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DBJ to host virtual high-end wine tasting fundraiser - Dayton Business Journal

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Dialogue, Dave Beran’s Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, is the latest fine dining establishment to rethink its service model as the COVID-19 pandemic rolls on.

Starting Aug. 6, Dialogue will reopen as Tidbits by Dialogue, a 30-seat outdoor patio space serving wines and small plates.

Beran said that up until a few weeks ago, he had planned to reopen Dialogue in its previous form, but given restrictions on indoor dining and other considerations, he decided to convert the restaurant into a casual wine bar, a concept that he and wine director Jordon Sipperley had discussed previously.

“I don’t think many people want to sit at a table for 2½ hours right now,” Beran said. “This was an idea we’d wanted to do for a while, and for better or worse, we have an opportunity to test it out and see how people respond.”

On the second floor of the Gallery Food Hall, Tidbits by Dialogue occupies the former Paperboy Pizza space next door to Dialogue, providing access to a large covered patio area where diners can sit at physically distanced tables.

Beran and his staff have also altered the restaurant’s menu significantly, shifting from elaborately plated dishes to a dozen or so unfussy small plates, though the former Alinea chef says that the food is still rooted in the ambitious seasonal cooking that defined Dialogue.

“We essentially took the summer menu we had planned and made those dishes a little simpler and straightforward, almost like pinxtos or tapas,” Beran said. “It’s not tweezer food like what we were doing, just comfort food that’s really flavorful and easy to share.”

Dishes, which range from $12 to $30 and will change weekly, include pork belly with peach jus and konbu, grilled hanger steak with sea grapes and cauliflower, choy sum with strawberries and avocado, roasted broccoli with anchovy vinaigrette and prawns a la plancha.

Dialogue’s popular Basque cheesecake will be available by the slice for dessert, and a drink menu will feature wines by the glass, a few beers and lower-alcohol cocktails made with vermouth or sherry. Along with outdoor seating, food and beverages can also be ordered for takeout online and picked up from the restaurant’s takeout window.

Beran said Tidbits by Dialogue will be open from 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays and 4 to 10 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Reservations are encouraged, but not required.

“If it’s viable and it works, we’d love to keep the wine bar going even once we’re able to open Dialogue,” said Beran, who noted that the foot traffic on Third Street Promenade was all but nonexistent these days. “We’re hoping more people in the neighborhood will come to dine with us, since there’s not the tourist crowd that used to be in the area.”

Beran’s second Santa Monica restaurant, Pasjoli, has converted to outdoor dining as well, with about 40 tables spread among a front and back patio. Beran said he planned to expand service at that restaurant soon and possibly add lunch service for the first time.

“Right now, we’re just trying to see what works,” he said. “If there’s a good response, you keep doing it, but if not then you figure something else out.”

1315 Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica, dialoguerestaurant.com

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Santa Monica's Dialogue is relaunching as an outdoor wine bar - Los Angeles Times

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Move Over Clean Beauty, Clean Wine Is Here - Forbes

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To the average drinker, the terms might sound interchangeable. But some winemakers fear that “clean wine” is becoming a major threat to “natural wine.”

Brands founded on the promise of “clean wine” have suddenly proliferated. Cameron Diaz’s new Avaline label — which drew major criticism as soon as it launched in early July — is just the tip of the iceberg. The last year has also seen the launches of the Wonderful Wine Co. (“clean wine for better living”) and Good Clean Wine (“see the world through a cleaner glass”), joining 3-year-old companies like Scout & Cellar (“clean-crafted wines”) and Secco (“keto, paleo, low-carb”).

These companies capitalize on the mainstream American consumer’s interest in wellness products, an interest that’s no doubt grown during the time of COVID-19. And they co-opt the language that small-scale natural winemakers have spent the last two decades working hard to legitimize, a language based on principles of responsible farming, ingredient transparency and minimal intervention.

But in many cases, these “clean wine” brands are peddling false narratives, advertising low calorie counts when the wines have perfectly average-for-wine calorie counts, or implying that they’re sourced from artisanal family winegrowers when they’re actually industrially produced. The phenomenon may not be novel — Alice Feiring, the preeminent American authority on natural wine, called it “NatWashing” more than a decade ago — but it seems to be reaching a saturation point now.

