2006 Joseph Swan Vineyards "Cuvee de Trois" Russian River Pinot Noir

Now, I know you may think living in California means endless days of sunshine and warm weather, but I have to shatter that idealistic view. Northern California isn't quite the same as southern California (from what I hear). No, I didn't suffer from a winter the likes of the many I spent in upstate New York, but I did experience a rainy season where it, well, rained. A lot. Constant clouds, wind and rain for months (okay, that's an exaggeration - it wasn't everyday, but it sure felt like it!).

I know what you're thinking, east coasters. Poor girl, suffering from above freezing cool temperatures and rain, while we endured an endless battering of snow storms leaving us stranded and shoveling ourselves out of our driveways. Believe me, I know it could have been worse. And, I'm not complaining. Yet, those months of less than ideal weather still made these first returning days of sun feel like the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I'm spoiled, because I got a taste of summer a week earlier than other Napa residents with a quick weekend trip to Arizona. Last weekend, Ryan and I flew to Phoenix, a getaway prompted by the Railroad Revival Tour headlined by English folk rock band, Mumford & Sons.

It was dark when we landed, but that first step outside the airport was such a release. Putting on flip flops, my feet felt freed from months of captivity in boots.

We lucked out: despite finding ourselves in the middle of the desert, the entire weekend was sunny and warm without being unbearably hot. We enjoyed Saturday lunch at a lavish resort outside Scottsdale, Sanctuary, with Ryan's friend Alexi and his fiancee, Krystal. The four of us then took in the concert in Tempe, enjoying openers Old Crowe Medicine Show and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, before singing along to Mumford & Sons.

The concert was over by 10pm and we found ourselves at a nearby bar in the collegetown - and I found myself to be pathetically far past my college days. I could barely keep my eyes open as the bass blasted from inside the Mexican-themed dive bar. By the time we returned to Alexi and Krystal's, I was essentially already asleep before even getting into bed.

Perhaps I can blame my exhaustion on the sun? A non-stop few weeks at work (that are bound to continue)? Weekly tasting groups and constant (attempts at) studying for my WSET exam that is inching closer and closer (June 7. June 7. June 7.)? Whatever the cause, I was perfectly content to enjoy a nice lunch and lounge by the pool on Sunday afternoon - before a very delayed plane ride back to reality.

I enjoyed it so much that this Sunday I did just the same - this time in Napa. The sun followed us home and this weekend was the first taste of summer. Oh, how I've missed summer. Despite spending the early part of my days studying, sitting outside with the warm rays on my back somehow made it feel less like work (and left me with a lovely little racer-back tan line on my back).

I think I could get used to Sunday afternoons by the pool. Today, it was at Laura's house for her first official summer pool party of the season. I'm still amazed at her accuracy in predicting May 1 would have pool-worthy weather two weeks ago, but I won't question it. I'll just sip my rose and take it.

After a night of decadent food and a 2006 Joseph Swan Vineyards "Cuvee de Trois" Russian River Pinot Noir - light-bodied, with soft cherry flavors - at FARM at the Carneros Inn, a little sunshine was just the cherry on top of the cake of the weekend.

That, and seeing sun in the picture for every single day in the long range forecast. Hello summer.

2008 Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon

Last night, I hosted my first ever Seder dinner. Now, in my 25 years on this earth I have been to my fair share of Seders, the traditional ceremony held on the first two nights of Passover. However, hosting is an entirely different ball game than attending. I couldn't rely on my grandfather for the facts - I actually had to know something about the holiday!

Work and class commitments had prevented me from making the cross-country trek to join my family for the holiday this year and, though I'm not religious, it seemed disappointing to leave the occasion unacknowledged - especially considering I would, nonetheless, be going 8 days without bread, in accordance with the Passover-specified dietary restrictions. And without pasta. And rice. And chickpeas. Thank goodness quinoa is in the good graces of kosher for Passover foods or, as a vegetarian, I might be starving this next week.

Yet, somehow, the food at the Seder always manages to be filling and delicious. Despite an additional seven days in the barren wasteland of food, that first night (or first two nights, if you're lucky enough to have two Seders!) is filled with yummy matzo balls, charoset (a blend of chopped apples, walnuts, cinnamon and wine), endless vegetable dishes and sensational desserts incorporating chocolate, coconut and almonds.

At least those were the foods incorporated into my very first Seder last night. At hearing my disappointment in not being able to return home for the celebration, my boyfriend's (non-Jewish) parents more than generously offered to have a Seder for me in their home. Ryan's mom and I spent weeks planning the dinner, deciding on a menu, what china to use, how to structure the evening. It was one of the most gracious things anyone has ever done for me, dedicating so much time, effort and energy to making a holiday away from home still feel special.

