Winehiker Witiculture

November 2nd, 2008 by winehiker

The Flamingo Resort & Spa was host to 175 wine bloggers at the October 24-26 Wine Bloggers Conference.

It’s amazing what can happen after you make the decision to start blogging. I’ve been at it just shy of three years, and I couldn’t have surmised three years ago where it might someday take me. Yet I’ve now enjoyed the rare good privilege in this past year to attend both last weekend’s First Annual North American Wine Bloggers Conference (WBC) and last October’s first Outdoor Blogger Ho-Down. That Ho-Down, organized by Tom Mangan, author of the Two-Heel Drive blog, assembled a handful of hikers, mountain climbers, flyfishers and other outdoor folks from various places around the North American continent. It was a rustic and simple event, as an outdoorsy types’ convention probably ought to be; the only real organizational aspect required prior to convening bein’ the menu, bein’ as how we hikin’ types tend to be healthy eaters. Naturally, I did all the cookin’. And, quite naturally, we hikers all savored a little wine tasting (OK, truth: a lot of wine drinking and singing Eagles songs around our campfire), but we definitely made hiking the lower slopes of Mount Shasta and an enticing section of the Pacific Crest Trail a major part of that highly memorable weekend.

It’s one year later, and I have experienced the other end of the winehiking spectrum. Last Friday at noon I strode into the lobby of Santa Rosa’s Flamingo Resort & Spa and found myself surprised to immediately recognize a myriad number of faces, most of which I’d only seen previously in 75×75-pixel avatars! Even more surprising was my fellow wine bloggers’ ability to recognize me, I remember thinking - being that my avatar doesn’t prominently present my face. Some, however, did ask me why my apparently-iconic leather Aussie hat wasn’t affixed to my head. True, I suppose, that I might have met more of my kindred spirits if I’d been wearing The Hat on Friday afternooon - being that more of them might have recognized me - but, well, I guess I didn’t figure on the weekend’s sunny weather streaming its welcome rays completely inside our fully-roofed conference hall, somehow.

Still, it was almost difficult to get the conference started - at least for me. It was simply über cool to chat for the first time, face-to-face, with a dozen of my fellow wine-blogging brothers and sisters, many of whom I had only met online or in some manner become consistently enamored of their online personalities over these past three years. And yet I knew, going in, that though our individual blogs had represented initial forays into the relationships we now enjoy, it has been the powerful community-building aspects of Twitter that has firmly cemented the foundation of our wine blogging community. The conference has only solidified that notion, and its outcome has proven it. Therefore I think it’s safe to say that our particular slice of the Twitterverse has been largely responsible for creating the brotherly/sisterly aura that very palpably graced our weekend. I, for one, was high on the pure headiness of finally connecting with good friends face to face, for good friends is simply what we know we have become. Then again, tasting over two hundred different wines together over the course of the weekend might also have had something to do with it.

Walking the vineyards at Murphy Goode

Despite the prodigious quantity of wine that I spat and swallowed over the course of the weekend, I harbor many heady and lingering memories of what was, to me, a very powerful gathering of wine industry influencers. For influencers we realize we actually are, we wine bloggers. I know this because I’ve seen - and my wine-blogging colleagues tend to agree - that the steady advance of wine bloggerdom has democratized the conversations that are occurring between winemakers and wine drinkers - increasingly bypassing the major media middle ground - and it is wine blogs that have largely leveled the playing field simply by virtue of current social networking technologies that have streamlined publishing timelines, increased the abilities of wine lovers to interact, and fired the ovens of pure immediate possibility that drives us vinoscribes.

Last weekend clearly amplified the notion of what a blog can do, especially when that blog is part of a vital and growing community. It’s simple math: the power of one blogger’s network influences the power of another’s. Those network influences are, simply, growing in parabolic parallel to the number of active wine blogs. Factor in the firmly established North American trend toward increased worldwine wine consumption, and you have a juggernaut in waiting.

Or at least you did until this past weekend. Now it’s out of design and in process, a full-fledged rockin’-good rocket ship, and the word is out, people: wine blogs are being perceived in the greater world community as having a dominant, credible, and seasoned citizen voice - a voice that solidly represents a new world that will democratize the acquisition and enjoyment of wine.

