We who love wine and are fortunate enough to live in Northern
California are truly blessed. Within a short drive from anywhere
are regions that produce world-class wines and most of those
wineries have tasting rooms.
We who love wine and are fortunate enough to live in Northern California are truly blessed. Within a short drive from anywhere are regions that produce world-class wines and most of those wineries have tasting rooms.
Just think: from the southern end of Santa Clara Valley, a wine aficionado would have to drive less than an hour to sample the best that Monterey County or the Santa Cruz Mountains have to offer. And it doesn’t even take that long to get to the Hecker Pass operations or the San Benito County producers.
But we are really lucky in that the Mecca of American wine regions, the Napa Valley, is an easy drive to the north. Sure, it’s not close enough for a relaxed day trip, but in addition to great wine, the verdant valley is home to some very tempting accommodations and fine dining establishments that make a weekend stay a real treat.
Of course, the real star here is the wine. If you become interested in wine, it is essential to make the pilgrimage to Highway 29 in Napa County. Along that route one will find the magical names that resonate through an oenophile’s purple-stained heart: Niebaum-Coppola. Beaulieu. Beringer. Cakebread. Grgich Hills. Merryvale. Heitz. St. Supery. Opus One. Clos Pegase. The side roads are populated with equally famous names such as Stag’s Leap, Clos du Val, Silverado, Frog’s Leap and Joseph Phelps.
Mind you, those wineries are not bunched together. This is California after all, and here we drive everywhere, using as much gas as possible. So every weekend, Highway 29 is chock-a-block with SUVs stuffed with happy wine tasters, flitting about like happy hummingbirds dipping their beaks into the nectar offered at each stop on the wine trail.
However, there’s a certain group of angry mothers who take a dim view of all that imbibing and driving, and they have a very powerful ally, the California Highway Patrol. Even though the tasting portions served at wineries (especially high-priced Napa wineries) are small, after five or six of them, the average person would certainly fall into (no pun intended) the “impaired” category. What’s a wine lover to do? Well, there are several options.
One is to use a designated driver. The ideal situation would be to cultivate a friend who absolutely detests wine, or is deathly allergic to it. That person can drive while you taste. Alternatively, there are many limo services that specialize in Napa wine tours. Also, you could do what most professional wine tasters do (and there’s no way to say this delicately): spit.
At any wine competition – and indeed on tasting room counters – there are buckets for spitting out wine after rolling it around the tongue. Can you imagine the condition you would be in at the end of the day if you were to taste several hundred wines and not spit? Ay Caramba.
There’s something vaguely decadent-sounding about this process, not unlike tales, related in countless Sunday sermons, of degenerate Roman orgies wherein revelers would stuff themselves with food and drink and then purge their stomachs so that they could consume more.
And speaking of degenerate, if you think the Romans were weird, get a load of what goes on at wine festivals in Australia and New Zealand. They have wine-spitting competitions. That’s right, friends, wine-spitting competitions.
Here’s a description culled from a Web page titled What’s on in Queensland: (in American English that means “What’s happening in Queensland”)
Waltzing Matilda with Barambah Ridge, Sunshine Coast Hinterland
Celebrate Australia Day at Barambah Ridge Vineyard, 79 Goschnicks Road Redgate, Murgon. BBQ for the whole family followed by the Barambah Ridge Barrel Racing and Wine Spitting competitions – both certain to be hotly contested.
Well. Too bad we missed that. It was on Jan. 26. Bad on us, mate.
Anyway, the sport of wine-spitting evidently involves expectorating a mouthful of the fruit of the vine and aiming at various targets. According to What’s on in Queensland, “Success in the Wine Spitting Competition will depend on spitting style and flair as well as accuracy.”
Here I am acting all high and mighty toward those wacky Australians when in reality I am a citizen of the country that brought the world watermelon seed-spitting competitions. America is also a country that finds relevance in Monster Trucks, Donald Trump and the dalliances of Paula Abdul.
So it should come as no surprise that wine-related spitting competitions are coming to a winery near you. The Cedar Creek Winery of Cedar Creek Settlement in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, (you think they might have Cedars there?) hosted the “Ready-Aim-Fire Grape Spitting Competition” at its annual Grape Stomp last summer. Can Napa be far behind?
A word of advice: if you’re lucky enough to find yourself tasting a refined Cabernet at a well-known winery, and you choose to spit it out: Etiquette demands that you lean over the bucket or urn provided and discreetly expectorate the unwanted wine.
It’s considered very bad form to stand across the room and loudly proclaim “hey, everybody. Watch this!” and hurl an arc of wine toward the bar. Very bad form indeed. Save it for the fields of competition.
