Friday 28 October 2011

Follow Up: Halloween: What Not To Do

Found a couple of articles which fit in with one of the themes of the last item, courtesy of cracked.com:



It's all self-explanatory. And we all know, if there are people selling them, there are people buying them.

Thursday 27 October 2011

Of Squash and Scarecrows

 

Durham: SpookySome places are inherently spooky. Much of upland Britain is. From the abandoned Roman forts of Northumberland and Cumbria where, once upon a time, young men from places now called Italy, Iraq and Turkey must have wondered why the hell they joined, as they stood sandal-clad, peering into the freezing mist and asking themselves whether or not the Celts were going to try to hack them to death today, to the Lancashire dales where stories of witch trials are repeated to this day. Lots of the Scottish highlands have eeriness built into the scenery, where tales of 17th-century clan massacres and 18th-century battles are blended with a landscape built of sheer-walled glens and thin soil to create an atmosphere which suggests the very hills are watching.

Germany: SpookyCoastal California just isn’t like that. It has many distinctive qualities, and while small-town eccentricity certainly is a phenomenon of the Central Coast, spookiness isn’t. California’s just not a very spooky place. It isn’t New England or Transylvania, whose genuine history has been forged into mythology by gothic writers. It has no Bram Stoker to populate the historic buildings with undead aristocrats, nor have the old Missions been commandeered by an H. P. Lovecraft to house ancient and bloodthirsty deities, and so our imaginations do not raise the hairs on the back of our necks when we think about Californian scenes. Joss Wheedon, of course, put vampires for Buffy to slay in Sunnydale, which was a fictional Californian beach town- but that was the very point. It was supposed to be unusual place for a portal into hell, so they could give a more distinctive flavour to what would otherwise have just been a nice little coming-of-age series for 90s teens. Buffy was like Dawson’s Creek with a side order of demons, rather than Sleepy Hollow with Added Adolescent Angst. California’s just not very spooky.

California: Not Spooky.For a start, it’s still in the eighties in San Luis Obispo. Although the nights are cutting in, there are avocados ripening on the trees. There are Cayucos oranges in the shops fresh off the trees. In Newcastle at the moment it’s in the forties. California’s also not a desolate place, like northern Britain, or 18th-Century upstate New York. It’s rolling golden hills, not misty, deserted glens. It’s cattle country and vineyards. It’s hard to be freaked out by a landscape which contains the ingredients of a future vintage Zinfandel and filets mignons dished up at $40 a plate.

So Californians don’t have nature on their side when it comes to creating a Halloween atmosphere, but, as the end of October comes round, it certainly does not mean they’re not going to try. Certainly in Cambria, where they’ll have a community festivity at the drop of a hat (and they’ll drop the hat themselves), they got into the spirit early. The Cambria Scarecrow and Harvest Festival has been in full swing since the beginning of the month. The festival is in aid of the Cambria Historical Society. The community throws themselves into it; over 200 scarecrows infested Cambria this October, and they’re all online at the above site. From Captain Jack Sparrow to the Headless Horseman there is a wide range of ideas, all the work of locals and many produced by kids. Personally, I don’t think you need to invoke a Johnny Depp film to make a scarecrow scary. This pair on the right look as if they’d pry themselves free of their stakes and strangle you on a whim.

 

DSCF9446Scarecrows mercifully aside, we come to Californians’ individual efforts to increase the amplitude with which one’s spine tingles, and the frequency with which one receives the willies. Of course, there are worse places to start than with an inflatable undead pirate ship, as I’m sure you will agree, but I know you will be just as shocked as I was to learn that, given the excuse, some people go totally over the top. One lady in Cambria has decorated her house with inflatable ghosts, a skeletal pirate climbing a 30ft mast, thirty or forty Styrofoam tombstones, three fog machines, dry ice, a custom made wrought iron fence to which her husband has specially welded skulls on every fifth spike, and a mural on her garage door (this year, she says, it’s going to be a mad scientist’s laboratory). She has to start decorating in mid-September to be done in time for October 31st, and last year she kept a tally of trick-or-treaters which topped out at 843 on the night. Her neighbour across the road is barely more restrained:

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Need I draw the reader’s attention to the menacing inflatable cat twice the height of the SUV in the driveway? I imagine it’s a rare 8-year old Cambrian who isn’t experiencing symptoms of PTSD by the end of the first week in November.

