Six from California pass advanced sommelier exam, including Chad Zeigler of Gordon Ramsay at the London West Hollywood

The Court of Master Sommeliers, the accrediting body for the nation’s sommeliers, announced that 11 students had passed their advanced exams, conducted at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Of the 11, six are from California: Yohannah Burmeister and Ian Burrows of Oakland, Garth Hodgdon of Sacramento, Jennifer Knowles of San Francisco, Rachael Lowe of Yountville and local talent Chad Zeigler, who serves on the floor at Gordon Ramsay in Hollywood. Lowe, sommelier at Bouchon in the Napa Valley, was awarded the prestigious Rudd Scholarship for her scores.

The five-day advanced test is the penultimate hurdle on the road to achieving master sommelier status, and the last test before the diploma exam. With its emphasis on theory, service and blind tasting, many rate the advanced test the more difficult of the two, not only for its length but also because candidates are responsible for a much broader spectrum of knowledge, which is to say everything there is to know about wine, spirits and wine service. Advanced candidates are required to pass with a score of 60% correct or higher; for diploma candidates, the bar is raised to 75%. It is almost unheard of for any candidate to pass on a first attempt.

Zeigler says he started hitting the books about three months before the test began. He plastered the rooms of his apartment with wine region maps, read histories of whiskeys, tomes on Burgundy (an important wine region in France), on brew kettle contents (for beer and/or sake) and Botrytis (the fruit fungus responsible for ethereal dessert wines). His colleagues drilled him on how to open Champagne bottles and decant older Bordeaux. In off hours, he’d field pop quizzes by way of text messages from friends and colleagues ("Quick! Name the sub-regions of Barolo") until he felt proficient. “You’ve got to work at it in layers,” he says, “spend a week or two in every country, until it’s like breathing.”

As for the tasting itself ...

Wine Spectator reveals Top 100 Wines of 2009, but... are all wine rating systems flawed?

Now that Wine Spectator has finished dragging out the reveal of its Top 100 Wines of 2009 -- a 2005 Columbia Crest Cabernet Sauvignon was ranked No. 1 -- over a yawn-inducing three days, we have to ask: Are wine ratings an accurate and useful guide for consumers? Or are they merely a series of wildly subjective impressions based more on context and expectation than the actual qualities of the wines? That's the question Leonard Mlodinow explores in a recent Wall Street Journal story, "A Hint of Hype, A Taste of Illusion."

Given the high price of wine and the enormous number of choices, a system in which industry experts comb through the forest of wines, judge them, and offer consumers the meaningful shortcut of medals and ratings makes sense.

But what if the successive judgments of the same wine, by the same wine expert, vary so widely that the ratings and medals on which wines base their reputations are merely a powerful illusion? That is the conclusion reached in two recent papers in the Journal of Wine Economics.

He's referring to findings published by Robert Hodgson, a retired statistics professor and the proprietor of Fieldbrook Winery. A few years ago, Hodgson joined the California State Fair wine competition advisory board, which allowed him to run a controlled scientific study of its tastings.

The results, published in the Journal of Wine Economics, showed that the judges' ratings varied by ±4 points on a standard 100-point rating scale. And "only about one in 10 [judges] regularly rated the same wine within a range of ±2 points."

Sampler Platter: bacon popcorn, useless kitchen appliances, Pabst brewery for sale

Want to see more useless kitchen appliances than you can find in SkyMall? Or badly named Chinese knockoff brands? Or squash blossom quesadillas? You've come to the right place.

--You think they've put bacon in everything, then you discover bacon popcorn! Uncrate
--20 of the world's most useless kitchen appliances. Restyle Your Kitchen
--Gather your pennies, hipsters. Pabst Brewing Co. is for sale. New York Post
--Husband leaves his wife after she forces him to eat cake for every meal. Metro
--40 chefs under 40, only one from L.A.: Matt Molina (#38), Mozza executive chef. MNN
--Kiss My Bundt needs to sell 5,000 mini-bundt cakes in the next few weeks to stay open.
--The wackiest Chinese knockoffs. "Nalencia" oranges? Yum. Business Insider
--A photographic ode to the po'boy. New York Times
--Costco bans Coca-Cola due to pricing dispute. Consumerist
--Wine DJ iPhone app, which helps you pair music with vino, launches.
--Berkeley cracks down on Cupkates truck. California Taco Trucks
--First it's pumpkins, now an Eggo shortage. Signs of the end times? Google
--Food Court LA becoming Spacecraft-designed gastropub? Blackburn + Sweetzer
--Squash blossom quesadillas on the Gold Line. 99 Cent Chef
--MillerCoors contributes $500,000 to water education. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
--"Eating Animals," Jonathan Safran Foer's new pro-vegetarian book, gets a mostly positive review from the Los Angeles Times and a meh one from the New York Times.

