Bottle Shock

Have you ever seen Bottle Shock?  It's the best wine movie I've ever seen, though it didn't get a big surge until after it left the theaters.

The first time I saw the movie, I made a great wine-pairing dinner, and uncorked a bottle of pretty good wine (I think it was a Howell Mountain Cab from Mahoney, but we don't support Mahoney any more).  By the end of the movie I was pumped up on adrenaline and a little sloppy from finishing a bottle of Napa wine by myself in 109 minutes.  In my enthusiastic state, I decided to stagger down to Blockbuster to return/get another movie.  Somewhere along the trek, I remember talking to Annie on the phone and wildly gesturing with my hands, which led to the video flying into somebody's bushes right next to the window of their house, about 10 feet from the sidewalk I was walking on.  I'm sure they thought I was peeing in their bushes, if they noticed me at all.

Anyway, this was just to say that I really like the movie, and you should watch it.  In our Napa trip for my birthday, we ended up exploring more of the Bottle Shock movie then we meant to (we actually had no intentions of doing anything related to Bottle Shock... it just happened).  We went to Gustavo Thrace's tasting room (Freddy Rodriguez's character in the movie).  Then we drove off to...

Chateau Montelena!

I left with an autographed copy of Bottle Shock, signed by the real Bo Barrett.

I included this picture, not because it's focused or flattering by any means, but because there's so much going on.

Now if I can just get Chris Pine's autograph on it, too, cuz he's a hotty.

Chris Pine or Adam Lambert..?  Tricky, but definitely Pine (no goatee was the secret hint)!

What are your feelings on a red wine (w/ grapes?) tattoo on a dude?

~RoB

Sonoma Valley Trip

On Friday, Annie and I got to experience our first pickup party as wine club members.  It was fun, and I truly believe that we found one of the hidden gems of Napa/Sonoma Wine Country: Hook & Ladder Winery.  Their wine is delicious, super reasonably priced, and their tasting room is the most welcoming environment I've found in all of my wine tasting travels.  Friday, we showed up about 20 minutes before closing.  It was jam packed full of people, and we were immediately nervous about who we check in with and where to stand and how everything works.

Five seconds after we were through the door, one of the ladies pouring yelled over for us to come join her while she found us 2 clean glasses.  Every person I talk to there is more than willing to tell you everything they know and to make you feel as comfortable as possible.  Then, when they gave me the total bill for this quarter's club shipment and all the extra wine we had bought there, it was about $50 less than I expected.  We just kept adding bottles, since it felt that cheap!  The worst part about it was that they had sold out of my favorite vintages of my favorite wines, but I can't really complain that they make good, popular wine for such a small winery!

We woke up Saturday morning and hit up the Healdsburg Downtown Bakery & Creamery to try their doughnut muffins (among other things) since they were featured on Best Thing I Ever Ate.  They were good, but not nearly as good as their Pain au Chocolat or their Sticky Buns (we got both while they were warm)!!!  Then we went to pick up our quarterly olive oil shipment from Dry Creek Olive Company.  We're part of their olive oil club (just like a wine club, but cooler).  The guy there remembered me, which always makes me feel like a VIP, and we tried some of their just-released, new oils.  This place is always great, they have bocci ball on site, and we're seeing them pop up more and more in Norcal.  I really wish they had a facebook or twitter page so I could hype them more!

Finally, we spent the rest of the day tasting at 5 other tasting rooms (3 of them at wineries) while driving south to head home.

Big Surprises
Kaz Winery.  We went there because we have made friends with someone in the Bay Area with really close connections.  Our friend got us a free tasting of their whole fleet of wines, and Kaz was happy to give us the 'friends' discount which was RIDICULOUS!  We bought a 1/2 case of their wine.  For those of you that know us, this is a TON of wine for one winery.  We were worried that it wasn't going to be good, but that we would power through to save face with our friend.  We were wrong.  Their alicante blew my mind.  We even did some port tasting, which is usually not one of Annie's things.  She liked it so much that we bought one just for her!  Heck, we even bought a bottle of their hot sauce!!

