Napa Valley - Day 1

Every year about this time I head down to San Jose to attend the Advanced Imaging Conference. For the past several years, I've gone down a few days early to visit wineries in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. This year Rachel and I spent 2 and a half days in the Napa area.

In the past, we flown into San Francisco and driven to wine country. It's about an hour if the traffic is light, but unfortunately bay area traffic is almost never light. This year, we discovered that Horizon Airlines has a direct flight from Portland to Santa Rosa, so we decided to take it. The plane itself is a good sized turbo-prop and was fairly comfortable. The approach into Sonoma gives you a great view of the vineyards, and the fall colors on the grape vines were beautiful. The Charles M Shultz airport in Santa Rosa isn't exactly set up for commercial flights, but it works. Upon landing, you stand around "baggage claim", a small tent set up over a metal rack, and eventually you can see the baggage truck drive over from the airplane. The driver then unloads the baggage into the rack, and you take what's yours. We picked up our rental care (a nice Nissan Altima hybrid) and headed north on 101. Within 2 minutes we were driving past acres and acres of grape vines.

Our first stop was the Healdsburg UPS store to purchase a wine shipping box with a styrofoam insert. This not only allows us to ship back 12 bottles of wine, but keeps the wine we purchase during the day from getting too hot in the car. We then grabbed a couple of sandwiches at the Healdsburg branch of the Oakville Grocery; the original Oakville grocery (in Oakville) is a Napa valley landmark for lunch. Our first winery stop was Mazzocco, just north of Healdsburg. We had visited them last year and fell in love with their Zinfandels. They are one of the very few wine clubs that we belong to, so we felt we needed to stop to taste some old friends and make new ones. We tasted through their entire lineup, which included a nice crisp Chardonnay, a nice Cab Sauv, about 150 Zinfandels (OK, maybe 6 or 7) and a light and fruit-forward Petite Sirah. Don't worry, I was spitting.

After Mazzocco we continued north (after Lee, our GPS, messed us up - a recurring theme this trip) and then crossed over into the north end of the Napa Valley. Our first stop in Napa was Summer's Estate Winery - chosen because they claimed to be a small family winery, about 10,000 cases a year. Where we come from, that's not small! They had a so-so lineup of wines, including a Charbono, which we had never tasted before. We were somewhat disappointed, and left in search of better things.

Our next stop was Sterling Vineyards. When I was researching where we'd visit this trip, one of my criteria for choosing a winery was the tour experience. The winery at Sterling was built at the top of a hill, and while they truck the grapes up from the valley to the winery, visitors make the trip in an aerial tram! Rachel and I paid our tour fee (with the Reserve Tasting upgrade), boarded a gondola, and up we went. Josh would not have liked the ride, but it was smooth and quiet, and we enjoyed it. At the top, they'd set up a very nice self-guided walking tour around the winery. It's designed to remind one of the Greek island of Mykonos with white stucco walls and bell towers. The walking tour takes you along walkways, indoor corridors with windows that look into various parts of the working winery, and a beautiful rooftop terrace. At several points along the way, there's a tasting station for their whites. We had a decent Pinot Gris, and a big Chard that was everything we don't like in a Chard - big butter and oak. After the walking tour, you're guided into the tasting room for a sit-down tasting of the reds. Visitors are seated at private tables as in a restaurant, and one of the pourers leads your through the reds at your own pace. We had a very enthusiastic pourer who gave us a nice description of each wine. Our tasting included a nice Merlot, a very workman-like Napa Cab, an excellent reserve Cab, an wonderful complex reserve Bordeaux blend with a super-long finish, and a rather bitter sweet white at the end. Up until we hit the reserve reds, we were getting worried about finding good wine in Napa, but these were quite nice. We rode the aerial tram back down with smiles on our faces.

By this time, it was about 4:45, so we figured that this was our last stop of the day since most Napa wineries close at 4:30 or 5:00. However, on the drive back down hwy 29 to the hotel, we noticed the sign for Alpha-Omega that indicated they were open until 6:00. Our friend Rhonda had told us about this winery from her time on the world cruise - a passenger had brought a case or two of wine from Alpha-Omega on the ship and had generously shared it. She raved about it, and said it was one of the best wines she'd ever had. Well, with a recommendation like that (and the fact that it was one of the few wineries still open), we had to stop. I'd actually looked on their website after hearing about it from Rhonda, and I knew that their wines were expensive, so I really wasn't planning to buy, just taste. As we drove to the parking area in back, we had to dodge forklifts full of grapes - it was great to see that this was a real winery!

