Oy. We have made it home. I feel good and we had a great weekend, but it’s good to be back in our own house, and shortly, we’ll be back in our own bed. I didn’t sleep well at all for the whole trip.
There was a bit more to the story last night after I went to bed – after a couple of hours, I started to feel very yukky. And then, after a few minutes of intense regret for eating so damn much bagna calda (basically, whole roast cloves of garlic, by the forkfuls), I eventually felt better.
I was thanking my lucky stars we had the business class tickets – it was a perk thing from work – because I really, really needed to be able to put my feet up and zone out to music while a little oscillator thing massaged my lower back.
Yep, we’re spoiled now for flying coach forever, dammit.
We ended up buying 3 or 4 bottles of wine that will be shipped within the next few weeks, and brought back a couple of little mementoes, like engraved wine glasses from one winery, and a wine barrel stave that had been made into a candleholder from another winery.
In order, we went to:
We had this coupon good for a “free” T-shirt if we went to the wineries in that order and got signatures or stamps. Each one was unique – some of them were more enjoyable to visit than others.
Summers was a small place off a side road. It didn’t look that impressive, but there was a bocce club on the property and there was a nice fountain and some vines out back by the tasting room that were marked off by variety. The tasting room manager and I hit it off – she was also named Ginny, so we did the whole “Hi, Ginny! I’m Ginny! How are you, Ginny?” thing at first. She poured 4 big tastes, of which we bought two – one was a Charbono, which she described as a rare-ish old variety that nobody grows anymore, because the old Italian vinestocks were ripped out 30 years ago when the whole Chardonnay/Cabernet fashion came in and California wines “hit” on the world market. The other one was an estate bottled Zinfandel – quite a good red wine and not at all the kind at the base of the “Friends don’t let friends drink white Zin” jokes. We also tasted another Cabernet Suavignon blend and a Merlot. Along with the wines, she recommended various foods – and she had tiny, ripe little cherry tomatos and some Hershey’s kisses, along with some plain crackers to taste in company with the wines. Very interesting – the chocolate went really well with the Cabernet. We had so much fun chatting there – it was a tiny little tasting room. But she let us wander back into the storage area where the wine casks were kept – we could see the brandings and brass plates on them that indicated where they were made, and if they were French or American oak (which makes a big difference to the taste, we learned).
We went next to Zahtila, which was a beautiful home up on the hillside with terraced rose gardens and vines that went up the steep slope behind the house. A friendly dog came out and led us to the tasting room, which was a pleasant little place with a bar counter in an outbuilding with a big stone porch. The tasting room manager was pleasant enough, but he was more interested in the hits of the 70’s playing on the sound system than in chatting with us, though he did give us engraved wineglasses as parting gifts. Meanwhile the owner of the winery, a youngish woman who was an ASU grad, sat on the terrace and put lables on her own bottles. They were oversized bottles of either Zin or Cabernet Sauvignon, too big to fit in the labeling machines at another winery. She did tell us that all the vintners/winemakers cooperated to a high degree, lending and borrowing equipment. Also, the manager told us how they had vines growing in a separate location, leasing the space from another winery, so they could get a totally different taste from the same stock. Interesting contrast.
After that, we had 3 more to go, and we were supposed to get to the fourth one on the list by 1230pm in order to not wait in line too long for their tour, so we skipped to that one as it was already after noon. That turned out to be the most disappointing one on the list, Sterling. The interesting thing was that when we told Gillian at the B and B this morning that we were going on the T-shirt tour, she gave us quick thumbnail sketches as to which ones were free and so on, and she said “Well, get to Sterling by 1230pm, or it’ll be too late. And their wine’s not really that good, but… the tour is interesting.” Okay, so we get there, and it’s a huge place with gorgeous grounds, and the buildings are all kind of faux-monastic Mediterranean. It cost $12.00 up front to take the tour, which included an aerial tram ride up to the top of a very steep hill, because the winery was at the top. But heh heh heh, I overheard a guy in line ahead of us asking for the Triple-AAA rate, so I told Steve to ask for it in an undertone. Upshot: 50% discount! Score! We load on to the gondolas and ride up the mountain. Very pretty scenery, lovely views. Right at the top, the sign said there would be tastings all through the tour (it was billed as a “progressive tasting” ) so we were to take our glasses with us. A very nice German or Swiss man poured us a taste of some Pinot Gris – the first white wine we’d had of the day – and told us about the winery. He confirmed my impression that Pinot Gris and Grigio are just the French and Italian versions of the same wine, same grape. However, the taste I had was much sweeter and lighter feeling that I like now – I prefer the Italian grigios like Santa Margarita, which are fuller, drier, and a bit peppery.
