Other than our family and our friends what Josh and I miss most about home is the wine.  Since moving to Fairbanks we have bought bottle after bottle of Riesling and Gewurztraminer only to be disappointed each time with a sickly-sweet wine devoid of any complexity.  Josh can be sated with a good Chardonnay, but since he likes his with a heavy oak and I like mine a little lighter there really is no way to make us both happy with one bottle.

So each time we fly East-to-West Josh and I smuggle a few bottles of wine back to Alaska with us in our checked luggage.  While it’s true that New York wineries can now ship to Alaska, the cost is prohibitive; the shipping fee is almost equal to the cost of a case.  When I moved out here I had a couple of bottles of Swedish Hill Optimus in my bag.  Last year when we returned to Fairbanks after Christmas we had a selection of Hermann J. Weimer and Dr. Konstantine Frank Rieslings and Gewurztraminers.  This year we included (among others) a bottle of Knapp Winery’s 2007 Cabernet Franc and thank goodness we did.

A couple of weeks ago Josh popped open that bottle of Cab Franc and we both remarked on how wonderful it tasted – even better than when we tasted it at the winery.  For some reason I decided to head to the Knapp website to check out their wine list and we discovered something…incredible.  Amazing.  To-good-to-be-true.  I have two words for you, reader:

Free. Shipping.

Josh and I looked at each other in disbelief.  Surely they don’t mean us, we said!

Reader, please understand – when you live in Alaska (and Hawaii) people like to fool you with promises of FREE SHIPPING*

It’s that asterisk – that bloody asterisk.  More often that not that little asterisk means one thing: Not you, Conebaby!  Retailers and manufacturers love to dangle “free shipping” in front of you but they often yank it away – like the proverbial carrot – if you live in Alaska.

The Knapp website didn’t have an asterisk, though.  There was no disclaimer, no fine print, and no exceptions that we could find, so we thought we would give them a call in the morning and give it a shot.

The next day the staff at Knapp assured us that yes we were most certainly eligible for the free shipping deal (now through December 12^th, plus 10% off a case or more!) and at that point I think I may have started squealing with uncontrollable excitement and gratitude.  On a side note, one of the women I talked to told me she used to live in Ketchikan, Alaska.  It certainly is a small world.

So here we sit, Josh and me, anxiously awaiting the arrival of our mixed case that includes a bottle of Prism, the Barrel Reserve Chardonnay, the Finger Lakes Chardonnay, the Estate Dry Riesling, and more.  Many thanks to Knapp Winery for offering such a generous promotion, one that will allow us to indulge in a little taste of home this holiday season.

Here are a few photos from our last trip to Knapp – thanks to Jayne for sending us her photos as well.

Photo credit: Jayne Moskal   

Photo credit: Jayne Moskal

Totally gratuitous shots of adorableness, starring Mason Michael Moskal, son of Jayne and Beau: 

Photo credit: Jayne Moskal