Waiting for crabs, watching for whales

Crab pots waiting to be filled

On a recent day at the Sonoma County coastline, I saw row after row of colorful crab pots neatly stacked near the water in Bodega Bay, waiting to be dropped into the sea and filled with delectable Dungeness crab. If you visit Wine Country in late autumn through early spring, you can expect to find fresh crabs caught off our shores in area grocery stores, specialty markets, and also featured on the menus at many inland and seaside restaurants. The coastal stores (such as The Tides) also carry fresh bread, cheeses, bottles of wine, and many other goodies for assembling a daytime picnic or after-dark dinner in the privacy of your hotel room.

As an appetizer, one two-pound crab easily satisfies two people; buy two crabs, some prepared salad, and a loaf of crusty bread and you have a substantial dinner or lunch for two or three. Ask the fish market to clean the crabs (a nasty job better left to the pros) and crack the shell lightly. Stock up on napkins or paper towels (mining the crabmeat can get messy, but that's part of the fun), and have your favorite cocktail sauce handy, if you so desire (I like my crab straight). Pour yourself a glass of Sauvignon Blanc (tastes great with crab) and then, dig, dip, and devour.

A choppy sea at Bodega Head on September 27

While waiting for crab season, scores of locals and visitors are perched high on Bodega Head, binoculars and cameras in hand, enjoying the sight of whales spouting and splashing. Just in the past week I witnessed numerous spoutings by the playful humpback and blue whales, which scientists say have been lured by a population explosion of krill, a shrimp-like crustacean. The whales seem to be taking their time feasting on the krill, the better to entertain the humans who are all jostling for the best viewing spot. Sometimes the wind on the Head can be brutal, with the meek running back to their cars to grab parkas. At other times it's glorious – calm, warm, and overcast. Word to the wise: try to make it there in the morning, when you don't have to squint into the sun to see some of the largest mammals on Earth.

If a restaurant door closes, another opens

Even in the best of times, restaurants come and go. A few featured in my book (The Insiders' Guide to California's Wine Country) have now closed, such as Bleaux Magnolia, Piccolino's Italian Cafe, Tuscany, Wappo Bar & Bistro, Deuce, Alice's Restaurant. They were victims of the recession or bad luck, or helmed by chefs who wanted to move on to other ventures. But several great new joints have opened that are worth mentioning. In Yountville is Bottega, the latest Italian-inspired eaterie from famed chef Michael Chiarello. There's also Norman Rose in downtown Napa. Smaller and more downscale (read: a favorite of locals) is El Coqui, on a busy corner in downtown Santa Rosa. It's Puerto Rican food –– bring on the Sangria and plantains!

Duskie

I'm pleased to report that Duskie Estes, a fabulous chef and genuinely nice person who co-owns two restaurants in Wine Country (Zazu and Bovolo) with her husband, John Stewart, will be competing on the upcoming season of "The Next Iron Chef" –– along with other serious-looking, driven contestants –– for that coveted title. I interviewed Duskie for my book and also featured one of her and John's tasty recipes suitable for any home cook to try (see page 100). The Iron Chef website misspells Zazu, but we'll forgive their blunder for the time being. Catch the season premiere of The Next Iron Chef on the Food Network on October 3, and tune in each week to root for Duskie. Please.

Guy in a familiar pose

Meanwhile, another Sonoma County chef who became famous a few years back for his domination of the Food Network is now more of a character than a cook. Guy Fieri's prime-time game show "Minute to Win It" on NBC has nothing to do with the restaurant industry, but people seem to dig his over-the-top, dude-on-steroids persona anyway. Go figure. Santa Rosans like myself are scratching our heads, wondering when Guy's long-closed Tex Wasabi restaurant downtown will reopen after major "remodeling." Or perhaps he's become too famous to return to Sonoma County for good. Even the master, Anthony Bourdain, told Guy to grow up and clean up his act, in front of a SRO crowd in Santa Rosa. Stay tuned.

Best art collection in Wine Country

Detail of an outdoor exhibit at di Rosa's main gallery

Expect the unusual at di Rosa, a phenomenal collection of contemporary art spread over 200 acres on a hillside in the Carneros region southwest of Napa. The first gallery you encounter up the stairs from the parking lot, called the Gatehouse, is open to drop-in visitors and features rotating exhibits. The permanent collection –– the best part, in my opinion –– is accessible only on a guided tour reached by a tram that takes you deeper into the property.

