Wine is universal. Vitis Vinifera, the grape species populated by the many beloved varieties that are made into the wines we enjoy everyday, has a very special and unique power. Unlike with other fruit, wine made from these grapes can give a world of different flavors that seem to have nothing to do with grapes at all!
What I mean is that wine made from, say, pineapples will taste just like pineapples, plum wine tastes like plums, but when Chardonnay grapes become wine, the wine can taste like green apples. Young Pinot Noir can taste like a salad of fresh raspberries, red cherries and cranberries. After a little time in an oak barrel, it can smell like baking spices - cinnamon and nutmeg, perhaps tobacco leaf and cedar, and it can have the flavor of hickory smoked bacon. Sauvignon Blanc can smell like freshly cut grass and green bell peppers, taste like citrus fruit like grapefruit and lemon, sometimes even passion fruit. No other fruit can do that!
So when I say wine is universal, I mean that with all those wonderful possibilities, there’s a wine out there for every palate. Seriously. If for example you enjoy eating grapefruits, and you love lemonade then I would think you should start buying and trying Sauvignon Blancs from around the world. If you grew up in South East Asia eating lychees, star fruit, rambutan and food cooked with ginger and lots of spices, get with some Gewürztraminer (say it with me now: ge-VIRTZ-tra-MEE-ner)
This is not the same as pairing wine with food. While that is a fun and interesting exercise, it does not definitively address the issue of personal taste and palate memory. If the flavors in a wine are familiar to you, then you will better be able to relate to that wine, and so it can serve as an easy go-to for you. Like when I first tasted Chardonnay, I just didn’t get it. Growing up in a West Indian household, I did not eat apples really - certainly not green ones. So I downshifted to White Zinfandel (don’t judge me). Bubblegum! Yes, I’ve had that! Then I shifted back up into the real wine world by trying some Riesling - yeah, tropical fruit flavors. Now we’re talking! Suddenly wine wasn’t alien to me anymore. Soon afterward, I took my first wine class - the Wine and Spirit Education Trust Certificate at the Birmingham College of Food in the UK - and the rest is history.
Drink what you like based on what flavors resonate best in your food life. That is my best piece of advice for your wineLIFE!
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Wine for a New World
The terms Old World and New World are used quite often in wine-speak. They imply not only a physical location where the grapes are grown and the wine is produced, but they also imply the idea of a style of wine.
The Old World in wine is pretty much Europe and includes places where wine has been made for multiple centuries and is a part of the tradition and lifestyle. The New World is everywhere else, where wine industry is a phenomenon of the last 150-200 years or so, and the culture-at-large still leans toward beer and/or distilled spirits.
As far as style is concerned (you know how I like to think of wine the way I think of people) Old World Wines are quite like that beautiful woman in the long dress who barely looks in your direction and makes you work hard to get her attention. They don’t show all their cards on the first sip, they often age beautifully and improve over the years, and even those entry level wines that aren’t built for aging are still quite coy. New World Wines in general are more gregarious. You might find they remind you of an episode of Girls Gone Wild Spring Break - they are cute and perky and leave very little to the imagination.
The Old World has that kind of opinion about the New World wine consumer, particularly the rapidly growing number of wine drinkers in the United States to whom every wine producer and his grandmother wants to sell some vino. Their very wide sweeping assumption is that we are Coca-Cola Nation - we grew up with lots of sugar, everything we eat slaps you with in-your-face flavor as soon as it hits your palate. They think that’s how we like it. In some cases they even produce a separate wine for export to the US, thinking they have done a good job pleasing our palates.
I submit that there are far too many people drinking wine in America for such a sweeping generalization to be true. I don’t think wine for a new world should all be fruit forward, crowd pleasing grown-up juice. In fact, I offer another curve ball: the same person can be a different kind of wine drinker depending on the scenario - with or without food, alone or with friends or with a love interest, in cold or warm weather - these could all mean different wine needs!
