http://picasaweb.google.com/daniel.lauve/CaliforniaSeptember2009For our second anniversary, we talked briefly about going out to Mandola winery or maybe for a day trip, and somehow that turned into Napa Valley. Good thing it did, too.
We found some good tickets from Southwest that took us into Sacramento on Friday the 25th and back from San Jose on Tuesday the 29th. On Friday, our flight to Phoenix was uneventful, but the flight to Sacramento was delayed by almost two hours. We slept late on Saturday morning before starting the hour-long drive to Napa. We didn't have any plans for the day, which we started to realize could be an issue as we surveyed the number of wineries that require some kind of appointment. Thankfully, Del Dotto winery, which received some really good reviews, had some space for us.
Del Dotto has the second oldest wine cave in Napa (built by Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century)---it's several hundred feet long, with a couple turns, lit with candles, and is lined with barrels of wine. After talking about the barrels they use and letting us sniff an oak barrel, our guide took us through the cave, letting us sample wine straight from the barrels along the way. The wines were between $60 and $125 a bottle, and they were about the best wines I've ever had. The first one was a sangiovese that tasted incredibly smooth and was really good (sorry, that's all you're getting from me, still not really a wine critic). We sampled about eight wines in all---probably the most interesting was a pair of wines that were the same wine (same grapes, same vineyard) from two different barrels. One was French Oak and one was American Oak, and we all preferred the French Oak.
Our second winery was Luna, which was a vineyard-lined country highway mile from Del Dotto. We had a tasting of their wines and took photos near the vineyard before heading up the road to Reynolds Family, a great little winery on beautiful grounds. We had a tasting there but were really keen on getting a tour, since Del Dotto was a great experience but didn't get much into the winemaking process. An intern was nice enough to take us around, showing us some grapes fermenting, letting us taste some grapes off the vine, and giving us some wine out of a barrel.
Our last stop was at St. Supery, which Brandi immediately recognized. They were having a party for their wine club members that included an 80's cover band. The wine club is something that I was previously unaware of. Very few of the wineries you visit distribute their wines through lots of retail and food service outlets. They count on selling to the people who come in for tastings, and then they have a wine club that regularly purchases their product. St. Supery is a bit of an exception, as they can be found in the grocery store, but it's still pretty apparent that they do a lot of business through their club.
For dinner we headed to Sonoma and ate at El Dorado, a restaurant on the city square with a beautiful courtyard. The food was very good, especially the ice cream sandwiches we had for dessert. Then we took a nighttime drive into San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge---that thing is massive! (And it's six bucks to cross, so best to take it all in in one shot.) Highway 1 quickly turns into Lombard Avenue, so we decided to go down the crookedest block in the world. The only problem was that in getting to the crooked hill we took ourselves further away from the hotel, and getting back took our poor rental PT Cruiser (the same type of rental car we had in Banff and on our wedding day, by the way) up a lot of tough hills that it really wasn't prepared for.
We stayed at Parc 55, right on Union Square. The hotel was very nice, we remarked to each other, as we got off the elevator, walked to our room, opened the door, and AAAAAAH! A high-pitched man squeal, along with said man frightenedly saying, "Someone's in here!" is how we learned that our room was occupied. We got a new room, thankfully.
On Sunday morning we went for a long run that included Chinatown, the piers, and the hills near Coit Tower. Then we went to church, which was (surprise!) a Latin Mass (our first). I enjoyed reliving my misspent year in high school learning impossible conjugations and arcane legal phrases, and Brandi enjoyed having no idea what was going on. Oh yeah, and we got to bring up the gifts, so that was pretty cool.
[Brandi here...] For lunch we decided to try Yank Sing, a Chinese restaurant that my doctor recommended. Dr. Schmidt is from the Bay area and he really knows Deem Sum! It was quite an experience; the waitstaff comes by with all menu items displayed on carts such as dumplings of all kinds, meat-stuffed buns, peking duck, various vegetable stir fry, and traditional desserts. We tasted as much as we could but I couldn't quite make it to dessert because I was so full. Daniel thought it was one of the best Chinese meals he'd ever had.
We then decided to go to Fisherman's Wharf and walked through the Ferry Building and then we took a street car the rest of the way there. My favorite thing at the Wharf was watching the sea lions. There were several hundred of them lounging and playing very close to the pier! After walking around Fisherman's Wharf we ended our evening in San Francisco with a nice dinner at the Waterfront Cafe.
We then drove a little under an hour to Half Moon Bay to the Old Thyme Inn, the Bed and Breakfast we were staying at until Tuesday. We got up Monday morning and ran down to the bay. While it was a foggy morning, it was still beautiful and calming. We made it back in time to get ready for the delicious breakfast of Dutch apple pancakes and chicken apple sausage. The pancake was more like eating a sumptuous cake than breakfast. There was also rosemary corn cake (made with fresh rosemary from their garden), fresh fruit and strong delicious coffee. We also had stimulating conversation with the other guests staying at the inn and I was very intrigued by the many different types of visitors.
Once we had our fill, we decided to head south to explore more wineries and enjoy the scenery. The drive was beautiful and calming, except for the first half hour because while I was busy looking at the map I got motion sickness, ugh. The first vineyard we came to was Savannah Chanelle. It was up the side of a mountain and had breathtaking views and a beautiful old house to enjoy our tasting. We kept driving south and visited the Cinnabar tasting room in Saratoga and then to Los Gatos to visit Testarossa---a winery that used to be an old monastery. The used to make church wine there! It was a beautiful old building. We then decided to head to Santa Cruz for a late lunch and possibly make it one last tasting room, Bonny Doon, but we caught them as they were to trying close up so we headed back up Highway 1 to Half Moon Bay. That evening we walked together downtown to our last meal in California at a quaint Italian restaurant that was downtown. It was perfectly warm and relaxing. We toasted to our lovely wine tour of Northern California!
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