Geyersville And What I Did On My Summer Vacation!
Ok so I took the summer off from blogging
with the intent of writing a lot so I would have them already done and this fall
would be easy blogging. As my Grandmother always said, the road to hell is
paved with good intension, which is unfortunately true, since I haven’t written a single blog post. So with Gale retiring as a teacher I decided to write about
“what I did on my summer vacation,” or at least what I did on our 11th
trip to California wine country.
This year Gwen, Joe (or Pinky to
my readers), Gale and I headed for Geyserville at the far end of Sonoma. We
have been there several times but this was the first dedicated entirely to the Geyserville
area. For those who’ve never been, Geyserville is a very charming small rural
town that also has some really great wineries! 
Downtown Geyserville has one street with three
tasting rooms and a very nice Italian/gourmet pizza restaurant, all housed in
old buildings. And if you ask anyone where to eat they will tell you the pizza
place, so of course we eat across the street at the old country store/deli. And
man did it have some really great sandwiches. 
And as a special treat, each night the tasting room staff brought over their
opened bottles for our drinking pleasure! You can’t beat that for service!!
The DeLorimier vineyards run up
to the Russian River. So one morning we walked down to the river that runs
through much of Sonoma. The river was low and moving slowly but you could tell
that at certain times it could really let you know it was there. On the way
back we met Jim Murphy, who was checking out his vineyards. Jim was great,
showing us around the vineyard and encouraging us to taste grapes. His family
once owned the Murphy Goode Winery and his wife's family owns the Alexander Valley Vineyards which often has wines at the Houston Rodeo. Jim is in charge of the vineyards
so who best to show us around? By the way the Alexander Valley was named after
his wife Katie's family.
We’ve had a lot of great experiences
over the years. Wine makers and winery owners have given us great tours; we’ve
tasted wines right out of the stainless, directly from the barrel and once from
a pitcher of wine used for testing. But this time I had a really unique tasting
experience. At the Zichichi Winery we went back to taste wine from the barrel, however
while we were there they cleaned a barrel and started filling it with a blend
of wine from several stainless steel tanks. The blended wine was being poured through
a funnel into the barrel. That’s when the winemaker asked if I would like to
put my glass under the pouring wine and fill it, which I did with great gusto
and pleasure thank you very much! 
In all we visited 13 wineries,
three tasting rooms, and toured three of the wineries. With
sales and some good deals we brought back four cases of wine as luggage, as did
Joe and Gwen. We also shipped home 11 cases between the four of us, which we’ll
sort out in October when the cases arrive. And no, they’re not coming by pony
express. It’s way too hot in Texas to ship wine in August or September, so it’s
coming in October.
Well that was my summer vacation!
And I want to thank all of you for reading my blog and putting up with my
summer wine blog hiatus. I promise fun and informative blogs this fall. I will be
writing more about the wineries we visited and I asked several to send
information so I can spend more time telling you about them and their wines.
And if you still haven’t joined
the blog, what’s taking you so long?
See you at a Porch Party! And have
some great wine with friends!
Cheers!
Harold
The Neighborhood Wine Porch Party
Please Add Your Comments Below & Join Our Blog on the Top Right Side of This Page. And You Don’t Have to Live in Munger Place to Join, So Please Join if You’re Enjoying Our Wine Blog!!!
October will be here soon! John and I will be happy to help you drink through that wine.
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