What consumers in the New World DO need in general though is to feel more confident about buying wine. When the Old World of wine is producing something to send out to the damn Yankees, they should think a lot more about packaging that communicates well with the consumer than changing the wine inside to fit some stereotypical new world style. Because satisfaction in wine should come from finding and drinking wines you love, based on what they were meant to be from the start of their lives that vintage, not based on how well they were doctored up to please the lowest common denominator. In that, we will all find satisfaction.
The Old World in wine is pretty much Europe and includes places where wine has been made for multiple centuries and is a part of the tradition and lifestyle. The New World is everywhere else, where wine industry is a phenomenon of the last 150-200 years or so, and the culture-at-large still leans toward beer and/or distilled spirits.
As far as style is concerned (you know how I like to think of wine the way I think of people) Old World Wines are quite like that beautiful woman in the long dress who barely looks in your direction and makes you work hard to get her attention. They don’t show all their cards on the first sip, they often age beautifully and improve over the years, and even those entry level wines that aren’t built for aging are still quite coy. New World Wines in general are more gregarious. You might find they remind you of an episode of Girls Gone Wild Spring Break - they are cute and perky and leave very little to the imagination.
The Old World has that kind of opinion about the New World wine consumer, particularly the rapidly growing number of wine drinkers in the United States to whom every wine producer and his grandmother wants to sell some vino. Their very wide sweeping assumption is that we are Coca-Cola Nation - we grew up with lots of sugar, everything we eat slaps you with in-your-face flavor as soon as it hits your palate. They think that’s how we like it. In some cases they even produce a separate wine for export to the US, thinking they have done a good job pleasing our palates.
I submit that there are far too many people drinking wine in America for such a sweeping generalization to be true. I don’t think wine for a new world should all be fruit forward, crowd pleasing grown-up juice. In fact, I offer another curve ball: the same person can be a different kind of wine drinker depending on the scenario - with or without food, alone or with friends or with a love interest, in cold or warm weather - these could all mean different wine needs!
What consumers in the New World DO need in general though is to feel more confident about buying wine. When the Old World of wine is producing something to send out to the damn Yankees, they should think a lot more about packaging that communicates well with the consumer than changing the wine inside to fit some stereotypical new world style. Because satisfaction in wine should come from finding and drinking wines you love, based on what they were meant to be from the start of their lives that vintage, not based on how well they were doctored up to please the lowest common denominator. In that, we will all find satisfaction.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Sending it Back: When you are NOT in the Right
I’ll never forget it: The elderly lady walked into the store I was working at 6 years ago with a look of complete horror on her face. “There is glass in my wine!” she exclaimed, with an accent that was distinctly Eastern European. “Glass! I may have cut my tongue!” And there I was, greenhorn with a few years of wine study under my belt, foolishly attempting to explain to her that it was not at all glass. I even had the nerve to smile about it - the wine nerd in me couldn’t wait to wrest the bottle from her possession so I could examine the phenomenon.
Tartrate crystals, also known as wine diamonds, but as far as she was concerned, they were NOT her friend! I did catch myself lest she try to swing the bottle or her little old lady handbag at me in defiance. I apologized and promptly refunded her money, but in truth, there was nothing wrong with the wine she was returning. Tartrate crystals will precipitate from time to time in white and red wines alike when the wine is not “cold stabilized” (chilled down to near freezing so crystals will form BEFORE bottling) at the winery. In the case of wines that were made by low intervention winemakers, you may find diamonds, darling!
Another chewy thing you might find is sediment. Oh boy, this could get technical (donning wine geek pocket protector and glasses with tape in nose bridge) The tannins - you know the stuff that we all seek for antioxidant properties, those molecules that make our tongue feel a bit dried out after a sip of red wine? Well, they start out life as monomers, but over time, they form chains - or polymers - by linking together into groups. Then they become little chunks. Once again, very natural. No reason whatsoever to send a bottle back! There are gadgets on the market created to help you remove the sediment from an older wine (polymers form over the passage of a few years normally), or you can simply decant it. The classic tradition of decanting is not only to give a wine breathing room, but also to very slowly pour the wine out, leaving any sediment behind, so none ends up in your glass. Although it is not a real “fault”, I’ll admit that finding a chunk of polymerized tannin in your mouth isn’t a pleasant sensation.