If that weren’t true, our legion of 175 attendees would not have been globally profiled as the Number 2 Twitter Topic during Friday afternoon’s Live Blogging Session, right behind Senator Barack Obama. Neither would we have been courted as a group so remarkably by the Sonoma County winemaking and wine marketing community (and many beyond its borders) to whom we North American wine bloggers owe many, many thanks. Those Sonoma County wine folks - they just plain get it.

You know, of seemingly small decisions - such as starting a blog to support your business - big consequences do come. As I write these words, I’m reminded of all that I have gained from authoring a blog: voice, creativity, passion, friends, memories, technological skills, an accelerated social networking climate and an improved writing desire - these are but a few. Conversely, there are the multiple inhibitions I have since lost, as if they are simply no longer required and now lie scattered, smattered, shattered and broken in my wake like so many cheap bottles of Tokay lining that not-so-easily-forgettable, greasy and weed-filled snake-infested roadside ditch that parallels the road to one’s desires.

(OK, so I haven’t lost the touch for writing blue prose. Who indeed, at 80, can claim they are finally satiated with desire? Yes, it’s true: I’m only 51. But I plan to be 80 someday. And I’m going to keep traveling that road. Plus, it’s my blog! And it is the blog that is the vehicle - the point of the WBC exercise.)

Overlooking the vineyards of Rodney Strong

Indeed, there are an amazing number of worthy WBC topics that I could jump into. But, being that many great posts have already been published this past week by my fellow influencers, I’ll instead share a little Link Love here - not that this will be my final word on WBC08.

I therefore present the following links to stories and accounts of the 2008 Wine Bloggers Conference that are very much worth reading, if for no other reason than to impart a grand perspective of what many of us feel was a very historic and paradigm-shifting wine-inspired occasion. Read on! There’s great stuff below worth clicking to from good people in my life - people who, in many wonderful ways, have become affixed to my head.

In case you’re not in the mood for further reading, however, you might simply enjoy a few pics from the weekend.

Kick Ranch Kickoff
from Hardy Wallace of Dirty South Wine, Grimace Says Sleep is for the WEAK! Wine Bloggers Conference Day 1

Speed Tasting/Live Blogging
from Michelle Lentz of My Wine Education, Wine Blogger Conference: Live Blogging Event
from Phillip James of Snooth, Wine Bloggers Conference tasting insanity…
from Rémy Charest of Wine Case, Blogging Live from Santa Rosa, CA
from Lenn Thompson of LENNDEVOURS, Live Blogging @ Wine Blogging Conference 2008
from John Witherspoon of Anything Wine, Live Blogging from the Wine Bloggers Conference 2008

Blind Tasting Challenge
from Chris Butts of The Kilted Blog, Blind Tasting

100 New Zealand wines
from Amy Corron Power of Another Wine Blog, Palate Shock

Gary Vaynerchuk and Alice Feiring: Crush it, and Stir the Pot!
from Tom Wark of Fermentation, The Battle For Wine and How I Learned to Love Alice Feiring
from Amy Atwood of My Daily Wine, Fire Starter
from Becky B of Smells Like Grape, Gary V. Upstaged at WBC?

The Vineyard Walks
from Ken Payton of Reign of Terroir, Hiking Rockaway Vineyard With Doug McIlroy
from Michelle Lentz of My Wine Education, Photos: Wine Bloggers Conference and Russian River Valley Hike
from Diane Letulle of Wine Lover’s Journal, WBC — Russian River Valley Hike
from Megan of WineClubbie, An Inside Look at Michel-Schlumberger
from Becky B of Smells Like Grape, Saralee’s Vineyard & the Russian River Valley
from Gwendolyn Alley of Art Predator, Biodynamic & mostly organic: Quivira
from Tim Lemke of Cheap Wine Ratings, Rodney Strong Charlotte’s Home Sauvignon Blanc

Discussion Panels Break Out
from Michael Wangbickler of Caveman Wines, Wine Bloggers Conference Breakout Sessions

Blogging from a Bus
from Gwendolyn Alley of Art Predator, WiFi on the bus: only in America

The Luxe Tasting
from Ken Hoggins of Ken’s Wine Guide, Reviewing Wine At The Wine Bloggers Conference - Day 2

The Unconference
from Michael Wangbickler of Caveman Wines, The Wine Blogger Unconference
from Alder Yarrow of Vinography, Is There Any Point to Negative Wine Reviews?
from John Witherspoon of Anything Wine, From the Wine Bloggers Conference - My thoughts on credibility

