Back In The Saddle

It has been some time since I wrote anything on this blog.  In fact, I haven't written anything for about three years.  Ugh.  I blame it on Congress.  What else are they good for?  Seriously, it's John Boehner's fault.  But in reality, it is due to the rigors of my litigation practice that has sucked up all my time for far too long.  My clients thank me for it.  But the courts have these silly things called deadlines and due dates, and I am nothing if not punctual.  I'm not 100% Type A, I'm more of a Type A/Type B hybrid, but I am good at meeting deadlines.  Since I last wrote, Washington passed a new law privatizing its liquor stores and restructuring the industry.  So there are lots of new wine and liquor stores around Seattle and all around of our neck of Cascadia.  Many things have changed in a short three years.

But enough about me.  What wines have you been drinking lately?  Great.  Back to me.  I have to talk about my latest wine favorites.  And about the last few times I slithered around Woodinville.  If you are what you eat, I am a grape.  Which one?  Probably a grenache, I don't know.

I'm a big fan of Sparkman Cellars, no mystery to anyone who knows me.  My five-year-old niece even knows.  We were drawing the other day and I drew a wine glass and inked in the sketch with a dark purple crayon. Then I asked her what I drew.  She said "Sparkman wine."  True story.

I have been a "Ring of Fire" member of the Sparkman wine club since its inception and I did not know that they made a Pinot Noir.  There aren't many Pinot Noirs that seem to come out of Washington wineries, so I was surprised.  Hot weather dominating the news, I was sniffing out lighter, summery wines, and I didn't really have red wine on my mind, even though I gravitate towards the reds.  Lately I've been entranced by rosés.  But when I tasted the Sparkman pinot, I was taken aback.  It was a nice, light, airy red that goes well with 88º weather in Puget Sound.  I just don't want a heavy red in the summer when my mollusk nature prefers shade in the mind-squelching heat of the global warming sun.  I felt like I could drink their pinot with a Kansas City barbeque brisket, with oysters and mussels and manila clams, and with barbeque salmon.  I don't know.  It was like a cross between a nice delicate pinot noir and some kind of rich, Provence-style rosé.  And this is not just the heat exhaustion talking.  I took home a few bottles.  I'm now riveted on the concept of Washington pinots.  I'll be digging into this more in later posts.

So, rosés.  I'm kind of a Provence purist when it comes to rosés.  But what about Washington rosés?  Gilbert Cellars and Waters Winery are two of my favorites.  If you see these on a menu this summer, these are definitely worth ordering if you like the dry Provence-style rosé.

I have a Court of Appeals deadline tonight, so I'm going to switch over to my legal analysis personality now.  More about rosé as soon as I can take off the lawyer hat.