TJ finally had a few moments to send some pictures to me, and I wanted to share them with everybody. I’ve never been to Washington State, but can tell from the pictures that it is a magnificent part of the country. With views like these, no wonder the grapes are so happy.

His first day was spent exploring Walla Walla and I think it’s easy to see that this might be one of the most spectacular tasting rooms ever. It’s over looking the Walla Walla Valley at the Caderetta Winery.

Of course, when you’re in Walla Walla, you’re probably going to run into Charles Smith. He hosted a dinner for the group at the K Vintners tasting room. Here TJ is wearing Charles’ glasses, channeling his best DJ Lance Bass.

The next day TJ was put to work, pruning, crushing and pumping over. Here he is picking his first ever grapes off the vine.

Being a spaz with some grapes from “The Benches” in the Wahluke Slope appellation at the Long Shadows Winery.

Testing PH levels of grapes that he crushed by hand. I was happy to hear that those size 14 feet did not come into contact with any grapes, thus preserving the 2011 Syrah vintage.

Here is a cork tree at Columbia Crest. Columbia Crest is one of the largest and oldest of the Washington State wineries, and arguably the most widely known. They bottle 20,000 bottles of wine a day! They personally farm over 3,000 acres and purchase grapes from another 5-6,000 acres in order to meet the demand. They have over 20 miles of underground cellars. Amazing.

And lastly, a gorgeous sunset at Waterbrook winery. If it’s this beautiful on an iPhone camera, you know it must have been truly stunning.

I wish I had more stories for you, but I still have not talked to him! We’ll get the scoop as soon as he’s home and I’ll be sure to share it with all of you here. Until then, these pictures are definitely a wonderful narrative of his time in Washington.

Our Washington wine sale ends tomorrow morning, so stop in tonight if you can!

Today I:

Woke up at 5:45; dressed, fed and organized the kids for school; walked the dog with the kids; left the house by 7:30 to drop Noah off at school in Chestnut Hill; fought traffic back into the city to get to Jason’s school; sat on a school bus for an hour and a half as it got lost on the way to Smolack Farm; went apple picking with a bunch of two-year olds; carried a 35 pound sleeping two-year old off a bus with one backpack, two lunch bags, apples, apple donuts and car keys…almost fell; drove back to Chestnut Hill to pick up Noah; stopped at the store to make a wine pick-up; fought traffic back into the city to make a delivery; made a side dish for a potluck dinner; made dinner for the kids; broke up 87 fights between the kids; drove back to Chestnut Hill for a curriculum night at Noah’s school…thought that the Pike made sense at 5:40…wrong; chit chatted through curriculum night; came home, walked the dog, paid the babysitter; worked for an hour; made lunches for tomorrow; stood at the counter and had a donut for dinner at 9:30 pm while I watched the end of Rachel Zoe.

And I was thrilled to do all of this so that TJ could be in Washington, cutting his first grapes off the vine and learning so much. Thrilled with all of this until this picture came from TJ moments ago.

Is that the most perfect looking plate of food ever, or is it me? Is it just because I had a donut for dinner? Look at how the potato salad is tucked under the ribs. Look at that grilled corn. I’m officially jealous.

Sigh…Don’t forget that all our Washington wine is up to 15-25% off until Thursday morning. Oh, and the cider donuts at Smolack Farm are really, really good! Like almost baked beans and potato salad on a red gingham table cloth good….

Yesterday started TJ’s week long trip to Washington State where he will be having an in-depth crash course on all things Washington wine.

Last night’s welcome reception was at the top of the Space Needle (jealous). Today he took a puddle jumper (not jealous) to Walla Walla where he will spend the day at the Cadaretta and Pepper Bridge Wineries.

There will be even more stories to tell after this evening, because his group is having dinner at the K Vintners Tasting room. I’m sure everyone is hoping to get a taste of the wine Charles keeps on hand just for his friends and doesn’t bother to sell!

TJ will be working in the vineyards, crushing, and getting his hands dirty in a variety of ways. I’ll share the pictures all week as they come in.

