vampires

Woot! Vampire Vineyards Pinot Noir

October 23, 2011

Guys, guys! We’re totally joking about the Vampire Vineyards being owned by vampires. We’re just normal people. With sharp cuspids.

When I saw the 2007 Vampire Vineyards, Dracula Pinot Noir on wine.woot!, I knew immediately that it was meant to be. ~~Edward Cullen~~ Vampire Vineyards, Pinot Noir… if my favorite fictional character and favorite type of wine were harmoniously coming together, well then it would be a crime not to indulge!

And along those same lines, the Vampire Vineyards 2007 Dracula Pinot Noir is definitely not made out of blood. I mean, why would we make a wine out of blood? That’s ridiculous! Maybe if we were vampires that would make sense, but, as has already been established, we’re not. At all. We’re totally normal guys. Just a bit pale.

Made from grapes picked before sunrise under the Master’s supervision, this wine highlights the incredible nuances and flavors obtainable from pinot noir grapes grown in the Santa Maria Valley. This cuvee was placed in French Oak barrels for 18 months prior to bottling, leading to a rich and concentrated wine with raspberry, dark cherry and pomegranate flavors–smooth and well rounded, with forward fresh fruit.

Now, when people talk about flavors or notes or whatever, typically I have no idea what they’re referring to. And when I do, I sure as hell can’t pick out the individual flavor. With this wine, however, there was something distinctly fruity about the flavor. Maybe my taste for wine is sharpening, or maybe it’s because of the wine itself (probably the latter). Either way, I tasted something. I’m not exactly sure what that something was, but my brain definitely registered it as a food of the fruit variety.

This red wine might just have the least amount of dryness of any red I have had the pleasure to drink. It’s got a very mild flavor, but it only took a couple sips to make my chest all warm and happy. So far, my first two purchases with wine.woot! have been better than most of my restaurant experiences combined. This only confirms my desire to stay home and drink in my basement as opposed to leaving the house.

I think I must go to vampire.com and check out Vampire Vineyards’ other selections as well. Also, they have a lounge in California, (Doesn’t that sound fancy? A lounge?) so next time I’m moseying through The Golden State, I am definitely stopping at this little gem for a quick ~~bite~~ taste.

My journey into Twilight the Movie, and other movie related paraphernalia

January 5, 2009

Friday 11/21 was a day was the day I had been waiting three long weeks for. I bought my Twilight movie ticket online in advance in order to get a free iTunes download of a special “Bella’s Lullaby” remix. Since I didn’t already have a date for the evening I talked Renee into seeing it with me. I practically had to twist her arm. Here’s what I posted afterward on the cklahr forum:

Here is my experience (no spoilers, or anything specific about it for that matter)

Twilight definitely did not disappoint. I thought they did a great job adapting it, but am still glad I had the knowledge of the book. For example, they could have explained the vampire conversion process a little better, Renee was confused. She liked it a lot too, which surprised me because she made it quite clear before hand that she’s not into the whole fantasy thing and didn’t like Harry Potter or LOTR. I practically dragged her kicking and screaming. I think the only reason she agreed to go was because I told her you guys liked the book, and that even Curtis wanted to see the movie. So I was really surprised on the way out when she told me if they make a second movie we have to see the midnight showing so there will be less irritating girls there. Sweet, she’s in.

It would have been a lot better if the theater wasn’t full of teenagers, although it was humorous to see the hordes of parents parked outside waiting. And the moms taking pictures of whichever group of girls they were chaperoning. Here’s pretty much how our experience went: Movie starts = excited murmuring, clapping. Enter Edward = squealing, seat bouncing (yes, I could hear them bouncing). They only had one reaction to funny parts. Giggles. No laughing, chuckling, gasping or otherwise scene appropriate reaction. Giggles were the only vocal remedy to whichever situation arose. It was really distracting actually. I think I missed the entire scene after Edward first entered the cafeteria because Renee and I were laughing so hard at them. Good times, good times.

The experience was definitely crazy. The line of traffic to get into the theater was absurd, but apparently it was all drop offs and pickups, because we got rock star parking and there were tons of spots open around us, which is unheard of in Maple Grove on a Friday night no matter what time it is.

My journey into Twilight

January 5, 2009

Alternate titles:
• Jilly loves the vamps
• Longest blog post ever
• My four favorite books of all time

Nope, I was not immune to the Twilight phenomenon. Here is my story.

It all started back in August. I was listing to one of my favorite podcasts, Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. This was the advertisement at the end of the podcast (no I didn’t type it, I copied it from the transcript):

Before you go, Twilight was the caller and coincidentally Twilight is also the book I’m reading this week. Are you surprised? It’s not Pride and Prejudice, but I believe it’s important to stay current with pop culture and the four books in the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer are some of the hottest things on the market right now. They know I’m Grammar Girl at the local bookstore here in Reno and they actually gave me a little grief for buying this book, so maybe the best thing about it being one the free options you can get when you sign up at Audible is that you can buy it online–privately! Audible has over 40,000 audiobooks and they have all four audiobooks in the saga from the first, Twilight, to the most recent, Breaking Dawn; so whether you’re just jumping onto the Stephanie Meyer bandwagon or you’re a devoted fan, they’ve got the right book for you. Visit audiblepodcast.com/gg to sign up for an account and get your free audiobook today. That’s audiblepodcast.com/gg.

Conveniently I subscribe to Audible.com and at the time had an abundance of credits that I wasn’t sure what to use on. Hmmm… Grammar Girl got teased, buy online privately, sounded like a guilty pleasure to me, and I’m all about guilty pleasures. I forgot I bought Twilight pretty much immediately after the download process was complete and went about the remainder of my summer in a non-audiobook/book sort of fashion.