Salamandre Wine Cellars Winter 2009 Newsletter
Winter Light on Winsome Salamandres

March, 2009

Beyond the immense appeal of robust red wine with friends when it's cold outside, the winter affords an important chance to reflect on simple, natural beauty. California offered a wonderful variety of exposures this winter.

The Eureka Dunes in Death Valley

Upholding an annual tradition I began rather late in life, I traveled to the remote Eureka Dunes north of Death Valley to celebrate the winter solstice in an environment of angular light, alien landforms, and abrasive beauty…and virtually no people. Primitivo plays a role in this celebration, particularly at that moment when the Earth stops its prodigal tilt into darkness and begins its long lean back toward the sun.

This year, a frosting of snow clung to the north facing slopes of the 700 foot high sand mountains. The snow melted grudgingly into the buried wind ripples to form sparkling saws. The beams from the year's lowest sun turned every sand cornice and wrinkle into a chiaroscuro moonscape. December sunlight never reaches some of the deeper wells, enhancing the lunar imagery. The fresh tracks of ravens, meadowlarks, kangaroo rats, lizards, beetles, and coyotes stitched the dunes. I wondered what they saw, pausing in hopeful curiosity next to each desert-hardened bush, sometimes marching uphill with linear purpose, sometimes wandering with quixotic whimsy. I hoped that the night wind would erase my own trespasser's footprints.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found the tatters of a pink balloon, snared by the blades of an endangered dune shrub that lives there…and nowhere else in the world. That balloon probably highlighted some laughing little girl's birthday party hundreds of miles away, escaping her giggling fingers into a blue Santa Barbara sky. However, in this pristine place, it looked like trash. It serves as part of the irony of calling a place “Death Valley” when, in actuality, it harbors some of the most determined life forms on the planet…vulnerable not to the desert austerity, but to intruders with soft habits.

The striped limestone cliffs of Last Chance Range jut 4000 feet above the desert floor, stiff-arming the gritty north wind into dropping its stinging sand. Their stark black fissures struck a dramatic contrast to the creamy fluidity of the sand beneath my feet. Before dawn on the day of departure, a fresh snowfall turned everything white…and quiet. My truck made the only tracks in a valley that holds 250 square miles of serenity. When I come back this year, I'll bring the newly bottled 2007 Primitivo for its solstice indoctrination.

 

 

 

Big Sur in January

In January, Sandie and I reenacted another tradition: a winter one-on-one getaway to Big Sur. As usual, we spent the first afternoon at Pfeiffer Beach, remarkable for its feathered magenta sands and the peephole rocks that frame the setting sun. Against all odds, in more than 20 years, we have never been rained out. Basking in uncanny shirtsleeve warmth this time, we enjoyed our Pinot Noir until the sun quenched in the Pacific. We watched as the sea changed from molten pewter to polished brass to burnished copper…and then glinting obsidian. In front of us, the pelicans drafted each other effortlessly above the waves as they have forever, but behind us, things had changed.

In early summer last year, ferocious lightning fires blackened huge swaths of the Ventana Wilderness, roaring up to distant ridgelines in the impossibly crumpled terrain, then ripping down to the world's most photographed highway. I'm pretty sure enough salamanders dug into the creekbanks to stage a comeback, but I worry about the condors we saw the year before, the trout I used to catch in the river, and the mountain lions. I didn't feel too sorry about the ticks in the burning chaparral, though.

While all of the inland trails are now blocked for restoration, we could see two uplifting marvels: one of Nature and one of Man. The green was fighting back, as it must have for eons of these fires. Shoots were bursting from redwood burls, and grass was poking through the ash. Scorched oaks refused to surrender as long as a few lucky branches held resolutely photosynthesizing leaves. We also saw extraordinary civil engineering. Teams worked 7 days a week to rig elaborate cable nets in every drainage to catch the logs and debris that could otherwise clog the culverts and take out the highway with the first major storm. We can, indeed, be on the same side.

 

 

 

The Redwoods of Nisene Marks

January started out as an ominously dry month, but towards the end, the first of a welcome series of storms finally arrived to our coast. I love to run in Aptos' Nisene Marks Park when it's wet. In one of the ephemeral blessings unknown to video prisoners, the clouds sometimes part between waves of rain, and crepuscular rays flare through the misty redwoods in a display that would make a Rococo artist gasp.  The main streams were finally running full and noisy, still clear, but beginning to act like we really have a winter.  While the hillside freshets had yet to gurgle, it felt reassuring to see vibrant green moss cloaking the trunks of naked maples, beds of redwood sorrel glinting in the filtered light, mats of lichen caressing the flanks of massive firs, colonies of mushrooms popping from the fecund duff, and wings of bracken ferns nodding as they caught the rain. Before long, the more serious storms began, and I'm certain the newts were beginning to feel amorous yearnings. Perhaps that's why I took a pre-bottling sample of Aimée Rosé up to the kitchen.

 

 

Contrasts of the Anza-Borrego Desert

The February rains also promised to rescue another California treasure from the clutches of drought. The Anza-Borrego desert lies just north of the Mexican border and East of the rugged chain of mountains that make San Diego wait patiently for sunrise. While legendary carpets of flowers had not unfurled, individually spectacular white desert lilies popped from what looked like impossibly sterile hard pan. Barrel cacti beamed with golden crowns, and crimson fronds waved from spidery legs of ocotillo. Clusters of heliotrope phacelia crouched beneath gangly creosote bushes, yellow daisies fluttered in the canyon breeze, and fuchsia splashes of verbena dappled the roadsides.

 

Ancient mortars, patiently ground into hard granite by Indian hands a thousand years ago, hid quietly behind the incandescent bristles of cholla. Venus snuggled up and practically kissed the thumbnail cup of the crescent moon at sunset, while coyotes yipped well into the wee hours of night. I admit that I nipped a little Coyote Cuvée, too, and then I decided to join the conversation. They answered, and in fact, refused to let me get in the last words. I declined, however, to engage debate with the agitated Mojave Rattlesnake who guarded the wash up to the Fan Palms at the head of Bow Willow Canyon .

 

 

 

We have only a few weeks of this memorable winter left. Use them joyfully, listen to some new music, pet a furry animal, and consider sharing a Salamandre with a friend.

Meanwhile, if you're interested in the Aimée Rosé, our newly released 2007 Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot Noir from the Dettamanti Vineyard, or our old favorite Primitivo 2007, come visit the winery at our invitational tastings April 4 & 5, 1-5 PM, at the winery.

Peace,

Wells Shoemaker MD

Winemaker