CALIFORNIA WINE COUNTRY

Tuesday, June 29, 2010



On Tuesday we headed north to California wine country. We stayed at the AVIA hotel in downtown Napa. Downtown Napa is small and quaint, with boutique shops and restaurants all within walking distance.



Upon arrival, the front desk employee found out it was our anniversary vacation and upgraded us to a gorgeous suite! Like total tourists, we took pictures of the suite because we were so impressed...

After checking in at the hotel, we drove to Julian's first wine country destination: Domaine Carneros. Founded by Taittinger, it is a grand-scale replica of a French chateau and it sits majestically on the top of a hill, surrounded by vineyards.

Time to be cheesy...

The view from the patio.

Of course we had to do a tasting immediately. Domaine Carneros is known for sparkling wine (the two on the left), but they also make some great pinot noirs.

That's all we could manage in the afternoon we arrived... but we returned here the next morning for a formal tour...

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

...Our tour at Domaine Carneros took us through the vineyard and the wine production rooms:

We tasted several wines along the tour...

(pretend this picture is rotated and not sideways...)

Wine aging...

After beginning our second day at Domaine Carneros, we moved along to Chateau Montelena. We had to go here after seeing the movie Bottle Shock.

The grounds walking up to the chateau were just lovely. Unlike Domaine Carneros, Chateau Montelena is actually the home of the owners.

The inside is small and there were no tours the day we were there. However, we did do yet another tasting before moving along.

After Chateau Montelena we hustled over to the Castello di Amorosa for a 2:30pm tour. Mixed feelings on this one. The basic story is that the guy who owns this place is really good with gimmicks. He produces wine (the castle is a working winery) and sells his wine only at this location and the other location he owns in Napa (V. Sattui). Once you taste the wine, you can tell why he has never tried to sell it on the retail market. Once you see the places he owns, you can tell why he doesn't need to depend on his wine sales to make a ton of money.

The castle is a brand-new medieval style castle that the owner had constructed piece by piece from materials imported from Europe. It is huge, with a working winery on the bottom floors, a torture chamber, a pit of dispair, a knights hall...etc. The tour is awesome because how often are you going to see a medieval castle in pristine condition? The wine sucks but what can you expect from the Disney Land of Napa.

An open courtyard.

This medieval castle has a parking lot.

Prison cells contain various old artifacts and wines.

I believe this was taken in the torture chamber. Are you supposed to smile in a torture chamber?

If you are Julian, you smile everywhere when in wine country.

More torture devices.

The iron maiden. Imported from Europe. An original, of course. (Yikes.)

They let us taste wine from the barrel (it is not yet ready to be sold). Actually, it tasted kind of like their final product. Pretty rough.

Pictures outside. Hard to do this place justice with a normal touristy camera. You should check out the website for more shots!

After the Castello, our last stop of the day was Beringer. It is a much more modest (and much higher quality) family vineyard. It is the oldest continuously operating winery in Napa. During prohibition, it was allowed to stay open to produce and sell religious and medicinal wines.

I like this picture because we had tried so hard to set up the camera in a bush - angled just so - to automatically take our picture... except we couldn't tell if it had taken it or not until it flashed as Julian went to check. Oops! Then someone who worked at the vineyard took pity on us and took the following pictures...

The tour at Beringer was great and took us through their vineyars and wine caves.

After that, we called it a day and went home to get some rest!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Thursday started and what became our favorite place of the trip: Joseph Phelps Vineyards.

This is another family owned spot and the family lives on the grounds. It is small but so, so good at what it does.

We arrived early in the morning (really early) because we were supposed to have reservations but had neglected to make them. The wonderful employee working that morning told us it would be no problem to schedule a tasting for 10:30am, which is exactly what we did.

The tasting took place on their beautiful patio, overlooking their vineyards. Not only was the view amazing, but the weather and wine could not have been better.

Can you tell I was enjoying myself?

