Left Coast Cowboys

On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog.

My second year trying to do NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) and I came up short. Real short. The goal was to post every day for a month. But winemaking and Thanksgiving got in the way. Actually that’s no excuse. Although November is the official month, you can take the pledge every month. Sort of like AA. In fact, I have taken the pledge every month since November 2008. And every month I’ve failed. Well, it’s good to have goals.

All I can say to any disappointed readers is: watch this space. A Vegas roadtrip with a twist is coming up this weekend.

Whew! Didn’t realize the implications of dropping out of my life to spend nearly three months living in a barn with two terriers and making wine. Last year, I found myself at the Doctor Doolittle level of craziness — you know, where you think you can talk to the animals. This year, I became the world’s oldest juvenile delinquent. Yup, I’m now officially a dropout. I missed so many classes and fell so far behind in my homework, I’ve had to make the difficult decision to drop, not just my Spanish class, but my HTML class as well.

Okay, that may not seem like a big deal to you. But I’m wondering if I’ll ever recover from the stigma. Throughout my life, I’ve always done the required reading, turned in the homework on time and I’ve never, ever dropped a class. But now…

Can I say in my defense, that before grapes got in the way of my academic progress, I had an A average in both classes? Nope, I didn’t think that would impress you much. Well, it’s the consolation I’m clinging to. At least until Spring semester when I think I’ll sign up for one or both classes in a community college version of a do-over.

At least the other day, since I wasn’t going to class I got to reacquaint myself with my Goddaughter, the World’s Most Beautiful Baby. So what better way to end this confessional post than with the palate cleanser of a few irresistible baby pictures:

TEEFIES!

Amelia with her new toy camera. She'll be starting a photo-blog next week.

Because on the InterWebs, no one knows you're a baby.

I wanted to start the month off with a fabulous post, given that today is the first day of NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. So a post that introduces all those new people who will be dropping by to the wonders of Two Terrier Vineyards would be just the thing.

Sorry, that will have to wait. The day devolved into a race through several counties and an exercise in negotiating the worst traffic hold-ups the Bay Area has to offer. Well, at least it was a nice day for a drive.

Not that there wasn’t some wine stuff going on. Today was a day for punchdowns of all the Cabernet we harvested last Thursday, and a day for racking the Mourvedre and Grenache from one steel tank to another. “Why?” you ask. Because dead yeast is still filtering down to the bottom of the tank and when we “rack”, which is a fancy word for stick a hose in one tank and pump the stuff into another, we leave behind a few inches of wine and lots of sediment. Do this several more times and you start to get a clarified wine. “And how do you know you are really getting rid of all that nasty dead yeast?” you ask next. Sometimes the method is very low tech.

You smell it, taste it, then take it out into the light to check the color. So far, so good.

Then again, sometimes you have to trot out all that fun equipment.

This crazy thing measures the level of sulfites in the wine. Yes, I know we are doing this organically, but you have to add some sulfite at certain stages of the process and for sterilization of stirrers and things you stick into the wine.

Looks like our Grenache and Mourvedre are registering very low on the scale. Here are the results in ppm or parts per million.

How low is that? Well, humans are not supposed to be able to detect, nor be affected by sulfites in lower doses than 200 ppm. (Affect as in that headache you get from cheap wine.) So you can see we're well below that threshold.

Don’t quiz me any more on this subject. I’ll have to get Andy to write a science-y guest post. I handle the more fun and less exacting work like punchdown. Or adding yeast.

Here, I'm activating yeast in a bucket prior to adding it to the Cabernet. Looks like chocolate milk!

Yes, you can let it all ferment naturally. And that’s what Cousin John is doing with his share of the Cabernet. But here’s the risk you run: there is yeast everywhere, on your skin, in the air. Who knows if you’ll get the fermentation results you want. Better to add a small bit of sulfite to kill the surface yeast, then add a good old UC Davis formulated yeast to the mix. It’s reliable, it’s consistent and it’s fun to mix up in a bucket and add to the vats. That’s called “pitching the yeast”.

And that was all the winemaking for me today. I was in the car, out of Sonoma County, up through Napa County and into Lake County to collect my mother for an appointment she has down this way. Hey, here’s lovely shot of Napa, specifically the Mayacamas Range.

We shall gloss over the fact that I got this neat picture because we were stranded on Mount St. Helena for an hour as we waited for emergency vehicles to tow a wreck off the two lane mountain road.

The hills above Calistoga have such wonderful formations, thanks to thousands of years of earthquakes and volcanos.

Then you head toward the valley floor and you see scenes like this lovely terraced Tuscan style winery.

Then home again, home again jiggety jig. Well, not really. Once we got into Napa Valley on the Silverado Trail, we poodled along behind trucks pulling winery equipment out of the fields (just about everything has been picked now except for Late Harvest Zinfandel).

And just in time for the big back up at the Golden Gate caused by the Oakland Bay Bridge being out of commission.

Tomorrow we’ll see what San Mateo County has in store for me as I head down to Stanford.

My faithful readers will remember when I first mentioned Donny Osmond on this blog. It was a throw-away line in a post I wrote about Michael Jackson’s death. In response to my musing that I thought Donny was an underappreciated talent, I got flooded with emails, Twitters and Facebook messages (People, talk to the blog!) In fact, I got more feedback on Donny than I did on Michael Jackson. So I had to come out as a secret Donny Osmond fan in a follow-up post. Next thing I know, it’s picked up in the forums at Donny’s official fan site and even reprinted on the front page. And again, the Twitters, Facebook messages and emails confirm that there are a lot of Donny fans out there. Even ones who aren’t embarrassed to admit it.

