4-15-10

DOWNTOWN NAPA

WINE INDUCED NAP TIME

SILLY SISTERS

ROADSIDE BALANCE BEAM IN NAPA

SONOMA VALLEY

TOUCH MOVE

YIPPIE CAY-YAE-YEH


Over the past three days, we visited several wineries and tasted somewhere between 50 and 100 pours. When you taste so many wines back to back to back, you try very hard to detect individual aromas and flavors, and you also try to distinguish what characteristics you enjoy from glass to glass. Certainly some wines we tasted were less enjoyable than others, and everyone's taste buds vary so reaching a consensus on a favorite proved impossible, but the truth is all the wines we tasted were easily and happily drinkable. Think back to the time you may have struggled through a glass of boxed wine, or some 1 buck chuck glass of drivvle. If a winery in Sonoma or Napa doesn't make the cut, it disappears. Only the best of the best can survive in wine country, and as a result, overall, all the wines we tasted were wonderful. After sampling wines that cost almost $100, It will be difficult going back.

Grapes aren't the only thing growing around here. This is an agricultural mecca, and as a result, there are some fantastic restaurants too. Without a doubt, the food we enjoyed this past week was among the finest, if not the finest since our trip began. We enjoyed a tapas style meal at the Vineyard Inn, which is the greenest restaurant within 100 miles of San Francisco. Their ingredients are organic and some of the supplier farms use biodynamc practices. Their hot olive dish is to die for. Hot olives: if you've never tried them before, believe us, you are missing out. We ate a Cafe Citti, a delicious casual Italian restaurant, where nothing on the menu wasn't incredible. We dined at a lovely gem with Jodi in the Sonoma Square area, with an accommodating chef who serves house wines that are poured exclusively inside the restaurant. The house cabernet was divine. Even a humble chinese restaurant in Napa, with everything from its lazy susan style table to the spring rolls to noodles to fortunes were terrific. Southern home style cooking may appeal to some, but to a bunch of vegetarians, northern California's food scene is heaven.