My Grill is Gone!
I am SO sad...I was reading back through the posts from the last few days and wanted to drool over my grill. When I clicked on it, the link was broken and I can't find any evidence of it online. Oh, how sad!!! I should have ordered it Monday. They have a teeny Smokey Joe or something in my green, but no Weber Performer.

In response to Heather's post about my wine...yes, I purchased that wine on my first wine-tasting trip to Napa Valley back in 2000. I think that's when I visited. Most of the wineries were selling their 1998 vintages, but a few still had 1997 for sale. So, I have a couple of cases of wine - mostly cabs - from those years. The Cakebread was especially memorable for me. The Cakebread Winery was the first winery I toured - it came highly recommended by a friend at the time. I did a "Vertical Tasting Tour" where we compared various vintages of the same wine. I quickly learned that I preferred the older wines. We had a 1991 Cab that was truly fantastic. I remember joking that I was either going to have to be really patient or spend a lot of money to get the wine that I liked. Believe it or not, I've been patient - mostly because I've been saving the wine for a special occasion or didn't have anyone I thought would be able to enjoy them with me. But, as Mike has been learning more about wine, and my cabs are turning 10 years old or so, I thought it was time to break them out and make room in my wine refrigerator for some of the wines I've just purchased. The Cakebread was the first. Is it possible to be sentimental about a bottle of wine? Who cares, I am!

What will I drink next? Oh, the collection is glorious! There's a Silver Oak Napa Valley Cab down there which I expect to be especially nice, an Opus One, a bottle or two of Robert Mondavi Reserve Cab, a couple of reserve Berringers, and quite a few others I picked up on a second trip a year or two later when I was trying to collect all of the top-scoring Napa Valley wines on Wine Spectators Top 100 Wines of the Year. Then in a few more years I can start enjoying some of my wine from my wine-tasting weekend in Australia - my memorable one there is Octavius from Yalumba - which is apparently available here in the US in rather limited quantities. They suggest drinking that one 8-12 years from the vintage.