LA WineFest: Better for Raleigh Studios Than ‘Ugly Betty’
Posted on June 7, 2009
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If you hurry on over, providing you live in Southern California, you can still catch the second and concluding day of LA WineFest 2009, which is being held at the Raleigh Studios in Hollywood from 2 to 6 p.m. today (Sunday, June 7) as well as yesterday, when it was held during the same time-frame. I highly recommend it. it’s a pleasant escape in a pleasant setting with plenty of great wines from the Paso Robles (mainly) wine region to sample. I was particularly happy that, unlike the Gold Standard, which was held earlier this spring at another studio, LA WineFest wasn’t overrun by Yippies, Yuppies or Millennials, or whatever the crowd of too-young-to-drink, upwardly mobile, future Bernie Madoffs call themselves these days.
It would be unfair to single out any vineyard, or group of them, for acclaim, since there is no way that I or anyone else in attendance could sample everything on hand and render a suitable judgment on all. That being said, I guess I’ll go ahead and do that anyway. I was particularly taken by the subtle wines produced by the winemaker for Pear Valley. His wines were all smooth but redolant (how’s that for a wine snob’s word?) of the grape variety. Even the big, bold wines possessed a smooth richness to them.
I was also pleasantly taken by a winery called Sculpterra, but mainly for the sculptures that line their winery (they had miniatures on display). Both Pear Valley and Sculpterra are in the Paso Robles region and worth a visit, which I hope to make soon, maybe over the July Fourth Weekend, if I’m not participating in a pitchfork parade somewhere.
Food was available for sale, but I didn’t want any hard substance to come between me and my grapes, so I settled for getting quietly enebriated instead. However, the ladies from Garlic Expressions were on hand to provide samples of their salad dressing/marinade of the same name. They offered up a Mache salad. Now if you’re like me and never heard of Mache before, you can do a little Web search. It’s a tiny-leaf lettuce that looks herb-sized and tastes really scrumptious with the Garlic Expressions salad dressing on it. I’m going to try to find both products and spring them on my wife to see if she concurs that the combination is a winner.
Now, as for Ugly Betty, I’ve never seen the show, but if the star thinks she’s some kind of philosopher fit to pass judgment on presidents and expect all of us to salute her infinite wisdom, I say, "Tear down that studio, Mr. Chairman," and get rid of the brat. Raleigh Studios is much better as a wine-tasting escape. One should never go to Hollywood to learn politics–or to listen to actors and actresses when they’re not reading from a script.
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