It was a good trip. We spent our first night (Wednesday) in San Francisco and got to walk around Fisherman's wharf and ride a trolley (yes, Keith did sing the rice-a-roni song over and over again).
San Francisco at night
on the trolley
On Thursday we got a car and drove up to Santa Rosa (we got to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge!)...
stopping at Lagunitas and Russian River brewing companies...
Russian River has a huge sampler!
...then drove through some crazy mountain roads to get to Napa.
We checked into our hotel (the Embassy Suites - fantastic) and ended the day with some dinner at a wine bar in Napa, who happens to sell a standard size bottle of wine for $1,695.00. No joke. The wine maker is Screaming Eagle. Crazy, no?
There's one highway that we took pretty much everywhere in Napa - CA-29. I call that winery road because every where you look there's a winery, all right next to each other. Lining both sides of the road you'll see thousands of grapevines carefully tied up - some are allowed to overgrow and some appear to be trimmed and maintained. Keith even tasted a grape off one of the vines, but since it's so early in the season it was bitter.
imagine these everywhere
Early Friday morning we headed back into the mountains and got a tour of Cain winery. They have some delicious wines and the air up there was so crisp and fresh. Our tour group consisted of the guide, another couple, and us. That's it. I liked how intimate it was and we weren't lost amongst a giant crowd.
yummmmm
We headed back down the mountain after that and visited V. Sattui...
...and Ferrari-Carano.
They have a few grapevines...
We chose to take a nap after that since we had to wake up so early to make our tour that morning. We had planned to get up around 7 for dinner, but we were so tired we hit the snooze and slept until the next morning!
Rested and ready to go the next day, we hit up 5 different wineries: Franciscan, Folie a Deux, Prager Port House, Del Dotto (the old caves), and Alpha and Omega. They all had some fantastic wines, and we brought home at least two bottles from each place.
Folie a Deux makes a red wine called Menage a Trois, which is pretty much our go-to wine for get togethers and just hanging out at home.
Prager was a nice surprise - we had never heard about them before but they make some great ports. Their tasting room was quite fantastic as well - it was covered in currency from all over the world!
Part of a wall at Prager. Even the ceilings and staircase were covered!
Del Dotto was fun because we got to tour their old caves and taste wine straight from the barrel. We had a larger tour group this time but it was still small enough that you didn't feel left out.
Barrels of wine
Dinner that night was at a vegetarian restaurant called Ubuntu. It was FANTASTIC! All of their vegetables are grown locally and you can really tell how fresh everything was. We ordered a four-course meal full of surprises from the chef. My favorite was the 3rd course which consisted of organic grits and beans and other deliciousness. I could eat that stuff every day.
The grits don't look like much but they were soooo good!
On Sunday we drove the 1.2 hours back to the San Francisco airport and headed home, our suitcases full of wine and beer.
p.s. Huge thanks go out to Tracy for sending me info about her trip to Napa!
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