Fortunately, Kathy had an appointment in das city, and we agreed to meet après for snappy hour © at Waterbar, on the San Fran waterfront by the Ferry Building.
Four dozen oysters at $1 each, but no Muscadet on the list? I’m shocked, Rick, shocked!
But with dollar oysters available from 1130h to 1800h, a crisp Sauvignon more than did the do. It took a while to snag a table; this is no secret happy hour.
Last Saturday evening was the Holiday Open House for Hess wine club members, up the winding Mt. Veeder road at the lower end of the Napa Valley.
Kath and I decided to make an afternoon of it, with an overnight stay due to the twilight start of the event.
Now, I have a file for each of our regular regional wine haunts: a Livermore folder; a Lodi folder; upper Sonoma (Healdsburg, Dry Creek, Russian River) and lower Sonoma (Carneros, Santa Rosa, Kenwood, Glen Ellen) each, among other regions, has its own — if we visit a delineated wine area, it has an informal plastic-sleeved dossier consisting of maps and tasting coupons for that region.
We brought our Napa Valley infopak, the proverbial heart on/in said plastic sleeve. Plus, with 2012 (and maybe more; I’m typing this on 12/12/12 after all: Holla, Mayans in das house!), coming to an end, K and I thought that this might be a great opportunity to avail ourselves of our Lot 18 card, which obviated so many Napa tasting fees until the end of this year.
Nothing lasts forever, despite what DeBeers would have you believe, and we figured that, aside from a wine club connection with Hess, this could be a nicely civilized “Shalom” to the Napa “Twenty-Dollar-Tasting-Fee-Not-Refundable-With-Purchase” Valley.
Highway 29, the Valley’s main drag is a winery’s Pushmi-Pullyu: bachelorette parties, tiaras: It’s all good, as long as we don’t have to share the bar with the Cosmo sippy cup.
Hit Clif Family up in St. Helena, one of our Lot 18 entreaties. Kath and I had the great fortune to meet both founders, Gary and Kit, as we sipped the Clif Family juice. We met them both, and then, as my bro at Cambridge might say, they were on their bike.
We’ve really dug being Hess club members. For one thing, as Kathy says, it’s like having a membership to an art museum, with the bonus of a complimentary open wine bar downstairs.
We also dig that Hess Collection winemaker Randle Johnson has embarked on his “Artezin” label side project spotlighting varietal grapes, not, as the nomenclature might suggest, just Zinfandel, some of which are sourced from vineyard sites, such as Evangelho, in our Oakley ‘hood.
Apparently I get paid by the comma.
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