Good evening, wine lovers!  After spending the past five days in the beautiful Central Coast wine country of California, we have arrived back home.  Soledad, Paso Robles, Cambria, Big Sur and Monterrey .  .  . amazing places to visit and a great way to spend a vacation.  But, there is no place like home – we have really enjoyed writing about the experiences of the past few days but relish the opportunity to write about WINES going forward.  It was a beautiful morning in San Francisco .  .  . cool, sunny with almost no breeze.  Our day started with breakfast – thank goodness for Denny’s coffee and a trip to the airport.  You can really tell that San Francisco has planned their airport for LOTS of traffic.  We were dropped off at our airline by Ellie Mae and Jethro who had a later flight – we proceeded to the ‘dreaded security area’.  Actually, the wait was much less than anticipated and we made it through scanning without much to talk about. (We did get full body scanned – quite a treat to start the day) It was almost amusing when we got to our gate and our flight was non-stop to Austin and in the gate immediately to our left was a non-stop flight to San Antonio that got in a half hour earlier!  Mr. Drysdale and Ms. Jane joined us on the flight – so it was eventful!  After a delay on pushing away from the gate, we were in line for take off – seven, count them seven planes ahead of us!  We ended up taking off a half hour AFTER departure time, but miraculously, we arrived ON TIME in Austin at 4:15.  Man, it always feels good to take a trip but it ALWAYS feels good to get home.

After a quick stop for a sandwich, it was on to the house and a chance to visit the ‘family’!  Our four-legged children were very excited to see us after being cared for by our special pet sitter, Mitsie Benton with Happy Paws Pet Service.  As usual, she did a great job of taking care of them, so we could keep them at home as opposed to taking them to a kennel.  There is a magic with vacations that you know you’re ready to get home when you realize there is work to do and you can’t wait to get home to do it!  On top of that, the break was just long enough for us to enjoy some great wines, some delicious food and our great friends.

Coming home tonight, we decided to forgo our Paso Robles wines (no worries, you’ll be hearing ALOT about them in the days ahead!) and instead opted for a Sonoma County Zinfandel given to us by Jean’s Dad, Bill.  The wine is a 2007 Carol Shelton Rocky Reserve Zinfandel, and it is a great way to come back home!  Of course, you’ve come to expect us to talk about zinfandel, and this wine kicks some butt .  .  . thank you very much!  A great nose of pepper and spice with lots of fruit greeted us when we pulled the cork, and then the first sip – WOW, it was smooth, tasty, fruity and oh, what a nice velvety finish.  We couldn’t have picked a better way to wrap up our vacation and usher in the next several months of wine blogging.

For those of you who have recently signed on to follow us, thank you.  We have learned that not only do we appreciate good wine, but we appreciate the process of making wine, the concept of marketing wine and the fun that comes from sampling and tasting wine.  Even though we are now home, we’ve learned and continue to learn about the stories of wine makers that are inspirational, family-oriented and have a cool under current.  We visited with Don Brady at Robert Hall Vineyards who  has ties to Texas and man, he is a great guy who really knows how to make delicious wines; we visited with Greg and Tealy at Barr Estates Winery who showed us that it takes hard work to make a quality product.  We can’t wait to talk about some of the amazing  wines that we tasted during our trip.   One of the great things about visiting wine country is ordering some wines and counting the days until their arrival – kind of like Christmas!

Tonight, we relax and enjoy our final hours of vacation with a renewed sense of energy and focus – good wine is not just a hobby – it’s a passion and much like the makers and sellers of wine that we met over the past several days, we hope that you’ll continue to enjoy good wine as well, but please remember to enjoy your wine responsibly and recycle whenever possible.