So what do we do if we have fabulous creations that don’t match with the said wine? We pop more corks and let the sweetness or acidity of the food guide us to other Cline wines. With an ample variety of options, a good match is never too far from our grasp!

Here’s the recipe:
8 chicken thighs
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 28-oz can chopped tomatoes
2 bay leaves
1 large onion
3 cloves garlic
3 zucchini, chopped
3 cups carrots, chopped
2 cups celery, chopped
2 cups mushrooms, chopped
1 cup green olives, sliced
Bunch of parsley, chopped
1 Tbsp Herbs de Provence
1 cup Cline Sonoma Zinfandel
Salt and pepper

Remove as much fat as you can from the chicken (partially frozen makes this task easier). In a large skillet, heat olive oil and brown chicken pieces on both sides.  Season with salt and pepper.  Remove chicken and place in slow cooker.  Pour chopped tomatoes and bay leaves over chicken.  In same skillet, fry onions until golden, add chopped garlic along with all other vegetables, herbs and Cline Sonoma Zinfandel.  Add salt and pepper.  Toss until veggies are coated then pour entire mixture over chicken in slow cooker.  Place cover on cooker and relax. Cook on high for 3 hours or on low for 6 hours. Serve with buttered pasta of your choice.

You can also bake this dish in the oven if you don’t have a slow cooker.  Just follow the same directions, using a large ovenproof casserole dish.  Bake at 350° for 1 hour to 1-½ hours.

About the Cline Gourmet Gals

The Gourmet Gals is a group of Cline employees who have a love for wine and food. We meet periodically to share recipes and creations that pair well with our wines. The goal is to find the perfect match; our creations can be found at http://www.clinecellars.com/haveittonight.

Heard of the “Holiday in the Vines” celebration?  It’s a celebration of sights, sounds and flavors of the holiday that Sonoma Valley wineries are offering visitors during this festive season.  The signature event that the tasting room staff gets giddy over is the Gingerbread Winery Contest!

This is the fourth year that professional and amateur chefs alike produced extravagant gingerbread likenesses of Sonoma’s most acclaimed wineries. Throughout the month of December, visitors can pick up a map and a ballot at any of the participating wineries and cast their votes for their favorite edible-masterpiece. As an added bonus, each time participants cast a ballot they’ll be entered into a raffle to win a prize.

Cline Cellars owner, Nancy Cline, and tasting room employee, Maggie Cox (and a few of their elves), tried their hand at replicating the 1850s style farmhouse tasting room.  It was a new venture for each.

“The coolest thing we learned about making the gingerbread house is that you can make ponds out of melted Jolly Ranchers; blueberry in the case of Cline. We truly had a blast for never having done this sort of project,” explained Nancy.  And she described the creative marathon as “…one whole hectic day and four or five trips to Safeway, Sonoma Dollar Store, Tidily Winks, and others in search of just the right adornments, such as lollipops. It was a wonderful undertaking which I approached with duress and now am confident that next year we will mow down the competition.  This was our getting up to speed year.  Next year we envision a project that we can’t even talk about it is so exciting!”

One term the team had to come to realize during the construction was “authentic” looking.  “Maggie and I had to remove the idea we were making something look authentic.  We planned on creating the rock walls with croutons, but they are boring.  Instead we decided on brightly colored gum drops!  Syrah hill was to be planted with grapevines using pretzels and green and orange frosting, but instead we decided lollipops would be more whimsical …I mean how authentic is a gingerbread house to begin with?”
 
The final product is a sight to see.  Unique creativity crowds the display with examples such as Gummy sharks representing carp in the pond, and Peeps style ducks sit on another.  Come behold the masterpiece from 11-6
daily throughout the month of December…. and don’t forget to vote.

When it comes to making a traditional Thanksgiving feast, customarily we stick to our favorite dishes.   It’s nice to hover in our comfort zone and remake our notorious and highly requested sides each year.  Don’t get me wrong, there are a select few who have the wherewithal to confidently present an unorthodox culinary concoction, which left each and every guest begging for more.  But, for the not so daring group, we stick to what we know.  With that being said, something that is easy to experiment with, and often times expected, is the leftovers!  With an innumerable amount of ideas a Google search away, this year’s creations came from our staff members.  So easy and delicious, check them out:

Left over Cranberry sauce

Jennifer Seekon-

I make Cranberry Corn Muffins.  I Stir ¼ cup cranberry sauce into a prepared batter from any 8.5 ounce corn muffin mix; bake as directed.  Makes about a dozen muffins.

