Valentine wine

R and I drove north to Sonoma Valley last weekend to spend a few days away from our regular lives; to see some more of this beautiful state; to indulge on some excellent food and wine; and to celebrate Valentine's Day, just the two of us. Maybe it was foolish to drive seven hours to get to a wine region when there's a fantastic one right here in Santa Barbara County, but on the other hand it was time to pay our respects to the birthplace of the California wine industry and see what all the fuss is about. Needless to say, this trip helped deepen our immersion into oenological snobbery. It was also great fun.

Love (for wine) is blind

Last Saturday R and I drove up to Lompoc, CA for a wine tasting event with the younger subset of the Newcomers group. What made this tasting unique was that we didn't know what was being poured into our glass. We sampled seven chardonnays and rated each of them without knowing how much each bottle cost, what the label looked like, or what flavors we were expected to taste. It was an interesting experiment, and for the most part, the better bottles rose to the top of the results.

I'm still learning how to distinguish good wine, but it was easy, even for me, to identify the one that was spoiled due to a defective cork. And Trader Joe's "Three Buck Chuck" didn't rate much higher. After that there was some variation in the group's rankings due to personal opinion, except for the top wine, which won by a long shot. It just so happened to be the one R and I contributed. It was a $22 bottle of 2006 Lafond Chardonnay purchased and given to us by R's mom during her recent visit to Santa Barbara. I guess Linda has some good taste!

We have another bottle of the same wine in our rack at home; it came in the latest shipment from the club we belong to. I'm looking forward to taking a closer examination of it sometime soon. Does anybody else get the impression that living out here is going to turn us into a couple of wine snobs?

Holy hiking and wine drinking weekend, Batman

The title of this entry sums up our weekend pretty well, but I'll go into more detail anyway. Let me first say it was a good weekend, very Californian. Maybe the novelty will eventually wear off, but right now our excitement over our new location is going strong. We are definitely enjoying being here.

We joined the Sierra Club for a Friday night hike that started at the Hot Springs trail head and took us up to a lookout, where we saw the pictured sunset, and back down on a path that pretty much crossed through Jeff Bridges front yard. There certainly are some characters in the club: a guy who played the harmonica throughout the hike, two guys who talked about some rather wild times in Thailand for anybody to hear, the occasional Hash House Harrier, text book writers, and a few others who are difficult to explain. In our limited experience, Cali appears to have no shortage of characters like this. But maybe they think the same thing about us... the crazy Minnesotans.

On Saturday we got up and moving to the local coffee shop and then to the biggest and best farmer's market we've ever seen. The produce around here is amazing -- watermelon, peaches, avocados, lettuce, strawberries -- all so fresh, so good. We loaded up.

Next we were off to a wine festival happening along the beach. R's bike revealed a flat tire so we took the trolley down instead and proceeded to drink/eat all the wine and hors d'oeuvres we could for the next 3 hours. It is yet to be determined if living here will turn us into wine experts or wine snobs. We tasted so much wine that we have no idea any more what was good and bad, but overall I'd give the event a thumbs up.

When we got back from the fest, we took an hour nap in a swirling world before getting on our feet again to hoof it down to a showing of The Dark Knight. The Arlington theater reminded me of the farmer's market; it too was the biggest and best I've seen. It's a Spanish mission style, single-screen theater that seats 2,000 people, in this case, 2,000 people excited to see Batman done right. I loved the movie. Its director, Christopher Nolan, is one of my favorites working today. He's done Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige -- all great, highly recommended movies.

On Sunday we went out for breakfast at a neighborhood joint and attended a few open houses. We've seen most of what is available in our price range, and it's nice to know we have some options. The market is certainly in our favor for buying (we need to make up for our poor selling performance in Delaware). Every place we look at seems to have some positives (maybe an amazing view of the mountains, hardwood floors, or lots of space) and some negatives (usually work that is needed, a higher price, or a lack of space), so it's a tough decision. If we could get a really good deal on any of our top choices, however, I think we'd be happy.

That's the news from the weekend. Talk to you again soon.

Wine hop

I am not above seeing something done in the movies, being influenced into thinking it's cool, and wanting to participate in such an activity myself. When Sideways was released in 2004 and it became the hit hip movie of the year, everybody--me included--wanted to drink pinot noir on the road with their friends and live out various misadventures. Well, the little muse of mine you see above and I had a little taste of such a cinematic experience over the weekend. We spent it with our friends T & C, who live in Richmond, VA. On Saturday the four of us and another couple drove out to the northwestern part of Virginia, near the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains, and visited four very distinct wineries. My favorite was the small one that was our last stop. By then the sun was low and somebody strummed a guitar on the porch. The owner, a proud new father from South Africa who seemed very content with his life, was generous with the tastings. All of the guests seemed to be in high spirits as they shared bottles in the picturesque locale. What a life. We probably didn't encounter enough "misadventures" to make a popular movie out of our day (you can't expect anything to go wrong when five out of the six people in the group are engineers with impeccable planning), but we enjoyed a nice picnic, good conversation, and a heck of a lot of wine.

Back in Richmond that night, we went to the late showing of The Last Kiss, which I liked less than I expected months ago, but more than I expected a week ago after hearing all the negative press. It's quite a different movie from Garden State, to which immediate comparisons are drawn, but that doesn't make it a bad movie. It conveyed feelings a lot of people my age can relate to, and it was surprisingly dark. I will say, seeing all the troubled relationships in the movie made me glad to be in such a happy one with my wife.

On Sunday we had brunch at the Tobacco Company Restaurant, said good-bye to our friends, and made the four-hour drive back home. Somehow we ended up getting on the wrong freeway near Washington and got a nice pass-by of the National Mall, especially the Washington Monument. I'm still getting used to the idea of having all of that so close to us. We're saving the D.C. tourism for another weekend. There's so much to see in this part of the country.