Vacation Recap Pt. 3

Day 5

It wasn't far from Half Moon Bay to San Francisco and Rt. 1 pretty much left the coast and headed inland after that. We skipped through the edge of SF, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and into Napa. Our single plan for the day, aside from checking into our hotel, was to have lunch at Mustard's Grill, a restaurant we go to every time we're out that way. It was a bit early for lunch, so we pulled into St. Supery to pick up a bottle of wine for a friend of mine, and then we went to another of our favorite places, Domaine Chandon. We did a little tasting of sparkling wine, but the big news by far was that Chandon will be starting to ship to NY starting in October, and that this year they are putting out not one, but two sparkling red wines. You can usually only find such wines in Australia, where they're common, but here they are very rare. Chandon did a sparkling red last year, based on Pinot and Zinfandel, and we picked up a bunch when we were there last year. This year they will be doing the same Sparkling Red again, as well as a Sparkling Pinot. We're looking forward to that. I just hope we can get a number of bottles of it.

After that it was time for lunch, so we went to Mustard's for our usual - sesame crackers with Ahi tuna and the Warm Chocolate Hazelnut Truffle Tart for dessert. Just to be civilized we actually threw in lunch as well - a pasta for me and a sandwich for Libbette.

We also went to Plumpjack Winery, a place we'd been to before. They didn't have anything new, but they did mention that one of their consulting winemakers had a winery called Saddleback. We decided to try to find it. That became something of a quest for the rest of the day as we traveled the area, trying in vain to find it. It wasn't listed in our guidebook and so we drove and drove to no avail.

Not willing to accept total defeat, we decided to stop for one more tasting, this time at Peju, a place we haven't been to before. The winery itself is nice, but many of them are. Once inside, however, we ended up with a very friendly, very funny man who poured the wines for us, and a nice couple from somewhere down south (that I can't remember right now). The wines there were decent, especially their Cabernet and a blend called Provence which was a red wine, but light, and meant to be served chilled - a good summer wine. It was refreshing and yet not so light as to be too thin or simple. We ended up ordering some of their wine.

That night we went to Bistro Don Giovanni for dinner which was decent but nothing special. The highlight of the meal, for me, was something called a Blondie Mary which was made with fresh, organic yellow tomato juice instead of canned red tomato juice, and which had a flavor unlike anything else I've tried before.

After that it was back to the room where I watched Dodgeball and then went to sleep.

Oh, a word on the hotel - the River Terrace Inn is in downtown Napa, so it's somewhat removed from the scenery and the wineries, but it was a very nice place. The rooms were large and nicely furnished with huge ceilings and DVD players in the room. You could also select movies at the front desk - a decent variety, too. I was pleasantly surprised.

Day 6

Another day in Napa. This time we headed straight for the wineries, heading farther down highway 29. I stopped at BV, mostly because my Dad used to buy a lot of their wine and I'd always been curious what the place was like. They're a larger producer than the places we seem to frequent, and there were no real surprises there. The wine was serviceable, but nothing special.

After that it was on to V. Sattui, another return visit, and we not only tasted wine, but we bought some food and had a picnic lunch outside at the winery (something quite common over there). We ordered some more wine from them, too - the Gamay Rouge, one of our favorite light drinking wines, and some others that we tasted there.

In the afternoon we took a trip into Sonoma, primarily to go to Gundlach Bundschu, another place we like. Since we're members of their club, we got to taste for free. Still, there was nothing new there, so we left with just a bottle of Pinot Noir.

After that day, and tasting a lot of wine, I was pretty wiped. We opted not to go to a big dinner for a change, and instead found a local Thai restaurant and ate there. I don't even remember the name - perhaps Thai Kitchen. The food was decent - not great (like the place near Disney) but not bad at all. I ordered Thai Iced Coffee which tasted like dessert to me.

Back at the hotel we watched House of Flying Daggers, which was pretty at times, but which I didn't think lived up to Hero.

Okay, only two more days to go. One more update and then it's done.

Oh, and by the way, I changed the look of my journal. It was time. Hope it works.