The first sculpture you encounter off the tram

Splurge on the two-hour-plus "Discovery" tour on a Saturday, if you can spare the time. Even then, you must pace yourself so you won't miss it all. Don't dawdle too long at any one spot in the main gallery, because the tram will be back before you know it. The breadth of the collection is vast, and photos just don't do the place justice. You have to see it up close to appreciate it. Reservations are strongly suggested to avoid disappointment.

So what or who is di Rosa? Rene and Veronica di Rosa began their personal art collection many decades ago, focusing primarily on Bay Area- and northern California-based artists, sculptors, and even a few scalawags. The collection now numbers more than 2,000 pieces by 800-plus visionaries. The bulk of the collection is in the main gallery, and the personal residence is also fascinating: artwork in every nook and cranny (even on the ceiling and in the bathrooms), and a kitchen with a tower that houses a huge bell you can chime.

This is a first-class destination for visitors to Wine Country, and a bargain, too (10 to 15 bucks per person).

The crush is on

See the pretty pinot noir grapes, freshly picked in the Los Carneros appellation of Sonoma County and ready for processing into a great vintage. I had the rare opportunity to follow the farmworkers in the dusty soil of an award-winning vineyard as they quickly and laboriously hand-picked these outstanding berries, then gathered them into bins for delivery to the crushing facility.

California's wine country has begun harvesting its thousands of acres of grapes, with the white varietals typically the first to be plucked from the vines for processing into sparkling wine. Depending on the weather, red wine grapes are left hanging on the vine as long as possible to develop the most flavor. It's been a challenging summer for winegrape growers in Sonoma and Napa counties: well-below-average temperatures and cloudy days went on for weeks, followed by super-hot weather, then a return to more seasonable highs and lows. There were also a couple of showers to add even more drama.

Despite the weird pattern, the 2010 vintage should be exceptional, though there may be fewer grapes harvested. Generally speaking, there are no bad years!

Recognize this?

Flags wave over the riverside patio at Morimoto

If you haven't been to the city of Napa in recent years, you might not recognize the newly re-energized downtown. There's a new hotel, new high-profile eating places, and some new stores and wine bars. Sure, some projects are on hold or no longer on the drawing board because of the recession (the Ritz-Carlton hotel proposal, for instance), but that hasn't stopped others from moving forward. A handful of must-try restaurants have opened their doors (can you say Morimoto?), and more are on the way. The renovated Uptown Theatre is booking big names in music and comedy, and the new Hotel Avia on First Street is catering to visitors seeking contemporary digs within walking distance of all the action. On the down side, it's distressing to see numerous "For Lease" signs in the older commercial buildings downtown, one more reminder that California's economy is sputtering.

When life gives you corks

So you've tried every way you can think of to reuse your wine corks, including some pointless and idiotic craft projects. Or maybe you're just not this clever and toss corks into the trash. Here's an alternative: Save up a sackful and drop it off at your nearest Whole Foods Market. This greenie store chain now has recycling containers for wine corks, which are ground up for making flooring and other products.

For some time now, the Napa Valley Wine Train has been donating garbage bags full of cast-off corks for recycling (they pour a lot of wine on the Wine Train), and the company received an award for its efforts last year from the California Integrated Waste Management Board. The fat from the train's food waste is also rendered and recycled. Altogether, approximately 71% of the train's garbage is diverted from landfills.

So many choices near Kenwood

There are so many winery tasting rooms along this stretch of Sonoma Valley's Highway 12, this pole isn't tall enough to show them all. It stands in Kenwood, just a shout away from a new store with an incredibly friendly proprietor. Daniel Green will warmly welcome you into the small but mighty space that is Victory Vittoria, a "collaboration of friends" that is packed with second-hand home decor gems, clothing, and great jewelry finds. Parking can be challenging right in front of the store (at 9255 Sonoma Highway – that's also Hwy. 12), but there's more space to the south of the building off the highway.

It's hip to be off the square

h2hotel's pop-art inspired lobby

h2hotel is the latest hip lodging in Healdsburg to pack 'em in. The name even sounds like a text message. On a recent Thursday night, each of h2's 36 rooms was spoken for, and the rates are not for the budget-minded. (Recession? What recession?) Located a bit south of the Plaza, the hotel is starkly elegant, but with colorful lobby furniture (wide-wide-wide-wale corduroy loungers with '60s-style upholstery prints) that would look appropriate in Austin Powers's flat. Another point in the hotel's favor: upstairs hallways left unadorned, with no tired and tacky watercolors of vineyards anywhere in sight. What a relief.

eeek! a Mouse!