Beside the picture at the Space Needle, the only other one he sent after his arrival was this one, with the subject line, “I see dead people.” At least his sense of humor is still intact. Let’s all raise a glass to Washington wine!

I have a thing about Aussies. I love the accent, I love the people. I am sure I would love the country, although I have never been. It’s a trip that is at the top of our to-do list. The reality of two small kids and a new business makes it a little hard to imagine we’ll get there any time soon, but a girl can dream.

My mother has a thing for Aussies too, specifically Hugh Jackman, so maybe I come by this genetically.

Aussie wine has come under fire lately, a subject that I have written about on this blog before. TJ and I think this is a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We’re fine if you throw the Australian “critter wines” out, but don’t ignore the good stuff.

Tonight at UG we’re sampling some very good, but also very fun, wines. Good because they are just plain good juice, fun because they are produced by “The Shark” himself, Greg Norman.

Greg’s daughter Morgan-leigh Norman will be here pouring the wines tonight. Greg is of course best known for his prowess on the PGA tour. In the food and wine circles, however, it’s Morgan that is the star. What started as a budding interest in food turned into a passionate career as a professional chef. Morgan joined the marketing team of her father’s winery in 2008, with her goal to make the wines more widely accessible, as well as to use her expertise as a trained chef to help customers think of interesting food and wine pairings.

Tonight, from 5-8, Morgan will be tasting us on four of her father’s wines. The Greg Norman Sparkling (described by TJ as “good…really, really, really good, actually!”) and the 2010 Greg Norman Chardonnay, the 2008 Greg Norman Cabernet Merlot and 2001 Greg Norman Reserve Shiraz, a personal favorite of the Norman family. The sparkling retails for $24, the Chardonnay and Cabernet Merlot are both $16, and for tonight, the Shiraz will be on sale for $28. It usually retails for around $50.

Morgan will be doing some food and golf themed give-aways, as well as bottle signing. In addition, all full and mixed cases of Greg Norman wine will be offered at 20% off. Good wine, good price, good time. So come visit us tonight from 5-8!

Every fashion magazine and catalogue I open is proclaiming the same thing – the hottest color palette for fall is burgundy. Burgundy nails, burgundy shoes, burgundy fur vests, burgundy dresses, burgundy boots, burgundy leather jackets. Burgundy is back in a big way.

How long until TJ buys some burgundy sneaks?

Call me crazy, but I have to believe that America’s growing obsession with all things wine related might be behind this trend. Among women, wine is the preferred beverage of choice by nearly 20 percentage points over beer. At the store, we’ve seen that women are growing more and more comfortable with red wine, no longer buying into the belief that good girls drink Chardonnay (not that there’s anything wrong with a perfect glass of white!).

Taking this theory a little further, the 2009 Burgundies are hitting shelves all over the world at the exact same moment that the burgundy color craze is hitting fever pitch. This vintage has been hyped up for for well over a year, with taste makers telling us it is the one of the best vintages seen in some time. We can’t keep our 2009 Burgundies on the shelves. Everyone has burgundy on the brain.

For myself, burgundy (the color, not the wine) leaves me cold. I know it’s soft and warm and cozy and should remind me of crawling into a wine glass, but my color palette tends toward bright or black. Give me orange and turquoise, or dress me in black head-to-toe. I can’t imagine that I will add too much burgundy to my wardrobe, although I do like the looks of all these burgundy fur vests.

It is nice to know, however, that the UG logo is so fashionably au courant.

Last Sunday, TJ and I had a meeting at the Copley Williams Sonoma to discuss the bridal registry event we are doing there on September 18th. While TJ picked out items to feature to couples who want to build their dream bar, I wandered around mentally purchasing the entire store. In reality, I left with Star Wars sandwich cutters (huge hit…Noah has been requesting a sandwich at every meal ever since), some gluten free flour, and the new love of my life, The Penguin SodaStream.

