WHILE TIME TRAVEL STORIES... often show characters skipping blithely about the decades, changing outfits, car types, and hairstyles as they go, oenophiles know another sort of time jump is involved when it comes to wine love. One moment it is high summer, and the grapes glistening on their various vines are doing that sun-shimmery thing, and then? It's Thanksgiving, or New Year's, and that whole ripe, mellow September-terrific harvest moment has flown by in a back-to-school, back-to-everything, life's-a-blur rush. There are easily implementable ways to seize the harvest moment before it blows through, and among those ways is attending a September Saturday sip celebration. They do crop up, charmingly, around wine country in the very late summer, and there's one just ahead that will involve 40 regional wineries and a whole snack-around line-up of "gourmet bites from local chefs." It's the...
CALISTOGA WINE EXPERIENCE, and it is entering its 2nd annual outing on Saturday, Sept. 9. The places is Pioneer Park, the time is from 2 to 6 o'clock, and vineyards hailing from the Calistoga AVA will be out, pouring, chatting, and doing that whole perfect afternoon try-a-wine thing. Live music, too, will add to the conviviality. Is this the moment you plug into the pleasures of September, at least for an hour or two, with a Calistoga overnight, because, well, Calistoga and September is a weekend-perfect pairing. Soak it in, before you wish you could time travel back, on Sept. 9.
