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Hello from Wine Country!
We spent a very rainy weekend in Napa Valley, but thats ok as we learned they were 10 inches behind on the rain they need for the season. We stayed at the Fairfield Inn - Marriot in American Canyon, very recommendable. On Friday we started off with a free tasting at Bouchain Winery. They were very proud of their location as they get the ocean breezes keeping their grapes warm and cool depending on the season. This is very important for the acids, tannins and sugars to develop producing great pinot noirs and cabernet ('cab is king' here). We also visited Black Stallion winery, very impressive but more for the tour bus group as it is a huge brand new facility. One of our favorite places was a small winery called Hagafen on Silverado Trail. They were playing the Allman Brothers in their tasting room and the vinter told us how his dad was a huge Boston sports fan. I really just wanted to trade dead rat stories as they advertised "Cat-rat control" on the top of their list of how they are eco-friendly. I bet Remi gets more and bigger ones. We ended up bringing
home some wine from this place that wasn't a rip off. We also thought it was great they he described many of their wines as 'hot tub wine'. SOLD. Saturday we got up early and raced down to Robert Mondavi to catch their 10:00am tour and tasting. A really great tour for beginners, we learned lots about the early roots of grape growing and many stories about overpriced wines and underpriced wines. Our tour guide (older man who gets paid to talk to tourists and drink with them) showed us to one of their tasting rooms where we got heavy pours of an unoaked chardonnay, a pinot noir and a pricey cabernet and fennel, mozzerella risotto ball to go with it. Delicious. From there we to Beringer which we were excited to see but didn't see our fave cheap wines here. They were very busy so it was kinda of a bar experience rather than a tasting, and I thought overpriced. We had lunch at Taylor's Refresher who had fabulous tomato soup, Pete had a burger bigger than his head. We went to V. Sattui that does a huge amount of advertising. The place was packed with wine, people and
picnic food. We squeezed in and tasted some nice things and not nice things, and bought some nice things.
Deciding we had tasted everything we wanted we headed back to the hotel. The Derby was on and a great race was run by Mine That Bird....so heads up for the Preakness!
We went to downtown Napa and found Piccolino's where we had their homebrewed beer, mussels, lasanga and spinach/chicken ravioli, topped off with cheesecake. Their was a guitarist playing and the servers were all great. Another great place to visit.
Today we are packing up and heading into bear country for a few nights. We will be camping at Yosemite for three nights before turning back east. We are hoping that Yosemite is set up like the Grand Canyon and hope to have internet access at some point while we are there.
Talk to you soon!
Pete and Culver
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lowry
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Yosemite Sam !
The Sierras ! A widerful,wonderful - magical and COLD forest. You probably drinking all that Napa wine and staying close to a fire- Yodel till I can hear you !