I have one of those bodies that needs a lot of water in order to function correctly. But I get so sick of drinking water that I ignore all signs that I am verging on dehydration and end up with headaches, exhaustion, etc. Not to mention a set of very parched looking lips. Drinking water just isn’t fun. I love sparkling water, but I feel guilty every time I throw out a plastic bottle and we also have limited storage space at home, so I never have any on hand. Needless to say, I’ve been coveting a way to make my own sparkling water for quite some time.

Enter The Penguin. Their marketing material swears it takes “just seconds” to turn ordinary water into sparkling water. Guess what. It’s completely true. Just seconds as in 15 seconds if you want it super bubbly like I do. And I don’t know why, but it’s the greatest sparkling water ever. You can adjust the amount of bubbliness to suit your personal preference, which means it’s your perfect glass every time. You bubble it up in two to three glass batches, so it doesn’t lose it’s effervescence. And adding your own fruit flavor at the end is so refreshing and simple (squeeze of lemon, lime, orange…whatever you can think of).

But here’s where things get really amazing. You can make TONIC WATER in this thing. This is brilliant because my tonic water pet peeves are as follows: 1) We never have any in the house, 2) When we do it’s an old bottle and it’s always flat, 3) When we are on Martha’s Vineyard the humidity gets into the bottles and makes them flat before you even open them. 4) Sometimes I want a lot of quinine taste, sometimes I want a little.

You can also make ginger ale, sparkling green tea, sparkling mango/orange soda, diet cherry cola…I could go on for hours here. You can even make your own Sparkling Red Bull. Endless possibilities.

If you were thinking about making the switch from bottled sparkling to making it at home, DO IT! It will not only make drinking water that much more fun, but it will make cocktail hour more fun as well.

*Beer Guy Noah celebrates the impending arrival of Fall with today’s blog about some spectacular hard ciders, now available at UG!

Just as with wine, cider is a manifestation of the terroir of the orchards, the age of the trees, both the quality and variety of that which is planted, and of course, the care and skill invested in this whole process. So what would happen if one of Paris’ most influential wine sommeliers brought his vast, encyclopedic knowledge of wine and applied it to the production of cider? The result would be Sydre, a product of unmatched quality and complexity, a completely unique breed that appeals to both the inexperienced cider drinker, and the fine wine connoisseur.

Eric Bordelet, the man behind this operation, and the producer of these world-class ciders, went into this field with a primary goal in mind: to create ciders that would draw comparisons to first-rate vintage wines. His production methods are entirely organic and biodynamic, and he uses only the highest quality apples and pears from trees as old as 300 years on his vineyard. He claims the older the tree, the better the fruit, so you do the math.

The other aspect that puts these ciders on a pedestal is that Bordelet uses nearly three dozen different heirloom varietals of apples and pears, all varying in relative sweetness and acidity. This boosts up the complexity of these ciders to an incomparable level allowing you to literally dissect different flavor profiles with each sip, just as with wine. For those of you with a seemingly discerning palate—or for those of you without one—I encourage you to try one of the two styles we now carry:

Sydre Argelette (a wine lovers cider): Named after the stony soil the trees are planted in, Argelette is Bordelet’s reserve cider made from 20 different apple varietals from the oldest trees in the orchard (200-300 years old). It’s a cider packed with bright, intricate flavors of apple, citrus, and spices that starts off with a beautiful balance of mild sweetness and crisp acidity and finishes dry with a long, lingering finish. It really is reminiscent of a complex vino. Plus, Bordelet swears this cider gets better with age, so throw a bottle in your cellar, or closet, or wherever you can, and let this stuff evolve into something spectacular.

Sydre Poire Granit (a champagne lovers cider): A reserve cider made from 300 year old, sixty-foot tall pear trees that have never seen a single bit of chemical treatment in all their years. It’s very champagney in style, with a pleasant effervescence balanced by mildly sweet, raw pear flavors, and crisp minerality. This cider too will season and develop with age, but it also drinks superbly right now. And with fall only a couple weeks away, it just may be irresistible to not pop this bottle and sip, or slurp, or glug down this delectable fermented pear juice.

This was an exciting weekend for us and it is filled with vivid memories that I hope will never fade. Part of what made the weekend so vivid was that we spent most of it outside in the crisp, clear weather. I love how life comes back in to focus in September.

