Today, at Premiere Napa Valley® with a kick-butt CIA buffet lunch. Lots of micro salad (with mache effectively ascending to the throne once held by iceberg), buffalo burger sliders and almost any wine you can imagine. Being on the Ital-in-Cal beat, I thought we'd voyage to explore new wines and new experiences.After tasting wines from Napa made of Primitivo, Malbec, Gruner Veltliner and Sangiovese, we sidled over to the Cabernet counter. Just for fun I had them pour a 2003 Silver Oak Napa Cab, so I could blind taste my writer-gal. See what someone thought of a popular wine if they didn’t know it for its celebrity status. I took a little taste too.
The Silver Oak Cab? She thought it was really tasty, felt it really expanded well in her mouth, but was not overly jammy. Surprised? I was as well. Did it boldly go where no wine had gone before? No, but it did seek out new woods.
At the dessert course, an Italian from Venice came up to our table to share the space. We got to talking in Italian (Yes, I sometimes do parlare in Italiano), and he suggested I stop by and taste his Nero D’Avola from Calistoga.
I promised I would, and on the way we fell into an accidental celebrity vortex around Silver Oak’s corner. And who was tasting their wine but William Shatner (James Tiberius Kirk or Denny Crane depending on how old you are). Lots of fun seeing the old boy. Now there’s a profile.
Nothing earth shattering, just a little mindless fluff for a damp and cold Saturday afternoon, from the Alpha quadrant traveling past the transwarp barrier.
Fresh pepper?
4 comments:
Everybody remember where we parked.
-James Kirk, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, after landing the cloaked Klingon bird of prey in Golden Gate park
Beam me up some of the "Good" stuff Scotty! Alfonso, there were lots of great wines at that tasting. Dirk
That is hilarious. I looked at the photo and thought to myself "that looks like William S. in the background." Lo and behold, it was.
On a serious note, I am happy that so many Italian varietals are being sought after by CA growers. However, it confuses consumers when they taste the original versions in Italy and say, "these taste nothing like the one I drank in CA!" I'm not sure what the net effect will be.
How did his toupee look in person?
Did you know that Shatner passed a kidney stone while filming 'Boston Legal' a while back? He negotiated with GoldenPalace.com to buy it for 75k (after they initially offered about 15k)! Then, he got the crew to chip in another 20k and they bought a home for a displaced Katrina family in the N.O. area.
True dat... really!
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