Letting wines speak for themselves

I was thinking about our visit to Fidelitas yesterday, and how impressed I was with the woman who served our wine tastings. She didn't make any mention of whether these wines won any awards, but rather let the wines speak for themselves. This way our palate wasn't influenced by what other people thought of the wines. There was no tasting fee for any of the eight or so wines we sampled, and we loved each of these amazing reds. It was tough to decide which to walk away with, but finally settled on the Optu Red, and a Columbia Valley Merlot. It didn't escape our notice that each of these was from the 2006 vintage. It's a year to watch.

Heading for wine country

This is our favorite wine country weekend of the year: pre-spring barrel tasting in the Yakima Valley. Next weekend is the official weekend, with wineries open longer hours, live music, food, and barrel samples of wines. It's fun, and hectic, and mobbed with people. Buses of wine tasters crowd the narrow lanes of the valley and choke the small parking areas.

For me, barrel tasting weekend is all about the wine, so the crowds and bustle just get in the way of the reason we love to come here. So we choose to go the weekend before the festival, when it's more relaxed. We can talk with the owners & winemakers, sample unreleased wines, and really enjoy the whole tasting room experience as we try new wines, and see how older wines are maturing.

We also love to add two more of our passions to a wine-tasting weekend: driving our MX-5 Miata through the vineyards and up to the door of each winery, and finding as many geocaches as possible along the way. These three ingredients, plus spending the weekend together, are the mix that makes it a perfect getaway.

How to Taste Wine in an MX-5

Driving top-down through the vineyards of Washington's wine country is an experience not to be missed. You enjoy the complete experience much more when you can involve all the senses. Turning your face up to the eastern Washington sunshine. Hearing the impact sprinklers in nearby fields. Listening to birds chirping in the tall grass in the ditches. Smelling the flowers, and this weekend, the lingering scent of fertilizers and chemicals that were sprayed overnight. Well, maybe that part of it I could do without…


The alternative is driving the SUV. It's the better choice if rain turns to snow on Snoqualmie Pass, which has happened 3 of the last 5 years on this same weekend. Tire chains just aren't an option in a sports car. The Explorer also carries more wine, something to consider since we always find bottles we just have to add to the wine cellar. And in said snow and cold, it's definitely warmer. But the great benefits of exploring with the roadster more than outweigh the few negative things. We always figure out a way to make it work.
So in the end, it all comes down to the packing challenge. Packing light, very light, as the only place to store your gear (and your wine) is in a very small trunk. You learn to do without that extra pair of shoes, and the just-in-case bulky coat. Layers is the clothing catchword you live by. You only bring the critical things, like underwear… and detailing spray and microfiber cloths, so you can keep up with the bugs that splatter (and eat through) your car's paint. There's no room for a cooler; you learn to like warm iced tea and diet Coke.

But the biggest challenge is how to fit in the wine you buy. This trip, we broke our previous record. With two soft-sided bags, a tiny detailing kit, and warm coats in the trunk, we still managed to squeeze in 2 cases of wine, plus another 5 bottles, and never had to use the last resort: a box of wine under my feet in the passenger seat.

And just look at the photo ops a bright red MX-5 provides!

A time to fight, and a time to run screaming

It didn't used to worry me. Someone would come to work sick, coughing and sneezing and generally polluting the air around them, and I'd shrug it off. No more. The 'stand and fight' behavior is for the young, I've decided. A couple of weeks ago, my co-worker and fellow technical writer came to work sick. He stood outside my office door and apologized, but he just had to finish something up.

A day later, I had a sore throat and cough. Three days later, I was coughing up a lung and every single muscle in my chest and stomach ached from coughing. A visit to the doctor provided the verdict: bronchitis with 93% lung capacity. What the...? This would never have happened a decade ago, but times change and the body doesn't shrug things off like it used to.

So because one person came to work sick, I spent the last eleven days coughing and feeling miserable, didn't enjoy our special 35th anniversary weekend at the lake, and missed a week of work.

Next time, I run screaming in the other direction.

Monsoon, Anyone?

The frogs were croaking this morning when I left for work, at the early hour of 5:00 am. After yesterday afternoon's rain, I wasn't surprised. When the pond fills up, the frogs go crazy. But I didn't expect to sit in my car outside my office for 10 minutes, waiting for the wind and horizontal rain to slow down enough to make a mad dash for the door.