That’s a wrap
from Lisa de Bruin of California Life: Better Than Happy Hour, Wine Industry Shift
from Jeff Lefevere of Good Grape, Postscript Thoughts on the Wine Blogging Conference
from Tom Wark of Fermentation, 13 Things I learned at the Wine Bloggers Conference
from Jo Diaz of Wine Blog, Wine Bloggers Conference: The 10 Most Important Things I Learned
from Michael Wangbickler of Caveman Wines, Final Thoughts on WBC 2008

Related posts:

• Movie stars, socialites, and now wine bloggers?
• October’s Mt. Shasta Ho-Down: distilled spirits
• Outdoor Blogger Ho-Down a Fine Success!
• Flavors and Savors

~winehiker

“Follow me, señor.”

The voice spoke to me in a baritone, richly smooth in timbre, uniquely Castilian in tongue, yet it was coming from inside my head. Or so it seemed. Willingly, I shouldered my Camelbak, and complied with the voice.

Along the gentle western grade of Rogue Valley Trail I followed the voice, stepping upward through the deep bay forests of Wildcat Loop, ever rising above the high meadows of Rancho San Antonio. I climbed, mile after mile, all the while that voice repeating in my mind’s ear.

“Come with me, señor.”

The voice resonated from without and within, always gentle, never chiding, yet powerfully intoxicating—so much so that I could never disobey its alluring imperative. I was a mound of unshaped clay under the voice’s command, ready to be molded into whatever I was to become. It was if I was guided by the unseen hand of Nephi.

I was just glad I had my boots on.

At five miles, at last I reached the high point of the trail, a place uncrowded, serene, and glowing with warm sunshine. Panting slightly and ready for lunch, I stepped into a semi-secret off-trail oasis that few could know, one that would afford me a commanding view. I doffed my pack and reached in to relieve it of its edibles. That’s when I discovered the Torremoyon.

Strange it was that I had not felt the pack’s extra weight on that climb. Light of foot on the trail yet heavy with hunger now, I tore into my roast beef-and-grilled pepper sandwich and studied the bottle’s label.

Ribera Del Duero
Denominacion de Origen
Torremoron
Tempranillo 2006
Estate Bottled by Bodegas Torremoron S.C.
Quintanamanvirgo - Burgos - Spain
100% Tempranillo

Without thinking, I set down my sandwich only to find my Swiss Army knife suddenly appearing in my hand, corkscrew at the ready. And, as if to demonstrate to me that miracles do occur, a wine glass dramatically appeared, intact and whole, from inside my pack. I smiled to myself, feeling glad I had gotten out of bed this morning.

“Drink me, señor.”

And so I opened the Torremoyon, and I poured. I studied the glass, sitting silently, contemplating everything. Beyond a mere breath of wind on my cheek, there was a fine stillness. As the morning drew toward noon, juncos chattered in the thickets below and the dry grasses of Autumn whispered their secrets. I swirled the glass, catching the late-morning sunlight in the wine’s many crimson facets. I could hear my own heart pumping, as if it were the drumbeat of misión ejemplar, a call to action.

I drank. The Torremoyon was at once delicious, cherry red, and meaty. Full-bodied, concentrated, and rich with aromatic earth and spicy fruit flavor, at once well-balanced in palate and exquisite in finish, a wine for the season, heady with promise, underpinned by lush desire and strong passion. It was a wine divine—one only the Spanish could make. Here was a wine that was easy on the wallet and therefore easy to make my house wine. And I didn’t even have to be in the house!

I wanted to taste every drop of it.

I poured again, and listened for the voice. But there was no longer any voice; it had become—¡evolucionado!—something so much more profound.

For in this Tempranillo Tinto, I tasted—I had become—the very soul of Iberia.

Heat: 13% alcohol by volume
Closure: plastic
Price: US$11.99 per 750ml bottle
Where purchased: BevMo, where it is on sale now

Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve is nestled in the western foothills of the Santa Clara Valley above the town of Cupertino. Here’s how to get there:

From Interstate 280 North or South, take the Foothill Boulevard exit and proceed south on Foothill Boulevard approximately 0.2-mile to Cristo Rey Drive. Turn right on Cristo Rey Drive, continue for about 1 mile, veer right around the traffic circle/roundabout, and turn left into the County Park entrance. There are several parking lots, including a dirt lot designated for equestrian trailers. The trailhead for the preserve is located adjacent to the 85-car parking area in the northwest lot.

