New Faces at Mentone

February 9, 2024 – Are you eager to learn more about wine? Want to experiment with fun cocktails, and maybe even zero proof ones? Wish you’d been able to score a resy at Manresa before it closed? You’re in luck. Well, at least with two out of three. 

First, there’s a new face and ethos driving the wine program at Mentone these days. Wine director Emma Bavera has been here only a few months, but she’s already bringing many welcome additions to the wine experience.

A Virginia native, Bavera told me she came to her current job as a major presence in the dining room as many somms do, via the kitchen. A French major, she had been studying abroad when the idea of pursuing culinary arts spurred her to attend the Culinary Institute of America in New York City.  She began to work in restaurants, among them Mel’s Pizzeria, Joomak Banjum, Jojo and Loring Place, all in NYC, finding the camaraderie stimulating and inspiring. A colleague was studying to be a somm and her interest in wine quickly became more than a passing one. Bavera decided to go all in and move from the back to the front of the house. With her calm, professional and rapport-building demeanor, she’s a natural. 

When her family relocated from Virginia to the Santa Cruz area, she came to visit and it didn’t take long to succumb to the irresistible tug of the West. Discovering that Mentone was looking for a wine director, she went for it. It was kismet: she fits right in.  

The revamped wine list shows her deep appreciation for all things European. Growing up on the East Coast and working in restaurants in New York will do that. But she’s quickly learning to appreciate the talented winemakers that surround us here and is eager to meet more of them. She’s also planning a series of wine classes that will introduce enthusiasts to different regions and styles of wine. The first one on Produttori del Barbaresco is already sold out. Bavera says she will be offering one class each month, featuring a specific producer. Classes will be held on Sundays from 1:30pm to 3:30pm: schedule forthcoming. 

An extremely accessible way to enjoy wines with your meal and share with friends is the Quartino program she recently introduced.  A true quartino holds 8.45 ounces (exactly ¼ of a liter, or 1/3 of a 750ml bottle), compared with the standard 5-ounce pours in most wine by-the-glass programs. Quartinos are served in a cute carafe that looks like a bud vase, accompanied by a wine glass. So very, very Euro.  

A recent Mentone Instagram post (by @Emmadrinksstuff) highlighted a taste of the Loire Valley, featuring 3 French wines, including examples from Vouvray (Chenin Blanc), Chinon and Saumur-Champigny. “Everyone in New York loves quartino’s,” Bavera says. “It’s 1/3 of a bottle (a glass and a half) and is an ideal way to sample a wine and then enjoy the rest of it with your meal.” She says the concept is catching on, and she’ll be changing the offerings each month to feature a different region or theme. 

Quartino’s are doubtless going to be super popular with “beachgoers,” once Mentone’s “Little Beach” concept, which features outdoor lunch on Saturdays and Sundays, from noon to 2:30, reopens around Memorial Day.

Flipping through the list, which includes a lengthy selection of Champagnes, along with skin contact bubbles and rosés, plus nice depth in French and Italian reds, I couldn’t help but feel transported to places I want to go, which is exactly what wine does. Better yet, she includes whimsical maps to help you on your mental journey. 

Mentone’s founder, owner and chief pizza developer, David Kinch, calls Bavera’s latest wine list, “the finest in the county.”  The day I visited Mentone to chat with Bavera, Kinch shared that he is feels there is nothing like Mentone’s wine list and experience in this part of the 831. He’s especially jazzed about the quartino program, another thing that keeps Mentone fresh and exciting, delivering a dining experience that transports you to that little slice of heaven where Italy meets France, on the Riviera. 

Asked about Ritual at Manresa, the new fine dining concept that has taken over the Manresa property in Los Gatos, he described his role as Chief Culinary Ambassador for Ritual, as purely advisory. “I’m also the landlord,” he added. 

Clearly, he’s having fun and enjoying the opportunity to connect with his colleagues around the world. “It’s a fabulous concept,” he told me. “Los Gatos is really embracing it. Juan and Luis (Caviglia) are really smart and they know what they are doing. They had a pop-up business on the Peninsula that really caught on and were looking for the right venue to make it more permanent. People are absolutely loving it. The first tranche of dinners sold out almost instantly, and that was with no proof of concept.”

Now the word is out and the upcoming dinners are already waitlisted. You can increase your odds of securing a seat at Ritual (48 seats per night at $450) by purchasing a membership for $190 per month. It buys you first dibs at tickets, chef meet and greets, last minute seatings and “members only” events. 

