For me it’s the poppies. They’re not the first harbinger of spring, but they’re certainly the most dazzling. My wife and I usually make annual sojourns to the Carrizo Plain (avoiding the Instagram hordes in the Antelope Valley) to wander among the poppies and lupine and goosefoots and owl’s clover and coastal tidy tips in that turbulent, fault-scarred wilderness.
Closer to home, we’ve seeded a patch of ground to wildflowers and wait each spring for it to push. Among the flowers, poppies take point, just as they do from Point Mugu to Pasadena, carpeting hillsides with their warm, blazing, lemony orange brilliance. Come spring, if you find your eyes need a wake-up call, feast them on a field of poppies.
And if your wine tastes are in the doldrums too, shift from the Cabs and Malbecs and Amarones and replace them with clean, sapid, mouthwatering white wines and pink wines, acid and electric. Dammit, palate, wake up!
Recently I reached out to a few wine retailers to see what they could recommend for spring. We spent a lot of time talking about spring in general, what their rituals and harbingers were for the season and what wines they paired them with. Here are a few of their suggestions.
“Peas are the herald,” says Zach Jarrett of Psychic Wines in Silver Lake. Like a lot of us he takes his cues from the produce stands at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, which he attends twice weekly. That’s how he knows that peas appear, perplexingly, toward the end of January. “They sort of announce pre-spring, or micro-spring, or spring week,” he says. “Then they vanish, and reappear in April.”
Usually the rhythms of retail wine shopping allow Jarrett and his shopmates to be languorous with their staff meal. “At Psychic, we really treat lunch with respect,” says Jarrett. They have a camp stove, a toaster oven and, critically, a grill as their makeshift kitchen. They prep, grab a bottle off the shelf and sit down and luxuriate, as if they lived on an entirely different continent.
Two spring dishes are often in heavy rotation. “Once spring is sprung, everybody is making iterations of vignarola,” says Jarrett, referring to the Roman vegetable dish of green garlic, spring onions, peas, favas, baby artichokes, sautéed together with olive oil and white wine like a stew.
“You have to cook it ugly,” he says, meaning past the point of bright green and al dente, “for it to really meld.”
As the season progresses favas figure into most meals, their preparation changing as they mature on the vine. “In the beginning, when they’re small and sweet and you can grill them whole, I look forward to those the most,” says Jarrett.
R. O’Neill Latta California White Blend F-Plus ($29)
The dish requires something lively and crisp, like Riley O’Neill’s F-Plus, a white-leaning mishmash of fiano, viognier and malbec from vineyards in and around L.A. County, “three grapes that globally would never cross paths,” says Jarrett. “The wine is lushly textured with this encouraging acidity that feels like eating frozen green grapes.”
Maurizio Ferraro Rosato “Secondome” ($25)
With dishes such as grilled favas, he pairs Maurizio Ferraro’s Piemonte pink, “Secondome.” “This is a rosato of barbera,” explains Jarrett, “dark as a Campari cocktail and vaguely reminiscent of one. It’s like barbera steeped in a field full of wildflowers.” Yum.
Psychic Wines, 2825 Bellevue Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 915-0600, psychicwinesla.com
They say that in L.A. you can’t really distinguish the seasons, but don’t tell that to Thatcher Baker-Briggs, who runs Thatcher Wines in Brentwood. “Spring announces itself,” says Baker-Briggs, “When the cold breaks, the sun lingers a little longer, and you’re outside, feeling the shift,” he says. He marks the occasion with the inaugural lighting of the grill. “Those first meals,” he says, “they feel like a reset. You light the coals, the sizzle starts, and you realize you’ve made it through winter.”
Often as not for Baker-Briggs, the first meal off the grill is lamb chops, seasoned simply with salt and pepper, a rub of garlic and rosemary. “A quick sear over high heat locks in all the juices, leaving you with that pink center,” he says. “I like to serve them with a bright salsa verde — parsley, capers, anchovies, lemon zest, and a good hit of olive oil.”
2022 Domaine des Aricoques Roussette de Savoie ($52)
The season’s first grill day demands bottles that match the energy. Baker-Briggs recommends two textural whites to pair with the lamb, starting with a Roussette de Savoie from Domaine des Aricoques. “This wine is made from the altesse variety in poor glacial soils that naturally limit yields,” he says. “It spends six months in concrete eggs, which lends it a luscious texture reminiscent of roussanne but with a backbone of acidity that keeps it fresh.”