So I thought I’d better examine this Donny phenomenon in a little more depth. Not being a scholar of music or even particularly knowledgable about modern music, I contacted my go-to guy on all music theory, history and trivia from the Blues of the 20s to Rock of the New Millenium. That would be my brother, Steven, who has been a professional guitarist and student of American music since high school. Knowing how Steven used to meet mention of bubblegum singers like Bobby Sherman with a sneer and an Eric Clapton guitar lick, I was a little nervous about asking for his musical assessment of Donny. I was completely surprised. Steve has a great appreciation of Donny, who he says is an artist with a lot of cred among serious rock musicians:

We rockers always appreciate a good vocalist as they

are always so hard to find. It really doesn’t matter what style you do

as it is very easy to spot the pretenders.  Donny is no pretender. He’s

a pro with serious vocal ability.

No less an authority than Jeff Beck thinks Donny rocks. He does. Just ask him. (photo: Mandy Hall)

Then he went on to point me toward a YouTube clip that he thinks illustrates his point. In Rock guitar legend Jeff Beck’s Ambitious video, the scenerio is a tongue-in-cheek “audition” where various singers and wannabes are lining up to try out as lead singer. Among them is Donny Osmond taking a cheerful poke at his own career. But as they say, the laughing stops when Donny starts to sing. Steven points out, “Donny’s vocals can definitely stand up to and even complement Beck’s guitar playing.” (In fact, Steve wondered why Beck didn’t go ahead and cut a collaborative album with Donny. He’d buy it.) But of course, as I said last time and Steve confirms, Donny can do most everything.

Here's the Donny I'm listening to now. And this just in: Donny will also be on the next season of Dancing With the Stars.

Judging from the Donny Osmond CDs I’ve downloaded recently, what Donny prefers to do is what used to be termed “Blue Eyed Soul”. You can hear how he’s mastered that genre on his cover of the old Spinners hit Could It Be I’m Falling in Love and he puts a nice twist on Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together. Plus, he shows the BeeGees how it should have been done with a surprising take on How Deep is Your Love, a song I spent the Seventies trying to avoid. When Donny sings it, I’ve been known to hit repeat on my iPod one, or maybe even two, times. Then, on the same CD, Donny tackles Broadway with Seasons of Love (Rent) and This is the Moment (Jekyll and Hyde), Reggae with I Can See Clearly Now, and even performs an interesting do-over on his own old hit Puppy Love. As Steven says, when you have real talent and a true understanding and feeling for the music, you can cross into most any genre. The only thing I haven’t seen Donny tackle is the standards, which sorely need him. At a time when we’ve got Rod Stewart mangling Porter and Michael Buble injecting too much sugar into Berlin, the American Songbooks need Donny Osmond.

So c’mon, folks. I know there are a lot of you out there who agree with me. Git yer Donny on and let’s start a movement. Download your favorite Donny Osmond songs and hold that iPod up high, no matter where you are. Tell the world, WE ARE DONNY NATION. Say it loud, Donny Fan and Proud!

NOTE: Here’s that Jeff Beck Ambitious video I told you about. Watch it and tell me if you don’t think Donny should be a rocker front man.

I’ve just discovered two great old broads. They aren’t my grandmothers, but I’m appointing them that title in the Blogosphere. It’s Margaret and Helen. They were born in 1925. They’re 82 years old. They’ve been fast friends for more than 60 years. Then Helen’s grandson set her up with a blog. The rest is fast becoming raucous InterWebs history. Helen, who lives in Texas, is really the blogger. But Margaret is on the phone from Maine nearly every day and her comments get incorporated. Their husbands Harold and Howard get mentioned from time to time, especially Helen’s because he’s a Republican. Margaret and Helen are decidedly NOT.

In common sense and often salty language, Margaret and Helen give their spin on today’s top news stories. Worried that Obama’s health care plan will bring about the “death squads” Sarah Palin warned about? Helen will set you straight. You’re an idiot. Furthermore, Helen reassures you that your final wishes are all in your own hands. Just write a living will. She and her husband have one with an interesting twist:

“Mine states that unless the feeding tube is large enough for a piece of pie, I don’t want to be hooked up to it. Harold, of course, says his can only be connected to him if the other end is connected to a bottle of single malt scotch.”

Margaret and Helen have been friends since college in the Forties. I imagine them in their campus days somewhat like this

Helen also tackles Rush Limbaugh. At least as hard as she could if she weren’t confined to that scooter. But after Helen finishes chastising him for disparaging Walter Cronkite, Margaret weighs in and reveals her own crush on the famous newscaster:

“Helen, dear, we can certainly agree on one thing for sure. Walter Cronkite was a very sexy man. I tell you, he was the Anderson Cooper of his day. He could melt my butter each and every evening. He could toast my bread on both sides. He could float my boat, row it out to sea, and wait for it to return with the tide any day of the week.”

Don’t even get these gals started on Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney or Governor Sanford and Republican hypocricy.

Oh, and by the way, Margaret and Helen are not rated PG. More like R. Helen admits she loves to use words like shit, dumbass and bitch. She says they make her giggle.

Here’s one of her many takes on Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney:

“No wonder these guys look bloated and constipated. They’re full of shit, and lots of it.”

Okay, that made me giggle. So new Internet Rule: when you are this funny and you’ve lived this long and still kept your edge, you get to use whatever language you want.

Viva Margaret and Helen!

Note: all of these images were found at random on Google Images. Neither is of Margaret and Helen. Just the Margaret and Helen of my imagination.