Recent Awards:
2008 Pinot Noir, Edna Valley
**Best of Class, Gold Medal - 2010 Central Coast Wine Competition
2007 Dry Gewürztraminer, Central Coast
** Silver Medal - 2010 Riverside International Wine Competition
2008 Dry Gewürztraminer, Central Coast
**Gold Medal - 2010 Orange County Fair Wine Competition
**Bronze Medal - 2010 Riverside International Wine Competition
2008 Pinot Noir, Edna Valley
**Bronze Medal - 2010 Orange County Fair Wine Competition
Recent Awards:
2008 Dry Riesling, Central Coast
**Gold Medal - 2010 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
2008 Dry Gewürztraminer, Central Coast
**Silver Medal - 2010 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
2008 Pinot Noir, Edna Valley
**Silver Medal - 2010 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
2007 Pinot Noir, Edna Valley
**Gold Medal (4 hearts) - 2010 Affairs of the Vine Pinot Noir Summit
1st Place - female consumer, 3rd Place - male consumer, 1st Place - male judges
January 2010
Library Wine Special: Limited quanities of each vintage available for purchase.
To place your order please call us at 805•544•4066 or email us at info@claibornechurchill.com
Advantages:
- Put any dollar amount you wish on the card.
- Easy solution to your gift giving problems.
- No wasted time in shopping malls or department stores!
- We can mail the gift card to you or directly to the recipient.
- They can choose the exact wines that they like!
- Perfect gift for that person who has everything.
* not valid for use on Cellar Club Shipments.
Additional Benefits:
Recipient can continue to use as a rewards card and receive 5% credit towards future purchases.
To purchase a gift card today, please call us at 805·544·4066
October 2009
Recipe: Provencal Estouffade (Beef Stew)
These days all the talk’s about Julia Child, and rightfully so. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever stopped talking about Julia Child, for I am one of the legions of Americans to whom she taught a love of good cooking and good eating. My well-thumbed and food-stained copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking dates from 1964, when I was in graduate school. It has survived ten moves, three children, one divorce, two careers, and about a dozen short-lived food fads.
Fredericka and I also were fortunate to have had the unforgettable experience of meeting Julia, at her house in Hope Ranch (Santa Barbara) in 1982, where we were pouring wine at a fund-raiser. She and Robert Mondavi (over whom she towered like a colossus) stopped by our able to chat. Can you say “star-struck?”
To be sure, I haven’t made every single dish in that great tome (as “Julie” in the recent movie did), but paging quickly through the book I counted fifty-one recipes I’ve tried, including the famous Boeuf Bourguignonne that gave “Julie” such a fit in the movie.
Instead of burdening you with that time-consuming recipe, I’d like to introduce you to a delicious beef stew that is incredibly simple, an “Estouffade” or stew from the South of France. This dish avoids multiple steps and multiple pots and pans; the meat does not need to be browned, but is marinated along with all the other ingredients (except the orange zest), and cooked in the same casserole!
Ingredients:
3 lbs stewing beef, cut into 1 inch chunks 2 Tbs thyme
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped 2 Tbs chopped parsley
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine 1 bay leaf
3 carrots, cut into rounds 1 bottle of red wine (SBR?)
2 stalks of celery, chopped into small bits grated rind of one orange
salt and pepper
Place all of the above ingredients except the grated orange rind in a non-reactive Dutch oven, mix well and cover. Marinate refrigerated for 6-8 hours. Bring to a simmer on the stove and then cook in a slow oven (300˚) for 2-3 hours, until meat is completely tender.
Allow to cool, skim any fat off the top, add in the orange zest, bring back to a simmer and serve with rice or noodles and a green salad. Drink some Claiborne & Churchill red wine with it!
Since this, like all stews, tastes better the second day (and the third!), you need to do a little advance planning. Most recently, we put the dish together on a Saturday morning, marinated it all day, and cooked it that evening. Then we refrigerated it overnight, skimmed off the top, added the orange zest, re-heated and served it for Sunday dinner. (We enjoyed a bottle of Runestone with it.)
