Heh, therein hangs a tale... Better pour yourself a glass and sit back....
We live in the midst of the Central California Coast wine country, but were never really interested. Then 3 years ago this coming Father's Day, our vet held her annual benefit open house. There were a few wineries there offering tastings and cheese pairings. The lady from Saucelito Canyon offered us a 10% off card and invited us to their monthly Sunset Club on the next Thursday. We went and had a great time.
We started looking for other winery events to attend, rather than just "tasting". We went to Sips and Songs at Claiborne and Churchill, Tapas at Tolosa, Twilight Wine and Apps at Harmony Cellars, and other, and of course more Sunset Club.
I suppose Tapas at Tolosa was the second event we tried. That evening we met some sunbirds from AZ who have become very good friends. We even visited them in Mesa last month as a part of our vacation. (You've possibly heard of Snowbirds, those people that move to AZ or FL for the winter to escape the cold and snow of the northern climes. Sunbirds come to SLO from AZ in the summer to escape the heat. there's quite a colony of them from the fourth of July until after Labor Day. Some of them take over otherwise summer-vacant student housing.)
Another Saucilito Canyon event was a benefit for Condor Lookout, which is a refurbished USFS Fire Lookout now used for California Condor research. that led to me getting to place one of my WeatherElement web weather stations on the lookout.
But I digress....
We got more into the wine scene, visited more wineries, and joined a couple 3 wine clubs. We had our 28th anniversary at Harmony Cellars, and our 29th (#29, Let's Drink Some Wine) as a BYOB to share tasting down in our woods.
Now then, last year I had a local contractor do some work for our water company. I jet around the water co. environs on my Kawasaki Mule. Ed (the contractor) and I were chatting on the job site and I mentioned that we sometimes took the Mule up Prefumo Canyon, over the top, and down to See Canyon to one of the popular local apple farms to get apples in the fall. He invited us to go a mile further to his orchard/vineyard to get some better apples, and try his wine, as he has his own vineyard. The next time we met, he brought me a bottle of his syrah, which was really good.
We then made the trek to see them, and took our new pup, Markie along. We now have some more new wine friends, and Markie a new girlfriend, they're little jack Russell Penny. Those two can tear it up for hours on end..
So, the Sunday before last Labor Day, before the Sunbirds left to go back to AZ, we took them wine and apple tasting to Creekside Farms. That was an extraordinary experience, as Ed doesn't have an official tasting room, just the apple stand. But, we got to be one on one with the wine maker himself, got to do vertical tastings of different vintages, got to try his special Port, and even some barrel tastings.
The friendship with them led to placing another WeatherElement station in one of their orchards.
We had to wait until after apple season to invite Edward and Donna and the dogs to our house to thank them for the wine tasting. we had them down in the woods for sausages cooked over the open fir and duh, wine... Ed wander up over the hill to check on the dogs. When he came back, he mentioned that that SW facing slope would be perfect for a couple hundred dry farmed, head trained Zin vines.
Damn him, anyway..... that's all it took....
We racked our first kit yesterday, and the first 25 zin vines (clone 8 on 1103p rootstock) ship today from Sunridge Nurseries.... And I'm rearranging some of the wireless weather stations in my home network to monitor conditions and soil moisture in the new vineyard. Then we'll get the data to the WeatherElement for display on the Internet.
And, the Sunbirds are probably going to rent Ed and Donna's vineyard view cabin for a couple weeks this summer, and we're planning our 30th anniversary this August. The traditional gift for #30 is pearls, so we're thinking the theme might be "Pearls Before Wine".
I told my wife, Katie, that based on my research on how long it takes for the vines to start producing harvestable quantities of grapes, and how long it takes to make and age wine, we could have a couple of vintages of our own wine ready to serve at our 40th.