Wine Bottling.

So, being as I have been to *almost* every brewery and brewpub in San Diego(There are two I haven't been to) on Friday I offered to take my friend to one of the local ones, Oceanside Ale Works, as he'd never been. Unfortunately, I had to wait til I got off work...

I hate working Fridays. So I had a beer at lunch. ONE beer, a Tecate. When I got back to work after my lunch break, we had a vendor there doing a tequila tasting for the employees. And a vodka. So I had a shot of Gvori vodka(very clean), and then on to the tequila. Dos Manos tequila. Silver(technically it's a platinum since it's triple distilled) was smoother than expected, Reposado was okay, Anejo was decent. Not the best tequila I've had, but far better than many I've had as well. Then I had the Tonala anejo, which was good, I've been curious about that one, but was leery of it because of the bottle it comes in, which is a hand crafted ceramic vessel. There's a thing amongst tequila makers, and some sell their Tequila more through the appeal of the bottle rather than the tequila itself. I digress. Finally, I had some of that lovely Tonala 4 yr Anejo. Technically(again!) you could call it an extra-anejo, or leyenda, but they've been bottling this stuff since before the recent amendments to Mexican Tequila Regulations, so they're not calling it extra...That stuff is good, sublime, and a damn good deal, I must say. Good sipping Tequila.

So let's see, 1 Tecate, 1 vodka, and 5 Tequilas, and I still had 3 more hours of work...well, that last hour? Yeah, that's when we've started our beer tasting...

Sometimes Fridays suck, and sometimes I can light my breath on fire.

Anyways, we make it to Oceanside Ale Works and get our first pints, I get a bratwurst, and we're mingling, talking to people, checking out the brewery...and then we notice that right next door is a winery. So we amble on in, beers in hand, and start chatting to the guys at the winery. We decide to do their Wine Tasting, blow through a Barbera and a Nebbiolo that were unspectacular, but then they give us a Cabernet Reserve which was damn good, and a nice tawny Port, and I love me some Port.

Anyways, we chat up the guys, talk to them about coming in to my work to do a tasting for the employees(boo-yah!), and then they mention how they're bottling wine tomorrow, and to come by if we want to help out, get a couple bottles of wine out of it...

can you say hell yeah? And that's without having had 1 Tecate, 1 Vodka, 5 Tequilas, 1 Blonde Ale(4.5%), 1 Strong Ale (8.2% I think), and 5 or 6 glasses of wine(they certainly weren't counting)...

So much bloody fun. Got to learn a lot about the wine making process, got to have a lot fun. Of course we were drinking the wine as we were bottling it. Everyone had a glass. Of course we also had a pitcher of beer from next door. So it would be, Fill Bottle of wine, drink beer, cork bottle, drink wine, dry off bottle of wine, cap it, drink, heat wrap the cap on, drink some more, put the labels on, drink and drink and drink...box.

So yeah. Pickled. It was a bit of work, I'll confess, but to be honest, we were having so much fun we didn't care.

I owe thanks to my friend Susan who came and gave us a drive home(don't drink and drive kids!), and another thanks to my roommate who drove me back to get my truck.