Mike's birthday weekend in Napa

It's July, which means I would like to celebrate my birth every day of the entire month, so I better get Mike's birthday recap out of the way so that I can focus on myself. (#kiddingnotkidding) (#ilovemybirthdaysomuch).

Mike and I spent the weekend in Napa in March for his birthday. It was the first time we had ever stayed overnight in the valley.  We tasted at Caymus (awesome, I'd go back there in a nanosecond), lunch at Rutherford Hill (always a good time), Rutherford Ranch (quick stop for zin upon recommendation from our driver), Duckhorn (we love the Duckhorn family of wineries but our favorite is their sister winery, Paraduxx) and Rombauer (wine is good but there's no personal experience there, it's just a "pour and leave me alone" type of place, we like to learn while tasting. There was no learning.) 

So..... there you go. 

We also did Inglenook which is one of Francis Ford Coppola's wineries.  It was fun to see some movie paraphernalia. 

Duckhorn

Picnicking at Rutherford Hill Winery. We're not merlot people, typically, but their merlot is delicious.   Their picnic grounds are also unbelievable and a "must stop" for us every time we are in Napa. 

Roadside pitstop to take pictures.  These are merlot grapes (#icanread)

Inglenook - beautiful grounds, great tour, really really great wines.  The only trouble was that the other people on our tour could NOT have been more annoying. 

In my inability to put these pictures in order, here's another photo of Rutherford Hill winery with the Napa Valley behind us.  I mean seriously, we count out blessings every time we are in the valley that we only need to drive 40 minutes to get to one of the greatest places on earth.  It's awesome.

wine country afternoon

There are a few wineries we've been to plenty of times and don't necessarily need to do a tasting every time we are there. We just want to go there to enjoy the ambiance, purchase a bottle and camp out on their patio for the entire afternoon (I'm sure the winery head honchos would love to hear that we like to "camp out" but when you buy a bottle, I don't feel bad just chilling on their grounds.  

In Napa, we like to go to Beringer and buy a bottle of their Cab Franc (probably one of our most favorite bottles of all time) and hang out on the porch just off the reserve room.  There is something unbelievably relaxing about spending a day not running from one winery to the next but just enjoying the area.

In Sonoma, we like to go to St. Francis, we found a quiet table on the patio, complete with shade and unobstructed view of the vineyard - can't beat that!

This particular day, we needed to eat our picnic lunch right around the time that we were driving past St. Francis.  The beauty of the place is that you can eat your own food on their grounds.  Purchasing a bottle of wine to go with your picnic, if not blatantly stated on the picnic tables is usually assumed, for this particular day we enjoyed the 2008 cab.  You might remember we dig the  07 St. Francis cab so much that we bought the entire stock from the liquor store one day
at the beginning of the year. 

Entire stock = 2 cases...we weren't the only people to know this is a excellent bottle at a steal of a price.  This is also the sole reason why I don't blog about new wines anymore, we just drink this one, sadly for us but lucky for you, we are nearing in on the end of our stash and soon enough will need to branch out and purchase some new wines to try.  

Barkley was totally digging it...you might sense a theme here. Our dog is just about as much of a fan of weekends in wine country as Mike and I are. Lucky little dog.  

winery: Jacuzzi

Jacuzzi was one of those places we had never been before but have driven past a lot, we had low expectations and walked away completely enamored by the winery.  

First big plus - FREE wine tastings. I had no idea they did that any more (clearly I spend a lot of time in Napa.)

Second plus - dogs are welcome, just not in the tasting room.  This is a bit of a bummer because it takes away from the lessons learned from a great guy pouring the wine, (but if you had a disengaged guy pouring the wine) it really wouldn't matter.  We just had a great guy, so I was a bit bummed we had to sit out on the terrace, but the terrace was beautiful and I would be willing to spend the rest of my days relaxing there.

Barkley enjoyed her own tasting of the finest water Jacuzzi had to offer in a porcelain bowl.

.



Wines were reasonable...

We always feel that if you get the tasting for free, you should buy a bottle, luckily the wines were good and priced right, so we took one home. 

...and, they had a Vespa.

