would you like wine with that?
The last time we went up to wine country was in June for the Days of Wine & Lavender festival at Matanzas Creek Winery. We're wine club members there and at Harvest Moon Winery and rather than having them ship us our wine, we make a point to drive up there and pick it up ourselves every quarter. Due to all of the activity of this summer, we were woefully behind on our orders so decided to head up there today. In between visiting each of those wineries, we stopped off at Manzanita Creek, where we proceeded to buy a case of zinfandel, talk with the wine maker Jack (a blue-eyed sicilian like Alan and his mom), and just drink a lot of great wine. We also signed up for their wine club. Oh, and we got to eat a petite syrah grape straight off the truck. Good stuff.
We were thinking of canceling our membership at Matanzas Creek but when we got up there, they were having a special tasting just for wine club members in the back of the tasting room and it reminded me what I loved about the place when we signed up about a year ago. So we picked up our shipment from July and picked out and paid for our October shipment since the next time we'll make it up there is probably December.
I would love to go to the Wine & Food Affair like we did back in 2005 (one of my favorite event experiences up there), but since it's the week before we leave for Italy, I very much doubt we'll get a chance. Manzanita Creek is participating this year and he was asking us about it since they hadn't done it before.
We also tried to stop off at Marimar Torres, but they were closed for harvest. A couple of places were, actually, including one of our old favorites Arista. I say "old favorites" because they no longer make zinfandel and are focused entirely on expensive pinots. Oh, we also stopped off at Gary Farrell for the first time, but I didn't like the environment (neither did Alan). While the setting was absolutely magnificent and the tasting room was gorgeous, the woman pouring our wine seemed to be a sycophant and was a little too hyped on "Gary." It was, "Gary, Gary, Gary" out of her mouth and just so ... unsettling. I like places that are a bit more down-to-earth and really just relaxed about wine making and drinking. She made a big production about it all. The wines were okay, maybe a bit too mellow for me. I started drinking wine at a time when berry bombs were popular and high alcohol content was the norm, so that's what I've grown to like. Subtle is not really what I'm looking for in a zinfandel, and all of their wines didn't really have a distinctive feature/taste. That is, except for the cabernet. It tasted like I was biting in to green olives and was just very unpleasant. It was to the point where I actually hated the wine and if I was at an event, would have drank water instead of it. It just sat that poorly with my tastebuds. So, showing up at Manzanita Creek was a welcome respite from the previous experience.
All in all though, a good day for wine. We're now up to 65 bottles. We've definitely come a long way from sitting out on the porch drinking boxed wine. Very far indeed.
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