My Bride has had a Christmas Party for her lady friend’s way before I was on the scene and it is a given.  Before she even does the Christmas Card list and Newsletter, she is planning the party.  She had to get the scrap book out, so that she would have hopes and aspirations of the attendees from last year, and it there are some who may have missed a year or two, she would even have it from the last time that they attended.  There is a gift exchange, where everyone brings a wrapped present and it is assigned a number, and when the guests arrive, they pick a number for another bowl.  Come Hell or high water, the party must go on, after all it is a tradition.  The party was also going to be part of a Zoom session, with presents that had been purchased ahead of time for the Zoom attendees, and they were also assigned a number, and they could watch as someone would unwrap their present while being filmed.   

Of course, this is 2020 and the world has been jostled and some people are more paranoid compared to others, but the ones that wanted to continue the tradition showed up.  I on the other hand, go up to my office and hide, there is way too much estrogen present and they need to let their hair down.  Normally, is that still a word?  Normally, the dinner would be a pot luck, but that was tossed out the window.  She went to a local Lebanese restaurant and ordered trays of food, and she was going to be the only one in the kitchen and she was going to plate everyone’s dinner, so that there would only be one food handler and she went so far as to even don a pair of gloves while she was doing it.  There was a house salad with a couple of different dressings, hummus, pita bread, rice pilaf, chicken kebab and lamb sauteed with mushrooms.  For dessert she had assorted macaroons and individual ramekins of Crème Brulee.   You should have seen the fun earlier, as we were trying to load Butane into the new kitchen torch that she had bought, because she was not sure where the old torch was and every kitchen should have at least two torches, anyways.

The wine selection for the evening was going to feature our two latest go-to wines as selected by my Bride.  The white wine was not a bone-dry wine and everyone that had it, was enjoying the selection.  Famille Sichel Bordeaux Blanc 2017 was the wine that was poured.  Famille Sichel is a family owned negocient firm from 1883 in Bordeaux, as they were in the procurement process for their locations in Mainz, London and New York.  In 1938 they even bought Chateau Palmer, which at the time had fallen on bad times and have since brought it back to all of its glory.  The family does not believe in resting on their laurels as in 2001 they even built a completely new bottling and storage facility in the Bordeaux region.  This particular bottle of wine is a blend of the two leading white grapes of Bordeaux, namely Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc.  I don’t think that I would be amiss to opine that this wine was aged in Stainless Steel as there was plenty of fruit and very refreshing.  It starts off with a nose of citrus fruits and finishes with some terroir with a decent finish.  The red wine was also chosen for its fruit and suppleness.  Gran Passione Rosso Veneto IGT 2019 is a limited production wine made by Cantine Bertoldi.  Cantine Bertoldi is known for their Valpolicella and Amarone wines.  They were founded in 1932 and have gone through several generations of the Bertoldi family and they are now in possession of fifty acres of hand cared varietals of Corvina, Rondinella, Molinara, Garganega, Trebbiano and Cortese, while also adding into the mix they have Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.  The grapes selected for their passito wines are sun dried and fermented in Stainless Steel.  The Gran Passione is made from some of these passito grapes and is made from a “rare red blend” which is a way to describe a mixture that either the winery wants to keep secret, or they just are not sure of their proprietary blend and then there are some years when this wine is not made.  While the wine is not as rich and full bodied as an Amarone de Valpolicella, it is a delightful wine.  In case there are some Gladys Kravitz individuals out there, the guest count will not be revealed, all went well and there was no need for a quarantine period for anyone afterwards.  I pray that next year, the party will not be as clandestine and Victor Lazlo’s work will be done.