in a blend
(28 percent) with the classic grapes of Southern Rhône rosé. From a vineyard renowned for its field blend of old-vine Zin and other varieties, this has a pale salmon hue, not pink, and might be described in more mineral and floral than outright fruity terms—try getting your White Zin sipper interested in something that smells like “crushed rock.” Although subtle, flavored with mere tinctures of orange raspberry, nectarine and strawberry, this is not lacking: it’s all about texture, deriving a sweet, creamy sensation, not from residual sugar, but likely from a generous portion of Grenache
(33 percent), a famously fleshy grape in such blends. (12.8 percent abv)

Labor Day Weekend Wine-and-Bites Ballyhoo in Healdsburg, with the Crew

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Labor Day Weekend Wine-and-Bites Ballyhoo in Healdsburg, with the Crew

Hello and welcome to your post-Labor Day Fishing Report. I had the good fortune to get invited with some of the Bohemian crew to the Taste of Sonoma event up at MacMurray Estate Vineyards in Healdsburg, on Saturday over the long weekend. The even was part of the three-day Sonoma Wine County Weekend. Glad I went. My colleagues from the sales department, Augusto Leon and Lisa Santos, Lynda Rael and Rosemary Olson, made for a delightfully fun and easygoing afternoon nestled among the sublimely beautiful vineyards and hills of Healdsburg.

There were a few highlights along the way. I grabbed a bunch of business cards as I worked through the variously packed tents to try and keep them all straight, and also took a few opportunities to find a quiet spot to take it all in. The MacMurray grounds are vast and it wasn’t too hard to find some uncrowded space in the shade, in the grass, on a haystack, from whence to observe the goings-on in a spirit of bemusement and the eternal frolic. 

I had a few sips of Pinot Noir from various vineyards (am I really supposed to recall all of them? There were over 200 represented here).

There were many enjoyable bites on offer paired with the wines, which included a fine square of seared albacore tuna in a paper ramekin; a tidbit of tri-tip on toast, fried balls of mac-and-cheese, and salty oysters on the half, courtesy of ace shucker-servers (and our friends), the Oyster Girls. The latter was featured in the so-called “Bubble Lounge,” where there was a bubble machine and lots of bubbly refreshments from Gloria Ferrer Caves and Vineyards. 

Elsewhere, a cup of butterscotch pudding emerged from the Patisserie Angelica, in Sebastopol. Banned cliche alert: it was to die for.

Sazon, the Peruvian joint in Santa Rosa, put out a ceviche that was accompanied by one of the great plaintain chips of the 21st Century. Meanwhile, Santa Rosa’s Belly offered up some rich morsels of fatty pig belly—another memorable micro-bite down the gullet with barely a pause to reflect that I was supposed to go no-pork-on-my-fork in my 48th year. Tomorrow. Besides, where’s the fork?

Disappointments were few and far between. I saw one woman of quite sophisticated affect gnawing on a nice big beef rib and was almost moved to rip it from her fist. Never did find those ribs. The heaviest conversation I got into all afternoon concerned my attire, and the apparently unforgivable faux pas I committed: I wore white linen to a wine-tasting event. For shame! I did slobber a sauced-up strand of ramen noodle all over it within 10 minutes of arriving, which is why we have dry cleaners.

My coworkers crowed over multiple varieties of caviar on a cracker in the Bubble Zone, and we all enjoyed music performed by a bunch of bearded hillbillies, who should change their name to just that: A Bunch of Bearded Hillbillies.

As the day wore on, the wine was decanted, and people started to enter their prospective and proverbial cups, a generalized swoozy uptick in the energy level was discerned. This was punctuated at the end of the event, near the shuttle-bus stop, by a man who announced, loud and proud and to no-one in particular, that his next stop was San Francisco for a Billy Joel concert that night.

His fragrant outburst reminded me how Joel had memorably wrapped his car around a few unlucky trees in the tony town of East Hampton, New York, over the years. I did not mention this to the man or to my colleagues, but merely note the outburst to highlight the insistence by which Taste of Sonoma does not want their attendees to wind up in jail on a DUI.

The drill here is lots of designated drivers and shuttle services from points all around the region to this event and the two others that flesh out the Taste of Sonoma Weekend.

Me, I had a few sips of Pinot Noir and then switched over to iced coffee.  

