Chapter 9: Napa Valley wine

At some point, I gotta talk about the San Francisco area portion of my trip. Guess I oughta start now.

I can't sit here and say that I am an expert on wine... yet. I would say that my knowledge of wine is just above the novice stage. I've learned a lot more about it in recent years. I don't have a good enough palate to tell you which grapes were used in the wine. But I have moved into a realm where I am more than just a casual drinker I believe.

Up until now, my major wine experiences have been in the state of PA. Pennsylvania wine is becoming bigger. The area I live in near Philly is seeing more than a few wineries pop up within driving distance of the city. And they are putting out some pretty good product. Sometime soon, I will devote a blog posting to PA wineries.

But let me tell you something... PA ain't Napa! Napa Valley is another world when it comes to wine. You probably knew that already, but you don't really know it until you've seen it.

Imagine this... driving for miles and miles, and all you see are fields of grapevines, literally one after the other on both sides of the road, and right next to each other. I mean, it is grapes, grapes, grapes, and more grapes as far as you can see. It's not like grapes, grapes, corn, and grapes. Or grapes, grapes, lettuce, and grapes. Or even grapes, grapes, Spam, and grapes. Everyone there grows grapes and nothing else, at least in the area I was in.

Let's put it this way... if you don't like grapes, don't go there.

I have 4 Napa Valley wineries to report on. Our tour took us to 4 wineries deep in the heart of Napa Valley. We didn't just go to Sonoma and turn around, no. We went right into the heart of everything. At least that was what the tour guide told us. And between 4 wineries, we got to sample 20 different wines total. I got a lesson for sure.

The first winery was V.Sattui Winery.

You know what the best thing about V.Sattui was? The food at the deli was tremendous. This is where we got to eat lunch, and they have a deli on premises that does nothing but gourmet sandwiches and dishes (if you ever go there, try the gnocchi... it's phenomenal).

Now, don't you think it is a little odd that I'm talking about a winery, and the first thing I say is that it has great food? There's a reason for that. The wine itself... not bad, but not memorable. In fact, during our tasting (I liked the fact that they gave us a $5 tasting option which was cheaper than the other wineries that charged $10), I would say that this was the only place of the 4 where my wife and I tasted a wine that we didn't like. If I remember correctly, it was the Sattui Family Cabernet that didn't work for us. Other wines, such as the riesling, were quite good. But the fact that one did not taste good kinda sat with us for the rest of the tasting. In fact, we also got to hear from the guy pouring the wines how another one of their wines was absolute crap and he wouldn't recommend it to anyone even though it was a popular wine (I don't remember the name of the wine).

Gee, it's real good when your employees tell the customers that something you sell is crap. I mean, bravo for his honesty. But it's not a good sign.

This place does have some good wine mixed in with some not so good. Perhaps it is more for your individual tastes. I just thought the food was a better experience here than the wine.

We then moved on to Domaine Chandon.

Now this place was pretty. I mean, this place reeked of class. They specialize in sparkling wines. The deal here was for $10 you got a tour and a tasting. For the tour, we got a gentleman named Mark who is pictured above in the black shirt giving the tasting lecture.

Mark defines the word "perky". I mean, this guy behaved like he poured coffee directly on his Frosted Flakes earlier in the morning. Very nice guy, very boisterous voice, and as I said, entirely too perky For some reason, he kept calling us "Lively Group". Not "A Lively Group", just "Lively Group." At least 20 times during the tour he would yell out, "Let's go, Lively Group!" After about 15 times, it gets a little old. But he was a really nice guy. And did I mention perky?

But here's the thing about the tour. We saw a grapevine in a cage which was set up just for the tour so the guide can talk about the grapes. We didn't see the grapevine field itself. No, we just got a cage with grapevines in it. Then we went inside to see the barrels. Then we got a little lecture on aging wine while standing next to those barrels... and that was it.

Litereally, this was what we saw for at least 70% of the tour...

Forgive me if I wasn't impressed with the tour. They should just call the tour "Come look at our barrels!" Because that's what it felt like. I was expecting a little more.

