Napa Valley!!

Thursday, October 21, 2010
We spent the day today driving through the Napa Valley and sampling wine - tough job, but someone has to do it!  We stopped at 3 vineyards with wine tasting, two with tours of the operation.  Our favorite, for the wine, was Berringer's.  We enjoyed the tour with John, and ended up buying 10 or so bottles plus both signed up for their wine club.  With the wine club, we will both be sent 6 bottles every 3 months.  Some of these wines are not sold in stores.  My favorite was the white Merlot and the sparkling white zinfandel.  Yumm!  John explained about the labor involved in the fields, which requires skilled labor, not migrant workers.
The other tour we took was at the Robert Mondavi vineyards.  Here, we got to taste the various grapes from the vine, and saw and heard more about the commercial operation and creation of wine.  We learned and saw much about wine.
Lovely lovely countryside.  I've always wanted to come here, and now I have another wish to cross off my list!
This evening, we got to go and meet Dan's son, David, and his fiance, Lea, in Davis.  We took them out for dinner at their favorite Mexican place - Yummy!  The salsa bar had everything from the usual hot/medium tomato salsa, to pumpkin (?), pineapple, strawberry, and cactus salsa.  Cool.  Good folks, fun conversation.

vines, everywhere vines!

at the Robert Mondavi vineyard

roses everywhere too - lovely!

at Berringer's

at Mondavi's

inside mansion at Berringer's

rooms and tunnels dug into the mountain at Berringer's

at Mondavi's

inside Mondavi's visitor place

ummmm - where did you say??

Mondavi's

old, uprooted vine, now bronzed for display

vines stretch on forever - all the green growth is from this year...!

in the area used for wine tours at Mondavi's

closeup

grapes on the vine for the visitors' tour....

at Berringer's, built 1877

either apricots or persimmons??

mansion at Berringer's

east side of the Napa Valley