SANTasteFRANCISCO BAY A REAofTRAVEL WRITERS TRAVEL JANUARY 2017 “The best education for a clever man can be found in travel.” —Goethe LAURIE McANDISH KING BOB COOPER DIANE LEBOW SUSAN ALCORN COVER PHOTO — STU WILSON “There is no sincerer love than the love of food.” —George Bernard Shaw WANDA HENNIG About BATW Established in 1984, in San Francisco, California, readers to the people, culture, arts and natural Bay Area Travel Writers, Inc. is a not-for-profit, splendors of each destination. professional association of journalists with outstanding Monthly meetings, held since 1984, provide a achievements in the field of travel. These professionals lively exchange of information among our widely share their unique stories in newspapers, magazines, traveled colleagues. Speakers from tourist boards and broadcasts, blogs, videos, books, internet publications destinations make presentations to inform members and travel industry publications. of travel trends and news; members’ professionalism BATW members travel and report locally and is enhanced by presentations that seek to strengthen all over the world. Some specialize in guidebooks; social media skills, public speaking abilities and others in golf, outdoor adventure, cultural or historic technological know-how. We also hold panel excursions, or travel for singles, families or seniors. discussions on subjects such as marketing, publishing Others are photographers or photo-journalists. Each and photography. journalist seeks to present the world in ways that Ultimately, BATW promotes high professional enrich, inform and fascinate, thereby exposing their standards within the field of travel journalism. 4 President’s Message Food is intertwined with and familiar, that leads many of us to say “Why not?” and essential to travel—not try a national specialty like haggis in Scotland, merely because we must witchetty grubs in Australia, escargots in France or eat to live if we hope to even the maggot cheese of Sardinia. Even if you don’t travel another day, but like the grub, you return with a good story. because the experience Perhaps best of all, your culinary adventures of each meal enhances en voyage will send you home with the kind of and opens up the travel memories that emerge, Proustian-like, from certain experience. tastes. A bite of summer’s first succulent peach, a sip You might be shy at home, of bitter espresso, the mouthfeel of cilantro and lime but on the road you’ll meet and juice: For a few seconds you’ll relive that picnic beside strike up conversations with locals a Dordogne river, that hot summer day at a Florentine and other travelers whenever you ask for restaurant café, or those amazing noodles on the beach in recommendations, sip ale in a pub, or browse stalls in Thailand. an open-air market. Does all of this make you hungry and ready to You’ll get to know a cuisine in the country that gave explore? Then you’re in for a treat. In the pages ahead birth to it. No matter how much you think you know you’ll travel the highways, climb the peaks, and delve about Italian or Japanese or Indian food, on your first into hidden passages of the world’s culinary scene visit to those places—or any other—you’ll discover a with the professional and award-winning writers and culinary depth, richness and history that you couldn’t photographers of San Francisco’s Bay Area Travel possibly have imagined. Writers. All the new-to-you smells and tastes you encounter will awaken your senses and embolden your explo- Happy Travels, and Bon Appétit! rations. You might surprise yourself by ordering a dish —Suzie Rodriguez, BATW President that you wouldn’t ordinarily consider. There’s something about being footloose, shaken free of the Contributors Alpine, Lisa Horstman, Judith Adkins, Madeleine Jordan, Dick Aksamit, Inga King, Laurie McAndish Alcorn, Susan Latham, Laure Brett, Cori Laws, David A. Broydo, Lina LeBow, Diane Butler, Jacqueline Harmon Levin, Stephanie Canter, Carol Mann, Beverly Compisi, John Meyers, Carole Terwilliger Conrady, Monica Montgomery, John Cooper, Bob Older, Effin Daley, Lee Older, Jules Deinzer, Erin Orcutt, April Deutsch, Laura Poimiroo, John Granahan, Andrea Rodriguez, Suzie Greitzer, David Shubin, Jim Gutenberg, Rhonda VanHatten, Wendy Hennig, Wanda Wilson, Janet and Stuart 5 Bob Cooper Boredom-Free Bordeaux: the operation down through the generations. It’s out of fear that this tradition might be broken French vintners roll out the red that Bordeaux winemakers are now plunging headlong (wine) carpet into wine tourism. “I work hard so that my grand- children can take over, just as my grandparents did for This article is reprinted with permission from AAA me,” one winemaker told me. Arizona Highroads Magazine and AAAhighroads.com, This family tradition is especially strong in the where it appeared in the March/April 