 

DSCF8345DSCF8352San Luis Obispo, being a university town, has its own take on the season. Its economy caters to a large population of young adults with a relatively high percentage of disposable income, and, shall we say, their own special agenda. Therefore we get female costumes like Pocahottie and Miss Krueger on the left. I particularly like this one because I felt that the one flaw in the Nightmare On Elm Street films was that Freddy just didn’t look like he was going to put out, and that’s what I look for in an undead fictional serial killer.

DSCF8351DSCF8343Gentleman’s costumes are equally subtle and tend either towards the unabashedly dorky (Darth Vader, Harry Potter) or humour of the “That’s what she said!!!” variety. On the right we have a One Night Stand (it’s funny ‘cos he’s a Night Stand! He’s a One Night Stand!) and also a gynaecologist's coat.  How do we know it’s a gynaecologist’s coat, rather than the lab coat of, say, a cardiologist or dental technician? Because it’s got “Howie Feltersnatch M.D” printed on it! HONK! HONK! Ah, Student Humour. Like Adult Humour before it’s fully mature.

DSCF9178So what are we doing to raise the Californian Spookiness Quotient? We went to the Giant Pumpkin Shop, of course. For us, that meant Francisco’s Fruits in Fillmore, CA. There, pumpkins and squashes of all sizes, colours, shapes and descriptions may be found. Stacey had been there two years ago and filled the car with what can only be described as Ridiculously Bloody Huge Pumpkins. The biggest one when we went this weekend (we left it late) was a relative tiddler, weighing in at a comparatively svelte 189lbs.

 

We went for form and finesse rather than size. Stacey described the procedure of pumpkin shopping to me. Firstly,you look round the shop- pictured below is not Francisco’s, but another patch in Fillmore where we stopped before moving on. It gives you some idea of what we’re talking about:

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It's the Great Pumpkin, Stacey Potts!

Eventually, you find the perfect pumpkin. She tells me that you get a feeling all over; in fact it’s more than a feeling in some ways- more like a whole-body event- which imparts to you the certain knowledge that there is no way on Earth you can live without this very pumpkin. Stacey, you see, is an ardent and evangelical cucurbitaphile. I didn’t feel quite this way myself, but once or twice Stacey was overcome by an almost epiphanic demeanour (see right).

 

 

DSCF9186Pumpkins and squashes and gourds; oh my! We saw striped ones and knobbly ones, bendy ones, fat ones and tall ones, in the universal colours of autumn- orange, green and gold. Stacey eventually went for one of the more moderately sized (57lb) pumpkins which had fine emerald-green veins streaking down from the stem, and picked up a similar 62-pounder for her mother. I went for a small pumpkin of a variety which has knobbly little bumps running down it. There are a lot of stencils around which I might make use of. I intend to carve into it an expression which suggests it wants to tear your face off. For the kiddies, you know.

P.S. : I had intended this to be the end of the post, but in doing research for the last paragraph I came across two things. Firstly, a lot of really, really lame pumpkin stencils. Funny faces whose use would be an insult to the squash you’re carving. Then, there was this: http://www.extremepumpkins.com/

I shall leave you with a quotation from the home page:

“At what point did the carving of pumpkins turn into a "cute" event? When did boys stop carving pumpkins and moms start? Where did we lose touch with one of the years coolest events?


Today we will seize back this ritual. Today is the day we throw away those safe, cute carving tools. Today we will buy a big, ugly, pumpkin so large one man cannot lift or move it. Today. We will carve that sumbitch into something ugly and plop it on the front porch. October 31st we will light it brightly enough to give visiting children suntans.
Pumpkin carving is reborn!”

Monday 19 September 2011

Festival Season

DSCF8304Every time I write a post I look for signs of the seasons. This week, I have at times been in the dog-house because the signs of the seasons have been smeared up the walls. Ketchup-making, you see is dangerous work. You blend your tomatoes up with sugar, vinegar and spices and then boil the living daylights out of it to rid it of water, intensify the flavours and concentrate the preservatives- that is to say, the sugar and vinegar. Imagine for a moment, if you will, a bubble bursting in a gallon of ketchup which is boiling at around 230ºF. If the mental image does not resemble some of the more dramatic scenes in, say, Platoon, you’re imagining it wrong. Meanwhile Stacey, although maintaining the angelic demeanour and grace for which she is well-known, has nevertheless made it clear to me that next time I make ketchup I had better be more careful otherwise it won’t just be the ketchup which is smeared up the walls.

