Oenomatopoeia

This may come as a bit of a shock, but it turns out wine is quite nice, and vineyards are pretty places. Who knew?

Robbie brought his friend Emily and me along yesterday on a hike down the Central Texas Wine Trail. Well, you don't actually hike it, you're supposed to drive, though frankly it would be a lot more convenient if all the vineyards were within a mile of each other so that you could simply stumble from one to the next. But then I suppose there wouldn't be enough room to grow the grapes. Really, how inconvenient.

We started out with a printed map listing the locations of about 25 vineyards within a 100-mile radius of Austin. Emily is an old hand at this - she's been on a Napa Valley wine tour, and is already familiar with many of the Central Texas wineries, and knows that she usually likes Sauvignon Blanc and doesn't care much for Sangiovese. She's fancy that way.

I drink wine out of a box.

We started with Driftwood Estates Vineyard, which is a beautiful place just south of Dripping Springs (the locals call it "Dripping" or even "Drippin'"), where Robbie and Emily favored the sweet plum red and I cottoned to the Lone Star Cabernet.

Have you ever done a wine tasting? See, I never had really. My stepfather and grandmother, sisters and I did visit a vineyard in central Alabama once, where they made wine from muscadyne grapes. The facility was spotless and beautiful, and the vineyards spread out lush and green before us. As far as I remember, they didn't charge anything for the tastings or the tour; but, seduced by the heady beauty of our surroundings, we probably bought more than a dozen bottles among us. We brought it back to my grandparents' suburban Birmingham home. It was just awful. We practically had to pinch our noses shut while we were drinking it.

These central Texas wineries have their act much more together. You belly up to a shiny blond wood bar, or sit at a high table in a pale stone room, dusty with newness. You can also relax outside on sloping lawns overlooking the vineyards in the valley below, or on a wooden deck surrounded by oak trees; and - unlike the place in Alabama - you are far from alone; wine tourism is popular, and though you're out in the middle of nowhere, the place is thronged. Visit two or more wineries on the trail, and you'll spot some of the same customers again and again.

You get about six tastings for 5 or 6 bucks - the equivalent of a glass of wine, more or less. You and your companions compare notes and discuss the nose, overtones, and aftertaste of each sample as if you were an elegant bunch who had never seen a box of Franzia in your lives. Then you order a glass and/or buy a bottle of the one that you particularly liked, relax and enjoy the atmosphere, and eventually - this is a highly leisurely pursuit - you head off to the next winery. There are dozens and dozens of them within an hour's drive. We managed to visit two.

After Driftwood we headed to Woodrose Winery outside Stonewall, close to the LBJ Ranch. Driftwood with its hilly vistas had a Tuscan feel, but Woodrose has a deck nestled in the woods behind it, with an acoustic guitarist/singer (most singers are acoustic as a general rule) providing a little ambience. Woodrose has fixed tasting menus laid out in a particular order, because "if you start with the port, nothing else is going to taste good," the woman explained to us. "Your taste buds will be fried."

This is good to know.

But don't be deceived by the inflexibility of the menu. Our waitress - probably an owner, I'm guessing - overheard Robbie expressing curiosity about one of the reds, and slipped a sample of it in for him before the port (which - this is extremely important - comes with chocolate). In fact she very good-humoredly gave all of us a couple of extra samples. My last tasting was a Merlot and she poured a sample for me twice, simply shrugging at me and smiling when I told her she'd already given me my last one. "Damn, she's nice," we agreed as she left.

My pick from Woodrose was the Wicked Red, so I ordered a glass to enjoy on the wooded deck and bought a bottle to take home, too. It's sitting on my kitchen counter. How it feels about the box of Merlot lurking six feet away is nobody's business but its own.

Welcome to Life!

Katie and I are both PMSing right now. I thought I'd go ahead and mention that, just in case you wanted to postpone your visit.

Yesterday Robbie allowed me to come rushing up to Georgetown and sweep him away for a random road trip: what fun! There's nothing else quite so therapeutic as just up and leaving. Have you noticed? I think that's why I love road trips so much. Symbolically, everything that bothers me is here at home, or at work, quarantined within about a 5-square-mile area. So it makes me feel a lot better to get in the car, grab a friend, and go to Lampasas. You heard me.

On the other hand, spring seems rather unequivocally to have sprung, and this also is irresistibly therapeutic. How can you be sad about anything when the trees all have tiny, pale green buds? Or when you've spotted a lone bluebonnet in a neighbor's yard? (Bad year for wildflowers this year, I'll tell you that right now.)