We went on with the tour, which was very well designed and very expensively carried off (flat screen TV monitors – big ones – for all the video presentations). Even the cask rooms looked showy – they were beautifully lit. Almost… too well presented. Hmm. So we went on to the next tasting station, and were given something else white to drink (by this point in the day, Steve and I were flagging a bit in our enthusiasm, but gamely drinking as much of the tastes as we could). Well, this taste wasn’t so great – kind of had a nasty aftertaste. I figured it was just a fluke, and we went on to the final tasting room, which was in a beautiful if rather pretentious hilltop facility with outdoor terraces and cozy, old-world rooms with sit-down tasting. We tasted 3 more wines – each one progressively more disappointing. How could this be? It was the biggest and busiest winery, with literally hundreds of people going through all day, riding the tram and taking the tour? Yet the stuff in our glasses just tasted bleh. We figured it was our untutored palates – we were literally learning all the tasting vocabulary from the folks pouring the tastes, so it’s not like we knew what we were talking about. However, we all agreed that there was nothing special with the wines at Sterling, although it was a pretty location and probably totally stunning as a place to get married. Heh. Really, we would have been better off if we’d just gotten a stamp for the T-shirt card and gone away. Steve filled out a comment card and made up some new categories for between “good” and “needs improvement” – he added “disappointing” to the wine tasting categories but gave full marks for the tour and tram. Which if you think about it is a pretty pointed way of saying “Your wine sucks, but your gardens are pretty.” We bought no wine and did not keep the information sheets on the wines we tasted, but I did buy a rather cool candleholder that was made from an old wine barrel stave that had been sanded, varnished, and drilled to hold 5 votives – the ends had been milled flat so that it would stand alone, kind of like a bow or a bridge, with the candles on it.
So yeah, that’s funny too – “Your wine sucks, but your barrels make pretty candleholders.” And it was only $20 bucks – kind of a bargain, but I got the feeling it was an experiment, because they hadn’t bothered to brand a logo on it or add felt pads to make it fancier. However, it’s nice the way it is, and you can see that it held red wine, so when I put it on the mantlepiece, the side with the wine stains will be visible. It’s attractive.
At this point we decided we needed some food – David was driving and was in good shape, but Steve and I were tasting vigorously and needed a break. So we wandered back into downtown Calistoga, and after a short period of indecisive wittering we went to the Hydro Grill for lunch. And yummy, another successful and delicious meal in Napa was scored. We were all happy with our choices; there were more heirloom tomatos so I had something with those, and ate the unwanted cheese off of David’s plate, too. Also, they had the most awesome gazpacho soup. Gazpacho sooooouuuuup! MMMMmmm.
After lunch, we continued with the Bataan T-Shirt Wine Tour And Deathmarch. Our next stop was Silver Rose, which looked pretty from the road and had many roses in beds surrounding the building, which was sort of round. The tasting room was a pleasant, high-ceilinged place with big picture windows overlooking their pond, a fountain that seemed to be barely trickling away, and the roses. The manager, Vanessa, turned out to be a very funny and knowledgeable hostess, and very quickly we all started having a lot of fun again. There’s a picture of her in this article from the San Francisco Chronicle.
We confessed that we’d just been to Sterling and she looked at us with a “And duh? Did you like it? NO!” expresssion when we told her we weren’t impressed, but we liked the gardens. THAT was funny. She liked us a lot after that, apparently. Hee! She poured very generous tastes of 4 or 5 wines, talking the whole time and showing us how to properly swirl the wine in the glass (she called herself the Swirling Nazi on this point). Then she poured us something from a freshly opened bottle and had us compare the bouquet before and after swirling. Very impressively, we could tell the difference! We were becoming wine connoseurereresrers before our very eyes (and noses and mouths). Really, it was a fun and educational time. We bantered back and forth with her and with the owner, J-Paul. Then we got a chance to wander back into the wine cask room, which was behind the tasting room and separated with big windows. They hold tastings and weddings back there, so there was a table set up with flowers and glasses and candles for an event later. We wandered around with Vanessa, chatting about the casks and about the oak used and the barrel making process, and she shared some industry dish about which wineries did it the right way, and which one sort of cheated by throwing in oak chips to flavor their wines in a big steel tank (note: this latter method is considered scandalous, wrong, and very bad, so don’t try it at home with your own 20,000 gallon steel fermenting tank).
