The Wine Country

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Never being one to pass up a glass of wine, our arrival at the Sonoma and Napa Valley regions was akin to landing in paradise. Ahead of us lay 2 full days of sampling the best that the USA has to offer, and if you believe the California hype…possibly the best in the whole world, although I suspect the French may have something to say about that…

Now, I could go into great lengths describing the outstanding natural beauty this area of California has to offer, the glorious rolling hills, the amazingly lush valleys filled to the brim with carefully manicured vines, the quaint villages lining the scenic highways…blah, blah, blah. Not in this blog. We are here to talk about wine, loads of wine, wine seeping out of every pore, enough wine to fill a well stocked winery. Yep, we drank ourselves into oblivion. You name it…Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Mourvedre, Chardonnay, Merlot, Syrrah, Zinfandel, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chenin Blanc, Petit Sirah, and some fine young Port…to name but a few, we tried them all, bloody marvellous! And before you ask…did we spit or swallow, what do you think? Not a single drop hit the bucket, we swallowed all the way baby!

Of course, as we are such discerning scholars, we felt it appropriate on our first day to take in one or two of the more recognised educational wine tours on offer in the valleys, of course with some wine tasting thrown in for good measure.

The first of these was the world renowned Robert Mondavi winery. Mondavi has been recognised as revolutionising the Californian wine industry and delivering the area from producing mere ‘Jug’ wines to creating some of the finest wines the world has to offer. Our tour guide proudly pointed out that in a much celebrated blind (Pepsi style) challenge, Mondavi wines scored higher than the equivalent French offerings. The French in true Gallic style resolved this problem by either collaborating with or buying the offending wineries...very funny, if you can’t beat them…buy them! The Mondavi Winery is a very modern and high tech affair, all their fine wines are produced using only the best techniques and ingredients, notably…French oak barrels and a chief wine maker educated in a French university…it appears that the Americans have learned something from the French…what goes around, comes around! Mondavi is noted for producing some excellent Cabernet Sauvignon; we tried several and liked them all, unfortunately they cost an arm and a leg so we took our tasting notes and moved on to the next winery.

Our next stop in the Napa Valley was for a spot of lunch and a bit more tasting. We chose a small family run winery called ‘V Sattui’ about three miles further up the road. This winery is not particularly famous for the quality of its wines, but it is famous for achieving the accolade of ‘Best Winery, West Coast’ several years running. To be fair to V Sattui, many of their wines are multiple gold medal winners, and very tasty they are too. You will also be hard pushed to find any of their wines in your local supermarket, as all of their wine is only sold at the winery. To complement their fine selection of gold medal winning vino, V Sattui also boasts one of the finest deli’s on the western seaboard, including a truly outstanding selection of global cheese. We duly stocked up on some fine Greek sheep cheese, a rather larger slice of Dutch Gouda, some Indian curry pickle and a French loaf and found ourselves a secluded spot in their huge garden…all for the bargain price of $25.00! It would appear that V Sattui could soon be in a position to buy the whole of France.

With our bellies filled, we headed off to the pretty village of St Helena for our final stop of the day at the Beringer Vineyards. Beringer is famous for producing the best selling bottle of wine in the USA, a truly unremarkable Zinfandel…a very sweet and nasty mass produced bottle of ‘Average Joe’. However, not wanting to be known for just this, in recent years Beringer have branched out (nice pun) and now also produce some of the better wines Napa has to offer. We chose to visit the ‘Beringer Vineyards’ to see what is regarded as one of the most beautiful wineries in California; the winery itself is modelled on a German Gothic mansion and it is easy to see why it has graced the cover of many a wine magazine. We decided to take on a second tour here and spent the next two hours delving into the secrets of the Beringer estate...once again this was nicely rounded off with a complimentary tasting of their reserve wines in the quite regal ‘Grand Tasting Room’. The entire estate was a joy to visit, the tour guide was knowledgeable and informative, the winery itself is the longest continuously operating producer in The Valley and consequently made for an informative insight into all things Napa, and last of all their reserve wines were exceedingly good! With daylight fading, we headed back to our campground in the nearby town of Petaluma for a sobering jump in the massive heated pool…hard day in the office!

Having taken the obligatory tours and visited the larger and more established wineries on day one, we decided that day two should be more about the wine and the smaller less commercial destinations. With this in mind we singled out 6 wineries in the Sonoma Valley each renowned for producing smaller quantities of fine wines.

First of these was the Ledson Winery, housed in a truly palatial modern-day castle surrounded by amazing landscaped gardens and several acres of perfectly trimmed vines. After our thorough wine education on day one, we were ready to put our lessons into practice and decided to pass on the tour and headed straight for the tasting room, a thoroughly good decision. We were lucky enough to be greeted by the chief sommelier, who was feeling exceedingly generous and proceeded to guide us through their entire wine list. About an hour and a half later, with just the port to go…Jennifer declared that she wanted to join their exclusive wine club, a snip at $500 a month! I managed to convince her that we needed to sleep on it and guided her towards the door, only stopping to purchase a rather fine Reserve Mourvedre on the way out.

Next stop was the Blackstone winery, a much less grand affair. The wines were ok, but unfortunately the experience was hampered by the extremely weird chap delivering the tasting….he was either a total stoner, or massively hung over from the night before, but he sort of spoiled the whole experience…we left without buying any of their wines and headed off to our next destination.

Just ten minutes further down the road we arrived at the lovely Valley of the Moon vineyard and winery. It was only about 11.30…we had probably tasted at least 15 wines already…a rather large bottle of Coke and a few sandwiches were definitely required if we were to make it through the day. With our bellies filled and our palate cleansed we headed through the grand entrance and took our place at the tasting table. The whole experience at Valley of the Moon was much more welcoming, aided by some truly excellent wines, including a remarkable Zinfandel and a couple of very knowledgeable and friendly vintners. Once again, we left with one of their very fine wines in our arms and both of us declaring a desire to join their exclusive wine club!

Number four on the list was the Ravenswood winery. Once again, a lovely building, great wine and nice people including the very helpful Tanya, who gave us loads of advice about where to eat in San Francisco and complimentary VIP passes to our next winery... fantastic! We didn’t buy any wine, but we did bag ourselves a couple of Ravenswood glasses to enjoy some of our purchases back at the campsite.

With our VIP passes in hand, we headed off to the Buena Vista winery, the oldest winery in Sonoma and a Pinot Noir specialist to boot…one of my favourite tipples. Despite only wanting to taste the Pinot, the sommelier insisted that we tasted pretty much every red and white they had to offer and feeling too weak minded to refuse we duly worked our way through their delectable tasting menu. The winery and tasting room resembled the archetypal image of a picture-book Californian establishment, with charming old stone buildings and vines aplenty. We somewhat over exuberantly thanked our hosts for allowing us to sample their fine wine and departed Buena Vista for our final stop of the day.

Just a short journey from Buena Vista and fortunately heading in the right direction towards the sanity and sobriety of our campsite was the Schug winery. I had been looking forward to this final stop all day as Schug is renowned for producing some of the finest Pinot Noir in the valley. Unfortunately, our taste buds and our sobriety were somewhat impaired; nevertheless we still left with a bottle of their finest Pinot to sample at a more sensible time.

With a truly memorable day behind us we nursed our hangovers back to full health with a well deserved dip in the campsite pool. Both the Sonoma and Napa valleys were truly breathtaking; this is somewhere we will definitely try and visit again in the future. If you like wine you really must visit this place, even if you don’t like wine the scenery alone makes it well worth a trip.

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