Napa Wine Country June 17-21, 2022

We took a family trip to CA – family being my daughter, Robin, her husband Jim, their two daughters, Grace and Claire, and me.  We went to see the grapes and enjoy wine tastings. First vineyard we visited was Chateau Montelena Winery located in Calistoga, California. This is the California winery that won for its Chardonnay in the historic 1976 Paris blind tasting that put California wines on the map, and is the subject of the film Bottle Shock. It is was established in 1882 and is a beautiful castle.

We had a private tasting in the library conducted by a gentleman who explained the history of the winery, the soil and the conditions necessary to raise the perfect grapes.  For example that the vines need to suffer, not be watered to much to produce the perfect grapes for the perfect wine.

There was another Napa winery that also won the 1976 Paris tasting so we set out to find it. We went unannounced to Stags’ Leap winery, another beautiful location and drank a bottle of their wine on a lovely porch. Robin Googled Stags’ Leap and found no mention of their win.  Seemed strange. Than she Googled 1976 Paris Tasting which discussed Chateau Montelena’s win and also the Stag’s Leap win in 1976.  It went on to explain that there were two wineries in the same area, incorporated in the same year by that name. There had been litigation but because they were started in the same year there could be no determination of which used that name first. So the distinction between them was the placement of the ‘. Went on to say that wine tasters  often visited the wrong Stags’ Leap and were duped into believing it to be the winner.

We looked at our bottle of wine and saw it was Stags’ Leap, not Stag’s Leap.  We too had been duped. We laughed like crazy.

When we left and went about a mile down the highway, we saw the sign Stag’s Leap.  We laughed again as Jim blew the car’s horn in greeting.

Stories like that are more fun to tell the folks back home than when everything goes as planned.  Hope you enjoyed this post.  Stags’ head was beautiful and had quite a history of its own.  It is worth Googling.

Hello Again

It has been a long time since I entered a post here.  When my husband Ralph had colon surgery in July 2014, it was the beginning of his long illness before his death on August 31, 2018.  He was fall prone but refused to use his walker.  First because of pride. Then, after he had a stroke and lost his short-term memory, it was both, pride and he couldn’t remember he needed it.

He fell and broke his left hip and his left wrist, was released from the hospital to a rehab facility.  First fall in rehab they found him in the bathroom of his room.  It was several feet from his bed.  When I asked how he got there before he fell, they told me he must have hopped on his good leg.  Now you tell me, what 80 year old man is going to get out of bed and hop on one leg 9 feet to the bathroom?  That wasn’t my first clue that the medical profession thought 79 year old women were stupid.

When he fell and broke his right hip, our daughter and I put him in a different rehab facility, in The Welsh Home.  Big mistake! We failed to notice that their physical therapy room windows looked right out across the street at our Giant Eagle grocery store.  He knew exactly where he was and how to get home.  He was hellbent on breaking out.  They put a plastic strip on his ankle that was equipped to lock the door as he approached it in his wheelchair.  He took one look at that and said “I can just cut that off.” I told my friends if they saw a man in a wheelchair heading West on  Center Ridge,  call me and I would go get him.

He had a stroke and lost his short-term memory in the afternoon of the day he bought a new computer.  When I brought him home from the hospital he asked where was his computer.  Good question.  When you lose your short term memory, you lose a short period of time before the stroke and can’t remember anything after, but old stuff is still there.  So he remembered that he had a computer on that computer desk but did to know where it was.  I had to go through his pockets and wallet to discover that he had bought a new computer that morning at Best Buy and left both computers with the Geek Squad to set up the new one. So we went to pick it up but he never used it again.  Nor did I, because I had a Mac.

Now I will tell you a happy thing.  It is really boring for a man to read the newspaper every morning but not remember a thing he read, or to watch TV and not know what he saw.  Or to ask the same question over and over and not remember the answer.  It is not much fun for the wife either.  Every day at 3 p.m. I asked if he wanted me to cook dinner or go out and every day his answer was “Go out.”

Ralph Smiling

We had dinner out everyday for over two years.  We had a whole circuit of places we went every week.  Bob Evans, Nates, Frankie’s,  some nights Macaroni Grill or Brio and other more expensive places.  He ordered whatever he wanted even though as he got weaker and sicker he could eat only 2 or 3 bites.  We ate out and he paid the bill up to three weeks before he died.  The cancer had come back and he was just too weak and ill to get in the car to go.

People asked if we could afford it.  I answered that we could pay for it but whether we could afford it was yet to be determined.  Well, I still live in the same house and I still go out to eat with friends, so I guess we could.  It was the highlight of that man’s day.  I would not change even if I could.