Now if the cork should be dried out and crumble a bit into your wine, and you find a bit or two of it floating in your wine glass, just get over it - fish it out, and drink your wine! That is definitely NOT a fault. If the wine still looks and tastes fine, it may just be that the bottle was stored standing up for most of its life, so the cork remained dry because no wine came in contact with it to moisten it up. See last week’s article to see what kind of a fault a cork can be the culprit of.
In these circumstances, it really isn’t right to expect a retailer or restaurant to take your return of an opened bottle of wine. Nonetheless, a good one will explain if you want to hear, empathize if you don’t, and do what it takes to make you a happy customer.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Sending it Back - When you are right to do so!
**I must preface this by saying that although I have renamed this blog "wineLIFE 
Almost Weekly" and have struggled to at least post monthly in these last few turns, I am back with lots of thoughts and new knowledge to share, and I will be posting with a vengeance!**
And now: Sending it Back!
So far since we’ve been open, we have had only one customer come back to us and say that they thought that something wasn’t quite right with the wine they purchased from our store. We asked them for the bottle back, but they had done away with the wine already.
They weren’t pressed about getting a refund, but they did feel compelled to inform us.
The more unsettling thing was that she was the only person who has come forward. I’ve had just a few people say they were not wild about one wine or another, but the overwhelming response has been positive to the wines we’ve been working with. Not that we want anyone to be unhappy. Nonetheless, we’ve theorized about this, and come up with a list of possibilities that also serves as a list of good reasons why someone should feel very free to send a wine back.
SEND IT BACK! There are indeed some cases in which you are right to either bring an opened but unconsumed wine back to your retailer for a refund, or send an ordered bottle of whatever back to the sommelier after you’ve been poured a taste and determined it is NOT IN SALEABLE CONDITION. There are two important things to remember in this formula:
A. If you are asking your retailer to refund or replace a bottle - BRING THE BOTTLE BACK! Think about it: if you wanted to return a garment to a clothing store because of a defect, you would need to bring it back and show the defect to the staff, correct? Same goes for wine. We would pour a bit into a glass and verify your claim. Just as in the retail store, we wine shop owners can return defective merchandise to our distributors and recover our money.
B. Unlike the clothing store return, it really isn’t OK to return a wine just because you “don’t like it”. Do you not like it because it is in bad condition, or because it simply is not your bag? If its the latter, then neither the retailer or restauranteur would feel compelled to take the return. Our reasoning is that you had an opportunity to get with something you’d like - that’s the importance of shopping in a good wine retail shop or ordering wine at a restaurant where the waiters know the wine list or where you can consult a sommelier. You are encouraged to tell us what your style is and then its our job to help you find something in our inventory that’s right for you. But in plain business terms, we are hard pressed simply take a return if you just plain don’t like it because once a bottle is opened, it is no longer saleable - we wouldn’t ask our distributors to refund us on these.
OK, on to our list:
1. WHAT HAPPENED: Cork Taint - When you open a bottle of wine and pour your first glass, the aromas should be alive and it should take less than a minute or two for them to arrive at the entrance to your nostrils and entice you. If this doesn’t happen, if the wine smells flat -
either moldy like your basement or attic, or it actually has the dead smell of the very cork you pulled from the bottle, then your wine is probably corked. It helps if you’ve had the wine before and remember what it tasted like the previous time. HOW DID IT HAPPEN: This is a condition that occurs when a chemical known as TCA finds its way into your natural cork. Oddly, this happens during the process used to clean the tree bark into which 
the corks are made with a kind of bleach. Your odds of cork taint are between 5-10% - pretty high! WHY HAVE WE SEEN SO LITTLE at wineLIFE? It turns out (not on purpose) that a majority of our wines have either screw tops or synthetic corks in them. No cork, no cork taint!
