Sunday, August 7, 2011

Women Winemaker's Part Duex

(Message for SAM: I know, I know - Part Duex of the Women Winemakers blog is beyond past due. I mean, I don't even remember writing PART ONE. But I will do my best to write Part Duex although that night is enveloped in lemoncello haze.....)

First off, I am excited to announce that Lucia's Women Winemakers Website has launched and is live! Congrats, Ms. Lucia! I am so thrilled for you. Everyone - check it out. It's pretty neat. And of course you'll be sure to find your favorite Californian female winemaker on the site.

To add to the excitement of the website launch, the online magazine, "Wines & Vines" wrote a headline article about Lucia's website - woo hoo! I'm especially excited as Wine & Vines used one of my photos for their article. You can read the article HERE.

Now on to the bloggosphere. Part One of the Women Winemaker's blog left off with the sun setting and the rowdy bunch of women winemakers + us tag-alongs going inside. Now I have to admit I went into this whole event with an agenda. Before I attended the party, I had a great talk with Lidsay (aka "Tasting Room Celebrity") about the fact that I would be doing this blog on Women Winemakers. Now Lindsay's parents own the winery, Dolce Robles, and one day, Lindsay will be taking it over and she herself may be a winemaker. She had commented on how great it would be for all the local women winemakers to get together on a regular basis to talk about what's going on in the industry, to allow up and coming women winemakers have an arena to ask some questions, and to just generally be a support for each other. Shizam! The Paso Women Winemaker's group was born. I'm currently putting this together with the hopes that we can all meet every other month for a party at various locations. We'll have a communal blog set up where women winemakers can post little articles on challenges, success or just ruminations, and fellow winemakers will be able to comment & interact online. Each party will have various themes to keep up focused, and well always have it centered around wine so we can stay up-to-date with what's happening at fellow wineries.

The biggest hurdle of all of this is the name of the group (hee hee.) Boyfriend came up with "Wine Goddesses Uncorked" which I love, but Lindsay shot down. Lindsay came up with "A Bunch of Grape Women" which Boyfriend liked, but it was too corny for me. Any votes about these two or suggestions for other names would be much appreciated!

On a side note: I was at a Lone Madrone Burger Sundays a while ago and told Neil Collins about this new, local women winemakers group. Neil got (sarcastically) mad and said, "Why is there all this attention on women winemakers? What about men winemakers? I'm starting my own group for men winemakers then!" So Neil and I will now have dueling winemaker groups - one for women and one for men. I can't wait to see where this leads :)

Now back to the party. We're all hanging out and chatting when Stormy, SAM's boyfriend, mentions that he & SAM had recently made a batch of lemoncello from an awesome recipe found in Sunset Magazine. He started telling me about how the used 100 proof alcohol and that all you can really have is a teaspoon otherwise it will knock your socks off! Though the lemoncello had only been sitting for a few days we had to break into it.

Now this lemoncello was absolutely beautiful. Big slices of lemon were floating around amongst sprigs of fragrant lavender.


Here's a photo of SAM pouring me some. Note how she's giving me more than a teaspoon. Yes, this is where the sugary sweetness gets me addicted to this fabulous lemoncello and I have a wee bit much.....


Here's an adorable photo of the happy couple enjoying their masterpiece!


So the night continued with us all hanging out together, chatting, becoming best friends over wine & lemoncello, & already planning the next get together. Can you feel the love? The photo includes from left to right: Jack (Lucia's husband) Lucia, Boyfriend, Amy from Ranchero Cellars, Stromy & SAM.


Suddenly, out of the blue, SAM starts a ballet where she is wrapping me in paper towels while Stormy is taking a "fashion photo shoot" of us in action. I have no idea how it started. I have no idea why it happened. But I got lost in a paper towel dream while being in a lemoncello haze (that sounds like a Beattles song.) I won't bore you with the progression of photos but I will leave you with one that I think captures the hilarious energy of the moment:


Ahhhh. Another crazy night with SAM for the history books.

So though we were all wrapping it up to say goodbye, I caught wind that Jack & Lucia were wine club members at Tablas Creek and were going to go wine tasting there in the morning before they headed home. Since Halter is right next to Tablas, I talked them into going to see me first for a tasting @ Halter, then we'd hop over in the car to go to Tablas together.

So here we are the next morning at Tablas Creek at about 11am, all of us hung over from the night before, drinking Tannat. I wouldn't have had it any other way.


A big thanks to Lucia & Jack for creating the Women Winemaker's website and giving us a fabulous excuse for all of us to get together. I'm so excited to see how this grows for Lucia, and am also excited to see our local Women Winemaker group take flight! Ms. Lucia: I wish you nothing but the best and can't wait to see you & Jack for the upcoming celebratory Women Winemakers Website Launch Party!

4 comments:

  1. That's Amy Butler between Dana and I, not Shannon. Amy was rocking the coolest jacket in Paso. Stormy

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  2. Whoops! Thank so much for catching this. Any more lemoncello brewing??? hee hee

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  3. Yes, in fact we just ran out of the first batch and the second is in it's 3rd week of steeping. We're giving this batch a good long time to open up. BTW, our IPA that we bottled July 4 is pretty off the hook as well. You guys should come over and have some of that.

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