You could also take that $190 and buy a few drinks at the bar at Mentone, the domain of bar director Matt Barron, who, like wine director Emma Bavera, came to the liquid arts via the kitchen. His early inspiration was watching cooking shows and he planned to pursue a career in food. But working in a huge club that catered to as many as a thousand patrons nightly, he was assigned a bar back position. He gravitated to the orderliness, precision and cleanliness of a well-appointed bar. From then on, it was mixology. 

He came to Santa Cruz from southern California when his sister moved here for college. She left, but he stayed. Soif was his most recent domain until the pandemic did things in. Now, he’s happy to be tending bar at Mentone. His regulars are a real mix of business people on their way home, and a smattering of locals: a very different crowd from those at the downtown spots where he bartended before Soif, including Motiv and Café Mare. They mostly know what they want and he doesn’t see them cutting down, or back, on booze. 

However, Barron totally welcomes the advent and popularity of zero proof cocktails. “Please don’t use the word mocktails,” he says. “That just adds to the stigma that people who don’t drink have had to face all these years. Now, at least there are a lot more choices.”  And there’s less shaming going on, and less peer pressure, which he thinks is a good thing. 

For those observing “dry” January, he created 31 Days & 31 Nights, made of “gin” tea, a painstaking concoction filled with botanicals, Giffard aperitivo, lemon and soda. He also makes a Zroni, which has many fans. 

Barron admits to feeling a bit guilty charging $15 or $16 for his zero proof cocktails, but they take a lot more work than the boozed-up ones. He ardently makes his own shrubs, infusions and garnishes.

Negroni’s are super popular here, and one of his customer’s favorites is Spagliato Bianco, made with Luxardo Bitter Bianco, quina (made with gentian and chinchona, the source of quinine) and prosecco. You’ve probably seen Maurin Quina, from Lyon, infused with wild cherry and perhaps the most famous quina ever: it sports a bright green devil on the bottle. 

Mentone has a good selection of mezcals and one Barron recommends that isn’t overwhelmingly smoky, is the Lagrimas de Delores, Verde. I appreciated the freshness. 

What’s trending? Just as a cloud forgot to block the sun (sorry, football on my mind), Barron pointed to a gleaming shelf of verdant liquors, high above the bar. Turns out there is such a demand for Chartreuse, the famous green —and yellow—liqueurs made from a closely guarded secret recipe of 130 herbs and botanicals created in 1605 by the Carthusian order of monks, that they can’t keep up with demand. During the pandemic, the home cocktail craze drove the popularity of Amaro’s and other herbal drinks, Chartreuse among them.

In a blow to devotees of Chartreuse-dependent cocktails, including “The Last Word,” developed during Prohibition, the monks, whose order was founded in 1065, and is located in the Chartreuse Mountains north of Grenoble, released a letter in 2021 saying they were capping their production to reduce environmental impact and to focus more on their core mission of prayer and solitude. They were putting the world on notice, and on allocation. 

Loose rays of sun turned the green bottles into traffic lights as I pondered this dilemma. What will become of the recipe, so sacred that only three monks at a time possess it? Could one of them be persuaded by nefarious means to leak the secret formula? (Is there a James Bond movie here?) Imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, all the way to the highest order of things. 

With his trusty bar ladder, Matt fetched two bottles I’d never seen before, pulling the caps so I could have a sniff. The Brucato Chaparral Amaro, glowing green gold like a fine EVOO, bears a label depicting a 1940s scene of blonde southern California hillside framed by Bay trees. Unsurprisingly, it was pleasantly redolent of laurel. For once, truth in advertising! 

Next, I sniffed the Faccia Brutto Centerbe (which means 100 herbs). The back label proclaims it’s made from a closely guarded ancient blend that is “not just for monks anymore.” Ooh, I smell a holy smackdown. And they’re in Brooklyn. This could get ugly. 

Turning to a happier topic, Matt pulled out a couple of his favorite gins. Gotha “Menegiks” con Acqua di Mare sports fish swimming on the label, and is made with ocean water from the Adriatic, Albanian juniper berries and capers. Good for a sushi martini, maybe? 

The other was Komasa, a Japanese gin distilled with juniper and tiny mandarins. So fresh, so exotic. 

Like winemaker Ian Brand says, “Always drink the really good stuff; just drink a little less.”