It's impossible not to be cheerful, even when last night led into the most difficult morning of the year (at least for those of us who are forced to observe daylight savings time) by keeping me awake, restive, fretful, tossing and turning, and finally allowing me to drop off two hours before six only to send me dreams of being sick, pregnant, bedridden, and attacked by tribble Muppet vampires with very sharp pointy teeth that crunched down into my ribs with much more realism than I thought strictly necessary, then waking me up in a cold sweat fifteen minutes before my alarm went off. And I had to pee.

I should have just called in sick. My boss did. On the other hand, I got a lot done today, and ended up feeling perfectly fine, not at all as if both arms had been ripped off and used to beat me about the head, which is more in line with the way I've been feeling lately. I can't understand these mood swings. I really need professional help - but really, only about two out of every three days, and falling.

And speaking of needing professional help, the Bubbly Bitching Smoking Nonsmoker found and friended me on Facebook (thanks, Robbie!), forcing me to take down the link to my blog in a big hurry. Her latest status update is grousing about how many status updates everyone else is posting, and in fact stopped me from posting a particularly witty remark about how nice it would be if Slappy White would quit knocking all the shit down off my dresser. I may just delete her.

Alas! if we could actually delete people in real life. Well, if only I could, anyway. It's one of those things that only works out if I'm the only one that gets to do it.

So never mind. Here's Robbie and me yesterday - and Lord bless us if we aren't only here on this earth by the grace of B.B.S.N.S. and all the times she never ran us over when we crossed the street in front of her on our way back from Dominican Joe. How can I be bitter?

Peachy

And you thought you had to go to Fredericksburg to get good peaches!

Robbie gets the wanderlust occasionally, which is fun because it means he'll swoop down and carry me off on a spur-of-the-moment road trip. Over lunch at Hickory Street, I suggested jumping around in the water jets at the park again, and I think that's what we were on the way to do, but we ended up taking the long way. And by the time we got to Ben White, Robbie idly wondered how far we'd have to drive to get Fredericksburg peaches.

Of course, there's only one way to find out.

We also realized en route that we had only the vaguest idea what a bushel is. I mean, I know it's an amount, and measured in container volume, I think, and it has to be a round basket, about, you know, yea big. Apples come in bushels, and peaches of course, and probably vegetables, I don't know. We decided we were on a sacred quest to find out what a bushel is.

So we headed out 290 in a general westerly direction, and passed through Dripping Springs with nary a bushel, peach, or any other such mythological creature in sight. We did see some very nice flex base, though, where they're preparing to widen the roadbed. We hit 281 and headed north (after a brief insistence on my part that Fredericksburg is actually south, in the direction of San Antonio, which Robbie fortunately overruled*), and in Johnson City, where you turn left to stay on 281, I spotted a peach stand at 3 o'clock.** So Robbie made a hard right into the parking lot straight from the left-turn lane and there we were!

The man running the stand was elderly and kind, but apparently mildly deranged, and Robbie had a little difficulty actually leaving with his purchase after it was bagged; but adversities were overcome, misunderstandings were cleared up, peaches were procured, and the peach-seller helpfully answered all my bushel-related questions.

A bushel is really big, you guys. You think it's about this big, and it's not. It's like four times that.

So we turned around and headed back to Austin. As we were passing by William Cannon we noticed a peach stand by the side of the road. "D'oh!" we said.

We sat under a tree in Stacy Park to eat peaches. I have to admit I was a little disappointed, because you always hear about Fredericksburg peaches, and these really were not all that great. They were crunchy, which peaches should never be if they can help it. It seems like I've read somewhere that you should put them in a brown paper bag in a dark, cool place, but I can't remember if that's how you ripen peaches or if it's a step in some arcane love spell.

Maybe you're supposed to put them through a couple of cycles in the dryer. Soften 'em right up.

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*Early in our career at the agency, Robbie and I were once stopped in the hall by an older guy in our division, who inexplicably wanted us to tell him the exact date a particular volcano had last erupted. Aside from our general disorientation at being thus accosted by someone we didn't know, we had no idea, which seemed to annoy him a great deal. "And you call yourselves geographers?!" he demanded, and marched off.

Which was somewhat surreal in that no, we never had; but to this day, that question pops into my head whenever anyone displays ignorance in any form.

**It was actually about 12:30