Grape Escape: Big Basin Pairs Fall Releases With New Food Menu

October 27, 2023 – As I walked into the Big Basin Vineyards tasting room in Santa Cruz to try the wines in the Fall Wine Club shipment, a slate of familiar faces greeted me. Behind the bar was Dolce, who happens to be married to Casey Dakeesian, longtime former Food & Beverage Director of Chaminade, with whom I worked for years on the highly successful Farm to Table dinner series featuring local wineries. 

Casey is now at the Santa Cruz Yacht Club. It was going to be a good day, despite having to plunk umpteen nickels and assorted other change into the silly parking meter, the only downside to this BBV location. This part of technology-adverse Santa Cruz does not support debit or credit cards, or pay by phone. Praise be to Luddites! 

The next familiar face was that of new BBV tasting room manager Christina Barnett, fresh off a roller coaster stint at The Tasting House in Los Gatos, where she had been working for the past two years. Barnett had spent over a dozen years at Double D’s, also in Los Gatos, before it was gutted by fire in 2016. After that life-altering event (Double D’s is a popular sports bar, whose closure indelibly disrupted the Los Gatos community), she worked for a time at Cin-Cin, and then ended up taking a job at Rootstock. 

There, she happened to meet Tommy Fogarty, who was impressed with her cool command of an always fluid situation and tapped her to help run the winery’s always full dance card of events. It was at Fogarty that she met Denise and Michael Thornberry, who are Fogarty club members, and who were in the process of opening their vision of the ultimate food and wine experience, called The Tasting House, in Los Gatos. They asked Christina if she’d like to work with them in their new venture, and she eagerly took on the challenge. After many iterations, and changes of personnel, the owners hired a hospitality consulting firm who recommended shutting the place down for a remodel. As that door closed, another one opened, and here she is at Big Basin Vineyards, as tasting room and events manager.

The BBV team roster also includes the effervescent and wonderfully hospitable chef Juan Garay, who started a popup empanada business during Covid that he named for his pit bull, Pancho. He was wine director at Casa Nostra in Ben Lomond when I first met him, and we had a great time putting winemaker dinners together, including with Comanche Cellars and Hallcrest. He’s now doing the food for the Big Basin Vineyards tasting room, and with his excellent palate, has wine pairings all lined up. 

Never one to turn down good food, I was delighted to try his spinach and ricotta open-faced empanadas, which are his Argentinian grandmother’s recipe. Before you ask if these are like those of Diego Felix, I’ll let Juan address that: “No,” these family recipes are closely guarded and highly prized. 

The spinach and ricotta empanadas were meant to be paired with the 2020 Coastview Chardonnay, but oops, I was drinking the newly released 2021, which has plenty of lemon pith, bright nectarine and juicy energy wrapped around a perfectly weighty middle from the perfectly unobtrusive oak. A truly delicious wine, and with the three kinds of cheeses in the empanada, just dynamite. The whistle clean finish is so perfect. 

The 2021 Rodnick.farm Pinot Noir from Chalone, with its cranberry and herbal core, was a nice companion as well. Like many wines from Chalone, one of Monterey’s ten AVAs, it is tensely wound with spirals of texture and savoriness, just waiting to unspool the secrets of this lost high desert land by The Pinnacles. Kurt Gollnick, formerly COO of Scheid and longtime vineyard manager for them, grows some awesome fruit: Windy Oaks also works magic with it. 

Juan also brought out a hearty beef empanada, along with a tasty chicken version of these pastry wrapped treats, both of which were wonderful with his vibrant chimichurri sauce, and accompanied by nicely dressed mixed greens. As suggested, the 2019 Gabilan Mountains GSM, with its mouthful of endless spice and evolving flavors of bright cranberry, pomegranate and boysenberry, was a delightful pairing, with both. You can order two empanadas for $17, and don’t pass them up. 

This newly released wine is made from Old Vine Mourvèdre from Rodnick.farm Vineyard in Chalone, and Grenache and Syrah from the Coastview Vineyard in the Gabilans. The Grenache was aged in a 240-gallon concrete tank while the Syrah and Mourvèdre saw time in neutral barrels, delivering nothing but amazing fruit in a distinctive statement of this region. 

Groups might want to share the trio of dips, which include hummus, olive tapenade and roasted red pepper: suggested pairing, the 2020 Alfaro Vineyard Pinot Noir. The food menu also includes tinned gourmet Portuguese seafood, including cockles, octopus and smoked mackerel., each with suggested pairings. Naturally, there are cheese and charcuterie boards (definitely going to be awesome with one of the many Syrahs on offer), plus chevre with EVOO, served with sea salt or gluten-free crackers. The suggested pairing with that is the 2020 Rodnick.farm Mourvedre, an incredibly interesting animal that skews towards smoky blueberry and chewy strawberry jam with tarragon. I might also recommend the chevre with the 2020 Howard Vineyard Chardonnay, with its lemony, lithe loveliness, tinged with sage honey and almond butter. This is a wine that persists and insists, and makes me long for Humboldt Fog, one of the west coast’s most distinctive cheeses. 

Feel like munching while enjoying a customized flight or glass of BBV wines? Nibble on snacks like warm olives and herbs, plus Vadouvan spiced Marcona almonds and truffle potato chips, and delve deep into the library. Did you know that BBV made a Merlot from Coastview in 2019? And there’s also Wirz Old Vine Carignan, probably the best thing to cozy up to warm herbed olives since the Estate Syrah. That’s the beauty of a big wine list that covers so much territory, not to mention the vast combined food and wine pairing intelligence of all those well-informed and equally informative and entertaining palates behind the bar. That’s what makes wine much more than some other beverage that came out of a bottle.