Fun in El Paso

Fun Stuff:

So I was in El Paso, visiting family, over the weekend. That is the explanation for no posts. I had a great time. I got to see my wife’s entire family, hang out, a lot, with brother-in-law, and his wife, ran a couple miles with my niece, and visited New Mexico. We went to New Mexico for a wine festival. If you know me at all, you know I can’t pass up a wine festival.

The second bit of “fun stuff” is that we are in fact leaving the country on May 13 as originally planned. Off to France with us. Yeah! No visas, but we are going anyway.

Wine Stuff:

Right now I am drinking Lucky number 9. If you know what that is, you also know it is yummy. I will talk about that in a later post.

As I said, I went to a wine festival in New Mexico over the weekend. WOW! It was hot. We had a great time anyway. The concept of the festival was that you pay $10 to get in, you get a glass and a wristband with six pull tabs. These six tabs get you six tastes of wine. You can also buy wine by the glass or bottle. So the plan was to get six tastes of wine, then buy a glass or two of the best stuff. Simple.

I got in one of the many lines and apparently I am a good line picker. I asked for a taste of Viognier, and I got a near-full glass of the stuff! That happened FOUR times with four different “tastes”. TWICE my little pull-tabs were left intact. I left the festival, drunk, and with one tab still on my wrist. I think I had about eight glasses of wine total. I did buy one.

I am not a big fan of Chardonnay, but I had a good one at the La Vina wine festival. They produce two different Chardonnays, but in my opinion, the Desert Flower is the only one worthwhile. What I remember about it is that it was very fruity, and that is not common among Chard that has character. It is an easy grape to produce, but it is hard to grow with real flavor. Wine makers tend to use a lot of wood on crappy grapes to make something interesting. There goes a digression, sorry. This wine was made with well-grown fruit. That is not to say it was not well treated with wood. I think it had the perfect balance between fruit and oak. With all of that said, I hope you can try it, but I don’t know where to get it… Aside from the vineyard.

-PMo