Once in a while, we attend a birthday that is out of the normal cycle of birthdays that we celebrate.  If you even occasionally follow these articles, you have figured out that we celebrate birthdays in any given month on one day, and have one big dinner and sometimes a bigger cake, depending on how many names have to be included.  As the families grow and the next generations, especially with third cousins and further come forward, they do things as they want.  I am just glad to see that there will be more generations.  My Bride wanted to go, especially since the parents of the child had just bought a new house.

I do believe that the new State Flower of Michigan is going to be the Orange Barrel, and the new governor and her administration will do all that is in the power to raise our taxes again, so that the continuation of poorly constructed roads will continue.  As the Orange Barrels begin to propagate the expected travel time grows exponentially and soon a horse drawn wagon may make the same travel time, but I digress and we finally got to the new home.  We just looked for a crowd of vehicles and then we saw an open garage with people sitting along folding tables eating, so we knew that we were in the right place.  I saw some relatives and sat down with them and my Bride went in to make a couple plates of food.  I think there was some assorted salads and fruit, but my Bride figured that it was safer to bring me some forms of meat.  I had either grilled Bratwurst or Knockwurst on a bun, and what was called on a television show when I was young an “Untidy Joseph” or a “Sloppy Joe.”  Then later on we had a cupcake.  

I understand that hosting parties can be expensive, because the Good Lord knows that I hosted plenty of birthday parties, not to mention holidays over the years.  I grew up being taught that one should always have a stock of beverages on hand, my Father only drank Molson Canadian, so there was always cases available, a couple of cases in the basement fridge and more on the side as a backup, but beyond that there was always Scotch, Rye, Gin, Vodka and a few bottles of Bordeaux; that way one could always have a drink in the house.  Nowadays, to play it safe when we go to a home, we take a couple of bottles of wine with us, and this way my Bride says that I won’t complain, but she says it in a more colorful manner.  The first bottle that we opened was a Boathouse Vineyards Dry Dock Riesling Leelanau Peninsula 2016.  We just stopped by the winery by chance on one of our trips to the northwest corner of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and we really enjoyed our time at the winery.  One of the few wineries that I have been to where you could get there by car or by boat, and the winery grounds are set up for musical entertainment throughout the Summer and Autumn season.  While they own twenty-one acres for the vineyards, they use an outside winemaking facility that is less than a mile away and they have won several awards for being a new winery.  This was a real pleasant Dry Riesling and I knew that we had to get some, because my Bride even enjoyed it.  It is made using Stainless Steel and only a couple hundred cases are made each year.  The wine had soft floral and citrus notes, with some ripe pear that finished quite dry.  The second wine is Ray’s Station Winery Cabernet Sauvignon 2014 from Mendocino and part of the larger Vintage Wine Estates family wineries.  The wine is named after former Army Captain and Bear Flag Republic Leader John Ray who established successful vineyards in the regions, especially in Mendocino County.  The area is known for its Redwoods, wines and now Cannabis crops.  This wine is eighty percent Cabernet Sauvignon and the balance is evenly split between Merlot and Malbec, with a suggested cellaring life of ten years.  After the Dry Riesling this was a much bigger wine and understandably so.   The wine had a soft nose I thought for a Cabernet Sauvignon, but it gave some dark fruit in the taste and a nice finish.  All in all, we had a nice time and we were ready to be herded like cattle by the orange cone brigades on our way home.  My Bride said to me, that they had a lovely house and asked my opinion, and I told her that I only saw the garage, maybe another time.