Wines in Orange County with Tom S

Our pleasure, I'm sure. :^) It's always interesting to meet fellow AWFers. I have yet to meet a turkey.

I hadn't been to Laguna Beach in decades. I arrived about an hour early and walked around town, checking out the art galleries.

Very pleasant evening, with a nice

This wine would have been better if served at the dessert end of the meal instead of before. It pretty much end the following (dry) wine dead in its tracks.

I'll take all that as a serious compliment. :^) Ian has a couple of bottles of that stashed away, and has tasted it at a couple of points in its development - including while in barrel. Mike has one also. The one I gave Dale is the reserve lot (more new oak).

This was the first Austrian wine I've ever tasted, and I really liked it. I'm not meticulous about note taking as Dale, and I can't pull all those wonderfully descriptive adjectives, similes and metaphors out of a glbutt as many others routinely do - but this was a rich, somewhat fat, yet crisp wine.

I'm a big fan of Italian wines, but this one didn't really *sing* to me. I left it to Kriss and Dale, who seemed to appreciate it much more than I did. Perhaps I should have poured a glbutt and just let it sit for awhile - but I didn't. I recall Kriss really liked the nose.

Another first for me: sweet Vouvray. I have to confess that Chenin Blanc really doesn't do much for me. This was an OK wine, but I couldn't help thinking that Chardonnay made in the same style would have a lot more depth and intensity.

Betsy and I had a very nice chat. I didn't mean to hog the conversation with her, but it was difficult to hear Dale or Kriss across the table because the ambient sound level was rather high, and neither my hearing nor lip reading are up to par. :^

The service at the restaurant was quite

I had a taste of both Betsy's mussels and Dale's calamari, which were both a lot better than my pasta dish. As usual, after long deliberation I managed to find the worst dish on the menu and order that! I really shouldn't bother reading the damned thing, but simply order the special - whatever it is.

Next time we really should coordinate our wine selections in advance. That has to be some sort of record: three wine geeks, five bottles of wine, and only ONE of them red! ;^)

Still, this was a fun evening, and I'm privileged to have broken bread with these three nice folks.

Tom S