And it truly did feel special. We did some of the prep cooking last Friday night, sipping on wine while making homemade matzo (to somewhat disappointing results) and an appropriately pre-Passover carb-loaded dinner of fresh mushroom pizza and pesto pasta. Oh, how I miss pasta already.

Before cooking, Ryan and I picked up kosher wines from Jeff Morgan, winemaker for Covenant wines. At our Seder, we served the 2009 Lavan Chardonnay with our matzo ball soup, unfiltered and oaky. The 2008 Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon was a perfect pairing with the brisket, or so I was told (yes, we had a meat main dish to please the crowd!). We also had bubbles and a Pinot Noir from kosher producer Hagafen. There was no shortage of kosher wine at our table.

At 2pm yesterday we started cooking, with our guests - Ryan's roommate, Katie, and her boyfriend, Andrew - arriving at 6:30pm to start the Seder. I explained the meaning of the event, how we would re-tell the story of the Jews' exodus from Egypt, of the escape to freedom, of how the Seder is a celebration of the sacrifices our ancestors made so that we aren't slaves today. Ryan's mom related the theme to the modern world, stating that its a moral we can all apply to our own lives, Jewish or not, by appreciating our existence as free people. She mentioned that Obama is the first US president to have a Seder in the White House - and that we were using the same Maxwell House Haggadahs (the Passover book) that he was!

It was different than my "traditional" Seder. I led, but allowed Ryan's father to stand in as the host when the Haggadah called for it. I explained the meaning of each step, recited parts in Hebrew where I could, embarrassingly singing some of the melodies to the Passover songs. We drank our four (plus) cups of wine, reclining as the Haggadah instructs. We asked the Four Questions, spoke of the Four Sons and searched for the Afikomen, the broken piece of middle matzo that Ryan's father hid for us "children." (Andrew found it, winning the prize of a 2004 Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon - only a slightly better prize than the $1 Sacagawea coin I won as a child).

No, it wasn't traditional. But, perhaps it was even more meaningful. Sharing the experience with others who weren't as familiar with it, but who were open and wanted to learn, who wanted to understand and see how they could make it fit into their own lives - it was refreshing. It was invigorating. For someone who characterizes herself as non-religious, it oddly made me feel more connected to my heritage to explain it to and share it with others who aren't Jewish.

Don't get me wrong - I missed my family and our traditions. I missed how my grandfather interrupts the flow of the Seder with new information the rabbis have just discovered when all we really want to do is get to the meal. I missed the singing that my cousin Jay leads after we have eaten. I missed the quality time with my family, my grandmother's matzo ball soup, my Aunt Benay's quinoa, my Aunt Randee's homemade macaroons. In the Seder we say next year in Jerusalem, but is it wrong if instead I wish to next year combine the two traditions, my family's established one and the one I have now created?

No matter where I am or who I'm with, I always know my family is there with me in spirit. So, as long as I have some great company, delicious food and continuously flowing kosher wine, I know my next Seder will be just as much a success.

As we say in Hebrew, Chag Sameach, or Happy Holiday!

2009 Grover Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc

For any readers still out there, let me apologize for my prolonged period of silence. I have a confession to make: I've been back from India for more than a month now, without filling you in on anything.

You see, the trip was a whirlwind and the transition back to reality so abrupt that I wasn't quite sure how to devote the time to properly processing it all. It took a week to deal with the jet lag, another to get back on track at work and then, before I knew it, a month had gone by, I had jumped back into the "real world" and neglected to share any of it here.

I know, I know - excuses, excuses. It was my mother's dear friend, Heidi, who finally exposed a crack in that wall that I'd built up, the undesired writer's block that seems to inexplicably develop the longer you avoid putting your thoughts down on paper (or, rather, into a computer). I believe the exact threat was:

"please tell Sherry if the blog isn't updated soon, she will start losing readership. Advertisers will pull their dollars, and the whole media empire she's building will start to crumble."

That was 11 days ago. And it has still taken me this long to sit down and do something about it. Good thing there are no advertisers with dollars to pull (yet?).

So where to even begin now?

After my sincere apology, I suppose I should start with India, which feels like a lifetime ago (I am already desperate for another holiday, which seems to suggest that I have, in fact, had a crazy, hectic, busy month). If a picture tells a thousand words, then I have a thousand times a thousand words to share with you in Albums One (The North), Two (The Wedding) and Three (The South) from my trip.

