Pictures from our Paella party and after party

Our Memorial Day Paella Party was a blast! We had it catered by Gerard's Paella, who competed against Bobby Flay on the Food Network (and won).

Gerard is a great guy and fixes some wonderful paella in huge paella pans. We had a "boy band" from the neighbors provide entertainment and they were amazingly good. We also showed "A Good Life" with Russell Crowe on the side of the winery and did our trademark candlelighting of the vineyards for romantic strolls.

After most everyone went home, our hardcore crowd of old and new friends carried on until 2 in the morning. One of our newest friends is Scott and Kristina Iverson, who were visiting Napa on their honeymoon. They had toured our winery 3 days before and came back for the party. Great to see a young couple in love at the start of their journey through life together.

Come see us next year - the Paella Party is now an official annual O'Brien Estate event.

Almost too good to be true

I received a notice from Facebook today that I had been tagged in a photo. Always curious as to what embarrassing position I have been caught in - and how much it will cost to have the photo suppressed - I logged on.

To my surprise, it appeared to be a photo of Emily Wahlman getting engaged with bottles of O'Brien Estate Romantic Portfolio wines in the foreground. I was truly touched. To think that her boyfriend (now fiancee) valued my poetry upon the labels to the extent of including it in his proposal (I assume from the photo) means that he understands exactly what I try to communicate about the nature of relationships and the search for true love.

Here is the link to the photo: Emily Wahlman Engagement

What an honor...

A Strange but True Tale

On the right of the picnic table is Jim Barber and his wife Kim. Jim and I were in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity together at the University of Florida; we graduated 30 years ago together and only saw each other last year for the first time since graduation.

One of my favorite sayings is to ask people what the best thing is about turning 40 or 50 or 60. They usually look puzzled; I tell them that the best thing about turning 60 is that you did not die at 59.

So it is amazing to still be alive and see friends from so long ago - which, of course, sometimes seems like yesterday and sometimes like eternity.

It is so interesting to be in the middle part of life. You remember your young romances, and, if you are lucky, you married the best of them. You look toward the future, hoping that everything will work out all right, and that life will continually get easier.

You look at your children, and wonder how their lives will turn out. You even wonder how long you will live and how you will die.

But then I am struck with a profound sense of gratitude that I am still alive, still in good health, and can spend time with someone I knew from 30 years ago and want to start my wind machines to impress him with the noise coming from the straight pipes of the 440 ci V8 engine driving them.

I deeply enjoy life and the 24/7 challenge of running a winery. It is intense but then life should have an element of intensity - I think this makes it seem longer.

But sometimes I wish it were easier.

A great engagement in Napa

It is always a great thing to see a young couple in love start their journey together through life. We are fortunate to have the unique experience of meeting many couples (over 30 so far) as single people and saying goodbye to them as engaged couples. The nervousness in the groom-to-be's eyes, the perhaps unsuspecting bride-to-be, and the beauty of Napa Valley makes for a wonderful scene.

Mike and Michelle came to us from New York City. He had called me on the phone earlier and told me that he was planning to get engaged at our vineyard so I could help orchestrate the proposal timing. I met them in the room inside our winery where our bottling line is and where we start our tours and tastings. We pride ourselves on delivering an authentic Napa Valley experience where you get to see all aspects of how wine is made in a small family owned winery.

This is also where we have our Romantic Portfolio and Romantic Trio wine wedding gifts on display. After showing them the winemaking equipment there, I then took them into the main part of the winery where we have our fermentation tanks and 175 French oak barrels of wine. After explaining how we crushed grapes, pumped tons of them into a fermentation tank, then into French oak barrels, I let them outside to the vineyard.

There I had them sit at our backyard table overlooking our vineyards and about 500 acres of our neighbors and left them alone with a bottle of Seduction. Now the moment was up to Mike to "pop the question".

Afterwards, I congratulated them on their new life together. They joined our Wine Lovers Club, so they will have reminders of their time in Napa Valley delivered to their door step every three months. They also are going to register for a Romantic Portfolio as a wedding present and plan to use the box as a bridal keepsake chest after the wine is drunk.

What a great celebration of the continuation of life!

A Day in My Life

One of the greatest pleasures of the wine business is the number of people you get to meet. We had the pleasure last week of having Gretchen and Shepard from Houston stay with us last week. Gretchen is the manager of Cellar 17, a popular wine bar in Houston and Shepard is the managing partner of Glass Wall restaurant, also a Houston hot spot.

This visit was arranged by Cal Remsburg, our distributor in Houston who is single-handedly responsible for our success there.

Gretchen and Shepard are delightful, so we had an impromptu party for them, inviting over Dave Cofran, former General Manager of Silver Oak, Gary and Ellen Luchtel of Suhr-Luchtel and Fortunati Vineyards, plus Charles and Teresa Kamins, our neighbors.

Gretchen had read my previous blog post on the way to Napa and told me how valuable she thought that advice was to young women, particularly those working in the wine industry. This was one of the nicest compliments I had had for quite a while. This gave me the idea of writing more on this topic - so you will see more of my thoughts on relationships mixed with my thoughts on romantic wedding wine gifts and everything else I muse about.

The forgotten role of courtship

One of the things that I have been thinking about recently is the forgotten role of courtship in society today. My understanding of the current social norm among young people is that the old fashioned concept of dating and courtship is not seen as relevant anymore. Instead there are more group activities and casual "hooking up" and then a relationship may grow from that shaky basis.

This is a shame. And women are the big losers in this new game. Under the guise of being liberated, they are expected to be as carefree as men as to who they sleep with. Unfortunately, men tend to only value that which they have to work for; an easy conquest, whether on the sports court or in the bedroom tends to have less meaning. I am also curious about the concept of reputation in the world of Facebook, etc. where what people may write about you on the internet will live forever - you can't move to a new town to escape your past.

So I am thinking about how to incorporate this old fashioned idea of courtship into the Romantic Portfolio wine gift set, particularly as a wedding present, where the concept of courtship is front and center. My hope is that is a message that some young woman may find valuable - that a man should have to work hard to gain her trust and the hope of intimacy with her. And that this effort is what will create the basis of a lasting relationship, rather than a one night stand.

Punishing the Mistletoe

Someone mentioned to me a couple weeks ago that one method of removing Mistletoe from trees was to blast it out with a shotgun.

Absolutely an irresistable idea once heard. I confirmed this concept with another random guest; armed with this information I went to arm myself against the mistletoe threat.

If you are not aware of this, mistletoe only pretends to be an innocent Christmas decoration to provoke kissing. It really is a tree parasite that kills trees by sucking the life out of them. You could call it a tree terrorist. Therefore, it needs to be punished.

My neighbor Robert Jordan offered his shotgun as a mistletoe removing device. Better yet, he had the good suggestion of calling the neighbors to inform them that multiple shotgun blasts would be going off next to the homes (they are a 1/4 mile away, but still nice to know).

I must say, this was some of the most fun I have had in my backyard for a while. I hadn't shot a shotgun for at least 10 years - pretty fun boy stuff.

I had a chance to teach my son Mason how to shoot the one remaining shell (he was late on the scene but very enthusiastic to punish the mistletoe also. After 12 shots, it appeared all the mistletoe had been removed and we celebrated with a glass of wine. I'm trying to tie this all into romantic wine gifts, but having figured out how...