Der Geschmack der Farben.

I arrived home in one piece.  My flight from SFO to Manchester, via Zurich, was without incident - very smooth and painless.
Now that I am home, I am in a state of amazement.  I have experienced better weather here in the past four days than all of 2019 in California and I have loved every minute of it.  Thing is, England is hard to beat when the sun is shining, it is just so pretty.  And so green.  Spring has always been my favourite season in Blighty.
Family OTW and I have busied ourselves with lots of activities; shooting, archery, bingo and other games.  Every meal has been outside, breakfasts, lunches and dinners.  Of note, yet another fabulous wood-fired pizza event (my sister-in-law's Thai chicken pizza could give California Pizza Kitchen a run for their money) at which I discovered that a particularly spicy pizza paired well with a Prosecco that Thud pulled out of his wine-stash.  Fun.
The Taste of Colours, kindly reproduced with the permission of Swiss Air (well, I'm sure they would have approved it if I'd asked), is not about the neurological trait synaesthesia.  Rather, the wine-article in my seat-pocket magazine maintained that there was a correlation between the colour of a wine and the way in which a wine is produced, even a vintage's growing conditions, with the qualities therefore inherent in a wine.  Not sure I totally buy the whole premise of the article as it's a little simplistic, besides I don't read German, but it made for some light, in-flight entertainment - a bit like the colour, Blasses Weissgelb.

Pizza, beer and wine.

Thud's pizza oven gets awfully hot.  I risked life and limb to get this photograph, as it was super, super toasty.  And that high heat is the reason that the pizzas are ready to eat after just 90 seconds of cooking.  Simply fabulous.  Copious amounts of Peroni aided Thud and his culinary-accomplice, Monkey, in the making of a dozen pizzas, mostly with all different toppings.  I polished off a bottle (well, not the entire bottle) of Amalaya, Blanco De Corte, 2016 Torrontés-Riesling (Calchaquí Valley, Argentina) with my pizza-dinner.  The wine paired well with most of the pizzas, but not the Thai Chicken one.  But that's OK, there were plenty of other pizzas that did pair with this Argentine-quaffing wine.  Yum.

Selección Victoria.

In 2009, according to the Napa County Ag Commissioner, there were only 302 producing acres of Malbec growing in the entire county.  Malbec, more famous nowadays for it's success in Argentina, is not a widely produced single varietal wine in Napa, although there are a few notable producers, including Antinori and St. Supéry.  This particular Malbec, the Herrera, 2009 Selección Victoria, is perhaps the best of any domestic Malbec I have tasted.  I don't know where these grapes were sourced, I just wish more had been sourced  as only 65 cases of this deliciousness were produced.
Made by winemaker Rolando Herrera, and named after one of his daughters, this Malbec was full bodied with the deepest purple hue, nicely balanced acidity, bold, but silky tannins and a persistent, moreish finish.  A purple-plummy-raspberryness was followed by the suggestion of blackberries - the floral-perfumey character one gets when one passes by a bramble patch loaded with overly ripe berries - then there was the velvety vanilla vibe that just didn't let go of my taste buds.  Yum! 
Unfortunately, the bottle was only a 375 ml and it disappeared quickly, but not to worry it was sufficient.  And the wine paired well with my Jack-o-Lantern shaped pepperoni pizza (a tradition in these parts).  I'm all about high-end food and wine pairings me.  Double yum!

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

Nothing says I love you like a heart-shaped pepperoni pizza and a cheap bottle of Chianti. We know how to celebrate in Vinoland.

A very happy day to you all!