Clay Thompson
June 2009
Straw Bale White Special! **SORRY SOLD OUT**
$99 per case for members of our Cellar Club.
(only a few cases left)
Type SBW Sale in the gift note section of our online order form or give us a call at (805) 544-4066.
News from the Winemaker:
Greetings C&C fans-
Is it time to start thinking about harvest? I ask myself this question at least 5 times per year. I contuinue to tell myself, it's never too early to start thinking about harvest.
With most of the wine already in bottle, my mind moves from one important factor of winemaking (bottling) to another important factor of winemaking (harvest). Things are looking promising for this upcoming harvest. We have a few new vineyard sources. If all goes well, 2009 will mark the first commercial bottling of our "Estate Riesling" vineyard. We came up with the clever name of "Claiborne Vineyard." This along with another Riesling source within the Edna Valley will give us the opportunity to produce an "Edna Valley" Riesling. So I say bring on the new vintage of grapes!
Cheers.
Coby Parker-Garcia
Winemaker
April 2009
Spring Has Sprung:
Spring has come to California, and Mother Nature has brought her annual "Stimulus Package" to our valley. Our newly-pruned vineyard has begun to push the little green buds that promise a bountiful harvest of Claiborne & Churchill Estate Riesling in six or seven months (see photo).
In the meantime, we are busy in the Cellar preparing the wines from last fall for bottling. Some of these will make their debut with our next Wine Club shipment, in early May. I suspect a lot of you are looking forward to new bottlings of such "cult favorites" as our Dry Muscat and the Dry Rosé we call "Cuvée Elizabeth." In addition, May will see the release of the "Cellar Club Cuvée" that was created at a special Blending Seminar we held here at the Winery in February.
January 2009
News from the Winemaker:
Hello from the cellar:
As we start off this new year, we put to sleep the 2008 vintage. All white wines are safely aging eagerly waiting spring bottling. Meanwhile, red wines are finishing up malolactic fermentation (a secondary fermentation occurs where malic acids converts to lactic acid).
As I write this, I look forward to all the different lots of wines to work with: An estate Riesling (all 12 gallons), a new source of Pinot Noir, a tasty Tempranillo, and another year of great aromatic whites. I think you will enjoy the wines from 2008. It was the harvest of everything: early and late frost, early and late heat spikes, smoke, and low yields.
Cheers from the big bad wolf
Coby Parker-Garcia
Winemaker
Recent Awards!!
2007 Pinot Noir, Edna Valley
**Gold Medal Winner, 2009 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
2007 Dry Gewürztraminer, Central Coast
**Silver Medal Winner, 2009 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
2007 Dry Riesling, Central Coast
**Silver Medal Winner, 2009 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
2007 Pinot Gris, Central Coast
**Silver Medal Winner, 2009 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competitionlifornia Dreamin Gift Pack $52.
October 2008
Greetings from Claiborne & Churchill!
These are exciting times for us, as the Fall Harvest is in full swing, and the Holiday Season is just around the corner! Allow us to bring you up to date on the latest news, recent wine releases, some attractive specials, and a look at "coming attractions."
The 2008 Harvest
As I write these lines, we are about three-quarters of the way through Harvest. We've crushed all of our 2008 Pinot Gris, Gewürztraminer, and Muscat. The Riesling is still a week or two away from full ripeness. One vineyard of Pinot Noir remains to be picked, hopefully next week.
The quality of the fruit seems excellent; however, the yields are down considerably, and we've had to use all our ingenuity to make up for some shortages. A new "Twin Creeks" Pinot Noir vineyard came on board, and we found new sources to augment our supply of Chardonnay, Syrah, and Muscat grapes.
Again this year, the crush proceeds under the expert guidance of Winemaker Coby Parker-Garcia. His tireless crush-workers are Jamison Stiehr and Michael Chase. Yours truly (Clay Thompson) makes an occasional "cameo appearance" on the crush pad.
