Saturday, March 15, 2003

Wine(s!) of the Night Whoa - a great wine night - totally! The Ski Boy and I had dinner with friends at Jens. Our wine choice of the evening was the 1998 Beringer Alluvium - we had two bottles, both of which we had decanted - still too young to stand on its own. What a wonderful meritage. It's mainly merlot: 75% - surprising that the Slat Rat would be such a fan. But it also has Cabernet Sauvingon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec. All of which combine to give the wine the merlot smoothness plus body, the right amount of interesting spice, and a deep color. A truly super bottle. Whatta treat A friend of mine was also dining at Jens - she was on a date. Turns out "the date" is a real wine guy. I had sent over two glasses of the Alluvium to their table. In response, they sent over two glasses of a 1996 Stangeland Pinot Noir. What a perfectly wonderful Pinot - nice light berry Pinot color with a - rare - hefty Pinot taste that was not over oaked. It's tricky - tasting a Pinot after a big wine like the Alluvium can be real disaster - the poor Pinot can get subsumed by the big meritage. But I could still easily taste the quality of the Stangeland - nice level of tanins anf fruit and much more robust than your average run of the mill Pinot. Of course, Stangeland is a boutique winery - which means that other than going to the winery itself or getting on the mailing list or knowing someone, you'll never have an opportunity to get one of their wines. sigh... The "date" also had a bottle of the non-vintage "Rob Roy" Pinot from the same vineyard - oh my. Another nice little perfect pinot with a friendly alcohol level: 12.5%. Perfect for us wimpy Slat Rats. A very well made smaller wine. Unfortunately I can't add more to that description - the wine just came too late in the evening... 10:28:24 PM    comment []

I hate to keep harping about Wednesday night's windstorm hurricane. But the winds really were at hurricane levels. A downtown weather station at the Phillips building registered gusts of 130 mph - which according to the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale is the top end of Category 3 or the bottom end of Category 4. As reference points, Hurricane Fran of 1996 was a Category 3 and Hurricane Opal of 1995 was Category 4. How about them apples! If this had been the East Coast, we all would have been evacuated and the event would have been a major news story. Instead, the Ski Boy and I just went out to dinner, blogged at the height of the storm, spent a sleepless night, and then went to work the next morning. There was quite a bit of damage - blown off roofs and decks, exploding windows, trees falling on houses, etc. But I bet you can't guess what the most common damage was. Give up? The answer is: burst pipes! Just about everyone (except us, miraculously) lost power for most of the night. The temperature that evening was between 0 F and - 10 F. The hurricane force winds blew all the warm air out of the buildings and as a result most North facing interior pipes froze. When the power was restored and the buildings started to warm, the pipes thawed and then burst. Several major office buildings downtown were nailed. When you drive through downtown, there are large frozen lakes everywhere. Yesterday and last night several of my friends' homes also got thumped as the temperature warmed up into the teens. You don't hear about Floridians dealing with burst pipes during one of their hurricanes! 6:07:02 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Stephanie A. Kesler. Last update: 4/1/2003; 9:07:16 PM.