Napa Valley: Day 1 & 2

Napa Valley: Day 1

It was an early start to the day today. It began with a trip to the rental car place. . .we ended up with a Kia. Poop. Turns out later on down the road that the check engine light came on. Yay.

We started in Napa rather early.. . we were too early to check in, sooo.. . .we began tasting at the world famous IHOP and it was SOOOOO good. After some pancakes and waffles we started on the wineries. Technically yes, we were drinking before noon.

I noticed Napa has a lot of champagne too. It seems like we tasted more of that than we did wine! We started at Domaine Chandon. My mom kept telling me that we needed to go there, so we did. I called mom too see if we needed to do anything special while we were there an all I heard was my Uncle Bob hollering in the background “they have really good wine!” For some reason, their tasting room smelled really bad. . ..too much onion! They cook right there inside the tasting room. . .not the best combination, kind of insulting to the nose! However, they did have great champagne. We also visited Robert Mondavi, Merryvale, Sutter Home, Beringer, Castello di Amorosa. The “Castle” was so pretty. . .I just need up move it back to Virginia when we get there. I had never heard of Merryvale, but I picked it because of a photo they had in a brochure of Napa. I’ll add it here:

Cask Room at Merryvale.

Beringer Vineyards

Sutter Home Winery

Castello d'Amorosa, the winery.... it was a castle!

After a few hours of drinking we headed to our Bed and Breakfast: The Blackbird Inn. Since we hadn’t eaten since IHOP that morning and it was late. I snuck out into the breakfast area and stole crackers and soda because we were hungry and drunk off champagne! We figured out where we wanted to eat and wandered off to Napa Valley Grill.

Day 2:

Breakfast was served at the B&B. It was more of a self serve number. Quiche, coffee, OJ, banana nut bread. We ate and got ready for round two!! First we wandered off to Rubicon. It is the winery owned by Francis Ford Coppola. Did you know that Nicholas Cage is a relative of his? Me neither.

Red Carpet Treatment! Literally. Valet and everything!

It's very pretty!

Next we went to V. Sattui, Mumm Napa, and last Domaine Carneros. We were hungry again, so we went back to the B&B for hors d’oeuvres. . . ..Jeff had too much cheese! For dinner we went to “Tuscany” Jeff had an entire flock of chicken on his plate! My ravioli hit the spot! Again. . .wierd dinner neighbors who overemphasized everything (waiter:” Maam, would you like more water?” , stupid lady: “Oh my gosh, more water would be fantastic right now!”) Then we raced back to The Blackbird Inn to watch the Olympic gymnastics. . . . .it took 4 hours for the meet to be over and never saw the results because I couldn’t stay awake long enough!

The Stately Domaine Carneros...maybe a tad too big, I don't know?

The man made us stick our pinkies out.