Last Sunday, Heather, Lou and I made the trip up to Healdsburg to celebrate Bastille Day at the Michel-Schlumberger winery in the Dry Creek Valley. I had been to the celebration several years ago, and I had fond memories of an afternoon spent tasting French wines, eating well-prepared French provincial fare and enjoying the warm weather of Western Sonoma County, California (I first discovered Michel-Schlumberger not long after I moved to San Francisco when my friend Amy, from business school, came to visit and we made a stop at the winery during a weekend tasting tour of the Dry Creek Valley).
A few years later and shortly after Lou and I started dating, I asked him to accompany me for another Bastille Day celebration at Michel-Schlumberger, but he refused me, saying he wasn't ready for a day trip with me yet. Three years later, when I asked again he gladly accepted. I asked Heather to come along.
We got a very late start last Sunday, leaving well after 10:30 for a lunch that was set to begin at 11:30. It takes about an hour to drive to the winery, so we arrived shortly before noon. We were the last to arrive, and they gave us three seats at the end of a long table that was set up in the wine storage area of the winery. The room was dark and cool, a different set up from my first experience when the table was set up under an archway in the central courtyard of the winery.
Last time I was there, Michel-Schlumberger was featuring tastings for its French wine club--I think they used to import a few wines from France--but this time all the wines were Michel-Schlumberger's own wines. We missed the pouring of the Pinot Blanc, but arrived in time for the pouring of a 2005 La Brume Chardonnay and the serving of the first course. The Chardonnay was deplete of the Napa-like oakiness and butteriness of so many California wines, and instead I noted minor hints of lemon or citrus. The food was a salad of chard, pea shoots, sunflower sprouts and asparagus, served with grilled shrimp and a "gateau de mer," which was something like a seafood cake. The flavors were very nice.
The second course, also the main course, was beef and lamb shishkebabs, served with harissa pistou (more or less French pesto), with fingerling potatoes, wilted frisee lentils and grilled peaches. They poured a 2004 Maison Rouge. I thought the shishkebabs were a little weird, but the food was delicious, especially the lentils and the wilted frisee (I'm going to try that!) and the grilled peaches (I'm also going to grill some more peaches before the summer ends!).
The third course was a cheese course--a soft cow's milk cheese, a blue and a soft goat's cheese--served with a 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon. The Cab was the best of the wines--it tasted of tobacco, plums and cherries. We bought four bottles!
And, for dessert, they served a strawberry and lemon verbena "Paris Brest" with candied pistachios (the dish was a soft pastry filled with lemon verbena cream, served on a strawberry gelee). Sadly, they did not serve a dessert wine.
It was a lovely afternoon, though the traffic getting back to San Francisco was horrendous. Thanks for driving Heather!
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