Stan The Wine Man

I bet most of you thought I gave up on writing. I apologize for my absence, but I assure you that writing is a passion for me and I fully intend to continue providing interesting content. I particularly love this segment as it allows me the liberty to give somewhat random and sometimes cohesive information that I hope most of you find interesting. So, what has been going on in my world lately?

I’ve been focusing on Washington State wines on my YouTube channel since March is the original “Washington Wine Month”. The Washington Wine Commission added August sometime later and now we have two “Washington Wine Months”. For the longest time, I resisted observing the August version. Why do we need two? Obviously, it’s a marketing ploy to get stores to focus on featuring Washington wines during these two months. I can’t say that I’m fully on board with August, but I do mention it and have a couple of YouTube episodes on Washington wines during August. Since March is the original, that is where I spend most of my time focusing on our great wine-producing state. I think we can all agree that Washington State puts out some amazing wines. My “Pick Of The Month” for March is a Merlot from Corvidae Wine Company called Rook. It goes for a whopping twelve dollars. To be honest, I could have chosen several wines to be featured during March for under twenty bucks that are stellar! The quality of Washington wines, especially in the higher-end category, rivals many of the big hitters from Napa Valley at a fraction of the price.

My wife Susie and I are looking forward to traveling abroad once again as the world slowly creeps back to normal. To say the least, it’s been trying times this past two years. Places to go on our radar include South Africa, India and of course London and Paris. I hope we can go to the Rhone Valley as well as neither of us have been there. It is such a joy to be with someone who enjoys travel as much as I do. Susie is our travel planner and she does an amazing job. I have to be careful not to make every trip wine-centric, but Susie is always a good sport and doesn’t mind spending time with me exploring the many wine-producing areas of the world. I have to say, that when we go to India wine will not be involved. What will be involved will be tigers, temples and the culture of the people.

The mask mandate was lifted for Washington State just over two weeks ago, which means I can now plan in-person wine events once again. During the past two years, I have utilized Zoom to keep on my schedule with wine events that were booked nearly two years prior. When the pandemic hit hard in April of 2020, I was at a loss as to what to do. I thought I would have to cancel the many tasting events that I had scheduled for that year. I sat on a board meeting via Zoom that month and things started coming together. I purchased some two-ounce tasting bottles and started scheming a way to have my scheduled guests present their wines to my group via Zoom. It has worked wonderfully. However, I never intended Zoom to replace in-person tastings. The tactile experience of being together is something Zoom cannot emulate. Some of my peeps came to enjoy the Zoom events and I have to say they would prefer I continue them. It took me over four hours to fill the bottles for the tasting kits that we handed out. I asked that the participants return the small bottles so that I could sterilize and wash them for the next event (the bottles are not cheap). That process (which included peeling off the labels) took over five tedious hours. To say doing all that was worth the effort is an understatement. However, if we can taste once again in person, that is my preference. Zoom will always be a tool at my disposal and I will use it when necessary. I know that at some point, the in-person tasting will become the norm once again.

Cheers!

Stan The Wine Man