Let's just recap the math on this one:

  Free wine tastings
+Dog Friendly
+Vespa =
1 sweet winery

winery: Hall, Napa Co.

My mom and I were up for one more stop on the day o' wine tasting, however we decided due to the fact that it was 109 degrees and we were sweating just standing still, the idea of tasting more wine kinda seemed like a chore (it's sad, but true.) We were driving south on Highway 29 and the traffic driving north into St. Helena was horrendous, so we knew that we had to choose a winery on the right hand side so as to not have to deal with crossing traffic upon entering and exiting.  Plus, I have always wanted to check out Hall (they have a sign boasting their "Crazy Good Cabernets" that has always peaked my interest). Luckily it met the requirement of being located on the right side of the road and we pulled in.  We wanted to find a shady spot to park the car, but apparently Hall loves their hybrids, all-electric cars, carpools, bicycles - you get my drift - there were more signs designated for all the different type of environmentally friendly cars I was a bit in awe.  My mom - the Prius driver before Prius driving was cool - I think, was pretty impressed with this.  

There is plenty of "normal" people parking too however, just not in the shade, not close up to the front doors, but my Volkswagen wagon found a happy spot to bask in the 109 degree heat. And we popped into the tasting room.  It was after sweating 5 pounds of water weight off just from walking from the car to the tasting room, that we decided it was too hot to taste the wine.  So we just wondered around and took pictures. Totally up my alley.  

winery: Luna, Napa Co.

My mom recently came out to visit me for a long weekend and her two requests of things she wanted to do were to go to wine country and shop in San Francisco. Done. and Done (the shopping pictures are on my phone however, so once I figure out how to get those off of there and onto my computer, I'll share those.)

Today it's all about Napa Co. Our first stop was Luna.  We were driving north up Silverado Trail and passed by Luna.  My mom yelled out - OH I love that one! So we made a u-turn and started our wine tasting at Luna.  Turns out that both of us were thinking that this winery was Luna di Luna, you know the one with the bright rainbow colored opaque bottles.  Well, it's not. Luna di Luna is out of Italy, and we were in Napa (you know, just in case you weren't clear).  We asked if Luna and Luna di Luna were all under the same wine family and alas, they are not. (It wasn't until just now that I looked up to see where Luna di Luna is out of.)  After we were let down by this fact, we tried some wine.  And, boy, we were pleasantly surprised.  (I love when that happens.) It was delicious. The tasting room was so homey - the ladies pouring the wines were busy, but not too busy to be pretentious snobs and not tell us anything about the wine (always important). We were encouraged to take a walk up to the tower that overlooks the Pinot (I think, sometimes I don't listen) grapes.  It was delightful. 

Luna's Sangiovese was superb. It goes for $25 per bottle and is seriously going to be a staple in our wine frig for summer enjoyment.  It was however 3 million degrees (OK, truly, it reached 109 degrees, which in my book is just about the same as 3 million degrees) the day that we went to the winery, so I didn't buy any wine that day, but I will be sure to make a stop next time. 

I would like my house to look like this - complete with a wine bar, people working behind the bar pouring wine and a dark wooden ceiling.  Yes, I think I just might move into to the Luna tasting room.  

 Luna's grounds were beautiful.  So quiet, so peaceful, so ready to try some more wine

olive tree overlooking the vineyard - as most olive trees do in Napa county.

entrance to Luna

For more information on Luna - go here.

winery: las positas

Just down the street (OK, 1.4 miles away) from Thomas Coyne is the Las Positas winery - clearly, I paced out the mileage...oh wait, nope.  I just managed to take a picture of a wine marker sign and there you have it, 1.4 miles away. Las Positas is a pretty winery, with a great patio and a few small banquet rooms off the front of the building.  It would be a great place to do an event - Mike does a lot of  events, so we are always on the look out for a new place to hold events, and an added bonus is that they also have good wine.  We had a great time at Las Positas.  Our wine guy was friendly and knowledgeable (and he gave me some dark chocolate to try with one of the wines - that doesn't hurt the perception of the winery either.)  We ended up liking pretty much all of their red wines (not sure why I specified, we never try the white wines, why bother, we aren't big fans...plus most wineries will give you a few re-pours since you didn't try any of the whites so that you get your money's worth at the tasting.) Anyways, we liked them all, but walked away with two bottles of the 2007 Cabernet @ $29 a piece - our favorite wine of the day.

