Once Upon a Time...

Does wine tasting two weekends in a row make me an alcoholic? If the answer is yes then what you are about to read is entirely fictional.

Once upon a time there was this red-headed freckled girl who had some friends in high places, and a family that loved her. Those friends invited her to join them on a Grape Escape to downtown Sac, and that family got her a ticket to Wine in the Pines.

The Grape Escape is an grand wine-food-beer-dessert tasting event in the enchanted Cesar Chavez Park. The cost is normally $40 in advance or $50 at the door (or gate)… but my friends and I got in free because that’s how we roll. Actually, that’s how my friend rolls, and I just waddle along. Said friend—Mrs. Burgundy—got me, my parents, and Mister in for free last year too. Even if it wasn’t free… I’d splurge on a ticket. For an evening of entertainment, drinks and food, it’s worth it. With more than 100 wineries and restaurants flaunting their stuff, you can try wines you wouldn’t find anywhere else (for better or for worse) and try food from restaurants that people normally pay $40 for a first course at.

Now if I were a true wine connoisseur I would be able to 1) use words like undertone, tannin, and robust, and 2) recall what I drank . But I’m not. I know when I like something, and when I don’t. Take, for example, an adorable elderly couple running a booth all by themselves. However, upon closer inspection the adorable couple wasn’t adorable, they were cratchety. The bottle labels looked like they were printed on a home computer, and the wine tasted like it was brewed in their bathtub-- the same one that they get their sponge baths in.

But something I did like was the Renwood Syrah: nice and grapey without being too sweet. Or the Carvalho Petite Syrah Port: thick and sweet like your normal port but with a much more winey-flavor (you like that description? What did I tell you.).

Of course what I enjoyed the most, was not the grape concoctions… but the one made with bad carbs and cheese. The food there was the perfect remedy to a belly begging to be filled with something other than fermented fruit. My favorite (I may have gone back for seconds) was Mason’s Mac & Cheese. Mason’s is a higher-end restaurant on the corner of 15th and L Streets. Their Mac & Cheese is made with the shell-shaped pasta and multiple cheeses that goop together and get all stringy when you shovel a forkful of it towards your mouth. The tastiest part is that it’s topped with herby breadcrumbs… mmmm.

The food wasn’t all a “hit.” We stopped at the MIX booth, and tried what we thought was bruschetta. Unfortunately for Mrs. Burgundy, it wasn’t pink tomatoes perched on top of a tortilla chip, but pink tuna. Now I’m big tuna fan, but this was little on the warm side… and didn’t quite go with tortilla chips. It was a big disappointment because a lot of good could have come from that tuna. Someone needs to call PETA and let them know of the crime against that poor fish. It would have been much better served in a Sea Steak Poke Salad (Call me PETA! I’m free for PSA’s!). I was sad MIX's food wasn't so hot, because their restaurant/club is one of the hottest new places in Sacramento. It's on the roof above DeVere's, and has an open-air dance floor and great seating for a night full of people watching.

Well I’ve already told you how this chapter ends… with a trip to Mikuni’s for more drinks, a stop at Rick’s Dessert Diner and another pit stop at DeVere’s for more drinks with friends (I may have left that part out earlier. It was fun. Packed, but fun.). Now any good fiction writer will leave their reader with a cliffhanger to make them want to read the next chapter... So how’s this for a cliffhanger: A short time after that event I was drinking wine from the butt of California.