You know what you could do if you had a couple thousand to spare? You could do the Cannes Film Festival, that’s what. Above is a slideshow I put together from my Cannes experience from last year. And here’s a story I wrote about the visit with some handy tips from local travel doyenne Allison Coe and her Best of Nice blog.

You say you haven’t a sous? Not to worry. This is what the Internet was invented for. You can enjoy the annual fortnight of glamour and glory vicariously.

Here are the Top Five things you need to know:

1. “It” couple, junior version. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, stars of the “Twilight” movie franchise and here for the movies “Cosmopolis” and “On the Road,” respectively. I’m a little bit ashamed that I know this notoriously publicity shy couple is known as Robsten. What can I say? I like to stay au courant.

2. “It” couple, senior version. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The Jolie-Pitt clan are Riviera regulars; Jolie gave birth to the couple’s twins at the hospital in Nice, the de facto capital of the Cote d’Azur. I’ve always felt just a little bit more warmly about them that they gave the first interview to the local paper, the Nice-Matin. That is the sort of thing that will gladden a newspaper reporter’s heart. The couple are in Cannes this year for Pitt’s “Killing Them Softly.”

3. Here are the films nominated for a Palme d’Or. I’m not saying we don’t have future hits here. I am saying that the 2010 winner was a movie called “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.”

4. Speaking of the spoils of victory, the Palme d”Or, Golden Palm, is the big prize at Cannes and the current incarnation is a 1997 design by Caroline Scheufele of Chopard and involves a single piece of cut crystal which forms a cushion for the 24-carat gold palm. This seems nicer than my 2000 Story of the Year Award which was a lucite clock shaped in the form of a triangle which (a.) would not remain upright and (b.) had a loose battery connection so the clock would not run. A portent if ever there was one. But I digress.

5. In case you have forgotten, last year’s winner was the “Tree of Life,” starring Pitt, which according to reliable sources was a story of family life that included visuals of the universe’s creation and dinosaurs.

Cheers, festively.

 
Related post:

http://vinecdote.com/blog4/2011/05/party-like-a-paparazzi-at-the-cannes-film-festival/

Cannes Film Festival by night /Photo Michelle Locke

Here is an extremely cool event that you will not get to be part of. The Napa Valley Register reports that the new Pixar movie “Brave,” will make its debut at a private screening next month at the Castello di Amorosa winery.

Since the movie is about a 10th-century Scottish princess who rebels against her role and the winery is a replica of a 13th-century Tuscan castle build by one-of-a-kind vintner Dario Sattui, I think this is the perfect pairing.

The screening required a little help from the Napa County Board of Supervisors because the temporary event ordinance did not have a “film screening” category. This week, the board fixed that.

The rest of us will have to wait until June 22 for the film’s opening.

If you’re in the Napa Valley, I highly recommend a visit to the castle. It’s not the cheapest attraction, with admission starting at $18. But the 121,000-square-foot castle is really a remarkable achievement and unlike anything else you’ll see in the valley.

I’ve put the trailer for Brave above; it looks pretty good. I especially like all the Scottish accents. They remind me of a puzzling time I had sitting at the cafe in San Francisco’s Union Square one day and trying to figure out where the foreign couple next to me were from. I was eavesdropping like mad but just couldn’t pick out their language _ every once in a while a word would sound familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. Slavic? No. Somewhere in the Mediterranean? No.

And then it hit me. They were Glaswegians.

Cheers, cosmopolitan-ly.

www.disney.com

A beautiful vineyard in the Napa Valley /Photo Michelle Locke

Maybe you’ve spent a sunny afternoon in wine country and wondered … what would it take to plant my own vineyard? Well, wonder no more because researchers at the University of California, Davis, have itemized the expenses from rootstock to disease prevention to harvest crews.

So how much does it cost? The short answer is: a lot.

Full results of the study can be found here. I’ve pulled out a couple of things I found most interesting below.

It should be noted that the researchers started with the assumption that you have access to a 35-acre farm in the Napa Valley with slopes of less than 5 percent (a big deal in terms of planning permissions). That’s quite an assumption with vineyard land going for upwards of $125,000 an acre.

But just the costs of planting and farming are plenty daunting when you consider that your payback, an average of $4,400 per ton of grapes, isn’t guaranteed and isn’t even going to happen until three years out.

You start by clearing the land (and that alone is $15,000 per acre) and planting cabernet sauvignon, the grape for which Napa is famous. The study takes you meticulously through the steps of pruning, training and irrigation. After that comes a section on disease and pests that is positively gruesome. I had no idea there were so many things out to get a grape. Leafhoppers, mites, mealybugs, powdery mildew — it’s a wonder we don’t have a valley full of white-haired viticulturists. Total cultural costs, which includes weeding, spraying and pruning, $1,099 per acre.

As mentioned above, you don’t have to worry about harvesting until Year 3, but when you do, you hire a crew that is going to cost an average of $520 an acre. And here’s an expense I never would have thought of, portable toilets and sanitation stations at $1,295 per farm or $432 per 10 acres annually.

