After a massive weekend on the booze in Palm Springs, we needed a break. So we flew to San Francisco (aka San Fran, aka Frisco…aka queue looks of disgust from James O) so we could head to wine country. The cause of and solution to all our problems. NB: If you’d ever wondered if a flight through a desert valley over a windfarm would be bumpy, I’d recommend you to stop reading now to avoid anymore head scratching…But since you haven’t I’ll continue.

In Palm Springs, Heather had enlightened us of a new phrase, which both “justified” / explained / described our existence and has become our new mantra…or at least our answer when people ask “what do you do?” When last in Sonoma they had met a much more interesting couple than us describe their, now retired, existence as “Chasing the grape”, ie. travelling from wine land to wine land…THERE ARE MORE LIKE US!!! I’d probably say for us it’s more than a mantra, perhaps a “raisin d’être”…

In an incredible feat of dedication to our ‘new’ raisin d’être, we (Lea, Dave and I [or ‘me’…wine seems to blur the proper use of first person subjects and objects]) managed to catch our first grape at ~10am (it turns out grapes are quite slow and no match for our drunken stumbling through the vineyard or our collective collection of primary school athletics participation awards). This first visit just happened to be at the winery where our friend, Sally, (Dave’s wife) was working for vintage. Quelle coincidence!! (Sorry not Canada yet, translation: “let’s get pissed in the morning!”). A much appreciated complimentary tasting thanks to Sal (although the super ripped server spent more time checking out his own guns rather than dishing out compliments to the Geophysicists and Reservoir Engineers present…and Lea), was followed by a private tour of the winery, where Sally told us how cultured she’d become before showing us the special “kill room” where she’d spent the last two months breading yeast…

We had a great drive along the ironically named Russian river, which was barely moving, tasted so many wines that Dave ended up commenting how one tasted ‘purple’ <insert photo of Ralph Wiggum that only James remembers> and visited Francis Ford Coppola’s winery where there were by far more disabled parks than abled, and only slightly fewer for horses… I guess it takes a brave horse to visit Francis’ place, and an even braver one to request a sleep over. We walked the impressive building and grounds with sprawling palm trees and lush vines, but didn’t do a tasting as it was getting late in the afternoon and we love the smell of palm in the morning.

Other than Chasing the grape, our next favourite phrase of our two days of tastings came from the last person you’d want to hear it from. On an amazing, James O organised tour, a lovely man introduced us to what he described as a “Porch Pounder”. Once we realised what he meant by an “easy, approachable, white, with a good nose and great body that you’d smash on your balcony after work”…was in fact an easy to drink ‘white wine’, we felt much more comfortable.