Summer Sendoff
This morning, if all goes according to plan, we will pull out of our driveway at 5am in the Swagger Wagon, cruise through LA downtown traffic at 6:45am, and make it over the Tejon pass and down to our Starbucks stop at the southern tip of the central valley around 8:30am. By the time you receive this e-mail, around 10 am or so, we’ll be a good five hours into our journey and yearning for the good old days when it was perfectly acceptable to just pull the car over and leave the screaming/kicking/whining kids on the side of the road. Assuming the entire family completes the trip, Tuesday will mark the beginning of our summer decampment to Healdsburg. We have a number of exciting upcoming Bruliam summer events to share with you. We’ll be blending and bottling our sophomore 2009 pinots, blending our inaugural 2009 Rockpile zinfandel, and securing our grape contracts for the 2010 harvest. In between, we have a lot of due diligence to perform (i.e., legitimized excessive wine drinking), the Calorie Challenge Rematch, and a number of visiting friends to look forward to. We have ten whole weeks in Healdsburg in front of us, and we can’t wait to get the summer started.
But, before we left we had one last SoCal hurrah. The weekend started off the right way. By Friday evening we were drinking Muira’s 2007 Pisoni Vineyard Pinot Noir on the beach with a number of friends. Saturday morning our saintly wives entertained the kids at the park so we soccer fanatics could watch the U.S. - England game in peace (prediction: England over Spain in the final. 2-1 final score, winning goal coming off the head of Peter Crouch in the 84th minute. Just remember you heard it here first). On Saturday evening we were treated to the best sushi/sashimi I’ve ever eaten. This was an especially delicious treat since everything was homemade and served family style with fantastic wines and lovely company. And we wrapped up our last pre-summer Sunday night watching Sting with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which was just a phenomenal show.
Healdsburg holds a special place in our hearts, and our desire to be up there can sometimes feel overwhelming. But this past weekend served as a reminder that life down here in the southland is pretty darned good too. And despite our passion for Sonoma County, it’s our friends and family down here that will always be a strong draw pulling us back.
Thanks to everyone who made this last weekend so special.
Happy summer everyone!