Welcome to 2010! Call it hubris (ὕβρις), if you will, but I like to think this will be Sostevinobile’s era. Time, of course, will tell.
2010 marks a number of personal milestones. It now has been 20 years since I’ve touched a Microsoft program, other than to reaffirm what an execrable excuse for software the megalomaniacs in Redmond, WA produce. It also marks 35 years since “food” from McDonald’s (or whatever substitute they serve) has tainted my palate. And it’s now been 10 years since I’ve succumbed exclusively to my well-documented febrile predilection.
Nonetheless, things in 2010 have started out quite well for Your West Coast Oenophile (like most folks, I’d have to say that, after 2009’s debacles, where else could they go but up?). Typically, I gauge my prospects for each new year by how I fare in my inaugural squash match, a particularly telling sign this year since I had been plagued with assorted leg injuries over the past 12-15 months. This diminution of my agility, along with a concomitant rustiness to my game, had allowed numerous opponents whom I could previously dispatch with remarkable ease, to prevail effortlessly against my dizzying array of lobs, boasts, and rails.
And it seemed this streak of unmitigated losses might continue, as my opponent, John H., manhandled me throughout the first two games of our match and mounted a formidable 4-point lead midway through the third. But, as the saying goes, squash is to racquetball what chess is to checkers, and I knew I could muster the psychological fortitude that would prove the ungluing of adversary. I steeled my determination and held on to even the score at 10-10, then won 13-11 in the tiebreaker. The spell now broken, I coated through the fourth game and held ground in the fifth before breaking out with an 11-7 victory and, with it, the match. Decidedly, a true portent for the ensuing twelve months, both on and off the court.
 An enlightened detail from Custom |
The next day, I managed to prevail against the misdirected zealotry of the San Francisco constabulary and have my most recent traffic offense, a baseless charge of crossing through an intersection without stopping at the blacked-out signal light, dismissed as a gross miscarriage of justice. Actually, the officer on duty merely failed to file his report and appear at the hearing, but I do like to inflate my victories whenever possible.
Later that evening, I had the pleasure of attending the unveiling of Roman Padilla’s new art show entitled We are All Commis, a visual paean to sustainability. Commissioned by Hotel Biron, a quaint confrère near San Francisco’s Hayes Valley. This series of directed pastiches includes several fragments from my more whimsical writings—the first time Sostevinobile has been enshrined in art! Needless to say, copious amounts of 2006 Talmage Barbera and 2006 Siani Farms Carignane from Cazadero’s organically-farmed Wild Hog Vineyard were consumed over the course of the evening’s festivities, though not enough to test whether my earlier triumph over the SFPD might be replicated.
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A clarion call?
A most heartening development for Sostevinobile in 2010 has been the sudden rash of blogs and discussions challenging the consistency of restaurants and other locavores establishments serving imported wines. The first has been a rather provocative LinkedIn discussion, started by Jon Wollenhaupt of Excel Meetings & Events in San Francisco and chronicled by SFGate bloggers Michael Bauer and Zennie Abraham, posed the question: “Should the ‘Eat Local’ ethic apply to wine as well? Should San Francisco restaurants only serve Napa/Sonoma wines?”
This thread has already reached 162 entries, including my own, and while it has veered off on numerous tangents that hardly seem germane to the origin query (particularly among restaurateurs in states that have limited production of local wines), it has shown that people here and throughout the West Coast do question the rationale behind serving imports when an abundance of excellent wine is available here.
Another wine blogger, Amy Atwood, posed a similar question on her mydailywine column: “Drink Local Wine Debate: A Harbinger of Change?” Much to my surprise, the most aggressive response came from local Australian wine evangelist Chuck Hayward, formerly of San Francisco’s Jug Shop:
“Do you mean to tell me that amongst the almost 3000 wineries spanning over 100 AVAs in California that they all make wines that are “too much?” They found those five wines, I am sure there are plenty of wines out there that meet the stringent criteria that somms want today. Just get to work and find them!!
