el capitan, i salute you...

...last stop...yosemite national park...and i was lucky enough to have a morning of sunshine before the clouds rolled in to make the light flat...
easiest view to get to so it almost feels like cheating. now i just need to come back and hike half dome and glacier point (both closed in the winter).bridalveil fall where i watched some ice chunks break off from the top, which sounded like a cannon shots echoing through the valley.mirror lake with what i call a t-rex skull stone. being alone and with the daylight quickly receding, this mirror lake loop hike was the only one i could feasibly do. although i was in mountain lion habitat, so luckily i had made some friends along the way...
now back to portland...

running to stand still...

...joshua tree national park...not too sound cheesy but someplace i have always wanted to visit...(p.s. i'm squinting into the sun...not trying to hold a sneeze in or something worse)it was a balmy 40ish degrees, but at least the sun was out so i warmed up pretty quickly on my mini-hikes. i only had a short amount of time and, being by myself, didn't have time to do more intense hiking or bouldering. but it was absolutely stunning landscape and i found a lorax ;)
apparently you used to be able to swim here?! or maybe in the summer?
well swimming is out, but i wish i could go rock climbing...
now to book it to yosemite national park...

on the road again...

well harvest was intense...a lot of running up and down and left and right. so i figured i needed a vacation. i've been wanting to drive down california and see friends that i've just moved away from and friends that i've been meaning to visit.

it had been awhile, but it was great to get onto that open road with just me, my music, and a lot of chocolate covered raisins. my itinerary included stops in ukiah (brand new nunamaker-bailey baby), sebastopol (i've got to see my peeps at paul hobbs winery), sonoma (a grown-up dinner party at the early-myers'), petaluma (haircut and scalp massage...priceless), san francisco (suppenküche, finally, as well as harris' steak tartare and tu lan). on my way down to santa barbara to visit alison at palmina winery, i decided to take the 1 through big sur and the like. beautiful coastline, of course...then i finally made it to los angeles to visit darling danielle. i hadn't been to the city of angels since right after the infamous riots, so it was nice to see that the scars had healed. i did see taye diggs at bouchon, but i did not (sadly) see lindsay lohan passed out in the corner of bar marmont or britney spears and the kids at toast. of course, the last thing i had to do was walk hollywood blvd and i wonder what they were setting up for...unfortunately, mother nature wasn't very willing to cooperate with me as it poured the last day i was in los angeles and while i was driving down to san diego amdist some gale-force winds. at the cactus garden in balboa park, i could clearly picture what the scene might have been like with all that rain...
so san diego was my southernmost stop and i finally got to visit jenn instead of the other way around. beautiful beaches...maybe made even more beautiful with the partly cloudy weather and high surf. but i thought san diego was supposed to be warm and sunny...i guess i'll have to come back when i can actually lay out at the beach!more to come...

you call this hard?! i call this FUN!!

because it's that time again...time to harvest!!! if you've read any of my earlier posts, then you know what harvest is like. if you haven't, well, it's harvest and i don't have the time to explain (if that can give you a slight hint as to the madness of harvest) so you'll have to read my earlier posts. so my view from my office/lab at paul hobbs winery in sebastopol was beautiful, but can it compare to the view from the penner-ash wine cellars patio where we eat lunch everyday?!? check out for yourself below. you can't see it, but off to the left is an amazing garden. i haven't had to buy produce once since august...amazing!!

the winery has a very nice gravity flow set-up where the grapes are crushed above and fall down to the tanks waiting below on the fermentation deck, which you can see below. after which, the tanks will be emptied down to the last level where the press is located.
i guess catered harvest lunches is a big deal in oregon's willamette valley, so jon and i were very honored to cook lunch this past saturday. well jon cooked obviously and i just made mousse au chocolat for dessert. it was an amazing meal where most of the vegetables came from the winery or people's gardens. grilled lamb that had been marinated in parsley, mint, and garlic and topped with a heirloom tomato, basil, kalamata olive sauce. frittata with zucchini, potatoes, braised swiss chard, mushrooms, and cheese. warm bread salad with feta, cashews, and asian pears. mmm...
i found a way to enjoy tomatoes...bake them in a tart with zucchini and basil (all fresh from the winery garden). throw in some mozzarella and that's what i call amore :)

monterey bay aquarium

this posting comes a couple of weeks late, but it's been hectic...

