March 25th, Crushpad taste off...

Saterday was the big Crushpad taste off with everybody's wines to sample. Our Vidmar Syrah showed really great and a few candidates came back for seconds. It was great fun and we ended up at the Tumers as usual for drinks and dinner. Very nice.

March 23rd, Ladysmith Black Mombaza

Jennifer, Liam's teacher, came to babysit and the Visser went off to Montalvo Art Center to go see Ladysmith Black Mombaza. The show was excellent.

March 22, Mandy's visit to NASA

This day Mandy went to visit Willem at NASA for the first time. She first had lunch (the famous burrito's) with Willem and Julian in their cafeteria and then went to see everybody's offices...Willem, Dimitra and Irem.

March 14th - Liam Walk

This day was a big day for Liam and for Grandpa Visser. Grandpa had his birtday on this day and Liam finally gave his first steps all by himself. Congratulations to both of you!!!

Grappe D'Amis Bottling today

We finally bottled our Grappe d'amis 2004 Vidmar Syrah today. We got to taste it and also some of the newer creations that is brewing in the barrels right now. The Tumers invited us over for Brunch and Kagan made a Spinach/mushroom souffle and potatoes...excellent!!

We had our 1st bottle of "Grappe d'amis" tonight with the neighbors and it drinks very good, but now it will go through bottle-shock, so we will wait 2-3 months before opening the next one. Michelle made some wonderful comfort food that Liam took quite a liking in, so we got some leftovers for tomorrow.

Dinner at the Raths

Saturday was our monthly wine dinner. This time at the Raths. Alan made excellent lamb shanks; the gravy was truly outstanding. He also made his famous bread-pudding...yummm!

The tasting was blind and everybody brought some outstanding wines as usual.

Friday: Snow in Santa Cruz

Mandy went to a meeting in Aptos Friday and got stuck there, because of a big snow and hail storm on Highway 17. She had to go down to Watsonville and cut across to highway 101 to get back home. The newspaper showed pictures this morning of snow on Santa Cruz beach.

We had dinner at the neighbors in the evening. James made wonderful rack of lamb and Michelle made a lemon mousse dessert...very good as always.

Liam's first haircut, March 5th

We got back from the wine country this afternoon and Mandy decided to cut Liam's hair for the first time. We held out to see how long it will get, but finally decided it is in his eyes and we need to take action. It was quite an ordeal with Willem trying to entertain him and Mandy trying to not poke anybody with the scissors. Now he looks like a little boy with his short hair and hopefully nobody will think his a girl again:)

Toad Hollow weekend

We went up to the wine country this weekend to participate in the Russian River Barrel Tasting event. We tasted some great wines and some not so great. The best Pinot this weekend was the 2004 Rochioli. Finally a Pinot that looks, smells and taste like a Pinot with great acidity on a very long finish. We again stayed in the Toad Hollow Bungalow and had a wonderful time. Mike and Jasmine joined us there and they made and Indian curry Friday night and Saturday night we had the Gordons, Raths and Randy and Genie over for a "Potjie". We drank a lot of good wine. Everybody enjoyed the food. We also discovered a lovely bakery and coffee shop in downtown Healsburg for breakfast, thanks to Mike and Jasmine.

Cirque du Soleil

On Sunday we went to see Cirque du Soleil just up the street from us. We managed to loose our tickets, but we got new ones at the event. Sadly though 2 poor people that somehow got the tickets we lost tried to get in too - hopefully they got to see the event and wasn't kicked out. It was amazing! Afterwards we did a curry evening with Gavin and Christina at our place. We did chicken tikka masala, lentil curry and green beens with ginger. Willem was a little on the sick side so could not taste a lot, but the other seem to say the food was fine. Gavin made a great Indian dessert to top things off.

Making Wine

We almost bottled our maiden vintage of Vidmar Syrah 2004 the other day - as it turns out there was a misunderstanding with Crushpad and now we'll only do it on the 12th of March. Tasted great though, although maybe lacking the acidity make it last more than say 5 years. Also tasted our new 2005 Thompson syrah and that was rocking - this might turn out better than the Vidmar, I'd never have guessed.