You know how we like 2007 California Cabs?  Yep. It's true.  No surprise then that when we got to Las Positas winery in Livermore that we couldn't wait to try their 07 cab.  And holy bananas! We loved it.  Seriously, I don't know what happened that year (well, in general, it was a pretty sweet year, we did get married that year after all, however pretty sure our wedded bliss has nothing to do with grape growing...) but man oh man, we can't pass up a bottle of 07 wine.  Our wine guy at Las Positas told us that they would soon be sold out of the 07's so of course that meant, we had to snatch up 2 bottles to take home.  We haven't opened them yet, stay tune for that day.

dne eht

(no, that's not pig latin, just "the end" spelled backwards, I figured since Las Positas was backwards I'd give you a bit more...the end.)

winery: wente

Wente is like the zoo of all zoos on a nice weekend day.  But there is something about it that makes me love it even more each time I am there.  Maybe it's the golf course, maybe it's sipping Arnold Palmers on the veranda on a hot sunny afternoon overlooking the course, maybe it's the fact that it has a winery. Does not matter. I love it all. 

You know how I said last week that sometimes when you get sub-par service at a winery, you leave feeling a bit disappointed?  Right.  Something about Wente's craziness makes it OK that they only stop by once in a blue moon, because when they did check in with us, they acknowledged their lack of attention to us and had us try a few extra wines that weren't part of our tasting.  Maybe that helps.  Yes, yes I think it does.

winery: thomas coyne

Thomas Coyne winery in Livermore Valley was one of those wineries where we had a lot of fun taking pictures of the grounds but the wine just wasn't completely our style.  The wine was good, don't get me wrong. The people were very nice, tasting room was casual and the tasting was free...Bonus.  There were a lot of people at this winery and the bar was quite small, which meant that we didn't get a lot of attention to learn about the wine - completely understandable on a busy Saturday afternoon.  However, I think the wineries we love the most, are the ones that we end up walking away from have exceeded all expectations.  They are the wineries that no matter what the wine tastes like (well, to an extent) we have been able to learn a thing or two about the winery and all that making wine entails.  So, it comes to no surprise that a winery that moves you right along without offering any insights on the wines they are pouring isn't one that we are super enthused about.  Just another reason to give it another try, as we are always amazed how the atmosphere can change each time you go back to a winery.

We did however purchase one bottle of wine while at the winery.  The 2006 Tannat (red blend) is one that should be paired with BBQ.  We thought what perfect timing to buy this bottle at the beginning of summer when surely we will be barbecuing quite a bit.  We haven't tried it yet (step one: refill the propane tank. step two: grill meat. step three: open bottle of Tannat wine and enjoy.) We are sure to follow these 3 important steps very soon - since we've already had a string of 90+ degree days.  Summer has officially begun in the East Bay, now we need to start grilling and drinking wine. 

winery: Steven Kent / La Rochelle

You know you've found a great winery when they feed you cheese and figs along side fantastic wine.  Or at least, to me, I know I've scored when the cheese tray comes out.  I'm easy to please, just give me some fine brie and the middle of a fig newton.  Oh how I love that.

In the reserve room, you can choose if you want to do a La Rochelle or Steven Kent wine tasting.  La Rochelle is all about Pinots, while Steven Kent is about the Cabs.  You know us, we dig the Cabs. So that's what we tried. I don't quite know any more about how the two are connected.  Today, we are talking about Steve. Stevie.  Steve-o.  He makes good wine.

The best part of Steven Kent was that every wine was better than the one before.  Seriously, our socks were blown off! Mike had talked to a guy on a flight from Las Vegas to Oakland recently that was a big fan of Steven Kent, he was totally dead on.  This place was great. 

We will be back and when we go back, I'll remember to write down the wines so that I can talk more intelligently.  This trip was just about hanging out with Mike and enjoying some wine and talking to a Steven Kent employee that was wine tasting on her day off.  It also happened that everyone in the wine tasting room had some tie to Minnesota or Wisconsin. You know it's super cool then! Duh!

winery: Murietta's Well

Murietta's Well - Our first stop in our wine tasting expedition in the Livermore Valley.   We had very low expectations, which were blown out of the water after the first sip of wine. 

