There are certain events that indicate that you have closed a chapter of your life and moved into a new one. Job changes (unless one changes jobs frequently), marriages, births, and so on. We actually have celebrated a marriage this year (of our daughter) and are about to celebrate a birth (of our first grandchild). In this case, however, we moved from our home of twenty years into a smaller condo, and we sold our home.

We loved our big home - Ernie's parents lived with us there for a while before they passed away, the kids were able to move in with us for a period to finish high school, we had huge parties in the "Seborgan Embassy" for the military folks with whom Ernie worked, lots of Christmases, Thanksgivings, birthdays, Snowmagedden, and so on. We have a lot of memories made in that home.

As luck would have it, we managed to time our entry onto the home sale market extremely badly. According to our wonderful real estate agent, Traudel Lange of Washington Fine Properties, the spring sales had been fantastic. So we anticipated that our house would sell in no time flat, what with all the improvements we had done over the years. Ernie likes to say that apparently aliens found out when we put the house on the market, as they then took great efforts to transport any potential buyers off to other planets! Yup, summer and fall in the housing market was pretty much down.

However, Traudel persevered, along with her trusty teammate, Justin Franco. They advertised, they held open houses, they talked up our house any chance they could get. We probably didn't help much - we decided to go ahead and move into our new digs right in the middle of this time period, thus creating a fairly empty house for Traudel to try to move. And her perseverance (and patience) won the day - we finally got an offer, suffered through all the negotiations and inspections (again with Traudel and Justin handling all the items needing to be fixed), and then got to closing.

To celebrate the closing Traudel took us to lunch in Bethesda, which was delightful (and very much appreciated). Then after visiting with friends and stopping for supplies at a favorite Italian store, we decided to have our own celebration in our new home.

We started with a toast - a beautiful sparkling rosé of pinot noir. We sipped on that while we cooked pompano fish with herbs and tomatoes in a bit of olive oil. A great start to a celebratory dinner.

For dinner, we opened a bottle that we had purchased from Chelsea Wine Vault in New York for a special occasion - a 2011 Condrieu La Doriane. What a fabulous wine - so rich, but with that characteristic Viognier taste of honeysuckle, white peach, and other flowers. Interestingly, the scent had traces of petrol (like a Riesling) with glazed fruit along with the honeysuckle.

Along with the pompano fish, we had lobster ravioli with a sherry cream sauce. The Condrieu was a wonderful partner with the herbed fish and the rich lobster ravioli.

And because it was a celebration, we had a decadent, chocolate dessert from Whole Foods. To compliment the chocolate, we each had a glass of Sandeman's Character Amontillado Sherry. Truly a great finish - both to the chapter we've closed as well as to dinner. And a new beginning in the fun city of Baltimore!

Chocolate cake and pistachios with Amontillado.