Left over Mashed potatoes

Natalie Pifer-

The best part about the day after Thanksgiving?  My Spicy Cheesy Potato Dumplings!

I take 1 cup of leftover cold mashed potatoes and add one egg and a ½ cup of all purpose flour.  I like to add a little pizzazz to my dumplings, so I dice up 1 Tbsp of Jalapeño and add 1/3 cup of grated pepper jack cheese and add salt and pepper to taste.  Mix until a stiff dough forms.  With a tablespoon, scoop a rounded heap of potatoes and drop into either a pot of boiling broth (recipe below) or boiling water. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.  Remove and enjoy with a hearty stew or turkey soup!  Makes about a dozen dumplings.

Leftover Turkey

Larry Reisinger –

A favorite of mine is my turkey stock.  Cut up the turkey carcass and put in a stock pot. Add about a handful of peppercorns (to taste), two bay leaves, a chopped onion, two stalks of chopped celery, and a couple of chopped carrots. Put in enough water to cover the bones and bring to a slow simmer and cook for a couple of hours, uncovered. Strain out all ingredients in the pot and use the broth as a base for soups or dumplings.

Carly Cabrera-

Turkey and Sun-Dried Tomato Bruschetta

Ingredients:

3 cups chopped cooked turkey
2 tablespoons Italian spices
1 tsp red pepper flakes
4 cups fresh spinach, torn
1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese
8 sun-dried tomatoes, packed without oil, chopped
1 (1 pound) loaf focaccia bread, cut into 1/2-inch thick slices
1/4 cup olive oil

Directions:

In a large bowl, mix the cooked turkey, olive oil and spices. Add spinach, feta cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Brush the focaccia bread with olive oil, and cook 1 minute per side on the grill or in a toaster oven, until lightly toasted. Place portions of the turkey mixture on the toasted focaccia to serve.

Enjoy!

Here is what’s going on in the vineyard, now that harvest is officially over:  The bounty has been gathered, de-stemmed, crushed, pressed, settled, decanted, and fermented.  At this phase, the chemistry of winemaking comes into play. Careful measurements of pH, % of alcohol by volume, sugar content and the rate of bacterial conversions of acids are charted.  The young wine must be tasted throughout the entire aging process to ensure the final product is one that is pleasing to the palate.

Cold December morning on top of Syrah Hill

As winter precipitation matures into full blown storms, the summer’s crispy chestnut-tinted hillsides begin to transform into cushy green corduroy slopes. The rains provide no nourishment to the dormant vines, but do administer sustenance to the advancing cover crop.  In January, pruning will commence.

The announcement that our first load of this season’s grapes would be arriving on August 19, sent waves of excitement throughout the winery.  The arrival of the palomino grapes, from our Oakley vineyard, kicked the 2009 harvest into high gear. Charlie Tsegeletos, our winemaker, informed us that this year’s palomino crop (one of the four varietals used in our Oakley fourWHITES blend) looks to be down about 13%.  “But,” says Charlie, “that’s because these 75 year old vines are dry- farmed and struggle to produce every year, and has no bearings on this season’s bounty.  These lime flavored little jewels are picked when acid levels are high and sugar levels are low, making a brighter, crisper flavored wine.”

With a relatively dry, cool spring and summer at our heels, we have seen some of the vineyards behind a week or so in relation to last year’s picking schedule.   The cooler weather, in addition to a few spikes in temperature in August and September, have allowed for longer hang times and higher sugar amounts in this year’s crop.  The juxtaposition of yields this year to last has much to do with the less volatile weather patterns that we’ve experienced.  Growers and vineyard managers who rode a rollercoaster of wild atmospheric conditions last season (while watching their crops grow smaller and smaller) have seen much larger crops this year, followed by the irony of demand for the fruit being at an all time low.

