Summer Sippin - Happy Independence Day!

It's been a minute since my last blog. The reasons are many and varied. What I can tell you is that raising two girls (now young ladies) with my wife has kept us at a frantic pace that does not seem to slow often! Finding time to slow down and take a sip or two this summer is high on our agenda.

Let's start with Greek Festival Season:

We make our way to about a half dozen Greek church fests each year. Some of our favorites are Downey, Pasadena, Long Beach, and Anaheim. We like to find a shade-covered table and set up a spread of à la carte items: (way too many) dolmades, lamb chops, feta fries, pastitsio, souvlaki, and maybe a salad or feta and olives. But what to drink? If it's daytime and a bit warm, you can never go wrong with whatever Greek beer they are serving: usually Mythos, but we've seen others. It's a nice light beer and goes well with just about everything, especially those delicious lamb chops! But, what about ouzo? I am the only one of us who likes it, and I do keep a bottle in my freezer at home. I like to save that for an after-dinner treat at the festivals (as I hand the car keys over to one of our daughters).

Greek wines have come a long way and can be found at all the festivals now. I can remember a time when you could only get Retsina (white wine flavored with pine resin) or Mavrodaphne (a red grape, known for both sweet and dry wines, with notes of vanilla, cherry, and chocolate). Now there are many delicious wines from Greece available in the US: Assyrtiko, Agiorgitiko, and Moschofilero, to name a few. All of which pair well with our wine sticks ;-).

If you are lucky enough to catch the Olympians playing at a festival, you will enjoy true masters of their craft. The Bouzouki player absolutely shreds, and the rest of the band is made up of professional-level musicians that keep the dance floor moving.

Anybody like music festivals?

Our yearly visit to Cali Vibes in Long Beach moved from February to June this year, and we're glad it did! The weather was much warmer and predictable in Long Beach, and the festival was cut down to two days. We've locked down the same one-bedroom Airbnb on Ocean Blvd for the last couple of years, within easy walking distance to both the festival and Roscoe's House of Chicken 'n Waffles. (I'm currently salivating!). We were also able to set up a schedule of our favorite bands on the Cali Vibes app and saw every group/individual we had hoped to see, with the highlights being Hirie and Dirty Heads.

How about the drinks? Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing. Overpriced concert beers and ultra-sweet pre-made mixed drinks are not worth mentioning. We did bring the French press and started our days with fresh ground Sumatra coffee and some of our homemade vanilla biscotti drizzled with melted dark chocolate. These will soon be an added gift in our wine stick orders. Shhhh, don't tell anyone.

Other than the concert, we have started off summer with the Mammoth Motocross race in Mammoth Lakes, CA (details may be coming in my next blog).

The plans over next few days/weeks are to drive up to San Luis Obispo for orientation for one daughter while also driving over to Fresno to move the other back home. There are at least a dozen wineries in that Central Coast region that we will be visiting over the next few years now that we'll have a reason to head that way.

This weekend, we need to make our way down to Temecula wine country to pick up our reds at Palumbo Family Vineyards and pass out some more sample wine sticks at a few more "new to us" wineries.

Have a great summer everybody and keep sippin!

Chuck

Our summer beer keg is in!