Al Abut

Awesome Weekend

Sunday, October 08, 2006

I had a great trip to San Diego, it was a perfect way to unwind from working hard the last few months. Big thanks goes out to birthday boy Trav for putting together Saturday's wine tour - it was good to catch up with friends and to get mildly trashed, er, I mean, try out new varietals, at our second ever wine tour.

Yesi and I tasted some great stuff at the South Coast, Thornton and Callaway wineries. Even though we didn't go overboard with the wine purchases (we bought a whole damn case of Almond Champagne last time), we still picked up super yummy bottles of Muscat Canelli and Merlot Rosé from South Coast. Everyone seemed to agree that their stuff was clearly the best of the afternoon, especially the Rosé - a little group of us cracked open two bottles in the courtyard while waiting for everyone else and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

The wine was so good that Yesi almost came to blows with a new friend Tommy over accusations of theft. No, seriously, you should have seen it. Each got ahold of a handle on either side of a shopping bag and were wrestling in an escalating tug-of-war, while Tommy's friend Mark and I laughed our asses off and stepped aside to let the fiery Hispanic duo duke it out. Instead of watching the impending brawl, however, I ended up diverting disaster by finding Tommy's missing bottles of the treasured Rosé in the overhead bin of the tour bus. You should have seen his face. And that was just the first stop of three!

We met some really interesting new people on the tour. Mark of the aforementiond Mark and Tommy duo pulled a hilarious stunt by pretending to work at the second winery we visited and checked the IDs of anyone trying to get in. Not only did absolutely everyone fall for it and bust out their driver's licenses, but did so 1) no matter how Yoda old they were and 2) stayed completely oblivious to both the people right next to them taking their pictures and the peanut gallery of people cracking up ten yards away.

Props go out to Carolyn and Ed for going on the wine tour - it was great seeing them again and we've had a lot of fun on all of my San Diego trips this year. It's been a great year for them - Carolyn got promoted to Creative Director (am I allowed to say where?) and Ed's band The Thicket and his solo act are both starting to take off, playing gigs on both coasts. And also really big props to Ingrid for making it out to Bluefoot on Saturday night even though her friend's car broke down. In TJ!

Overall, I had a great few days, a perfect mix of time spent with family, friends and my girl. I even snuck in a SoCal moment in the sleepy little neighborhood known as Ocean Beach, just an hour before my flight, with fried oyster tacos in my belly and sand between my toes. It was an insanely gorgeous day, the kind of sunny paradise you have to leave to appreciate.

Stay tuned for pics later this week.

elsewhere on the web: wine, Rosé, Muscat, Merlot, winetour, sandiego, oceanbeach, Temecula, vacation