Our harvest came to a close on October 26 as the last passel of Syrah grapes entered the hopper.  Overall this season, yields are very good; the quality of the fruit is spectacular and Charlie is calling this harvest “a piece of cake.”  Not much could cast a shadow over this year’s near perfect produce, not even a season ending whopper of a storm that sent an assemblage of vineyard workers to pull damp dangling fruit from the vine. 

October 22 and 23

WE MADE IT!! We rolled into the Red Rock Canyon Resort at about 2:30 on Thursday. Well, here it is… the end of our Ride to the Ride. I don’t have any pictures of us finishing because it was a little disorganized when we arrived and I haven’t been able to get the four of us together since our arrival. We met the rest of the riders at dinner last night and we all did a short warm up ride this morning. Tomorrow, Saturday, we do the 100 mile Ride to Empower. It is great to get reacquainted with those who are back this year and to meet the first time riders. A couple of people, including Charene, asked me if we were glad we did the ride to Las Vegas. In reflecting, I can say for myself that there are no regrets about doing this ride. The scenery was beautiful and the people we met along the way were friendly and often inspiring. Taking on challenges is what keeps the glass half-full. Most of all, the generous financial support that you gave and your moral support during the ride provided the energy needed when the gas tank felt empty. I hope that you enjoyed the ramblings of these updates and that the photos helped give you the flavor of the ride. I look forward to seeing all of you as the year passes. I want to end by thanking Cline Winery for their support of the Breast Cancer Network of Strength and the Ride to Empower. I especially want to thank Andy’s wife Micki for driving support during our ride and my wife Sharon for meeting us in Lone Pine and riding with us part of each day and providing an additional support vehicle. We couldn’t have done this without them.

Best to all of you, Jim, Andy, Micki and Sharon

WOOHOO!

October 20 Day 11

We are in Pahrump Nevada tonight, and getting close to Red Rock Canyon, only a day and a half away. We are actually closer to our destination than we thought. When I was planning this ride, I had the distance from here to Red Rock Canyon as 85 miles. Now that we are here we found that we are only about 60 miles away. I think our plan is to ride half way there and back Wednesday and then ride into Red Rock Canyon on Thursday. We expect to arrive in the mid afternoon.

Today our ride included a very strong cross wind for the first half and then a wonderfully strong tail wind during the second half. The temperature was quite cool, in the mid 70s with spectacular clouds to our east. It is amazing that by now when we ride 48 miles, it feels like a short day. If only we could keep that feeling all year.

We are excited to be reaching our destination. We are looking forward to meeting the rest of the riders on Thursday and Friday, and riding the century Ride to Empower on Saturday.

Jim and Andy

Andy nearing Furnace Creek

October 19, Day 10

Today we rode out of Death Valley and to the top of the climb toward Death Valley Junction. Tomorrow we ride to Pahrump, Nevada (ever been there?). We are only two and a half days from Las Vegas where we will ride the Ride to Empower century ride in Red Rock Canyon.

This morning Sharon, Andy and I started our ride at Furnace Creek. Our goal was to get to the top of the climb out of Death Valley, just over 22 miles. Sharon rode about 8 uphill miles with us and headed back. We continued the climb and got to the top! This means that most of our ride to Pahrump will be flat or down tomorrow.

The climb was steady but not too steep with a head wind most of the way. We passed Zabriskie Point, and Twenty Mule Team Rd. on our way. The most interesting sight for the day was a coyote who was hanging out on the side of the road stopping cars. This animal was not afraid of cars or people and was definitely not intimidated by us. After five minutes of debating the danger of riding past him, a car stopped to take his picture and that was our chance to make a break for it. He was there again when we rode back.

Wylie Coyote

Why did we see him on the way back? That was because we are staying at Stovepipe Wells again tonight to see the desert one more day. It gave us a good day of climbing and a good day of downhill for our 40 mile ride.

There are clouds on the horizon this evening so we are looking forward to a great sunset tonight. Well the sunset was a bust. The clouds were in the North and the sun did not illuminate them at all. Oh well, they were still pretty.

We are holding up well. Your donations, emails and messages on Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025936&id=1068080243 and this blog help keep us going when the days get long. Mostly, remembering that we are riding to raise money to help Breast Cancer Network of Strength support women who are dealing with the much more difficult ride of breast cancer treatment and recovery, gives us the strength to do that last hill each day.

