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Here is the second installment of Wine Country Revisited. If you missed the first one you can catch up here.

Thursday, June 29, 2006 - Noonish thru 2am

So after leaving the Buena Vista and the Dirty Martini bar we take a ride down Lombard Street. It’s one of those things that I had seen on TV and to drive it is something else. There was a line of people waiting to drive down it and most weren’t too friendly about keeping their place in line as people were cutting and didn’t really care what what anybody else thought about it. The guys in this black truck did cut in front of us. I tried snapping a couple of shots on the way down and this is the best one.

Jerri then gave us a tour of some pretty cool places around San Francisco including the Presidio, the Cliff House and Ocean Beach before heading to our one-night stay at the Archbishop’s Mansion. The place was pretty cool. It has themed rooms though I can’t recall which room we stayed in or which room Jerri stayed in (but Jerri can probably recall if she’ll comment). The place offered some wine and cheese around Happy Hour time and we enjoyed some in the Parlor where there was a chandelier that was used in the movie Gone With the Wind. Robin is a huge fan of the movie and was purely delighted to be drinking wine beneath it!

Wait, isn’t this supposed to be about Wine Country?? It is…I know…hang in there with me. It will be worth it I promise!

We drank some wine and had a bite or 2 of cheese and catch a cab to Kuleto’s in the Financial District for dinner and drinks. We started out at the front bar drinking some good Syrah and eating marinated olives, pickled garlic and other finger foods when 3 guys to our left strike up a conversation. We talk about Texas and Colorado and SF while one of the guys makes eyes at Jerri. They seem to travel a lot and are in town for a medical convention. Eventually, our table is ready and we stuff ourselves with a great dinner and a couple more bottles of wine. Now we are primed and I mean PRIMED for a night out!

Around 10pm we catch another cab over to Bix where it’s standing room only and we somehow make our way to the bar and I continue drinking Syrah while Robin switches to, you guessed it, dirty martinis and Jerri switches to Cosmopolitans. Somewhere along the line I lost count of the number of drinks we all had but we had a great time debating what the butler in the huge painting to the left of the bar was thinking.

As we’re about to wrap up the evening we are accosted by the same 3 guys we met earlier at Kuleto’s. It turns out that they are salesman for surgical instruments used in female-only procedures; hysterectomies and such, yeah, THAT was a comfortable conversation! The one is still trying to pickup Jerri and she’s having none of it. After being rebuffed multiple times he finally reveals that he’s married and the gang catches the cab before us. Jerri later claims to have known from the minute we first met these guys that she knew he was married even though he wasn’t wearing a ring. This still baffles me but you just can’t question a woman’s intuition!

The point of the evening is that nobody can remember specifics. We remember the salesmen, the paintings and the drinks (nameless syrah) but we’re all a bit foggy on the details.

Before the night is over, well…let’s just say that only 2 of us remember the cab ride home! I won’t say which one of us it was who couldn’t remember but I will say that I vividly remember the Asian cabbie getting all 4 wheels off the ground on the way back to the hotel on one of those steep downhill roads. Kinda like in the opening sequence in the Streets of San Francisco with Michael Douglas. It was crazy!

I think we woke everybody in the hotel up as we ssshhhed each other and the ladies giggled all the way to our rooms.

Well, it was a long day and it was still only Thursday and we still haven’t gotten to Wine Country. Rest assured that we make the trek to Petaluma where some interesting things happen at a Motel 6, a visit to Bodega Bay and a crazy limo ride with George through Napa Valley.

Tune in next time!

Great post over at Grape Thinking about the size of wine bottles.

The idea is that medium and large wine producers could benefit from making wine available in smaller sized bottles…kinda like what you see with wine coolers, Jack Daniel’s mixed drinks, Zima and many other girly type products. While there are some good arguments for it like not getting screwed on a crappy bottle of wine that you paid good money for I’m not sure that unless you can buy those smaller bottles individually - not in a 4 or 6 pack - it would be of any benefit other than sealing an unfinished bottle for the next day.

Funny thing is I always thought that the traditional 750ml bottles were already, as my best friend calls it, “Individual Sized”. If you want to talk about bottles that are too large for everyday buying, storing and drinking look no further than Italy. While I haven’t been there myself my wino buddy Mark was stationed in Germany for several years (with a stint in Iraq, thank you for your service!) and made several visits to many of the more popular wine regions in Europe.

While in Italy visiting a winery he observed a kid of 18 or so ride up on a bicycle to the front of the winery. There were what appeared to be gas pumps out front and the kid had 2 large bottles (1-2 gallons each) on baskets over the rear tire of the bike. He pulled the pump handle and began dispensing wine into these 2 large bottles until they were full. He sealed them and off he rode. I guess he had some kind of unlimited club membership!

Mark’s other experience while at that winery was the unique tasting environment. Mark and his wife were each handed a glass and pointed in the general direction of a dozen or so vats of wine. They were free to taste whatever they wanted, unattended, unlimited. Beats the hell out of waiting in line at some wineries in Napa and paying for a taste!

In any case I feel that the current wine bottle size is perfect. Making it smaller could cause issues with other wine drinker friends over who gets what is left of what is deemed the best bottle in the 4-pack (if its a flight) and more bottles of what already can’t be recycled.

Cork:Authentic
Name: Lava Cap Zinfandel Reserve
Type: Zinfandel
Vintage: 2003
Region: El Dorado
Country: USA
Producer: Lava Cap Winery
Price: $15
Purchased at: BevMo
Date: 05/20/07
Served With: Hershey’s Special Dark with Almonds Nuggets
Appearance: Great raspberry color, nicely dispersed legs that drop long and slow
Aroma: Licorice and oaky
Taste: Black cherries, black currants, spicy!
Comments: Rich, heavy, bold…just my style!