But the wine tasting was outside on the grounds which was pretty cool as you can see from the photos above. And the wines they gave us were all tasty. All 3 of them.

You know, I would have gladly given up the tour to get to taste two more wines instead. This place gave us the least amount of wines to sample among the 4 wineries we toured. That was disappointing. We had about 6 wines at V.Sattui even though one of them was crap. We got 5-6 glasses of wine at the next two places we visited. To get only three after a half hearted tour let me down a bit.

I did grab a bottle of their pinot noir rose from their shop because it was on sale for half price and I love a deal. Haven't touched it yet. I'll let you know when I do.

Now you may think that I was disappointed so far. I mean, these two places were good experiences overall, but they had things about them that let me down. Now let me tell you about the places that didn't let me down at all.

The third place we visited was Andretti Winery.

If the name sounds familiar, the owner of the winery is race car driving legend Mario Andretti. This place was definitely the most impressive looking of all the wineries. I mean, he built this place right. The pictures above are only three of what I took. I probably took more pics of this winery than all the others combined. As you can tell, it is quite gorgeous. I was told that Andretti on occasion shows up at the winery and had been there the previous Friday, but he was not around that day. Bummer. That would have been cool to see him.

So the tasting had an interesting wrinkle. $10 gets you 4 wines of your choosing, which we did. On the list, I saw a port wine that was available. I inquired about it, but found out that you had to pay an extra $2 to taste the port. To which I replied, "Gee, that's a shame." This place was probably the most expensive place of them all. And for some reason, I felt too cheap to pay an extra two bucks for a mouthful of port.

However, the guy doing the pouring decided to be nice that day. He poured me a taste of the port on the house. Very nice of him. It is called the Montona 2003 Zinfandel Port.

Gang, imagine a thick sweet wine that tastes like chocolate and berries. That was the Montona 2003 Zinfandel Port. This wine made me go "WOW" after tasting it. This one gets my award for best tasting wine of the tour.

I do regret not buying a bottle of it. Truth was I was saving my money for the final winery on the tour which the tour guide told us was the best deal for buying wine on the tour. But that port at Andretti Winery is something I'm not going to forget. Maybe somewhere down the line I'll find a way to get a bottle of it, if I can only find a way to get it shipped to PA (don't get me started on wine laws for shipping to PA, which are pathetic). And as a result, I have decided that I want to try more bottles of port in my life. It has opened my eyes to a new world of wine.

So now, we come to the fourth and final winery of the tour which is Rutherford Ranch.

Truth is, this place wasn't much to look at compared to the other wineries. That's why I had to resort to taking a pic of the wine glass just to get something that resembled artistic. But the wine was tasty.

During the tasting, one of the wines came with a piece of dark chocolate just to enhance the flavor. Of all 4 of the wineries, they were the only one to do something like that. It came with the Rhiannon Red Wine. And it worked well together. Nice touch.

But here's the best part. It was $10 for their tasting. And the deal was with that tasting meant you could take the price of the tasting off of one bottle of wine in the store. Which meant that a $20 bottle of wine became a $10 bottle of wine. That was the deal I was waiting for.

I wound up buying a bottle of their Napa Valley Zinfandel Port with my deal. The wife picked up a bottle of that Rhiannon Red with hers. And we even threw in a small bottle of their Cabernet Sauvignon which was the first bottle we drank when we got home. This place definitely gets the award for best combination of taste and price.

While their Rutherford Ranch brand is priced in the $20 range, they also have a side brand called Round Hill which is priced under $10 a bottle. In fact, the white zinfandel of Round Hill was $4.50 a bottle. I didn't get any, but I thought it to be a good touch to market a Napa Valley wine to cheapskates. As a result, I don't know if it is any good. But I'm willing to bet it might not suck.

That's all I got for Napa Valley. I may never get back there again in my life. But who knows? It was definitely worth the $95 a ticket for the bus tour. At least I didn't have to drive back to San Fran after sampling 20 wines.