Wanna know why you're not getting laid tonight?

Four reasons...

1) Wine 2.0 in NY


We travelled out to NYC and attended Wine 2.0 on Thursday. We figured it would be a good chance to meet some of the folks that are marrying wine with technology, see some neat uses of said technology and drink some good wines. What we came away with was the realization that these are the very early days of this wine-technology marriage.


Highlights -
hanging w/Michael Brill at the Crushpad table - discussing harvest, fish tank heaters, weather and ...
Manning the Crushpad table which allowed for some more interaction with not just the folks manning the other tables but those walking the hall
being handed a couple bottles of wine just 'cause someone yelled in my ear
Papaya King after the event

Things we wanted to see:
More folks in both traditional uses (wine resellers, distributors, etc...) and new uses (bloggers, wine tracking software, wine making software, games, etc...)
demonstrations from the participants to accompany the couple speakers.
More local representation (since it was in NYC it would have been great to see more NY State wine representation)

All in all it was worthwhile for us to dip our feet in and mingle a bit. I look forward to seeing what comes down the pike in the coming months and years.

2) NY Wine in NY

We were able to make a couple fun wine stops in the city. The first was to Chambers Street Wine. Chambers Street is known for being one of the best wine shops in NYC and we could see why. For folks coming from the left coast a trip to an NYC wine shop is all about Europe and we weren't disappointed. Chambers street not only has a great selection of wines from the other side of the Atlantic but they are also really nice and helpful folks. Only disappointment: we didn't buy anything this visit (our fault not theirs).

After Chambers Street we wandered over to Vintage NY and spent at least an hour with them discussing all things NY wine, tasting some good whites, an interesting pinot noir and an incredible vidal ice wine (which did get us in the buying mood). This is a great place to stop by for some good local wine and to talk with some folks that are really passionate about the NY wine scene.



3) Baseball in NY

As two baseball fans we couldn't help but catch the very last night game EVER at Yankee Stadium.

Even for someone like myself that has always loved to hate the Yankees I couldn't help but feel the energy of this incredible park and be in awe over the enthusiasm of the fans that even with their team out of the playoffs showed up in droves and cheered like it was October. I hope, for NY's sake, that the new ballpark cam come close to what this ball park has been for the past 85 years.


4) Friday Night Jersey City


We got wrapped into the birthday celebrations for a 25 year old NJ bartender named Kim (the drunker KIm got the more Kim absolutely loathed us). Wrapped into a birthday party by just sitting at the right end of the bar. I'm not going to go into too many details about this night other then Dan being handed a dime bag by a two time ex-marine pinot gris spritzer sipping used car salesman ("I put asses in seats") and Kim, in her last fighting chance of drunken anger pointing to the two of us and saying:
"Wanna know why you two are not getting laid tonight?
...
"4 reasons..." (insert incoherent drunkenness followed by her wandering off)

fwiw, we could think of more than 4.

Outside of NY the weather has been a little unnerving on the west coast with rain on the horizon and grapes that are slowing down as the weather cools. We'll be crushing soon but through the continuation of an unpredictable year the schedule Dan posted previously has been made obsolete.