2. WHAT HAPPENED: Vinegar - Wine is just one step away from Vinegar anyway. Look at the word: Vinegar - VIN - Egar. The French word is Vinaigre, which literally means sour (aigre) wine (vin). HOW DID IT HAPPEN: All it takes is the presence of enough Acetobacter, the bacteria who’s job it is to turn wine into vinegar, and the deed is done. Most of the winemaker’s responsibility lies in protecting the wine from such ugly scenarios, but some are less inclined to intervene in the winemaking process than others - they’d rather let it do what it do, and as such, if they have not fought off the baddies with sulphur dioxide, the winery’s all purpose friend, then acetobacter may find a home in your bottle. WHY HAVE WE SEEN SO LITTLE at wineLIFE: Our inventory is largely under $20.00 a bottle. While we do have organic wines, sulphur dioxide is allowed in organic wine making (its a natural by-product of the fermentation process anyway, and SO2 is itself organic) At this price level, most winemakers don’t take chances! We carry wines of commerce - recent vintages, made, like 98% of the wines on the world market, to be consumed young.
3. WHAT HAPPENED: Madirization - the wine oxidized in the bottle. It might smell like sherry. Caution: some wines smell like that ON PURPOSE. Once again, you are encouraged to talk to the good folks at your neighborhood wine store or restaurant for advice. For the most part, though if you open a bottle and it smells sort of like eggs or feet, it is not a good thing. White wines may actually take on a brownish hue, as well. HOW DID IT HAPPEN: Usually this is a symptom of pour storage. Wine that is stored in a warm place can fall victim. A good wine retailer or restauranteur will buy from distributors who are careful about their warehousing, and will consider the temperature of their own storage place very thoughtfully. WHY WE HAVE SEEN SO LITTLE at wineLIFE: We work with very good, mostly small companies who really love their wines and take great pains to make sure you enjoy the magic as well. We are all wine people. We care.
4. WHAT HAPPENED: Reduction - Sometimes, wine will suddenly feel painfully shy, and the flavors will retreat into some unknown place, leaving very little in the glass for you to love. In some cases, you’ll only have rotten eggs! HOW DID IT HAPPEN: The jury is still out, but most experts agree that it can be prevented to a degree in the winemaking process. WHY WE HAVE SEEN SO LITTLE at wineLIFE: Good wine makers understand and can prevent this in their wine before bottling it. Also, quite simply, this condition can be very subtle and most people don’t spot it. They may simply decide that they weren’t wild about that wine and that they’ll try something else next time they shop.
In any of these scenarios, you are right to send it back and have it replaced, pick something else out or simply get your money back. But remember, if its from a store you’ve gotta bring the bottle back. Next week, I will cover other “wine faults” that are not eligible for a refund.
Hint: Girl’s Best Friend.
Almost Weekly" and have struggled to at least post monthly in these last few turns, I am back with lots of thoughts and new knowledge to share, and I will be posting with a vengeance!** And now: Sending it Back!
So far since we’ve been open, we have had only one customer come back to us and say that they thought that something wasn’t quite right with the wine they purchased from our store. We asked them for the bottle back, but they had done away with the wine already.
They weren’t pressed about getting a refund, but they did feel compelled to inform us. The more unsettling thing was that she was the only person who has come forward. I’ve had just a few people say they were not wild about one wine or another, but the overwhelming response has been positive to the wines we’ve been working with. Not that we want anyone to be unhappy. Nonetheless, we’ve theorized about this, and come up with a list of possibilities that also serves as a list of good reasons why someone should feel very free to send a wine back.
SEND IT BACK! There are indeed some cases in which you are right to either bring an opened but unconsumed wine back to your retailer for a refund, or send an ordered bottle of whatever back to the sommelier after you’ve been poured a taste and determined it is NOT IN SALEABLE CONDITION. There are two important things to remember in this formula:
A. If you are asking your retailer to refund or replace a bottle - BRING THE BOTTLE BACK! Think about it: if you wanted to return a garment to a clothing store because of a defect, you would need to bring it back and show the defect to the staff, correct? Same goes for wine. We would pour a bit into a glass and verify your claim. Just as in the retail store, we wine shop owners can return defective merchandise to our distributors and recover our money.