last fourth of july weekend, i willingly faced holiday traffic and drove down to monterey to meet up with becky george in order to finally explore the monterey aquarium. despite the high price of admission and screaming kids, it was worth the experience for the photos i took below. the sea otters and penguins were adorable. the giant fish and sharks were impressively sized. the stingrays that you could pet were scared and annoyed with all the kids' hands reaching into their tank.

i especially enjoyed watching this yellow fish which seemed to just sit there and mouth "hello". mmm...sashimi...i'm just kidding!but the main reason that i wanted to go was to see the jellyfish and i wasn't disappointed. luckily, i could tune out everyone else and it just seemed like the jellyfish were noiselessly floating in space. it was very elegant and ballet-like. my favorite is this one below...the stinging sea nettle jellyfish. this is just one of what seemed like hundreds floating in the one tank together...almost in unison.the purple striped jellyfish seemed more acrobatic, but maybe that was because it's tail was a lot longer and it seemed like it was doing backbends and cartwheels.the moon jelly, which seemed like a ufo because it had no long tail with which to entrap its prey.next stop...portland, oregon!

bee kind

i know what you're thinking, "holy crap! 3 posts in 2 weeks?!? what is she on!?!". don't worry, i'm not taking blogging speed. interesting (well at least to me) things have been jumping into my lap lately!

so yesterday during lunch at the picnic tables at the winery, i heard roberto (our cellarmaster) give a faint yelp. i looked over and saw a swarm of insects. as our jaws dropped, the buzzing noise became very apparent. and in front of our eyes, what appeared to be a brown oval shape began forming in one of the trees on the treeline. as the swarm steadily decreased in size, we realized that there must be a new queen and the bees were swarming to protect her and to start building a new hive for her. this was amazing to me purely because i'd never witnessed anything like in my life...the start of a new beehive. after maybe 5 or 10 minutes, the swarm was gone and was nestled in the tree as you can see below... apparently there are beekeepers you can call in sonoma when you have a new swarm of bees. they will come and safely transport the swarm so as to start the new hive in a safe environment. interestingly enough, bill wiebalk (our director of sales) is one of these beekeepers, so he drove over in full beekeeper gear (that he apparently keeps in his car) to scoop the swarm up as you can see below...so there you have it, that's how a beehive gets started. now i wonder how the new queen gets nominated...

indulgence weekend

i haven't had one in a bit and it's a longshot from an actual vacation, but i'll take what i can get right now!

our 1st indulgence was to hike the dipsea trail (starting near downtown mill valley) and the sun trail to the german tourist club, which you can see below.the dipsea trail was quite a workout for my glutes and quads, but with every step, i reminded myself that there was beer at the end. the german tourist club overlooks muir woods and is open to the public on weekend afternoons (for the most part). we were rewarded with amazing views (a camera phone doesn't do justice to the views so i didn't even try) and awesome german beer (is there any other kind? don't worry belgium, my beer heart lies with you as well). you can bring your own food, so we made ourselves some fresh kielbasa sandwiches with mustard and cheese.

it was great to get in touch with my outdoorsy side again and hopefully i will be getting my fill of the wilderness in oregon.

the following day was our 2nd indulgence but of a very different kind. jon and i treated ourselves to sunday brunch at the top of the mark restaurant in san francisco. it's standard fare for sunday brunch and maybe only slightly better quality than any other sunday brunch, but the views...360 degree view of san francisco on an actually sunny sunday morning! but wait, there's more, part of the all-you-can-eat brunch is a caviar station. so as you can see from the photo below, we topped our blinis with a heavy-handed serving of caviar! ah, life...

no news is good news...

