Tacos and Tequila San diego 2019

This year we decided to do something a little different.  We attended, one of my favorite events, Tacos and Tequila in San Diego.  First of all, you can’t beat  San Diego for a venue.  The weather was great and the location of Marina Park was perfect.

Marina Park

THE TEQUILA’S

Unfortunately, you are only given 6 tickets to use for the private tequila tasting event.  Considering that there were more than 10 different brands, each pouring a Blanco, Reposado and Añejo, some were going to be left untasted.  I decided to only taste the tequila I was not familiar with.  This led to some great discoveries.  Let me tell ya about them.

Nuda Tequila

Owned by Frances Reyes.  Nuda Tequila is triple distilled.  The Añejo is aged for 26 months in French Oak barrels.  Aromas of Agave and Vanilla.  On the palate I experienced; light agave flavors, vanilla, oak and a hint of caramel.  The extra Añejo was delicious with notes of agave, vanilla, coco.  I was lucky enough to have been able to try all four of Nuda’s Tequilas, including the Blanco and Reposado.  I have to admit, they were my favorites at the festival.  Price point is $80 for the Añejo and $100 for the extra Añejo.

The owners of Nuda Tequila

SOME OF MY OTHER FAVORITES

 

UNO POR FAVOR TEQUILA

Uno Por Favor Blanco is a tequila with more citrus notes.  It is very smooth and light on the tongue.  The Reposado adds notes of caramel and oak. $40 for the Blanco.

MANDALA TEQUILA

Mandala Tequila.  The extra Añejo is aged seven years in French Oak barrels.  I found this one to be a little sweet with tasting notes of toasted oak, agave and vanilla.  Price point is $130.

MI CAMPO TEQUILA

Mi Campo Tequila.  Surprisingly, this brand was probably the best tequila under $30.  The Reposado was aged in Robert Mondavi French wine barrels.  Great minerality and mouth feel with notes of toasted oak, vanilla and honey.

REVOLUCION TEQUILA

 

Revolucion Tequila.  This tequila aged in traditional America White Oak barrels.  The Añejo has good minerality and a smooth finish with hints of caramel, honey and butterscotch.  They put their extra Añejo through a charcoal filter to remove the color and they call it Cristolino.  This is a good line of tequila and I believe the price point of $50, $60 and $80 for the Reposado, Añejo and extra Añejo, is dead on for this quality tequila.  

There are some really good things going on in the tequila world.  From adding oxygen to the distillate to remove impurities to using nontraditional  vessel for aging.  the industry is evolving and I look forward to keeping up.  Enjoy.

-Brax

 

 

 

 

 

 

quick getaways

Fantastetic4 got together to attend the winemaker’s dinner at kukkula winery. The 5 course dinner was absolutely fabulous and I would love to post pictures and tell you more, but honestly, I got caught up in the moment and just enjoyed the experience.

We did have the opportunity to check out some wineries for the first time. Law Estate Wines tasting room was recognized as being in the top 15 in the world. Beautiful architecture. Law Estate Wine tasting is by appointment only. I highly recommend making an appoint and enjoy the experience.

TH Estate Wines is a must visit. They specialize in Rhone varietals. By appointment only. TH Estate Wines was formally known as Terry Hoage Vineyard. Their wines are well structured, and full body. Their blends are complex and well balanced.

Levo Wine, Benom wines and Wine Shine distillery were the big find for us on this trip. They are both located in Tin City. Tin City is like an adult Disney. Located just South of Firestone Walker Brewery, Tin City is filled with wine tasting rooms, breweries, distilleries and a cider house. Food trucks are available on a lot of the properties. Just take a share ride in and enjoy. Check them out and tell me I’m wrong.

-Brax

What I did on my Summer Vacation…….

What I did on my summer vacation……
Here is the short attention span answer; I went to France for 3 weeks. It was amazing. The food, the wine, the culture, the wine, everything. You can forget about all the “warnings” you have read about France (they don’t like Americans, they don’t or won’t speak English, they are rude), I did not experience any of that. If you have not been, you need to go. If you have been, you need to go back. If you would like to learn more then continue reading.
I have wanted to go to France for a while now, both because of all the mystique and also because it was hard for me to grasp the different regions without ever being there. Unfortunately France is a large country and cannot be fully explored in a short amount

of time. This means either a long vacation or multiple trips. Fortunately I was able to carve out a 3 week period that hit the sweet spot for travel to France. Just as an aside, this is something to consider. France does have seasons, most notably winter, tourist and harvest. The first two do not really need any explanation on why they should be avoided. If you are interested in wine (and if you are going to France you very well should be) then you will want to avoid the heart of harvest season. Many of the wineries in France are still family operations and/or relatively small. Harvest season requires “all hands on deck” and so they likely will not be able to spend the same amount of time with visitors (if they can break away at all) as they would in the other seasons. Our window was at the tail end of tourist season (still warm, less crowds, better service) and ended just as harvest started.
We flew into Paris and had an evening and a full day to explore. Can you do Paris justice in less than 4 days? No. But neither of us are big city people and we wanted to

