Oh Boy! Rotational Thursdays with Litre.

Good evening to you!

At this point I’ve just returned from a much needed vacation in Arizona! You see, my folks, and my in-laws both live in Phoenix because they are not stupid and flee the Canadian winter. Sadly they live clear across town from each other so I did so much driving to appease both parties. Total of 26 hours through the week, basically I could have driven home in that time.

Here are a few observations from my time in Arizona.

• Blax is an absolute beauty and we had a great time at a brew pub, Gigantes game, and at a brewery. Goldwater brewery is a great spot and have a superb Desert Rose Kolsch. He did bring up a really interesting point for Spring Training, the players involved should be wearing the unis of the team that they either played for last year or are slated to play for this coming season. For instance if you played for Sacramento last year, then fire on that uni and if you make the show you graduate to the Gigantes uni next year. I don’t see a problem with this as look at the All Star game with all the different unis.
• Speed limits on the freeways are merely a suggestion, and driving here is like a video game. (confirmed by Blax)
• Old people pay no attention to yellow lights, it seems that they give themselves a 5 to 10 second cushion for when it turns red.
• If you want to see incredibly attractive women at a Cactus League game go to Scottsdale, not Mesa. They seemed to roam in pack of 4 to 6 and there was quite a large amount of stagettes there as well. .
• U of A fans are fun, hilarious and troll ASU fans on the regular. “Bear Down” is a constant call to each other. So I looked up the meaning, which you can find here
• I’m normally a weekend drinker but due to the prices of good wine and being on vacation I definitely earned the moniker of Prairie wino down there.
• Phoenix is spread out more than the Houston 500 and it is still spreading.
• Flagstaff has a LOT of cool breweries and is a great town.
• In closing, I really like Arizona, especially the change in climate, landscape, and scenery throughout the state.

Not really a travel story but I have now met 5 DFOers in real life (BC Dick not included because he’s family) and I must say every one of them have been absolutely wonderful. From BFC giving my weed cookies to his crew, BeerguyRob’s beer vendor voice, GTD driving through a blizzard for beers, Maestro fitting in seamlessly with my workmates and now the thoroUghly enjoyable afternoon with Blax. They have all been amazing experiences. Next step is to meet the booze exchangers and talk to Hippo through his window as he rarely leaves his abode. This is a phenomenal accepting community that was created here and here is to many more years of dick jokes, Boss Todd, recipes and booze. Huzzah to you all.

As for wine I will just chat about wine tastings in beautiful Jerome, Arizona.

We escaped our parents and dumped Decilitre with the inlaws for a night and headed up to the Grand Canyon as my wife had never been there before. Had a great night brewery hopping in Flagstaff which was a great experience then we decided to drive back to Phoenix through Sedona so we could see the red rocks, the valleys and a town that really reminds me of a ski town sans ski hills.

After that I decided to take Mrs. Cola to Jerome, Arizona which is perched up on a hill overlooking a valley. It’s a very artsy village with many galleries AND wine tasting rooms. As I was driving and did not want to get a DUI we decided on only going in to one spot and seeing what was what.

We decided on The Original Jerome Winery which turned out to be a great decision. We were the only ones there at 1st and Vanessa was tending the tasting room. She’d been a server for many years in Sedona and decided to “retire” to working this spot once she turned 50. Basically what I want to do in a couple years.

I’m not a dickhead who announces that I have my sommelier papers but when my wife and I start discussing wine you can pick it up pretty fast. Mrs. Cola has her WSET level 1 and plans to get her level 2 in the coming year so our discussion is very fluid. Clearly Vanessa was bored and wanted to chat so she pulled up a barstool while we were tasting. She eventually asked me about my past as we were discussing a couple grapes that were foreign to me. Why were they foreign? They were clones of two grape varietals that were made in the lab back in the day in Montpellier, France. We’ll get into cloning of vines in future episodes. She was quite pissed off about the weekend staff who did not date any of the bottles in the vinoteca pictured below. In fact she made me be the tester for everything as she had too much coffee that morning and had already shot her pallette.

Vanessa was absolutely lovely and was actually ticked off when other customers came in as she then couldn’t hang with us. We were going to leave but she then floated by and gave us each a comped glass of wine and told us to hold tight as she would be back once the others left.

I found their Cabernet to be really slick and smooth, especially since she had just opened it and it hadn’t had time to develop. One of the non cloned varietals that we had was Charbono which I enquired about any aliases that it had and indeed it is also known as Bonarda which I definitely have had before.

I do like obscure bottles in my collection so we left with 3 bottles from there as well as my raid on Total Wines. All in all my visit to Arizona was absolutely phenomenal.

At time of writing I am in Sky HarboUr Airport and do not have a sports lineup for you tonight, but it is MLB Opening day where everyone has aspirations, except the Diamondbacks as Blax has stated that the owner is a cheap fuck and does nae care.

He did float an idea of having the A’s as a moveable team around the league. Wichita? Maybe!