Summer Of Wine Continues 17Jul17-21Jul17

Wow, the summer of wines continued with vengeance. While I've been biking to the ocean, golfing in the marine layer, and eating like a king, hitting the great and small wine makers in SLO county was stellar. My fav is Bodega de Edgar - where the focus is on Spanish varietals, which grow so well in the hot days and cool marine nights of this area. I took advantage of club pricing, now no longer offered, to score some great stuff and we had a fun time tasting with Edgar himself, including 11 wines, one of which was a reserve Tempranillo blended from barrels directly before our eyes. He'll bottle it in Aug17 after 3 years on oak and let it rest again till Fall18 for sale. It is very good. We've known Edgar for several "seasons" but his stuff is now selling out, he's applying for righteous US citizenship and he's getting some notoriety (http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/business/article157271369.html), though he related the labeling of Mexican-American is not as satisfying as our heralding his wine-making. Really good guy with really good wine. As we left the tasting room he simply gave us two additional bottles we had not yet tried; "for dinner guys."

We of course hit the gorgeous Sextant house and restocked with the latest Kamal and Cavario after tasting that they indeed kick ass.

We enjoyed a number of wines at Denner but they were pricy and I did not buy (others are pricey too... I know guys). At Brecon I did buy the spectacular tannat-tempranillo-mourvedre for it's taste and unusual blend. We went to JDusi as well and bought, but drank, the zinfandel brandy.

We hit Tin City, the start-up area of SLO vintners, where I'd booked a special appointment with Nicora. Good tasting and very good wines, now in the cellar - I was flinching as we passed up J Toft, Torrin and others but did roll into ONX for another tasty GSM buy.

The day closed with a mini-party at Ancient Peaks in Atascadero near Duffy's house. We met others in her family. AP's price points were better but their "library offers" were best and we bought the Renegade GSM and Oyster Ridge Bordeaux blend using Duffy's membership.

On down the SLO roads with Grant Trexler, husband of Steve's cousin Dana, we enjoyed some of "his" spots. Being a wine industry guy he knows some stuff and gains access to some stuff - plus he and Dana, and Dana's mom Duffy, are very cool. Keep your friends close and your wine club members closer. We hit Terry Hogue's fine caves and syrah-centric wines first but prices and offers didn't move me to buy. Fabulous stuff was tasted and acquired from L'Aventure - a club like some others is now closed as to discounts, but not from us... fortunate as the price was very high but the wine was great - 100 points on many from Robert Parker. I liked the GSM best and bought some of the Cote A Cote.

Lunch at Calcareous with an ebullient young pourer, and of course some good wines moved us to buy for lunch and buy for the cellar. We leveraged Grant's industry discount of 30%, so that's nice. Kala and I liked the Moose syrah and Tres Violets GSM.

I "demanded" we go to Nadeau to try the "famous" zinfandels - unfortunately while they produce 5 zins per year they were sold out of all but 1 and that version would be sold out by the end of day. I bought two of the mega-jammy tasting Pirate 2014. It seems attending the March zin weekend is the way to gain access to these more and more rare zins from Robert Nadeau. Dang it; but thank goodness I got one.

Of course I heard bands, beached, rode bikes, hiked mountains, dined wonderfully and played golf. Great outings.

All this was spent with our long-time buddies in debauchery, Steve & Anne Gordon. But others in wine appreciation are waiting for the delivery party back in COS. The car is quite loaded with fine wine and we are prepped to handle it all carefully.