In-Cline-d To Stay Awhile

Day 8 of Wineapalooza: Saturday July 30, 2011

[Note in "real" time...I've failed miserably at blogging every day about this trip. I've failed miserably at blogging every other day about this trip. In fact, I'm close to being two months behind in telling about this fabulous trip. And actually, there's been a lot going on in "real life" currently, (mostly having to do with the memoir!) but I can't tell anything publicly just yet, so it's probably a good thing that I've got a few days of the trip left to blog about. Don't get me wrong, it was a fabulous trip--I hope you can tell that--I'm just bursting at my proverbial seams to tell you some other stuff!!]

Meanwhile, back at the wine tasting wineapalooza... we woke up on day 8 with a busy schedule ahead of us. Not surprisingly, I got us off to a late start. By the time we arrived at our first stop, Cline Cellars, the crowds had descended. Bus loads of 'em. To be honest, we almost didn't go in. Not that we're wine snobs....we're more wine tasting snobs. I don't like to taste wine while climbing over  giggling she-packs in tiaras shouting things like "I only drink red!" or "I want champagne!" (particularly since, if one is not at a winery in France, in, say, the Champagne region, the proprietor is not going to be pouring you champagne. Sparkling wine, yes. Champagne...no. So don't be thinking you're all fancy shouting things like that, blondie at the bar. Also....wear underwear.) So yes, we were hesitant. There were literally (used properly!) buses of people there...most of whom did not look old enough to drink. But we had an appointment, so we went in.

And Dog bless them, they were ready for us. Our guide quickly whisked us away from the bussies and off on a private tour of the gorgeous grounds of Cline Vineyards. Turns out there is a California Missions museum there and if you  grew up in California and were Catholic or went to a public school before Prop 13 destroyed school budgets for things like this, you likely toured several of the missions and definitely you made a model of one of the missions (Chris recalls that he made a model of San Miguel; I can recall what mine looked like, but not which mission it was...I'm older; I blame that. Chris was only making his paper mache' mission a few years ago!), so you understand how nostalgic this would make us. The mission museum may have accounted for one of the buses of underage folks.

This is the Santa Barbara mission; not my model or Chris's, but I did go to U.C. Santa Barbara, so that's the one that got the photo taken.

The grounds (where weddings take place on a regular basis for obvious reasons) may have accounted for another bus or two (the water lilies up top are also from the Cline grounds).

Nonetheless, we were very pleased to see they had set us up for a private tasting at a table out on the porch, removed from the bussies at the bar.

The wines were very enjoyable. We bought their 2010 Marsanne Roussanne blend and the 2010 Cashmere (a Mouvedre,Grenache & Syrah blend). The Cashmere I'm particularly happy with because it's a great wine, but also, they donate a percentage of the profits to a local breast cancer charity. Gotta love that!

So, the moral of the story is...don't judge by the buses out front. Cline is worth the stop. Just look how happy Chris was to be there and see how well he makes friends?

Next up... we head to Sacramento and the Amador County wineries (Sierra Foothills).