Drink the '90s away!

Meet John Caruana and Denny Anderson, folks. A couple of weeks ago, up from Mill Valley and Novato, these two brought a party of their own to the KL office.

Denny, a Karl Lawrence affiliate since '95, showed up with a vertical of the '95 to '98 and the '04-'08. Seeing how this is quite a bit of wine, even for us, the tasting party lasted a good five hours.

After all was said and done, the consensus was this: 1. While all of the wines were good, they seemed a little past their prime. 2. One person loved the '95 for the first hour, but didn't like it a little later. 3. The '98 was the "most powerful of the bunch."

So, in the end, our tasting panel's unanimous decision is to drink your KL from last century, now. Quit saving it for that special occasion. Take your corkscrew on down to that cellar of yours, pop open a few bottles of Karl Lawrence cab, and drink the '90s away.

That special occasion is now.

Take it from John and Denny, ladies and gentlemen, and have a wine party of your own.

Más Amor

The last love story was such a hit, we decided to keep 'em coming. So without further adieu...

Mike DeYoung, Joey and Tika Gelsino, Allison DeYong, and Cheryl at Redd's in Yountville.

Disregard your first impressions. This is not some crazy account of five swingers who drank too much Karl Lawrence. Rather, here we have a romantic tale of a young couple who have just embarked on their life journey together.

The DeYoungs venture west from Miami often and have become KL regulars. And while, in the picture of above, the two of them look normal as always, we came to find out that, when this picture was taken, Allison was 31 weeks pregnant to the day!

We understand that the great news of a baby coming probably outshines the specifics of this information. One might not pay attention to fact that, 31 weeks prior to this photo, this baby was conceived. By now, we're sure you're assuming, Oh yeah, Miami, palm trees, candles, full moon, cloudless night, yadda yadda yadda.

Well, folks, we here at Karl Lawrence would like to tell you otherwise. And we even got the picture to prove it. Here is a photo taken from the DeYoung's previous visit to the Napa Valley... 31 weeks prior to the photo above.

To. The. Day.:

Mike and Allison at Bottega in Yountville.

Well, needless to say, we'll let y'all figure it out from there. But both Mike and Allison gave us testimonials giving Karl Lawrence the credit of making their magic happen. That is to say that one more DeYoung is on its way thanks to great company and Karl Lawrence wines.

Congrats, guys!

Keeping Ourselves Busy

Again, pardon the lack of posts, folks, but we assure you we've been working hard in our absence from the blog. We've been catching up on things like...

Golfing!

Nicholas, Cheryl, and Cheryl's mom, Betty, on spring break in San Diego.

...Going to concerts!

Ric with Danielle of traveling family blues band, Trampled Under Foot. Based out of the blues-capital Kansas City, Ric and Cheryl saw both of TUF's first shows ever played west of Colorado. Biscuits and Blues.

Nick, brother of Danielle, shows the audience how to Jimi.

... The work here has been so tough, we've even managed to...

"Enjoy" ourselves at Disney Land.

Indi, Zoey, and Betty in the Tea Cups, finally winding up a long day.

...And... Get our Tahoe on.

Jeff and Matthew snowboard while Ric drinks beers in the hot tub (below).

Well I think that finally sums up our break. But don't worry, we've finally got partying out of our systems and are back to tell you guys of everything Karl Lawrence. Stay tuned in the next couple days, for round two (or three?) of Karl Lawrence's side effects of love.

2nd Place

Pardon the hiatus folks, but we have been lamenting in defeat... Despite the fact that Karl Lawrence usually finishes in first place, we're sad to inform you that the KL team, The Flaming 8 Ball Jackets made it to the championship, only to lose.

The entirety of the Jackets shortly after their win to put them in the championship.

Right to Left: Drew "The Rainmaker" Sager, Jake "Cherry Eyes" Craney, Worthington Worthington, Dr. Tan Legs, Crashtian "The Flying Alaskan" Lendé, Nate Dogg Kinney, and Matthew Von Baron Meyer (famous CU Football Buffs special teamer)

But they made an epic run to the championship. In one game, they were down 10 points with 1:05 left in the game, played some killer defense, hit a few 3-pointers, and came out up by 2. In the next game, they came back to win from a 12 point deficit, not scoring for the first 11 minutes of the game.

