Napa, CA –
This is the life!
A glass of wine, a bite of food…
And someone else to do the driving.
I can see a couple of issues with touring wineries in the Napa Valley area.
Since I’m not from around there, I don’t know where the good ones are to go to for tours and tastings.
And since they involve drinking alcoholic beverages, driving might be an issue.
At least after visiting two or three.
Of course, I could just take advantage of an available spit bucket, and only taste the wine without swallowing it.
But where’s the fun in that?
I mean, if the wine is good, why would I want to spit it back out?
No, I want to enjoy it as fully as possible.
And that means swallowing each sip.
Eventually.
I might roll it around in my mouth at first, savoring the various hints of something.
Unless it’s bad wine.
Then I wouldn’t have a problem spitting it out.
As quickly as possible.
But why would I want to tour wineries where they would be giving us samples of bad wine?
Let’s think about this for a moment.
The end goal of any winery tasting room is to sell their wine.
The only reason visitors would want to buy their wine was if they liked what they tasted.
So, why would they serve bad wine in their tasting room?
That’s not to say that all is wonderful.
On the tour we took, the wineries all wanted to give us samples of their white wines.
Their sweet wines.
That’s all fine and good if that’s what you like.
Unfortunately, that’s not what I like.
My tastes run more to the dark reds.
The dry, un-sweet wines, so to speak.
And the day would provide a few opportunities to indulge those preferences.
Oh well, when in Rome…
So, Dore and I were spending a few days in San Francisco, and decided to take advantage of our proximity and spend a day up in the Napa area, sampling some of the bounty the region is known for.
Hmm, should we rent a car for the day?
Or take one of the pre-arranged tours of the area?
Since it was our first time to visit the region, we decided to take one of the organized tours.
It allowed us to relax and indulge as much as we desired.
And if we got to the point where we needed to nap between stops, we had that option.
So, up bright and early to meet our guide and driver for the day and hop on the bus with our fellow tasters.
Way too early to think about drinking.
Yet, here we are, boarding a bus to spend the day doing just that.
At least we have a long drive ahead of us, before the drinking begins.
Apparently there were some traffic issues that morning with their normal route, across the Golden Gate Bridge, so they took us across the bay to Oakland and then up the East side instead.
After a short pit stop about halfway, we arrived in Napa late enough in the morning to make drinking somewhat palatable.
We arrived at the Mondavi winery to be greeted out front by our host with glasses of white wine to start our visit. We were told to hold onto our glasses, as we would need them throughout our visit.
From there, we were taken throughout the winery, and were shown the entire operation. Our first stop was a balcony where we could look out over some of their fields of grapevines, along with a grove of olive trees.
Next, we were taken inside to a very large room full of vats, where the initial wine fermenting is done. And then down into the cellars where the wine is placed in casks for aging.
At several of these stops, we were presented with another wine to taste.
And at the only stop where we got to sample one of their red wines, we were offered one of their sweetest whites as an alternative.
And sure enough, one of our members opted for the sweet white instead of the dry red.
It reminded me that there seem to be a lot more people who only drink white wines than only drink reds.
And for those who drink both, it just means more choices to be had.
After giving us more than sufficient time to browse the gift shop, and to make purchases of our own bottles, we were bundled back onto the bus and headed to the next winery.
The Andretti winery.
At the Andretti winery, designed to look very much like an Italian winery, not only were we offered samples of a few of their wines, we were taken into the aging barn to sample wine directly out of the cask.
This gave us the opportunity to see what the experts get to taste when they are making judgments on a wine long before it is ready to be bottled.
Then, after we had finished with our samples, we were led to a set of tables just outside of the grapevines, but shaded by huge trees, to be served a “picnic” lunch.
Nothing special, just your standard collection of pre-prepared sandwiches, along with a salad, fruit, and of course, the requisite cheeses.
We were only provided with non-alcoholic drinks as part of the lunch, but we had the option of buying our own bottle of wine (at the gift shop) to accompany our food.
After lunch, we were eventually trotted back to the bus, and driven to a couple more wineries, at which we were again served primarily white wines, with an occasional red.
After we had visited all of the wineries on the tour, we were taken to the Vallejo marina, where we were loaded onto the ferry for the trip back across the bay to San Francisco.
Once we were loaded onto the ferry, we were back on our own, without the tour guide to accompany and herd us around.
Luckily, we had a long ride ahead of us to sober up before having to navigate the crowded and busy streets that we would eventually be disgorged onto…
For more photos of the Wineries on the tour, click here.
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