Posting from Disneyland

Well, I never thought I'd say it, but Disneyland is a magical place... for even I, a Disney scrooge, reluctantly left the park smiling broadly. I'd spent the first two days of my conference (American Library Association) begrudging that Anaheim was selected as the location. I bought a ticket for an event not realizing that I was actually buying a voucher to be exchanged for a ticket to the Disneyland theme park. I tried to get my money back and they refused, so I decided not to waste the dough and just go... I wandered around the park for three hours marveling at all the amazing attractions, light shows, landscaping, architecture, sensurround sound, and the thousands of people (and no drunks). I was all by myself having a blast and an unforgettable evening. I really liked the park, but all the commercialism surrounding it is pretty annoying--my hotel is right in the resort and it's difficult to escape. Also, it took a couple days of getting used to seeing "Micky everywhere." If not his entire image, the "three adjoining circles" appear in the most unlikely places such as on the top of lamp posts and metal stanchions, in the wallpaper (photo above), carpet patterns, topiary (although my photo shows Donald), and even his gloved hand graces the decor--they are holding the sconces to the wall in our bathroom. I have to admit though, I prefer the Disney architecture to the barren landscape of this desert that is So Cal. I'm looking forward to returning to the lush land of the Middle Coast!

In the meantime, I was extremely happy to find a very nice wine bar a few paces away from my temporary resident, the Dreams Tower. The hotel campus has a ships and pirates theme, and the wine cellar is below a little place they call Hooks Point next to the Neverland Pool. I was able to fully enjoy a Pinot Noir wine flight consisting of Acacia, Edna Valley, and another not so memorable. The Edna was my favorite, with a nice blend of fruit and earth, with a touch of vanilla. The Acacia was by far the earthiest, but also good. I was able to work in one memorable dining experience at a high end restaurant called the Napa Rose inside the Grand California Hotel (uber lodge extraordinaire--larger than life). The restaurant, thankfully, was more tastefully designed and sized at a more human scale. The food was awesome--had a wonderful grilled salmon with a medly of wild mushrooms in foam, which I successfully paired with a delicious Jade Mountain Mouvedre.

Prior to this trip, I had the pleasure of attending a wine tasting at a great little wine bar in my neighborhood called Perpendicular. The distributor was showing a collection of wines by Brassfield Estates from Lake County, CA and a new appellation called High Valley. The whites were 2006 and included Sauvignon Blanc, Dry Riesling, and Serenity, the latter an unusual blend of 63% Sauvignon Blanc, 28% Pinot Grigio, 6% Gewurztraminer, 3% Semillon. It was my favorite of the whites, with a complex, fruity structure, medium bodied, and nicely balanced with just enough acidity. The reds were 2004 and included Merlot and Zinfandel. The merlot was the best, which was extremely smooth and rich. I agree with their notes which use descriptives like black cherry, cocoa and cinnamon. I don't usually like Merlot, so this was a pleasant surprise. More information about these wines is available at http://www.brassfieldestate.com/wines/.
I found them to be good value wines with prices ranging from $13 - $17.

Time to don my library cap again and get ready for the Newbery-Caldecott Awards Banquet.
Cheers!

Patio Wine Tasting

Patio Wine Tasting
June 7, 2008

The challenge from our hosts was to “Beat the Palmelo.” Wines are listed in order from most to least favorite. Bold indicates a characteristic was mentioned three or more times. Except for the last one on the list, I'd buy any of these wines again.

Wine: [2006??] Palmelo (Sauvignon Blanc)
Region: California
Bouquet/Palette&Body: fresh, flint, clean, grapefruit, lemon, lemon rind, citrus, slight spice like white pepper, acidic, light, crisp

Wine: 2006 Memsie (Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Rousanne, Chardonnay)
Region: Australia
Bouquet/Palette: aromatic, sweet, cream, slight mineral, floral, pear, stone fruit, honey, slight vanilla, butter, citrus, buttered toast, melon, crisp, tart, silky, crisp

Wine: 2006 Mason (Sauvignon Blanc)
Region: California
Bouquet/Palette: grapefruit, white pepper, grapefruit, silky, rich

Wine: Greg Norman Chardonnay
Region: ??
Bouquet/Palette: banana, butter, cream, nutmeg, ginger, slight oak, vanilla, nutty, spice, banana, apricot, clove, spice, nutmeg, butter

Wine: 2004 Conundrum
Region: California
Bouquet/Palette: hot, very aromatic, floral, a little sweeter than previous vintages, tropical, a little spice

Wine: 2005 Schlossaarstien (Riesling-Cabinet)
Region: Germany
Bouquet/Palette: green apple, pineapple, mango, pear, peach, mango, apple, green apple, citrus, green, mild citrus, grapefruit, pineapple, tropical, sweet, crisp

Wine: 2006 Allison by Stelzner Family Vineyard (Rose)
Region: California
Bouquet/Palette: strawberry, apple, raspberry, vanilla, rhubarb, cranberry, peppery, cinnamon, citrus, steely, tart

Wine: 2006 Fetzer Gewurztraminer
Region: California?
Bouquet/Palette: toasty, spice, citrus, sweet, too sweet, very sweet, hint of mint or eucalyptus, vanilla, honey, buttery, melon

There were actually several more wines to taste but we stopped taking notes when a severe thunderstorm forced us into the basement I mentioned in the previous post. If you're interested, check this post and comments in the near future for possible additions and more details on price, region and maker. Cheers, JJ

Out of Touch

It's been a while since I've been able to blow some time in front of my computer. I've been super busy with trying to get my Mom completely untethered from her house of 40 years. She's 74 and is now living in an assisted living facility--very nice complex and close to my house. We moved her out in December and it's taken until now, plus quite a bit of cold, hard cash, to get her house (the place where I grew up) cleared out and cleaned up--phew!! Finally, we are at the point of having real estate agents looking at it to determine a fair listing price. We hope to have it listed by the end of next week. We've also been showing it to potential buyers who got wind of it going on the market before the listing--all of this has been extremely time-consuming.