We were warmly greeted as we entered the tasting room, and were given the tasting menu. They had run out of the Sauvignon Blanc listed first on the menu, but were substituting an older (2005) Chardonnay. This one was everything we like in a Chard - crisp acid with light oak. This was followed by their 2006 Napa Cab - a technically well made wine with personality, and the creatively named "Proprietary Red", a good Bordeaux blend with smooth tannins and nice fruit. Then our pourer, Vinnie, poured their flagship 06 Era wine - wow, an incredible bd'x blend with deep complexity, structure and earthiness. We also got to taste a barrel sample of the '07 Era which had similar depth as the '06 but was somewhat smoother and fruitier due to the higher percentage of Merlot. Finally, we tried their rosé - not bad if you like those things... Sadly for our bank account, we liked the wine a lot. As we were arranging shipping, Vinnie poured us a taste of their late harvest Sauv Blanc/Semillon, a nicely balanced dessert wine. What a lot of really exceptional wines! We were concerned that we may have just hit the peak of our wine tasting trip, and it was only day #1. As far as the wines went, this was close to true, but little did we realize that our socks were about to be blown off.

Rachel teases me about having the trip completely planned out weeks in advance, including a spreadsheet showing which wineries we had appointments at, which wineries I wanted to visit, and of course which restaurants I had made reservations at. On the other hand, she took my spreadsheet and entered all of the addresses into Streets and Trips on her netbook PC so we could map out our travel; I guess we're both geeks. Anyway, tonight's dinner reservation was at La Toque in Napa. It looked like an interesting menu and wine list on their website. It's inside the Westin Hotel, and one is always a little suspicious of hotel restaurants for "fine dining," but to make things worse, when you walk up the steps to the restaurant, you pass underneath a giant lighted toque. Hmm, I could see that Rachel was getting concerned.

We went in and were seated immediately. The space itself is fairly typical of California restaurants - high ceilings and a fairly large elegantly furnished single room. The menu is prix fixe, but you can choose the number of courses (2-4) and can select from several different items for each course. You can also get wine pours specifically selected for each item you order if you want (and I *did* want). We each chose 3 courses, I had the wine pairing with all 3 of my courses, and Rachel choose to pair with just one of hers. After our waiter took our order, we were served an amuse bouche of pork confit along with some other incredible flavors. This was a shot fired across the bow that this wasn't going to be just another nice restaurant - there was some creativity here that we hoped would continue through the meal. Next, one of their 2 wine stewards came by to deliver the wine that would accompany my first course - seared fois gras and quince. However, instead of just dropping off a glass of wine, or pouring it from a bottle and leaving, he explained why he'd chosen this wine ("normally a Sauternes would be served with fois gras, but the presence of quince on the plate really called for something with a little more acid..."), then poured a generous amount into my glass, then corked the bottle and left it on the table. We assumed it wasn't so that we could pour ourselves more , and enjoyed reading the label on the Royal Tokaji. It was a perfect pairing - sweet enough to be a foil for the rich fois gras, but with enough acid to complement the quince. Rachel had an unbelievable beef carpaccio with a smokey aioli and crispy grilled trumpet mushroom slivers.

After we finished that, two more wine glasses arrived - one for me and one for Rachel. My next course was a ricotta chick pea ravioli in a Parmesan wild mushroom broth that was paired with an amazing restrained and slatey 2005 Nuits Saint Georges. Rachel had a very creative warm lobster and sweet potato salad paired with a 2008 white Rhone blend from Pelerin Wines in Carmel Valley, CA. She didn't like the wine by itself, but was a perfect match with the salad. Heading down the home stretch, it was time for some California Cab to go with my sliced rib eye (rare, of course) with cheddared pearl tapioca and an amazing red wine reduction. The big cheesy tapioca balls were a little strange, but very tasty. Rachel had lamb loin with cumin scented carrot purée and chick pea fries which went quite well with my Cab also.

Dessert? Of course! Do I remember what I had? No, but I do remember the wine that was paired with it. Pedro Ximénez (aka PX) is an intense dark dessert wine made from white wine of the Pedro Ximénez grape that is pretty much sherry or port on steroids. This was a 1979 (I think) and had such an intense deep woody sweetness such as I've never tasted before. I may never drink port again. Wow! Rachel had dessert too, but I don't remember it either. I remember that they were both pretty good, but the PX just eclipsed everything else. It was probably the best dinner that either of us had ever had, just going to show that you can't judge a restaurant by the size of the lighted toque!

Back to the hotel, full and happy. We didn't stay up too late since we wanted to be well rested for a full day of tasting tomorrow.