Another confession: deadlines from the powers above necessitated I write two articles on my India experience on wineandfoodtravel.com, one on Indian wine (which I was surprisingly impressed with, particularly the 2009 Sauvignon Blanc, which could have had me fooled as an offering from a more established wine region) and another on the Keralan backwaters, the most relaxing part of my whirlwind two weeks.

The wedding itself, the first one I ever attended (pause for shock), was simply mesmerizing. Jamie, the groom, entered on an elephant.

Megha, the bride, looked like royalty as she was carried in on a throne.

The two of them sat for hours underneath a flower-adorned gazebo-type structure (I'm sure that's not the technical term) performing the various rituals that would legally bind them as husband and wife.

We watched on, the westerners, unsure of exactly what was going on, yet ironically decked out in traditional Indian garb while the Indian men wore western suits. Megha's aunt let me borrow her beautiful salwar suit, a generous offering that was just one of many during my stay in the culture.

How to sum up two weeks of adventure into a single post? We saw the Taj Mahal in Agra, searched for tigers in Ranthambore National Park, visited a centuries-old synagogue in Cochin, lazed about on a houseboat in Alleppey and treated ourselves to a dining experience fit for royalty in Mumbai.

And, then, just as quickly as it arrived, I was back to reality. A good reality - a busy job, a weekend of class (aka tasting wine), a new relationship (that has been going strong since January). For the first time, returning to Napa felt like coming home. And what was the first thing I did upon arriving back home? Well, go wine tasting, naturally.

It may be real life, but my real life involves a lot of bubbly. I'm a lucky girl.

Still, it's not all play and no work. As my absence suggests, work has been hectic, I've started to devote more and more time to studying for my next WSET Diploma exam in June, plus a weekly tasting group, and I have embarked on a regular workout "regime" in an attempt to burn off the pounds of naan and curry I put on in February.

I have also played hostess to a seemingly endless stream of visitors who have found their way to Napa this month. That means many a wine tasting, a meal out and even a much-needed spa day. I've gone bowling, cooked a vegetarian version of Croque Madame, quesadillas, arancini, chili and a uniquely St. Patrick's Day crepe-themed meal. I've seen a performance of The Tempest by the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival at a local high school. I attended a Lobster Feed, where I wore an apron and a red hat with class, while being entertained by a creepily accurate Elton John impersonator. I even saw Lady Gaga in concert!

So, you see, I have not been ignoring you, dear readers. I simply have been up to my ears in commitments. Yet, I vow never to go this long again without updates. After all, it's my responsibility not to let my media empire crumble.

Or, in all seriousness, it's my pleasure to share the ins and outs of Napa life with you here.

2004 Sullivan Coeur de Vigne

I apologize for the brevity of this post, and for the lack of creativity and accompanying visuals, but I am writing this as I scramble to pull my things together and make it to the SFO shuttle on time. My flight leaves late this afternoon for India, with a full-day stop in London on the way.

I'm excited, anxious, nervous, all these things, but mainly I'm just out of time and lacking the adequate focus to process it all. I had so many things to share this week, so many things to check off my To Do list and not enough hours to do them all.

I'll be gone for the next two weeks, likely without internet access and a method of regular posting; however, I'll be toting along my new SLR camera and a journal throughout the journey. Two weeks in India - the first in the north, the second in the south. I can only hope to return with lots to tell - and show - you.

2008 Goats Do Roam Red Table Wine

For days now, the sun has been shining and the temperature rising. Yesterday I walked around without a coat on. In the middle of January.

Now, I'm told this is not typical northern California winter weather, but frankly all I've heard since moving out west is how atypical everything is - it's usually warmer during the summer, it never rains in San Diego, winters are always much colder and wetter than this. I've decided I'm going to accept everything labelled "unusual" as "normal" from now on. Whether or not this is how January has been in the past in Napa, I'll take it.

My brother, Landon, was equally pleased to bask in the sunshine while visiting over the weekend. It was the first time we'd seen each other since I moved in June. Though he subsequently followed me out west in August, Bozeman, Montana is still a plane ride away. That, coupled with his lack of vacation time (he's the sports director at the local NBC affiliate, and the newest member of the team) and minimal pay meant it took a few months before the first visit.

So, you can imagine I was pleased when he booked his flight for January, expecting rain and cold, to instead be welcomed by t-shirt weather and sunshine. He left with a completely warped view of Napa as paradise, which he was glad to take home with him to snowy Bozeman.

A weekend is a seriously short amount of time to show someone all that the bay area has to offer. We debated spending a day in San Francisco, but since we only had two full ones, we made the realistic decision of maintaining a narrow focus on the valley. Wine, food, the outdoors - it's not hard to fill a weekend up here.

