Back from Vacation

[JimCook]

Beautiful California - home to a grand slew of wineries and lots of pretty sights, this was the place for my honeymoon vacation. 1000 miles and 8 days later, I realize that I prefer flying to driving, elephant seals just aren't pretty, cheetahs are beautiful, and wine is an amazing thing. I held back my tasting schedule due to the intent of the trip, but we still covered 10 wineries in two days around Santa Barbara and Santa Maria areas and thenwent for the kill in Monterey at the 16th Annual Winemaker's Celebration. At that event, there were 45 wineries represented (although four of them were retailers 'disguised' as wineries) and in the allotted four hour time, I visited all 41. I set a new personal record for total number of wines tasted at one event (not more than 4 hours) when I tasted 100 different wines (previous best was 80).
Now that I've returned, it's time to tend to the winemaking assembly line and try to increase the need for more carboys. Then, I can continue to develop a realistic plan to get closer to the grapes.


- Jim

 

[grapeman]

Wow that was some time Jim. Welcome back home. We all missed you. I am impresses - 100 wines in 4 hours. I hope you were spitting a lot! If not you probably weren't too rambunctious that night!

 

[JimCook]

Appleman,


I'm a militant wine taster - I was paced and steady through the whole thing, and I didn't spit, actually. Eat a lot of food and drink a lot of water right before and if you keep moving you can stay in good shape with the right pacing. The dump buckets weren't too accessible - if I just had grabbed one and carried it around, I could have tasted more.

- Jim

 

[grapeman]

 

[Wade E]

Sounds like a real good time Jim! Hiccup!