Saturday started with a momentous family moment – Noah’s first soccer practice and game. Although occasionally running in the wrong direction, the Gators tied it up late in the game and almost eked out a win. Not that they knew…or cared. We celebrated with pancakes for lunch with a sweaty, happy kid. I’ll never forget seeing him run up and down the field with that moppy hair bouncing. It feels like he’s really turning into a little boy.

Later that day, TJ and I attended a Gala for the American Repertory Theatre that included a showing of their new production, Porgy and Bess. UG donated all of the wine for the Gala, which included a spectacular Champagne reception and post-performance dinner at a private home (manse!) in Cambridge. The house had spectacular grounds and TJ and I wandered around pretending we lived there and talking about where we would spend the rest of our lives’ cocktail hours. The performance of Porgy and Bess was amazing. David Allen Grier was a scene-stealer and TJ and I laughed every time he came onstage, remembering all of his fantastic skits on In Living Color. The rest of the run is completely sold out, so if you can’t beg, borrow or steal some tickets for yourself you’ll have to wait until it opens on Broadway this December.

On such a high from the previous night, I completely forgot it was 9/11 when I stumbled out of bed with the kids on Sunday morning. I flipped on the tv because the kids were happily playing in the other room and got sucked into the coverage of the opening of the 9/11 Memorial in New York. I was shocked at how gut wrenching it was to watch the footage of that morning. It was like re-living the whole thing. I’ve kept the memories of that morning in a deeply hidden box and I don’t often like to take them out and remember them. After shedding countless tears, I ushered the whole family out of the house to escape the television. As TJ and I sat on the banks of the Esplanade, holding hands and looking out at the sailing lessons on the Charles, the kids played joyfully under the old weeping willows. Behind us, the church bells in the city pealed for a minute to mark each important moment from September 11. It was vivd – surreal, peaceful, healing and strangely uplifting.

We ended the night at the store with Chef Rich Morin and Amy Audette from Lineage in Brookline. They put together anoutstanding heirloom tomato tasting for the lucky attendees of this first Chef Pop-Up Tasting at The Urban Grape.

We started with a tomato water and sparkling wine cocktail. I wish I could insert a scratch and sniff button into this blog so that you could smell the intense aroma of the tomato water. It was just beautiful and was brought to life even more by the Punk’t Gruner Veltliner Sparkling Wine that TJ poured into it.

We had heirloom tomatoes three other ways – as part of a lobster salad, on top of house-made Tasso ham and in a light and flavorful gazpacho. The Tasso ham/tomato jam with the Solena Pinot Noir pairing was my favorite. TJ got cheeky toward the end of the night and paired a young mezcal with the gazpacho and despite lighting my entire mouth on fire, the mezcal actually did pair quite nicely with the soup. We couldn’t have picked a better restaurant to kick off our pop-up tastings for the Fall. A huge thanks to our new friends at Lineage!

In all, a spectacular weekend filled with family, old and new friends and fantastic food and wine. You really can’t ask for more than that.

I’m often struck by how many husband and wife teams there are in the winemaking world. It seems the husbands usually lead the charge and the wife slowly gets sucked in to the intriguing, satisfying and, let’s face it, kind of sexy world of wine production. The husbands tend to dream about the wine itself, and the wives dream about how to make the company itself stronger, more efficient and more widely available. This is a broad statement, of course, but from what we’ve seen it’s often the case. And it’s a story that TJ and I relate to in a very personal way.

Having been sucked into this world myself, my biggest fear is what I would do if something happened to TJ. I have a good palate, a working knowledge of wine and can certainly market the store, but I don’t have his skill sets. The wine wall is his alone, tuned perfectly to his palate. He is the basis off of which we all work. The disconnect unnerves me.