A virtual clink of the wineglass to all who have participated in this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, the 50th in a series originally conceived by Lenn Thompson at LENNDEVOURS.

Related posts:

• Meeting chicks on the hiking trail
• Seeing my way back to the trail
• Wine Review: 2004 Twisted Oak Tempranillo

~winehiker

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In the mercurial materiality that is my life, I sometimes find that I’ve got the gumption to read all I can about a particular wine. Often, I’ll have designs on pairing the wine with a meal I’ll be sharing with friends; sometimes I merely want to experiment in the kitchen, then reap the rewards of my culinary frivolities with the right wine. So I’ll study winemakers’ notes, click through a handful of Google results or, as is frequently the case, become interested in a wine based on a fellow blogger’s recommendation.

Often there is only one write-up about a wine that I can glean online; sometimes I feel lucky to be able to read comparisons across multiple blogs. I consider it a special bonus when I can track how one wine from a particular vintage is tasting over a period of months, if not years. That can be the exception to the rule, however; the price tends to go up and the availability tends to go down when a wine is tasting well over time. More’s the case that I’ll want a wine which is affordable and easily obtainable. As one who occasionally reviews wine, I know my readers will find more value in reading about a wine they, too, can obtain and enjoy without resorting to HELOC havoc.

It’s certainly an influence on me when blogs come to consensus about the same wine; indeed I was intrigued about a recent exercise in which a number of wine bloggers were asked to review a premium-priced Sonoma County Cabernet during the same week. While that particular exercise devolved into a silly, almost hateful debacle about blogger’s ethics—a notion that seemed, to me, to be obtusely irrelevant to the task—I was interested in the exercise simply because, as someone who might want to share that wine over a nice meal, I felt I would benefit by a real-time comparison study, one that was not compromised by time’s effect on a wine’s aging.

Then again, sometimes I don’t feel the proclivity to read read read read read. Sometimes I would just rather lace up my boots and go admire a beautiful sunset from a rocky perch. (Yes, you’re right: I do this more than just sometimes.)

O wine! O sunset! I’ll gladly go wherever you glow.

Sometimes I’ll take a flyer and, before I hit that sunset trail, actually place trust in a paid expert’s opinion* and (gasp of horror!) grab a 92-point bottle at BevMo. (Come on, I know you do it too.)

Well that’s precisely what I did as I looked toward tomorrow’s Wine Blogging Wednesday selection. Should you dare to read that forthcoming post, please don’t hate me because the wine was beautiful.

~winehiker

*Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Robert Parker, blah blah, yadda yadda.

Just taking a moment to share a little bit of news with those of you who are members of the Open Wine Consortium and/or are registered to attend the First Annual North American Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Rosa next month.

I’ve been working on a newsletter at the gracious behest of Joel Vincent, who originally spearheaded the Open Wine Consortium. I’ll be sending the inaugural issue of that newsletter to your inbox on October first!

~winehiker

» Got an opinion? See what 2 others have to say. Then speak your own mind.

Download my 20-point wine scoring sheet • Vote for your favorite wine region

50 can be a very special number, a golden milestone that speaks of advancement and achievement, the fruits of passion, efforts worth celebrating. This month, I’m pleased to be hosting the 50th Wine Blogging Wednesday (WBW), a monthly online wine tasting event that, for 50 months running, has been a cooperative endeavor of the wine blogging community and the brainchild of Lenn Thompson of the LENNDEVOURS blog.

Also quite special is the Autumn season; it’s certainly a favorite of mine. Despite cooler evenings, the heat of summer still lingers, the vegetable garden is happily producing your favorite squashes, tomatoes and peppers, and you’re anticipating the robust red wines that will warm you during the longer nights ahead. And yet it’s comfortable out still, and you’ve been thinking about hopping in the car for one last outing in your favorite nearby wilderness—one that’s within, say, 50 miles of your home—before the weather turns wintry.

And so, imagine you and your significant wineau walking in the cool woods of Autumn. An amber glow lights your path, golden leaves fall around you, and as you walk, you’re working up a sizable hunger for that post-hike picnic you’ve got planned. Not to mention that sizable thirst! Which wine will you pour in the Great Outdoors?

