Final day in Napa

Sunday morning in Napa Valley was another cool, foggy morning.  We wanted to get another good walk in after all of the rich food we'd eaten the night before at Redd.  This time I took my camera as we were walking through Yountville and past some beautiful vineyards.  

I love this one - huge, fully grown, wild Cabernet vines next to brand new ones.

After a delicious Masion Fleurie breakfast, we made 1 winery stop before our brunch reservations.  We stopped into Raymond for a tasting.  Their tastings are typical Napa style - 3 different tastings of 4 wines at 3 (expensive) prices - $15, $20, and $25.  We picked the middle one with several Syrah options.  The expensive one was for the 'Crystal Room' which is this totally funky, club like room.  While the sales pressure was a little much, the guy was pretty nice.  The wines we tasted were $40 each, and after a $20 (not refunded with purchase) tasting fee, that made their bottles pretty pricey.

Napa was definitely busy that day!  We'd never seen traffic like this...

We headed back into Yountville for brunch at Ad Hoc.  Our favorite west coasters, good family friends who live in Sausalito, drove up to join us.  It was so fun to see them!  As always, we shared good winery and restaurant finds, talked about our parents, and enjoyed catching up.

Brunch was just fantastic, of course!  Everything is served family style on large beautiful trays and pans.  The salad was crisp and fresh.  The steak and eggs - oh man.  Mushrooms, potatoes, delicious steak and scrambled eggs.  We all wanted to lick the pan.  And the carrot cupcakes.  I'm not a big carrot cake fan but let me tell you.  We all thought about eating the paper just to get every last crumb.

After saying goodbye to the Pierces, we went to our last winery of the trip, The Terraces.  It was a wonderful spot to end the amazing trip.  Nate, one of the winemakers, was our guide and he was fantastic.

Sitting on some incredible real estate on Silverado Trail, tucked behind an very unassuming gate, Terraces winery is an amazing place full of cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel vines.  Nate put us into their utility golf car and we headed off to check out some vines and views - just look at this one!  It's amazing - you can almost see all of Napa Valley from the top of their property.

We were literally riding through the vines.  It was great!  Along the ride, we stopped in one of their stone buildings dating back to the 1880s.  This one houses their balsamic vinegar barrels.  The lesson in balsamic aging was super cool, and we got to taste it straight out of a few barrels, tasting the difference. It was really interesting to see how it's aged in the different size and wood type barrels.

See how the size is graduated?  After 1 year, they go in and use the smaller one to fill up the larger one to replace what's evaporated.  Then they cover them with the cheesecloth and wait another year.  Each barrel is made from different wood type, and they have a significantly different taste between the different types.

Then we went back into their 'tasting room' which doubles as a guest house above their wine making facility.  We tried several of their wines, and really enjoyed our time chatting with Nate.  He showed us different blending options, and how really simple wine making can be.  A splash of this, a splash of that...swirl, drink sip.  We had a great time with him, and could have hung out with him all day.  If they come out with a fifty-fifty-fifty blend, that was all us :)

We hated to say goodbye to Nate and to Napa, but it was time to head south to SF to fly home.  The view out the plane window of the fog over the city was amazing - the fog rolling in over the city was ridiculous.  You could see it swirling from the air!

We love California wine country.  Some people go to the beach, we go to California.  It refreshes us, and we love to learn about new restaurants, wineries, winemakers, and try new things.  This was our 5th trip in 4 years, so please, if you're heading there don't hesitate to contact me with questions about places to go and see.  I love to talk about Sonoma and Napa, and would love to help you find great places to visit! 

And now, back to your regularly scheduled blog posts...

To Napa we go!

Over the mountain and through the woods, to Napa we go!

We packed up our stuff and checked out of the hotel and made the long drive over the mountain to the other side of wine country, Napa Valley.  Our style tends to be more of the Sonoma way, but our last few trips we've been better about spending at least one day in Napa, and have found some wonderful wineries.  Also, the restaurants in Yountville are just amazing. 

First things first - lunch.  Now, it may seem a little odd to do lunch first...but we had to work for it.

In an attempt to do something new and different on this trip, we signed up for a CIA Enthusiasts cooking class at the Culinary Institue of America Greystone, right in the heart of Napa Valley.  We decided on the Bold Flavors from Tuscany class, and were so excited to go.

Little did we know it was an emersion class....

We got there and the group sat around this big table in an enormous, beautifully clean kitchen.  Then the chef, fully dressed in her chef outfit, came and chatted for a few minutes, handing out a packet of recipes.  Then we were directed to select a station, and informed that we should get going because we'd be eating in an hour and 10 minutes.  Eating what we'd cooked...on our own. 

Our recipes were potato gnocchi and radichio and onion crostini. 

Have you ever made gnocchi from scratch before?

Yeah, me either. 

It was a crazy hour and a half by the time we got everything plated, but super fun.  I'm so glad we picked something more challenging because we were able to ask some questions and received guidance along the way.  Gnocchi isn't something I would have attempted at home, but it was really not that tough and soooo good...

Especially with the brown butter and sage sauce that we made.  Mmmm.

I think my favorite line of the day was husband shouting that he was 'in the weeds' and felt like he was on Top Chef...while he tried to saute onions and top some crostinis with cheese and the onions...while I attempted to kneed, roll, cut, and boil gnocchi. We both felt like we were on Top Chef with the race of the clock, and I was channeling my inner Fabio with my gnocchi!

We all shared our dishes with the rest of the class and spread them out on a huge counter buffet style.

Everything was really delicious, and we had a great time trying the different dishes! 

Completely stuffed and slightly exhausted from the 'class' we raced off to our first wine appointment. 

