What comes to mind when you think Summer of Love? How about long-haired hippies wearing tie dye and drinking wine?

we tie dyed this shirt for Lucy in the Sky

In 1967, 75,000-100,000 young people converged onto San Francisco in what became known as the “Summer of Love.”

That makes this summer the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. And to mark this date, San Francisco and other communities including Ventura are holding events and exhibitions in commemoration. Ventura’s Museum has a special exhibition up through August and events include the Grateful Tribute Band Cubensis.. Read more about how the Summer of Love began in this Vanity Fair article.

the wine that inspired the party… which I thought was a Lodi zin…

And what can you do? Well, how about hosting a tie dye party? That’s what Sue and John did! With plenty of zinfandel and burgers too!

Because anyone can throw a backyard BBQ but why not mix it up by offering a craft or organizing a tasting? And make it easy by offering a burger bar with sides prepared in advance and shared potluck style!

We invited a bunch of people and we gathered a case or so of different bottles of Zinfandel– and one Tie Dye red blend. One person supplied the tasting note sheets, and we opened the bottles around a big table with some appetizers in the center. While the corn and turkey and beef burgers were cooking, we tasted the wines and wrote down our notes and votes. We encouraged folks to taste the white zin first but other than that, people tasted the wine that was closest to them and in general worked their way clockwise around the table. Then we converged on the burger bar, loaded up our plates, and tasted the wines with food. And at one point or another, people did some tie-dying!

Barry and Edie getting their tie dye on!

And this is what we came up with!

Note: We had everyone vote for their favorite #1, #2 and #3 by placing a raffle ticket in a jar with the number on it. We assigned first place votes 3 points, second place votes 2 points, and third place votes 1 point. If a wine received a #1 vote, I wrote the score down. Read on to see which one won!

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