The party is on. Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday get ready to lend a hand to help restore some balance back in DC.

Sign up for one or more of Bernie’s Rock the House Phone Parties! Bernie is opening his house — hot tub included — to volunteers willing to make calls into key Congressional races in support of Democratic candidates. You will be calling pre-identified progressive voters to help get out the vote. Come for as many parties as your cell plan can bear!

From the host:

Please bring cell phone and chargers, swim suits and towels. Any snacks and/or beverages would be appreciated. Sorry, the location is not handicap accessible. We have three cats.

Click on any of the links below to sign up:
Saturday, Nov 4, 10:00am-1pm
Saturday, Nov 4, 2pm-5pm
Saturday, Nov 4, 5pm-8pm
Sunday, Nov 5, 10:00 m-1pm
Sunday, Nov 5, 2pm-5pm
Sunday, Nov 5, 5pm-8pm
Tuesday, Nov 7, 7:30am-10:30am
Tuesday, Nov 7, 4pm-6pm
Tuesday, Nov 7, 6pm-8pm

My latest Flickr gallery collects some shots I’ve taken from the neighborhood.

OK, so it really is cool to be around all this wine. And one of the more interesting things about working this show is taking home a whole boat load of open wine bottles from the day of the show. But what do you do with multiple cases of open wine bottles? If you do nothing, they all go bad in a matter of days. You can gas them, and if you do it well, it will make them last a week or two.

Not me. I play wine maker. I invite my wine friends over and we mix our own wines. They last for months—maybe longer but I wouldn’t know. And sometimes they come out really tasty. When they don’t, who cares?

Of course, by the time I pull the cork on one of my blends I typically have no idea what is in the bottle. It’s kind of enjoyable that way, but also a bit disconcerting. Especially when it tastes really good. If you drink wine for the pure taste experience, it’s great. If you have some need to be an expert, or bask in the prestige of the pursuit of fine wine, it’s really disappointing. Which is why I love it.

This year I have one blend that I made in an opened screw top bottle that I shared immediately at my blending party. We had the unique chance of tasting the two ingredients separately, then tasting the mix.

And it was good. Very good.

So I christened it Bernaltage!

I’m seriously tempted to chase these labels down and try this again. The blend was way, way better than either of the two bottles were on their own. And you tell me, when will you ever taste a blend of an inexpensive South Australian and rare Paso Robles wines? Only if you make your own Bernaltage!

Here’s the mix:
2-parts Wakefield, 2004, “Promised Land” Cabernet Merlot
1-part Rotta, 2003, Paso Robles Cabernet Franc

Angel looks down on you
Originally uploaded by BernalKC.

From her perch atop Bernal Hill.

Clearly I’m not the only one that loves getting up on the hill. Angel is actually starting to show her age on these walks. She doesn’t have quite the energy anymore, and sometimes lags behind. But look at her. She loves it up there!

Downtown panorama from the hill
Originally uploaded by BernalKC.

As long as we’re talking about Bernal wine blogging, why not feature some more local content. Here’s a shot from a day ago on one of those glorious mornings when I’m so glad I have a dog to walk. I lived here for a decade before getting Angel and hardly ever got up on the hill. Now, it’s one of the things I love so much about this place.

This is unepxected. Not only is the author of this blog, Vinography, a Bernal denizen, he’s writing about a fellow Bernal resident who makes wine here. check it out

‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I said. ‘No. Seriously,’ he replied, and proceeded to tell me all the different places he had put vines into the ground, including a patch not 200 yards from my door in Bernal Heights. ‘I eventually had to move those plants to the Inner Sunset,’ he admitted, after the politics of the Bernal Heights community garden got finicky, ‘But I kept making wine from them along with the guy whose yard they ended up in.’

I bet the finicky garden politics had to do with pest control. But I have no doubt that grapes would do well here.