Not too many pics from Joseph Phelps because there was no tour or anything. But it definitely remains the favorite memory from the trip.

After Joseph Phelps we went to Sterling Vineyards. Sterling is another winery that is just lovely - you take a tram up to the picturesque white washed adobe buildings - but whose wine is sub-par. You definitely go for the scenery.

The tour of the grounds is self-paced and self-guided.

Julian made us take a pic in front of the bell because I guess that's what identifies this winery.

After Sterling we went over to V. Sattui for a picnic lunch. No pictures, unfortunately, but it is exactly what you would envison. They are the only vineyard with a food license in Napa, and they make the most of it by offering an overpriced - but delicious - deli and accompanying picnic grounds. We grabbed sandwiches and sat outside on a picnic bench where we ended up talking with a great couple from Florida. We met so many nice people in wine country. Wine makes people friendly!

After lunch we went to Robert Mondavi. This was another beautiful vineyard with quality wines. We did yet another tour and enjoyed sipping the wines all around their grounds.

Since this tour was actually late in the day we were the only ones on it! Score - private tour!

After Mondavi we decided it was time to rest up for our final full day in wine country.

Friday, July 2, 2010

For our last full day in Napa/Sonoma, we thought we'd try something different. We got up early and drove out to Highway 1, which winds its way along the California coast. The views were incredible. Driving out there we passed through Sonoma county, which is far more rural than Napa. We saw lots of farmlands, cows, and rolling hills. As we got closer to the coast the hills got more dry and yellow but were still large enough to completely block views of the ocean until we got to Highway 1. The ocean was wild - lots of jutting cliffs and large rocks breaking through the water. It was chilly, too. Unfortunately, that's why we have only one poor picture taken by balancing the camera on top of the car! Also, it was just so pretty we didn't want to interrupt the drive by dealing with pictures.

After driving along the coast we took 116 back east and - on the way to Sonoma wine country - drove through s little section of redwoods. We stopped at the Armstrong Redwoods Reserve to see what we could see.

It is way to hard to capture these trees on camera...

This was the largest redwood tree in the reserve. 308 feet tall, appx. 1400 years old!

I have no idea how many miles we drove, but it was late by the time we got back to civilization.

We stopped at a little sandwich shop and took a picnic to the Benzinger Winery. This is a little family vineyard in Sonoma that was very pretty and super friendly. After eating our picnic on their grounds we went inside for a little wine tasting. We loved their wines but unfortunately have no pictures of the experience!

After Benzinger we drove over to Chateau St. Jean. Lots of pictures but no tasting here. Also no tours.

We just enjoyed walking around. It was so gorgeous.

I'm making no excuses for this picture. We hadn't even been drinking much that day!

Julian wanted to end our wine country trip the way we began: with another trip to Domaine Carneros. But first, we had to swing by another winery that he is quite fond of: Etude. This was probably the sleekest, most modern winery we went to.

This was the view behind the bar where, of course, we had to do one last tasting.

Finally bringing the trip full circle. We went back to Domaine Carneros for a bottle of bubbly and a cheese plate. Yum!

Hard to believe our wine country experience is over. With over 400 wineries in Napa valley alone (and probably at least that many in Sonoma county) we did not even see a fraction of what the California wine country has to offer. Oh well, I guess we'll have to come back!

Saturday, July 3, 2010

We got up early on our last morning and drove back to San Francisco. I wanted to see the painted ladies (colorful old victorian houses) and the famous curviest street in the nation before flying home. We didn't take any pictures of the painted ladies because you can find so many better ones online.

Driving up to Lombard street...

Beginning our descent... the road was actually so small and quaint that I am surprised they let cars drive down. As you can see, they have pretty hedges and gardens surrounding the road. When you are down by the water and looking up the street, all you can see are the winding hedges.

Leaving the curvy road.

Random shot in SF.

We ended our trip with a quick stop at a cafe for some coffee and a snack before heading to the airport. What a great vacation - Julian's smile says it all.