--Elina Shatkin

Photo: Rochon Armwood of Mother's in New Orleans stands firmly behind the restaurant's po' boys. Credit: Alex Brandon / For The Times.

Wines that scream rock 'n' roll

Traditionally, the wine comes first. Then, the name, says Ron Roy, co-founder of Wines That Rock.

"With these wines, we blasted the music in the cellar of the winery and developed a bottle of wine that captured the attitude of the music,” Roy said.

It only seems fitting then to use a rock album cover as a wine label. Get ready to rock 'n' roll at your next holiday party:

--Rene Lynch
On Twitter @renelynch

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Photo: Wines That Rock 

Sampler Platter: Top 100 Wines of 2009, best late-night diner, best gay bar, Soda Pop's sandwich shop opens this week, tofurky gravy soda

The world's grossest soda and manicured nails made to look like bacon are in today's food news roundup.

• Main Street merchants want a crack at the Santa Monica Farmers Market. Santa Monica Daily Press

• Soda Pop's sandwich shop to open this Wednesday on La Cienega at Beverly. La Brea Dining Japanese restaurant to open at Crescent Heights and West 3rd Street. Blackburn and Sweetzer

• While the rest of the world tries to reduce its plastic use, Aussie winemaker Peter Yealands switches to plastic wine bottles. Stuff

• Playboy names Original Pantry Cafe as a Top 10 Late-Night Diner

• TripOut names the Abbey as Best Gay Bar in the World. Brand X

• Nov. 23 is the New Yorker's food issue with John Colapinto on the secrets of the Michelin guide, Calvin Trillin on poutine, Adam Gopnik on cookbooks, Mimi Sheraton on spit cakes; Evan Osnos on Beijing's love of wine, Raffi Khatchadourian on the Givaudan flavor factory and more.

• Jones makes tofurkey and gravy soda (read: carbonated vomit). Chicago Sun Times

• Wine Spectator will announce its Top 100 Wines of 2009 on Wednesday. Members get a sneak peek today.

• Prospectors set to drill for Shackleton's booze in Antarctica. Metro

• Meat manicure: bacon nail tips. Jezebel

• All About Beer celebrates 30th anniversary edition: "Revolution!" versus "What Revolution?"

• Elizabeth Hurley's diet tips: vodka and one meal a day. Daily Mail

• Yes, people do win McDonald's Monopoly game. (Daily Finance) In other news, McDonald's will open 1,000 new restaurants in 2010. CNNMoney.com

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo: Stan Augustyn handles oils at Givaudan-Roure Corp. Credit: Joe Tabacca / For The Times

Picking the perfect wine

Click through Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila's recommendations.

-- Kelsey Ramos

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Photo credit: Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times

Sampler Platter: 7-Eleven makes its own wine, MasterChef cooks endangered eel, 70 cases of brat pizza stolen

How will two-buck Chuck compete against 7-Eleven's new wines? How does someone steal 70 cases of pizza? How do you open a bottle of wine with nothing but willpower and your shoe? All this and more in today's food news roundup.

-- How to open a bottle of wine in France: For those times when you've been up all night, you're drunk and all you want to do is drink another bottle of wine, but you're in the street, you have no corkscrew and the stores aren't open yet. Happens all the time. YouTube
-- Speaking of which ... 7-Eleven's making its own wine. Oh, thank heavens. Dallas Observer
-- Hotel and nightclub impresario Sam Nazarian slams into ugly financial reality. Could this be part of the reason behind SBE's recent split with Brent Bolthouse? Wall Street Journal
-- Auntie Em's tops list for best cupcake shop; Sprinkles left out. LAist
-- A $47,000 lunch tab from Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Buzzfeed
-- In the ongoing Tavern on the Green saga, the venue hosted the Halloween party from hell, say booted patrons. New York Daily News
-- BBC's "MasterChef" cooks critically endangered eel. Oops. The Telegraph
-- It's cloudy with a chance of record-setting meatballs in New Hampshire. Yahoo! News
-- Tasting ecstasy and agony at Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa. New York Times
-- 70 cases of brat pizzas stolen from Wisconsin company. Sheboygan Press
-- A preview of the apocalypse: Boston Markets will all run dry. Consumerist

