snow better time for an angel

we got snow this week, and a little last week - who would have guessed? i am not a big snow person - well, i like snow well enough, but i like to go to snow, not have it come to me. i like the snow-covered ground, just not the snow-covered roads. but since i don't have a whole lot of control over the snow coming to me, i tried to embrace the moment (and stay off the roads by working at home).

susie on the other hand is quite fond of the stuff and even ventured out to lay down and make a snow angel in it.

Rancho Sisquoc

I have no idea what a Sisquoc is, but i'm here to tell you it produces some good wine.
While we were down in Cali with Toby and Lynne'e, we stopped in at the Rancho Sisquoc tasting room. For directions see www.ranchosisquoc.com - or call T&L and they can take you on a personalized tour as long as you pay the tasting fee.

I can't quite tell you where it is, but it's about a 35 minute drive from T&L's place (an 18 minute return if Susie's driving). You get off highway 101 somewhere south of Nipomo and head east. After winding your way down some cool roads, you end up at a Y in the road. The high road takes you to a chapel (the one on the wine label), the low road takes you to the winery. We 'really' were meaning to take the high road, but once we started down the path, there was no where to turn around.




The tasting room is really cool, almost like an old barn and the ladies doing the pouring were very friendly. Unfortunately there were quite a few people that had missed the chapel turnoff, so we had to share the place. I think this also led to shorter pours, but Lynne'e took matters into her hands and snuck in an extra drink since she and Toby kept trading off getting refills.



I'm partial towards reds (wine that is), so i'd recommend the Tre Vini and the Meritage, but the Sylvaner was really good (for a white).




After putting on our best wine snob show, we headed out to the picnic area and had a great lunch. Might i remind you that this was 30 Dec - we shouldn't have been able to be outside having a picnic - oh wait, it was in Cali ...



On a separate note ... beware if you have T&L with you - you get to keep your wine glass as part of the tasting, and T&L even offered to give us theirs - but lo and behold, the wine glasses are in Cali in a cupboard, and we are in Oregon.

Happy New Year (a few days late)

Happy New Years everyone - to commemorate the year, i give you a couple pictures of the sun setting on 12/31/2007 as seen on a beach somewhere near Oceano, CA.









I hope that 2008 will be a great year for each of us.

bitter grappa face

I was looking back over some pictures from the year and found some from my birthday dinner with Josh and Jess Smith. For the past couple years we've gone to Sybaris for their OctoberFest dinner. Sybaris is a local restaurant that changes the menu every month. The food is incredible, and although it's a tad spendy, we've never felt that it wasn't worth it. For those of you that need a reminder, my birthday is October 7th and i have idea lists on both Amazon.com and Rockler.com.

Susie and i have gone enough that we know one of the waiters - Jesse - he's a great guy and always hooks us up with a little something extra. As it happened, Jesse was our waiter on the night of the birthday feast. He was getting our drink order, and Jess asked him what year the Pinot Grappa was ... Jesse chuckled a bit, then told her that the year really doesn't matter, we didn't want grappa with dinner. We asked him what the dealio with it is, and he said the best way to describe it is for us to try some. Thankfully he waited till after dinner to bring it out. Below are the facial responses to what grappa tastes like ...