Chuck tries to cram as much summer as possible into the last few weeks of August.
 
My son left last Thursday for his annual summer trip to visit cousins. Before he left we tried to get to the beach for boogie boarding as many times as we could. That led to us headed to La Jolla Shores on a Saturday along with the entire population of East County San Diego and much of suburban Phoenix. We drove around in a conga line of cars for a while before deciding that maybe PB had beach parking and headed south. Of course, that’s when we found a spot and headed back to the water. I haven’t spent this much time at the beach since I lived on Maui and I have to say; that it’s been pretty cool.
 
Tuesday night found me with the former model-turned child advocate. She works 60+ hours a week making life better for the most defenseless among us. I convinced her to take a night off and scored a couple of tickets to see Paolo Nutini at the 10th anniversary party at the Hard Rock Café in the Gaslamp. It’s a very small venue. I don’t think it holds more than 200 and so we stood about 15 feet away from the stage at eye level with Paolo. If you have never heard him, google him and “New Shoes” and “Last Request”. What a fantastic show!
 
On Wednesday the organic coffee goddess had turned me on to a couple of killer seats at Petco to see the Cubs spank the Padres. No matter, the seats were great, the weather was exactly why we live here, and it was just way cool to hang out with my son at the game and eat ball park food.
 

VinVillage members Shelly suggested at the “Drink What You Blend” class (which was fantastic, by the way) that we get a group together for the SD premier of the movie “Bottle Shock”. The movie tells the story about when in 1976 in a blind tasting of California vs. French wines, the Golden State wines won and changed what people thought of American wines and winemakers forever. The movie was great, except possibly for one entirely invented character and situation. The writer/director couple and several producers were there for a Q&A after the film. It felt quite like Sundance (who says SD aint got no culture). Afterwards, we all went to the Better Half, a wine-centric café that specializes in half bottles…brilliant! Some of us brought wine. I bought the last bottle of Chateau Montelena Chardonnay. That was the white wine that in 19976 won the blind tasting and forever changed the wine world. Life is good.

So tell me, what are you doing to squeeze the last few sweet, ripe drops of that fruit called summer onto your tongue?

 
 
Chuck
Leader, VinVillage, San Diego
Chef/Owner, Chuck Samuelson Catering