To many in the wine industry, this is infuriating. “It’s been hijacked, this word ‘clean,’” says Todd White, founder of Dry Farm Wines, a natural-wine subscription service based in Napa. “It’s been hijacked by copycats and inauthentic players.”

Maybe so. But the truth is, natural wine has been vulnerable to these sorts of copycat attacks for a long time. In fact, natural wine may have even invited them.

That’s because natural wine has no official definition.

[Taste six California natural wines that are great for beginners.]

Other descriptors of virtuous winemaking, like organic and biodynamic, are policed by certifying organizations. But natural wine, especially in the U.S., is kind of whatever you want it to be. Unfiltered? Unfined? Fermented by ambient yeast? Undoctored by additions of acid, tannin, color? Most people would agree that these are some of the qualifications for a natural wine, but the details — particularly when it comes to natural wine’s biggest sticking point, sulfur — are very much up for interpretation. Nothing is stopping anyone from calling their wines “natural,” other than maybe some Twitter shaming.

Purity Wines in Richmond is a hardcore “natural” wine producer.

Some say it was inevitable that big companies would capitalize on natural wine’s cachet without having to back up their claims. Many people are intimidated by wine, and easily fall for marketing tactics, says Noel Diaz (no relation to Cameron), the owner-winemaker of Purity Wines in Richmond. Diaz is hard core as natural winemakers go; many of his labels even carry the rare designation of “no sulfites added.”

“This was always going to get co-opted,” he says.

The world’s first attempt at an official definition of natural wine arrived in March, when France’s national agricultural department approved a new certification that will add a Vin Méthode Nature logo to qualifying bottles. The news was controversial. Some lovers of natural wine celebrated the promise of accountability. But accountability also means bureaucracy. Interviewed by writer Jamie Goode, Pipette magazine editor Rachel Signer argued that it was at odds with the spirit of natural wine, which encourages freedom and rejects the sort of top-down bureaucracy that a certification creates.

These are difficult paradoxes to hold. Proponents of natural wine have worked hard to build an audience and have fought against the accusation that the category is merely a fad — but now find themselves having to fight against commercialization.

Anyone skeptical that natural wine has breached the mainstream need look only at Dry Farm Wines, which sells curated boxes of natural wines from around the world. According to its founder, Dry Farm has 100,000 subscribers and sold 3 million bottles of wine last year. “We are the largest buyer of natural wine in the world by many multiples,” White says. (The claim is hard to verify. Natural wine sales aren’t tracked, since the category remains undefined in the U.S., but the country consumed about 67 million bottles of organic wine in 2019, according to industry analyst IWSR.)

A self-described “biohacker” who follows a ketogenic diet and leads his entire staff in a meditation every morning (these days, on Zoom), White says that his company is now seeing many “copycats” like Secco and Scout & Cellar because its success is well known.

Dry Farm’s pitch is that, unlike other sellers of natural wine, it tests every prospective cuvee in a lab. It will accept only wines that test for fewer than 70 parts per million sulfur and that are free of mycotoxins, a type of fungus. The lab tests also look for residual sugar (wines must have less than 1 gram per liter sugar) and alcohol (wines must be 12.5% ABV or lower), which aren’t necessarily markers of natural wine, but which have appeal for the health-conscious drinker. White has not yet found any American wines that meet his company’s standards, which also include dry-farmed, i.e. non-irrigated, vineyards and a price point of roughly $22 per bottle.

Noel Diaz operates a tasting room out of his Richmond winery. He calls the lounge the Study, and pours other winemakers’ wines too.

The lab testing is so integral to Dry Farm’s platform that White wouldn’t send me a list of wines it sells. “We don’t want to give away that information to our copycats,” he says. “If they want to do their own lab testing, they can do it.” He did, however, send me a representative box, which included wines like Frappato from the Sicilian winery Cos, a Swiss rosé by Domaine de Beudon Schiller rosé, a Beaujolais from Domaine Gregoire Hoppenot and an orange wine of Garganega from Dalle Ore in Italy’s Veneto.