Jim and Andy

This is what you get when you leave Death Valley

Here we are heading from Lone Pine to Death Valley

Day 8 and 9  October 17-18

Day 8 Lone Pine to Panamint Springs
We started in Lone Pine, skirting Owens Lake (dry) with our first stop in Keeler. Keeler is a less than spectacular town with a very nice DWP employee who gave us water without arsenic. Then it was a rolling climb to the top of a pass where we had lunch at the turn off to Darwin, thanks to our wives Micki and Sharon.

After lunch we headed down a beautiful fast grade that dropped us into Panamint Springs; yet another awesome, fast descent. We enjoyed a giant cold iced tea at the cafe.  (See the picture of Andy in my Facebook album at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/album.php?aid=2025936&id=1068080243)

Another amazing donation story: When Andy walked up to the cafe porch, a group of locals asked what we were doing and Andy explained our ride. They pulled out a five dollar bill and made a donation on the spot!

When we returned to Lone Pine we celebrated Andy’s 61st birthday at a Mexican restaurant. Then it was early to bed, early to rise to prepare for Sunday’s ride as we had to drive back to Panamint Springs for the day’s start.

Death Valley straignt ahead!

Day 9
We are now in the heart of Death Valley at Stovepipe Wells. The valley here is a striking desert ecosystem. There is a vast flat valley surrounded by brown mountains in all directions. We are getting close to Las Vegas and are about a day ahead of schedule, so, we decided to extend our stay here for one more day.

We began our ride, today, at the base of Towne Pass elevation 4956 feet. I can say that this climb rivals just about any other that I have done anywhere. The grade was 8 miles of between 4% and 8% grade. The reward came after the summit when we had 18 miles of down with speeds approaching 40 mph. The descent ended at Stovepipe Wells where the thermometer read 98 degrees at noon. We stopped for a quick drink and then were off to Furnace Creek, 27 miles further.  Furnace Creek is 190 feet below sea level.

While riding up Towne Pass I was passed a couple of times by a white van. On the sides was written Ride for the Cure 3100 miles. Each time it passed the driver honked and waved. When we arrived at Stovepipe Wells the van was there. When I went over to thank them for their encouragement, I learned that they were a group from all over Canada, who were riding from Vancouver BC to Austin Texas in a relay. Each team rode 100 km each day. They expected to reach Austin next Friday.

Sharon and Micki picked us up and took us back to Stovepipe Wells where we all enjoyed the refreshing pool.

Tomorrow, we will ride from Furnace Creek to Death Valley Junction. Then we will do some exploring of Death Valley sights for the rest of the day.

Note for Fred and Nancy Cline: Andy was checking the wine selection at the Stovepipe Wells General Store and found that they carry Cline Wine!

Day 7, October 16, Highway 395
Today we rode from Bishop to Lone Pine. We had another spectacular day as we headed toward Mt. Whitney. It boggles my mind to think that we will be looking at the highest point in California and Sunday we will be riding through the lowest point in the U.S. Every day is a new adventure.

Speaking of adventure, we invented a new triathlon. It is the bike walk and search. I took the picture of Andy riding to Lone Pine while we were still moving. Unfortunately, when I pulled the camera out of my pocket, I flipped my glasses out onto the roadway. I didn’t notice they were gone until we stopped in Independence, about seven miles down the road. We had to backtrack in the car when Micki caught up with us to look for them. Fortunately, the picture had a road marking that helped us identify the intersection where I took the photo. Unfortunately, we could not remember what part of the ride the picture was taken. We backtracked from Big Pine where we had breakfast, and the last place I knew had my glasses, back toward Independence. Each time we came to an intersection that looked like the picture, Andy would let me out and I would walk back and look for the glasses. Luck was with us, I found the glasses lying in the sand just off the shoulder at the last intersection before Independence. What a lucky break.

Sharon, my wife,  joined us today for the rest of the trip. It is good to have her here. I was starting to miss her.

A shameless plug for the Mt. Whitney Motel in Lone Pine. We are staying here for two nights as we could not find a place to stay between Lone Pine and Death Valley on Saturday night. When we checked in to the Mt. Whitney Motel, the owner charged us for only one night and said the second night was free because he wanted to support our ride. The motel is not fancy but very comfortable. If you are in Lone Pine I recommend it.
Jim and Andy