2015 issue. Saint-Emilion, a 10-appellation portion of the Bordeaux where some of the world’s most acclaimed The old stereotype that the French are rude and don’t wines are produced on estates that average just 17 speak English to visitors drained away like a bottle of acres. Winemaking dates to the Roman era there, but smooth merlot during my week last fall in the only in recent years have most of the old wine families Bordeaux region. The last sediments at the bottom flung open their doors to visitors, at least on weekends emptied when I was pulled over by a City of Bordeaux or by appointment. There are no big Saint-Emilion cop. Had I violated a French hotels yet, but 5,000 traffic law in my cute Renault guest rooms are scattered Clio? No, it’s just that he saw about, mostly in cozy me circling the same block B&B chateaus. (Wine twice (goofy GPS!) and wanted tourism is more to assist. I told him where I was established in the Medoc, headed, and he offered in the Bordeaux’s other perfect English: “Just follow best-known wine region, me, and I’ll flash my lights where the estates are when we reach the highway.” larger.) A police escort befitting a I spent most of my time visiting diplomat? Oui! Oui! visiting chateaus near the historic village of Saint- Vines to Wines Emilion, but you may Fanning out for 40 miles north, prefer to concentrate on south and east from Bordeaux the Medoc for its cabs in southwestern France are the or visit chateaus in the region’s 60 appellations lesser-known Graves- (winegrowing sub-regions) Sauternes or and a mind-boggling 7,650 Entre-Deux-Mers chateaus, the French regions, which produce equivalent of wine estates. both reds and whites. But a winemaker’s home and The Bordeaux region is workplace also is called a as complex as its wines. chateau, typically a centuries- old, two-story limestone Tasting Time building with family bedrooms upstairs, the The tour-and-tasting experience in the Bordeaux wine winemaker’s living/dining area and barrel rooms below, country is only slightly more challenging for U.S. and a bottle storage cellar. These chateaus (both the visitors than in California’s wine regions. The easy wineries and the buildings) range from small and choice is to take full-day bus, van or riverboat chateau simple to sprawling and sumptuous, from part-time tours, which depart daily from central Bordeaux. More winemakers with a few acres of table-wine grapes adventurous travelers can rent cars and find their way to Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, the world’s most to smaller family chateaus. About half welcome prestigious label. But nearly all share one feature: visitors any time, and half are open for a visit and ownership by proud families who pass the land and tasting only by appointment. Most charge no tasting 6 Bob Cooper (www.bob-cooper.com), who has also written about wine regions in California, Idaho, and Germany, is a widely published travel, general-interest and outdoor-sports writer. He has been published in recent years in National Geographic Traveler, The Wall Street Journal, Hemispheres, American Way, Wired and many other major magazines and newspapers. fee, although it’s expected you’ll leave with a bottle or sold at chateau prices; you’re allowed two in your two that, surprisingly, sell for as little as $4. luggage when you fly home. By tradition, most wines from the Saint-Emilion/ Sabine’s dad, Max, owns nearby Chateau Chereau Pomerol/Fronsac region are blends—typically 80% but is handing off winemaking duties to his son and merlot, 10% cabernet sauvignon and 10% cabernet marketing duties to Sabine. He revealed later in the franc. The winemakers insist this adds complexity, week over dinner another quality that sets Bordeaux more aromas, more balance. Other distinct traditions: winemakers apart: “Everywhere else in the world, they growers bottle wines that are exclusively from their make wines for a certain market. Here we make wines own vineyards, and there’s no irrigation, making each we like to drink, and then we find a market.” year’s vintage highly dependent on the weather. Add Apparently it works. As his close friend and fellow rich limestone-clay soil, wet springs, warm summers, chateau owner Laurent Gerber remarked that night, sunny autumns and cool nights, and you have the “Here we have the best grapes, the best oenologists ingredients for some of the world’s finest wines. and the best barrel makers. If anything new in I learned all of this—and how to swish, sip and winemaking is tried, it’s tried here, because we’re small spit—in a classroom where Bordeaux wines are guys with a few acres who can afford to experiment.” poured, appreciated and explained. Oenologist Sabine Silvestrini taught the two-hour wine-education Wondrous Wineries workshop at Saint-Emilion’s Bordeaux Wine School.