Last year I led some writing workshops in my son’s class. His group wrote a poem, “I am a Scary Smelly Skeleton Pirate” which my son and I turned into this YouTube video. Here’s the text to the poem and here’s two more Halloween oriented poems from that workshop.
And here we are as un muy pequeno calavero with Art Predator aka Ms Frizzle of the Magic School Bus fame.
River of Skulls: the perfect wine for Halloween & Dia de los Muertos & more
Yep, Twisted Oak’s River of Skulls: This is the wine you need for Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, and maybe for all the sinners on your list: Twisted Oak’s River of Skulls, a mourverde with a little syrah thrown in.This is a special creature, this wine. Sorry to say that unless you have a trip planned to Calaveras county, you’re out of luck. You can get on the list now for next year! Sign up here.
While my favorite blend on Earth has to be GSM (grenache/syrah/mourvedre), seeking out a mourvedre– “the sinner” in all its wild gamey glory–seems perfect for this time of year. And for my money, I’m going for Twisted Oaks “River of Skulls” which conveniently arrived a few weeks ago in my “Twisted Few” allotment!
I had the amazing opportunity to taste this wine at last year’s Wine Blogging Conference 2008 and it wowed the socks off of me. (OK, I admit, I’m a sucker for mourvedre!) This year, El Jefe aka Jeff Stai served it up during the live blogging portion of the 2009 Wine Bloggers conference. This wine not only wowed us bloggers but in recent competition and tastings, it’s done well: they just got word
from Wine Enthusiast magazine that the 2006 Spaniard will receive a score of 92 points, and the 2007 River of Skulls will receive a 90 point score, in their December issue. Congrats to Jeff and crew!
For more poetry, jump on the TRAIN! For more about wine, head over to Wine Predator! That’s where I plan to aggregate my wine posts and where I will post first from the European Wine Bloggers Conference and from the Enoforum Tour of the Alentejo region of Portugal. (Oh, you didn’t hear about that? You didn’t hear my joyous noise? Go here to learn more.)
There is some ghostly formatting going on here–just attribute it to the hi-jinx of los calaveras!
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 
(Kinda tricky looking to get redirected to the WINEpredator site/mast…)
I love what El Jefe & especially Magnificent Scott do, but since I can’t get them here, been exploring/splurging on the roots producers: Domaine Tempier & Terrebrune. Now I have to put Bandol on my list of wine regions to visit. You might search ’em out…also, don’t know if the focus will be exclusively on Portugal & even more narrowly on Alentejo wines at the EWBC, press Ryan on traditional Monastrell producers in spain…& not so trad, but WOW Casa Castillo Pie Franco (ungrafted old vines!!)
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Monastrell is definitely on my list!
EWBC is more wide but lots from Douro I see. The Enoforum Wines tour will be in Alentejo so will yes focus on the region. I wish I could be there sooner–will be missing out on an amazing dinner Thurs night I hear and I was invoted to a special shindig on Friday am but will be in transit.
thanks for the tips!
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