By the pricking of my thumbs...

Well, I'm not saying something wicked comes, but I am starting to worry that I'm experiencing the calm before the storm.  This week's rain pushed back our last Chardonnay pick and the start of our estate Cabernet Sauvignon harvesting to perhaps next week.  As a result, I got this past weekend off, too.  Perfect timing, as A) the weekend was super gorgeous, and B) I was hoping to get off work in time on Friday night for a dinner with Jim Laube, and C) my beautiful friend and former client, Mira, was planning on coming up to Napa with her husband, Joe, on Saturday.  

Jim Laube has written for the Wine Spectator for thirty years and is the magazine's California expert.  When my friend, Don Ross, invited me to fill in for a guest who couldn't attend the dinner, I jumped at the opportunity.  First, I love Don.  Don and his wife, Joann, own Shibumi Knoll, a small production winery (120 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon produced in '08) in St. Helena.  I met Don three years ago when I was dining at the bar at Redd in Yountville.  I was trying to ignore the aggressively flirtatious but unattractive New Yorker on my right, when in walked Don, holding a bottle of '04 Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles.   Thank you, sweet baby Jesus!  Don promptly took the seat on my left.  He graciously offered me a glass of his Leflaive, but we somehow ended up draining the entire bottle together before Don ordered a chaser bottle -- his amazing Shibumi Knoll Chardonnay.  Yes, the way to my heart is through my liver!  

After Friday night's dinner with Don and Jim Laube, I wish I could share with you the secrets to a perfect Wine Spectator score, but Jim, though gracious, wasn't forthcoming.  Anyway, dinner was delicious, and it was a treat to try all the wines served: in addition to the '08 Shibumi Knoll Chardonnay, we had three '08 Cabernet Sauvignons: Shibumi Knoll, Kinsella, and Harris Estate.  I was looped enough to start singing Frank Sinatra with Michael Harris of Harris Estate while simultaneously inhaling my slice of chocolate cake, so thank God the crowd was not of the YouTube generation.  

Friday night's scrumptious menu

Jim accepting his winning golf team's award

Despite being dinged up on Saturday morning, I intrepidly set out to drink wine again with my friends, Mira and Joe.  I'm usually a prodigious planner, bordering on OCD, but I guess being in the midst of a "life transition" is helping me accept the fact that I do not have to have every minute of the day of the next three years figured out, with all costs NPV'd in a spreadsheet.  In other words, Mira, Joe, and I had made absolutely no appointments at wineries on Saturday -- and not just any Saturday, but a holiday weekend Saturday.  However, the three of us not only had a great day tasting at Heitz, Corison, and Elizabeth Spencer, but we also were able to meet up with one of my former L.A. Wall Street colleagues, Mike, and his girlfriend, Sam, and taste together for the afternoon.  

Me and my beautiful friend, Mira, outside Corison Winery

Mira, Joe, Mike, Sam, and I on an impromptu wine tasting tour

That evening, Mira, Joe, and I dined at Brassica, a Cindy Pawlcyn restaurant which opened six weeks ago.  Mira and Joe not only treated me, but they sent me home with their leftovers, too.  Egads!  I really am a mooch!  Thanks, Mira and Joe.  Next time, burgers and beers are on me!

Looking for the three-peat, I decided to go wine tasting in my neighborhood after church on Sunday morning.  Looking at the map of wineries in "Wine Country this Week," I was amazed to see two "appointment only" "wineries" only a few blocks away from my rental room.  Both Ruston and Trespass have vineyards nearby, but neither has a physical winery.  Tastings occur in the backyard of their properties: at Ruston, under a lovely pergola; at Trespass, in a beautiful backyard of what should be a home, if they hadn't spent all their money planting vines (the owner used to camp out in his Airstream on the property, but now lives in a house a mile away from his vineyard).  Both make Cabernet Sauvignons and Bordeaux blends (e.g. Cabernet Sauvignon plus Merlot), and both have well-known Napa winemakers (Jeff Ames at Ruston and Kirk Venge at Trespass).  Ruston's wines were lovely: well-balanced and refreshingly restrained for Napa, but still silky and appealing.  My favorite was "La Maestra," named after John Ruston's mother who is a teacher, or "maestra" for ESL students.  Imagine my surprise when I was leaving Ruston and ran into La Maestra herself, who just happened to be in my pew earlier that morning at the First Presbyterian Church of St. Helena!  So, I guess divine inspiration led me to Ruston.  Trespass's wines were immediately approachable and fuller-bodied than Ruston's -- easy drinking Napa Cab.  OK, so I'm no Jim Laube, but you're not paying for a Spectator article, are you?

We are invited to "Trespass" into this beautiful place

Ruston's lovely labels and even lovelier wines

Lest you think all I do is drink, au contraire, mon frère.  How do you think I pay for all that wine?  No, not by mooching!  It's back to life at the winery.  Even though we haven't harvested lately, there is still plenty to do.  One of the scariest jobs for me has to be steaming barrels.  This is done to clean used barrels and consists of taking a baton resembling a medieval torture instrument and generating enough steam to get it whistling like a tea kettle.  Once you've removed the steam baton, you have to close the barrel with a bung, creating a vacuum inside for the steam to penetrate and extract impurities from the wood -- kind of like a facial for barrels.  At our winery, we release the steam after exactly five minutes.  If you let the vacuum go on too long, the barrel could implode.  As if that weren't scary enough, the sound of the implosion is magnified ahundredfold inside the winery caves.  Similarly scary is releasing the steam at the end -- you have to kick the valve open with your foot unless you want to melt your face and hands off.  There is one fun part to the job: when you release the steam, the caves fill up like an uninhaled Clinton bong.  I shot this photo of T playing air guitar as we finished steam cleaning.  OK, so I added some purple haze effects via my iPhone Camera+ app!

Steam cleaning barrels, Jimi Hendrix style

Another recent job has been "barreling down" our wines as we transfer them from tank to barrel.  This involves some Cat-in-the-Hat-esque machinery, as well as a mini maglight, a ginormous metal ruler, a metal filler wand, and mucho hand-eye coordination.  You can tell from P's expression that it's been a long day.

Barreling down one of our first reds with P and our enologist

One of my favorite jobs so far has been lab work.  Who woulda thunk?  I stunk at high school chemistry, and organic chemistry earned me my first C at Stanford...actually, that was my first C anywhere!  When it comes to wine chemistry, however, I can't seem to get enough.   Lately, I've been asked to take grape samples from the vineyard and then run tests for pH and sugar levels.  I've also been pulling samples of last year's wine still in barrel and running tests for sulfur dioxide, which involves using hydrogen peroxide and phosphoric acid in an aeration/oxidation test.  Despite being the least quantitative Asian to have ever walked the halls of MIT, I finally feel I have earned my brass rat ring!  Mom, who wanted me to be a chemistry major, would be proud.  Dad, I'm sure, would just want to know if this means I can change my own oil yet.  The answer is still no.

Turning wine into pretty colors to test for free sulfur dioxide.  Fun with chemicals!