Bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party embodies good etiquette. But when the Atoll Restaurant at the Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa throws a dinner party, guests meet the winemaker as well as new wines.
Once a month on a Tuesday, the Atoll Restaurant, 3999 Mission Blvd., hosts a wine dinner with three main ingredients: several wines from a featured vineyard, the winemaker and a four-course menu designed around the wines by Chef Rob Famulare of the Atoll Restaurant.
“We wanted to do something special for people who really love food and wine,” said Jennifer Huether, Atoll Restaurant manager. “We think it’s really special that you can sit down and have dinner with the people who made the wine.”
Last month, the restaurant kicked off the series with Cecil and Christine De Loach of Hook & Ladder Winery in the Russian River Valley, Calif. Better known as the founders of the popular De Loach winery, the couple has been making wine for more than 35 years.
“When we started, there were 40 wineries in the area,” Cecil said. “Now there are 400.”
The couple sold the De Loach name along with that branch of their winery to a company that wanted to buy its well-known brand.
“I can sign my name on a letter, but I can’t put it on a bottle,” Cecil laughed.
Then the couple began their new enterprise, named Hook & Ladder to honor Cecil’s 17 years as a San Francisco firefighter and the firefighting profession. They described the wine as the best grapes from the family’s 400 acres of vineyards.
To start the evening, restaurant patrons leisurely settled into their seats at two long tables with views of the bay. Richard Beckman of Beckman Wine & Spirits Company introduced the De Loaches and encouraged guests to ask questions.
“This is your chance to find out everything you wanted to know about wine from the people who make it,” he said.
Cecil started sharing stories as the guests began their first course: spicy lobster with mango, ginger and cucumber salad, paired with a 2006 estate-grown Gewurztraminer. He said he bought his first vineyard in 1970.
“It was the cheapest land you could buy because it never made any money,” he said.
After the first few years of success in both selling grapes and purchasing additional vineyards, the couple’s wine business grew systemically from there.
The history of the family’s winemaking continued as diners enjoyed a second course of butter lettuce, shaved fennel and pink grapefruit with citrus vinaigrette, paired with a 2006 estate-bottled Chardonnay. Cecil described the challenges of upholding quality while trying to hold prices down and how a frost could spell disaster for the grapes.
When a 2006 Pinot Noir was served with the third course of Copper River salmon and crispy potato pancetta mash, one patron asked what made Pinot Noir so special. Cecil said that the market had improved for Pinot Noir since the movie, “Sideways,” set in California’s wine country.
“It’s not that it’s difficult to grow; it just needs to be grown in the right place,” Cecil said. “It needs the fog at night and the warmth of the day to retain its acid. Without those cool nights, it’s flabby and just falls apart.”
The fourth course brought a tea-rubbed tenderloin to the table, paired with a 2005 estate-grown Cabernet Sauvignon and 2005 proprietary wine called The Tillerman. Cecil said that he named this particular blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Sangiovese for the years he spent driving the back of a hook and ladder fire truck and operating the aerial ladder.
“I was 70 feet behind of the driver, so I had to know what I was doing, especially around corners,” Cecil said.
To the patrons at the wine dinner, it’s apparent that he also knows what he’s doing around grapes.
“Cecil loves to talk about the winery and its history, but he really just wants people to enjoy the wine,” Christine De Loach said.
The next wine dinner will be Tuesday, July 22 at 6 p.m. and will feature Chalone wines with insights from Matt Viotto of Diageo Chateau and Estates.
Viotto works closely with the Chalone Vineyard and Winery in the mountains above the Salinas Valley floor in Central California. The vineyard has been producing wine for 40 years with Chardonnay as its flagship wine.
Viotto will share his knowledge of the wines along with glasses of Chalone’s estate Chardonnay, estate Pinot Noir, estate Syrah and their Monterey Cabernet Sauvignon.
Chef Famulare will again pair a four-course meal with the wines. The cost is $65 per person, all-inclusive. Reservations are recommended. For more information, call (858) 539-8635 or visit www.catamaranresort.com.