Summer Transition to Fall Respite

For a few weeks now, our friends, husband and I have been busy putting up netting and closing the netting with clothes pins and harvesting our small crop of Auxerrois. But, when the rains come and the weather turns cool, there is not much to do except catch up on all of the household chores that have been piling up.

We had our friends over on this cool bordering on cold evening, for a hearty meal of pot roast, roasted home (not my home) grown carrots and potatoes, arugula and watermelon salad and individual brownie, raspberry and vanilla topped dessert. It was her birthday after all!
My husband pulled out two red wines to have with this repast. The first was a 2006 Michel-Schlumberger, which has long been one of my favorite California reds, ever since we visited the winery in 2012.
What I like about the wine is that it is

not overly jammy and heavily extracted. It still had a tannic backbone that lent a note of dryness to the backend. Definitely a wine to drink with pot roast!
The second wine that we had with our meal was this 2000 Chateau Yon-Figeac. While the Michel-Schlumberger was a good pairing with the roast, I felt that this 2000 Chateau Yon-Figeac was speaking my palate and I enjoyed it with the roast beef. The wine tasted of red fruits, bing cherries, red raspberry, again, not jammy, but still definite fruit flavors with a mellow finish.
All in all, this was a fine way to celebrate a friend's birthday and welcome in Fall. I'm hoping for a nice long Indian summer, Mother Nature is still on the hook to ripen the Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc, still hanging in the vineyard!