Saturday wine tasting

We went wine tasting on Saturday and visited several wineries in Napa. The Stags Leap District Winegrowers were hosting their annual Vineyard to Vintner (V2V) event and we hit most of them!

1. Nickel & Nickel - (not part of the event, but we had free access to their Spring Barrel Tasting.) Our favorites (out of the 13 tasted!) were the 2006 C. C. Ranch and Rock Cairn cabernets). The barrel room was absolutely beautiful!
   
2. Baldacci Family Vineyards - Tom Baldacci was cooking some nice sausage and steak on the grill in front of the cave. We learned his "secret" for tenderizing his steak and will be trying it out soon
   
3. Shafer Vineyards - Was pretty busy here. They have a great name, so not surprised.
   
4. Ilsley Vineyards - The tasting was out on the porch. Too bad the porch was small. We left shortly after arriving.
   
5. Silverado Vineyards - This place was BIG! Probably the most corporate on the Silverado Trail.
   
6. Taylor Family Vineyards - We met Jerry, Pat and Sandy. Bought a Reserve bottle here.
   
7. Pine Ridge Winery - Only offering two wines (a red and a white). The skewers off of the grill were quite tasty (serving both lamb and shrimp).
   
8. Steltzner Vineyards - They had the tasting in their cave and sampled a 1985 Cabernet...one of their oldest. Near the entrace, they keep many of their library wines...look for all the dust in the cabinets to the left.
   
9. Griffin Vineyards - Due to a trademark dispute, they are changing their name.
   
10. Hartwell Vineyards - Bob Hartwell was signing bottles and his Shih Tzu was leashed next to him. She was had quite a reserved temperament compared to another puppy I know...
    
11. Regusci Winery - Awesome tasting room...surrounded by boxes upon boxes of ancient vintages from around the Napa neighborhood

We've been to Chimney Rock Winery, Cliff Lede Vineyards and Robert Sinskey Vineyards before, so the only one that we really missed was Clos Du Val.

What did you do for Earth Day?

We bought a Hybrid Civic. I like!

Wikipedia "occasional" word of the day: involution

At an all-day meeting today, one of my colleagues used the word "involution", which made many a brow furl. What was that? What does that mean? How's that?

Three of us headed to Wikipedia for the translation and had a good time. The definitions led to many more raised brows and chuckles:

• An involution is a function that is its own inverse, so that f(f(x)) = x for all x in the domain of f
• Any involution is a bijection.
• Examples of involutions include: identity map, circle inversion, the ROT13 transformation, and the Beaufort polyalphabetic cipher.

We know so little...

Would you like a Silverfish in your Laurel Glen Counterpoint Cabernet?

How did you spend your last Friday evening? Mine started out quite well! I arrived home from work and dinner was all prepared. Once I changed, we began to eat. Our first response was...this wine isn't so good. It was an extremely cheap bottle, so we dumped it down the drain and then decided to open up something from a trip to Sonoma a year and a half ago: a 2001 Laurel Glen Counterpoint Cabernet Sonoma Mountain. I poured two glasses and we dug in. I heard Cammy give a yelp and a then a scream. She said that there was a worm in her wine. I took the glass, looked inside and my first thought was that it was some cork floating. Since the light by the couch was dark, I went into the kitchen to scoop the cork out with a spoon. Upon doing so, I quickly noticed that she was right, it was a bug. A nice wine-pickled Silverfish. Ugh! Yuck! Phooey! DISGUSTING! How the hell did that get there? What kind of an operation does Laurel Glen run? Uggggggggghhhhhh! This bottle, too, is dumped down the drain and we both pledged to never drink Laurel Glen again...

Oh...if you don't know what a Silverfish looks like, see below:

STIRR Founders Mixer 2.4 (Palo Alto, CA)

The next STIRR Mixer is tonight (April 11) at Illusions in Palo Alto.

Presenters this month include:

• applicationexchange.com, Tim Delhaes, CEO
• edgeio, Keith Teare, Founder and CEO
• Spinn3r, Kevin Burton, Founder and CEO
• Xcellery, Reto Laemmler, Founder and CEO

Thanks to Pivotal Labs, SUN, and K&L Gates for being our sponsors!

Hope to see you there!