You get bonus points for choosing a wine that is made locally to you, double bonus points for sharing the name of the wilderness you would walk in, triple bonus points for sharing the name of the trailhead and how to get there, and a gazillion bonus points for actually walking that trail, enjoying your selected wine on a post-hike picnic, and describing your day of outdoor adventure for your readers. But by all means, do describe the wine!

Wine bloggers around the world typically post their WBW reviews on the second Wednesday of the month. This month, Wine Blogging Wednesday is October 8th. If you are participating this month, just add a comment to this post with a link to your WBW#50 review. Within the following week, I will endeavor to compile a synopsis of this month’s reviews and post them here on Winehiker Witiculture. Like those cool Autumn woods, I’m sure the results will be golden, and you may even achieve a milestone of your own.

Hey, it’s WBW #50! Let’s make it special.

~winehiker

Coding madly! From sunup to sundown. Thank goodness for those rich brown beans. Mmm-mmmm.

I meant to get another blog post out before today. I’ve been sucking down the coffee and working like a doggone dog since three weeks ago, doing three big things at once. One is modifying my blog, which you can now see is in a snazzier 3-column format. Sooner or later I will figure out the CSS for the dang thing; the style sheet code from my last layout was light years cleaner.

Another project has been my website itself. While I’ve now got much of the big picture effort behind me — the layout and formatting issues are essentially done — I believe I still have another week or two of 14-hour days working on a few pages worth of content and making it load a little faster. See for yourself if you can spot any changes. There are a few.

The third project? Well, I wish I could tell you about it, but I can’t. Not yet. Those of you who are in the wine industry will certainly hear about it, albeit indirectly, while those of you who still read this bitrag will see a few words from me next week about it. I’d surely tell you sooner, dear ones, but then I’d be compelled to force you to chase me up a tall steep hill on a hot dry day, which might just — well, you know…

…I may not be pulling in a paycheck right now, but I am diggin’ what I’m doin’, so I’m gonna go write on doin’ what I’m diggin’. And then who knows? Maybe you’ll dig the result.

~winehiker

» Got an opinion? Add your thoughts here.

Download my 20-point wine scoring sheet • Vote for your favorite wine region

These past weeks have been as much of a mental break as they were a return to Ground Level. To Joy. My old self, Square One. If it weren’t for the limits of technology, who knows how long it might have taken for desire to reawaken within me — to come back to this blog.

Suffice to say, here I am again. Back on the ol’ Witiculture blog. Recharged, running full and cool. Ready to tackle new challenges.

Geez, I sound like I’m giving a stump speech.

I’d seriously begun — well, honestly, I was way past begun — to hate computing at home. And I don’t toss that particular four-letter word around too lightly. Technology can expand one’s abilities for accomplishment, and I’d certainly been eager, early on, to embrace it.

But this past year had found me increasingly frustrated with my PC’s inabilities to do what I asked of it. It had gotten to the point wherein I just simply refused to wrestle with the grief I would constantly bear when attempting to accomplish the most basic of tasks. Looking back, if I had only been more focused on replacing it, I probably would not have endured for so long what I could barely stand to tolerate! Indeed, some days I was ready to take a 20-pound sledgehammer to it; I truly hated to even turn the damned thing on.

There were some days in which I felt that epithets would figure prominently in my epitaph.

Finally, toward the middle of July, and only days before my contract ended quite abruptly at VMware, my PC gave up the ghost. Ironically, I had just ordered and received new DIMM chips, and was preparing to install this new RAM when the mother board blew a trace — as if the infernal contraption knew I was going to tinker with it and should instead add insult to injury.

There was a period there in which I wasn’t sure what had happened and I’d had the PC diagnosed. I’d hoped it wasn’t the hard drive that had blown. Thankfully, it wasn’t the hard drive (and I now have everything backed up, thank goodness). But meanwhile, I’d been paying my bills and doing other personal stuff online at work — something I don’t prefer to do. I certainly hadn’t preferred to blog while at work, either; there’s always something preventing me from doing that. Call it ethics if you will. Or the need for at least two hours of research and writing time, if not more, to assemble a decent blog post.