2023 Bricco Ernesto Vino Bianco VdT ($69)
An alternative, a Vino Bianco from the Piemonte producer Bricco Ernesto. “This arneis is full of zesty citrus, floral aromatics,” says Baker-Briggs, “and a saline edge that makes it dangerously refreshing.” Fermented with skin contact and aged with minimal intervention, it’s a wine that bridges the gap between refreshment and what Baker-Briggs is calling “textural intrigue.”
“It’s well suited for the lamb, or even a simple plate of roasted almonds and olives,” he says.
Thatcher’s Wine, 11718 San Vicente Ave., Los Angeles, (415) 234-0046, thatcherswine.com
Like many New England transplants, Jill Bernheimer of Domaine LA in Hollywood doesn’t much miss the winters. But she happens to love spring in L.A. For her, the seasonal shift from February to March, when the light warms with the temperatures, is a quintessential marker for springtime in L.A. (and generally there are no false springs, as happens so often in New England). In fact, for Bernheimer, with its clear days and crisp evenings, spring in L.A. is like the equivalent of fall in New England. “It’s when the weather is most perfect,” she says, “the light is so clear and crisp; it’s warm, but there’s a nighttime chill in the air. The summer’s heat hasn’t taken over; you’re still layering with a few winter clothes.”
Late last year, with Julian Kurland and chef Travis Hayden, she opened Bar Etoile in Melrose Hill; now a seasonal menu contributes to markers of the season. “Travis came up with a dish that truly tasted like spring,” she says, “snap peas with house made ricotta, nettle gremolata and preserved lemon.”
2022 Agnes Paquet Bourgogne Aligoté, “Le Clou et la Plume” ($33)
Few wines taste more springy than aligoté, a white grape that originates in Burgundy characterized by tense mineral flavors framed in a green tinge. Bernheimer currently has five at the shop, including Agnes Paquet’s “Le Clou et la Plume.” Bernheimer says that the minerality rules with this wine. “It’s a wine that tastes like the day after rain in Los Angeles,” she says, “bright, a little steely, crystal clear.”
2023 Lady of the Sunshine Santa Maria Valley Presqu’ile Vineyard “Chevey” White Blend ($41)
Bernheimer’s other go-to is from Gina Giugni, who runs a winery called Lady of the Sunshine in California’s Central Coast. She makes a wine called Chevey, a sauvignon blanc and chardonnay blend inspired by the whites of Cheverny, in France. With its herbaceous green notes and slightly rounder citrus fruit, “it goes with Travis’ dish for obvious reasons,” she says.
Domaine LA, 6801 Melrose Ave. Los Angeles, (323) 932-0280, domainela.com
For John Stanley of Stanley’s Wet Goods in Culver City, spring’s harbinger is the first flowers of the magnolia tree in the backyard of his Venice bungalow. Usually within days of the tree’s first pink and white blooms he’s prepping for his first outdoor meal, which will inevitably involve his second spring harbinger, blood oranges. “Technically they start to appear in late winter and early spring, so they’re a tweener.” One of his go-to recipes is a salad made with local burrata ringed with blood orange sections, then topped with pistachios and young arugula. The only thing to drink with it is a well-structured rosé.
“Rosé has seemingly become uncool over the past few years,” says Stanley. “Perhaps that’s due to a monolithic notion of what ‘proper’ rosé should be — pale, steely, a touch of bitterness. But I still relish a great rosé, and think in good hands, they deserve a lot more respect.” He offers these two, exceedingly different from each other.
2023 Birichino California Vin Gris ($20)
The first is from the Santa Cruz producer Birichino, “a vibrant pink, Mediterranean-style vin gris blended from mostly Grenache, Mourvèdre and Carignan, with tart raspberry and strawberry flavors, with just a hint or rosewater or lavender.”
2021 Le Fraghe Bardolino Chiaretto ‘Traccia di Rosa’ ($40)
Stanley’s other selection, as he puts it, “breaks the freshness rule of rosé due to its age.” It’s a 2021 vintage wine, a Bardolino Chiaretto from the producer Le Fraghe “Traccia di Rosa.” “This comes from the Veneto,” says Stanley, “a blend of corvina and rondinella. The age, however, strips the wine of its primary fruit and into realms of light tension and structure. “This is mineral to the core,” he says, “with gorgeous watermelon and light cherry fruit.”
Stanley’s Wet Goods, 9620 Venice Blvd., Culver City, (424) 341-2870 stanleys.la