Fezzik: “Why do you wear a mask?  Were you burned by acid, or something like that?

Man, in Black: “Oh no, it’s just that they’re terribly comfortable.   I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.”

As the clock keeps ticking and the everyone is watching the casualty list, like out of the scene from “Gone with the Wind,” there is the potential glimmer of hope that the lockdown will ease up and perhaps the state won’t be totally bankrupt.  I know that I have done over two complete incubation terms in lockdown or quarantine, if you prefer and both my Bride and I are not showing any symptoms or secondary symptoms.  Though I do wonder, if the governor of the state has even done one day of lock up or, is she waiting to be a martyr that will never occur.  Personally, I think if the citizens have to do without income, the least our elected officials could do is match, what they are so willing to wish on the masses, and forget about their token percentage that they have given up.  It is now demanded that anyone that goes out into another building should wear a mask, though the one person that should, has not been seen by me or reported in any photo. 

On a saner situation, is how we are coping with all of the dictates, and yes, we are still going out for our daily walks, waiting for the weather to be totally agreeable.  My Bride has been wracking her brain trying to make dishes that sound more like what we would have in a restaurant, if we could go to a restaurant, and not have to bring something home, just to be reheated, it may as well be fresh, at least for the first night, as we have been alternating dishes and left overs, so that we are not in a rut.  Well, she found a recipe for Tequila Shrimp that sounded interesting and we even found some Tequila in one of the liquor cabinets.  While it was good the first night, she ignored the original recipe and doctored it up the second time with the leftovers and really zinged it up.  The original recipe must have been created for people that prefer food not spicy.   The second night it was awesome and she felt vindicated, though I ate it the first night stoically the second night was wonderful; because why complain?

As I have stated, I am in the midst of rearranging the wine cellar and moving the whites to another location and I found some white wines that I had forgotten about, and just in case, I knew that I had backup selections to choose from.   The bottle that I put in the refrigerator to chill was Russian Hill Chardonnay Gail Ann’s Vineyard Russian River Valley 2007.  Patrick Melley is a self-taught winemaker and co-founder of Russian Hill and Talawind Ranch wineries.  He went from the restaurant industry to making wine himself, back in 1989 he started making wine at home, and then in 1993 he co-founded Benicia Cellars Winery.  In 1997, he and his partners moved to the Russian River Valley and founded Russian Hill Estate Winery.  I couldn’t find any winemaking notes on this wine, but it was the tenth year that the winery was in existence.  I forgot to grab my Durand and used one of my other corkscrews and the cork crumbled, and I had to put a coffee filter into a funnel and pour the wine into a decanter.  The wine had a deep amber-gold color, looking more like an aged Sauternes, and my Bride was afraid that the wine had oxidized.  I was the guinea pig, the nose was soft, almost non-existent and the taste was subtle and soft and the fruit was gone, with a finish that evoked alcohol.  It actually was a beautiful drinking wine, not showy or pretentious in the least.  The next day when we enjoyed her doctored version of the Tequila Shrimp, we finish off the decanter of Chardonnay and the taste and finish was the same as the first day and I just wish that I had tried a bottle of it earlier when it was young, but those things happen.  The lesson of the day, is don’t presume a wine is over the hill, give it a chance.