Next: a tasting at nearby Driftwood Winery. After all had
eaten their overfill, we clambered back on our friendly bus;
some of us diverged from the program, either with planes
to catch or being suspicious of the idea of Texas wine or
not drinking wine at all. These unlucky or benighted ones
were accommodated in the cars of friends who had driven up.
The winery is in a really pretty location, and our tasting
kiosk was in a breezy area smelling lightly of sage or
some similar native herb; conducive to lazing about and
being inveigled into buying lots of product; little did
they know that we had planes to catch and TSA to deal with.
We tasted 11 wines in short succession, overload if I've
ever seen it: 2 whites (not notable); a rose de Pinot Noir
(not notable minus); 5 reds; and 3 sweeties, which, to give
them credit, were reasonably acid and thus well balanced.
The consensus was that the reds that had Cab in them were
the best: the Cab itself and something called Longhorn red.
The former was rather nice in the California style with
chocolate and plums, a honeyed aspect, and good vanilla
oak, and if you can't taste these things, don't knock those
who can. The Longhorn, a blend with a lot of Shiraz I think,
was the consensus favorite, with black cherry and spice, but
I found it a little out of balance toward the tannin end,
perhaps the most ageworthy of the lot.
A few of us got together to buy Sandra, our good-natured
and long-suffering bus driver, a couple bottles with the
strict injunction that she wait until we were out of sight
before sampling them.
A contrasting trip to the Mandola Winery (Italian-style
products mostly) was scratched by scheduling issues, which
is okay, as we had had plenty of sensory and oenophilic
input by this time.
Life was good on the way back to the hotel. Though there
were fewer than twenty of us on this leg, the feeling was
just as upbeat as on the others.
-
Not that anyone needed more food, but Threadgill's was on
the evening agenda. Again lili and I decided to walk, as it
was not too cold (though a bit far, as it turns out), and we
could have used a bit of exercise to settle our stomachs.
Sixth Street is quite different on Sunday night, no buzz
at all, so we bypassed it and went down some other street,
which was also quiet. We passed a congregation of hotels
near one another - a Hilton; a Hampton; a Residence Inn and
Courtyard in the same building - and speculated on how easy
it would be to get status on multiple programs on mattress
runs arranged like this. Just compelled to stay on topic, I
guess. Crossed the bat bridge, but I guess it wasn't the
bats' social hour, so that was less fun than it could be.
Threadgill's is easy enough to find, and with Starwood
Lurker's hand-drawn map it was a total snap. Our only issue
was distinguishing the front door from the back door. Looks
like we would have found the party earlier if we'd entered
by the back door.
I guess lili is as nearsighted as I, because she spotted
Alysia at a noisy banquet table to our left as we entered
the place, and I saw Donna (handle forgotten), so we burst
upon the scene expecting to be greeted with open arms, only
we weren't - it was the wrong bunch of people altogether,
and Alysia and Donna were figments of our myopia.
After our long walk and our exhausting 30-second tour of the
restaurant to find you all, we were hungry enough for half a
sandwich each: we split a hickory burger medium rare (the
waitperson said that the quality of the meat here is such
that they serve it at any stage of doneness, including rare)
- a pretty good chunk of meat, thin slices of Canadian bacon
on top, slathered with what tasted like chipotle ketchup. We
passed on the cheese, though in retrospect I probably should
have sacrificed a couple lactase pills and eaten the cheese:
would have balanced the tang of the ketchup better.
Our parting toast was at the Ginger Man at Lavaca and 4th.
Pints of Spaten were 3.25, an amazing bargain; I had the
malty, rich, alcoholic double, Optimator; lili had the Pils.
We lounged about in the mixed comfort of overstuffed living
room furniture in a concrete warehouse space with an open
garage door spewing cool rainy air at us, but, hey, it was
the best available.