Off to California

[Kcwhippet]

I'm baaaaack!! It was a good trip, all in all. The meetings were OK, but the trip up to see Brian Loring was really neat. It was a good thing I decided to head up there early in the day, because it was a three hour trip through LA, Ventura, Oxnard, then upp 101 to Rte. 1 into Lompoc. Great visit though. When I walked in there were two other guys with Brian and they were just getting ready to tap some barrels. We all introduced ourselves, and the others were Peter Cargasacchi and Howard Graham (owns Graham Family Vineyards up near Sebastopol and August West with Gary Franscioni) - nice company to be in. Brian spent the next 3 hours getting barrel samples, often doing glass blends like some 667 from Rosella's mixed in the glass with some 115 from Rosella's. All the while, Peter is keeping up a running commentary to me about the vineyards and grapes used to make the wines we were tasting. I was given more info about everything possible with CA and OR PNs than I could possibly digest. Hint for future purchases - the consensus from the three of them was that the 2006 vintage will garner the first 100 point PNs from CA and OR. As examples, look for the 06 Momtazi Vyd PN from Pali as well as Brian's 06 Shea. Anyway, I had a great time - I tasted some awesome wines and met with some wonderful folks.

BTW, I mentioned Verne to Brian, and he definitely knew of him. He said he's the first person on the Loring mailing list that wants cases and cases of his wines.