Wine Outlook

The great thing about working at Rosenblum is that when we work very hard, we make up for it by playing very hard. Such was the case last night. In December, on a random Thursday, we had our busiest day ever. We even passed the famous Rockpile day. I wasn’t here for that, but I think it was after the 2003 Rockpile Road Zinfandel hit #3 on the Top 100, and calls poured in. (If I’m wrong, please feel free to leave a comment, as my memory has been known to fail me.)

Anyway, as a thank you to those of us in retail who were busting our butts that day, Kent and Kathy took us to the Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge right here in Alameda. (We didn’t even need to travel.)

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2003 Rockpile Road Zinfandel, Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge

Monday evening we had our holiday party at Foreign Cinema in San Francisco. Quite a charming place to which I’ll have to return and actually watch a film. A few of us girls took the ferry over and therefore got there a little early. That meant having to check out the bar downstairs, while waiting for our room to be ready. We had some tasty cocktails, though the wine list looked rather promising. Then it was onwards and upwards, in our balcony overlooking the rest of the dining area and bar. (more…)

Friday was the culmination of a season’s worth of late evenings and early mornings. Tons of grapes were driven in, crushed, fermented, and barreled, which meant bins and tanks had to be cleaned, pH levels measured, and a million other tasks. Finally, the big stuff is done, all there is to do now is wait (and rack, continue to run tests, and sample, but you know what I mean). As you may have gathered, at Rosenblum, all hard work is rewarded by hard play. Therefore we all gathered for an End of Harvest lunch. Sid was in charge of the rotisserie-style pig and smoking the salmon, making it quite the affair.

Each department was in charge of different courses, including apps and veggies. We had everything from crab dip to spinach salad, from the Filipino dish lumpia to pineapple upside-down cake, extra rum. That’s Chris, our chemist, who can also cook up some tasty red beans and rice. And I had all kinds of fun running around making squash, asparagus, and mustard greens–which I ordered everyone to put over the yummy corn bread Kevin had made. (more…)

End of Harvest

There were ghoulish decorations and bowls of candy everywhere– some of them talking. We poured good wine as usual, including the 2005 Rosenblum Rominger Syrah from Yolo County that recently got 91 points from Wine Spectator. It was from the Advance sneak peak, but I had already put it on this week’s tasting menu because I thought it was drinking quite well. Despite the wine’s new found attention, I think the most interesting thing about the day were the characters walking around. We had Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a corresponding vampire, Goth girls and a Geisha, and even “the juice of life” (Meg and her puns).

I’m not sure who or what Kenny G was, other than amusing, as he wore the wig and hat combo I got at Walgreen’s that morning. My plans to make him dress as the ‘real Kenny G’ didn’t exactly come to fruition. But we all laughed all day, and I think everyone who came in had an especially good time. And some people even got a secret pour (St. Peter’s Church Zinfandel, in honor of it being the eve of All Saints’ Day) if they could guess who I or Meg was. I was surprised at how many people figured out I was Buffy.

By the way, there’s none of that Rominger left, so don’t even ask….It’s not fun to be the bearer of bad news, as I was all day today.

2005 Rosenblum Rominger Syrah

Rosenblum Cellars makes 200,000 cases of wine annually, buying grapes from almost 90 different growers all over California. While we do have one vineyard, it’s up in the Russian River Valley, far from the winery in Alameda. Situated on the water, next to a shipyard, it’s easy to forget about the agricultural aspect of the business. That’s why I think Grower Days are such a great idea. It gives production workers, tasting room staff, marketing gurus, and other employees the chance to tour the vineyards and talk to the growers, getting back to land and back to the basics.

A few weeks ago, I got the chance to go on the only overnight trip, which is down to Paso Robles. Having just been there, I already knew that I loved the area and the wines I’d had. But this time we weren’t going to any wineries, only walking among the vineyards, getting to see up close the oyster shells in the calcerous soil that BK was so interested in on our previous trip.

Of course, it being the Rosenblum gang, there was no shortage of alcohol. It began with having lunch on tables set up in the yard at Catherine’s Vineyard, with nearby coolers of beer and Rosenblum wine on ice. Later we would tour the oh-so-fun Margarita Vineyard, complete with a ride on an old Disney train and dinner under the stars and twinkling lights, a country band to serenade the meal with many more bottles of wine.
*I’m only thankful that the bar down from where we were staying was closed when a group of us trooped over to ride the mechanical bull, as I’m not sure anyone would have stayed on at that point…. The sad thing is, we were opening really good bottles, new releases of Syrah and such, late into the evening. And my friend Nathan was right when he said I’d need to increase my tolerance working at Rosenblum… I was out well before many of the others and was given quite a hard the next morning at our last stop at the Mondello Vineyard for how I felt and looked like I felt. (That’s me on the left.)