But, despite the momentum train rolling, they lost in the championship game to MIT by 7 points. MIT appeared to be made up mostly of international students, studying abroad at CU. At least the Jackets were able to give them some good memories of America.

The Sad Alaskan after the defeat.

You might be asking: "So how is this relevant to Karl Lawrence?"

Easy. After the wins, The Jackets drank a lot of Karl Lawrence... After the loss, they drank a lot of Karl Lawrence.

Bad. News. Bears. But not to worry! The Jackets are enrolled for another round and we'll keep you posted as the new season progresses.

Stay tuned, for further KL news and Trampled Under Foot! And if you're sick of reading about intramural basketball, we would rather hear your stories! So, again, e-mail 'em to us at ric@karllawrence.com.

Dr. Tan Legs most likely missing the jumper.

The Karl Lawrence Blues

We here at Karl Lawrence have established ourselves as one of the most popular and most frequently enjoyed wines on the blues music circuit. We've partied our way through concerts, festivals, and cruises getting our name out there by way of t-shirts, baseball caps, and word of mouth. However, for some reason, KL has never meddled in advertising (in the traditional sense of the word). But, it turns out that, Robert Jr. Whitall, the Publisher and Editor in Chief of Big City Rhythm and Blues Magazine (and Karl Lawrence fanatic) wanted us to do an ad for the mag. So we got together with our graphic artist, Brian Nash, and this is what we came up with:

Well we think the results are pretty superb. We are proud to be involved in a great magazine and want to thank Brian for styling our ad accordingly. Most excellent.

Check out the blues mag and Brian Nash here: www.bigcitybluesmag.com, www.bndco.com.

In other news, The Flaming 8-Ball Jackets (who after the coach's poll were actually the number 3 seed) rolled past their first opponent by a mercy-ruled score of 69-29 (their opponent, The Leonards only showed up with 4 players...). Although it was slightly uneventful and disappointing, considering the lack of competition, the Jackets hope to meet some tough competitors next week on the road to the finals.

Undefeated

I know it's only been a day, and you guys are most likely exhausted from reading the epic Karl Lawrence love ballad of Seo and Yesi, but get ready for customer "story" numero dos:

Howard Chin (above) recently held an '01 cabernet restrospective tasting. And as you probably could guess from the picture, Karl Lawrence's Herb Lamb reserve was the overwhelming favorite of the day.

Now this wouldn't be surprising if the competitors were, say, Two Buck Chuck, Franzia box wine, or Carlo Rossi. But Howard thought the line-up was pretty strong (and so did we): Bryant Family, Pride Reserve, (our) Reserve Morisoli, Sloan, Mondavi Res, Montelena, LaJota 20th Anniv, Bond St. Eden, Leonetti Res, Paul Hobbs Beckstoffer, etc. etc.

So we encourage all of you to make some tasting brackets, like our wine the best, and then tell us about it. Then you can get your picture on here too! Thanks for the story, Howard!

Speaking of winners and brackets, in other news, Nicholas's intramural basketball team, The Flaming 8-Ball Jackets, just finished an undefeated regular season and are moving into the playoffs Monday as the number one seed. We'll keep you posted on the Jackets' trip to the championship.

Heat

St. Helena hit the 80 degree mark three days in row: a sling of the highest February temperatures in 25 years. It was so warm in fact that Ric ended up spending the whole time painting his white picket fence. Oh, America... He couldn't do the Tom Sawyer trick by telling Nicholas how much fun it was, as he's off at college.

And for the business side of the heat wave, the Karl Lawrence 2008 Release Offering Letter is going out this week to all the customers living in the cooler areas. Production is lower this year, so we'll have to stick a little closer to the allocation numbers.

Also, a few customers have said they couldn't fax in, so here's our secondary fax line: (866) 874-5369.

Keep in touch with the blog as some stories a little more interesting than the weather are hitting soon. And if any of y'all have any epic Karl Lawrence tales (of course you do!), email us with your story and a pic at ric@karllawrence.com.

A repeat of Ann Ryan's pic of her Bowman Lake experience made better with a glass of Karl Lawrence.