Operation costs per acre for Year 1 are estimated at $30,318 per acre. Your first yield, in Year 3,  is 1 ton per acre on the new vines, or $4,455. So you don’ t have to be a math whiz , to see that it will take quite a few fabulous harvests to start breaking even let alone making coin.

I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking one of those “winemaker for a day” programs may be the way to go here.

Cheers, logistically.

Yes, that was me backstage at the Train concert in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, interviewing band members about their new venture, releasing a wine. Here’s the story I wrote about that. It was one of the more fun pieces I’ve done. Side benefit: I had to look up rock star behavior for the story and came across the tale of how The Who were banned from Holiday Inns for life. What rascals.

Catching up with Train was not quite that exciting, although my evening started out briskly when I had to walk down a slightly dodgy street and encountered a fellow who reeled out of an adult emporium with his clothes in some disarray. I must have looked a little dismayed because he assured me, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to take it out.” A few steps on and another gentleman wanted to know if I had plans for the evening. “Yes, and they include men with more than three teeth,” I said, but not out loud.

Other highlights: Whisking by the line stretching down the block outside the Great American Music Hall. Listening to lead singer Pat Monahan talk about how it’s not so surprising the band ended up being involved with a wine since they started out getting paid in beer. Learning drummer Scott Underwood’s favorite varietal: “Vodka.”

I have since tried two of the wines, a chardonnay and a red, both priced at $9.99.

Calling All Angels 2010 Chardonnay: Light, fresh, a little bit of vanilla in there to keep things sweet, a nice wine that can be sipped alone or served along cheesy, creamy dishes.

Drops of Jupiter 2009 Petite Syrah: This was a surprise, I was expecting something more generic but got a red with a lot of personality. Started with a jolt of black berries and finished very smooth and mellow.

I posted a while back about a video the band made at Shafer Vineyards for their song, “Drive-By.” Here’s a behind-the-scenes short they released about the 15-hour day that went into the video.

Related posts:

http://vinecdote.com/blog4/2012/02/train-single-driveby-shafer-vineyards/

Restaurant

But my attention was drawn to No. 98, Berkeley’s own Chez Panisse, back on the list after an absence of a few years. This is the restaurant cofounded by Alice Waters, who helped usher in the trend of eating fresh, local food simply prepared.  (The awards are officially the 50 best restaurants, but 100 are listed. Which makes about as much sense as most things in the food world.)

Chez Panisse, which opened 40 years ago, has been patronized by former President Bill Clinton and was the training ground for a number of future stars including Dan Barber of the Blue Hill restaurants in New York (Blue Hill at Stone Farms was 77, by the way) and Suzanne Goin of Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles.

Other Northern California restaurants making the list include The French Laundry in the Napa Valley, 43, Manresa, south of San Francisco, 48, and Coi, San Francisco, 58.

And that wasn’t the only nod to California cuisine. Chef Thomas Keller of French Laundry also saw his New York restaurant, Per Se, listed at No. 6 and was this year’s recipient of the lifetime achievement award.

Here’s the complete list.

The photo Fieri posted to Twitter of his new Camaro

It appears celebrity Chef Guy Fieri’s looted Lamborghini is no longer on the lam.

You’ll recall the bright yellow lambo, valued at $200,000, went missing in March 2011. It was quite a spectacular heist, with the thief or thieves rappelling into the high-end dealership in San Francisco where it was parked, busting a door lock and driving off into the night.

Fieri, host of the game show “Minute to Win It” and “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives,” on the Food Network, moved on by buying himself a styling lemon Camaro.

But the case of grand chef auto stayed on the books and, according to several published reports, seems to have led to a storage locker in Point Richmond, just north of SF. Marin County authorities searched the locker following the weekend arrest of a 17-year-old suspected of shooting at (but missing) two people. You can read the Marin Independent-Journal story here.

According to the IJ, a spokesman for the chef wasn’t willing to confirm the car ID until the vehicle ID number is verified.

And, suddenly, I’m feeling very nostalgic for my very first car, a 1969 Chevy Chevelle, sequoia green, two-door coupe, 307 V8. Not the SuperSport, but, man, when  it ran, it ran good.

Cheers, mechanically.

The winemakers at work /Photos courtesy Laurent Maynardier

Homer wrote about “the wine-dark sea.” But a couple of winemakers in the South of France are making it a reality.

Yes, in what has to be one of the coolest innovations I’ve come across in a while, the wineries of Chateau Champs des Soeurs and Abbaye Sainte Eugenie are experimenting with aging wine under the sea.

I found this so fascinating I struggled through the article in the French newspaper L’Independant and asked vintner Laurent Maynardier  a couple of questions by email, partly using my high school French as well as the magic that is Google’s French translator. (Have you tried? Pas mal, as they say.) Maynadier, who runs Chateau Champs des Soeurs with his wife, Marie –Sainte Eugenie is also a husband-and-wife operation, run by Christine and Thibaut Cazalet — says both wineries are in fishing villages in France’s Languedoc wine region with vineyards that overlook the water.

The winemakers submerged 400 bottles this week near the harbor of Gruissan with the plan of letting them age underwater for 8 months. The bottles were secured by a kind of mesh wrapping and stacked in cages before being lowered by crane into the water. Previous experiments have shown that water-aged wine has a freshness and finesse, Maynardier told the newspaper.