Also, we ate at Zazu, which is a restaurant adjacent to the farm that's providing most of the food.  They make and sell their own bacon.  The food wasn't spectacular, but their bacon-wrapped dates were superb.  We bought a package of their bacon to take home.  We ate the whole package Sunday morning.

Disappointments
In asking around for winery suggestions before going to Sonoma, we heard Benziger a few times.  I even started to see it more at retailers (though I think that's because I always used to confuse it with Beringer).  Their property is gigantic, and they were in the middle of a huge party for their wine club members.  That wasn't a big deal, since it was separate and didn't really clog up the tasting room.  Though nobody was rude or snobby, big places like that just don't have the same warm feeling that Sonoma does so well.  You never feel like anybody cares rather or not you like their wine.  2 of their wines were absolutely amazing, but I couldn't afford a single bottle in their reserve tasting room.  They did move us halfway through our tasting to an even cooler room (just us and one other couple tasting) because the first reserve room was filling up, but that didn't really make it any better.  They also overcharged my card for an extra tasting, and the lady had the hardest time fixing it.  She ended up giving me her card and saying, "In case you get charged for 2 extra, which may have happened at this point, feel free to call and give them my name."  We got a free tasting for their sister winery, Imagery, and we're hoping we have a better time there.  One other thing to mention is that they are a biodynamic winery, and if you have any interest in super-organic woo-woo farming, you should research what biodynamic means.

Annie and I live off Cline Ancient Vine Zinfandel.  They sell it at Trader Joes and BevMo! and other wine retailers.  So, we were enthusiastic to hear that the wines they pour at their winery aren't mass-produced or widely distributed.  When we showed up, it was the end of a huge party (April in Carneros), so the property was filled with intoxicated people.  We got to taste everything we wanted for free, but the environment wasn't that inviting.  The kid pouring our wine couldn't have been more than 19, and he was pretty tied up by 3 drunken 19-yr-old-looking girls.  At least he admitted "a few of these wines are cheaper at BevMo!" for those wines that they actually sell at BevMo! (not the wines we were tasting).  I'll definitely be going back here once I can find an odd time where they'll be empty and able to treat me like the huge fan that I am.

Other places
Mutt Lynch, a dog winery that Angel was invited into and treated like the princess he is.
Deux Amis, a winery that shares a tasting room with Mutt Lynch, but I couldn't sip without my big nose being in the way of the shape of their small tasting glasses.
Glen Ellen Market, a gigantic deli with good food right next to Benziger.

One great moment of the day was at Mutt Lynch/Deux Amis when a group of 4 friends came in and tasted.  As they were leaving, they told one of the pourers they were heading over to Napa Valley and asked if they had any recommendations.  None of the 3 pourers in the room could think of a single place, since they all "hadn't been to Napa in years."  It's so funny to think that they are so close, yet there is really no reason to go spend money in Napa when you're surrounded by amazing, cheap wine in Sonoma!!

If you are heading up to either Napa or Sonoma in the near future, I'd be happy to tag along or just offer advice,
~RoB

Annob's Valenbirthday Wine Weekend

Annie and I went on a little wine trip for my birthday, mostly, and Valentine's Day, coincidentally.  We stayed at Old World Inn, a B & B in downtown Napa.  Our plan was to walk downtown Napa so that we could taste a lot and not worry about driving.  That is exactly what we did.  We had initially planned to buy the tasting card, but our innkeeper gave us enough complimentary passes to deter us from that itinerary.  The Old World Inn was everything that's great about B&Bs without the grandma decor; the evening chocolates were the best (cake and chocolate covered strawberries set out for late night snacking).

Annie will probably provide a more detailed listing of the day on her blog in the upcoming days, but I would like to give a shout out to the lady that made my day, Trisha from Mason Cellars.  We were the only ones in her tasting room for about 30 minutes, so we talked for a while.  She gave us wonderful advice, the tasting was complimentary, and the wines were dirt cheap for Napa standards yet really good.  She explained the rise and fall of Copia (which we had toured years before) and even offered to drive any wine we bought that day (from any winery nearby) back to our hotel and drop it off for us.  We took her up on her offer, and she ended up dropping off almost an entire case of wine to our B&B (we only bought 4 bottles of Mason wine)!!

