A few months ago, I got an email about a tasting taking place in New York City: The tasting, In Pursuit of Balance (IPoB) started by Jasmine Hirsch and Rajat Parr back in 2011 in San Francisco.  According to the website, IPoB “seeks to promote dialogue around the meaning and relevance of balance in California pinot noir and chardonnay.” Unless you are completely new to this blog, you have to know that I am a complete Pinot freak (I was going to use a more dicey term, but I will leave that up to your imagination). In 2012, the brought the tasting to New York City, and I tried to buy a ticket, but I waited too long to decide and the darn thing sold out.

Kind of the story of my life.

This year, it was coming back to New York and I thought I would apply to get into the trade tasting in the afternoon–I figured that I have been blogging for a few years, have received a bit of recognition, and gradually increased my regular followers to almost a dozen, so I figured I would give it a try. As soon as IPoB was announced (in November) I sent Jasmine Hirsch an email to see if I could get in–I had met her a few times (including a trip out to Hirsch vineyards, which is no small feat) and I thought I had a pretty good shot to get an invite.

Nope.

Jasmine sent me an email–“limited media passes, all allocated, blah, blah, blah” (as my five-year old likes to say). Undeterred, I decided to pull out an ace that I had up my sleeve. When I started blogging, I reached out to another, much more established blogger here in Southeastern PA. You might have heard of him: Joe Roberts (aka 1winedude). Joe lives about an hour outside of the city (otherwise known as “the boondocks” or “the sticks”–not all that sure of the difference) and we have gotten together a few times. Once, he told me to let him know if I ever wanted to get into a tasting, and he would do his best to help me out.

Well, I decided this was the tasting.

The Dude was not quite sure if he was going to go initially, but a few weeks before the event (i.e., the end of December), he texted me to let me know that we were in.

That was easy.

In typical fashion, we waited until the week of the tasting to develop any sort of plan for our trip up. Joe suggested that we take New Jersey transit–I would meet him in Hamilton, NJ (about an hour outside of the city), getting us to Manhattan about an hour before the 1:00 start of the tasting. Just enough time to grab some lunch.

Well, that was the plan, at least.

The tasting was on a Tuesday, but Sunday night, the Philadelphia region was clobbered with a snow storm. There was roughly 6-8 inches of snow in the city, and a bit more in the suburbs. I figured it would not be much of a problem (in terms of getting to the tasting) since this was not the Northeast corridor’s first snowstorm and there was a good 36 hours or so to get everything moving again.

No problem.

Monday evening, however, I got a text from Joe, letting me know that he might not be able to make the tasting the following morning. Apparently, those living out in the boonies (that’s short for “boondocks”–us city folk like to abbreviate) were having a bit of trouble getting dug out from the storm, and Joe did not know if he was going to be able to make it to the station.

Problem.

Actually, only a minor problem since I was more than willing to ditch the Dude forge ahead on my own.

The following morning, though, Joe let me know that they plows had finally come and he would be able to meet me in Hamilton. I got to Penn Station in plenty of time to catch the train to Trenton, where I would need to change trains to meet Joe. I went up to the platform and stood outside in the 18 degree air, watching the board as it moved from “5 Late” to “10 Late” to “15 Late”.

I was going to miss the connection in Trenton.

Crossing the Delaware–I felt like George Washington.

The train finally came, I hopped on board, and I was on my way. I received a few more texts from the Dude–apparently there were several road closures on his way to the station, and he was hoping he would make it in time. As we pulled into Trenton, it was clear that my train was late–there was no chance I was going to make the connection, but luckily, they held the train for us. I will not say this all that often, so pay attention: I was thankful for the kind people of New Jersey who had the foresight to hold the connecting train.

As we pulled into Hamilton, I saw Joe waiting on the platform, gave him a quick wave as he boarded, and we were on our way.

We got to Penn Station (NYC) right on time and then took the subway down to Tribeca for the tasting. We figured there would be plenty to eat down there, so we bypassed all the mid-town options.

Oops.

We got off the subway at Canal Street and after learning that Joe’s sense of direction was almost as bad as mine (clearly Darwin did not anticipate the GPS feature on the iPhone–I would likely have been dead a long time ago without it), we walked in to the only place we could find to eat lunch. Once receiving the menu, I was glad to see that I was not the only one who spends at least three times longer on the wine list than the actual food offerings–even at lunch.

Since we were going to spend the next three hours tasting wine, we did what most people would do.

We ordered some wine for lunch.

But only one bottle:

More on the tasting later this week….