Of course, it's not all work. Last night, Laura and I went to a tasting at Farmstead.
Favorite wine of the night? The Marston Family Vineyard 2009 Albion, a Sauvignon Blanc with a touch of Semillon. (Seriously, it's amazing what even the smallest amount of Semillon does, especially to the mouthfeel of a wine.)
After the tasting, we had dinner at the restaurant. There was a beautiful basket of beets on the counter.
Which meant I just had to order the beet and arugula salad as a starter. I didn't regret this decision.
For my main, I had Farmstead's version of risotto -- California arborio rice with mushrooms and an egg on top. Yum.
The fun continued this morning -- I was up before dawn so I could start uncorking bottles at 7 a.m. for a trade and media tasting in St. Helena. That's right -- I opened 39 bottles of wine (and tasted through 10 bottles to check for cork taint) before 8 a.m.
While my favorite wine from the tasting was the Ancien Pinot flight (especially the 2007 vintage), the absolute best moment was meeting one of my media contacts in person for the first time and having an amazing conversation with him about -- you guessed it -- ramen. He was flying out of the Sacramento airport this afternoon, so I told him he had to stop by Shoki for lunch. He got extremely excited and actually left a seminar early just so he could make it to the restaurant. (His parting words were: "I could sit and listen to a speaker talk about wine writing, or I could go eat ramen. Hmmm. I really like ramen.") I so hope he shared my opinion and loved it!
Anyway, events continue tomorrow with a barrel tasting and auction, so I'll be in the Valley again, bright and early, wearing a dorky name badge and a big smile.
(On a totally unrelated side note, the snow that everyone was predicting did not happen. But there was hail. In fact, I went for a 7-mile trail run in Annadel with Neveia late this afternoon, and we got hailed on.)
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