Hi Everyone!

For the past few weeks, when I am in town, I have been going to the Capital One Cafe every Monday to get a free handcrafted beverage (and you can too if there’s one nearby you!). I am slowly, but surely, working my way through the entire menu. So far, I have tried a chocolate cherry mocha, a matcha latte, and a blueberry ube latte. One thing I always try to do while traveling is visit a local coffee shop. It’s a simple luxury, but one that drastically improves my quality of the trip, especially knowing that I don’t have to fight the “we have coffee at home” argument that plays in my head on repeat. It’s kind of nice that as my travels die down for the summer, I can still enjoy the same small luxury back at home, too! 

It also has me thinking about the word “Handcrafted” and how it can be applied to practically anything to make it sound just a bit more special. So, taking a page from the master marketers at Capital One, get ready for this handcrafted newsletter as we find out What’s Up With Will…

For the Semiquincentennial, I decided to show my patriotism by fulfilling my civic duty of jury service. On Monday morning, I woke up early and headed to the A.F. Bray Courthouse to SERVE some justice in the largest unified court system in the United States. I have never had jury duty before, and my only experience with it was hearing Paul Lieberstein’s Toby Flenderson discuss the Scranton Strangler case in The Office. My time in court was nothing like that, though. 

After fighting tooth and nail against all of the other prospective jurors in the seemingly microscopic parking lot, I made my way inside the building and checked in. As I walked around, I noticed signs signifying the importance of jury duty, as a cornerstone of the judicial system for 250 years, and an opportunity to uphold the promise that justice is not decided by the government alone, but by the people. As I sat down in the assembly room, I read through several pamphlets provided by the courthouse to prepare myself for my time as a juror, and if I was ever worried about how I would fare on jury duty, according to the Court and Community: Information and Instructions for Responding to Your Juror Summons, you do not need any special skills! Thank goodness!

Then came the first roll call of jurors, and I patiently waited as they listed out names. I was not a part of it. They told everyone whose name was called to follow the bailiff, and that everyone else was to wait here until further directions were given. As the room cleared out a bit, I was able to grab a prime desk space. Just as I whipped out my laptop, though, the clerk started another roll call, and this time, I heard loud and clear my name, “William Willis”. I responded with “Present!” 

I was 100% ready to follow the bailiff when the clerk continued, “Everyone whose name was called completed their service and is excused for at least one year”. The room erupted with a collective applause. 

With Jury Duty checked off from my to-do list for the week, and it being the first full week of the summer that I was not galavanting someplace new 1,000+ miles away from home, I could finally turn my head to work on some stuff for the upcoming school year. I have three big goals for the summer (in order from least to most work): 

On the last one, I have made some steps forward. After my success in my multiple methods class with the subject of wine, and the positive feedback from my professor, I want to continue exploring this avenue in a doctoral program. However, while I have a domain that I want to analyze, the next part of the equation is deciding what type of research questions I want to answer. While this might sound pedantic, it drastically changes which programs I am applying for. Right now, I am wrestling with 3 potential degree programs: Anthropology, Sociology, and Communication. Do I want to ask questions that seek to understand humanity as a whole (Anthropology), our society and institutions around us (Sociology), or how we interact with one another (Communication)? I don’t know yet.

World Cup Fever has taken over the Bay! I’ve been seeing crazy videos online of watch parties in San Jose and practically every sports bar being filled to the brim with avid soccer fans. State reports showed that $1.2 billion was expected to be spent in California due to soccer mania, and it’s easy to believe. With all the frenzy of FIFA happening, though, the Santa Cruz Mountains (SCM) American Viticultural Area (AVA) released a special Sip & Explore: Santa Cruz Mountain Wine Adventure Mobile Pass during the entire length of the World Cup, so in your off days of watching soccer at Levi’s San Francisco Bay Area Stadium, you can bide your time in vineyards. While we have never been to SCM AVA before, we figured now would be the perfect time to see what this region has to offer on our long weekend due to the Semiquincentennial!

We started our trip by driving up windy roads littered with blind turns and a few one-lane sections (functioning as a built-in sobriety test) until we arrived at David Bruce Winery. As we arrived and checked in with our passes, we learned of the SCM Adventure Pass leaderboard. At every winery on the pass you stopped at, you would gain 100 points. The #1 spot on the list had 1300 points, and while we had no shot at beating them, I was excited to rise in the rankings over the weekend. 