DSCF8315But it’s that time of year, frankly. This week’s activities have repeatedly filled the air with the eye-watering, nostril-scorching scent of boiling vinegar. As the result of a happy shopping accident, Thea ended up with enough packet mix to pickle enough cucumbers to stuff a yak. She therefore took one packet to use and passed the rest- enough to make a stone (that’s 14lb for US readers) of pickles- on to me. Well, frankly, I was brought up to believe that there’s only one thing to do when you have enough pickle for 14lbs of cucumbers, and that is to refuse to be intimidated by the scale of the project. The people at Avila Valley Barn were kind enough to sort us out with these pleasingly green specimens at bulk rates. They were washed, trimmed, cut into spears, packed, pickled, preserved and photographed looking something like an extraterrestrial barbershop quartet (left).

The beginning of Autumn is upon us; so testify the jars of ketchup and dill pickles, beetroot, DSCF8167nasturtium capers and pickled eggs in the kitchen. There will also be sandwich pickles and even more beetroot to follow if I have my way. Autumn is festival season on the coast. After Labor Day, once the tourists have gone home, the various communities start putting on their own small-scale festivals, which provide an insight into small-town American life which teeters on the cusp of being Too Much Information.

For instance, there was Pinedorado in Cambria. It’s called Pinedorado because they have pine trees there. It’s exactly that subtle. But I tell you what: Main Street, Cambria was packed with viewers on both sides for the 1.3 mile route of the parade, and it wasn’t hard to see why. As street theatre goes, it was second to none. I am reliably informed by Pinedorado veterans that it’s advisable to face hostilities fortified with more than one early-morning Bloody Mary to take the edge off the weirdness. In all fairness, the parade opened this year with the band of the 3rd Marine Air Wing (right) who really can play. They were followed by the Grand Marshall of the parade, Cambria resident Red Holloway- a saxophonist who, in his time, has played with Lionel Hampton, Billie Holliday, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, B B King, George Benson, Dexter Gordon, DSCF8184Sonny Rollins, Aretha Franklin and Lester Young, among others. He wasn’t playing as much as presiding, in line with this year’s motto “Cambria is music to our ears.”

And there then follow the usual elements of local parades- police and firefighters, local charities and the marching bands of local schools. I found them quite impressive; as a former dedicated Band Geek at school, I dread to think what would have occurred if they’d tried to get us to march as well as play. On the other hand, sitting down allowed us to cultivate a more sophisticated, big-band sort of feel, especially as we played a good few Glen Miller numbers and wore waistcoats and bow ties, rather than the frankly panic-inducing uniforms worn by the marching band kids (left), which made them look like refugees from the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. One can only assume that it’s good, character-building stuff.

 

DSCF8177DSCF8187As I say, this was all to be expected and, in all honesty, applauded; at which point the parade took an abrupt detour through the Twilight Zone. There was the truly unique performance of the  Friends of Cambria Library who gave an example of counter-marching while pushing book trolleys, which will not be easily forgotten.  Followed by local representatives of the Shriners, appearing as clowns on very small motorbikes. At ten in the morning, nursing a hangover, it was all a little difficult to grasp, but it was good clean fun and nobody got hurt. Everyone was watching with the same glazed expression of mild amusement and having a good chuckle at the people who’d been good enough sports to put the thing on.

 

Contrast this with the Morro Bay Avocado and Margarita Festival, which was held this past weekend. Far be it from me to criticise, but I would question the competence of the event’s organisers to arrange festivities within the confines of an establishment dedicated to the production of beer, ale, lager and stout. To get in, you had to join one of three lines to buy event tickets, and then join a fourth which cut across the other three in order to get in. The implication on the outside was that you needed to pay for what you wanted in advance by buying tickets which you would then hand over to traders inside as and when you wanted to buy things. In fact, very few traders inside could accept tickets, and if, like us, you had converted all your dollars to tickets, there was no way of laying hands on cash once inside. It was billed as the Avocado and Margarita festival, but the avocado farmers inside couldn’t accept tickets, much to their apparent annoyance, and the margaritas didn’t deserve billing. There was a single margarita stand. Hardly festive.

