It was all quiet after our New Year Eve celebrations with cannon at Cavender Creek Winery. However, the starting gun for the new winery season is Valentine’s Day weekend. On Sunday 16th, Three Sisters Winery celebrated with a chocolate and wine tasting in their tank room. The reserve chardonnay was remarkably good with an upmarket soft caramel choc. On Saturday this week, as March crept through the door, we went to another local favourite, Wolf Mountain, for a “blend your own” seminar followed by a very good dinner. The American preference seems to be wines labelled as single grape varietals – although the rather flexible US labelling laws permit adding 25% of other things without revealing what. Wolf Mountain is different – the winery mainly produces blends rather than single varietals. We were each provided with three barrel samples of their 2012 vintage – a Syrah/Touriga field blend, a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Tannat. We then tried mixing these in various proportions to rival their signature Instinct blend. Though I say it myself, Lisa and I both produced palatable mixes, though maturing potential was unproven – all was drunk pronto. There is another blending session there in May (disgorge and finalise a bottle of their sparkling wine) which we will certainly be attending.
On Sunday we are heading back to Three Sisters for what is billed as a St David’s Day celebration (Sharon and Doug Paul have Welsh antecedents). Their own wines matched with welsh cakes – we will see!
There was also a neighbourhood “assembly” last Sunday at the local gathering place, the historic Lydia Schoolhouse, to meet the staff of the Waypoint drug and alcohol rehab unit which is moving into our area. This is not just NIMBYism. Waypoint is not a medically based or state licensed operation. It is a group of well-meaning evangelists who believe that ex-junkies (who have to be clean for 3 whole days before they are admitted) can get themselves straight through Christianity. They are obviously concerned lest the locals continue with a legal challenge to the planning change of use decision to permit this location.
It wasn’t a totally happy meeting, and some of our neighbours remain seriously concerned. I don’t diminish the upset we personally feel about this, but I think the onus is now fully on Waypoint to demonstrate that they can be good neighbours. Somehow, I don’t think that this is all over yet, as some of the local folk are still extremely vehement in their objections.
On the Building Site It looked like a house at the end of the week!
This week saw the last pieces of the framing jigsaw slotted into place. The roof trusses made for us by Accent Trusses were lifted into place using a boom truck on Monday, and Milan and the framing crew could now race ahead completing the external structure. Jim Diffenderfer (the owner of Accent Trusses) came down from South Carolina on Friday bringing the final beam which was carefully manhandled into place to complete the back porch roof structure. We are very pleased with the beams, they are going to look spectacular in the finished house. We got Jim to sign one of the beams – we want all the important craftsmen to leave their name behind. Milan, Libor and the rest of the framing crew will be signing one of the attic beams once they have completed their work, and Rob Steele’s signature is fused into one of his stained glass windows. In the backroom, we have been busy too. We met with the HVAC (heating and aircon) specialist to discuss what we needed doing, purchased handles for the front door under construction, finalised the designs for the cabinetry through the house with John Browning of Moore Custom Cabinets. But we still need to make progress on (economical) internal doors, and finding suitable garage doors.
Bill has lots of plans for the coming week – shingles on the roof, windows installed and giftwrapping the house – will we be in the dry” by next weekend? Come back soon and find out what progress has been made.