Elly Extravaganza

I'm sitting here in a shitty beach condo in Kona waiting for my girlfriend Elly to fly in for our vacation from my vacation around the Big Island. Lovely Elly is the gal who took me on the best wine tasting of my life in Oregon and has become a dear friend in the past few months. We were both dealing with monumental breakups, bonded over too many dirty martinis (with amazing Gorgonzola stuffed olives) and have been tight ever since.

There must be some cosmic force with a healthy sense of humor who really doesn't want Elly to show up here, because I have been getting the most comical travel updates from her. Most of my conversations with Elly start with "wait til you here this..." and end with both of us relaying the latest crazy life events and lamenting that both of our worlds seem to be imploding in on themselves like collapsing black holes; they're the best kind of heart-to-hearts...you start out blue and end up laughing in that snarffly, embarrassing sort of way. The travel updates have been no different.

A week ago, Elly forwards me her flight itinerary so that I know when to pick her up at the airport. I notice that her return flight is a week later than what we had talked about on the phone, so I point it out thinking that she must have just accidentally picked the wrong return date. She contacts the airline and they want 150% more than she paid for the original ticket to change it. So we laugh and decide that she should just stay longer...win-win in my book. Then yesterday I get a voice mail from Elly as I'm on my way to pick up both her and the rental car: "Wait til you here this...there was a riot at the ticket counter and I'm on my way back to San Luis." I think that I must have heard wrong, so I call her back. Sure enough, the ticketing agents in San Francisco were taking forever to check folks in, there was line of customers all waiting to catch their international flights and things started to get agitated. Eventually someone in line chucked something or other across the ticketing counter, all hell broke loose and 200 people missed their flights, including Elly.

So she drives the 4 hours back to San Luis on the promise that she'll get on the first flight out this morning and be on the island before noon, and first class at that. Only this morning, I get another update saying that she got bumped and won't be in until tonight. Oh, and her return flight keeps mysteriously changing dates in the airline's computer system. It's doing this little pirouette...the 20th...the 27th...the 20th...the 27th. So I have no idea when she's getting here and no idea when she's leaving. All I know is that when she does arrive, we'll drink some awesome wine, tell lots of stories that start with "wait till you hear this..." and drive around the island in my shiny red rental car with the music blaring. I'll make sure to post some pictures of our adventures this week. Until then, at least I get to catch up on my blogging...

Wine Makes Me Feel Dumb, But It Sure Does Taste Good!

Having friends in the wine business really pays off. My lovely friend Elly, co-owner of Proof Wine Marketing, has been a major blessing in my life in so many ways, and I'm not even talking about all the cool wine events that she manages to get me invited to. Last week we both found ourselves in Portland. She was there for the International Pinot Noir Festival. I was there on my way from San Luis to Seattle. Lovely lady that she is, Elly invited me to come wine tasting with her at a few places before the festival officially commenced. Being unemployed, free and socially acceptable drunkenness in the middle of the afternoon sounded like a fine idea indeed.

We visited three wineries specializing in Oregon pinot noir. Apparently Oregon pinot is like manna from the gods if you're a wine geek, which of course is why the festival is in Portland. Here I must insert that I know absolutely nothing about wine. My decisions about purchasing it boil down to two very simple questions: 1) does the label look cool? and 2) is it under $10? I cannot tell the difference between a fine wine and 2 buck chuck. Personally, I think this makes me the ideal tasting companion--I can be effusive and complimentary to any winemaker because it all tastes great to me!

This tasting tour was not your run of the mill, 5-varieties-in-30-minutes-while-getting-your-wine-poured-by-an-20-year-old-viticulture-student-"don't-you-want-to-join-our-wine-club?" schpeel. We actually got to hunker down with each of the winemakers for a couple of hours, walk through the vineyards and taste from the barrels. This was insider wine tasting. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the process, of particular interest since I've been boning up on my plant knowledge for my farming stint in Hawaii.

Here are just a couple of things that I learned about wine that maybe you didn't know either:
1) Everything from the mineral content of the soil to the amount and timing of rainfall effects the flavor of the grapes
2) That contraption they use to taste from the barrels is called the thief and the hole in the barrel they draw it out of is called the bung-hole. (Here my inner linguistics geek rapturously squeals!)
3) When they treat the wooden barrels for wine fermentation, it's called "toasting" the barrel. This makes me think of warm buttered toast and makes me really happy. I started imagining that I could taste it in the wines and frankly it made me like them even better. (This was sign number one that I should have spit like everyone else.)

Forgive me if you know all this already, but frankly I found it fascinating. It was amazing to see these winemakers who control everything from the vine to the bottling with such care and attention. These artisans were way passionate amassing knowledge about agriculture, new technology, marketing and of course good wine and food. I had no idea wine making was so cool. I love folks that really geek out on shit and everyone we met was totally freaking on making the best pinot noir possible. My inner dweeb felt a kinship. It could have been the six solid hours of guzzling wine, but I choose to believe that I simply have an appreciation for folks with a passion.