Take a long dram with me
of California wine, of California wine.
And the wine, it tastes so sweet
as we lay our eyes to wander,
and the sky, it stretches deep.
Will we rest our heads to slumber
beneath the vines of California wine?
Beneath the sun of California One. 

– the Decemberists

Despite being a Washington State native and rather uninclined to live anywhere else, I really like visiting California. We lived briefly in Santa Barbara after we were married, and this was the first time we’ve been back to visit. So nice to see the live oaks and the dry grassy hills (at least the ones not recently burnt black) and smell the eucalyptus.

To boil down our Memorial Day weekend to a few sentences: we drank wine and ate barbecue. Then we went to a wedding and had more wine, and oysters, and more barbecue. Then a lot more wine.  Whee! Many thanks to our friend Deron who drove us all the way out to Foxen Winery. I loved Foxen’s porch tasting room.

We also stopped by Curtis and Rusack Wineries. Curtis offers a tasting with chocolate truffle, quite nice with their syrahs.

And, of course, the Jonata Winery vineyard, which was where the wedding was held (Jon’s cousin is the winemaker there). We missed out on visiting the winery, but the ranch was gorgeous.

And, just because I can, here’s some goodies from the wedding. The food was all grilled onsite (many guests hovered near the grill in an attempt to stay warm) and there were fantastic wines at each table, each of a different vintage. Our table was 1997, so this was our wine:

It was very good. Not Californian, but the other dozens of bottles being poured made up for that.

The actual dinner (after a great deal of time spent lurking around the oyster table) kicked off with a salad of greens, dry goat cheese and blood oranges.

Then came a basket of fresh sweet cornbread and herbed butter. We ate quite a lot of this.

The rest was served family style, with platters brought to each table. Grilled halibut with herbs, baby back ribs, grilled artichokes, and mixed vegetables.

We left sometime after the firepit was set alight and most of the guests had climbed down into it to stay warm. I gather they eventually ran out of wine. The groomsmen looked a little pale the next morning.

I do believe a good time was had by all.

And now we just need to decide when we’ll be back to California. Soon, I hope.