In Vino Veritas

I went to Occidental over the weekend with the explicit goal of achieving waffle nirvana. How did this happen you ask? My cohort in crime and I beelined it to a restaurant called Howard Station Café. Actually the route was more like the path a kid with ADHD would take if you let him loose in a candy store (makes me think of the onomatopoeia buzzzzz, which is just like a bee, so there you have it). When told we…

There’s just something about running until your legs don’t work anymore. So, time changed on Sunday. I’m not talking in an existential manner or anything. The cosmos shifted, dimensions coalesced and in spots of Newark pigeons walk backward… no, nothing like that. We were thrust forward an hour, unless you reside in Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, et al. For most people who work Monday through Friday this equaled less sleep-in time. However, for over 25,000 people that congregated at Dodger…

If you like big, fruit forward, easy drinking, affordable wines then look to Sicily (Sicilia), Italy. Back in the day, before Italy really started regulating wine, Sicily was doing some shady stuff. They would ferment wine in large quantities, and then pipe the wine directly from the tanks into tankers. These ships laden with big juice would traverse the waters to Northern Italy. This was before the shift in temperatures that…

I did something yesterday.. something pretty intense. I ran the Long Beach Marathon. Aside from the giant sea serpents, a kraken, and a few sand monsters it was a pretty tame race. Rumor has it that the first Marathon was when a Greek messenger ran from Marathon to Athens to proclaim victory over the Persians in 490 BC. He ran the entire length (guessed at approx. 25 miles), shouted that they won, did a victory dance, and then dropped dead. Fast forward 2,503 years.…

Well another birthday just happened. They say that time speeds up as you get older, but for me it has slowed down to a crawl. I don't mind in the slightest. I just started my third quarter on my quest for a Masters degree. I have three more quarters of Psychology left before I switch schools and start the Masters program. Being in school is delicious. It gets the brain juices…

The Sonoma Coast AVA (American Viticultural Area) is just North of San Francisco and has about 2000 acres of vineyard land. Aside from being  beautiful and home to Tomales Bay Oyster Company, the wine from here can be breathtaking. *side note: Tomales Bay Oyster Company = awesome. Sit on the bay and eat  seconds fresh oysters and drink beer while sitting by the ocean. Although there are numerous micro climates throughout this AVA, they all have one thing in common. They…

Some friends have a way of making things better. You get a call, your face lights up with joy and you think... Wow, how did you know I needed that? I want you to be that friend today. Call up a friend and share a smile. While we are on the subject of smiles. I'm going to talk about some days that I loved with wine and friends. Chablis in the sun with oysters or muscles.... One of my favorite meals with…

We left Ahsan talking with those strange members of a rogue communist party. He was just talking money. *side note: I have all manner of love for Karl Marx's idea of communism, but I feel he, like Ayn Rand and others, base their ideal world on themselves. We currently don't have 3 billion Karl Marx clones (unless we recruit Ahsan) in the world. So because of that we get silly communist wannabes that I get to poke fun of. "So lemme…

  In the last post we took grapes from the vineyard all the way to what I like to call the yeasties (not a legit term.) There are various types of yeast to chose from that affect change on the wine in different ways.     Now they add the acid, if done at all. Depending on the rules of the region,…

  Root structures on the vine. With any given vine the root structure is touted by the wine maker as the giver of Terroir. Terroir is a French word derived from the word terre ‘land’ and is used to describe the effect the ecosystem of an area has on the grapes and eventually the wine produced in a specific region. By ecosystem I mean nearly everything in the vineyard that…

The sunlight streamed in through the window laying across Jeff’s desk.  It was another boring Thursday.  Of course nearly any school day was boring as far as Jeff was concerned.  The pen he was holding cast a shadow on his Algebra book which drew his attention away from Mr. Brobeck, his Algebra teacher.  He was probably the least favorite of all his teachers at Marscott High School and not just because he was the ugliest, which he most certainly…

That’s a riot. What’s a riot? The wine riot. Some wine tastings have a snooty air about them. The wine riot didn't. No there weren't any creatures being accosted by torch wielding villagers. People weren't getting squished against a fence to enter a soccer game. This wasn't that kind of a riot. It was more along the lines of : ri·ot·ous