Wine-ing Up and Puppying Up

Yeah, so it's taken me nearly four months to finish telling you of the epic wine tour through Oregon and California. I'm going to finish this up just as I leave on my next trip (Shhh....I'm going to Maui!). Perhaps I should have stuck to cancer and dogs (I have more stories there too!!). But the trip was fabulous and I feel obliged to share. So here's the second to the last Wineapalooza post, with, as promised, a little something else at the end....

We have a very boring but quite enjoyable (we like each other's company... a lot) drive from Sanger

alllllllll the way down through central California to Paso Robles. I heart Paso Robles. Really. Truly. Madly. Deeply. And it did not disappoint. Dinner was at Artisan and then we crashed at the Marriott.
The next day we decided to check out the tasting rooms in town and started at Clayhouse (loved their Adobe White blend as well as the Adobe Pink rose'!)

Next up we hit Bear Cave, which I was fond of because it's a) a wine tasting room, b) a law office and c) their dog was there--and boy was he playful!

Next up was Bodegas/ Asuncion Ridge (they share a tasting room) and....our 300th wine tasted!

Lucky 300 was a tasty Bodegas 2007 Vaca Negra (50% Mouvedre/ 50% Tempranillo)...note Chris's serious wine teeth. Good, good stuff.

We ran into the same woman at several of the tasting rooms and it was here we found out she worked for one of the wineries with a brand new tasting room in town. Naturally, we took her suggestions and headed over to Parrish Vineyards tasting room. And we ended up there for the rest of the evening!

Chris with winery owner David Parrish...discussing grapes of course

The beautiful bottles of gorgeous Parrish wines!

(Love their Silken red. Mmmmm..... )In fact, we went to dinner with David and the young woman who enticed us over, Chalan Lind (pronounced, she helpfully told us, like "Shhhhh....Alan.") Great people with some great wines! This turned out to be one of our favorite tasting experiences (see? I love Paso!). And we're pleased to say Chris will be carrying some of those great wines in his Forgotten Grapes store! (Opening soon and yes, you'll be hearing more about that too!).

In real time...sort of, the little something extra of this blog post is what Seamus and I did last weekend:

That's the Puppy Up Canine Cancer Walk in Costa Mesa CA. And they say it never rains in California! It poured! So only a few of us die hards showed up and they had us do a "symbolic" walk (not a mile...more like 100 yards). Seamus probably would not have forgiven me except that the nice lady at Take5forFido massage gave Seamus a massage! Also, we won a raffle prize full of some healthy snacks and relaxing music for stressed out dogs. Yeah, Seamus thinks he's stressed. It's hard not getting steak every time you howl for it.

The short walk meant we had time to visit with my sister, her husband and my two adorable nieces though...so that all worked out!

(I promise you, that's hot chocolate...not the lattes they look like.)
Next up...the final day of Wineapalooza and an update on the progress of The Dog Lived memoir (as my manuscript deadline approaches...)