Bonus Round!

Tim had finished all the milk with his cereal yesterday, so I got up and went to Surfcrest to get some. Surfcrest is right next to Waves of Grain, so I stopped in there and got breakfast goodies: marionberry scone, blueberry streusel muffin, cinnamon roll, sticky bun. Also bought a bag of granola. WoG is the place to be on a Sunday morning for sure. Getting Tim out of bed when there’s a cinnamon roll and chocolate milk for breakfast is very easy.

Packing went smoothly and took just over an hour. We were on the road by 10:10. We got home and unloaded the car, and Tim and Dave changed the catboxes. Then Dave and I headed over to Crumbled Rock Winery, where Mike and Patti Green (Deux Vert) were pouring their Tempranillo and Macindoe’s 2009 Melon, along with the Julia Staigers and Gerard Koschal of Crumbled Rock pouring their ’07 and ’08 Pinot Noir, and Mike and Robin Murto pouring their Cleo’s Hill ’06 Pinot noir and ’09 Pinot Gris. The Melon was terrific, a worthy successor to the ’08, and we went ahead and bought a whole case this time, rather than buying a half case and having to go back a few weeks later for more. The Pinot Gris was also very nice. All the rest of the wines except the Crumbled Rock ’08 PN are already well represented in our collection.

Crumbled Rock, Cleo’s Hill and Deux Vert Vineyards have got to be 6 of my favorite winemakers of all times. They’re all growers, and very fun to spend time with. Mike Green, Patti and Robin all greeted us like we were cousins they hadn’t seen for a while, and as always made us feel we’d made their day by showing up. They were serving fresh foccacia from their wood fired oven and we were glad to have stopped by. The only thing that would have made the visit more perfect is if the Murtos had been standing next to each other so I could have started them talking about whether the ’08 PN is ready to release (she says no, he says yes). That would have been fun to listen to.

Since we were practically in Dundee, we headed to Dundee Bistro for a late lunch, but there was a half hour wait. DB is very good, but not that good. So instead we headed over to Farm to Fork, where we got a nice table on the patio and had a yummy lunch. Dave’s sandwich needed the bread toasted, but my olive tapenade, goat cheese, arugula and radish on a baguette with a cup of summer squash soup was just delightful. After lunch we thought we might head home, but instead decided to revisit Sokol Blosser winery. Going left from Farm to Fork would have been very hard, as the Dundee light was causing its usual massive traffic jam, but there was no traffic in the direction we wanted to go.

When we got to Sokol Blosser the parking lot and tasting room were both very full, but we were able to find a space in the lot for our car and a space at the tasting room counter for ourselves. Our pourer was very personable and managed to keep on top of things even in the crowd. In fact all of their pourers were very good, from what I could tell. If only the wines had been the same. We did enjoy their dessert Riesling and ’05 Dundee Hills pinot noir, but the other offerings were not our style. It’s funny, because when we were at Newman’s they’d poured us a glass of the ’07 Dundee Hills, and after seeing we weren’t crazy about it replaced it with a nice ’06 Walnut City. So our feelings about Sokol Blosser didn’t change after visiting the tasting room, which is not a pretty as I remembered it.

After that it was time to head home and finish the unpacking, which took about the same time it took to pack. And that really is the end of the vacation blog.