The entrance to Stanley's gallery

Today I literally stumbled upon artist Stanley Mouse on a sidewalk in Healdsburg. He was unloading an SUV packed with some of his fine art portraits for a special show this weekend at his new gallery called Rockin Roses –– The Art of Rock and Roll. The gallery features a collection of Stanley's most famous skeleton-themed and Grateful Dead-inspired artwork, created when San Francisco was the epicenter of American rock music. Stanley was busy overseeing the installation of several large fine art pieces in a style far removed from the iconic rock images that made him a legend. Can't make it to the show? Check out the merchandise at www.rockinrosesart.com.

French toast and fishing worms

OK, so this photo was not taken in Wine Country. But this is why I love to travel America's state highways and leave the interstates to the big trucks. This sign/door greeted drivers in the parking lot of a busy cafe in a tiny Oklahoma town, along a lonely state road. I was intrigued that a plethora of fishing worms might be in such close proximity to the restroom, and be given equal billing as well. Are the worms perhaps in the restroom? I didn't ask. I did dine in this establishment, however, which had charming mismatched coffee cups bearing logos from other businesses and faraway hotels. Against my better judgment (this was also the back door into the restaurant's kitchen), but nearly faint from hunger, I enjoyed a delicious early-morning, stick-to-the-ribs breakfast. But did not have the fortitude to go looking for those worms.

Wine Country = well being

Let's face it: As places to live, some areas of the United States are just more desirable than others. Case in point: Sonoma County (more precisely, the city of Santa Rosa), which took 5th place in the U.S. in a recent list of the top 10 cities overall with the highest index of "well-being." Only four other California cities made the top 10. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index uses 42 core questions in a survey that is "scientifically designed by some of the world’s leading experts in economics, psychology and health to thoroughly measure how respondents are faring in all aspects of their lives: physically, emotionally, socially and professionally, as well as to take a daily pulse of how Americans rate the overall quality of their current life and outlook for the future."

Spin the Aroma Wheel

A few years ago, a relative of mine proudly poured me a glass of diesel fuel disguised as red table wine. Produced in a southern state that I decline to identify, the color was correct, but judging by the odor, I feared it was a petroleum product. I looked around nervously for nearby sources of flame. It was undrinkable, yet I choked it down to be polite.

But it's apparently not uncommon to smell gas in wine, because Ann Noble's Aroma Wheel devotes a subcategory to the scents of petroleum, such as diesel, kerosene, tar, and plastic. Twenty years ago, Ms. Noble, a professor at the University of California at Davis, developed the Aroma Wheel for novice and pro wine drinkers "to learn about wines and enhance one's ability to describe the complexity of wine flavor."

If you spend any time tasting wines, either at wineries or with friends, you've likely tried to nail down a particular odd taste or odor that made the experience heavenly, or dreadful. At times like that, it's sort of cool to have the Aroma Wheel at your fingertips, because it can more precisely identify a scent or a flavor that might otherwise elude you. Many of the wheel's categories and specific terms are to be expected (fruity, woody, herbaceous), but the wheel also offers these pungent possibilities: wet dog, wet wool, skunk, burnt toast, and even natural gas – yikes!

Napa, Sonoma, Napa, Sonoma....?

The various place names of Napa, Napa Valley, Napa County, Sonoma, Sonoma Valley, and Sonoma County can be confusing for first-time visitors. It's further complicated when geographically-challenged writers and journalists mistakenly place Sonoma County wineries and attractions in Napa County locations, and vice versa. This type of imprecise reporting happens more than it should, and it appeared again in a TripAdvisor survey. More than 1,000 survey respondents who said they plan to visit a U.S. vineyard this year ranked Napa Valley at No. 1 and "Sonoma" at No. 2. Now, "Sonoma" could refer to the city of Sonoma or even the Sonoma Valley. On a map, Napa County and Sonoma County are side by side. Each county has a small city of the same name, Napa and Sonoma. "Napa Valley" generally refers to the concentrated wine-growing region that runs the length of Napa County and includes the city of Napa. "Sonoma Valley" is a large wine region in eastern Sonoma County that also encompasses the city of Sonoma. Once you visit, it all becomes perfectly clear.