Time Out from Pump-Overs for a Drive!

Posted 11/03/2006 at 01:30 PM by Dirk

(All the Cabernet is in...lots of fermentations...Dolce harvest underway)

We had some "WOW" cars visit Far Niente this week. As you may know, we enjoy cars at Far Niente. Gil loved and raced cars. The faster, the better!

Boys-n-Toys! What ever you call it, we feel some of the same passion and craftsmanship that is in fine wine is equally present and enjoyable in special cars. (Separately of course.)

Robb Report magazine is trying out 10 of the world's finest cars and will have some way of giving one the gold star of being "The Best." These are so good, and must be so fun, that there is no such thing as a "loser" in the whole group. They also had enough horsepower that I wouldn't dream of leaving the keys unguarded at home. That sort of acceleration is too tempting for any normal teen. (That is why my parents taught me how to drive in an old Peugeot! It couldn't get going fast enough to hurt anyone and a Peugeot was incapable of attracting any positive female attention. Talk about vehicle safety...It was brilliant!)  Detective Columbo's Peugeot 403 verged on coolness...almost.

Larry was a test driver. (I was not invited, was still preoccupied with the tail end of harvest, and there are a few driving stories that I assure you, are exaggerations, and happened long, long ago...).  Actually, I had too much vineyard dirt on my shoes to step into a single one of these beauties and not be overwhelmed by guilt. So I just have to live with the jealousy as well as the curiosity of wondering which one was named "Best" and which one would have been the "dream fit" for me.

I can say that my teens thought that the Lotus Exige would be the perfect car for me. I think they described it as a high-performance go-kart on steroids....with attitude! My son, Ian, perked up from his college studies when I sent him a camera-phone picture of it beside the wine press. I remain too technically impaired to take and store pictures of the other cars.

Just to mention wine in this blog: the press was being prepared today to handle the first of the Dolce harvest. Greg started the first picking pass with the vineyard crew and was bringing the fruit to the winery. He will likely be making small picking passes for the next few weeks as we battle the elements to see how much botrytis blooms in the Semillon.

With all the fermentations going and lots of pump over activity, the winery smells great! The sound of some hot cars outside didn't hurt either!

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