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo: Meatball appetizers, distant cousins of the New Hampshire record setters, at the Crow Bar and Grill in Corona Del Mar. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

Small Bites: 'Seafood for the Future' at Providence; Sona's 7th anniversary menu; Palmina wine dinner at Craft

For the love of seafood: Providence is partnering with the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach to host a "Seafood for the Future Dinner" on Nov. 18. The aquarium's Seafood for the Future program encourages people to make environmentally responsible choices when buying and preparing seafood. Dinner will feature six courses from Providence chef-owner Michael Cimarusti. On the menu: kona kampachi tartare, Alaskan king crab, a niçoise salad with grilled sardines, wild king salmon, wild local swordfish, and dessert. The cost is $115 per person, $160 with wine pairings. Seafood for the Future program manager Andrew Gruel and marine biologist Dave Anderson will be discussing the program with guests, and each guest will receive one complimentary pass to the aquarium. 5955 Melrose Ave., Hollywood, (323) 460-4170.

Happy seventh birthday: Chef David Myers is celebrating Sona's seventh anniversary with a seven-course tasting menu that features guests'  favorite dishes throughout the years. On Tuesday through Thursday evenings through November, the following menu will be available for $77: hamachi with edamame puree, spicy grapefruit, preserved turmeric; Tahitian squash soup with chai foam, anago, pearl tapioca; Maine lobster risotto with kaffir lime leaf; roasted duck with celery root-shiso salad; red wine-braised short rib; baba with quince, pear, grains of paradise sabayon; and chocolate beignets. 401 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 659-7708.

Wine with everything: Craft chef de cuisine Anthony Zappola and pastry chef Shannon Swindle are planning a California-meets-Italy five-course dinner to pair with wines from Palmina winery on Nov. 11. Winemaker Chrystal Clifton will attend to talk with guests and answer any questions. It's $125 per person including wine pairings. Here's the menu: hors d'oeuvres; fluke crudo with citrus and wild fennel; braised Maine lobster with smoked bacon and porcini; roasted California squab with leg ravioli; venison saddle; and almond praline panna cotta with roasted Warren pear. A few wine examples: 2008 Honea Vineyard Tocai Friulano Santa Ynez Valley, 2007 Barbera Santa Barbara County and the 2006 Undici. 10100 Constellation Blvd., Century City, call Tobie Cancino at (424) 204-7485 for reservations or e-mail tcancino@craftlosangeles.com. 

-- Betty Hallock

Photo: Aquarium of the Pacific

Can we interest you in a glass of 'natural wine'?

"Natural wine" is the trendiest term to be punted about by people seeking something nongeneric. It’s also the vaguest, and that’s a mixed blessing. Read more here:

Photo credit: Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times

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Three decades of Napa with Freemark Abbey

Last Tuesday at Spago in Beverly Hills, Freemark Abbey winemaker Ted Edwards brought a few bottles down from Rutherford, Napa Valley, to uncork with a few sommeliers, ostensibly to show them that the winery has had some staying power.

And how. Edwards showed a pair of 1995 vintage single-vineyard Cabernets from Bosché and Sycamore, and a pair from the same vineyards from 1987. But the pièce de resistance was a bottle of Freemark Cab from 1969, the same bottling that was served blind at the tasting that changed the world of American wine – the Judgment of Paris, in 1976.

Freemark Abbey was founded 70 years ago, when three Southern California businessmen, Charles Freeman, Markquand Foster and Albert "Abbey" Ahern, joined resources and concatenated their names to form the winery. For their first three decades, the wines were largely a local phenomenon, sold by San Francisco retailers and in restaurants until the late 1960s, when winemaker Jerry Luper’s stellar bottlings earned the winery a broader reputation for pure, limpid expressions of valley floor fruit, inflected with the firm distinctive earth note that came to be known as “Rutherford Dust.” Certainly Stephen Spurrier was sufficiently impressed to include the wine in his Paris Tasting in 1976, when California wines bested their French counterparts, stunning the wine world in the process.