The Geek Squad: 2.

Illuminated in a rare (this winter) ray of sunlight, this pretty Pacific hound's tongue (Cynoglossum grande) adds a very noticeable and welcome pop of colour to all the greenery that currently is soggy-California.  A member of the borage family, I had first spotted this particular wildflower a year ago, but was too busy, distracted, preoccupied, dog-tired (pick one) to take the time to identify it.  As with the shooting stars, this wildflower was identified for me by the Marketing Queen.  Thank you MQ!  I just love any blue flower.
Seeing as I was out and about with my camera, photographing the aforementioned shooting stars, I thought I'd get a quick snap of the hound's tongue too.  Geek's do stuff like that.

The Geek Squad.

Most lunchtimes will find TWWIAGE's Marketing Queen (MQ) and I huddled together in the winery's kitchen discussing a diverse miscellany of topics; anything from art to zucchini.  (Dear reader, you don't have to state the obvious as we both freely admit to being rather geeky.) Yesterday's lunchtime was no exception, however the subject at hand did happen to be one of my favourites - wildflowers.
Whilst the MQ had been out hiking she had spotted and photographed a wildflower that I had never seen before.  How exciting!  Furthermore, the MQ went on to identify this dainty, but quite dramatic, wildflower as Henderson's shooting star (Dodecatheon hendersonii).  Such a discovery scores high on my geek-o-meter.  So, imagine how thrilled I was when, today, I spotted a couple of shooting stars whilst Vinodog 2 and I were out walking.  (V2 is the black and white bokeh in the photograph.)  What were the chances?  Perhaps simply an example of frequency illusion, I was nonetheless excited to discover the shooting stars growing in close proximity to Vinoland.
It is my hope, after suffering through so much rain this winter, that the array of wildflowers this spring will be full of new discoveries for me and the MQ.

Gazela.

The Marketing Queen at TWWIAGE recently gave me a copy of a Japanese magazine to read in which TWWIAGE was featured.  I say read, but there was not one, single word of English in the current issue of What-Wine!? (their punctuation, not mine) magazine.  So I just looked at the pictures.  And very nice pictures they were: it is a beautifully produced publication.  However, something other than photographs of TWWIAGE's vineyards and winemaker caught my eye.
The first time that I tasted Gazela's Vinho Verde, I remember thinking that it was pleasant, but that I had had better.  Well, I have since had to eat my words (or rather, drink them).  I drink Gazela all the time and I can still buy it at my local supermarket for $3.99 (if I buy six bottles at a time, which I do). The photograph that intrigued me in Wine-What!? was that of a Gazela wine called 'Frutos Do Mar' (seafood). Although I did notice the initialism 'DOC' in the write-up of this wine, I gleaned no information from the magazine's text.  So off, onto the internet I went.
Apparently, last year Sogrape, the producer of Gazela and Portugal's largest family owned winery, decided to repackage their Vinho Verde specifically for the Japanese market.  It seems that 'Frutos Do Mar' is the same wine, but packaged to let the Japanese consumer know that the wine is seafood friendly.  Can we say, sushi?  Yes, we can.
I had noticed that Gazela had changed the label this year/batch (remember, it is a non-vintage wine) from the old clear label to a new silver label.  I'm just wondering if  the seafood-friendly-marketing-move will make it to the USA in the future: does America need idiot-friendly labelling?  Actually, I don't care - I'm going to continue to drink Gazela no matter what the packaging looks like.

All done for 2014.

So that's it, Vinoland's 2014 harvest is over!
Fruit looked great, not that much bird or bee damage and the odd rain event that we have had, over the past few weeks, didn't really cause any mould problems either.  Weather was fantastic for a harvest day (even a tad on the toasty side), workers were affable and the harvest after-party enchiladas were yummy.  Once again, good friends, good wine, good food.  And to quote TWWIAGE's very own Marketing Queen, "...harvest.  Always makes me remember why I love living here."  Couldn't have put it better myself.
Of course, I think the fruitless vines look a little forlorn now, but that's just anthropomorphic me.  Now I'm looking forward to the 2015 growing season.

Say the bells of St. Clement's.

Oranges and lemons?  Just lemons.  Lemon curd to be exact.  This St. Clement, 1983 Sauvignon blanc (SB) is the oldest Napa Valley SB that I have ever had.  Actually, this is the oldest SB from anywhere that I've ever had.
A small diversion today, from our usual routines, saw my co-workers and I taking a few minutes to taste this senior SB that had exited our employer's personal wine library.  Initially what began with the group cracking jokes, mainly about the deep honey-amber colour of the wine, turned quite serious when the still viable cork was eased out of the bottle and we finally quietened down enough to taste the stuff. 
Almost 30 years old, this aging SB had the aromas of honey and hazelnuts, with a shy-hint of apricots.  On the palate the wine showed surprisingly good structure, with a fetching acidity, more nuts, more apricots and the aforementioned lemon curd on the finish.  There was the merest, and I mean tiny, tiny, suggestion of acetaldehyde, but one would expect that with a three decades old white wine.  No residue of any kind around the punt and at only 12.5% alcohol, my fellow tasters and I laughed no more.  Now, whilst I wouldn't want to drink a butt load (technical term) of this wine, as after all it didn't have the bright vivacity of a young SB, it was nevertheless a beautiful wine.  A delightful experience.
The Marketing Queen, tasting along with us, pointed out to the group that there was no government warning label back in those days, and sure enough, the back of the bottle was indeed nekkid.  My goodness, how did we manage to survive in an era when there was no mandatory, official foreboding-verbiage to save us from ourselves?  Ho-hum!