365: LaRocca Winery

(click to enlarge the rad panorama)

We spent a couple of hours at LaRocca Winery today. Ange discovered it while surfing the 'net while I was in Denver & made a tasting appointment for today. It's only a couple of miles from our house and was the first organic winery in the state of California! For $10 we got an extensive & informative tour, 8 wine tastings (3 white, 5 red), and an all around great time. Our tour guide was the owner of the winery! It's a small, family run operation. It was a gorgeous winery and of course we loved all the green and organic parts even more! It's my new favorite wine & winery! If you come and visit us, this will definitely be on the list of things to do!

365: Remnants of a Good Time

We're sticking to our couple's New Year's resolution and having more people out to the house/hanging out more often. This one snuck up on us--Ange's friend Melissa came to visit from San Francisco (and is now my friend!) and one of my friend's texted me to see what we were doing for the evening so I invited her over. Then Ange remembered one of her friends' partner was out of town so she invited her! We ended up having dinner and cracking up until after 1 am! Definitely a great night. Yay for impromptu gatherings!

365: (Winona's) Wild Wine Weekend!

Today was a BLAST. We hit 5 spots & sampled from 8 wineries. I don't think I've laughed so hard in ages. This was at the first stop and goofball's look was only a preview of things to come! I think we celebrated Winona's birthday in style! We're definitely going to have to come back to Santa Cruz soon!

365: Funsies!

Wine and games? I'll take it!

Wannabe Winos

Ange and I have been trying to be wine appreciators for most of our relationship. Sadly we're both forgetful as hell when it comes to actually drinking wine. We will buy some wine for one reason or another and it will sit around F O R E V E R because we forget to actually drink it! Whenever we do drink a glass or two of wine we like it and it usually goes well with what we are drinking, which is why we continue to be wannabe winos.

Now this is not to say that we are wine enthusiasts and can tell the difference between a "good" wine and a "bad/cheap" wine. In fact, we don't really care if the wine is expensive or not. Sometimes we'll spend $5 on a bottle, sometimes $15. It's rare to go over $20 and we'd need a really good reason to do so. Sam's Club has a surprising array of wine choices, although they tend to have more "fancy" stuff that comes from abroad than anything else. We try and support Indiana Wineries as much as possible, followed by other US brands and rarely something that has taken a long voyage over the ocean. Just another part of our local eating quest.

Now this is not to say we are going to become wine enthusiasts and start going to wine classes or anything. We just like to drink wine every once in a while. Maybe it seems weird to want to cultivate a wine drinking habit since we are not really in to the "stuff" that goes with wine drinking, but that's ok with us. Partially it's because I don't really care about that stuff; I don't want wine-drinking to be a hobby, just something "fun" to spice up an evening every once in a while. Another reason that I'm not way into it is that I come from a family with a history of alcoholism. Not that I'm afraid that I'm going to become an alcoholic because clearly we are NOT in danger of becoming alcoholics since we more often than not forget to drink the wine. But I think when you've seen some of the really nasty sides of alcoholism you tend to seriously downplay the excitement of alcohol. I've never been a big drinker and have never experienced the "thrill" of drinking that many people do (in the US anyway). It's not that I don't drink and haven't drank to excess before but it's just not a big part of my life. So making a bottle of wine the focal point of an evening is unlikely to happen.

Anyway, Ange and I DID remember to have a bottle of wine this weekend and it was nice and it made me think about this blog. So cheers!