David Bruce is renowned for its Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs. In fact, they were proud to tell us that at the Judgement of Paris (covered in more in 👨‍🏫 Instructor William 1/18/25), their Chardonnay was one of the 6 wines selected to represent California. What was not mentioned at the tasting, though, was that it finished last place. Still, simply being selected is an honor few wineries can claim. C’est la vie…

We kicked back on their porch overlooking their vineyards. Over the course of the 8 wines we tried, we were introduced to a variety of their estate-grown grapes such as Riesling, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir. In the SCM AVA, the higher elevation means that grapes are more acidic than those grown at lower elevations, and this showed through each sip. During the explanation of each wine, our wine educator also utilized beautiful descriptors to describe what we were tasting. Imagine words and phrases like “vivacious” or “crunchy texture”, words that are seldom used to explain wines, but capture how robust our sensory experiences can be. 

Then we headed down the mountain roads for our second tasting at the Gali Vineyards Tasting Room in Downtown Los Gatos. We spent so much time at David Bruce, though, so we had to speed run through our 6 wine tasting flight to make it in time for our final tasting. Gali’s actual vineyards are located at the very southern part of the SCM AVA, though, so there was that same level of acidity in their wines as David Bruce’s. What made Gali unique is its use of Spanish varietals such as Albariño and Tempranillo, but the stand-out wine was the Pinot Noir Brut Rosé Sparkling Wine. Very Red, White, and Brut if I would say so myself!

Then, we drove up a (thankfully) much smaller mountain road to get to Testarossa Winery. Located now in what was the Novitiate Winery of Los Gatos (the oldest continuously operating winery in the SCM), it was at one point awarded a Best in Silicon Valley award, making it a hodgepodge collision of both old and new. We walked inside the outstanding wine cellar for a standing tasting. Unfortunately, all the wines we tried here were from the Santa Rita Hills AVA, but at least it allowed Rylee to get a small taste of my Sideways adventure (🍷A Trip Gone Sideways! 5/24/26). As our wine educator pulled out our last wine of the tasting, she told us, “This is my favorite of the bunch. While I could give you a detailed description, all I like to say about this one is that it is yummy”. While you can go in-depth on the notes present in a wine, I guess sometimes, “yummy” is all you need.

To wrap up the day, we drove back downtown to get dinner at Senza Italian Restaurant, a completely gluten-free Italian spot! I devoured some fluffy focacia and Nando’s pasta, full of chicken, crispy bacon, and a subtly spicy alfredo. And on the way out, they gave us free pastries since they were going to be shut on the 4th. I can confirm that all of it was yummy!

We woke up the next day ready for more wine! Our first stop of the day was Cooper-Garrod Vineyards at Garrod Farms.

George Cooper started his career as a test pilot for NASA at Moffett Field. After marrying into the Garrod Family, owners of several apricot and prune orchards, he joined their agricultural legacy. As the orchards became less profitable, the Garrods turned much of their land into horse stables. WhenGeorge retired, though,  the Garrods planted a set of vineyards. This unusual combination of horses and wine still exists today. Our Wine educator joked that this was a retirement project that got out of hand. It sounds like a great retirement plan…

We saw several horses and heard even more neighs as we drank our wines, each a red blend with some curious names: the F7U Cutlass, the F6F Hellcat, the F104 Starfighter, and the F86 Sabre Jet. It turns out that all of which were planes George Cooper flew back in his test pilot years. I bet bringing a F7U Cutlass to a dinner party would be quite the conversation starter. All of the wines were a bit too acidic for my liking, though.

Our final stop of the day was House Family Vineyards. As we got out of our cars and walked to our surprise, not a house but an outdoor tasting room, we were greeted with sweeping views of the SCM. We tasted 6 wines, most of which were with estate-grown grapes (shout out to their Cabernet Sauvignon), as we drank in this beautiful view. 

As we walked back to our cars, I looked once more at the leaderboard. With 500 points accumulated over the trip, I was in 25th place out of the 168 competitors. While that might not seem like much, multiply that finishing place by 10, and you have a very fitting Semiquincentennial score.

I accidentally clicked on this video but became entranced by the Scantron, and now I know everything there is to know about the seemingly ubiquitous testing score sheet that plagued us growing up. It’s a surprisingly simple device that’s far less foreboding than I imagined when taking tests growing up, but I guess its ease of use is why every school used one. For my own classes, I highly doubt that I will ever use one, because I don’t really see the merit in using tests for a public speaking class, but I am glad I watched it nonetheless.