A couple of weeks ago I hosted the Tex & Fritz Wine Club and the Vegas Wineaux Wine Club for a special night of appetizers, cheeses, and Opolo wines.  While my intentions were stellar, the proverbial “best laid plans” kind of kicked in.  My beautifully planned five-year vertical … well, let’s just say that I had a slight miscalculation.  Of about four years. Oops.

Let me explain.

According to CellarTracker, I had five years of Opolo Mtn. Zin, 2004-2008. Maybe not.

As it turns out, it appears that the Wineaux Guy and I had indulged at some time and I had been somewhat neglectful about keeping my CellarTracker holdings up to date.  I only had three of the five years:  2005, 2006, and 2008.  What to do?!?

Well, since I had invited all of these people over, I had had to do something!  So I broke out the Rhapsody (insert sounds of heavenly voices here). And, thankfully, I had a vertical!  Opolo Rhapsody – their Bordeaux blend – 2005, 2006, 2007. Whew.  And just for fun, I threw in a bottle of 2007 Opolo Remo Belli Zinfandel.

I’m not even going to pretend like I took notes.  It was a great and yummy night!  A night of Paso Robles rich red Zinfandels.  Along with the great food that everyone brought, a great tooth-staining time was had by all.

And, believe it or not, we did taste, and we voted on the wines.  Which one was the favorite (WOTN)?  Surprisingly, the Remo Belli Vineyard Zinfandel.

Actually, that’s not a big shock.  Every now and then Opolo will explore outside of their “usual’ wines and do something fascinating, and this Remo Belli is a great example of that. Thankfully, I still have one more bottle.

And, um, this time I checked.

So the wines were the following:

• 2005 Opolo Mountain Zinfandel
• 2006 Opolo Mountain Zinfandel
• 2008 Opolo Mountain Zinfandel
• 2007 Opolo Zinfandel – Remo Belli Vineyard (WOTN)
• 2005 Opolo Rhapsody
• 2006 Opolo Rhapsody
• 2007 Opolo Rhapsody

Yes, I changed the look – once again – of the Vegas Wineaux website. Why? Other than “because I wanted to,” there were good, practical reasons involved.

While I really liked the new look I’d come up with before (and so did others – I was nominated for a Black Weblog Award!), it still didn’t do what I wanted to do.  So I sat down to figure exactly what it was that I wanted.  (If you’re easily bored with techy stuff, you can stop reading now)

Practicality - I found that I was posting less because of the many steps I had to take in order to make sure that the great pictures were always displaying in an eye-catching, thrilling manner. I had made it too complex for myself!

Professionalism - While the old new site was chock full of eye-candy, it was lacking – in my opinion – in giving a serious, but still fun, impression. I decided that a more monochromatic color scheme and cleaner lines would correct that.  There are other reasons, all having to do with making the correct impact in the wine blog world.  The old new design didn’t quite carry the message that I wanted or portray the seriousness with which I take the messages that I share.

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