What’s especially interesting about Dry Farm is that it has tapped into an audience for natural wine that isn’t necessarily the stereotypical set of cerebral wine nerds. That’s evidenced by its astonishing scale, and also by what White calls its “aesthetic”: The club does not sell anything that tastes “funky,” which has typically been a natural-wine hallmark. The cloudy, the sour, the barnyard-y — “That’s cool for hipsters and bearded guys in Brooklyn,” White says, “but I sell to housewives in Des Moines and Kansas City.” The typical Dry Farm customer, White seems to be implying, isn’t the denizen of hard-core natural wine bars like Ordinaire, but the average American Chardonnay drinker who just wishes her wine came with nutrition labeling.

But those sorts of stereotypes, especially when they fall along gender and class lines, are dangerous: Not only are they likely inaccurate, they can also alienate many would-be drinkers. And some natural wine adherents may bristle at White’s divisive language — at his refusal to publicly identify the wines he sells, his defensiveness against competitors, and his claim that his company “for all intents and purposes created the healthy drinking category five years ago.” (It didn’t.) Plus, despite his professed aversion to funk, some of the wines in the Dry Farm box I received were undeniably funky, including a Riesling blend from Austrian producer Christoph Hoch that tasted strongly of the spoilage yeast brettanomyces.

Still, it’s hard to deny that he’s found a way of communicating “wellness” values to his customers that has seemed to elude many U.S. wineries, even natural ones. Many artisanal producers would find it tacky to advertise that their wares are “friendly to keto and paleo,” as Dry Farm’s website does, but maybe they’re missing out on a major opportunity.

Meanwhile, the Avalines of the world are taking full advantage of that language, and potentially duping unwitting drinkers with their claims of industry-leading cleanliness.

Maybe the “clean wine” fad will benefit the real natural winemakers, too. Diaz says he is starting to see his audience expand beyond natural wine’s early adopters. Age groups other than Millennials, his typical customers, are showing more interest. “They want to know more about how the wine impacts the environment and health issues,” he says. That’s a good thing.

But unfortunately, Diaz says, responding to those concerns in a thoughtful way isn’t as simple as tossing around a few SEO-friendly buzzwords like “clean” or “keto” or “sugar-free.” Maybe it’s not even enough, anymore, to just say “natural.”

The right way to communicate what’s in a wine and how it was made, according to Diaz, is the old-fashioned way. “I think we have to just get people to pay more attention and to ask more questions,” he says.

The new revolutionary method for vetting natural wines: a conversation.

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob

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Natural wine's (inevitable, problematic) entry into the 'wellness' industry is here - San Francisco Chronicle

kiratni.blogspot.comTo the average drinker, the terms might sound interchangeable. But some winemakers fear that “clean wine” is becoming a major threat...

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For every big wine cashing in on the “clean wine” craze by advertising its low calorie counts and friendliness to a ketogenic diet, there are a dozen small-scale, thoughtful winemakers quietly making natural wines here in California.

Natural wine lacks an official definition in the U.S., so every practitioner may follow a slightly different set of principles, but the philosophy is broadly characterized by sustainable farming and minimal intervention in the cellar. Most self-identified natural wines are fermented by ambient yeast, are bottled unfiltered and undergo few or no additions. More recently, though, many companies have been capitalizing on the lingo without following through on the philosophy. Brands like Avaline and Good Clean Wine have amplified the already growing interest in natural wine — but have also drawn considerable ire from members of the natural wine community, who fear that some companies are spreading false information and taking advantage of the work that the real natural winemakers have done.

The moniker remains a thorny topic in certain wine circles. Some California winemakers take issue with the implication that only certain types of wines are “natural,” as if the rest were industrial, chemical plonk, often pointing out that legally allowed wine additives are not harmful to human health. That’s a discussion for another day.

But all that said, if you’re new to natural wine and want to support small, independent producers — rather than, say, Cameron Diaz — this list of wines is a great place to start. All of these bottles are from California and, to my palate, should be fairly universally appealing; none of them is excessively “funky” or alienating. And this list merely scratches the surface of the long roster of excellent natural wines now being made in California.