My overall impression? As a relative newcomer both to California and these sorts of epic and iconic events centered around wine, my takeaway is that organizers of this vast, three-event fund-raising blowout across the county really have the logistics down cold. It’s just a fantastic event, and this year they raised more money than ever, $4.5 million for underprivileged Sonoma kids, at the Sonoma Harvest Wine Auction that went down on Sunday. The event had kicked of Friday at the Coppola vineyard in Geyserville. 

Given that the MacMurray event on Saturday was attended by thousands of people on a hot day, bellies bursting with wine by the end of it, there would seem to be ample opportunity for parking-lot beat-downs or other besotted meltdowns. I frankly wish I’d seen one or two of those. I love that kind of stuff, especially when it doesn’t involve me.

Yet the event went down as smooth as those few last silky drops of Pinot Noir swirling down yonder in my glass.

   

 

Get Comfortable

Jim and Michele Wimborough had a dream: Leave the big city and move to a small town where they could open a little restaurant of their own. They did it, and opened Hazel in Occidental six weeks ago. It's a great addition to the West County's dining scene. The restaurant, located in what was Bistro de Copains, is an intimate,...
Read more

Say It Twice

A highlight of every summer is Petaluma's "Live at Lagunitas" series at the Lagunitas TapRoom & Brewery. With this season coming to a close, the brewery has a special treat when experimental Philadelphia rockers Man Man take the stage Sept. 14. In addition to a set of highly energetic grooves and infectious melodies, the concert will also feature a chance...
Read more

‘City’ Falters

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than perhaps disappointment is the purest reflection of respect. There are few theater companies in the Bay Area that have earned the level of respect and admiration that Cinnabar Theater has over its 43 years of presenting quality theater, opera and musicals. So maybe it's because the company has built up such...
Read more

Three Thousand Nights Later

A few weeks ago, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors signed up to reverse more than 35 years of federal neglect and human suffering. Their remarkable plan to raise $110 million and build 2,200 homes over the next 10 years promises an end to widespread and chronic homelessness in the county. County staff have developed a 91-page report, "Building Homes:...
Read more

Letters to the Editor: September 9, 2015

Up a Creek Time to remove all pumps along the creeks and rivers. Absolute greed and damage to the river has occurred due to pumping for grapes. Withdraw all grape pump stations now! Not printed was the number of residential developments demanding water from wells located within 30 feet of Green Valley Creek. —Brad Pipal Via Bohemian.com It's time for responsible local growers...
Read more

Holds Up

Possessing a mane of long, blonde hair and a blazing alt-country sound, Danny Click is an immediately recognizable figure in Marin County's music scene, fronting his popular band the Hell Yeahs! and releasing acclaimed albums of original tunes since moving to the North Bay in 2006. Click's new record, Holding Up the Sun, is due out Sept. 18 on Dogstar...
Read more

The Red Menace

Every summer, recreational oyster and shellfish harvesters brace themselves for the period from May through October when red tides prohibit recreational shellfish harvesting in coastal waters along the California coast. "Red tides" (or "harmful algal blooms," as scientists prefer to call them) occur when colonies of phytoplankton, a form of algae, begin to rapidly reproduce. The result: millions of cells...
Read more

Laguna Legacy

'The Laguna de Santa Rosa watershed is a huge part of what makes Sonoma County so special," says Kevin Munroe, the new executive director of the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation. This weekend, the foundation celebrates 25 years of ecological conservation by throwing its largest party of the year, the Laguna Garden Gala, on Sept. 13 in Sebastopol. "The Laguna is...
Read more

Think Pink

The next time you're tempted to roll your eyes on the topic of White Zinfandel, consider this: it was meant to be a bone dry wine with distinctly Gallic pretensions. In 1972, Bob Trinchero made a truly white wine from Zinfandel, according to Sutter Home. He called it "Oeil de Perdrix," a florid French term for such wines. It was...
Read more

Labor Day Weekend Wine-and-Bites Ballyhoo in Healdsburg, with the Crew

Hello and welcome to your post-Labor Day Fishing Report. I had the good fortune to get invited with some of the Bohemian crew to the Taste of Sonoma event up at MacMurray Estate Vineyards in Healdsburg, on Saturday over the long weekend. The even was part of the three-day Sonoma Wine County Weekend. Glad I went. My colleagues from...
Read more
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CURRENT ISSUE & ARCHIVES
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