Here's the long story of how we tried to get Beth's picture on a wine label.
With no East Coast Christmas trip this year, the first miss in 19 years for me, we decided to spend our winter break GSD (gettin' shit done)!
For a long time, we've wanted a second refrigerator in the garage. In order to fit a refrigerator in the garage, and still park our cars in the garage, well, there was some work to be done.
It started with the purge. Before Beth put away the Christmas decorations we took out every bin, tub, and box and went through it all. With overloaded trashcans, 3 trips to The Salvation Army, and some neighborhood Facebook page giveaways, we were freeing up some space. But then came the picture bins. Big plastic tubs packed with albums, frames, and lots and lots of loose pictures.
Before I get to THE pic, I need to share a connection I made and brag about my amateur accomplishment. In the garage sat 7 leftover boxes of tile from when we tiled our downstairs. Why so much extra tile, you didn't ask? Because I measured for the pantry, purchased tile for the pantry, and for 7 years lived with not ever tiling the pantry. I'm not proud of it.
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But, it was the week of GSD. I had the tools and I'd run out of excuses. So I set out to put those 7 boxes of tile in their intended place. And voila!
Far from perfect, but I can live with it. Back to the point, almost. There's plenty of opportunity to let one's mind wander while squatting alone in a pantry for a weekend. And being imperfect and real is what I love about the wineries that I love. Herman Story being one of them. While some tasting menus might suggest pairing a wine with "a braised lamb shank with a cranberry reduction sauce on chilled endive leaves," Herman's sending its members taco & salsa recipes, bottles of hot sauce, beer coozies, and stories like this this in our email newsletters:
I guess I just appreciate authenticity and maybe imperfection over fuss.
Back to the pictures. We set up shop in the garage trying to sort our lives snapshots into categories to store them with some sort of purpose, when I hear, "Oh. My. Ghawd." Now, mind you, Beth says this a few times a day. Over the years I've developed a pretty good grasp on the tone to tell if it's worthy of me stopping what I'm doing to see/help, or if she's maybe just talking to herself. This was a good sounding one. She was clearly not in danger. Not mad. But I knew I should check something out. I looked up, and knew we had ourselves a Late Bloomer candidate. Wanna know what that is? If you're still reading, sure you do.
Herman Story has a wine label, Late Bloomer, for it's Grenache, that real-life wine club members submit their own pics to compete to hopefully grace the label of the next vintage. A quick google images search will lead you to this:
That top, left pic, that's the first ever LB label and sweet picture of the owner/winemaker himself.
So, Beth's, "Oh. My. Ghawd." gave us hope that maybe we can know the person on next year's Late Bloomer wine label and reemphasized the fact that I'm a great younger brother by not posting pictures of my sister.
I present to you, our submitted pic.
and that's how I spent my winter break
