The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind. Last weekend, our normal weekend was upended by my having to cater the annual Delaplane Cellars Club Barrique dinner out at their winery in Delaplane. It's an event that I enjoy in that it is a pretty easy gig at a beautiful location, but it robs Ann and me of a very, very precious day together. And the lead up to it is always very involved. All the planning and sweating of details takes about two weeks and makes the dinner look easy, but leaves me exhausted.
In spite of being exhausted, I decided that after the Sunday night dinner gig, on Monday after I got out of work Ann and I should go on a real date to try to get some us-time before I turned back around and jumped into another 1200-piece catering job this week, which is now delivered to the customer giving me a spare couple of minutes to think.
Monday afternoon, after I got some errands done and the fire suppression-system contractor had come and finished maintenance on the system, I got quickly to the "Aw, screw it!" point with the remaining paperwork on my desk. I've learned over the years that that never-ending pile of crap will still be there tomorrow, so I headed home mid-afternoon to be with Ann.
I hadn't been home very long and was sitting in my chair pondering what to do on our date night when Ann asked "Are there any wineries open on Monday?" I grabbed my phone and checked and found that two of three local favorites, Delaplane and Linden, were open while Glen Manor was closed. We were just at Delaplane in October and I was just there working the night before, so it was a no-brainer to go down to Linden and visit before they closed at 5pm.
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| Petit Verdot: Ann's Choice |
When we arrived after an easy 40-minute drive, there were perhaps five vehicles in the parking lot including the winery pickup so we knew it wouldn't be crowded. There was only one person behind the counter doing a tasting for another couple. We were waiting our turn to do a tasting when Jim popped out of the office on some errand, spied me (Ann was in the bathroom at this point), and instantly an impromptu off-script comparative tasting was on. He clearly needed to get away from paperwork as much as I needed to.
Honestly, I hadn't expected to see Jim at all. We spent a good half an hour catching up, running through this harvest, chatting about his and my plans for turning over more of the reigns at our respective businesses to a younger crew, and my and Ann's plans to relocate to Oregon. In between chatting, we got a really good comparative overview of most of the wines they have on offer. The big fruity Petit Verdot struck Ann and so we got a bottle to enjoy out on the deck with a little light lunch.
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| It Was a Happy Time |
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| Late Lunch |
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| Drinking Al Fresco |
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| Shooting a Panorama |
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| Lovely Any Time of Day or Year |
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| What Ann Was Filming |
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