Wine Country

Wine country. Acres of vines, quaint old barns and winery outbuildings, folks sipping samples in tasting rooms, rookies taking a tour to get some basic training in how grape juice becomes wine, picnics under shady trees. Sales rooms with bottles and cases of the local product plus the usual assortment of cork pullers and glasses, special cheeses, gourmet goodies, museum pieces from wine areas in Europe.Just your normal, everyday, ho-hum winery scene, with one small difference. This is Virginia.

I touched down in Gisbourne, New Zealand, on a flying "cigar tube with wings. " The placards to that town read "First to see the light" and "First to see the New Millennium. " Having crossed the international dateline while in a more sizable bird and "lost a day" while flying, the signage seemed even more disorienting. This was the locale to which international observers flocked on Dec. 31, 1999, to see how the Y2K bug would strike because Gisbourne is the first place to see the dawn in the world every year.

California's Napa Valley, located 65 miles northeast of San Francisco, seduces with bustling wineries, ostentatious chateaux, great restaurants and hostelries so refined you never want to go home.When we tacked a visit to wine country to a San Francisco business meeting several years ago, the place seemed like a convenient weekend getaway. To our delight, it was more than that. The valley, contained by the Mayacamas and Vaca mountain ranges, was compact and manageable. Roads were uncrowded.

In Sally Thorner's living room, a sprawling rattan loveseat beckons from a corner. A bit fantastical, it's a closer relative of the porch swing than the sofa in mood and purpose. With its oversized downy cushions, this piece is meant for long, lazy mornings, for losing track of time with one's husband, for unabashed relaxation. Needless to say, it's new. As an anchorwoman for 25 years, the omnipresent face of television news in Baltimore, Thorner had little time to herself.

Former college roommates Miles and Jack, both firmly ensconced in middle age and enduring the myriad crises that station in life inevitably entails, have embarked on a tour of California's wine country. For reluctant divorcee Miles, the trip is a chance to maybe finally move past his failed marriage and a present to his longtime bud, an opportunity for last-chance bonding before Jack's impending nuptials. For veteran bachelor Jack, it's a chance to sow some final wild oats. For audiences, Sideways is a voyage of rediscovery, a chance to revel in the simple pleasures - too often forgotten in this age of cinematic blockbusters - of a film that celebrates the intricacies of life in ways both splendid and mundane, revealing it all with unflinching honesty.

Vacationing Survivor-style may seem like an oxymoron, but that hasn't stopped Island Quest Vacations. "Survivor was the inspiration," says company spokeswoman Annesophia Alexander. Island Quest trips will mimic the reality show, she says, but "there's no eating bugs, starving or getting voted off." Although no trips have been scheduled yet, Island Quest's plan is to give vacationers a week of fun in the sun -- on St. Croix or aboard a Royal Caribbean ship -- with daily quests, secret missions and nightly point-earning summits.

Body found in July in Kansas City linked to new discoveries KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A body found in July behind a vacant apartment building in Kansas City has been linked to five others discovered since Thursday in the same part of the city, police said yesterday. At a news conference, police Capt. Rich Lockhart said three of the victims had been identified, while the other three bodies were so decomposed that police have not been able to determine their race or sex. Two bodies were found Thursday in a detached garage after someone notified police of a foul odor.

RECENTLY I SPENT several days touring the California wine country, and I must say that it was a wonderful experience that I will remember until long after I get this mud out of my ears.I'll explain the mud in a moment, but first I should explain that the wine country is an area near San Francisco that is abundantly blessed with the crucial natural ingredient that you need to have a successful wine country: tourists. There are thousands and thousands of them, forming a dense, continuous stream of rental cars creeping up and down the Napa Valley, where you apparently cannot be a legal resident unless you own a winery named after yourself.

In Sally Thorner's living room, a sprawling rattan loveseat beckons from a corner. A bit fantastical, it's a closer relative of the porch swing than the sofa in mood and purpose. With its oversized downy cushions, this piece is meant for long, lazy mornings, for losing track of time with one's husband, for unabashed relaxation. Needless to say, it's new. As an anchorwoman for 25 years, the omnipresent face of television news in Baltimore, Thorner had little time to herself.

Never mind all the naysayers who say newspapers are only good for kitty litter. From Annapolis comes proof that papers are also good for murder investigations, albeit by way of the litter box. On Monday, workers at an Annapolis animal hospital were shredding The Capital to fill kitty boxes - try doing that with the Internet! - when one of them spotted a photo of a missing SUV. Police were looking for it because it belonged to a man found murdered in Davidsonville last week. Looked just like the green Hyundai that had been sitting in the lot for the past week.

