Pre-partying

Saturday night gave a whole new meaning to pre-partying!

(Thank goodness Sarah doesn't read this blog, because I used that joke about, oh, six times on Saturday. I don't think it got better with age.)

That afternoon, Mike and I went to Total Wine and Beverage to buy the wine for the party next Saturday. I thought we had already made the decision on what white and red to buy, but then when we got to the store, Mike changed his mind. We roamed for a while, debating this one or that one, or this one or that one.

We thought we'd settled again, and when we asked for help to get cases down from the shelves, the helpful salesman recommended another of each varietal we might want to try.

This put Mike in even less certainty about our (now second) choices.

So we left the three cases of wine at the store, and instead bought five bottles. We decided we'd take them home and taste them that night, then decide which was our favorites.

Of course, with five bottles of wine to drink, we couldn't do the tasting all on our own! We called Sarah, Gregg, David and Lauren, and being the true friends that they are, they agreed to come over and help us out in our time of need.

And me being me, we couldn't just give tastes and make a decision. Oh, no. We needed blind tasting.

Sarah even suggested taking notes, a great idea to use the "Tasting Notes" booklet Debbie sent! We went through all the wines, then went through them again, then back and forth to keep tasting 3 against 1, and 4 against 5.

It was a large amount to drink between the five of us (Gregg was the smart one and didn't partake). We started talking loud, moving from room to room, telling the same jokes over and over... what a blast!

We even got the "I'm really, really smart" complex thanks to the wine. Here's Mike describing to David how to read the grape varietal by the color.

The night's damage:

We did some roll-playing after Mike dropped the bomb that he was considering purchasing a handgun (everyone feel free to bring this up and talk him out of it), all in retaliation for me admitting that I had actually already seen Ratatouli without him.

Gregg suggested he consider a taser instead, then worked the angle that as a form of house protection, the gun doesn't cut it. This I thought was great, until he said that instead, a knife would do.

Here's Gregg showing David that he can run at him with a knife faster than David could pull a gun.

After getting the boys back into the kitchen, we took votes on all the wines, read our intellegible commentary, and finally had some winners!

The best part is that the white wine selected has something really cool about it: it's actually the house white at The Inn at Little Washington.

Party time has officially started!