I can’t believe it is May already. It is hot in San Diego, summer is here, there are girls in bikinis and drunk guys with tattoos all over the place. There are keggers and guys with signs that say “I have weed for sale.” I am not sure that my little hamlet is part of the real world. But it is good to come home from a long and tiring work trip and get back into non-reality.

So. The company I work for gives out an award every year, for excellence in wine literature. That is, the writing of many books about wine. In order to get the award you have to have written about American wine a bit. All the most famous wine writers have received this award, except for Oz Clarke. I’m sure he doesn’t really give a fig about this, but I am just as sure he would be pretty happy to come and accept it if he did. This year, the recipient was the 90 something year old Robert Lawrence Balzer. At first I was like, why are we giving the award to that guy? I didn’t realize, that he is totally loved by all these old winemaker and wine industry guys. Plus, he hung out with Gloria Swanson (which he went on and on about in his speech.) OK. Homie REALLY won my respect when I spotted him, during the Press (I mean part Press and part Professional Drunk/Gate Crasher) tasting, smoking a cigarette on the steps of the California Culinary Academy with a couple of young, hot, future grill cooks. I tried to be accomodating (which of these 790 wines would you like on your dinner table, Mr. Balzer? He gives me the look that is given to all women who are not Gloria Swanson.)

It was a good event – out of 14 of them (in almost 20 years) I have done 13 and it’s getting pretty smooth now. I can’t even begin to describe the set up of 800 or more different wines, on long tables, by varietal, at 6 A.M. Well I could describe but it would be really boring. Just imagine setting 150 Chardonnays on long tables in alphabetical order and then discovering you forgot one. You then have to move 300 bottles four inches to make room. Let me just say that there is a bit of Champagne flowing amongst the staff by 10 AM, when the Press/Professional Drunk Gate Crasher Tasting starts.

The Press/PDGC tasting goes for six hours, and then we clean everything up for a big banquet and all the boys at my work (all hot 30 somethings) are in tuxes and I am in a cocktail dress from Ross Dress for Less. I sometimes have a hard time getting rid of the PDGCs at 4:00. At 3:30 I go around and say WE ARE DONE IN HALF AN HOUR. PLEASE MOVE ALONG. Some of these dudes are still on Gewurztraminers; there are about 500 reds to get through, and they want to try them all (or at least all the expensive ones.) Last year, there was a bit of a problem as some of these guys did not listen to me but instead, at 4:00, proceeded to pour 3/4 full glasses of Stags Leap Cabernet straight down their throats. So this year, I wasn’t taking any of that nonsense and instead told them, borrowing from the film Pulp Fiction, that if they did not finish by 4:00 I was “going to get medieval on their ass.” Well, what do you know! It worked! They all left by 4:15. I need to expand this whole S & M thing with the wine writers in my life.

So we (us and 150 other paying folks, like Mr. Robert Mondavi) eat and drink and then we have several hundred bottles of wine, half or 3/4 full, left over. Everyone asks, what do you do with all that leftover wine?

Well, email me and I will tell you.

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