Expats come back, bearing wine

One of the South Bay’s most enduring restaurants, Redondo Beach’s Chez Melange, introduced the First Annual South Bay Ex-Pat Wine and Food Tasting last month. As a nod to the food and wine community in which they have thrived for the last 30 years, Chez proprietors Michael Franks and Chef Robert Bell invited winemakers and winery owners who originated in the South Bay to pour their wine for a hometown crowd while enjoying samples from some of the South Bay’s noteworthy chefs and restaurants.

The majority of the wineries hailed from our most local wine region: the California Central Coast and Central Valley. Stretching from Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez Valley on up to Santa Maria Valley and Paso Robles, winery participants included Buttonwood Farm Winery, Seagrape Wines, Alma Rosa, Clos Pepe, Dragonette Cellars, Babcock Vineyards, Stolpman Vineyards and Cuatro Dias.

Local pride was running high. Old friends shook hands over chardonnay while Larry Schaffer of Tercero Wines chatted about his first career in the music industry, back when he lived just down the road in Riviera Village. Aaron Walker, winemaker at Pali Wine Co., boasted of his Redondo Union alumnus status, and Rolling Hills native Andrew Murray of Andrew Murray told me how he “spent a lot of time on the Strand” as a teen. All throughout the Bouzy Gastropub and BarComida, past and present South Bay locals sipped and chattered about the community and cuisine.

And cuisine there was plenty. South Bay greats like the Hudson House, Ortega 120 and Addis’s Tandoor set up tasting tables alongside newcomers 1321 Downtown Taproom, The Strand House, The Standing Room and Chef Robert Bell’s 2010 venture, Mama Terano. Standouts included a miniature version of Ortega 120’s Tierra y Mar dinner entrée — a Mexican surf-and-turf dish with marinated steak and Mexican white shrimp on a crunchy homemade tortilla — and the amazingly savory and slightly pungent braised short-rib sliders with pea shoot and blue cheese slaw from the Hudson House. The truffled hamachi poke with crispy rice from The Standing Room was a delightfully fresh addition to the mix (although menu consultant Thomas Lowell confided that the item is not all that representative of The Standing Room’s typical all-American grub), and the “chocolate salami” from Chez’s own Diane Scalia of BarComida was a huge hit among those hunting for a bit of chocolate to have with their red wine.

Unsurprisingly, for the majority of the patrons of the First Annual South Bay Ex-Pat Wine and Food Tasting, the highlight was in the glass. For me it was the 2006 Purple Haze Red Blend from Andrew Murray, a moody, perfume-rich syrah-viognier blend from Santa Barbara County that Murray named for the Jimi Hendrix classic (“’Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me,’” quoted Murray. “The viognier put a spell on that syrah.”). It was not only a beautiful glass of wine, but its casual elegance and playful demeanor seemed to echo the feel of the Ex-Pat Tasting: It’s a very good thing to never get so sophisticated that you can’t enjoy the things that made you who you are. B

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