Playing Catchup Blogging

As Debbie so correctly pointed out this afternoon, I'm falling behind in the blogging of our daytrips. I've yet to cover the Napa Valley, San Jose or Coyote Point and, with a sure-to-be-blogworthy trip to the Burlingame Pez Museum scheduled for tomorrow, I do need to start chronicling some of these earlier journeys before the memories fade.

Just before I do, I thought I should let you know the sacrifices we pet-owners go to for our animals. On Wednesday of this week the pets were scheduled for yet another visit to the vet to provide yet another blood sample. For reasons that I am unable to explain, Debs and I feel it our duty to front up to the vet with two shiny, sparkling pets. I guess we think it shows we're loving, caring owners - as if staying here purely because of the pets for a couple of extra months doesn't already do that! Anyway, over the previous weekend and early in the week of the scheduled visit, the weather was poor and, in any case, Debs and I were busy, so Tuesday night arrived and we still had a malodorous Mitzi. There was but one solution : I had to shower with the dog.

Mitzi is rarely permitted to venture outside the kitchen, so she is usually pleased when one or other of us picks her up and carries her, say, into the loungeroom or the study. But a trip to the bathroom clearly had her a tad confused and disoriented, and the look on her face rapidly took on a quizzical and mildly alarmed aspect. "Mild alarm" became "expressed preference to be somewhere else" once the shower was started and, fifteen minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom, quiet and looking like a drowned rat but now smelling fit for a vet. I emerged some five minutes later sporting three claw marks on my chest. I guess it could have been worse : it might have been Astra I had to shower.

So, onto:

Napa Valley - February 8th

Firstly - to let you know now - there will be no photos accompanying this post. Though Napa is quite scenic, the predominant reason for venturing to this part of California is to visit a few of the hundred or so vineyards in its environ. Consequently, photography tends to become something of a secondary activity and, in any case, the quality declines as the afternoon progresses ...

In Napa, the best alcoholic beverage that we tasted, was, to our considerable surprise, a sake. This is as much a reflection on the overall poor quality of the wines that we tasted as it is a tribute to the sake-makers of the Hakusan Sakery, our first stop for the day. As well as retailing some fine sakes, the Hakusan Sakery allows its visitors to conduct a self-guided tour of the on-site sake brewery. The tour consisted of a stroll along a covered walkway, parallel to the functioning brewery. Large windows permitted a view of what was going on inside, and plaques on the wall under each window explained each step in the brewing process. All-in-all it was quite informative and certainly novel. Strange machines did strange things to rice grains and gave off strange odours. Our only moment of concern came when we spotted a bottle of Liquid Paper, prominently positioned on a window ledge on the inside of the sakery. Surely, we hoped, they have a better way of ensuring that the rice grains are as white as they need to be.

During the remainder of the day we visited 3 wineries and tasted probably 10 or 11 wines, some red, some white. None of the wines shouted "buy me!", though a few did ask politely, so we entered our driveway with only a few more bottles in the car than we'd started the day with. One of those bottles though is going to be with us for quite a while. Why, I hear you ask? Well, let me tell you ...

We arrived at one winery whose name I won't reveal here for reasons which I hope will become obvious, and entered their small tasting room to find queues at both tasting benches. We waited, and waited, and waited, passing the time by taking an inordinate interest in the "here's-what-the-winery-used-to-look-like" photograph on the wall and by surveying the 5 or 6 wine-related items available for purchase and sitting on some shelves. During our extended waiting period, fatefully, we decided that we would only taste 'the reds' here.

Without warning, a tasting bench became free and we stepped purposefully up to it. The two staff manning the booth took this as a cue to launch into what was obviously a vitally important conversation about, I believe, the software that was running on the cash register, and saw no pressing reason to cut short such a lively and fascinating discourse merely due to the presence of potential customers. At some length the conversation abated, one of the staff scurried off to do something else equally important - perhaps pass on to another member of staff the more salient details of the cash register conversation he'd just had - and the remaining staff member was left without further diversions and so felt obliged to recognise our existence.

He explained that there were two tastings opportunities available to us on this day, a tasting of 3 of their finer white wines for US$5 at the bench on the other side of the room and a tasting of 3 reds - the "estate" tasting - that he could help us with at the bench we were currently occupying. Well, as you know, we'd already decided to taste the reds, so we stayed where we were, asked for two tasting glasses, had a little of the first wine poured in each glass and then commenced the tasting ritual.

Good wine-tasting practice is to start with lighter, softer wines and move on to bolder and heavier wines. So, we knew immediately that we were in some considerable trouble when the first of the wines redefined all our previous conceptions of boldness in a red wine. I can think of no food with which this wine could safely be paired, save perhaps some culinary disaster whose taste required heavy-duty masking. We tasted a little and then poured the remainder into a ceramic receptacle provided for this purpose.

It was, I think, at about this time that I started to feel a vague sense of uneasiness. I glanced at the tasting notes we had been provided and noticed that the wine we had just tasted was US$75 a bottle. The two which we had yet to taste were US$100 and US$150 a bottle, respectively. I had assumed that this tasting would also be US$5, but, mid-way through our second red, I glanced at a sign on the bench which I'd not previously noticed. It said : Estate Tasting $30. The day's wine sampling had not dulled my senses sufficiently to fail to recognise that, firstly, this was a lot of money and, secondly, that we were about to pay $60 for little more than an unpleasant aftertaste. I wondered if the tasting fee would be rebated against the purchase of a bottle, though this hadn't been the practice at other wineries.

The staff member who had been serving us the wine poured us our third and final wine and then started a conversation with another customer. The pair soon became entrenched in a passionate discussion about the quality of the wine and the manner of its making, encouraging the staff member to venture out from behind the bench to better point out to the customer the steel vats that dominated the tasting room.

At this point, lady luck intervened and the staff member who was in charge of the white-wine tasting on the other side of the room came over to our bench, went to the cash register to deposit some cash and asked "Can I help you?". I grasped the opportunity and asked for one bottle of their cheapest red, hoping that she would ring up just the price of the wine. She did. We took our receipt, our bottle and what remained of our tastebuds, and left, swiftly but unobtrusively.

And that's how we came to own a US$75 bottle of wine. We hope it ages well in the bottle ...

Originally posted by TC.