Arc de Triomphe

get to the country side ASAP. And while I will definitely want to explore some of the many museums and monuments in Paris when I go back, this was not the focus of this trip. We decided to download one of the many bike rental Apps and ride along the Seine River, which is where many/most of the Paris highlights are. Not a bad deal for $12 and we got to “see” everything we wanted to (just not explore).
The following morning we rented a car, loaded up and hit the road. Our first stop, the Loire Valley. We did make a detour to Versailles. As luck would have it we arrived on a Monday and it is closed for tours on Monday. Perfect. We did not want to go inside and could now explore the grounds (which are still open and very much worth visiting) without any crowds and didn’t even have to pay for parking.
Another side bar here. We wanted to keep this trip as spontaneous as possible so aside from Paris we only had two other reservations. We had a general idea of where we wanted to go but did not want to be restricted by too much pre-planning (especially since neither of us had ever been there). We wanted to be able to stay an extra night if we fell in love with an area or divert off of our path if we were told of a place we could not miss. Obviously this strategy is a bit risky and we knew that we might end up sleeping in our car on occasion. That never happened. In fact our plan worked perfectly. We did extend our stay at several places, diverted off our original path a couple of times and never had to sleep in our car. We would generally discuss our following days plans at dinner and then go on-line either in the morning or on the drive to lock in our evening reservations. I would not recommend this method for all trips but it worked well for us because of the time of our travel (not high season) and the fact that we generally avoided the larger, more popular cities.
The Loire Valley is known for its Chateaus (read castles). These “hunting” lodges popped up all along the river in the 1700’s as the nobles tried to keep up with the Jones. They also became a very popular gift for favorite mistresses. This leads to some very

entertaining history and I do recommend learning a bit about it beforehand so that it can be thoroughly enjoyed. Outside of that it is mostly farm land which explains the phenomenal cheeses that come from this area. As this is a bit north the wines produced in this area are generally whites although we did find some good reds as well. If I had to compare it to a region that I am familiar with it would be the Finger Lakes region in New

Sunset on the Loire River

York. Somewhat cooler climate, similar topography, and similar vibe. Compared to other French wine regions, the Loire Valley is a bit more relaxed and smaller in production. Many places do not require any reservations and more often than not the person doing the pouring is also the wine maker (and grower, warehouse manager, distributor…).
From there we headed south to Bordeaux , the polar opposite of the Loire Valley wine scene. This is the land of very old, very big and very famous wineries and they are not afraid to tell you. This is one of the places we did make reservations. The B&B we

Chateau Beauregard at night

stayed at was actually a winery in Pomerol, Chateau Beauregard. We were fortunate in that we were the only people staying there at that time which made us feel like royalty since we had the whole place to ourselves in the evenings and while eating breakfast. It was also very close to the town and region of St. Emillion, a beautiful medieval village overlooking even more beautiful vineyards. Wineries in Bordeaux generally require a reservation. They usually include a tour and a tasting of 2-3 wines and last about an hour. You can find wine shops and tasting rooms for smaller wineries in the villages and these do not require reservations. After two days of playing king and queen at our own Chateau (that we let them make wine at during the day) we left the amazing country side and plunged into the city of Bordeaux, home of the City du Vin. City du Vin

The City du Vin wine store

is an interactive museum dedicated to wine, wine history and France in wine history. A definite DO NOT MISS. As an added plus, they have a self-serve wine bar where you can taste wines you would otherwise not be able to afford from the region. This was an unexpected bonus because Bordeaux is a large region and you could easily spend a week or two here alone. This allowed us to taste the wine from areas of Bordeaux that we did not visit. Bordeaux is a large city with a great farmers market that has many food stands, all of which looked incredible. We did stop by the sea food stand and while I recommend the oysters and shrimp, the rest of the sea food did not stand out. I would also recommend doing some homework on the restaurants in Bordeaux. The choices are endless and can be a bit overwhelming and many require reservations. This was the one time I wish we had planned ahead a little more.
Then it was into southern France/Provence, land of Rosè. We spent a couple days

An entire cooler of Rose?

driving through Provence, with stops in Arles and Cassis, no our way to Èze. Arles is not much of a tourist town, which can be a good thing some times. We did not explore much here but there was not much to see. I did have a phenomenal dinner here with one of the most interesting food pairing I have had, legumes with ice cream as an appetizer. Cassis is a great water front village and I would spend a little more time here on a return visit. Our only other reservations for the trip were for the Hotel Hermitage in Èze. Èze is an awesome small medieval village perched high on a ledge overlooking the

ocean in between Nice and Monaco. While Nice and Monaco are both lands of the rich and famous, Èze is more low key and much less pretentious. This was a great place to relax and decompress for a while, so much so that we extended our original stay here for an extra night.
After catching our breath and laying out at the water side in Èze our next stop was Chateauneuf du Pape. This is a great little town with a tasting room on every block. Reservations are not needed but there is an expectation that you will purchase something. This is not difficult because the wine is amazing. Technically still part of Provence, this is really the southern part of the Rhone Valley and these wines, essentially all GSM’s of some sort, were big, full-bodied and very smooth. A great jumping off point into the Rhone Valley. Our first couple nights in the Rhone Valley we spent in Vaison la Romaine. Much of the Rhone area was gifted to the young retired generals from the Roman army after their conquests. You can imagine why the Roman