Williams-Sonoma Wine & Food A New Look at Flavor By Joshua Wesson Free Press / May 2008 / $29.95 Matching food with wine can be a baffling, if not intimidating, experience. Just as toothpaste residue will sour the morning orange juice, the wrong wine can undermine an otherwise great entree. Joshua Wesson, who founded a chain of wine stores organized by style, organizes his book the same way - to the benefit of anyone looking to demystify wine pairing. He explains not only why chardonnay is a rich white, but why it works alongside a fresh corn soup with shiitake mushrooms.

Callused palms and bandaged fingers; broken fingernails stained black with dirt - Hollywood actor and director Emilio Estevez proudly shows off his vineyard worker hands as he walks the vine rows. Four years ago, Estevez planted this half-acre pinot-noir vineyard around his Malibu, Calif., home. Today, wine labels featuring a pen-and-ink drawing of his front-lawn vineyard - a wink to the ego satisfaction of bottling his own wine - are ready to be slapped on his first serious vintage, the 2007 pinot noir aging in a single half-sized oak barrel in his wine cellar.

Never mind all the naysayers who say newspapers are only good for kitty litter. From Annapolis comes proof that papers are also good for murder investigations, albeit by way of the litter box. On Monday, workers at an Annapolis animal hospital were shredding The Capital to fill kitty boxes - try doing that with the Internet! - when one of them spotted a photo of a missing SUV. Police were looking for it because it belonged to a man found murdered in Davidsonville last week. Looked just like the green Hyundai that had been sitting in the lot for the past week.

Bachelorette parties are becoming more inventive and more exotic. If there's a grown-up version of the no-boys-allowed slumber party, it's the bachelorette party. And this bride-to-be's last chance to kiss off the whimsies of youth and singledom has been elevated to the ultimate female-bonding fest. Although this rite of passage has always brought the dearest of friends together to make lifetime memories (some never to be recounted in the presence of husbands), the bachelorette party has evolved in recent years.

LEXINGTON, N.C. - For generations, farmers in the Yadkin Valley have grown tobacco. But the demand for that plant has dropped, so many are turning to another green, leafy crop - grapes. As in the wine-making kind. And if the image of Tobacco Road morphing into Winery Way sets North Carolina stereotypes on their ear, consider this: The valley's biggest wine producer, a man who lives in a Tuscan-inspired estate, packs impeccable good ol' boy credentials. Richard Childress, 59, once made early-morning moonshine runs, raced stock cars and owned NASCAR's most famous car, the No. 3 of the late seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt.

Some of the finest grapes in Maryland are grown in a small town off Route 70. The three vintners who call Mount Airy home were drawn to the area by its terrain and soil. Now the wineries are drawing attention to Mount Airy, thanks to their award-winning wines and popular wine tastings. With spring in full swing, Berrywine Plantations/Linganore Wine Cellars, Elk Run Vineyards and Loew Vineyards are open for tours, tastings and other events this weekend. Among the highlights is Sunday's April Champagne Release at Elk Run. This once-a-year tasting includes gourmet treats and live music.

Wine country idyllWhat could be lovelier than a Sunday picnic in the country -- especially if all one has to do is show up for charcoal-grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, chicken breasts marinated with lemon and sage, baked beans, summer salads and homebaked desserts.All this bounty is available in the "wine country" setting of Boordy Vineyards, 12820 Long Green Pike, in Baltimore County. Cookouts are informal, with a few tables and acres of lawn. If it rains, the event moves to the second floor of the winery.

Williams-Sonoma Wine & Food A New Look at Flavor By Joshua Wesson Free Press / May 2008 / $29.95 Matching food with wine can be a baffling, if not intimidating, experience. Just as toothpaste residue will sour the morning orange juice, the wrong wine can undermine an otherwise great entree. Joshua Wesson, who founded a chain of wine stores organized by style, organizes his book the same way - to the benefit of anyone looking to demystify wine pairing. He explains not only why chardonnay is a rich white, but why it works alongside a fresh corn soup with shiitake mushrooms.

Los Angeles feels a million miles away as we drive along Santa Rosa Road between Buellton and Lompoc. The sun-dappled grapevines, rolling green hills and pastoral pumpkin patches are a picture-perfect backdrop to the nearly 80 wineries and small farms that populate Santa Barbara County. They're also the setting for director Alexander Payne's movie Sideways, a comedic, bawdy adventure that gives a starring role to local wines. Based on a book of the same name, Sideways has inspired a wave of tourism here.

Former college roommates Miles and Jack, both firmly ensconced in middle age and enduring the myriad crises that station in life inevitably entails, have embarked on a tour of California's wine country. For reluctant divorcee Miles, the trip is a chance to maybe finally move past his failed marriage and a present to his longtime bud, an opportunity for last-chance bonding before Jack's impending nuptials. For veteran bachelor Jack, it's a chance to sow some final wild oats. For audiences, Sideways is a voyage of rediscovery, a chance to revel in the simple pleasures - too often forgotten in this age of cinematic blockbusters - of a film that celebrates the intricacies of life in ways both splendid and mundane, revealing it all with unflinching honesty.