Rain Wedge Man on Middle Coast!

Hello All,

Just coming off of a fun and fabulous weekend with RWM, a dear friend from Seattle, who was passing through on his travels across the country selling the phenomenol rain wedge for golfers. For more information about the product, check out the website at http://www.rainwedge.com/.

The photo gallery includes shots of my new winebrat friends and my visitor at various hotspots around town, including my dining room where we landed for the night to taste some Long Island wines that RWM bought from various tasting rooms in NY. He was pleasantly surprised at how good some of those wines were, having never seen any wines produced from the region before now. I also shared a new favorite from Vino 100, a Barossa Valley, Australia label called Fetish. It's one of the best values I've had the pleasure to enjoy. It's distinctive label sports a very sexy silhouette of a woman, styled like the ones you see on semi trucks, only she's still standing. It's an extremely lucious and bold red shiraz.

A memorable hilarious moment was when four of us inadvertently started shuffling three of our glasses of wine and couldn't figure out which was whose, with only one of us having a sharp enough olfactory to finally distinguish the one Lyeth Merlot from the two Alexander Valley Cabs, a sobering moment for the other 3 of us who have vowed to practice more sniffing and sipping to help build these important skills!

On Sunday, we hit the road with our bikes and headed toward the baseball stadium to watch my team lose by one point in the 10th innning. But in stark contrast to the stormy deluge on Friday night, it was sunny and dry, so we were still pretty happy in spite of the loss. Thanks again to RWM for putting my bike together and making it ride-worthy.

I hope this was easier to read--one of my friends asked me to please start using paragraphs...

Friends and Wine in Seattle

Taste Washington! The Ulitmate Wine Experience was spectacular!! 216 wineries were there, and Karen, Nancy and I tasted over 50 wines in under 3 hours. We were still standing at the end of the day because we were very good about spitting after sipping. We had dozens of excellent wines and lots of tasty food samples. JJ got to see *lots* of old friends from the wine industry and was even invited to apply for a job with one who recently started a new business as a distributor of NW wines. I hope he's in business for a while, because when I retire from libraries, that could be the next big thing--moving from the Midwest to the Southwest to take the job might also sweeten the pot a little. For now and the foreseeable future, I'm not budging from my current location--I'm loving it here on the Middle Coast! At any rate, back to the wine tasting--we had wines from all over the state, including Cave B Estate*, Syncline*, Andrew Will*, Cadence, Fall Line, McCrea*, O-S, Walter Dacon, Chandler Reach*, Terra Blanca*, Robert Karl, Goose Ridge Estate*, Powers, eMaurice, Canoe Ridge, Cougar Crest*, Gifford Hirlinger*, K Vintners, L'Ecole No. 41*, Nelms Road (Woodward Canyon), NxNW, SYZYGY*, Tamarack*, Wines of Substance, Woodward Canyon, Darby, Januik, JM, Novelty Hill, Agate Field, Alexandria Nicole, Sheridan, and Wilridge. The ones with an asterisk indicate my top choices. All wineries poured multiple choices and I tasted an average of 3 wines per table. I tasted all 6 of McCrea's offerings, which were quite superior to many of the other wines I tasted. McCrea specializes in Rhone style blends and varietals, so lot's of Syrah here blended with Grenache and Mouvedre. For the whites, he uses Rousanne and Viognier. He uses American oak for some wines and French for others. Other stand outs were Andrew Will's Bordeaux style blend called Two Blondes, SYZYGY's cabernet and syrah, Tamarack's Firehouse Red, Cougar Crest's, Dedicated 2, L'Ecole's Semillon and Perigee, and Goose Ridge's Vireo. Most of these are reds and red blends. Also, I highly recommend Syncline's Rose, which I believe is Grenache-based. Syncline also specializes in Rhone varietals and does a wonderful job. At the seminar the day before, I also had the pleasure of tasting DeLille Cellar's 2006 Doyenne Estate Rousasanne from the Red Mountain AVA--it was my favorite of the 4 whites, full-bodied and very fragrant.~Before the seminar on Saturday, Nancy and I went for a great urban hike featuring the Seattle Art Museum's recently opened Olympic Sculpture Park--the two photos were taken there. Lots more good stuff happened, making for a wonderful vacation and a much needed break from work.