wine on the lawn

I ended up coming across a group of folks on campus who gather for intermittent wine tastings. They don't really happen on a regular basis, just whenever someone declares them. My group moved to a lovely office with a courtyard lawn, so I thought it was a good time to declare one. Unfortunately the warm weather didn't make it to Friday, but it didn't stop people from coming. Usually we have maybe 10 people, this one drew a good 30 folks with 15-16 bottles of wine. I think we went through 10 of them and half way through 4 more with only 2 left unopened.

Along with my "mystery" (scraped off the label from a 2005 2 buck chuck Chardonnay - the California State Fair winner), we also enjoyed:

Villa Creek 2005 Mas de Maha Tempranillo from Paso Robles - a very good screw top Tempranillo. It was great because we didn't have a bottle opener yet and it was the only thing we could open. We have since rectified the situation of the wine bottle opener.

Another wine that people enjoyed was Edmeades Zinfandel, but I didn't get to it before it reached the bottom.

Another wine I enjoyed was a Malbec, but I didn't catch the vineyard, all I know is that there were ants on the neck label. The ants were meant to coincide with the theme of "grass".

For those who didn't drink there were tons of snacks and just all around good conversation. Grant it people couldn't resist talking "shop", but somehow "shop" is so much easier to talk about while sipping wine.

One person brought their sweet beagle who sat on her hind legs at everyone who had food sending her dog telepathy, "drop the food. drop the food".

People enjoyed themselves so much we're thinking of doing the next one in December perhaps with a Champagne theme.