B. Unlike the clothing store return, it really isn’t OK to return a wine just because you “don’t like it”. Do you not like it because it is in bad condition, or because it simply is not your bag? If its the latter, then neither the retailer or restauranteur would feel compelled to take the return. Our reasoning is that you had an opportunity to get with something you’d like - that’s the importance of shopping in a good wine retail shop or ordering wine at a restaurant where the waiters know the wine list or where you can consult a sommelier. You are encouraged to tell us what your style is and then its our job to help you find something in our inventory that’s right for you. But in plain business terms, we are hard pressed simply take a return if you just plain don’t like it because once a bottle is opened, it is no longer saleable - we wouldn’t ask our distributors to refund us on these.
OK, on to our list:
1. WHAT HAPPENED: Cork Taint - When you open a bottle of wine and pour your first glass, the aromas should be alive and it should take less than a minute or two for them to arrive at the entrance to your nostrils and entice you. If this doesn’t happen, if the wine smells flat -
either moldy like your basement or attic, or it actually has the dead smell of the very cork you pulled from the bottle, then your wine is probably corked. It helps if you’ve had the wine before and remember what it tasted like the previous time. HOW DID IT HAPPEN: This is a condition that occurs when a chemical known as TCA finds its way into your natural cork. Oddly, this happens during the process used to clean the tree bark into which 
the corks are made with a kind of bleach. Your odds of cork taint are between 5-10% - pretty high! WHY HAVE WE SEEN SO LITTLE at wineLIFE? It turns out (not on purpose) that a majority of our wines have either screw tops or synthetic corks in them. No cork, no cork taint! 2. WHAT HAPPENED: Vinegar - Wine is just one step away from Vinegar anyway. Look at the word: Vinegar - VIN - Egar. The French word is Vinaigre, which literally means sour (aigre) wine (vin). HOW DID IT HAPPEN: All it takes is the presence of enough Acetobacter, the bacteria who’s job it is to turn wine into vinegar, and the deed is done. Most of the winemaker’s responsibility lies in protecting the wine from such ugly scenarios, but some are less inclined to intervene in the winemaking process than others - they’d rather let it do what it do, and as such, if they have not fought off the baddies with sulphur dioxide, the winery’s all purpose friend, then acetobacter may find a home in your bottle. WHY HAVE WE SEEN SO LITTLE at wineLIFE: Our inventory is largely under $20.00 a bottle. While we do have organic wines, sulphur dioxide is allowed in organic wine making (its a natural by-product of the fermentation process anyway, and SO2 is itself organic) At this price level, most winemakers don’t take chances! We carry wines of commerce - recent vintages, made, like 98% of the wines on the world market, to be consumed young.
3. WHAT HAPPENED: Madirization - the wine oxidized in the bottle. It might smell like sherry. Caution: some wines smell like that ON PURPOSE. Once again, you are encouraged to talk to the good folks at your neighborhood wine store or restaurant for advice. For the most part, though if you open a bottle and it smells sort of like eggs or feet, it is not a good thing. White wines may actually take on a brownish hue, as well. HOW DID IT HAPPEN: Usually this is a symptom of pour storage. Wine that is stored in a warm place can fall victim. A good wine retailer or restauranteur will buy from distributors who are careful about their warehousing, and will consider the temperature of their own storage place very thoughtfully. WHY WE HAVE SEEN SO LITTLE at wineLIFE: We work with very good, mostly small companies who really love their wines and take great pains to make sure you enjoy the magic as well. We are all wine people. We care.
4. WHAT HAPPENED: Reduction - Sometimes, wine will suddenly feel painfully shy, and the flavors will retreat into some unknown place, leaving very little in the glass for you to love. In some cases, you’ll only have rotten eggs! HOW DID IT HAPPEN: The jury is still out, but most experts agree that it can be prevented to a degree in the winemaking process. WHY WE HAVE SEEN SO LITTLE at wineLIFE: Good wine makers understand and can prevent this in their wine before bottling it. Also, quite simply, this condition can be very subtle and most people don’t spot it. They may simply decide that they weren’t wild about that wine and that they’ll try something else next time they shop.
