Where the party is, where to stay. Questions?

WET ZEPPELIN IS A SCHOLARSHIP BENEFIT!

Our last three wild winery events have been birthday parties limited to a couple of hundred invitees, but now it's time to go big. As there's a burgeoning Wine and Viticulture major at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, we thought that we would make our next event a scholarship benefit for deserving students, to be selected by Stillman in consultation with faculty. Please donate generously, or at least as much as you would spend if you had to pay for the wine that you'll drink! We're also looking for volunteers to help with checking people in, designing and building sets and decorations, and helping Stillman manage the musicians. Well, maybe not the last one.

To offer help or find out more, email StillmanB@aol.com or call him at 805-550-6492. Thanks!

A Brief History of A Dozen Years of Partying, part 1

This is what started it all. Possibly worth re-reading, even if you were a recipient . . .

April 21, 1997

Stillman Brown

Your Name
Somewhere Out There
Our Mailing List

Dear Friend, (insert actual name here if person is really important)

We know you get a lot of mail from wineries and wine-related businesses, and most of it is junk. So many points, so little wine, so give us your credit card number. Well, this would have been one of those letters, if only we had any sense . . . the wineries and wine shops that do that sort of thing seem to make money at it. But who needs money?

This is an exclusive invitation to attend a major historical event. In the tradition of the humane, selfless aristocrats of the European Renaissance, men and women of honor who, inspired by their holy faith, bequeathed subsequent generations of humanity some of the greatest works of art the world has ever beheld, we have commissioned a painting. The artist is a heretofore unknown genius; and the subject is the defining cultural and religious event of the twentieth century, which was not fully recognized until recently.

At 6 P.M. on Friday, May 2, 1997, at the London Wine Bar at 415 Sansome Street in downtown San Francisco, California, we will unveil for the first time a painting by Robert Cochran, “The Death Of Elvis Presley.” We hope that you will be able to attend.

Yours,

(sign here if hand is steady enough)

Stillman Brown
Jory Winery

WET ZEPPELIN band lineup expands!

As you can plainly see from our poster above (once your eyes adjust to the flames) we have recruited several more phenomenal musical acts for Wet Zeppelin. We're also seeking set designers, who will doubtless tell us that our idea for launching the Cayucos Veterans Hall into the Pacific Ocean at the end of the party is perhaps overly ambitious. Fine - what's YOUR idea?!?

Twitter attacks Blog, defended by Godzilla!

Just in case you're not following me on Twitter, here are some of my recent hits. Warning: may induce ADD in just about everyone.

In North Carolina, I just saw a roadside establishment named "Midget's Grooming Station." I was happy to see the apostrophe!
I didn't know "Hang down your head, Noam Chomsky" was a traditional Yiddish folk tune.
2007 Tudor Tondre PN best wine I've had from this vineyard!
Okay, the moment of respectful silence is over. What's the difference between Michael Jackson and a Disney movie?
A Disney movie can still touch children.
Apparently Elvis was beating the hell out of Michael Jackson, until Jesus calmed him down.
Off to the Warped tour with Luke. Not much mourning of MJ today, I suspect.
I've seen 9 count 'em 9 people my age or more here, but I've only looked at a thousand or so! "Warped" tour, Ventura - Punk by the Pacific
Never goes into the first mosh pit - especially when somebody threw a full garbage can into it.
What kind of old school punk band has a keyboard player anyway?
Mosh pit! Made it out alive, the only man over 25.

Bad Corks

Long time consumers of my swill, doubtless numbering into the millions, may have noted that I haven't used what are disingenuously known as "natural" corks in quite a while. (I call the people who offer them "mold salesmen.") The last straw on this flying monkey's back was the 20+% TCA rate in the "natural" Suncorks used on my 2000 Jory Winery "Lock Vineyard" Paso Robles Syrah. I have used Neocorks for several years with complete satisfaction. They're the ones that have a foamlike core exposed at either end, and a solid, often colored, on the surface that touches the interior of the bottle's neck. I often put flying Zeppelins on the outside, unless the supplier wants more money for the printing than they do for the corks themselves. Of course, my complete satisfaction is not the wine bartenders, as putting a Neocork back into the bottle is not easy, especially if the wine has been bottled recently. Neocorks cost about the same as inexpensive 'natural' corks.
I'm also a big fan of screwcaps, particularly the 7-layer Alvis type (they have a tin liner on the bottom, as opposed to exposed white foam) though the surface area that's sealed is only that of the very top of the bottle, a narrow ring, which is vulnerable to a blow or a long period of overpressure, such as when pallets of wine are stacked four high. The screwcap/bottle combination costs a bit more than the cork-finished type.
My Stillman wines use Diam "corks" which are made from a very finely ground 'corkburger' that is purged with supercritical CO2 which removes the TCA compounds, and then 'glued' together with some foodie-happy compounds. They work perfectly, though they look cheap. They're not.
The worst closure, in my not so humble opinion, is the so-called 1+1, which consists of visibly irregular small chunks of corkburger, glued together with corkdust, with a thin disk of solid cork at each end. The center sections of these corks very frequently have enough TCA that you can smell it just by breaking the corks open and applying one half-cork to each nostril. The thin discs at each end are usually permeated within a year or so, allowing the TCA in the corkburger to contaminate the wine.
Guess which cork is most commonly used in inexpensive plonk?

WET ZEPPELIN UPDATE!

Ladies, gentlemen, and fruit flies, we have contracted with Bill Gaines Audio of San Luis Obispo to provide a state-of-the-art, Hammer-Of-The-Gods sound system for Wet Zeppelin. While we will provide complimentary earplugs for those of you who require perfect hearing in order to still-hunt monkeys in the forest primeval, we will not be turning the amps up to 11; we just want very high quality sound. Also note the presence of a few bands you may not have heard of, but be assured of their musical quality and entertainment value. And, yes, the Dancing Cage of Love will make another appearance this year.