Why am I blogging about wineries and vineyards?

There are lots of different ways for people to connect and do business out in Wine Country, bring guests out on one-day tours to visit all of them.

Gracious guests, Exhibit A

Some folks buy land and farm grapes, then sell them to a winery, or bring the grapes to a "custom crush" facility where the wine can be made. Some build a winery and buy (source) grapes from a grower. Some with a bigger investment do it all at once. Some open a "tasting room cooperative" like Silenus Vintners<www.silenusvintners.com> or Savour St Helena <www.savoursthelena.com> and offer wines for tasting and sale from a number of local growers and winemakers who otherwise wouldn't have exposure to the public. Then, of course there are all the other people; like tasting room staff, cellar rats, wine sales reps, sommeliers and...tour guides.

I started working in wine tourism two years ago, came from event production, publishing and education. When I lived in Italy in the nineties I got introduced to wines and eating well (no offense to Dad who raised us on a good, clean diet of 3 squares-a-day peppered with the occasional kosher delicacy). Back in college I got a summer job hauling tomatoes in the Sacramento River Valley, been a commercial driver on-and-off hauling lots of things, paper, food, mail, horse manure from the racetracks, and now people?!?!...to and from the wine destinations of Napa and Sonoma. 

I am not a sommelier, or as some incredibly seem to say "Sommalier", a nomiker I would reserve to the expert of the inner workings of a certain East African country. I also hear people simply say "somm". I might try it some day. There are a seemingly endless supply of enigmatic pronunciations in the industry up here, not least of which is the mysterious addition of a second ghost n popping up between the i and g in Benziger or a softening of the g. Thousands are doing it. No one even at the vineyard offers a reason for this.  Another good one is "Ferrarrrr", as though it were an exotic Italian car with a missing final vowel sound. I can't explain it.

I will try my best to refrain from the excessive use of flavor-profile adjectives, although my friend said something about this being an industry of adjectives and we must all use them well. Sometimes I will use adjectives which are obviously not mine. Other times I will use adjectives which you wouldn't believe are mine, but they actually are mine. If you don't like them, then they are in fact not mine. 

Tasting notes are generally developed not by one person, but by consortium. So please consider many of the notes I write here, largely agreed upon in that way. Truth is, it's hard not to write something, however dimly perceived,  about the quality of the wines I/we taste.  

It's not my goal to necessarily tantalize you with adjectives as much as to share my stories with you; news of the cost of tastings and wines, how the local economy is treating the different businesses, what offerings these remote locales are cooking up for their guests and wine club members, and maybe more than all of this, what is happening on my tours and off-duty visits. I will hide names to protect the identities of my mainly-gracious guests. 

These people all just finished taking turns dancing on that pole
in the middle as I wound along the Silverado Trail . I insisted they stop
 and they refused flatly until they had all finished. Slightly less gracious.