 

DSCF6560 The purpose of the thing was to promote local avocado growers, and I think there are worse causes to champion. It’s superb to have good avocados which haven’t been shipped halfway round the world at vast economic and environmental cost. There was an awful lot of information about the avocado and the avocado farming industry. For instance, did you know that at www.avocadosource.com there are databases such as Avocado People (“Who’s who in the avocado world”) and selected articles from Subtropical Fruit News? Me neither. Either way, the whole thing smacked of trying too hard to do something which would be worthwhile doing properly. There wasn’t enough avocado. There wasn’t enough margarita. I didn’t need a marble pestle-and-mortar or an NFL t-shirt, and I failed to make the connection between those stalls and the avocado-and-margarita scene. There’s no stopping me eating avocados, I dare say, but I’ll not be queuing up to get into the “festival” next year.

 

At time of writing, I am looking forward to another festival in the epicentre of Central Coast quirkiness, Cambria. Coming up fast is the Cambria Scarecrow and Harvest Festival. This, I’m sure you will appreciate, is going to be charming, funny, and more than a little weird. For you, I will endure motorcycling clowns and scarecrows to boot. I’ll make sure the photos get uploaded.

Thursday 1 September 2011

Market Research

 

DSCF8055I have mentioned in the past just how special San Luis Obispo Farmers’ Market is, but I’ve never gone into depth. Ironically, at the time I wrote that post I was procrastinating during the grand Packing Of The Possessions, prior to moving to the USA, and fantasising about the things I was longing to do once I got here. That was on April 27th. Today, on Monday 29th August, a man in a van is going to bring the very same stuff (minus one German pickling jar which was a casualty of transit) to my door in Cayucos, and I can write to you and tell you all about the Farmers’ Market at some length.

My mother, incidentally, says that these blog posts are too long. She hasn’t, she says, got time to read 2,000 words a fortnight. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy reading them, she tells me, it’s just that I tend to go on a bit, apparently. So, bearing this in mind because a wise boy always listens to what his mother says (even if he chooses, on later reflection, to disregard whatever gibberish it was she came out with on the spot) this is going to be something of a photo-rich, word-poor blog post. In other words, Mother dear, you can just look at the pretty pictures.

The weekly market in SLO began as a response, more or less, to what we today call anti-social behaviour. In the late 70s and early 80s, Thursday night became the late-opening night for shops in downtown San Luis. This in turn attracted large numbers of teens cruising in cars. For some reason, large numbers of young people doing apparently innocuous things like “wearing hoodies”, “talking to each other”, “listening to music” and, here in America where 16-year-olds can hold a license, “driving on the road in cars” are incredibly threatening to those over the age of 21. I can’t explain it; I’ve been there myself- felt intimidated by groups of kids who seem to be doing nothing even vaguely reprehensible at all. My feet speed up all by themselves, and my brain, perhaps troubled by the thought that they appear to be having a better time than I am, just sits there and feels like an idiot. Either way, trade was suffering as the teens put people off coming downtown to spend actual money. After cars were banned on Thursdays, the farmers’ market sprang up in 1983 as a way of attracting people downtown without their cars.

The best part of three decades has passed since then, and the significance of SLO Farmers’ Market, as well as its counterparts elsewhere, has increased beyond the original intentions of the people who started them. I doubt if, in 1983, the San Luis Obispo Downtown Association had the direct aim of attracting the attention of the LA Times and the New York Times. Its Facebook page has over 7,600 fans at time of writing.

But that’s not the point. The point is that the farmers’ market represents a whole range of positive influences on both the local area and the world at large. If you buy at Farmers’ Market, you know that you haven’t paid for more food miles than necessary. You also know that someone is supporting the people who farm the fields you drive past every day. You know that you’re supporting locally owned restaurants. You know that you’re part of a local tradition.

You can buy the ugly-duckling fruit and veg which a buyer for a big supermarket chain would reject. Think of the water, fertiliser, pesticides and hard work which go into producing the tomatoes which will never be bought up by supermarkets because they don’t meet the aesthetic ideal. As if that matters once you’ve blended them up and put them on pasta.

You live in tune with the seasons. This is important to do, not for any flowers-in-your-hair reason, but for reasons like importing Peruvian asparagus to Britain by air in December is stupid when it’s available in Britain in due course in the Spring. If jet emissions contribute to climate change, and polar pack ice melts earlier so the krill, which is eaten by Atlantic cod, can’t breed as successfully, you have to put up with Pollack in your fish fingers because cod’s so expensive. It’s not the only reason- it’s one of many.

