Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Good morning crew,

The odd thing about wine tasting is that you are really only supposed to taste it. When they give you a sample it is only about two fingers in the bottom of a glass, and even then you are expected to spit it out after you have savored the aroma, consistency, body, texture, balance, mood, timbre and emotional impact of the vintage.

I never wrapped my mind around the idea of wasting good booze, so I drank everything they put in front of me. Plus, I finished what the wife didn't like.

We bought ten tastings each (they had a lot of different wines), so by the time we retired to the dining room I was already in an expansive mood. Add another full glass of wine for me with lunch and as I weaved out of the place at around one in the afternoon I pushed the truck keys into the wife's hands and collapsed into the passenger's seat.

The next winery was only about an hour north of the first, which didn't give me a whole lot of recovery time, but at least my mouth had stopped tasting like syrup by the time we got there.

While the first place had a very bucolic feel, the winery is actually on the same site as the vineyard, the second place was in the heart of a commercial district. Perhaps I wasn't as inspired by the setting, or maybe I was still a little drunk, but I did not enjoy the selection they had quite as much. Consequently we only bought half a case of at the second place.

And so it went. By the time we pulled into the third winery of the day at about six o'clock I got slowly out of the truck and leaned heavily on the hood. The wife, who had been pacing herself all day, was a little road weary but still eager for a little more experimentation, while I could have been handed a glass of Welch's grape juice and wouldn't have been able to distinguish it from a cabernet sauvignon.

Not that it stopped me from doing the tasting, but my contribution to the evaluation of the wines was limited to doing knock-knock jokes for the barista.

Looking back at my original plan, visiting 8 wineries over the course of the trip seems amateurishly optimistic. It is not even so much the alcohol consumption, it is that after sampling so many wines they all start to taste the same. But at least we had finished the first day, and we only had about 280 miles to drive on day 2.

Laugh it up,

Joe

joe@gophercentral.com

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***
"A 97-year-old man from New York just received his high school diploma. Turns out there's a problem. Apparently he's only reading at a 95-year-old level." -Jay Leno

***
"A big movie is opening today ? 'Man of Steel.' Superman is played by Henry Cavil. As far as I'm concerned, Christopher Reeve will always be the best Superman. Just like Sean Connery will always be the best James Bond. I'd love to see Superman played by Sean Connery. He could just shave an 'S' into his chest hair." -Craig Ferguson

***
"A company in Britain has created a car that can be powered by human waste. It's cool, but it gets a little uncomfortable when your buddy asks you to 'chip in' for gas." -Jimmy Fallon

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A customer called our service line demanding help with her TV set, which wouldn't come on.

"I'm sorry, but we can?t send a technician out today due to the blizzard," I told her.

Unsatisfied, she barked, "I need my TV fixed today! What else am I supposed to do while the power is out?!"


*-------------- Guaranteed to Roll Your Eyes --------------*
I'd just sat down at a Manhattan diner when I noticed schav on the menu. Since I hadn't had a bowl of the cold, sour soup in quite a while, I ordered some.

"We don't have it today," said the waitress.

"Oh, you have it only on certain days?" I asked.

"No, we never have it."

I was confused. "Then why is it on the menu?"

"Oh," she said with a shrug, "some people like it."