Oakstone Wheel of Wine 2010

Every March I look forward to Oakstone Winery’s “Wheel of Fortune of Wine.” I think it’s very appropriate that my favorite winery celebrates their anniversary so close to my own birthday in early March. Since we live in Redding, several hours from Fair Play, CA–the location of Oakstone Winery–we usually rent a cabin nearby with a moderately sized cadre of friends. We spend the weekend having good conversation, playing games, eating great food, trying some amazing wines–and we almost forget we have jobs awaiting us when we return home. Although we’ve done this several years in a row, the 2010 trip also saw the first ever “Tim Doyle Memorial Caps Tournament.” This ironically named friendly competition was won–after a severely anti-climatic championship round–by Chris. All said and done I think our group bought nearly $3000 of wine combined. But we had to. Oakstone is that good–better than over-priced Napa, and without the pretension. Although I’m bound to end up at Oakstone a few more times this year, I’m already looking forward to the March 2011 Wheel of Wine! A few notes: the shots we’re shown taking are a natural vitamin B12 supplement–they are supposed to provide natural, non caffeinated, energy and to reduce the chance of experiencing a post wine-tasting ‘headache.’ We are also shown to have a healthy supply of flavorless cheap beer; this was only purchased for the caps tourney and needed to be finished off. We are all beer snobs and prefer the good stuff over …