The next Winemaker Dinner at Sage on the Coast is Sunday, April 6, at 6:30pm. Sage will host Bryan Kane, co-owner and winemaker of Vie, a small-production winery specializing in Zinfandel and Rhone varietals. Chef Rich and Chef Kris will design a five course meal to accompany Bryan’s new releases, including the 2007 Belle Amie Rose and the 2006 vintage reds: Las Madres Syrah (Carneros), L’Imaginaire Grenache (Santa Barbara) and the L’Etranger Zin Blend (Sonoma). The 2006 Beatty Ranch Zinfandel (Beatty ranch is the source of the oldest Zinfandel vines in Howell Mountain) will be paired with Sage’s cheese selections and pastry chef Robert LeSage’s spicy chocolate truffles. Sunday’s dinner is your big chance to try some rare wines so thoughtfully and carefully made that they sell out very quickly. Last year’s releases are entirely gone; this year you can put yourself on the waiting list at Vie’s website: Vie Winery

It’s become a cult list, although Bryan has been making wine commercially only since 2004. Twenty years ago, he was in business development. He collected wine. He was on all the cult lists himself. He was a wine fanatic. But he decided he had to know more. He took classes at UC Davis and elsewhere, made trips to France, to the Rhone Valley, and walked the vineyards of Chateauneuf du Pape with Pierre Usseglio, whose sons now make wine from the vineyards purchased by their grandfather, Francis, an Italian immigrant, sixty years ago. The grapes of the Rhone appealed to Bryan, not just for their variety and character, but because the growers were accessible and forthcoming, in contrast to the more reticent and reclusive Cab mavens back home. The owners and managers of great, low-yielding vineyards shared their knowledge and occasionally some fruit with Bryan, who had become a humble acolyte, one whose competence was exceeded only by his amiability.

Before planting his own vineyard, Bryan worked the hot hills of Paso Robles with Tablas Creek wine-master Neil Collins, planting non-irrigated, un-trellised Roussanne, Grenache and Mourvedre. He works at Copain, shoulder to shoulder with Scott Shapley, formerly of Siduri and Novy, now at Roessler Cellars. Like the old world vignerons and their loony-bird California epigones, Bryan aspires to make wines that express the idiosyncratic character of the land that produced them, their terroir. He employs a number of techniques to preserve what’s unique about the flavor and color of a single variety or a single vineyard—native yeast, long cold soaks, hot fermentation, extended maceration, judicious use of new French oak, even premium natural corks. Why take all the trouble though, if, like the French, you’re just going to blend them? “To make a more interesting wine,” says Bryan. “For example, in the Les Amours Syrah, which we release in the fall, we bring together the meaty, earthy characteristics of the Thompson vineyard with the white pepper spice of the White Hawk vineyard to make a more interesting wine. Am I saying the blends are better than single vineyards? I appreciate both, but there is definitely a reason why the top, most expensive wines in the world are blends.” Call now to reserve a seat and meet this consummate craftsman. The cost is $75 per person, excluding tax and gratuity. It will be a meal to remember.

You remembered the food fondly, too. Si and Brett C. write of Chef Rich, “I don’t think anyone else will ever drive every week to the Santa Monica Market and get the very best available local produce.” Debbie H. also likes “the creative use of seasonal ingredients” and has “Chef Rich to thank for helping me learn to eat salmon.” Leanne S. writes that when Sage catered her wedding, it was “the coldest day in July, yet all anyone remembers about that day over seven years ago was the incredible food.” She also admits to being “obsessed with crosnes” after the Three Chefs Dinner in the fall of 2006, and she remembers most fondly “the many nights that Rich would dream up little tapas-style tidbits in the kitchen, and then bring them out for us to taste.”

As for the atmosphere: It’s “always been a warm and cozy experience,” says Marjorie L. Jonathan C. says he and his wife are “always made to feel incredibly welcome” and Carol G. enjoys “sitting in what feels like my very own patio.” Chuck and Tilly H. remembered the Farmers’ Market Expedition Dinner: “all of us sitting in the garden at a communal farm table was like a setting in Tuscany.” And first impressions, it appears, are indeed lasting. On her first visit Linda L. “immediately fell in love with the barbeque pulled pork appetizer” and Grace and Stu N. knew after one meal that they had “found our home away from home.” Walking through his new neighborhood, Bob B. wandered in and sat at the counter, where “all of the people and staff were very friendly and welcomed me to the area.” It’s been ten years, wrote B.J. and Ned W., ten years “of being constantly excellent and interesting.” Well, thank you all for making those years so much fun!.