After all, the paychecks I was receiving from VMware were, ostensibly, compensation for my actually performing a job for them, not for me.

When the gig with VMware ended — due more to fulmination at the top of the organization than to my own performance — I was suddenly without a computer. True enough, I felt free and unburdened from the yoke of PC oppression — it was now my turn! — but only for about two days. I needed to stay tapped in. I needed to pay my bills! If nothing else, I needed to be able to respond to email to the tune of 150 on a slow day.

So I got a new PC, an immensely sleek, shiny and souped-up HP box equipped with Windows Vista (which I thoroughly like, by the way). After much configuring, reinstalling, and getting back to routine, I set out to discover the new PC’s boundaries. And, as it turned out, to rediscover and expand my own.

I want to be *your* Sledge Hammer. This will be my testimony!

I’m much happier now. The joy has returned! Without going into specifics, let’s just say that I have 200 times the RAM I used to have. And I have accomplished much. Oh, so much.

And yet, these past weeks have had me in Stealth Mode as I have sought to exploit my new PC’s capabilities. Certainly I’d had a huge To-Do List to tackle — things I hadn’t been able to do on the old PC. It had become a marvelously long list.

As I’ve been checking off these items, the To-Do list has gotten longer but the stress has melted, my focus has sharpened immensely, the Joy of Accomplishment has returned, and I can once again approach my future with a newfound enthusiasm. I’m smiling again!

I love my new PC.

Now there’s a four-letter word I think I’ll be using more often.
And so, patient reader, please stay tuned for news about what I’ve been up to. There is much to tell.

~winehiker

[Editor’s note: If you’re reading this post directly on my blog, one of those To-Do items may appear evident. I hope you like the new 3-column scheme and color format. Obviously I still have work to do. But at least now I’ll enjoy doing it!]

» Got an opinion? Add your thoughts here.

Toast This! • Download a wine scoring sheet • Vote your favorite wine region

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UPDATE: Please allow me to preface the following post by stating that prior to my writing it, I was not aware that the lone hiker that I describe below had pulled a hoax on authorities; he was not attacked by a mountain lion. Despite this galling evidence, the following post is still pertinent to hiking in mountain lion country.

Last Saturday a local hiker was attacked by a mountain lion in Palo Alto’s Foothills Park. The hiker was hiking alone. Yesterday, in response to the incident, a number of area parks and preserves were temporarily shut down and an animal tracker was hired by Palo Alto city officials to hunt the mountain lion down and kill it. I vehemently disagree with this knee-jerk tactic.

Late this morning, a fellow hiker posted the names of the closed parks on a local bulletin board, mentioning that the Midpeninsula Open Space District is working closely with Foothills Park staff and that the California Department of Fish and Game will reopen these preserves and facilities as soon as it is safe.

The posting was meant well. To me, however, it was only half the story. I felt compelled to tell the other half, so I contributed a post of my own:

The reason that these local parks and preserves are temporarily closed is so an “animal tracker” (read: “hunter”) can kill the mountain lion without interference. It’s a shame that our first instinct, as a society, is to kill a big cat rather than trap it humanely and release it in a more remote area. We have to get used to the fact that wilderness isn’t wilderness if we keep killing what’s wild in it.

My fellow hiker wrote me directly:

In receiving my volunteer trail crew training, it was explained to us that, more often than not, when the animals responsible for the attacks on humans are caught, they are found to be injured or demented. This drives them into behavior patterns they normally wouldn’t have…like attacking humans. In these cases, they typically prefer to put the animal down. Some of the other cases, where the animal has been killed and no attacks were involved, I would agree, seems a bit excessive.

A-ha! We “typically prefer to put the animal down.” Hence my argument.

Let’s face it: oftentimes the explanations we hear and read are biased only toward humans, not toward the animal. When you’re truly hungry - as a top-of-the-food-chain predator might be in times of drought - you’ll do what is necessary to eat. That’s just true nature at work.

A non-rescuscible injured cat I can understand euthanizing. Pronouncing an animal to be demented, however, I feel is a subjective, narrow-minded, human-centric, and therefore wholly inappropriate judgment that merely serves to perpetuate our human fear of nature rather and our unwarranted desire to control it - i.e., sanitize the outdoor experience - rather than embrace it. It is issues like this that regularly remind me that it’s we humans who need to reconsider our own behavior patterns.

