Autumnal Equinox

Hello everyone and Happy New Year (if you're in to that sort of thing). Here in NorCal, we're celebrating the end of Summer by eating old fashioned tomatoes and avoiding spinach. We've had a good month of honest work and short weekend road trips. Here in Berkeley, the sweetgums are more red than last month and the star jasmine flowers and their beautiful smell are gone. It's warmer now than last month thanks to the helpful Pacific currents which cool down in the light months and warm up in the dark months. Here's Daphne.



Just last weekend we made a trip up to Sonoma with work friends. The harvest season is very exciting in wine country; everyone seems to be in a good mood--as in the late hours of a fun party. Maybe this was how it was in the old days too. On Daphne's first wine tasting trip, she was affable and patient. Here's a family shot in Chateau St. Jean.

Here are some Parnassus people in the reserve room at St. Francis, where we had food paired with four kinds of wine.

I snuck a quick grape from this bunch of syrah. All around us we saw trucks bringing harvested grapes in for processing. It's fun to think that these grapes one day will be in a bottle of 2006 St. Francis Syrah.