Reckless Wanderings At Total Wine

Nosing Around An Unfamiliar Aisle

Perusing The Chardonnay Offerings

Let’s say someone wants to give you a good bottle wine and they gift you with the opportunity of choosing the bottle. Would you go down your list of favorites thinking of Zinfandels, Syrahs, Petite Sirahs or a GSM blend?

Or would you take the reckless wild road, wandering down an unknown aisle of your favorite wine purveyor looking for something different, something to explore?

Total Wine recently provided this opportunity to us with a gift, a penny coupon for one of their Winery Direct wines retailing for less than $9.99.  That’s right, a penney for a bottle of wine, what a gift!

As creatures of habit we of course started in the red zone, eyeing the Zins and Syrahs for their Winery Direct offerings. Then we became even bolder, more daring, wandering through the Pinot Noirs.

Then we literally ran off the tracks with our newfound devil-may-care attitude and found  ourselves in a section of the store unfamiliar to us, The Chardonnay Aisle. Because, we’re running wild and free looking for something different, something to nose around, something new to savor.

There were many familiar faces here. Rummaging through the Critter Wines, the Name Wines, the Cute Label Wines, searching for something interesting. We settled on Cloud Break Chardonnay. It’s  a 2015 barrel fermented wine priced at $8.99. The bottle hails from Parlier in California’s San Juaquin Valley near Fresno.

We’ll extract the cork on Thanksgiving afternoon and consider its offerings while giving thanks for the many gifts in our lives.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Bill Hodge & Erin O’Neill-Hodge enjoy a good bottle of wine, visiting and enjoying California wineries from Lake County to Orange County, from the Paso Robles Gold Coast to Gold Country and from Lodi to Temecula.