This wine fits nicely as a daily drinkable. I was drinking this after dinner with a little dessert but I think it makes an excellent 2nd bottle with or without food. The variety of tastes in this bottle - black cherries, currants, etc. - make it enjoyable. I’m actually surprised that I can give this wine a solid 7 corks when drinking it immediately after the Spectacular Shiraz.

For a review of the same wine in a 2004 vintage have a look at the Wannabe Wino blog.

It’s been just over a year since my first trip to Napa and Sonoma, aka, Wine Country. I had such a blast on that short vacation that I had to relive it with the 4 other people I went with. We spent a few hours discussing it and I thought it was worth sharing for others that may be making their way to Wine Country.

What follows is a series of posts recapping the visit, the struggles to get a rental car, the perils of useless limo drivers, an unforgettable night at Bix, 2 of the best lunches I’ve ever had and they were on-the-go, Sooz and downtown Petaluma.

This is installment #1 of 3-5 thoroughly enjoyable posts you’ll get to read.

Thursday, June 29, 2006 - 6am thru noonish
We caught an early morning flight from San Antonio to San Francisco, non-stop. Wahoo! We hate layovers.

We arrive sometime around 10am and make our way to the rental car section of the airport…the dirty underbelly of the parking garage.

There are 3 of us to begin with and between the 3 of us and all our bags it’s determined that a minivan is best suited for toting us around. You can be sure that I did not vote for the minivan. I vaguely remember saying, “convertible” and “sports car” but the sensible side in us (the ladies) won out. I am there with my wife Robin and our close friend Jerri. Jerri drives a minivan everyday so this was a good fit for her.

Jerri goes to the counter to get the keys while Robin and I wait in the parking garage near where all the minivans are parked. While we were waiting a porter somewhere between 90 years old and … oh, I don’t know…dead? backs a Subaru Forester right into a concrete post. He doesn’t even notice, or at least pretends not to. He gets out of the car and walks off like nothing happened. I take a quick peek at the rear of the Subaru and see that the damage is not severe. We got the van with a navigation system and headed for the wharf.

Since Jerri lived many years in or near SF she is our guide at Fisherman’s Wharf and the rest of the city. We drive up the wharf and decide we’re up for an early lunch at McCormik & Kuleto’s. It’s about 11:20am and time for the first glass of wine. I get a Syrah that I can’t remember the name of (theme building here). We eat a fantastic lunch while enjoying the view, watching swimmers in wet suits, freighters on the water and homeless people walk the street.

After lunch we take in the view and get a first-hand look at several people sleeping

on the steps of a small amphitheater. There is what appears to be a field trip for several classes of 7 year olds and they don’t even seem to notice the people sleeping on the steps; even when one wakes up and fingers a Vienna Sausage out of a can, licks her fingers and rolls back over for some more prime time sleeping! We eventually make our way back to Ghirardelli Square where I buy a 5lb bag of assorted chocolates that I will enjoy for the rest of the trip!

Since we’ve had a little time to let lunch settle and work up a new thirst we walk down to the Buena Vista for Irish Coffees where a guy who looks like Jack’s dad from LOST lines up 6-8 coffee cups drops in sugar cubes, pours in hot coffee and whiskey and uses a special wrist motion and a spoon to mix them all up. He’s very efficient as he can do all 8 cups in about 90 seconds.

Before leaving the wharf area we stroll around “shopping” and found a cheese store near/at the cannery. Both ladies love cheese but decide to wait until we get to Dean & Deluca’s to get the good stuff. Robin is a martini drinker as evidenced by this photo taken outside of a bar called Dirty Martini. We always try to bring her back from the dark side but I’m afraid it’s too late.

The day is just getting started and a night of too much fun is on the horizon. Check back for the next installment of Wine Country Revisited when our heroes take a ride down Lombard Street, continue to drink no-name syrahs and have multiple run-ins with a gang of surgical instrument salesmen.

Organic wines let the wine’s flavors rise naturally to the surface. These wines feature the same flavors you’ve come to expect from your favorite wine.

Cork:Authentic
Name: Canonbah Bridge Drought Reserve Shiraz
Type: Shiraz
Vintage: 2003
Region: Western Plains
Country: Australia
Producer: Canonbah Bridge
Price: ~$30.00
Purchased at: Vino Volo
Date: 05/12/07
Served With: Grilled chicken, roasted asparagus, sweet potato and Rice-a-Roni
Appearance: Smoke on the Water! Deep Purple, nice legs
Aroma: Musty, allspice, oak?
Taste: Wow! Complex, balanced, soft tannins, fits nicely on the palate, brooding!
Comments: Can I change my rating on all previous wines? Maybe I need a new rating scale? Maybe I just need to give this fabulous wine a score of 11 on my 10-point scale. Whatever the case make no mistake that this wine is head and shoulders above anything previously reviewed on this site. The only other wine that might come close is the Le Volte but that was so early on in my wine life that I’m not even sure it merits comparison.

When I think of drinking fine wines this wine is what I wish all wines could taste like. Unfortunately, the price of this wine, even at some of the more discounted online sites, doesn’t allow it to fit into either of my top review categories <$11 or <$25. In the past I would say that I couldn’t tell the difference between a $10 bottle of wine and a $100 bottle of wine or anything in between for that matter. I am afraid, however, that I my weekly wine budget will now increase as I search for more wines that are as satisfying as this one. This bottle was purchased by a friend of mine at a Vino Volo in the Sacramento airport on her way home from a visit to the Lodi area. The wine was recommended by the store clerk and he didn’t get it wrong.

I am compelled to rate this wine a 9 even though it is the best wine I have tasted to date. I must leave room for a better wine which I’m sure exists but will I ever taste it?

This wine shall forever be referred to as the “Spectacular Shiraz”.