This was a year filled with extraordinary food and beverage adventures.  It was difficult to narrow down a “Best of the Best” list, but here are my picks for 2011:

Best Overall Coffee Experience: Roasting beans and doing a comparative tasting with Scott Miller, owner of Ogeechee River Coffee Company, Savannah, Georgia.

Best new chocolate confection chef: Chris Kollar of Kollar Chocolates in Yountville, California.  Especially love his passion fruit, coconut and peanut butter chocolates.

Best foraging adventure on a farm: La Petraia in Radda in Chianti, Italy, with owner and chef, Susan McKenna Grant.  Foraging was followed by a cooking class and lunch that featured our foraged ingredients!

Best wine harvest experience: Goosecross Cellars, Napa, California. Was such a learning experience to follow Winemaker Geoff Gorsuch during the pressing and crushing of the grapes for their Viognier wine.

Best new chocolate bar: Askinosie Chocolate, Springfield, Missouri.  I absolutely adore their new single-origin bar made with cacao beans from Honduras.

Best organic olive oil discovery: Castelas’ Biologique Olive Oil, Les Baux de Provence, France.  Grassy, aromatic, spicy and delicious.  This is a perfect finishing oil.

Best dish using brussel sprouts: Bottega Restaurant, Napa Valley, California.  Their new crispy brussel sprout salad is phenomenal.  I was upset that they took their shaved brussel sprout salad off the menu but this new salad is truly superior – so full of flavor and crunch!

Best new diner: The Fremont Diner in Sonoma, California.  Farm-to-table, Southern-inspired dishes such as BBQ pork sandwich, collard greens and housemade biscuits.

Best sugar discovery: Wasanban from Shikoku, Japan.  Wasanban is a very fine-grained sugar that is made from a thin sugar cane plant grown in Shikoku.  A friend in Japan sent it to me.  I have been using it to sprinkle on dessert crepes and cookies and to sweeten tea.  I love its delicate texture and sweet flavor.

Best affogato (gelato with a shot of espresso): Poggio in Sausalito, California.  They dress their affogatos up with slices of toasted almonds and candied orange peel.  Exquisite!

Best caramels: Jacques Genin in Paris, France.  These caramels melt in your mouth and dance on your tongue.  The flavors are rich and the texture is perfect.

Best wine education experience: Les Printemps de Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, France.  Was there in April for a tasting of grenache wines from several different soil types and microclimates within the Chateauneuf-du-Pape appellation.

Best new artisanal salt: Jacobsen Hand-Harvested Pure Sea Salt from Netarts Bay, Oregon.  This salt has a wonderful crunch and a bright, clean flavor.  Excellent finishing salt.

Best hamburger in San Francisco: 4505 Meats, San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.  Haven’t tried every hamburger in town yet, but this was my favorite of the ones that I tried this year.

Looking forward to discovering what new “Bests” 2012 will bring!

Note: Top photo taken by Oliver Seidel and Nicky Stich of deliciousdays.com.

From time to time, I conduct interviews for Napa Valley Wine Radio.  Today was one of those days and I interviewed Bill Chambers, Director of Hospitality for Round Pond.  Have you heard of Round Pond?  Their olive oils are some of my favorites.  They grow 2200 olive trees on 12 acres in Rutherford.  And they actually have their own mill for making olive oils – they don’t have to wait for availability at someone else’s mill.  This allows them to harvest their olives at the peak of ripeness and mill those olives within minutes of harvesting. 

I adore their Italian olive oil blend – it is spicy, fresh and just waiting to go on top of your freshly picked salad!  

Round Pond makes two other exquisite oils that I love, as well - their Meyer lemon olive oil and their blood orange olive oil.  These oils are NOT infused.  Instead, the olives are macerated with the peels of either fresh, organic Meyer lemons or fresh, organic blood oranges during the milling process.  Try this recipe with their blood orange oil: Fava Beans with Fresh Mozzarella, Orange Zest and Round Pond Blood Orange Olive Oil.