20 April 2010

WHEN I'M NOT DRINKING WINE

I have escaped from San Francisco, just in time to save my liver. Despite the proximity to Napa, Sonoma and hundreds of other wine growing areas that bound the Bay area, the locals are into cocktails.

We loved the Pisco Sour, traditional Comopolitans, innovative spicy mixes with vodka and gin, and several other amazing concoctions the bar men shook for us. Judith Tabron called this breakfast as she claimed the egg white in the drinnk was adequate qualification! And when we ordered cocktails they were there in front of us before we could blink.

Not so with the wine. It seemed to take an age to arrive. In one restaurant, the bottle of wine that accompanied our dinner was the only wine I could spot being consumed in the entire restaurant. But there are some goodies. Californian pinots are dark and broody, chardonnay is oaky and huge on the whole (isn't this where ABC started?), and most wine lists we saw listed a stunning selection of regional Italian wines predominantly. Spotted on one wine list; Pyramid Valley Sauvignon Blanc, with the symbol for bio-dynamic alongside. Hurray for New Zealand.