Then as we wandered back toward the door she stopped by where they had a wine barrel set up for tastings, and got out a big glass wine thief and poured us about half a glass of a very young and rambunctious red wine… not sure what it was, but I think it might have been a Cabernet. And it was delicious, yet even I could tell it needed some time in the oak to mellow out and not be so brash. See? This wine stuff is easy. We tasted a lot of stuff where we were told the flavor was “fruit forward, but the tannin structure is there at the end.” Anyway, Vanessa was a lot of fun to talk with and we learned a lot in spite of spending most of the time laughing and joking around. She told us to watch out for Richard, owner of the next and final winery, Graeser Vineyards. Before we left, we ordered two bottles of wine, a Cabernet and something called “Dentelle” that was a blend. Both yummy. Surprisingly, we didn’t buy any Merlot; we quickly developed a taste for the Cabernets, I guess. And we’ll be signing up for their wine club, because they ship to all 50 states (a fact that made my sister Tudy happy when I told her earlier tonight) and when they ship, they send out 2 bottles, rather than requiring that we purchase a case or more.
I noticed that they had a couple of loose staves by the barrel – probably as a demonstration tool to show people how the barrels are made, not having a freakin half-dozen 48″ flat-screen plasma TV monitors to show videos on – and I told her about the candleholder I’d bought from Sterling. Hee! I bet that gave her ideas – I bet they come out with a really pretty candle holder with a nice Silver Rose logo on it. She told us the barrels are often up to $700 EACH, so it’s smart to try to come up with ways to make a bit back when it’s time to discard the barrels, as they’re only used for 3 years or so. I hope she does something with it. We discussed routers and sanding and varnish – yep, we were so hitting it off we were talking power tools. That’s my kinda girl talk, baby. David and Steve stayed out of our way for that part of the conversation. What a hoot.
Anyway.
We drove back through Calistoga and up Petrified Forest Road; way up and turned up a steep gravel drive and went even farther up… you get the picture, it was up there. It turned out to be a comfortable looking home with some flowerbeds and some picnic grounds, with a big dog snoozing out on the front terrace. We went in and spent time petting a second dog, who posed helpfully for us with a bottle of wine provided by Richard, and we talked to him about everything that interested him and a few things that ticked him off (he was quite the character). We picked out our T-shirts, tasted 4 wines, and Steve bought one as a gift which Richard signed. David and I liked the wines, but decided that we’d bought enough wine for now. We spent extra time petting the dog and yakking, but then it was time to head back to the inn and drop our stuff of and think about the next item on the agenda, which was the mud bath and massage that I’d booked that I mentioned in another post. Also, dinner after the mud bath was amazing. Jeeeeeeeez, Steve ordered the entire “small plates” menu at All Seasons; Charles the waiter loved him but the cook probably hated him. However, it was a great end to a great day, and they didn’t even mind about the stray bits of peat and mud in my hair (I washed and washed! Honest! And then I found some more in my ear today, after yet another shower).
I’m not usually one for having a lot of activities planned in advance on trips, but I have to say that we had a hell of a lot of fun talking to people on this trip, and we had time to do that because we had a kind of built-in structure that either we improvised, or we planned it around something booked for a specific time. It was a great way to go and David and I have decided that it’s way more fun to meet people and socialize on our trips more, rather than sticking to ourselves and not interacting with locals the way we’ve done before.
We have a lot of funny memories, and there were a lot of things I’d like to go back and do that we didn’t have time for on this trip. It makes the stress that I’ll be going through in the coming weeks easier to take somehow, because we had a really good break (if not really good sleep).
And now, bedtime. Tomorrow: stress! But I’ll stop and think of silly stuff from the trip, and it’ll be a better day than it might have been if we’d just stayed home.