In 1991, Carol Duval-Leroy found herself in this same exact position. She was part of a husband and wife team that owned Duval-Leroy Champagne, one of the last 100% family-owned champagne houses in France with a lineage back to 1859. Her husband was the “front of the house,” she the back. He died unexpectedly, but with enough time to ask his employees to promise their loyalty to Carol, and to support her as she transitioned to the head of the company. It was a new role for her, but she and the company flourished, becoming one of the top 15 champagne houses and a frequent award-winner. She increased the product range and expanded their exports. Under Carol and her loyal employees, the quality of the Champagne itself increased. Today, Duval-Leroy is an example of, in her own words, “her passion for his profession.”

TJ and I were lucky enough to try five of the Duval-Leroy Champagnes this past Wednesday, and we will soon be carrying four of them, the most affordable of which is the Brut Champagne at $36. They were all fantastic, but two really spoke to me.

The first was the Brut Rosé Champagne. We were both shocked at how pale the color of this rosé is. At first glance you think it will have an equally faded taste, but we were wrong. It’s robust, even intense. It has a round flavor of wild cherries and figs, with hints of ginger and geranium. It would be fantastic with food, as well as on its own. There is something so celebratory about pink Champagne, and yet at $55 it’s reasonably enough priced that you can reach for it to celebrate a great day, without feeling like you have to wait for a special occasion.

The other Champagne that really stood out was the 2000 Femme de Champagne. This vintage was only just released. Ten years is an exorbitantly long time for a Champagne house to hold on to a vintage, and this was so worth it. It’s all toasty brioche and vanilla, with brightening flavors of citrus fruits. The finish is silky smooth and lingers on your tongue for a fantastic amount of time. But the reason I really loved it was that Carol named this bottle after herself, literally “The Woman of Champagne,” to celebrate the fact that she has had so much success in the male dominated world of Champagne. She bottled it in a gorgeous bottle and I like to imagine that every time she looks at it she gives her husband a little wink.

Carol Duval-Leroy is an inspiration. Not only for her Champagne, but for for showing us all that we can succeed in a profession that we may have stumbled into when we took our marriage vows.

Until moments ago I had hundreds of images from this summer trapped on my camera. Photos of the kids, the pets, TJ, the Vineyard itself, great food, even better wine…all trapped since the weekend of July 24th. No, I did not have some sort of strange camera virus, nor did I lose a cable or important software. I was paralyzed with the knowledge that my two brothers, my cousin and my other cousin’s husband had been left alone with my camera one night when they were very, very drunk. It took until this evening to have the strength to download the photos, and let’s just say I almost lost my dinner during the process. Women would never, ever do such things. Men truly can be pigs.

One of the meals I most wanted to share from this summer is a meal that I would very much like to have had tonight. Summer in a bowl, in a decadent, feels-kind-of-naughty way (but not in a brothers-stealing-your-camera naughty way).

Of all the dishes my mother is known for, this is TJ’s favorite. To start, she oven roasts tiny roma tomatoes all day long in the oven at an absurdly low temperature. They are covered in garlic and herbs and as soon as they start to get the slightest bit ooey, the house smells incredible. She was roasting these tomatoes when we brought Noah home from the hospital at five days old and I will never forget walking into this homey smell.

Next, she heads to the garden and goes to town on her basil patch. This summer Jason helped my mom make her first batch of pesto, eating spoonful after spoonful of it after every press of the Cuisinart’s on/off button. She puts an insane amount of garlic into her pesto, but somehow it works.

This dish is brought together with piping hot, grilled sausages from the local butcher at Shiretown Meats in Edgartown and the best quality hard pasta she can find. It’s simple, it’s incredible and you literally can’t stop eating it.

She served this to us at the end of August, and TJ paired the meal with the stunningly packaged Belle Glos Pinot Noir. The label is beautiful and the neck is dipped in dark red wax. It’s worth pointing out that my father, as a general principle, hates Pinot Noir. Even he liked the Belle Glos (once we cajoled him into trying it). Belle Glos says that it’s Taylor Lane Vineyard is subject to such ruthless fog and winds, that growing grapes there is an act of faith. I have faith. It’s a lush, flavorful wine that will make Pinot Noir lovers swoon, all while having enough body for someone who prefers Cabernet.

The memory of this dinner is almost enough to make me forget the images I just saw on my camera. Almost…