At last, the latest installment of Girls Gone Wine!

When we last left our heroine, she'd just finished two flutes of J Sparkling Wine and her bus had pulled up to Darioush Winery...(www.darioush.com, for those interested in looking. The browser on this computer isn't letting me do the usual formatting and links for my blogs!)


I’ve been to Darioush twice before. The first had been on the spring field trip, the second when we took a friend on her first trip to Napa. Third time there I was still blown away by the beauty of the place; think Persian temple, columns, sandstone, and understated elegance. I love this winery.

Our tour was hosted by Ryan, manager of the visitor center, and two of the tasting room staff (attractive young women dressed tastefully in black). After being handed a glass of the 2002 Chardonnay, we followed Ryan out back to the crush pad, where the harvest was still being processed.

While Ryan gave a little talk on the whole harvesting operation, one of the women in our tour came up to me and whispered, “Did you know that your skirt has a big rip in it?” and pointed at my backside. Sure enough, the fabric of my skirt had pulled away from its ribbon inset, leaving a rip about a foot long midway down my thigh. Ah, jeez louise….Oh well, at least I wasn’t flashing my g-string. And the rip was below the fat part of my thighs. Hey, you have to be grateful for the small favors in life, y’know? No one had any safety pins or handy dandy sewing kits, so I made due with a half dozen paper clips, which I wove in and out between the ribbon and fabric to prevent the rip from growing any larger.

We adjourned to the cellars, where we were poured more wine by Ryan and the two women, one of whom had obviously missed her calling as a Stepford Wife. Her smile was voice activated; the second anyone talked to her, she’d flash her pearly whites in a grimace that rivaled any Jessica Simpson photo op. Billy and I agreed that she was kind of scary.

We had the 2002 Syrah, Merlot and Cabernet. I’m familiar with the wines at Darioush and this was both a good thing and a bad thing. A good thing because, although my taste buds and sense of smell were still blunted, I knew how good Darioush wines tasted, and could use a certain amount of sense memory. A bad thing because I couldn’t really taste them with the clarity of senses such yummy wines deserved.

Billy bought two bottles of the Merlot, though, to be consumed in the near future. I hoped that ‘near’ meant that weekend, hopefully when I was better able to appreciate the nuances of the wine. And I got a bottle of the Syrah for a friend’s birthday, knowing that she’d share it with me. I didn’t taste as much as I normally would, though, figuring that there wasn’t much point if I couldn’t fully appreciate the wine. I left Darioush with a pleasant sense of well-being, but still quite sober.