Famed California winery offers entertaining cooking classes online
I’ve been a fan of Cakebread Cellars wines for a long time. My fandom first started during the final weeks that The Trace was still open in Hillsboro Village when they were closing out their wine list. I discovered Cakebread chardonnay for $30 a bottle, pretty darned close to retail prices, and I thought it was one of the best chards I’d ever tasted. Even though it’s 100 percent aged in oak, I found the sweet wood to be much less of an oak bomb than other California chardonnays, and I personally tore through more than a half-case of bottles during that heady spring of 2008 as the discounts became deeper at the foundering fern bar.
Since then, Cakebread has stayed on my radar as I discovered more of their offerings, like a highly acclaimed cabernet sauvignon and a sauvignon blanc that is one of my favorite pairings with seafood. So when the opportunity arose to participate in a virtual cooking class from the winery featuring a couple of their wines that I was unfamiliar with, I jumped in with vigor
A problem with falling in love with a winery that’s all the way across the country is that they usually don’t offer some of their more special smaller releases at retail outside of California, and that was the case with a single-vineyard chardonnay that they were featuring with the class. Fortunately, as part of their online Cooking with Cakebread series of culinary classes, your price of admission includes a direct shipment of these difficult-to-source wines along with an ingredient list, recipes and the link to tune in at the appointed time to cook along with the winery’s culinary director.
It was like a bonus Christmas morning when UPS rang my Ring with a shipment of two special bottles a few days before the scheduled event. In the box were some chilly 2018 Cuttings Wharf Chardonnay and 2017 Syrah. However, I’m going to be honest with y’all. I didn’t exactly cook along with the class.
This is for a couple of reasons. First off, one of the recipes was for Dungeness crab soufflés, made with an ingredient that I fondly recall from my time living in the Bay Area, but which isn’t exactly commonplace in these here parts. Secondly, the suggested prep work to do ahead of time of the class was a little, in a word, intimidating. Here’s what they suggested I have already completed before Zooming into the class:
If you are planning on cooking along with us, the chefs recommend preparing by taking the following steps in advance:
Dungeness Crab Souffles: Oven preheated to 350°F • Ramekins buttered and dusted with parmesan cheese • Crabmeat picked through for shells • Red pepper, minced • Garlic, minced • Eggs, separated • Parsley, chopped • Green onions, chopped • Parmesan cheese, grated
Andouille Crusted Filet Mignon with Garlic Sauce: Filet mignon, marinated overnight • Parsley, picked • Green onion, chopped • Andouille sausage, chopped • Garlic, peeled and blanched 3 times
Yikes! That’s … a lot. Instead, I opted for a little simpler version of surf and turf, some shrimp poached sous vide in butter and a couple of nice strip steaks that cooked in the same bath as the crustaceans before a final sear in a scalding hot cast iron skillet and a smear of homemade chimichurri on top. Those are dishes I’ve done before frequently and knew I could pull off in the allotted hour so that we could enjoy an early Valentine’s dinner before our normal bedtime.
The class was highly entertaining, even if I was exploring my own path. Chef Brian Streeter managed to pull off the entire menu cooking on a cassette burner on a table in the middle of the winery with gleaming tanks as a backdrop, so I guess I shouldn’t complain that it was too ambitious of a menu. (But he is a pro and had his wife helping out!)
Unlike other cooking classes I’ve tried online where most participants keep their cameras turned off, this one was extremely convivial. Many of the Zoomers obviously were veterans of multiple classes, and the chef knew many of them by name. Even for strangers like us, he was extremely engaging, taking the time for each party to introduce themselves and sharing stories with each other as we call cooked or just sipped wine while watching. It was fun to scroll through the windows and see other folks scrambling around their own homes with multiple cooks trying their hardest to ruin the broth. (“Hold on! I’ve only blanched the garlic twice!”)
Most importantly, both of the wines were fantastic and excellent pairings with the suggested dishes. The Cuttings Wharf chardonnay comes from a single vineyard in the cool climate of the Carneros Valley which is planted with six French chardonnay vine clones. Four of those clones are combined to create this particular wine, and unlike their regular chard, Cakebread ages a small proportion of the juice in concrete eggs and a little more in small oak puncheons. They combine the unoaked juice with the more heavily oaked wine from the puncheon along with the greatest portion that lies in new French oak to come up with a blend that allows the fruit and honey notes that are often masked by wood to shine through while still showcasing some nice butteriness from the barrels. Which is all to say, that butter poached shrimp was a fantastic pairing!
Cakebread’s syrah is a wine that I often overlook in favor of their more well-known cab, but it’s a much less expensive choice. Another estate-grown wine, the grapes from their syrah come from their Suscol Springs Vineyard in the southern half of Napa Valley. As with the Cuttings Wharf, Cakebread combines five different clones of the varietal from the Rhône Valley which age in a mix of new and used French oak for 15 months before bottling. This particular syrah opened up in a way I didn’t expect, but not unpleasantly so. At first sip, it was very fruity and floral with lots of cherry on the nose. The tight tannins weren’t too apparent at first, but over time they rounded out and became more prominent, a fine match to the beefy strip and herbaceous, garlicky chimichurri. By the time we finished the bottle, more chocolate and dark fruits were coming through, just in time for dessert!
Cakebread is still welcoming visitors to the winery, but all tastings must take place outdoors. This cuts down on the culinary experiences they can offer, so they’ll continue to offer these virtual classes for the foreseeable future. It’s probably too late to source the wines for their next class featuring the Brazilian specialty of feijoada, but you could probably still experience the delight of that wine delivery to your porch in time for their next class on February 26 called Risotto Done Right! with lobster risotto, butternut squash and chanterelle mushrooms plus arancini with butternut squash and taleggio cheese. If this class interests you or you want to see what they’ve got coming up, you can check out the whole schedule here. Cheers!
February 17, 2021 at 08:42PM
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