The juicy part: skip ahead 5 hours and 6 tasting rooms.  We decided to head back to our B&B for wine/cheese hour, and we thought it would be a good time to drop off our freshly purchased cabernet chocolate sauce from Ceja (amazing) and the other bottle of wine we bought there.  The wine hour wasn't all that interesting (I blame the clientele), so we went back to our room to prepare ourselves for more tastings, and eventually dinner.

Annie immediately passed out on the bed.  She woke up 30 minutes later and ran to the bathroom to throw up.  She didn't actually throw up, but laid down for a little na-na and waved her glasses around until I grabbed them and set them on the dresser.  She laid around for a while, so I snapped a few pictures of her on her fancy, new HTC Incredible.  Those of you lucky enough to catch them posted on facebook know exactly what they looked like.  She deleted them as soon as she got her shit together around 11pm.  I also snapped another picture that made it to twitter (and gmail), but that got deleted even faster.  Needless to say, we slept through our dinner reservation and didn't eat anything substantial until our amazing breakfast at the B&B the next morning.

Sunday took us on a little tour of Napa & Sonoma Valleys.  I'm hoping to write another post specifically regarding Bottle Shock, so I'll save the details for that future post.  We made one stop at Dry Creek Olive Co, where I am a member and receive regular shipments of fresh, amazing olive oil.  The day ended at Hook & Ladder, a favorite winery from our trip back in May.  I've long considered joining their wine club, since I loved so many of their wines from their last vintage.  As soon as we started tasting yesterday (a new vintage), I immediately filled out their wine club membership application.  I consistently love their wines.  They are the first wine club I've ever joined, and I'm super excited.

(Annob is what are closest friends called the two of us in college, cuz she followed me around like a lost puppy.  I made up Valenbirthday just now.)

Cheers!
~RoB

Birthday

It's that time of year again, and already things have been interesting.

I got my first birthday card yesterday.  It was from my aunt.  (I posted about my crazy family, but my aunt is the lone person that kept me this side of crazy as I grew up.)  It has a bunch of stuffed monkeys on the cover hopping around yelling 'Yahoo!!' 'Whoopee!!' 'This is gonna be great!!  I'm so excited!!'  The last monkey exclaims "I can't wait!!  I... I..." and the inside says "... I think I just pooped myself."  She signed it: "(maybe I should stop reading your blog) haha."  How perfect is that?  The check inside made it even better!  Thanks, Aunt!  (I don't use people's names other than Annie [and Angel]).

Today, at work, I easily got off next Friday to go skiing with Annie and all of her friends.  I told them it was for my birthday.  I also scheduled a drug screening on my birthday, so things can get crazy that night!!

Then things made a turn for the worse.  I came home, and Angel was in trouble.  He had eaten one of my birthday presents!  Chocolate covered Oreos that Annie had found in some fancy chocolate store.  This is the same dog that ate our roommate's cupcakes that I made her for her birthday.  Angel is the birthday ruiner (word?)!  (Don't name a dog Angel; it's setting everyone up for failure.)

We brought it back a little with a birthday card from my mom.  The front is a bunch of plastic flamingos and reads "If this is the first thing you see the morning after your birthday celebration, you may want to ask yourself these important questions:" inside "Am I naked?  Is this my front yard?  Who are these people...?"  Mom doesn't read my blog, but she apparently knows me nonetheless.  Only downer is that it came with a post-dated check.  That makes me feel really guilty... like she felt obligated to send me money that she can't afford.

Similarly, I never got a/an Xmas present from my grandparents, and I don't know if they'll send me a birthday present.  It's not really a big deal, but I wonder if they actually did send something and it was lost along the way.  Considering the current granny situation, I'm not going to ask.  Am I awful for caring rather or not they sent/are sending something?

Anyway, things are in full swing, and Annie is whisking me off to Napa for the weekend.

Hello, good wine, I've missed you,
~RoB