After a very difficult “shelter in place” for over a year, we were finally all protected by vaccines and experts in double masking. We now felt safe re-entering the world and restarting our lives. Of course, that meant one thing: wine tasting! So we all met at Dashe Cellars to celebrate health, family, and good times.
We were so excited! We used the on-line reservation system on the Dashe website to reserve our outdoor table for tasting. This was an important part of their safety protocols, and we were happy to do our part. We approached the Dashe check-in table and were immediately escorted to our pergola-covered table. The pergola roof was cleverly sectioned so that it could rotate to become nearly solid when the sun was beating down, or made nearly invisible when the sky was a more gentle hue. The table was more than ample to handle our group of seven, and we were easily 20 feet away from the next group of tasters. Our only issue was choosing which of us were seated to directly face the incredible view of San Francisco from across the bay! The entire area had obviously been recently sanitized and a fresh set of wine menus were laid out, in addition to wine glasses, water tumblers and carafes. We were ready for some wine!
We were celebrating a birthday (someone in our group is “pushing forty”) so we decided to start with the Dashe Cellars Sparkling. Happy people, happy wine, cheers all around. We were off to a great start for our first winery visit in over a year. Happily, we remembered how to do it! We were very pleased with the sparkling, with bright citrus notes and a crisp, dry finish. We followed that with their 2018 Dry Creek Zinfandel. What a crowd pleaser! Rich plum and blackberry notes up front, leading to chocolate and leather on the lingering finish. Our group split about equally on which wine was their favorite, which meant that there was enough for everyone without the shame of “left over” wine. Full disclosure, there has never been an occurrence of left over wine with our group when tasting. We all happily sipped, drank in the amazing views, and enjoyed just being together at a winery after so long apart.
Eventually, our wine was gone and it was time to head home for more birthday celebration. We thanked the Dashe team for all their help and their focus on delivering a fun AND safe experience. Since we had wine club members in our group, we all helped carry their club release wines (later we helped by tasting the new wine, too). Our first wine tasting experience since before the pandemic was a great success! From our family to yours: stay safe, get vaccinated, and find yourself a local winery to support. Cheers!
About the Author: John grills a mean steak and is always in the market for another wine fridge. Believes that if a winery has more than 10 employees, it's probably too big. Buys wine faster than he drinks it, but who cares?