We've been meaning to try out some of the wineries in the Livermore Valley for a long time.  Then we heard that the Livermore Valley is known for its Zinfandel...and the following weekend, we made a point to go try them out.  We were blown away.  One employee at Murietta's well said that Livermore's atmosphere today reminds him of what Napa was like about 20 years ago. 

This valley is friendly, relaxed and makes good wine.  I'm sold.  We love it here.  The East-West orientation of the valley allows for cooling off quickly at night even though the summer days can be quite warm (this valley is in the East Bay, after all, and I'm sure you are all too familiar with my complaints about how stinking hot it gets here in the summer.) 

We ended up taking home a bottle of the Cab Franc and a bottle of the Zin.  We also loved the merlot (always shocks me when I have a good merlot - darn you, Sideways!) and the Spur (their red blend) were also totally worthy of being purchased.  We just like to save our pennies, and we live close and know we can always go back.  And we definitely will.  The people at Murietta's well were fantastic, employees were stopping us on our way out the door asking us which bottles we bought.

tricks of the trade

It's no secret that we like to go wine tasting. A lot.  I mean, c'mon, we live near one of the most remarkable wine regions in the world, wouldn't it be a shame if we didn't go?

We go wine tasting for you, people, so that this blog has content. 

We are givers.

And since it's the season of giving, I thought I'd share with you what we bring with us each time we go wine tasting.   Thank you, you kind readers that like to hear me babble. I appreciate it.

Now, let me tell you a story. Once, we were at Kenwood (Sonoma County) tasting their delicious wines and there was a girl in the tasting room that wasn't looking too hot. Her boyfriend, husband, poor soul...whomever he was, was basically carrying her over his shoulder, she had had a bit too much to drink. (Side note: This was our first winery of the day, hardly 11am.) Shortly after we finished up our tasting, we headed to the car to grab a few snacks, and to our left was this girl, and her poor soul of a caretaker, leaning over a rock ledge.  Then, as if the fire hose turned on, vomit started violently coming out of her. Purple vomit. Let this be a lesson to you, purple vomit is never pretty, even if you are just an innocent bystander. 

To avoid vomit like the marionettes from Team America, we bring snacks.  Here's our list of things that come with us every time we go wine tasting:

1. Barkley : no, we don't eat her, she's just so fun, we can't leave her behind...you don't need to have her on your list, but she's on ours and I wanted to be truthful with our list...therefore, I'm sharing. Many wineries are dog friendly, more than you would expect. 

2. Water : I mean a lot of it.  Like toss a case of water bottles in your trunk, I typically am not a proponent of plastic water bottles, but this is my one exception. 

3. Snacks : party mix, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, apples and granola bars are our go-to snacks

4. Pack a picnic : Most wineries will not allow you to picnic on their grounds, however there are some that will either allow you to picnic if you buy a bottle of wine (Rutherford Hill Winery) or others that have a deli where you can buy your sustenance and picnic on their grounds (V. Sattui and Beringer).   I am sure there are more, but those are the few that we've actually eaten at. 

The good news about packing a picnic is that you don't waste time sitting at a restaurant. We are serious about our time management in wine country.  Most wineries are only open from 10 - 4pm or so, which means it's important to maximize your time.  In the course of a day trip to Napa, we typically don't taste at all the wineries we go to (but when we do a tasting, we typically share one so that we don't become like the purple vomit girl), but we like to check out as many as possible, just to see the grounds, take a few pictures... you know, for the blog.

wente

Tucked back in the hills of the East Bay, Wente Vineyards is a wonderful place to golf, take in views of Mt. Diablo and enjoy a different wine region of Northern California. Wente is located in the the Livermore area, which boasts some great wines, and very relaxed attitudes.  Also, it's one of our favorite places to golf.  I say, any golf course that you can see grapes on nearly every hole is a winner in my book, even if I do score an 8 on a par 4. It's OK, because it sure is pretty.