Swedes drink Glögg for Christmas and during the cold winter months. Glögg is kind of a version of mulled wine, but much better! Every Christmas for the last few years Blossa has made a special edition, this year with coffee taste.
We had a few friends over to taste this years edition for the first time and I was very pleased! I had two bottles thinking I’d give the second bottle away if I didnt like it, but I think I’m gonna keep the second bottle for myself!
Drinking wine out of plastic cups, so classy!
We used to drink this wine all the time when we were in Chile 7 years ago (wow!), the locals laughed at us cos they did not consider it being a great wine… I have not seen it since, but someone bought a bottle tonight!
I went up to Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez valley over the weekend to celebrate a friends birthday, I brought my camera but forgot the memory card at home. Super Stinky! Took a couple of snapshots with my phone at the Bridlewood Winery though.
We were only gonna have breakfast, take a stroll around town and then head back home when we walked by the Lucas & Lewellen tasting room and this sign;
I dont think anyone of us was really feeling it, it wasnt even noon yet, but the “buy one case and get an additional case for 1 cent” was really tempting!
But we couldnt buy a two cases of wine without tasting it first!
We had to pay a last visit to a bakery while waiting for our wines to get ready.
We were told Gainey was one of the first wineries that open up in the Santa Ynez Valley, we thought it was a little too commercialized for us. The wine was ok, but we were not that impressed and none of us bought any wines.
The Sauvignon Blanc was really good, and I think I will visit this place again!
We had some time before dinner and stopped by one last tasting room; Dascomb Cellars. We all loved this place from the moment we walked through the door. Sofas, comfy chairs, fireplace and Trivial Pursuit questions on the tables. I bought a bottle of the 2008 Dascomb Roussanne, and the 2005 Port from East Valley Vineyard was Ah-mazing! I’m usually not a big fan of port wines, but it was served with raspberry chocolate that we let melt in our mouths while sipping on the port. My friend got me a bottle and the raspberry chocolate to go with it, since it is my birthday week. Yay!
The White Elephant rules, taken from wikipedia:
To determine the gift-choice play order, participants may draw numbers from a hat. Starting with one and up to the total number of participants, the players take turn in the corresponding succession.
Once an order has been established, each person takes his or her turn choosing a gift. The first person picks a gift, opens it, and shows it to the rest of the company. Then in turn, the participants chooses to either unwrap a new gift or to “steal” a previously unwrapped gift. If a gift is “stolen”, the person who had their gift taken from them gets to unwrap any unopened gift; and then, the turn passes. When all the gifts have been opened, the game is over.
We also added: A gift can only be stolen three times before it is considered locked and can not be stolen again and a gift can not be stolen more than once in the same round (a start of a round is when someone open a new gift).
I got to go as number 9 out of 24 people, which turned out to be a pretty good number, a fair amount of presents had already been open and there were a few that was pretty cool, like a bottle of Champagne, and there were a few I felt would be disappointing if I ended up with. I couple of people thought I should steal the bottle of champagne, but after some consideration, I decided to open up a new one and this is what I got:
A bottle of Grey Goose that came with a shaker. I did not get to keep it for very long though before someone stole it from me. So then I stole the Champagne. I was still a happy camper!