You know what’s seasonal by the price. Artichokes are getting their second wind just about now, but the main season has been and gone, avocados are becoming less expensive as the weeks pass, squash and courgettes and tomatoes have been quite cheap for quite some time now. Cayucos oranges are appearing. Peppers are getting there, but aren’t at their peak quite yet. You eat food when it’s at its best, when it’s ripest, when it’s cheapest, and when it does the least harm. What’s not to like?

Rant over; enjoy the photos. I took them this past Thursday (25th August). It was a typically glorious night at Farmers’.

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Right: Trade is not allowed until the bell goes after 6pm, but barbecue crews from local restaurants turn up around 5pm, while Higuera is still quiet, to get the fires lit and the ribs tender.

 

 

 

 

 

Below: Some items look from a distance, a bit on the British side, until you get a closer look at the label. The jam isn’t quite what you’d expect (left)  and the pies (right) are slightly more exotic than usual too.

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Above: Salty and Sweet. Olives from Home Maid Italian Markets and fresh strawberries and cream.

 

 

 

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Above, Left and Right:
Oranges and berries in season. Golden Raspberries are, I am told, sweeter than red ones.

 

 

 

Medley

Above: Colour abounds….

 

 

Medley2Gala

 

 

 

 

Above and Right: … and the rainbows come in many forms; Clockwise from top left: Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory; G. Brothers Kettle Corn; Central Coast GALA.

 

 

 

 

SLO the Stigma

Making Strides

 

The market is a well-used forum for those raising awareness of various issues, from a Making Strides, a colourful stall raising awareness of issues associated with breast cancer (right) to SLO the Stigma, a stall which uses the not-immediately-obvious combination of selling carnivorous plants with a campaign against the social stigmatisation of those suffering from mental illness (left), to those issues you didn’t know were issues (below). Click photos for links.

 

Vitamin D Council     http://www.gridalternatives.org/welcome-central-coast

 

 

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Above and Left: Bubblegum Alley.

This alley leads off Higuera, the street where the market takes place. Love it or hate it, it’s visually impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

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Right: There are always musical acts at the intersections on Higuera, from up-and-coming local artists, to military bands, to trad. jazz, to emo rock, to those who know that there was never enough accordion in Rock n’ Roll the first time around. Details are published in advance on the market’s Facebook page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The street food is mostly pretty amazing. A typically eclectic blend of various cultures influence the food on sale, but there is an awful lot of what you have to call Californian food on sale.

Top left; freshly-grilled corn; Top right: churros baking.
Bottom left: Tostada salad; Bottom right:
The Rib Line BBQ.

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DSCF8117DSCF8148So there you have it. For a couple of hours every week, life is good, evidenced by the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the market. The strongest smell is corn grilling over wood or gas; the air is filled mainly by the chatter of shoppers. It looks like a palette of a hundred thousand colours, in a million different degrees of light and shade. What it tastes like, I suppose, is up to you.

Tuesday 16 August 2011

The Summer Wine

 

Hummingbird, our garden.August on the Central Coast is as it should be: Summer in full swing. Nature seems aware of it, and people too. Migratory species are passing through Cayucos, from the tourists who throng the beaches (and, frankly, why shouldn’t they?) and struggle to cram their vehicles into already-full car parks by the Veterans’ Hall downtown, to the hummingbirds (right) who are feeding from the bottle-brush tree above me as I write. Out of curiosity, I did a bit of research and found that this particular species is known as the black-chinned hummingbird. I personally think this is a rubbish name. For one thing, they have no discernable chin, black or otherwise. The link I posted here seems to be a bit sniffy about them too, calling them “the least colorful of US hummers.” I think this is down to bad P.R. and if I was a prominent bird in the black-chinned hummingbird community I would think seriously about hiring a new manager to turn thing’s around. Someone with a proven media record and some industry savvy. Perhaps Oprah would consider it; she’s bound to have spare time on her hands now her show’s finished. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could get them on a stamp by the end of 2012.