“The real issue here, however, is hypocrisy. Preaching local and then saying that the wine portion of the dining experience is exempt is just plain elitist and hypocritical.”
I can only wish I had the temerity to make such an indictment, though outside of this forum, Sostevinobile has iterated much of the same. With so many others now echoing our central tenet, I suspect a successful launch and enduring run for our venture lays just beyond.
| Still, the most auspicious omen for the upcoming decade assuredly has to have been losing, then amazingly recovering my iPhone Bluetooth earpiece. Seen to the right at nearly 150% its actual size, this teeny device fell, imperceptibly, from my pocket Wednesday evening sometime after I had shopped at San Francisco’s Rainbow Grocery. Several hours and stops later, I discovered that the Bluetooth signal on my phone had disconnected, but it wasn’t until I returned to my flat that I realized the earpiece was no longer on my person. A frantic search throughout my blue Corolla confirmed my worst suspicions—my headset had been lost, and hopes its retrieval, quite slim. |  No, this is not a hash pipe! |
I placed late night calls to Nihon Lounge and to Heaven’s Dog,the two establishments where I had stopped for cocktails and where I had reached into my front pocket for a pen to sign my receipts. Their searches in the vicinity where I had sat turned up empty, but I was reassured they would call me after the morning cleaning crew had swept through the bar. On the other hand, Rainbow did not reopen until the morning, so I had to wait until then before speaking with their Customer Service team.
The morning calls proved just as futile. Resigned to having to purchase a new device, I headed off to Traffic Court, determined to plead my case as vociferously as needed for my exoneration. I entered the court room at 1:36 PM and by 1:40, I had my dismissal in hand. Having allocated the whole afternoon for this appearance, I decided to take the time I’d been spared and make one final, implausible search to find my lost Bluetooth. After a futile return visit to Heaven’s Dog, I made a meticulous search of the area nearby where my friend and I had parked the night before, hoping that I might find the earpiece squashed on the pavement (whereby I could still claim it under Apple’s warranty). No such luck. I then pedaled over to Rainbow, in search of the same remnant, then figured I might make one last futile attempt to investigate the space where we had parked by Flour + Water.
From fortitude comes fortuity
As I had before, I crouched down and looked beneath the automobile that was now parked in the same space alongside 13th Street. As I ought to have expected, nothing. But just as I prepared to remount my 14-speed Trek, there on the sidewalk, out in plain sight, completely intact, lay my 1½” long Bluetooth earpiece, as if no one had even touched it over the past 18 hours!
I pressed the activation button and it connected to my iPhone with nary a glitch. Phoning my drinking companion from the night before, I queried through the remote microphone, “How do I sound?” “Fortuitous,” he replied. Here was the first crest of a wave of luck I whole-heartedly intend to ride throughout 2010.
And so far, I seem to be (at least until I show up at the 2010 Olympic Club Singles Squash Invitational this coming weekend). I discovered a pair of wines, grape varietals which have enjoyed cursory mention in this blog as components of blends, but not as distinct wines. The 2008 Sylvaner Flood Family Vineyards from Rancho Sisquoc showed faint reminiscences of a Riesling or a Gewürztraminer and married nicely to a Cajun-spiced catfish I prepared. On the other hand, I found the 2007 Chasselas Doré Pagani Ranch that Berthoud Vineyards produced a wine with no easy comparisons and a somewhat incongruous match for the Dungeness crab I steamed over the weekend. It did, however, pose a fairly decent complement to the store-prepared Italian Wedding Soup I consumed the next evening as the start of my avowed weight loss program for 2010.
The next evening, I attended my first party for 2010 at the Tonga Room, a San Francisco landmark purportedly destined for demise later this year. Guests at this kickoff event were asked to create name tags with their New Year’s resolution or other goals for 2010. Never one to turn down the opportunity for a pun, I scribbled in “Here to Get Lei’d,” a line that my friends and Facebook fans know belies my true avowal: