Corks and Caftans

We’re still more than a week away from receiving any grapes from our outlying vineyards, but for my own sake, I consider my early arrival as indispensable, akin to an SAT prep course.

Nothing too exciting on the photo-front yet, but that will all change when the grapes start rolling in. Rain and cold weather early in the season has harvest running about a month behind—not a good thing when the weather typically starts to get dicey in October. If the rains starts, the grapes dilute, stress surrounds [...]

Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to do ‘marooned on an island’ numerical postings! I understand that despite my excitement, readers may grow tired of vine pictures. Me scrubbing the inside of a 3000-gallon oak barrel in my new rubber suit, on the other hand, I won’t fail to document. I met the good folks at [...]

Wan’t to know what I did last night? It was exciting: I fashioned a makeshift window cat flap out of bandanas then trained Eli how to use it by luring him in and out with tuna treats. I contemplated packing for Oregon, but didn’t execute. What to bring, what to bring? I heated frozen dinner [...]

11 days until departure. If you read Carey’s last post, Brace yourself for the things you want, then you know that I have less than two weeks until I leave everything I’ve known and loved for the last 4 years to fly out west and begin 2 months of work at an Oregon winery. When [...]

Menetou-Salon. A small, overshadowed appellation in the spotty Central Vineyards district of the Loire Valley is new to me for Pinot Noir. When I consider the Loire Valley, I think Sauvignon Blanc, and the whites of Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé, Chenin Blanc from Vouvray, Chinon Cabernet Franc, and Melon de Bourgogne, the grape of Muscadet. [...]

The generators are still running across the street. We were told that we could be looking at 4 days without power, but were back online in less than 36 hours. We were prepped for the long haul, but into the second night, we were quickly breaking down. Dry ice had the fridge covered and batteries [...]

Wine doesn’t have to be great to rally around. It doesn’t even have to be good to bring people together—sometimes it’s more about what we make of it. Take this bottle for example; I bought it years ago for $5 through an online auction. I never planned on drinking it, but it was available, I [...]

Now that I’m working around wine, it seems odd that I would be finding less time to write about it. I feel the tide changing though; I guess that’s kind of the way I am. All or nothing/when it rains it pours.

  Carey and I had a last minute sushi invitation at her brother’s house this weekend. Sushi is considered one of the more difficult foods to pair wine with—probably because it encompasses such a vast spectrum of flavors, textures, and spice. There is no single base protein or veg, and rice is probably the only [...]

Well, I didn’t meet the Hosemaster. I scanned name tags all weekend, but it wasn’t meant to be. But all was not lost; the weekend rolled on! [Viognier under a dense canopy at Horton Vineyards, Orange County, VA]

Being new to the area, I’m making sure to keep up with the local wine happenings. And this is a pretty happening spot for wine these days—The Wine Bloggers Conference is this week/weekend in Charlottesville. The first time on the east coast, and kind of a big deal in my world. Or I should say, it’s [...]