As the year ends, a speed wrap-up of 2009 here Inside Sonoma.
It won’t be accurate. It will be entertaining:
January 2009
January dawned anew and afresh, with adjectives astrewn about. We were getting a new president and historic things were happening. To commemerate, IS took on such august topics as ugly dogs, the fiddle festival and Bobby Flay. If you did a Venn diagram of those, the overlapping parts would be utterly mindblowing. We also went in for in-depth reporting, sending out the Jenntern to find the best beers in Sonoma County. The other major events were Winter Wineland, the HGTV dream house in Sonoma and that we actually titled a post “Wine, Chocolate and Sweet, Sweet Loving…” (I’m not even going to link to it. You want it – you search for it.) A good beginning.
The mind reels
February 2009
We spent most of this month trying to figure out what to get people for Valentine’s Day. Since no one was sending us free samples (guess we’re not those kind of bloggers) we had to get creative. We also wrote a bit about romance, since this is evidently the true meaning of Valentine’s Day. The blog posts were abysmal. I take full credit for that since I wrote them. Highlights include several bad puns about cougars spotted in wine country, with some of you chiming in on good spots to view them. (There is a place in Healdsburg where cougars doth roam. Now I know.) We also talked about the vine pruning contest and 12 more free things to do in wine country. Finally, our video series showed Where Peggy Sue Got Married and deconstructed Howard the Duck. All filmed in Sonoma County. Moving on…
March 2009
Barrel tasting! This event is so good it needs its own song. Since I can’t write music, or prose for that matter, I leave it to you. We took on the MSM and their blatant biases against whippersnappers and barrel tasting with a scathing blog. It changed the world, man. Or at least the lives of the 107 people who read it. The Irish dancers at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts got a nod from us for St. Patrick’s Day with a nifty video. Michael Flatley is just off-screen I heard. It was a month of promise.
Lively fellow waiting in line for a prosciutto wrap at the DC General Store
April 2009
Hudson Hawk came to Sonoma Valley when Bruce Willis was the honored guest at the Sonoma International Film Festival, still the best acronymed festival around, beating even the Cornwall Light Acrobatic Parade. We also took on the Murphy-Goode people for daring to bring in an outside blogger to basically write about anything and nothing. I could show you a Flying Goat-full of people already doing this. And for free. Also, we got a nifty itinerary for people to follow along the scenery from “Bottleshock” which featured some of our staffers as extras. They were standing next to Michael Flatley in the final cut. It wasn’t the cruellest month.
Actually, I don't think you could handle Merlot...
May 2009
Still no wine country blimp. But we got some help from better writers in May, including Carey Sweet, James Knight and Thomas Pynchon. We also got a post about a dream wine country wedding from SiouxsieQueue, which seemed to involve tamales, kilts, wine and the bride getting hauled off to jail. (I made up the part about the wine. They drink beer.) We did get in a bit of hot water when we suggested that Napa and Sonoma chefs were going to square off in a caged death match against a furry lamb. Again, we apologize. We got it wrong. Oops. All in all, a good month.
June 2009
We finally found out who the world’s ugliest dog was. Phew.We also started the World’s First Sonoma County Food and Wine Tattoo Contest, much to the chagrin of every branding expert in the universe. This contest not only spawns entries from across the internets, it features promotional videos that use comical sounds in the place of body parts. The videos win 2 Golden Globes. Halfway there!
July 2009
In July we welcomed back the Wine Bloggers to the Flamingo, where they voted for the winner from the finalists in the tattoo contest. Feeling competitive, we challenged Levi Leipheimer to a bike race, with the caveat that he had to wear no-iron, comfort-waist khakis, just like we do when we bike to work. Leipheimer has yet to accept this challenge. Keeping things more serious Beth gave us a run-down of the next month’s Grape to Glass event. Steering things back to the absurd, I challenged the Bohemian Club to invite me to their annual meeting of world-domination and horseshoes. They have yet to accept this challenge.
August 2009
Fort Ross was a good post, and was a guest blog from Lynda Browning. Remember that name folks – she’s a good writer. We also unleashed all the local secrets in August. Got one we haven’t found? Still want to share it? You can peep them here… For all those locavore and slow-foodies we got a good rundown on where to go to get the good stuff. for those who would rather see a slow foodie blown over by the hot exhaust of a screaming loud fighter jet, well we had that, too at the Wings Over Wine Country Air Show. August – something for everyone.
September 2009
“Crush” was in full swing in September. Crush is the word for harvest when the item being harvested sells for more than $2000 per ton. We heard where to go for wine country on the cheap, where to spot cool public art in Sebastopol and managed to work in a blog post that tied together the tomato festival and Boogie Nights. Crush is always a wee bit crazy though.
October 2009
Pupusas! Loves the pupusas! And we found the spot for ‘em when Carey Sweet told us where to go. Cycling came back when Levi’s Gran Fondo came rolling through (c’mon Levi! What are ya – size 30 waist? I’ll buy you the khakis.) Also, Inside Sonoma received it’s first ever invite to an event in San Francisco as a member of the press. Yes! To celebrate, we found a clip from the movie “The Jerk.” It made sense when we first wrote it. Halloween came and left us. No Great Pumpkin. Sigh.
November 2009
A turkey and twenty guests went into our dining room. Not all of them made it out. This month Chef John Ash showed off by telling us how to cook not one, not two but six folks, six game hens. We also found out that Top Chef was going to be in Healdsburg and managed to tie-in a reference to the movie 2012. This so terrified us we found some clips of the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special. Happiness is a warm turkey.
Would you go to the end with an empty wine cellar?
December 2009
Bacon! We told you about Black Pig Meat Co and the bacon that supplies zazu and bovolo. The recipe actually didn’t use bacon – it was a panettone. Oh well. There was some sort of dust-up at the local government offices involving stars and angels and which caused our inbox to fill with some amazing Christmas letters. Hey – doesn’t anyone want to talk about public option healthcare? We also detailed which wineries are open on New Year’s Day. Finally, in a bit of meta-blogging, we did an amazing wrap-up of the year on the blog, and in under 1300 words no less.
Thanks for reading, tweeting, facebooking and whatnotting.
Happy New Year!
- The Sonoma Insiders
