August 31 2007
Let me paint a quick picture for you … while my wife and I were on vacation in June, in California, in a 23 ft. rented RV, with our dog, a Pug/Beagle mix, cover girl for the book Mixed Breeds for Dummies, we took a hot lap through Napa on our way to Bothe State Park to camp for a night, before heading over to Yosemite National Park.
In order to get provisions for the evening we needed to stop at Dean & Deluca on Hwy 29 in Napa Valley. This is how I roll when I camp—RV and cheese and crackers, tough guy that I am. Unfortunately, on any given Saturday the Dean & Deluca parking lot is jam packed, and particularly jam packed for a 23 foot RV.
However, and most fortuitously, the Flora Springs tasting room across the parking lot was not packed. So, I dropped my wife off at the door of Dean & Deluca and parked the RV lengthwise across four parking spots in front of the Flora Springs tasting room. My big ass rented RV was simultaneously causing a mini-eclipse while reflecting a shadowed pallor in the large, glass picture window of their tastefully modest retail storefront tasting room. I get out of the RV wearing shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops, with a days beard growth and four heads on a swivel, Flora Springs’ employees, look at me through the tasting room window like I’m either Satan’s spawn or Cousin Eddie.
At that point, I was going to leave our dog in the running RV with A/C while I joined my wife to shop for a couple of minutes. She always gets mild cheeses and I wanted to get a stinky gorgonzola with some honey. Based on the angle and arch of the eyebrows of the faces in the windows of the Flora Springs tasting room, I quickly re-thought that strategy and figured a tasting in the lovely Flora Springs tasting room was a darn good idea. I dutifully paid my tasting fee, which was credited towards purchase, if I recall correctly, and did a fly through tasting while my dog looked forlornly out the front seat window.
Given a choice of heaping scorn and being the story at the end of the day as an example of the unwashed masses OR essentially paying a parking fee in the form of a tithe to the church of wine at Flora Springs, I chose the latter and the ’05 Sauvignon Blanc. A pretty good wine, and one I won’t soon forget. Thankfully I did buy the bottle and didn’t need to peel out of their parking lot disgracefully because well ... Total tasting room time coupled with Dean & Deluca shopping time 17 minutes. Total waiting time to turn left onto Hwy 29 at 3:00 in the afternoon on a Saturday: 19 minutes.
This is a nice wine and my review can be viewed here:
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