...it's funny. i didn't realize that it's been almost 6 months since i've put up a new post. funnier still is that the last post was titled "i heart portland" only because the decision has been officially made and i will be moving to portland in the middle of july! it's been great in california and at paul hobbs winery, but i've decided that i want to go back to the cellar so that's what i'm going to do at penner-ash winery this harvest. wish me luck and adios california!

i don't even know if anybody is still reading this thing or checking in on this thing, but there will most likely be more posts once i'm in my new "hometown".

please come back and join me on my new adventure in the rose city!

(in case anyone was wondering, yes, i'm still with jon [gasp!] and he'll be joining me in portland in the fall as he starts chiropractic college)

i'll just leave you with my delicious lobster from canada (eh) that was only $7.99/pound in a great chinese grocery store on clement street in san francisco...mmmm...fiesty lil' one...

i heart portland

so i just got back from another trip to portland...4th one...in fact, it's the most visited city that i've never lived in, which is rare since i usually like going to see new places. granted, each time i go, it's for a different reason where i see different people and different places. this time around, i went with jon so he could take a look at wscc's campus. this visit was also more of a exploration of portland and (since i'm with jon) an eating marathon. i hadn't really trolled around the different portland neighborhoods yet, so it was interesting to see them all. my conclusion (besides the obvious fact that i heart portland and i'll be moving up here soon)...portland has some of the most creative and interesting cocktails in its bars/restaurants/lounges. the best was from the teardrop lounge where i had a cocktail called "the freedonia", which is made up of foie gras infused armagnac, costa rican coffee, some other liqueur that i can't remember, and pistachio gastrique. strange, but so smooth. of late, i've been getting back into cocktails and even starting to like gin...maybe this past harvest kind of put the kibosh on beer and wine for me temporarily.

oh and did i mention the eating? we had a lot of good recommendations from a friend of jon's and we tried many of them and they were all quite tasty. our favorite restaurant was "pok pok", a thai restaurant, that we went to twice...couldn't get enough the first time around! you can see the bar in the background below...i didn't take many photos...it was basically grey and cold in portland...but please enjoy the one below of mt. shasta. you can also see my rubber duck collection in the corner. tom stransky gave me the red one randomly one day and just the other day, someone left the white one on my car windshield in san francisco...

gobble gobble gobble

happy turkey day...yeah, i know...it's december, but it's been incredibly busy at work and i'm just now getting around to posting a couple of photos from my thanksgiving. this year, i decided not to go home due to the expensive plane tickets and the possibility that i would have to work over the long weekend. instead, jon hosted a small gathering of friends and we cooked thanksgiving dinner. it was a great night where the drinking started in the afternoon and most everything went off without a hitch. i even rallied to go out to the elbo room for some dancing later that night.
paul hobbs winery provided me with a 17.6 lb willie's organic turkey...biggest thing i've ever tried to cook! but it was a beautiful turkey. we wrapped it in aluminum foil and baked it for about 4 hours (an hour or so too long since we were distracted by our oysters on the half shell and champagne) before removing the foil, basting with herb butter, and baking for another 30 minutes. i thought it was quite tasty, but jon thought it was a bit dry. well at least it looked delicious as you can kind of see below...sadly the photo of our thanksgiving table as well as our guests didn't turn out quite light enough, but below is our side table with a view of the candy pumpkins and pumpkin pie. my 1st attempt at a pumpkin pie...i've never been a big fan because i always thought pumpkin pie was a little too heavy so i found a pumpkin-chiffon pie recipe where there was added honey and whipping cream...mmm...and i hadn't even added the honey-brandy whipping cream and candied pecans on top yet :) all in all, it was an awesome thanksgiving. i give thanks to my friends, family, jon, and the fact that we're going to have a democrat in office by next year...cheers to that!

trick or treat!

it's amazing...we received our last lot of grapes october 24th...chardonnay grapes, no less. there's still a lot of work to be done with the cabernets that are fermenting in tank. also, my work load in the lab is steadily increasing as i'm monitoring all the barrels with the 2008 pinots and chardonnays. but, this week will be my first week with 2 days off...in a row! i don't know what i'll do with myself. i do know that i'm starting to have the energy to call my friends again, many of whom i haven't talked to in ages.

