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| OHCC LIVING | SEPTEMBER 2020 | 25 Just in case: Check with your club contact to confirm meeting place, date, and time. Woodchucks Who are these masked men? Behind these masks are giant smiles. The woodshop is open, and we are playing catch-up on building the toys for Camp Pendleton children. Master Toy Builder Larry See has created a kid's bookshelf with the look of an old biplane. He builds toys and imagination. Mitchell Ehrlich is shown with some of his whimsical toys that bring so much joy to the younger children: "There were green alligators and long-necked geese, Some humpty-back camels and some chimpanzees." Tom "Production" Murphy is surrounded by the parts necessary to finish the (50) cradles for little girls' dreams. Once assembled, they will receive the artistically painted details by Holly Radziwon, along with the creative quilts made by our OHCC Sewing Club. Our members are slowly working out the COVID details required to work in the woodshop and promise to keep our tradition of "Serving those who so bravely serve us" alive. A very special thank-you to the Garden Club for understanding the difficulties facing the Woodchucks this year. They sponsored the Holiday Donation Drive-Thru to help make the 2020 toy drive as generous as ever. You, our OHCC neighbors are all honorary Woodchucks. On the third Thursday of each month, Group 5 of the Wine Tasting Club is supposed to meet for a tasting at a member's home. During the pandemic, this is not possible, but as a workaround we decided to meet via Zoom video. It's not the same as an in-person meeting, but we did the best we could. Our July tasting was via Zoom. The planned presenters for March (canceled of course), Alan and Marilu Belisle, had purchased wine from a Northern California winery, Frey Vineyards. And they didn't drink it up! The group coordinator, Jody McDonough, purchased some 4 oz carafes with corks so that the wines could be distributed to participants ahead of time, to have them available for the Zoom meeting. The idea was that everyone would have the same thing to drink at the same time. Alan constructed a way to stand the carafes up in a bag so they wouldn't topple over and spill all over the place. It mostly worked. Alan and Marilu followed careful procedures to avoid contaminating anything. We met via Zoom, and after some initial tasting, we had a surprise guest. Jonathan Frei (note not the same spelling as the vineyard) joined our Zoom call. Jonathan works at the winery, doing a whole host of activities. It's a family operation, and he is married to one of the family. They had a terrible time with the fires the last couple of years, and are building a new facility for tastings and sales. Frey wines are available nationwide in high-end groceries. They sell organic wines and biodynamic wines (no yeast, it ferments on its own). We had 14 participants in the Zoom meeting, which is a bit fewer than we would expect at a regular tasting, but we could get everyone on the same screen on an iPad. We enjoyed three whites and three reds, and Jonathan was having the same thing we were having. He explained how the wines are made, what the differences are, and we all enjoyed ourselves. The favorite white was the 2018 Biodynamic Chardonnay. Our favorite red was the 2016 Organic Carignane, a grape variety native to Spain, used a lot in France, and almost unheard of here. The appetizers need work. The Wine Tasting Club holds monthly tastings in members' homes, whenever the government says we can. Wine Tasting Club

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