Fin Whale, Cayucos

Also spending August round Cayucos have been migrating Fin Whales. Chasing shoals of krill northwards as the water warms, we watched them for half an hour as they swam a couple of hundred yards offshore. For those of you unfamiliar with whale-watching, the best way of spotting whales in a whale-rich environment is to scan the horizon rather than the water. What you are watching for is the tell-tale “blow”; the column of water and whale snot expelled at high velocity as the whale exhales. This, visible for several seconds, is far easier to spot than the whale itself, which can usually only be seen for a fraction of that time. Having seen the whale breathe, you know where to watch.

We are now, at the beginning of August, just over halfway between Independence Day and Labor Day, the two public holidays which book-end the American Summer. In England, the cricket season is at its height (England having just completely crushed India) and the football season has just started.  As a kid, I always thought it was great that the season began in mid-August because it gave the season a little time to take shape a bit before we all went back to school at the beginning of September, and it was possible to drag some of the Summer with you into school, in the form of conversations about player transfers and the three or four games which you’d not yet had the opportunity to discuss at school.

Harvest Moon, Highway 1This weekend the Perseid meteors passed through the atmosphere but were largely obscured by the quite spectacular harvest moon which coincided this year. It being that weekend, it was time for the quarterly wine pick-up at Rotta Winery in Templeton.

Stace and I first went to Rotta two years ago on the recommendation of Stacey’s sister Thea. The Paso Robles AVA (American Viticultural Area) is located just over the hills East of Cayucos. Paso Robles, you will recall, is the town which hosted the California Mid-State Fair at the end of last month. It was once home to outlaw Jesse James and the Polish pianist (and later diplomat and founding father) Jan Paderewski, the latter planting Zinfandel grapes which were subsequently turned into wine for him by York Mountain Winery. Padarewski’s were not the first grapes planted in Paso, nor were they the last. Wineries are now a significant element in the local landscape, culture and economy. We visited York Mountain in 2009 and found it a shadow of what it was once reputed to be. That was before it was bought out, the next year, by Epoch Wines- owners of the vineyard planted by, yes, Jan Paderewski.

All wine-tastings are not created equal. We once went into one very grand-looking winery a little way further than York Mountain; a stately-looking building with substantial adobe walls and Tuscan Cypresses planted outside. Snooty people in aprons patronised and overcharged us for the privilege of trying their acceptable-but-overpriced wine. It was distinctly off-putting. We left them with their silly trees and their silly aprons and their silly prices and went in search of a more fulfilling experience.

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Above: The Paso Robles American Viticultural Area. Clicking on map opens link.

When we moved on from Snooty Valley Vineyard (or whatever it was called) we acted on Thea’s recommendation, and went to Rotta Wineries, near Templeton. The winery has been owned by the Rotta family for over a century, the original vines having been planted by a Frenchman in the 1850s. Rotta, for those who don’t know, is pronounced to rhyme with “voter”. It was Easter Sunday, and a family was seated on the patio, clearly having a good time.

Inside, the tasting bordered on cabaret. To the accompaniment of first-class banter we tried about ten wines, and bought a couple of bottles; one was a present for my dad. The lady conducting the tasting said she could get the owner of the winery to sign the bottle. A moment later the man who a few minutes previously had been enjoying his Easter Sunday lunch with his family walked in, having signed the bottle I’d just bought. “I hope you know,” he said “this is gonna decrease the value of the bottle by around 50%.” Surrounded by his family and his customers, Michael Giubbini, the owner and operator of Rotta Winery, was spending Easter in the vineyard which had belonged to his grandfather and great-uncle, Joe and Clement Rotta. It’s that sort of place. He said he’d worked in the vineyards as a kid, had loved it, and he had hopes his daughters would continue the family business.

Paso Robles is well-known for its Zinfandel grapes. It’s a traditional Californian varietal, genetically identical to the Sicilian Primitivo grape. In a state which grows over a hundred different varietals, Zinfandel is grown in more than 10% of vineyards. Paso has its own Zinfandel festival, held the third weekend in March every year. During Prohibition, Californian wine producers started producing bricks of grape concentrate which would enable consumers to illicitly make wine at home. The packaging would include warnings like “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine.” The acreage of Californian vineyards increased by 700% in the first five years of prohibition. The staff at Rotta, a firm proud of its Italian-American heritage, told me the vineyard had survived Prohibition by supplying the church with sacramental wine.