well, winter is definitely approaching...even in california. it's certainly darker in the morning when i leave for work and a bit colder. today we got our first autumn rain and it was a chill-to-your-bone kind. i look forward to sweater and hot chocolate weather though. and after these few years in california, i still miss the first snowfall.

on that note, i leave you with the pumpkins that jon and i carved this week. it was great to be a kid again...hand inside the pumpkin tearing out pumpkin guts. and it was great to roast pumpkin seeds again...mmm...

every day is a wednesday...teetering on the hump

so i'm still in harvest. i have been since labor day. it's been an odd harvest. the heat at the beginning of september brought in our 1st wave of pinot and chardonnay. then it got colder. then it started warming up a bit more during the day, which led to the 2nd wave of pinot and chardonnay. then it threatened to rain, which brought in a bit more pinot, chardonnay, and our 1st cabernet. then it rained. so now we're in limbo...waiting for the grapes to dry a bit and regain equilibrium. then, i bet you, it's going to hit us like a ton of bricks.

i love my job...i love my job...i love my job...

well, at least that's what i say to myself every morning on my way to work. ah...i've lost track of what the actual day of the week it is. to me, every day feels like a wednesday. teetering on that hump day. unsure which way the see-saw will swing...back towards the beginning of the week or towards the end of the week where a faint light glows showing the way to the elusive "day off". although, to be honest, sometimes i'd rather not have a day off, then my body is constantly on adrenaline to keep going and going. when i come back from 1 day off, my body is just more tired than before. to fully recover, one needs 2 days off in a row. well, there's always december!

at least, my life is not filled with ugliness as you can see by the photo of our estate vineyard at 7am a week or so ago before the rains came.
and on a different note. i've done a piss-poor job trying to grow my dahlias that i had high hopes for back in the summer. too much sun...not enough sun...too much water...not enough water (kind of like this harvest). so imagine my surprise when i noticed that one of the plants did try to produce a flower...albeit a quite "special" looking flower as you can see below. but a flower nonetheless! you can understand the degree of suprisedness (yes that's a word in my world) when you see what the rest of the plant looks like next to the flower. reminds me to be optimistic again...maybe america's economy won't completely crash...maybe voters this year will actually do the right thing...

hurry up and wait...

all right, here's our Paul Hobbs Winery harvest team processing our very 1st grapes of the 2008 harvest...some delicious pinot noir from the Valdez vineyard...

time to crush some fruit...

...it's crazy...it's the end of august, but it's still august and we received our first lot of chardonnay...albeit for a custom crush client, but still...it's pretty bleeping early! this means that the madness of harvest begins again. this year will be a strange harvest for me since this will be the first time that i WON'T be a harvest intern. i'll actually be in charge of a couple of harvest interns (or sample bitches as their nickname will most likely end up being :). it'll be intense and it'll be a test of my managerial skills, but it'll also be most interesting. i'll have to try to keep the blog updated on how everything goes.

well, at least i got in one last weekend in san francisco with my newly minted boyfriend (yes, that's right...mj has finally snagged a man...poor sucker...hahah) before he won't be able to see me for days on end. it was an interesting weekend as well since we went to the friday outside lands concert in golden gate park. that was madness on a poorly organized level. there were way too many people and the artist line-ups were way too close together. i only got to see half of the black keys (while eschewing beck since i assumed, and correctly, that there would be way too many people trying to see beck) before i felt that i had to make my way over to the main stage for radiohead. i didn't even get that close to the stage (as you can see from the blurry photo below). it was good to hear them play their new stuff, but i will always hold dear to my heart the concert i saw on their ok computer tour at the rosemount theatre in chicago...center section, third row...it was most amazing...almost a life-altering experience. well their light show has matured with the new technology, but they are still one of the greatest bands ever. we left halfway thru their encore because we were afraid of the onslaught of drunkards trying to get out. it was a correct decision since i heard a riot almost broke out in the tunnel that leads to one of the exits. luckily, a friend has an apartment on geary street so we got to drink beers while watching the poor souls waiting forever for a jam-packed public bus. ah, that is the way to do it...

