DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

And so I found myself in Healdsburg, wandering around the square, when I stepped into the Sebastiani tasting room for a few minutes to see if they might be pouring some Zinfandel. They were, as it turns out, but it wasn’t very good.

They were also pouring a new “tasting room selection,” apparently not available elsewhere. I’m not immune to marketing scams… but I’m also not immune to good deals on tasty red wine.

I’d never heard of Ruby Cabernet, but I have to say I enjoyed it more than I expected. It’s not a Cabernet blend, but a hybrid grape — a cross of Carignane and Cabernet Sauvignon, developed especially for warm inland California regions. I’ve just looked up some details on this and laughed out loud at a comment in the Super Gigantic WWW Winegrape Glossary: Ruby Cabernet is “currently used in jug-wines as ‘backbone’.” Ha!

There are really only two rules for buying wine at tasting rooms. You can follow one or the other. The first is this: buy only in bulk, to take advantage of case discounts. Or, for infrequent social visits, you can follow the second rule: buy only a bottle or two and try not to think what you paid for it.

It was with rule #2 in mind that we bought a few bottles of Ruby Cabernet. What they’re selling, and what we’re buying, is the right to stand around in a million-dollar room sipping free vino, pawing the fancy oils, vinegars, cookbooks, glassware, grape-themed tchotchkes, etc. and acting like well-to-do people on vacation.

Of course it helps that we were well-to-do people on vacation.