Rotta “dry farms” its Zinfandel in the Templeton vineyard. Basically, they do not irrigate the vineyards, which forces the vines to grow deep roots in search of water. This makes for small yields, and intense character, according to the marketing.

Iain and Stace at a Rotta tasting.Since that first visit, I’ve been there three more times and Stace has been back a couple of times more than that. The winery has character; the staff are actually very knowledgeable about their product, rather than college students earning a bit of pocket money. The wine is good value for money. When I say this, the following should be borne in mind. The price lists at the Central Coast wineries I’ve visited generally start at about $18-20 a bottle and work their way up. I say this as someone who usually buys wine at the supermarket and rarely spends more than $10.

Sometimes, unfortunately, the wine you buy at wineries is not always better than the wine you buy at supermarkets pound-for-pound; this is especially true of the bottom end of the wineries’ price list. It’s quite often the atmosphere that sells wine to the wineries’ visitors. Vineyards are scenic and are usually in places where the sun can be depended upon to shine. Add to that a drop of alcohol and an enthusiastic pitch and people who have set out to buy the product in the first place and what you have is a sales opportunity. One thing to remember when wine tasting is: all grapes grow in vineyards. All wine is made in wineries. Some of those wineries are out to sell wine to visitors.

So, what you have to ask yourself is not “Is this great wine?” (because at that point in time, the answer will almost certainly be yes) but “Is this wine worth the asking price?” And I can honestly say that the wine at Rotta is worth it. I have tasted better wine, it’s true, but usually on occasions when somebody else was paying for it. And I have definitely been in situations where people have asked for more money in exchange for worse wine. A $20 bottle of Rotta wine is, in fact, twice as good as a $10 supermarket bottle, and that’s not always the case at wineries.

Membership of the various wineries’ wine clubs vary in what they offer; this is a selection of a few.

Winery Price For:
Rotta Winery $32/qtr.. 2 bottles of wine, 10% off purchases; free tastings, “Rotta Run” pick-up parties.
EOS Estate $45-$55 qtr.. 2 bottles of wine, 20% wine discount, membership benefits at sister wineries, opportunity to rent on-site vacation condo.
Wolff Vineyards $35/qtr.. 2 bottles of wine, 20% off purchases; free tastings, invitations to events.
Opolo Vineyards Free (with minimum purchase) Minimum 4 bottles of wine at 15% discount; free tastings, private tours.
Tobin James Cellars

$155, twice yearly

Eight bottles of wine, 15-20% discount on wine purchases, special gift in each shipment, invitations to special events.

The above wineries are from the 170-odd wineries in the Paso Robles  AVA, with the notable exception of Wolff Vineyards, whose crisp white wines are produced just south of San Luis Obispo in the Edna Valley AVA. I mention them because not only are their wines very good but they are ecologically sound producers, who have a turtle sanctuary at their vineyard. If you can’t approve of a turtle sanctuary you just aren’t having enough fun.

As you can see, Rotta’s wine club is comparable to many others. Not knowing quite what to expect when we turned up, we found a fairly diverse group of socially lubricated individuals enjoying themselves on the patio where, two and a half years ago, Michael Giubbini had been enjoying his Easter Sunday with the family. While winery staff took club members and visitors through the now-familiar list of wines, including their award-winning port- and sherry-style dessert wines, there were others serving snacks to complement the wine, and others still making sure customers collected the wine they’d already paid for.

We tried Cabernet Franc with grilled steak and a 2006 Merlot that went well with blue cheese. We sat on the patio with everyone else. It was so far removed from how I imagined the events at Snooty Valley Vineyard would be. Although there were cocktail dresses and Panama hats in evidence, there was an equal if not greater number of people in jeans and polo shirts. Everyone was eating, drinking and being merry, listening to the live music.

A bold young lady who appeared to be about nine or so was playing her part in the afternoon. She had enlisted the help of a shyer, younger girl who could well have been her sister. The younger of the two was carrying a plate. “It’s cream cheese, and the jelly’s made from the Black Monukka dessert wine.” said Big Sister. I tried some, and as Stace and I smiled at the unabashed confidence of this little lass who was pronouncing words bigger than she was, we reflected on the likelihood that these were the daughters, whose great-grandfather Clement Rotta had bought the vineyard from his brother Joe, who had bought it from the Frenchman who had first planted vines here a hundred and sixty years ago. It’s not just the vines which have deep roots in Templeton.