My office windows face south, and all day long I watched the squalls blow through. Heavy rain, then brilliant sunshine, then rain again. I lost count of the separate systems that blew through.

Mid afternoon I took a break and walked outside in the sun, talking with my sister on the phone. We chatted about the weather, among other things, and she mentioned reading a meteorogist's blog about our atypical winter, and that it was too early to give up on snowfall for western Washington. And she was right.

As I left work, driving east toward home, every time I was stopped by a red light, a rainstorm caught up with me. Traffic would move and I'd drive east away from it, only to be caught again. A couple of miles from home, the temperature plummeted and the sky got black, and it started to hail. People came out from the local QFC just to watch it come down, and the wind drove it into the side of the buildings. Between work and home, a linear distance of about 6 miles, the temperature dropped from 48 to 38 degrees, and my car thermometer was warning "ICE." Shades of winter in March.

Heronry

Quite by accident today I discovered a Blue Heron rookery. Surprised to see two herons flying tandem across the road, one of them looking much too large, I slowed down to look. The second heron was carrying a 4 ft. branch in its beak. They're nesting, I thought. And just as I passed the gap in the woods where they'd flown, I saw the nests. I came back later to look again, and this time, I had to creep along the shoulder before I got the perfect view into the rookery. In a few weeks, when the trees by the road have leafed out, you won't be able to see the nests. But now, if you know where to look, there's a perfect view of a dozen huge nests in the tops of dead trees, each with a sentinal Blue Heron.

I did take photos with my ultrazoom, and can see nests and birds because I know they were there. To anyone else, they'd just look like bare trees. I wonder how long this rookery has been here. I've driven this road every single day for almost 30 years, and walk in the nearby park every week. And I've never seen these nests before today. The herons chose their site well.

Around the world by computer

In the wee hours this morning, I talked with two of my nieces. One conversation took place on facebook, the other on Skype. One niece is in York, England and the other is in Adelaide, Australia. Two computers, two networks, two nieces = a whole lot of talking and fun. Both girls are working on their Master's degrees, and I wish I was closer than half a world away. I miss them both.

Is it a train..

...if it's just engines? My town has two sets of railroad tracks, and it's always a challenge to leave work at just the right time, so I can make it across town without getting stuck behind a freight train, the Amtrak Cascades, or the commuter train. Tonight I timed it perfectly: I got across the first set of tracks, then heard the crossing bells and saw the gates drop down.

As I waited at the next intersection for the light to turn, I watched for the train in the rear-view mirror. A yellow Union Pacific engine, then another, then another… wait a minute! Where's the train? There were 9 engines in all, pointing forwards and backwards, and not a single car or caboose. Too bad I didn't get stuck waiting for this train... it would have made a great photo!

Breakfast at The Farm

Dave spotted a review about this place in the Times, and we decided to check it out. The Farm is near Poulsbo, and is a working farm that just happens to serve breakfast the first Saturday of each month. We arrived early and got in line, beating a serious crowd by mere seconds. By the time they opened up the doors, we were chilled and thankful we were near the front, not back a hundred people or so.

They offer a couple of meal choices, which you order as you enter the building. We also bought cookies and a loaf of banana bread to go, then found a table in the back with a view out over the fields. The self-serve coffee stand was closeby, and we helped ourselves a couple of times before our food arrived. It was very good (but not sure I'd want to wait in line an hour or more).

Languages

I've been spending my week creating translated versions of one of my technical manuals. German, French are done, now I start the Italian. We hire a company to actually do the translation, but part of my job is to import the text files, add back the numbers (which we remove so we don't pay 22¢ a word to 'translate') and add any other text that's already been translated. Then I replace the illustrations, wiggle stuff around so it fits, create the parts lists, check line breaks so words split correctly for that particular language, redo the tables of contents, and whew... it's done. It's actually a satisfying part of my job, easy but time-consuming. It's one of those tasks you need to have on the back burner--perfect when you need a break from the really tough part of writing technical documentation.

Easy... but oh-so hard on a beautiful day like today! Spring is just bursting into bloom, right outside my windows.