In Which a LOT of Wine is Consumed.

(Image shamelessly borrowed from Megan, your local food and music expert.)

Things I learned on this most recent trip to Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo, California:

Wine tastings, while almost always enjoyable, are not especially good when you are being pitched bland wine and weird palate-cleansing bubbly water (not that it doesn’t work - I just don’t want some former Cal Poly kids telling me how badly I need this).
The best jokes always get the best laugh when you think of the punch line simultaneously.
Tastings should all be done with food. Bonus points if a chocolate fountain with pretzels and nilla wafers are available as well.
One should not try to move an up-standing heater by oneself in a hundred-year-old wooden barn with hay and flammable liquids everywhere.
Check engine lights do not mean your call will explode. Not that day, anyway.
Announcing in a crowded room how you told someone to “get off of me” when you woke up will get stares. Lots and lots of uncomfortable stares.
Olive oil tastings can be fun. Just be wary of old women who try to sell you $50 bottles of balsamic vinegar. You may think they’re kidding when they tell you that price, but you’d be wrong.
Sharing a four course meal paired with extremely well made wines with your best friends (and forty people much, much older than you) makes for a hell of a Saturday night.
New term: “The Don” refers to a curmudgeony, but well intentioned, old man who has good suggestions.
I like port wine. Who knew?

Jason Nellis dot com