Open Yer Mug and Fill Up That Jug

It is always a pleasant surprise that taking a short weekend trip can feel so nice. Plot and Duck and their friends Jim and Karen, Wine Experts, left at 9AM Saturday and drove out Rte. 80 to Rte. 50 to Rte. 29 to Rte. 124, or some numbers like that, and ended up in Amador and El Dorado Counties in the foothills of the Sierras, picking up, tasting and buying a few zinfandels, frivolos, sangioveses, viogniers, one fabulous petit syrah, a bottle of champagne and even two jugs of red for $4.99 per jug, and if you bring back the jug they'll fill it up again for $3. And it's good!

Later on Saturday they drove back towards the Bay Area and stayed overnight in Lodi, then went to several more excellent wineries there on Sunday before driving home and arriving by 4pm.



The Great Plotnik likes wine, maybe even likes it a lot. But he doesn't love wine, not the way Jim, Wine Expert, does, which is to say he doesn't understand many of the complexities involved in how wine matures and ages over time. But he is getting to see why you drink one wine now while laying another wine down for a year or two to let it mellow. He still hears the godawful booshwa that passes for knowledge during the tasting process ("do you sense the boysenberry? I get carrot. Do you get carrot?"), but he has to say that each weekend he spends tasting wine he learns more about the things that he loves in life, and also the things he despises.

He loves friendly winemakers with something to offer. He despises haughty winemakers who only want your money. He loves beauty and hates development that passes for beauty, and he doesn't care if its three years old or three hundred years old, if they did it right. He loves winery dogs.

He is always suspicious of any wine he tastes -- expecting it to disappoint. But if that first part of the taste, in the front of the mouth, is nice -- hmmm, Duckie, this isn't too bad -- he is nonetheless always astonished when the 1 in 30 wines whose second taste, the afterburn -- where all the important subtleties are, like how it feels on the tongue and how smoothly it slides down and what all those lingering side flavors are, and man! That's great! -- takes him to a new place. The few are what make all the silliness of the many worth it.

And if they can afford it, the Plotniks buy that one, and if they can't, they keep looking for the one they can.



Plot likes the B&B in Lodi with the pond in the back surrounded by willow trees where the owner brings you out a complimentary large glass of the wine you seemed to like the best in the tasting room a half hour earlier, even though you didn't buy anything.



He loves passing by a pit bbq in a parking lot and having the smell of the ribs and tri-tips stop him in his tracks. He loves that bbq, run by Indians in the middle of Lodi, as much as he hates all the stupid restaurants in stupid restored downtowns with stupid bimbos as hostesses and stupid overpriced meals catering to stupid wine tasters on holiday. He hates scented candles and wineries whose tasting rooms smell like scented candles.

And yet Plot and Duck and Jim and Karen had a fine meal in the restored downtown in Lodi fronted by --yes -- a bimbo hostess. And the Michael-David winery near Rte. 5 makes a petit syrah that will knock the fillings out of your mouth, even though the place looks and smells like a Cracker Barrel.

Ya never know. That's why wine tasting is fun, especially in regions like Amador and Lodi where there are few people tasting and little pressure to buy. Folks, we suggest you tell your families that when they visit they should head North to Napa Valley. Meanwhile, you should join all the Plotnikkies as we head East, taking our empty jugs along for a refill.