Today was another traveling day with the morning starting with a trip over to Muir Woods after watching an exciting finish to the US women’s Wold Cup game against Brazil (one of the best soccer games I’ve ever watched). After Muir Woods we made a quick stop by Sonoma for a short wine tasting before heading over to Napa.
Strangely enough, Liam and Natalie, two of our great friends from Tucson, happened to be coming through San Francisco from Lake Tahoe so they met us in Napa. We ate a quick lunch at a barbeque place. I’m always a little wary of barbeque outside of the south, but this place was impressive.
We started out wine tastings at a vineyard called Frog’s Leap, a suggestion from Ben Hoffman. It was exactly what we were expecting in a beautiful Napa Valley Winery. An amazing house with a wrap-around back porch where we sat and enjoyed some wine. It was a perfect temperature, mid-70s with a slight breeze.
We then headed to another winery, not nearly as grand as Frog’s Leap, but it had a lighter, little more commercial feel. Most of the wine I wasn’t that impressed with, except for the 12-year Port that we finished with. It was exquisite: a much smoother feel than the aroma suggested, with a sweet and crisp finish. The lady helping us suggested that it would only get better with age and that the biggest change would happen between 10 and 20 years. Liam and Natalie got a bottle and hopefully we can get back together in 2020 and crack it open. Imagine how different our lives will be by then.
We finished with a trip to a small, up-and-coming winery called Tember Bey. We had a complementary tasting which was nice, but the owner was pouring and we were the only one’s in there so we just hung out and discussed how he got into the business. He then broke out the 2009 lines which they haven’t released yet (he had opened them to test how the wine was developing) and gave us a taste of the newest vintage of the wines we had already tasted. We ended up buying a bottle of his Cabernet Sauvignon and can’t wait to have a good occasion to break it open. It was the perfect end to a fun and relaxing day in Napa. We drove back to San Francisco and had a great (again, late) Thai dinner near AT&T Park.
Looks like it was a great trip! Ya know, they do have vineyards up here in Minnesota if you’d like to take another holiday with friends and wine tasting 🙂