leaders did not want a lot of battle tested young generals lounging around Rome with nothing to do. This has left the Rhone area with a vast array of Roman ruins to explore (in-between tasting the wine). The countryside of the Rhone Valley was by far my favorite throughout France. Something about the rolling hills covered with vines was quintessential France for me and was what my visions of France were before getting here. Many of the wineries do not require a reservation and the atmosphere is very relaxed with little pressure to purchase. Another very cool find was that many of the villages have their own tourist center/wine shop. Here you can taste all of the local wines and learn about what makes the area and the local wine makers unique.
Our final leg of the journey was through the Burgundy region. Our first stop here was in Beaune, considered the heart of Burgundy, and over all my favorite town on our trip. It was big enough to have lots of restaurants, tasting rooms and activities yet small enough to be manageable and be able to get anywhere by foot. It also helped that we

rented a flat that was right on the town square so we were right in the middle of all the action. It is also home of the Hôtel-Dieu, which operated as a hospital from the 1400s up to the 1970’s and is now a great museum. One other interesting fact about Beaune is that under many of the streets and houses are miles of underground wine caves that house vintages going back hundreds of years. I could have stayed here several more days but time was running out and we had one more stop, Dijon. On our way to Dijon we did have to stop at the DRC vineyard and as luck would have it they had just started harvest. It was fun to see the “mecca” and interesting to see it get managed as any other vineyard would during harvest. I guess the grapes just speak for themselves. Dijon was an interesting city, very young with several universities located here and very commercial as well. I am glad we went but I am not sure I would return here.
Overall a phenomenal trip that checked all the boxes I had going in. I feel much more confident about the various regions in France and the wine in general. If you are going to try to explore a large part of France I think 2 weeks is a minimum, otherwise plan on coming back. There is too much here to try to do a whirl

DRC

wind tour and get through it as fast as possible. While we did not have any significant problems not being fluent in French, we did take lessons beforehand so we at least knew some phrases which helped significantly and was much appreciated by the locals. We also purchase 2 books, Rick Steves and Lonely Planet, before hand to read up and get a general idea of where we wanted to go. Phone service is not an issue but you will need an international plan and you can use plastic for purchases almost everywhere. If you are going to drive be prepared to pay, most of the major highways are toll roads.

TACOS AND TEQUILA

 

 

 

 

Drew and Crew

Tacos and tequila is one of my favorite events.  San Lorenzo Park in Santa Cruz California was an excellent location choice.    The weather was perfect and the crowd was friendly and festive.  The event was festival style with multiple choices of tacos venders, margarita bars, merchants, bands and of course tequila tasting.  I did notice that there were not as many tequila reps this year as there were last year but, the ones that were there this year were great. 

I had a chance to hang out and talk to Drew Garrison from Dulce Vida, about tequila.  We had a great conversation and I learned that Dulce Vida allows their tequila to go through malolactic fermentation.  Their tequila is 100% Puro  Agave, one of the highest rating given by the Mexican Government.  They have a blanco that is done in stainless steel and they also have infused tequilas.  Their agave if from Arandas, Jalisco Mexico.  I found the Organic Blanco to be lite to medium agave flavor, easy over the tongue.  It could be drank with just a cube of ice.  According to Drew, it is available at Bevmo and Total Wines.  Price range is $22 to $24.

Don Antonio Aguilar

I had the pleasure of meeting Cesar Garcia from Real de Jalpa.  He is the Rep for Don Antonio Aguilar Mezcal.  If you are one of those people that turns their nose up when you hear the word Mezcal,  I guarantee Don Antonio Aguilar Mezcal with change your mind.  It is a Mezcal with a lot of the same qualities as tequila.  Real de Jalpa own their own fields in Zacatecas Mexico.  They produce approximately 6,000 liter a day.  Cesar brought for Reposados with him.  They ranged in age from 4 months to 11 months.  For Mezcal, they were not smokey.  I found them to be earthy with good agave flavors.  The older reposados had more oak notes and easy finish.  Price range from $30 to $60.

Blue Iguana Tequila

Blue Iguana Tequila was the surprise find.  It is double distilled from agave from the Highlands of Jalisco.  They were pouring a 2 months, 4 months, 7 months, 11 months and an 18 month tequila.  The 7, 11, and 18 month olds were aged in whiskey barrels.  I found the tequila to be very neat and clean.  Good agave flavor with a short smooth finish.  Well balanced oak notes from the whiskey barrels.  According to the Rep, it can be found at Raley’s for $28 to $35.

Azunia

Another surprise find was Azuñia.  100% Puro de Agave from the Valley of Jalisco. Azuñia is hand harvested and roasted in traditional clay hornos.  The blanco and reposado good agave flavors that were not overpowering.  An earthiness that was complemented by lite oak notes.

We had a Fantastetic time.  Made some new friends, ate some tasty taco and tasted some excellent tequilas.  I am looking forward to the next event.  Where ever that may be.

Ciao for now

Brax