So we tried a new recipe last night inspired by a local San Diego restaurant, Solare. I went a Junior League meeting last week and we visited the Old Marine Training Center in San Diego. The land since is not being used as a marine facility any longer has reverted in ownership back to the city (original owners). Well the city has leased the property for $1 a year to a non profit promoting the arts in San Diego. They are rebuilding the area with shops and restaurants as well as keeping the marine facilities to house local artists ranging from painters to musicians to dancers. It is really fun what they are doing there. I especially loved one of the groups that is housed there that works with Children from the Ronald McDonald house to have a space to play music.

So this recipe called for a small amount of wine in the risotto, usually I would by a cheap bottle. I wanted the best for this dish so I decided to open our bottle of unfiltered Chardonnay from Hop Kiln.

So glad I did! The dish was delicious and I would be afraid to change anything about it. Which I guess means we will need to get more of the Chardonnay, which is more than fine by me.

We visited Hop Kiln our last day of our trip in January of 2010. It is in Russian River more on the side closest to Dry Creek. This winery is in a unique building because of its unique history; they will go into that at the winery. The winemaker here is quite young and does a fantastic job. We did two tastings here, one of the regular and on of the upgraded wines. Some of the nicer wines here go by a different label, HK Generations. This Chardonnay I highly recommend and the price is even quite affordable, $28. We also got a bottle of their Malbec which was good as we knew we were loaded up on Zins and Pinots from the last 4 days of our trip.