pinot mania @ ipnc

well, i'm fresh from a road trip that i took with my roommate katy (of flowers winery) and my good friend rebecca (of schramsberg winery) who was interning at domaine meo camuzet in 2005 while i was at maison champy in burgundy...yes that's right...a trio of enologists! we drove up to mcminnville (oregon) in the willamette valley (about an hour drive from portland) for the international pinot noir celebration. we three are quite the pinotphiles, so it was high time that we did some serious tasting of oregon pinots (as well as the californian, burgundian, and kiwi wineries that were also pouring). we were highly impressed with penner-ash winery and a few others. there is some great potential for pinots there. the quality is defintely there in the grapes. the winemaking could be tweaked. in the end, this trip pretty much confirmed my desire to move to and (hopefully) settle in portland. i miss city living (so not the case in petaluma) and i miss new england. the willamette valley and portland hold the keys to resolving this! i can live in a city and just drive 45 minutes to an hour into wine country, ski country, and ocean beach country. and i can be among the evergreen forests that remind me of home.

i also ran into dimitri bazas, the winemaker at maison champy, my old boss, and now a good friend. his palette is unbelievably amazing. the wine literally speaks to him, so it was very interesting to taste with him and refine my palette as well. who knows, dimitri and this trio of enologists may be doing some interesting things in the future...les anges...dimitri and i before we dug into our delicious fried chicken...
becky searching the horizon at penner-ash winery...
super katy at archery summit winery...

view of the estate vineyard at archery summit...

p.s. these photos were all taken with my new favorite thing...my new cellphone, the lg dare, or verizon's answer to the iphone...

hallelujah! the sun rises again...

it's been awhile i know and i'm sure most of you have lost interest, but things have been pretty much business as usual in petaluma/sonoma county with nothing very exciting to report let alone take photos of.

there has been one thing of note that has been going on in northern california...wildfires. i didn't get any photos of how hazy it was and there's no way to instill the smell of bbq that permeated the sonoma county air for a week, but it has been wicked hazy/smokey out here since last weekend. the sunrises and sunsets have been weirdly amazing and it's been ridiculously cooler than usual because the sun couldn't infiltrate all that smoke. from my office window, you can usually see the napa mountains and mt. st. helena, but you couldn't even see 100 yards away into the next vineyard. petaluma has been far from danger, though, so i'm quite lucky.

and happily, today, i looked outside and i could see the sky...

budbreak

spring is here, which most of you know, but i've been a little slow in updating my blog. however, with spring, comes budbreak and the rebirth of our vines. it's very exciting to see the vineyard come alive again, especially since i pruned some so it's good to see that i didn't kill any vines ;).
it's also been exciting because our new winery for the 2nd label is almost finished being built. i went over last week to help guide kieran move tanks with the forklift. i also witnessed how they actually lift these giant tanks up...
i also took in a a's vs. twins game because it was a special $2 ticket/$1 hot dog night. it's nice to see that even at the colliseum, you can still find yankees haters in the girls restroom. it was a great game made even greater 'cause i got to spend it with my roommate katy and my best friend katie!

wait a second...

...i'm not in my 20's anymore?!? alack and alas, as most of you know, i turned 30 last week. it seriously just crept up on me. and you all know that i still act like i'm 25!

well, i decided to attempt to embrace it by having a party in san francisco at the wine bar, amélie (props to amelie for putting up with our party). i wished more of you could have been there, but i do realize that not all of you, unfortunately, live near the bay area. but there were still enough people (some of whom i haven't seen in awhile...that's you, former uc-davis labmates!) to make it a fun time. jenn even snuck away from the hospital and flew up from san diego! a lot of wine was drunk , but not enough dancing occurred...well the venue wasn't really appropriate for dancing and we stayed too late to try to find a nightclub before they closed. i would highly recommend amélie to anyone looking for hip wine bar to hang out in san francisco. i won't regale you with the photos dannie took of me trying to be a model (including the one that is my new facebook profile pic), but please enjoy the group shot of some of us below ...i have to thank dannie and jenn for being the photographers of the night. the photos seen here were taken by dannie, so i have to include her artistic photo from our hotel room below...