WAY up on a hill mountain, we pulled up in front of a beautiful rustic gate at Outpost Winery. Iyla was our host, and she was wonderful.  We tried their Grenache, Zinfandel and Cabernet wines.  She gave us a great tour all around the property, through the newly (that week) finished guest house(s) and out into the vineyard.  The wines were delicious and views one of a kind.  She's from Pittsburgh, so we shared some east coast stories.

The white grape bins are everywhere, just waiting to be filled when Harvest comes!

Leaving Outpost, we worked our way back down a little bit and stopped at Ladera.  Ladera is a beautiful, small Napa winery, mostly focused on estate Cabernets. 

Their Cabs were nice, but we typically don't drink too many cabernets.  But we did snag a bottle of their Sauvignon Blanc to take home!

One more stop for Saturday, and it was at Failla Wines.  Jeff, affectionately called Honey Badger by the folks at Outpost, was a great host.  We all got a good laugh when we called him Honey Badger, as we'd been instructed to do...apparently there's a youtube video that explains it all!

Jeff was very knowledgable about the wines and the Failla story - it was great to listen to him.  We really enjoyed our visit!  It's a beautiful setting tucked back in, and they have a big table set up for people sit around during the tasting.  There were 3 other couples there and we did the tasting together.  It was interesting to share stories about other places in Napa with the couples.

 

After saying goodbye, we headed down to Yountville to check into our inn for the night.  We discovered the Four Sisters Inns on our first wine country trip, and fell in love.  We've stayed in several of them, and this was our second time at Masion Fleurie. 

It can be expensive to stay in some of the fancier suites, and our less expensive room is tiny, but it's still lovely. It's wonderful to walk to the restaurants and cafes in Yountville, and their homemade breakfasts at the inn are amazing.  I'm not sure I could stay more than a couple of days in this room, and the bathroom's mini-sized, but it's still really nice. 

Drinks at my favorite, Ad Hoc, and dinner at Redd awaited us on Saturday night!  We freshened up, changed clothes and walked the couple of blocks to the main part of town.  It was a beautiful night and every restaurant was just a buzz with people out on the town!

Dry Creek Valley day

Thursday morning, after a walk to Starbucks for some exercise and caffeine, we headed to Mauritson Winery for our first appointment of the day.  We had a wonderful visit - it was one of our favorites of the week.  Mary did our tasting and then Jessica gave us the full tour.  It was great.

This was so cool.  So most big wineries have a space like this - a lab.  You can't really see her but there's a girl in the chair in the left corner...that's Emma, the assistant wine maker.  She was tracking things from different grapes in the different vineyards that they source for.  They had been out looking at grapes that morning, testing sugars, acidity, and a couple of other things, and tracking them just in a regular spread sheet.  They test several times and compare the differences to help determine perfect picking time.

You can see on the right side what looks like high school chemistry - that's exactly what it is.  They have a girl who's great and was doing all these tests and boiling things and doing fancy lab tests.  It was really cool.  Also hard to see (sorry, I didn't want to stalk them with the camera) - on the island are glasses of the current vintage of their wines.  Behind and beside those glasses are baggies full of grapes that were just picked that morning, and beakers of their juices.  We tasted a couple of juices and they are so different!  The juices were brown/tan in color and were tight and sour.  The grapes still have a few weeks to go on the vines before they can be picked.  The weather in 2011 has been very challenging, and harvest is looking to be 3-4 weeks behind most years.

After a walk through their tanks, lab, and on site vineyard, we went into their barrel room to do some barrel tasting.  Jessica was great - we tasted a few different wines straight from the barrels...and then went back into the tasting room to taste the last wine of the list, comparing the barrel to the finished product.

After spending too much time at Mauritson, we were late and raced to Unti for our tasting.  They were in the middle of bottling, and were very busy.

Most wineries don't have their own bottling lines.  They are huge, expensive, and require people who can run them and fix them.  You saw Wild Hog's mini-line from the day before.  This is a little more traditional.  They bring this big tractor trailer, back it up to the tanks, and bottle.  Most of them bring their own team of people...and go from wine in a tank to bottles sealed and boxed.

We had their wine at dinner the night before and were really excited to visit because of all of the great things we'd heard.  They were just a little too busy, I think, to have visitors there.  The wine was great, but the experience was a little disappointing, especially after the first stop was so welcoming and extensive.

We were starving after Unti, so we stopped at the Dry Creek General Store for sandwiches.

We ate lunch on the porch, looking out at beautiful vineyards.  The sandwiches were delicious, and exactly what we wanted - fresh, light, and yummy.

We had to get in some dog love!  This adorable pup was just hanging out in the truck, greeting all of the customers.

After lunch, we stopped at Quivera.

It was nice, but we are learning after so many visits and trips that we really enjoy the smaller production wineries.

We were right down the street from Bella, one of our favorite Zin producers, so we stopped in.

It's a beautiful property on West Dry Creek Road.  We visited them on one of our past trips and loved tasting in the caves - the entrance is in the curve of the hill on the left.  It was awesome - they were picking grapes from that hill while we were in there, and the winemaker was unloading grapes when we left the cave.  This time, the tasting fees had increased, they were offering a new line of Pinot Noirs, and were very sales-y.  The Zins were still great, but otherwise we were a little disappointed.  Sometimes you just need to be really good at what you're really good at.

Then, we made our final stop at Woodenhead.

Up high on River Road in Santa Rosa, the small rustic tasting room has a great view.  The wines were wonderful.  We'd had a couple before, and had been hearing over and over how great all of them were, so we had to stop.  And everyone was right - they're great.  So great that we joined their wine club!  We're really excited to get our first shipment this fall.  We decided on the Pinot-Zin combo - they're all great!

We finished just in time for dinner in Santa Rosa.  We had plans for Petite Sirah, followed by our traditional stop at Russian River Brewing Co.