In any of these scenarios, you are right to send it back and have it replaced, pick something else out or simply get your money back. But remember, if its from a store you’ve gotta bring the bottle back. Next week, I will cover other “wine faults” that are not eligible for a refund.
Hint: Girl’s Best Friend.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
How We Select Wine
How do we Select Wine for wineLIFE Wine Shop?
The short answer is that we taste. We’ve tasted every single wine in the store at least once. People bring us wine to taste, and we try them, and based on their cost, we decide whether we can a. stand behind it as a wine of quality and value for money and b. fit it into our growing catalog of wines (gratuitous plug).
The long answer is still simple. In our store, we want to offer our customers a well chosen selection of wines. So we started by categorizing everything we tasted - first just into groupings like white, red, rosé, sparkling, then into grape variety categories. And so evolved our Chardonnay (including a lovely, oaky-buttery number from upstate New York and an Unoaked refresher from Australia), Sauvignon Blanc (including an austere white Bordeaux and a fruity Argentine darling), Riesling (including both sweet and dry versions and a great 3L Bag-in-Box), Pinot Noir (including one great Chilean under $15 that actually tastes great) and Malbec (including one with a few years of age on it) sections. Thus we began filling in other areas - Sparkling wines with simple sweeties, crisp Cavas and a Blanc de Blanc Champagne, Cabernet and Bordeaux Red blends.
We also wanted to support local as much as possible, so we made sure to fit in a strong offering of wines from the North Fork of Long Island and the Finger Lakes. Rounded out with some great Italian reds, which will expand into a World Reds section (because honestly, we’re probably not going to have a Sangiovese section in the store), an international selection of rosés, some Pinot Gris and Grigio and some great stickies, we have a store we can be proud of.
Now if we could just wean our customers off that damned Bitch Bubbly...
The short answer is that we taste. We’ve tasted every single wine in the store at least once. People bring us wine to taste, and we try them, and based on their cost, we decide whether we can a. stand behind it as a wine of quality and value for money and b. fit it into our growing catalog of wines (gratuitous plug).
The long answer is still simple. In our store, we want to offer our customers a well chosen selection of wines. So we started by categorizing everything we tasted - first just into groupings like white, red, rosé, sparkling, then into grape variety categories. And so evolved our Chardonnay (including a lovely, oaky-buttery number from upstate New York and an Unoaked refresher from Australia), Sauvignon Blanc (including an austere white Bordeaux and a fruity Argentine darling), Riesling (including both sweet and dry versions and a great 3L Bag-in-Box), Pinot Noir (including one great Chilean under $15 that actually tastes great) and Malbec (including one with a few years of age on it) sections. Thus we began filling in other areas - Sparkling wines with simple sweeties, crisp Cavas and a Blanc de Blanc Champagne, Cabernet and Bordeaux Red blends.
We also wanted to support local as much as possible, so we made sure to fit in a strong offering of wines from the North Fork of Long Island and the Finger Lakes. Rounded out with some great Italian reds, which will expand into a World Reds section (because honestly, we’re probably not going to have a Sangiovese section in the store), an international selection of rosés, some Pinot Gris and Grigio and some great stickies, we have a store we can be proud of.
Now if we could just wean our customers off that damned Bitch Bubbly...
Friday, May 14, 2010
Love in Carneros
Fabulous weekend in Napa! Remember the list in my last post "Wine Tripping Rocks"? My top reason for loving wine travel was the people, and sure enough, it was the people who made the trip uniquely wonderful!
I have to start with Amelia Moran Ceja. On our Sunday Morning vineyard tour, Amelia herself – Founder and President of Ceja Vineyards – hosted a group of 10 Women for WineSense members from San Francisco, Seattle and New York at her beautiful winery and vineyards in the Carneros AVA. The sunny, beautiful weather was indeed a great help, but it was her hospitality and the stories she shared with us that made it a special afternoon. A lot was learned on many levels for everyone present. And of course, the wines were fantastic! Beautifully balanced with a sort of European vein of acidity that makes the mouth water – perfect for food!
