Thursday, July 20, 2006

Enjoying California Wines

Sometimes I wish I had gone to Cornell as an undergrad. Then I could have taken the famous wine class. A friend of mine went to Cornell and told me that it's really hard to get into because it's only open to Seniors and depending on how the stars are aligned, you get access to enroll in classes at random times because of some weird thing about their system.

Right now I'm in San Francisco again for work. It's a pretty nice place to get shipped off to for work. And if I ever leave New York, I'd probably come here to San Francisco. If I were here I could make more trips out to Napa Valley. I've done the Napa thing once and it was so much fun, despite the almost silly inherent oeniphile elitist feeling you get when you're out there. Even if you're not Andrea Immer, you'll become your own wine expert after one trip out to Napa and armed with lots of information the next time you're at a fancy restaurant.

Last night, I had dinner at One Market which is across the street from my hotel here in San Francisco. Besides the food, which was really good, the best part about it was the wine. They're running some sort of promotion to promote awareness of California wines. The deal is 50% off of ANY bottle of wine in their list, which is like a novel. My friend and I got a bottle of yummy 2003 Cakebread Cabernet for only $60 as opposed to $120. Usually I hate buying wine in restaurants because of the absurd markups (worse are the stupid corkage fees), but $60 is less than retail for this bottle. Tasting it made me think of the good times I had in Napa.

2 comments:

tim said...

I know and have worked with Andrea Immer. If you get a chance, you should take a class with her. She's very inspiring.

Jon said...

I dunno, I like San Fran too, but I get bored easily there. It's small, you need a car, and don't get me started on that tacky Japanese tea garden at the DeYoung Museum-- that garden looks horribly tacky and 'wannabe'