All arrived and ready for our wine tasting!

I wanted to take a number of my friends to one of my favorite wineries: Lava Vine. I arranged a private tasting and when we arrived we were ushered into the Barrel Room for our private "VIP" tasting. When we walked into the normal tasting room, everyone who was in there was told to "ignore [us] -- these are the VIP's". We felt very special :P Sasha even bowed!

Wine, Strawberries, sunshine, and lots of things you could buy. This was our tasting menu (sort of)

These are all the bottles you could order … if you could read the list

Burroughs (yes, that's his first name) was pouring wine for us and he studied at the Culinary Institute … he decided to pair our Viognier with a nice combination of Pluot (plum/apricot mix) and "PCP" (ok, so maybe it was salt and cayenne, but he told us it was PCP). First we took a sip of wine, then we took the pluot, dipped it in PCP, then ate it, then sipped the wine. Delish!

Our plout / "PCP" combination (it's really just cayenne and salt, in case anyone from work is reading this)

Shauna, trying to decide whether Ben or the Pluot is tastier, seems to have made her decision, and it doesn't look like she went with Ben

3 happy campers (and I must point out how Sammi's got her A-game smile on!)

Hector and Brian are also having a blast. We're ready for red wine though!

Emily and Lillian are enjoying their Rose of Cab

Silly face time -- looks like we've had a bit of wine already!

I really like this one of Jaime and Zou

She allowed me to have 1 picture with her, and it came out quite nice! Thanks for taking this Jaime!

OK, so we tried 2 pictures, but my camera had problems focusing in low light that by the time Jaime was able to snap this, Sammi had pulled away :(

Pluots, Rose, and a lot of other wine already gone. All that remains is the "PCP". You can also get a better sense of the wine we were tasting from this (non-blurry) menu. The only thing we didn't taste was the Cabernet (it wasn't ready yet), but I did swindle a taste of the Syrah that wasn't on the menu

A cherry, mozzerella, olive oil, and garlic concoction that Adam put together to pair with our Grenache? Or was it with the Petite Sirah? I can't remember!

Shenanigans are about to begin, the fold out piano is making its entrance

Apparently the night before there was a big party at Lava Vine and some of the kids and adults played/sang some rockin' performances. The instruments were left over and we decided to incorporate them into our tasting.

BONGO DRUMS!

Yes, that is cow bell and Ben is afraid of what's about to unfold.

Ben was rockin' the cow bell with gusto … and using a wine opener!

Cause I'm the king of bongo baby, I'm the king of bongo bong! (OK, maybe she was the queen)

Paradiddle demonstration

Jaime and Pete were rockin' it on the guitar and chorus. Jaime kept us going with her sweet vocals. A bunch of the other people at the winery started peeking their heads in and seeing why we were having so much fun!