I said as much in response to my fellow hiker’s email, and received the following response:

Demented animals are determined to be so by the results of lab tests and autopsy, not arbitrary pronouncements. Each case has to be assessed individually.

I felt as if my argument had fallen overboard into a sea of disregard. So I hoisted it back aboard:

Therefore, it would seem that to be pronounced demented, the cougar is likely killed first. That scenario smacks of being a typical application of misguided human-centric “shoot first and ask questions later” logic rather than a consideration of the life and needs of the animal itself. Typical human behavior, yet still wholly inappropriate.

I’d sure like to learn of a cougar who attacked a human but whose life was spared.

We have to remember that we humans are visitors in the cougar’s habitat; it is not the other way around. Soon, I suppose - perhaps by the hour of this posting - there will be one less local cougar merely because we as a society have chosen to react with extreme prejudice to its choice of menu. I’m sure the accosted hiker knows how lucky he was despite his decision to hike alone in an area where mountain lion warnings are clearly posted. But, sadly, it is the mountain lion’s demise that will be exchanged for this hiker’s lucky break.

I haven’t even begun to mention what happens to a local ecosystem when you remove its top predator. But highway fatalities due to excessive deer populations springs to mind.

We seem to continue, as a society, to act as sociopaths against Nature. We jump to conclusions based on our own point of view. We gun down what we don’t understand. We often say live and let live; why don’t we mean it?

We need cougars in our local hills. Let Nature take its course. Take pictures, not lives. And don’t hike alone.

~winehiker

Yesterday, after learning about one of my favorite wines garnering a Double Gold from the San Francisco International Wine Competition, I decided to pop a bottle and cook up a delicious dinner to go with it. Ever since dining at Slow Club in San Francisco last Thursday night, I’d been in the mood to see if I could conjure up my own version of braised chicken breast, and I felt that the 2006 Torcido from Twisted Oak Winery, with its ripe, meaty flavors, would pair well.

So I poured a glass of Torcido, honed my chef’s knife, and went to work. Later, confident that I was satisfactorily smelling up the neighborhood, I tweeted what I was up to:

Braising chicken breast in marsala, onions, garlic, garden-grown thyme, organic chicken broth, and essence. S/B !! w/ that luscious Torcido.

My Twitter feed displays on my Facebook page, where fellow winehiker Thais Li spied it this morning. She promptly asked me for my recipe!

I was profoundly flattered. I was also bereft of a recipe, since I’d concocted the whole shebang out of my head. You know, as long as I’ve got tongs or a wooden spoon in one hand and a glass of vino in the other, I’m cookin’. I’m usually happy with the results. Last night was no different! And the wine made for a purty darn good pairing, too.

To wit, my recipe for CHICKEN MARSALA, WINEHIKER STYLE:

3-4 boneless chicken breasts
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. Emeril’s essence (or substitute 1/2 tsp. cayenne powder, 1/4 tsp. cumin and 1/4 tsp. black pepper)
1 onion, sliced
3-4 cloves garlic, smashed
8 oz. crimini mushrooms, sliced
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 cup marsala wine
2 cups chicken broth
Olive oil
Pat of butter
Salt & pepper to taste

Wash the chicken breasts, pat them dry, then start a skillet over medium heat, with just enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the skillet. In a brown paper bag, add the flour, salt, and essence. Close the bag and shake to combine these dry ingredients, then add the chicken breasts and shake well to coat them.

When the oil is smoking hot, remove the chicken breasts from the paper bag with tongs, and place them into the skillet. Brown the breasts on both sides for 5-7 minutes each, being careful not to scorch them. When the breasts are done, remove them from the skillet, place them onto a plate, then cover them with foil to keep them warm.

Add the butter and the onions to the skillet, stirring occasionally until they are almost soft. Add the crimini mushrooms and the thyme and cook until the mushrooms have released and evaporated their water content. Add the garlic and cook one additional minute. Then, place the cooked chicken breasts back into the skillet.

Pour in the wine and let come to a boil, then add enough chicken broth to cover the chicken breasts. Turn the heat down to Low, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Before serving, remove the sprig of thyme, and garnish with fresh chopped Italian parsley. Oh, and pour a generous glassful of Torcido! After smelling up the neighborhood something fierce, you deserve to celebrate what you just accomplished.

Cheers!
~winehiker