Keeping in mind the focus on typicity, Landon's arrival on Friday night was greeted by yet another unusual experience. Sometimes I wonder how I find myself so frequently in bizarre situations.

This particular situation traces back to Thursday night, when I was at the Oxbow market searching for groceries to cook dinner. I selected what looked fresh - parsnips, baby carrots, red kale, some pasta and cannellini beans - yet I was uninspired as to what to do with the individual ingredients. After a loop of the market, I ended up at the spice shop and found myself asking the proprietor if he could recommend some spices to turn my ingredients into a meal.

That single action - asking for spices - resulted in a delicious dinner of pasta and roasted root vegetables, as well as a dinner invitation for the following evening: Shabbat dinner at my new Israeli friend Shuli's house. Yes, I asked for spices and then got asked to dinner.

And so, on Friday night, Landon and I found ourselves driving to Novato to celebrate the Sabbath with Shuli, his wife, Ronit, their three kids and a number of international friends: Israeli, South African, Argentinian. Shuli cooked a delicious meal (using his spices, of course), even making his own bread. One of the South African guests had brought a bottle of red Goats do Roam, a play on words of 'Cotes du Rhone,' the French wine region home to the grapes in the blend. The evening was entirely bizarre, out of context and utterly enjoyable.

Shuli joked with his guests that he and I had known each other for 22 years, since he'd come to this country, then laughed it off and revealed that we'd met merely 24 hours prior. It made no difference. Old friends or new, we were welcome in his home.

"So, this is what you typically do on a Friday night?" Landon joked in the car on the way home.

Not in the past, I answered, but I'll certainly be going back!

We walked off the night's festivities on Saturday during a brisk hike with Nathalie and Laura up on Howell Mountain. It was a perfect day and we rewarded ourselves with a picnic in the vineyards, a reward that left us so satiated that none of us could do more than lay comatose and watch movies in bed for the rest of the evening.

Yet, somehow, Landon and I found the stamina on Sunday to put in a full day of touring and tasting, visiting each of Napa county's towns, as well as four vineyards. We started the day at Signorello, where I taught Landon what an infiniti pool is (surely he has seen The O.C. before?), then stopped at Robert Sinksey, one of my favorites, where we enjoyed the biodynamic wines and light food pairings. An electric guitar in the window of Page Cellars in Yountville led to an hour or two of tasting at the bar, followed by a leisurely finish on the patio at Alpha Omega with a glass of the 2007 Proprietary Red in hand as the sun went down.

Landon left this morning, but the gorgeous weather has persisted. I'm eager to visit him soon - Bozeman is meant to be beautiful - yet, I think I'll wait until the spring when the weather typically improves. I wouldn't want to get a warped impression of Montana country.

2007 The Fight Syrah

I've been asked on a number of occasions if being tested on blind tasting takes the fun out of drinking wine. It's a logical question; if I'm so focused on accurately identifying what's in my glass, am I not being too analytical to sit back, relax and just enjoy it?

My standard response has always been "absolutely not." I'm a wine lover and one of the most beautiful things about wine is that no matter how much you know, there is always more to learn. Blind tasting simply allows me to better appreciate what I'm drinking.

However, I questioned my optimistic outlook this past weekend.

Saturday and Sunday I had my first class session for Unit 3 of the WSET Diploma. Over the course of two days (16 hours of class, to be exact), we tasted 32 wines. Each day I left brain-fried, lips stained and questioning why I was willingly putting myself through this.

Don't misunderstand me - it was informative, challenging, enjoyable even - but it was exhausting. Our focus was France, as we rapidly went through PowerPoint slides on each of the country's wine-producing regions, tasting through representative wines from each. It wasn't entirely blind, but we were expected to start forming associations amongst the grape variety, style of wine and appropriate region. I didn't actually drink a single drop, but instead looked, smelled, sipped and spit, taking detailed notes at each stage.

For the first time, I could fully understand the point-of-view of those who have questioned my wine studies. Here I was with some of the world's finest wines in my glass and instead of drinking and enjoying, I was taking notes and spitting! If the ultimate goal is to appreciate what's in the glass, was I really doing that?

Well, yes and no. No, in that I wasn't immediately enjoying the wines in the conventional sense. Yet, the exercise was designed to help me better appreciate the wines in the long run. When I find myself with a glass of wine in my hand in a "real" drinking situation, I'll not only enjoy it, but I'll understand why I like it.

In theory, that is.

Despite my complaints of wine tasting fatigue, on Saturday night I found myself at downtown Napa bar The Bounty Hunter, infamous for its "brown bag" wine blind tasting. Though the menu features dishes such as beer-battered chicken (clearly, not my thing), the bar has quite an extensive wine-by-the-glass list, one option which is a mystery wine of the bartender's choice. If you guess the wine right, your glass is free; if not, you pay.

