Last Tuesday my friend and
day job manager, Walter and I had the privilege of a private harvest tour of a bustling
Crushpad, courtesy of
Leon Glover, owner and winemaker for the upstart
Lionheart Wines. Leon and I have maintained a continued correspondence since
my first tour and our subsequent
joint tasting at
Artisan this past summer. He was gracious enough to extend an invitation for a harvest tour back in September, but I was swamped with other activities and it wasn't until this latest surge in fruit that I was able to partake of his kind offer.
Walter and I finished our lab work and then headed out that evening towards the
Dogpatch in SF and our meetup with
Leon. We found him arms' deep in a 1 ton fermenter of
Pinot, working through the 6pm
punchdowns. He greeted us with a sort of apologetic and newly sanitized air fist bump and suggested that we cruise around and bide our time while he finished the hour's activities. After perusing the hundreds of bottles of wines that have been vinted on-site, we happened to run into a former co-worker of mine that has since taken the leap and changed careers into winemaking,
Chris Nelson. He and I used to damage lab equipment, TGIF's and opposing pitchers in the mighty
South San Francisco Biotech Softball League while developing
small molecule drugs for cancer indications at the original
kinase inhibitor biotech company,
SUGEN.
In the final week leading up to the very first North American Wine Bloggers Conference (which I first mentioned here), I wanted to give you readers a preview of what you can expect from me over the next weekend:
Wine...insanity!
A vineyard tasting at Kick Ranch Vineyard right off the bat, live wine blogging with 14 wineries including Leon from Lionheart Wines, a New Zealand self-tasting and dinner with Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV...and that's just the first day!!
(more after the break) 
Disclosure: I received this wine as a media sample from Twisted Oak Winery.
Ever since 2003, the middle of September brings a certain feeling of excitement to my mind. It brings to mind dusty, hot vineyards, absolutely full of virtually mature grapes. It brings thoughts of BBQ, 
