Food and Wine pairing notes: The Artist's Palate/Canvas (worth five points)

Consider our dinner at The Artist's Palate/Canvas. Note the ambiance and atmosphere of the room. Describe the nature and quality of the service. How did the establishment make our group feel welcome?

Elaborate on the marriage of food and wine at our meal. Describe your meal in precise sensory detail. How did the wine support or conflict with the food?

Think critically about how well the establishment met your expectations. Apply your professional knowledge toward making a supported conclusion about the dining experience.

Write 400 words on the subject. This assignment is due by midnight on Friday, February 25th.

While in California, you will eat together as a group almost every day. In each instance, consider what distinguishes the restaurant. Have fun, too! It has been a pleasure having you in class. Please direct inquiries about the trip to Professor Morris.

Best regards,
Brent W.

Week Eight: Rowan Jacobsen, "California and Oregon," from A Geography of Oysters

The oyster is a simple yet amazing animal. Note how both the method and place of cultivation have a significant outcome on the taste of this bivalve. Hog Island Oyster Company, on the northern end of Tomales Bay, is renown for its oysters from this slender inlet.

Note: if you don't make it to the farm on Tomales Bay, visit the Hog Island Oyster Co. oyster bar in the San Francisco Ferry Building for a fine Kumamoto.

link to: Hog Island Oyster Co.
link to: Video--John Finger of Hog Island explains how to shuck an oyster

--Brent W.

Week Eight: Greig Tor Guthey et al.: "Creative Preservation in California's Dairy Industry"

Pictured here is Albert Straus at Straus Family Creamery. Visiting the farm reveals just how much the family is doing to ensure the ecological and efficient operation of the dairy. In addition to being a pioneer in the organic dairy business, Straus Family Creamery now has methane collection ponds that ultimately power the farm buildings and vehicles. As the reading explains, the company takes its responsibility to preserve the open land through active farming very seriously. The Straus family continues to be a strong voice in area politics, including continuing its role as founding members of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT).

The concept of food quality takes on new breadth here, in which the ecological care for an area contributes to consumers' perceptions of the products which originate there. This corresponds with our earlier discussions outlining the particular food culture of the Bay Area--one informed by politics, a strong sense of shared community, and a concern for social and ecological welfare.

link to: Marin Agricultural Land Trust
link to: Video of Straus Family Creamery's operations

--Brent W.

Week Seven: Mondovino (and review by A.O. Scott)

Mondovino's wry humor and grim view of the globalization of wine reflects the food system discussions we have been having in class. Wine, like so many other agricultural products, finds itself torn between small-scale traditionalism and large-scale industrialism. Why does wine evoke such a passionate response, compared to other food products?

The portrayal of Michel Rolland as the jet-setting pied piper of the wine world is both comical and searing. His call to "micro-oxygenate" develops into a slogan in favor of the standardization of the global palate.

Is wine really losing its soul?

--Brent W.

Week Seven: C. van Leeuwen and G. Seguin: "The Concept of Terroir in Viticulture"

Terroir is a product of both the natural and human environments. Van Leeuwen and Seguin focus on the natural environmental aspects of viticulture, providing a structured approach to understanding the conditions of the vine. This type of analysis may be extended to any plant, however. I especially am drawn to the agronomic questions of horticulture: how does the plant interact with the place? How deeply do its roots extend, or how does drought impact the plant's physiology? Terroir addresses the responses of living organisms.

Feel free to relate your comment to our class tasting of wines and spirits from California and China.

--Brent W.

Week Six: Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robisnon. The World Atlas of Wine.

Every wine enthusiast should refer to this amazing book full of detailed maps of the world's appellations. The number of California AVAs has grown rapidly in recent years as growers have identified the specific soils and microclimates of smaller areas of land. AVAs create a political and market identity for growers' fruit that can help to distinguish the resulting wines (if not in the glass, then at least on the label!).

In the picture: Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard speaks about terroir and his sense that wine should be a representation of place.

--Brent W.

Week Six: Stephen Rannekleiv, "Review of the Industry: Future of the California Wine Industry"

The challenges that impact the California wine industry reflect the broader hurdles agriculture faces in the state. Soaring land prices, challenging labor conditions, and increasingly competitive imports are forcing California vintners to consider how to shape the future of the industry. This 2008 article suggests that success will be found in the premium wine market. North Coast, Lodi, and Sierra Foothills producers dominate this market segment. The lower-end wines (priced below $9) do not compete well in a market flooded by inexpensive bottles from Chile, Argentina, Australia, Italy, Spain, and even France.

In the picture: Ravenswood Winery's Alicante Bouschet vines on their estate; a glass of their limited-production Viura.

--Brent W.

Week Six: David Carle, Introduction to Earth, Soil, and Land in California

Carle eloquently argues for the preservation of California's quality farmland. In this chapter he reveals the politics, history, and science of soil. As urban encroachment continues to claim the ground that produces our food, the author's passionate defense of open land draws from his deep understanding of soil.

In the picture: strawberry mounds at the Driscoll's Berries research plot in Watsonville, CA. Driscoll's is slowly phasing out the use of Methyl Bromide, a fumigant common used in strawberry row soil.

--Brent W.

Week Six: Amy Trubek, "California Dreaming"

Trubek shows that terroir is dependent on the landscape, but that it is also a product of culture.

Does California have the experience necessary to claim specific terroir? Some of Trubek's French informants fault California winegrowers not for their lack of potential, but for their lack of history. They argue that it takes time to identify the nature of a plot of land.