Meanwhile, I've been training for a 5K coming up in July. My elliptical has served me well in that capacity over the winter. I finally took to the streets this past Saturday on a hot and stuffy morning. I managed to run about an 11-minute mile, my usual time, so I was happy with that--but I spent the rest of the day icing my knees to keep them from swelling--worked pretty well. This is also helping with the blood pressure which is mostly back to normal, I'm happy to report.

A recent, really cool development is that I managed to rescue a very limited number of special items from my Mom's house (the last three truck loads went directly to landfill, sadly, thanks to 1-800-GOT-JUNK). One of those treasures was a swinging porch bench which DG and I put together one Saturday afternoon. Ever since then, my neighbors and I have been spending Sunday evenings out there sipping wine and chatting. We've drawn passers-by to the porch to join us and it's been a total "community-building" phenomenon. I've always avoided hanging out on the front porch due to prior bad connotations, but I'm slowly being converted by my neighbors who say that front porch frequenting is good for the neighborhood on a number of fronts--even from a security standpoint.

My lifestyle here is so different from the one I left in Seattle and let me tell you, I was fighting hard to avoid sinking into the "white picket fence" mindset, but now that I live in a house on a street full of other houses instead of a downtown highrise, or mid-sized condo, it's hard not to get caught up in it. I tried hard to buy a condo, but I couldn't bring myself to spend the money in what I thought was/is an over-valued market. But I'm adjusting...now, I spend a lot of time bird-watching from my own front and back yards. We have a nice variety of resident birds including cardinals, finches, hawks, woodpeckers, and geese, along with the ever-present sparrows and robins. Closer to the water there are quite a few gulls. We also have our resident bunnies (quite a few) and squirrels. The biggest difference in lifestyle is having my immediate family so close at hand and allowing them to take up so much of my time--it's all for the good right now though.

Some things are similar. Like Seattle, a number of my favorite hangouts are in my neighborhood, rather than downtown. I have my choice of restaurants and coffeeshops, as well as a local theater, art gallery, huge park, and wine shop, all within easy walking distance. A slightly longer walk encompasses everything else to which I need regular access (though I usually drive). Downtown is farther away than what I enjoyed in Seattle, so I *always* drive to that area of town. I drive a lot more in general, but my neighborhood is great for walking and biking, so I do this when I can.

Well, I think I'll try to load in a few pictures too: Mom at the grocery store (she can't walk unassisted); a scene from the RiverWalk (DG and I spent a perfect Sunday afternoon along this groovy part of downtown); my front porch on a night other than Sunday.

Next posting will include notes from a patio wine tasting at a friend's last week before howling winds, torrential rains, and thunderstorms sent us packing into the basement (not a bad place to be stuck since he has a beautiful new bar, complete with booth seating). Check back in a week or so...

Cheers

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.

Skiing in Spring!!

What a great day!! I *finally* had a chance to go cross-country skiing during one of our many snowstorms this season. All the other storms happened on work days and then were immediately followed by near zero degree temperatures. I happened to be off today for Good Friday and the temperature was perfect for busting out the skis and breaking a few trails. I went to two different areas in the city with a break in between at my favorite coffeeshop. I am fortunate to live within five minutes of a number of beautiful parks and river parkways. Since it was still blizzarding when I went out, I also got soaked, but that was half the fun. It helped a lot to be wearing a good pair of goggles. Getting out and playing in the snow was the best way to keep my spirits up after a brief teaser of spring-like weather this week. We could actually see our yards again for the first time since early December--well, no longer. This has been a long, hard winter filled with many snowstorms, lots of dashed plans, and way too much shoveling...which is exactly how I will be starting my day tomorrow...shoveling out of at least 12 inches of snow, assuming it actually does stop snowing overnight...

Open That Bottle Night 2/23

I hosted my first wine tasting since leaving Seattle with my new winebrat friends here. A good time was had by all and wonderful wines were shared. The top wines of the evening were 2006 Foley Pinot Noir (Rancho Santa Rosa), 2005 Incognito (David Michael Phillips-Lodi), and 2003 Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe (Chateauneuf du Pape). All were pretty concentrated with dark fruit and spice (even the Pinot) on the nose and the palette, and had a nice, long finish. They all paired extremely well with food, esp. the Pinot and the roasted eggplant. I would buy more of all of them. The other wines were also very good, but there were too many of them, so unfortunately, my tasting notes are loosely scribbled and full of obvious redundacies. I was hoping to share more about all of the wines, but my notes are useless. I also recently attended tastings featuring all Syrah, and before that, a tasting with the winemaker from Korbel. We all fell in love with their 2004 Lake Sonoma Zinfandel (Russian River). It had a powerful bouquet, a silky mouth-feel, full of ripe, dark berry fruit, with vanilla notes, and a long finish. It was perfection. Time to sign out. Cheers.