The wines they choose are notoriously challenging (they won't be serving you a Napa Cabernet), but my tasting partner, Ryan, and I were feeling pretty confident in our blind tasting abilities that night (perhaps our courage was brought on by the 2007 The Fight Syrah from Red Car that we shared with dinner at tapas bar, Zuzu, earlier).

I'd like to say I blame my tired palate (I was already 16 wines in - 17, if you count dinner), but really they stumped us. Ryan, a winemaker himself, had a cheat sheet that he pulled out for us to use, outlining the distinguishing characteristics of the main grape varieties. Even with that crutch, we had two failed attempts: the first turned out to be a Spanish Tempranillo, the second an Argentinean Malbec. Blind tasting certainly isn't easy.

After continuing my studies late into the night, it was a struggle to get back into it Sunday morning. I considered Saturday night's continued practice a lesson, skipping the wine with dinner on Sunday as I dined at Farmstead with Adelle and Meaza, friends and fellow Cornell graduates who had come up to Napa from San Francisco for the day.

Skipping wine with dinner? Perhaps all that structured tasting really is taking the fun out of drinking wine? Well, it definitely didn't take the fun out of dessert, a chocolate tart and a meyer lemon tart, both enclosed in the most delicious homemade graham cracker crust I've ever tasted.

Fortunately, the effects on my enjoyment of wine weren't long lasting. I was perfectly happy to sip on a glass of Chardonnay while Nathalie, Laura and I cooked and caught up on Monday night.

I didn't even think about what was in my glass; I was just happy to be relaxing and enjoying it.

2007 Rubicon Estate Captain's Reserve Zinfandel

In case you were wondering, if you ever move to a new place and need to get a vaccination, bring your immunization records with you. Oh, and if you work in a medical center that provides vaccinations, it's also a good idea to tell your patients to bring said records before they arrive at the appointment that they left work early for. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

In approximately three weeks I am headed to India to attend Megha's wedding, a good friend whom I met while living in London. I've been prepping for this trip for months and it's all becoming real now that I am in the process of getting Typhoid vaccinations and anti-malarial tablets, a process made all the more difficult by not packing immunization records in my suitcase when I made the cross-country move.

For someone who prides herself on being organized and efficient, you would have thought this would have gone more smoothly. Yet, the entire "India preparation scheme" has been one giant faux pas after another.

Take the visa process, for example. I started on the application two months in advance (far ahead of the one month required), only to realize that one of the requirements was a passport with at least two blank visa pages. Judging by the fact that the last time I reentered the country my passport had to be stamped on the addendum page (which resulted in rolling eyes and a sigh from the man at passport control), this meant that I had to send my passport in for additional pages to be added. Which takes another 6-8 weeks. And so had to be expedited.

Oh, but that's not it. Once I received my passport back with all its lovely new pages, I overnighted it along with my visa application to be processed with exactly one month to go, receiving a near immediate email in response that my proof of address was insufficient. Clearly, moving in the midst of a government application process was not ideal timing. I had my landlord/roommate write a letter affirming that I do, in fact, live where I say (and the lease says) I do. Ironically, today my passport was returned to me with my visa issued, as I sat at Clinic Ole arguing to be shot with a needle.

But, I digress. We were talking about vaccinations and the drama that I found myself in today, namely that dear old Clinic Ole scheduled me for an appointment to have immunizations for Hepatitis A, Polio and Typhoid, yet didn't really have any intention of actually giving me any of those. One hour of personal time from work for naught.

Well, not entirely for naught. I walked out with a Polio vaccine, a boo-boo and a band-aid, as well as a prescription for anti-malarial tablets, instructions to go to county for the Typhoid vaccine and a written note to the pharmacy to give me the Hepatitis A vaccine (since they didn't have either - perhaps another fact I could have been told before I arrived?). Not sure how I feel about CVS giving me an injection, but when I went there to get it they also didn't have it. Tomorrow I will locate the mythic pharmacy on Old Sonoma Road that is promised to prevent me from contracting Hepatitis A, according to the experts at CVS.

Yes, it hasn't been the smoothest process, but as I sit here with a sore arm and a cloudy head I am comforted by the fact that at this time in three weeks I will be in India, preparing to join in the festivities at Megha's wedding, legally and Malaria-free.

I would be even more comforted if I had a glass of the 2007 Rubicon Estate Captain's Reserve Zinfandel I was drinking last week, but we can't win them all, now can we?