You can buy any of these wines directly from the wineries’ websites, or look for them — and others — at one of the Bay Area’s natural wine-focused shops, including Minimo, Ordinaire, Bay Grape and the Punchdown in Oakland; Tofino, Terroir, Ruby, Gemini, Verjus and Fig & Thistle in San Francisco; and Vineyard Gate in Millbrae.

• A crisp, ultra-light summer white: Et Alia Picpoul Blanc El Dorado Sierra Foothills 2019 ($26, 12.1%). This wine comes from Cara and Aaron Mockrish, who mostly make wines under the Frenchtown Farms label, including from the legendary Renaissance Vineyard. This rendition of Picpoul Blanc, a variety associated with France’s Rhone Valley, is racy and linear, which you don’t always find in Picpoul. It’s flinty, suggesting underripe pear and sappy herbs, with a sunny, bright quality that wraps around the entire mouth.

• A white that can stand up to food: St. Rey “SRV” Chenin Blanc Sutter Ranch Vineyard Clarksburg 2019 ($15, 12.36%). Craig Haarmeyer is one of the great winemakers of the greater Sacramento area, working with vineyards from Yolo County to the Sierra foothills. His SRV Chenin Blanc tastes like a summer fruit salad — think peach, cantaloupe and a generous sprinkling of lemon zest. Firm, mouth-watering acidity carries the wine. Recently, it was showing a hint of reduction — that smell of struck matches — when first opened, but give it a few minutes in the glass and that’ll blow off.

• A different take on Cali Chardonnay: Florèz “Moonmilk” Chardonnay Santa Cruz Mountains 2018 ($40, 11.8%). The name “Moonmilk” puts you in the right mind for the aroma of this wine, which has a dairy-like quality, something like tangy plain yogurt. Look for sour pineapple and sweet sage notes, and don’t mind the spritziness that the wine shows when you pour the first glass. In other words, this effort by winemaker James Jelks is nothing like the stereotypical buttery California Chardonnay you might be used to.

• A “glou glou” red: Woods Zinfandel Capo Creek Vineyard Dry Creek Valley 2019 ($34, 14.2%). San Francisco craft brewery Woods is now also a wine company, with winemakers Chris Scanlan and Kyle Jeffrey crafting the new bottlings. This Sonoma County Zin is a good example of what the natural-wine cool kids like to call “glou glou,” an onomatopoetic term that describes light, easy-drinking, chuggable wines. Despite this wine’s light color, it expresses the deeply juicy fruit notes that are typical of Zinfandel. The nose is pure raspberry puree, the palate full of blueberry pie, and a chalky, rustic texture holds it all together.

• A light-but-serious red: Iruai Shasta-Cascade Red Wine ($28, 12.5%). Iruai is the other label from winemaker Chad Hinds, also of Methode Sauvage. This extraordinary wine is a blend of Trousseau, Mondeuse and Blaufrankisch, grown in what Hinds has termed the “Shasta-Cascade” region of Northern California. Its color is a brilliant, translucent ruby, and its taste embodies a sense of mountain-air freshness. The flavors recall orange peel studded with spicy, musky cloves and a savory hit of anise. Loud and expressive, yet light on its feet. I challenge anyone to dislike this wine.

• A big red that will please the Cabernet lover: Absentee NMWD “Private Stash” California Red Wine 2018 ($30, 14.5%). A mainstay at the Point Reyes Station farmers market, Avi Deixler makes his wines in a Marin County dairy barn. Though the name of this wine stands for “North Marin Wine District” (a term Deixler made up), the contents — Carignan grapes — come from Mendocino County’s Poor Ranch. It’s a dense red, big enough to stand up to a steak. Grippy tannins, baking spices, graphite and blackberry round out this substantial, structured but balanced wine.

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob

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Natural wine for beginners: six exemplary California whites and reds - San Francisco Chronicle
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Natural wine for beginners: six exemplary California whites and reds - San Francisco Chronicle

kiratni.blogspot.comFor every big wine cashing in on the “clean wine” craze by advertising its low calorie counts and friendliness to a ketogenic diet,...

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