Out the back door of the Ceja Vineyards tasting room on Las Amigas Road are two Bocce courts. I recalled an episode of The Cosby Show when Cliff’s Trinidadian friend came over to play (they called it Petanque) on one of the coldest days of the year in the back yard of the Huxtable’s Brooklyn Heights brownstone. In costrast, on this gloriously sunny day in Carneros, Amelia found us (the New York City Chapter girls) outside making up our own rules to the game. “The great thing about Bocce,” she sang – her voice is like a lovely, never-ending song – “is that you don’t have to have any athletic ability to play, so its fun for everyone!” She showed us how to skillfully toss the pallino (the target ball) into position, and showed us where we could stand to bowl our balls within its range – it was Chardonnay (green balls) vs Pinot Noir (red balls), with our “Vana White” keeping score on a large courtside abacus. We were soon joined by WWS ladies from Napa/Sonoma and Seattle, and Amelia treated us all to her new release Vino de Casa white blend while we played. The wine was crisp and delicious under the beaming late morning sun.
Soon we started the vineyard tour, where Amelia allowed us to get up close and personal with her budding vines. These are natural vineyards – lots of wild growth around the bases of trunks and posts and in between rows. She showed us the row of great oak trees where glassy winged sharp shooters, those beautiful but deadly-to-vineyards insects, live just at the edge of a healthy vineyard – I’m still amazed, perhaps we could learn from this type of harmonious coexistence. She showed us her home, which looked as though it had risen up right out of the soil in the midst of the vines , where she had just come from hosting 20 of her family members for Sunday morning breakfast – business as usual for the Cejas.
Love is evident in every ounce of Amelia’s spirit and in every aspect of Ceja Vineyards, from the river of life symbols that flow across labels and down the capsules of the bottles, to the symbol of the Camino Real bell Amelia spent a year researching to choose for a logo. You can view the bell hanging from the arbor archway entry to this beautiful place – the clapper signed by the smith who cast the bell, the winery’s ethos etched around the lip: Vinum, Cantus, Amor – Wine, Song, Love, or as Mr Ceja lovingly interprets it, Wine, Sex and Rock and Roll!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wine Tripping Rocks!
Flying out to California every year is ALWAYS a fun thing! This is my forth year in a row, third Women for WineSense Grand Event - yes, your math is correct, I attended the second one while I was 6 months pregnant with my daughter. Here are the things that make this trip so special every year:
1. Seeing my friends again that I rarely see or only get to see during this event - not only my Cali posse, but women from all over the country come through - my Dallas girls, my Oregon crew from Portland and Bend, ladies from Richmond.
2. Traveling with my northeast region girls, enjoying the growth of our friendships in a shared hotel room in St Helena and at the Grand Event luncheon at CIA.
3. Getting Chef Shehu some Charles Krug Rosé right from the source. (perhaps I’ll see my friend the little jackrabbit who hangs around the picnic area outside of the tasting room, too?)
4. Visiting a new vineyard or winery I haven’t been to before - last year, it was Spottswoode, to pick up my allocation of Sauvignon Blanc. This year, I will visit Ceja Vineyards on my Sunday morning Vineyard Tour (part of the Grand Event ticket package - WHAT A DEAL!!).
5. Dining at some of the countries most fabulous and beloved restaurants. This year, Mustard’s Grill!
6. Watching the Napa Valley Wine Train go by and waving at all the “happy” people on board while eating a burger at the Taylor’s Refresher, THE BEST burger joint I’ve ever been to! (Imagine great burgers, perfect fries and an AWARD WINNING WINE LIST! I KID YOU NOT!)
7. Amazing new experiences - in 2007, I met Mrs Margrit Mondavi, in 2008, I blended and bottled my own wine at St Supery, last year Samantha and I drove through Sonoma Valley and stayed with a new friend in Tiburon, where I had a fantastic morning run, this year - WHO KNOWS???
8. Beautiful weather, which we always seem to be blessed with.
9. A little time away from the concrete (and let’s face it, a little me time without hubby and baby) - at least enough time to miss it all and want to come back home!
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