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As is my usual practice at the end of our harvesting/packing season, I loaded up our beloved 23 foot pull trailer, Sunshine Sally III, and headed for Morro Bay for a short week of R&R ... Kathleen is still in the middle of her season as Assistant Manager of the outdoor breakfast and lunch restaurant, The Garden Cafe, so this was a solo trip to start with ... read 6 books in 6 days and ate my fill of a different kind of fresh fish every day ... I walked into Giovanni's, my favorite fish market, one day and behold they had fresh swordfish on special ... I bought a big steak, headed back to camp, and fired up my faithful Weber ... lo and behold I found I didn't have any fresh garlic ... I always fix a small concoction of olive oil and fresh minced garlic to use to brush on both swordfish and tuna as I'm grilling ... rumaged around in the spice rack and came across a small jar of Garlic Garni made by the wonderful folks at Garlic Festival Foods located in the garlic capitol of the world, Gilroy, California ... shook and little of the Garlic Garni into the olive oil and proceeded to brush the steak several times as I was grilling it ...
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The swordfish was like eating the prime filet side of a porterhouse steak ! And the Midnight Cellars Moon Mountain Red was the perfect wine to go with the delicious swordfish ... anyway - don't know if you're familiar with the products made by Garlic Festival Foods but the Garlic Garni is their signature spice mixture ... they have a website at
http://www.garlicfestival.com/
At the end of my week, I pulled the trailer over the hill to Paso Robles, set up camp, and drove into San Luis Obispo to pick up Kathleen at the airport ... Friday night we attended the Annual Bash at Tobin James Cellars ... WHAT A BLAST ! Five bands, food from dozens of local Paso restaurants, and all the Tobin James wine you could drink including all their regular bottlings, all their Reserve bottlings, and all their seperate vineyards right out of the barrels ... STUPINDOUS ! Saturday we met up with a bunch of Kathleen's family and went on our annual "Wine Death March" ... great zins at Stacked Stone Cellars, more great zins at Norman Vineyards, MORE great zins at Dover Canyon Winery where they were grilling racks of lamb for us wine tasters, MORE great zins at Four Vines Winery where we all got transferable tatoos (mine was "Zinbitch" on my neck while Kathleen chose "Naked" just below her throat), then to Rotta Winery for some great priced cab, then to Dark Star for more cab and some wonderful syrah, on to Midnight Cellars for their proprietary blend, the Moon Mountain Red, over to Clautiere Vineyard for some outstanding Rhone style blends and a bunch of pictures of all of us with bright colored wigs and Dr. Suess type hats, back to Tobin James to pick up a few cases of wine, and finally to Vina Robles Winery to top off our journey with some great priced and wonderful syrah ... after a short nap (much needed after a whole lotta wine as you can see), we fired up the Weber and grilled a bunch of fresh halibut topped off with some great chardonnay from Laura's Vineyard ... Sunday we rested up and then headed out Monday morning for our 9 1/2 hour journey back to the Desert ...
Watch out for the 2006 zins from Paso ... absolutely without a doubt some of the best zins I've ever drank ... nothing flabby about the 2006 vintage - zinberry explosion in your mouth with just enough grip to make big eyes after every sip ... will be interesting to see down the road what others think of the Paso 2006 zins ...
Clink !
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P.S. Oh - don't forget about the swordfish !