I’m not surprised to find this is happening in France’s Languedoc region. I visited the Languedoc last year on a trip hosted by the regional wine association and was struck by how innovative and passionate the winemakers are. None of that hidebound traditionalism one associates with Old World methods.

By the way, if you want to learn more about the Languedoc, I recommend the Outsiders website featuring several producers who’ve moved to the Languedoc-Roussillon region to explore the potential of the area.  In fact, website editor Louise Hurren brought this story to my attention and was kind enough to help me out with the translation. (Google is good but it’s not quite up to capturing the flowing poetry of French expression.)

There’s a scientific point to the underwater aging, looking at temperature, assessing the effect of oxygen and monitoring the caps.  Nomacorc, the big manufacturer of synthetic corks, is involved in analysis.

But the true motivation goes beyond research, Maynardier says. What keeps him and Thibaut Cazalet going despite difficult times is the fact that they have a  real passion for what they do. He says, “we are following in the footsteps of generations of winegrowers who went before us — in my case, 12 generations — and we are opening up new paths for those who will come after us. This is something that few people get to experience, and we recognise this.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking Gruissan’s a spot I should put on my travel itinerary.

Cheers, nautically.

Mmm congee, the soup that satisfies /Photo Michelle Locke

The popular Sam Wo restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown may not have served its last supper after all.

The restaurant is a Chinatown staple famous for serving up solid Cantonese fare as well as being the stomping grounds of the late Edsel Ford Fung, a no-filter kind of guy who would sometimes insult customers — although on other occasions he would encourage people to eat up and order cheap, filling dishes.

It’s been in business for more than a century, but closed last week after getting a bad grade from San Francisco food inspectors. Owner David Ho said the building was just too old and dilapidated to make the kind  of changes required to bring things up to standard.

But the situation changed after the closing announcement triggered an outpouring of support. Lines wrapped around the block Friday as customers came for one last plate of chow fun or dish of rice porridge and the family put an announcement up on its website asking supporters to show up at a hearing with public health officials.

The meeting was held Tuesday and the room was packed. The Ho family will have to make a number of changes to reopen, including installing a commercial refrigeration unit and more sinks. And they’ll have to get rid of the rodents. The wiring needs fixing and the fire escape (it’s a three-story restaurant) needs some work, too.

Still, family members say they’d like to stay in business if possible.

For more on the hearing, go to the SF Chron story here.

Related posts:

Sam Wo’s Closing

Today and tomorrow, fixtures and other assets of the center founded with the support of pioneering vintner Robert Mondavi and his wife, Margrit, along with the great Julia Child, are being auctioned off live and online.

Items featured today are mostly equipment — chairs, stoves, TV screens. Tomorrow, there’s some Tiffany china, old exhibits and interactive kiosks and about 4,000 bottles of wine. A collection of Child’s cookware which was one of the center’s permanent attractions has already been transferred to the Smithsonian.

Developers reportedly have plans for the building, although nothing concrete’s been disclosed.

Copia’s demise is hardly shocking, since the center declared bankruptcy in 2008 with close to $80 million in debt. Still, it’s a pity. Copia was intended to revitalize downtown Napa, then a bit of a blighted area, offering wine and food tasting programs, exhibitions, organic edible gardens, films, concerts, dining at the Julia’s Kitchen restaurant and shopping at the gift store.

It had a couple of things going against it. One, opening in November 2001, just when travel and eating out took a dive following the Sept. 11 attacks, was a piece of bad luck. And even after that, when visitor totals were quite impressive, income generated did not meet operating costs, which is a bit of a non-starter for any business.

As it turned out, downtown Napa did flourish, as hotels and chic restaurants sprang up nearby, including the very successful Oxbow Market right next door.

Want to check out what’s on the block?

Go here for today’s items and here for tomorrow’s. If anyone feels like buying me one of those 2005 Opus One’s, go right ahead.

Cheers, nostalgically.

Even if you’ve never been to San Francisco or its Chinatown, you may have heard of this tiny restaurant sandwiched into a sliver of a building. It’s been in business for more than 100 years and during the ’50s was popular with heroes of the Beat scene like Jack Kerouac. It’s probably best-known for cranky waiter Edsel Ford Fung who used to insult customers on a regular basis to hold on to his unofficial title as world’s rudest waiter.

Here is the menu so you can see what you’ll miss. It’s the kind of hearty, calor-ific fare you will find in a lot of Chinatown dives. Which, of course, is just my style. I’m a big fan of the Sampan Porridge with Chinese doughnut. It’s not as scary as it sounds — seafood in a thick rice soup served with delicious fried bread on the side. I would have to say that Mr. Vinecdote (also a Ho, but no relation to David, yes that does make me Mrs. Ho, what of it) has brought many good things into my life with Chinese fried bread near the top of the list.

Late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien visited Sam Wo’s during a tour stop here some years ago and made this rather irreverent commercial for the place; it starts at 2:20 into this clip (but the beginning showing Conan the Cablecar-man is funny, too.)

Cheers.