Is it constructive to compare Europe and North America when it comes to taste? The wine industries of these two continents developed with very different intentions. Remember that California agriculture is marked by demand-driven planning. The majority of the state's crops have always been intended to meet the demands of a larger national or international market. This is quite different from the wine traditions of many established European appellations.

--Brent W.

Week Six: Robert Louis Stevenson, The Silverado Sqautters

Stevenson, a Scotsman, traveled to California in 1879 and spent the spring of 1880 living in the immediate area of St. Helena. The author's curiosity regarding the way people lived in this area, which he found to be as rugged and rural as any imagination of the American West could conjure up, yielded The Silverado Squatters.

These short vignettes provide us glimpses into Napa Valley before it developed into the wine center of the United States. Despite the early date, the beginnings of the wine industry in this area are evident in Stevenson's visit to producers such as Mr. Schrams.

The author captures the collision of settlement and nature in this area marked by varied agriculture, diverse immigrants, and wild stretches of land.

--Brent W.

Week Five: Rob Wilson, "Spectral City: San Francisco as Pacific Rim city and counter-cultural contado"

Wilson explores the rich landscape of San Francisco's spirit and ethos. The multitudinous references he weaves into his piece illustrate the cultural complexity of a city that is at once dedicated to the counter-culture movements of the Beat and hippie generations as well as poised to dominate the Pacific Rim.

With references to films such as Phych Out and Vertigo, and poets such as Alan Ginsberg, Wilson illustrates San Francisco's strong artistic capacity. At the same time, the wartime technology industry of Silicon Valley and San Francisco's economic interests over the Pacific (including GAP, Banana Republic, and Old Navy) bear witness to the extension of the American empire.

--Brent W.

Week Five: Jesse Drew, "Call Any Vegetable"

Why do hippies eat bean sprouts and brown rice? How can vegetarianism in 1960s San Francisco be considered a form of cultural resistance? Is the protest of McDonald's locations common only to the WTO meetings of the present?

The author presents an image of San Francisco of the late 1960s and 1970s as a site of activism through food. Often connected to concepts of socialism, civil rights, or utopian lifestyle, the provoking actions of groups such as the Diggers, the Food Conspiracy, and The People's Food System subverted the dominant post-WWII model of food distribution. These actions contributed significantly to the broadening of American tastes and stimulated the creation of the health food niche. For more on this subject, refer to Warren Belasco's excellent book Appetite for Change (review).

--Brent W.

Please note

No comments are due on Monday, January 17th.

--Brent W.

Week Three: Cesar Chavez, "The Organizer's Tale"

Chavez gives an account of both group and personal struggle in his effort to unite farm workers in California. Today, United Farm Workers has expanded its efforts to gain basic rights for laborers beyond farm fields as well. In the picture, a team of Hispanic workers sorts garlic at a processing plant in Gilroy, CA. Visit the UFW's website here.

--Brent W.

Week Three: J.V. Palerm, "A season in the life of a migrant farm worker"

Why do you think this article appears in a medicine journal? What are the impacts of agricultural labor on worker well-being?

When you visit farms in California, consider the personal stories of the workers in the fields. J.V. Palerm gives us some insight with his following of Pedro, but many variations to the migrant farm worker experience exist. For a song that reflects the kind of travel path a typical Mexican immigrant farm worker may take, refer to Tom Russell's "El Gallo del Cielo," available on YouTube here. Also, here is the link to California's Harvest of Shame, on Vimeo.

--Brent W.

Week Three: Brett and Nee, Longtine Californ'

Why is it cheaper to eat in Chinese restaurants? Although this chapter from Brett and Nee's book depicts Chinatown during the immigration boom years of the mid-1960's, the people interviewed express concerns and describe challenges that many San Franciscan Chinese still experience or recognize. English continues to act as a barrier to better work for many, and the closed culture of Chinatown isolates workers in lower-paying jobs.

--Brent W.

Week Three: John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

This selection is the first chapter from Steinbeck's book, in which he introduces the multiple cultures and industrial setting of the Monterey waterfront during the mid-20th century.

Cannery Row, pictured here, has evolved from being a "poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream," as Steinbeck described (reader page 147). But is it really all that different? The old industry was fishing (sardines), but the new industry of tourism offers its own grotesque slice of humanity. What is your impression from the short introductory chapter Steinbeck wrote in 1945? [Read here about the collapse of the California sardine fishery].

--Brent W.

Week Three: Sidney Mintz. "Food and Diaspora"

Consider the North Beach district of San Francisco. The Italian identity expressed there is a particular creation of the movement of people and their food. Cioppino, the fish stew of San Francisco origin, bears witness to Mintz' idea that "When food objects, processes--even ideas--spread from one society to another, the receiving society is likely to modify, often to misunderstand and usually to redefine what it has received" (reader page 119). GiGi's Sotto Mare is an example of this evolution, expressing a type of Italian-American identity that is even different from examples of similar hybrid cultures found in the American East.

--Brent W.

Week Three: Lucy Long, Culinary Tourism

Long is a folklorist. Here she considers how experiencing foodways of the Other is a touristic act in itself. A visitor or observer can uncover many ideas about a host culture through its food. Think about the concept of otherness as well as the strategies of negotiation that Long details regarding how people approach new food. How can food serve as an effective window into culture?

In the picture: In San Francisco you will have the opportunity to visit Chinatown, which can be a very clear experience of the Other. Here our guide helps us decipher (negotiate) the meaning of the foods we encounter (in this case, Chinese BBQ duck).

--Brent W.