Notes from Napa

I would update about work, but who really wants to hear about that?  Instead I'll give an overview about what we've been doing on the weekends.

Last weekend, we went to Napa.  We agonized about which hotel to stay in, and eventually settled on the EuroSpa and Inn in Calistoga.  The hotel was basic, but clean and they had spa services on site.  Also, it didn't cost a fortune.  As you can imagine, the hotel prices in Napa Valley are steep.  But this hotel served our purposes well, and the massages we had were excellent.

So after our spa appointments, we headed out to do some wine tastings.  By chance, I happened to find this barrel tasting event at Vincent Arroyo.  What a find!  They had several barrels to try, and had quite a spread of cheeses and fruit - all for free!  The wine was quite good, and the winery was very "California cool."  If it wasn't our very first trip to Napa, we would have just stayed there all day.  Here are some pictures from that event:

Apparently, I only own one sweater

Vincent Arroyo himself

Our favorite winery (so far)

After that, we went to Summers Estate Winery.  The wine was good.  However, they rushed us through our tasting, which really annoyed Dirk.  Nevertheless, we ended up buying two bottles of Charbono.  This wine come from a rare grape, and Summers Estate has one of the largest crops of it.

From there, we headed to August Briggs, which we also liked.  Again, we were a bit rushed, but we picked up a Chardonnay that we could drink in our hotel room before dinner.  I'm not a Chardonnay fan, but this one was good.  At this point, we were getting quite tipsy and I kept on talking about how I was going to see the geyser tomorrow.  Wow, I really know how to strike up interesting conversations with strangers!

Finally, we ended up at B Cellars, which was the most expensive tasting of the day.  The wine tasting was $15 per person and the wine bottles were expensive as well.  Normally, the winery waves the tasting fee if you buy a bottle of wine, but this place only waved it if you bought three bottles or more! This winery specialized in blends.  By then, I was liking everything, so I can't say that I could give you an honest opinion.  The winery itself was gorgeous and comfortable.  Again, I talked about the geysers with strangers.  Here are some pictures from B Cellars:

Totally Sober

Here's B Cellars!

Ohh heyyyy come take a look at my koi pond

We ended the day with a nice, but forgettable dinner at JoLe.  I had some sort of food and Dirk had some sort of food.  And we drank something.  Actually, I think it was from B Cellars.  I don't know - who cares at this point!?

Then on Sunday it was geyserrrrrrrr timmmmmeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!

And there it was.  I paid $10 for this shit?  I guess this would be really exciting for cave people, but they didn't have the Bellagio.  This is like...a crap water fountain.  Oh, but they had some goats:

hi.

We went to two more large, "commercial" wineries on our way out of town.  Sutter Home was...well, Sutter Home, but we did buy some really amazing salsa there - oddly enough.  Then, we went to V. Sattui, which had a very cool Italian market.  We tasted some wines, and then had an adorable little picnic on their grounds. We also stopped by Grgich, where I made sure I pointed out that they were "missing a vowel."  They gave us wine glasses for free, which was nice.

So that was our weekend in Napa!  I'm ready at any time to take visitors up there.  It was so much fun and the scenery was absolutely gorgeous.  I can't even imagine how beautiful it would be in the summer when everything is in bloom.

An update on THIS weekend will be coming soon in another post.  You think you can have it all at once? Well, you can't! Stop being greedy.