Bottle Your Own

Kevin and I had been planning a long weekend, make that a family weekend, at Papa's cabin in Pollock Pines. However, life got the best of us and we had to cut it to 24 hours, minus the kid.

Kevin, who never works on Veteran's Day out of principle, decided to head up to Charles Mitchell in Fairplay to "bottle your own wine". As we are both virgins to this, it was a perfect date.

We dropped Charlie at Nana's for a slumber party and headed for the hills, literally. I need to stop and mention that at 11:11 AM, Kevin pulled over (not on the freeway) and played Taps (see photo) in honor of this special day. It was lovely. To me, Veteran's Day was just a day off from school. That was until I met Milo Nelson (a special thanks to Jeff Wright for this introduction). I spent many a day at the Veteran's home in Yountville visiting with Milo who taught me about the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918....It was after spending Veteran's Day with Milo many years ago that I began to appreciate this day. I look forward to sharing this story with Charlie.

So, we arrived at the winery with our case of already labeled empty bottles and I stood there feeling quite inadequate. What do we do? Where do we start? Maybe we should just start drinking. So, that's what we did. We tried the three wines that we could bottle. A Bordeaux blend, a Zinfidel, and a port. After buying $10 worth of pizza and getting a little food in my system, I was ready. We decided to purchase a case. $5.99 a bottle...who could resist? It was really so simple. Stick the bottle in and it automatically fills and stops at 750 ml. Pull it out, cork it, wrap it up, and label it. We each fills our bottles and Kevin corked them, while I wrapped them in the foil using a "hairdryer".

The best part of the day was when one of the volunteers asked me who was corking and I pointed to Kevin. "Tell him to put the tapered side down," he said. "There is no tapered side and it'll be fun to watch him try to figure it out." Now, this was my kind of guy. "Hey, Kevin make sure you put the tapered side down," I called over my shoulder. I watched as Kevin held up the cork, examining it, turning it over trying to figure the damn thing out. It was priceless. You all know Mr. Know-It-All and when he asked, "How can you tell?" I busted out laughing.

We made quite the team and learned a bit from the veterans. We placed our labels over are old labels, making our wine bottles look like an old time suitcase with stickers from various places plastered all over. We're not sure if we'll actually spend the time to de-label them for the next go around or just keep adding labels.

We enjoyed some more wine, tasted from the barrels, contemplated joining their wine club...next time, and scarfed down more oven-baked pizza. The day was cool and crisp, but still warm.

We decided that next timewe'd bottle an extra case as Christmas is just around the corner and what a great gift. So, if next year you get a bottle of wine from us, yes, it was cheap, but I promise you'll enjoy every drop.

We headed up the hill, stopped at Holiday market to buy our typical date night food, read by the fire with hot chocolate in our hands, enjoyed many episodes of Entourage...we're finally catching up, and headed to bed early. What a treat to wake up at 6:30 AM knowing that it was my internal alarm that woke me, not the pitter-patter of feet. Yes, we did miss our family cuddle in the morning, but Nana took care of it for us.

Charles Mitchell and Papa, we will be back! Kevin, thanks for a wonderful day!