The Bucket List

Life is short. And nothing's guaranteed. Change is constant. Carpe diem and all that.

I have a very long bucket list, so each year on my birthday I make a short list of the things I'm going to accomplish that year. In year 31, the list includes the following:

Visiting Thailand:



Bonding with an elephant: (meet Yatmanim)



Playing with tigers:





Praying in a Buddhist temple:



And, among other things, opening our second Riverbench tasting room. The tasting room is slated to open in April (finally!). A productive year 31? You bet.

All that's missing from these pictures is a glass of Riverbench, because we can all agree that with the best life experiences, whether you're swimming with elephants or celebrating the fact that you made it through the day, there should be a darn good glass of wine involved! Enjoy every minute, and don't forget to pop a cork or two.

Lordy, Lordy, Riverbench is Forty

Riverbench the wine label is new (first vintage: 2006).

Riverbench the vineyard, however, is one of the oldest planted vineyards in the Santa Maria Valley. The first vines were put into the ground in 1973. It's kind of amazing to think on what those vines would say if they could talk: "Man, that was a helluva frost we just had," or "That winemaker Clarissa sure is picky!" (in a good way) or "Who is that goofy chick who gets a kick out of riding the night harvester at midnight?" (That last reference is to me, in case you couldn't guess.)

But seriously, those vines have seen generations of winemakers and vineyard crews, overseen the opening of our tasting room in 2008, and posed for many an amazing photograph. They've produced some gorgeously delicious grapes and weathered a few storms and heat spikes here and there.

So we'll start celebrating now. Heck, you only turn 40 once! We'll be doing some fun events across the country, spreading the word about this special place and its place in Santa Maria's history.

It's auspicious that we'll be opening our second tasting room in Santa Barbara during our anniversary year; that has to bode well for Riverbench's future for sure! It's a good thing we make celebratory sparkling wine now, because I know that this year above all others we'll be needing a lot of it.

Happy New Year, everyone!