Napa Valley - Wine tasting

Want Wine ? eh ...:-)

Sunday Aug 6th,

We decided we would be going to Napa valley to do some Wine tasting and watch a hot water geyser nearby at Calistoga.

I took about 1 hour to get the driving directions and went over the maps to see how we were going. I also looked around for the best Wine Tour and tasting experience. Based on what I read from the reviews, the suggestion was to go with "Robert Mondavi Wine Tour"

We left around 11.30 AM and went over CA85, 237, I 880, I 680, I 780, I 80 and finally CA 12 and CA29N, covered about 100 miles in around 110 mins. We reached the place around 1.30pm and directly went to Robert Mondavi" Wine Tour center. I had called ahead to do the reservation. 888-766-6328 is the number to call to make advance reservations.
The tour is offered daily year round from 10 am to 4pm and cost 25 $ (expensive ? )

Check this link for more details.
http://www.robertmondaviwinery.com/inside.asp

I had reserved for the 1.45 pm tour. We were off at 1.45 pm straight to the wine yard where the grapes were being grown. Barbara was our guide. She was very knowledgable and knew what she was talking. But, she did not give us enough time to take photos. She appeared to be in a hurry to take us around.

She did give a history of the place, why the area is suited for growing grapes, how the soil and the weather is good and a brief history of the Mondavi family as well. She took us into the wine cellar and explained how wine is made, the difference between white and red, the reason oak is used. It was about 45 mins tour.

Then, it was wine tasting time. We sampled 4 different types of Wines - 2 white wines, 1 red wine and 1 yellow wine. The first one was a white wine called Sauvignon Blanc - this was a strong wine and had a lemongrass flavour, didn't like the taste, it was suppose to be tasted with seafood, next on the list was a Chardonnay Reserve white wine, had a kind of fruity flavour, much better than the first one, but still was more like a tonic than wine.

Then, we were given a red wine called Cabernet Sauvignon, this was better than the first two and was decent. i had a real tough time remembering these names, :-)
Of course for a person, who has never had wines before, it was a new experience and the way people smell, taste and drink water inbetween and then taste another one to get the full taste of wines was a learning experience.


We are fuzzy after tasting wine.

Last, we were given a wine with a sweet taste - it was a yellow wine and I forget the name, it was the best of the lot I drank. Atleast tasted sweet and was felt nice drinking it.
After wine tasting, we look around in the Winery area - took some photos around the place. They have lots of different flavours of wine for sale.

Shubha was feeling a bit dizzy after drinking these 4 types of wines, so was in the same place for sometime. We left around 4pm and wanted to have something for lunch as we had not had lunch till then.

Other Wine yards tour recommended based on my internet search:

Sterling Wine tastingDomain Chandon champagne tour

I haven't tried them, but the reviews rated these popular. There is also a wine train which takes a tour of the Wine Country side.
Check http://www.winetrain.com/

We wanted to go to a Subway, which we had seen on the way. We went searching for it thinking it was nearby - but even after 10 miles, we could not find it.
So, we decided to go back to Calistoga to see the "Old faithful Geyser"








Entrance to the Geyser place

Refer http://napalinks.com/calistoga/frame/at_old_faithful_geyser.htm for details about the place.
We reached the geyser spot around 5.30pm, we took the admission tickets (8$) and waited for the Geyser to erupt. It erupts every 40 mins and by the time we took the tickets and went, it was only 5 mins left for it to erupt. It erupted and it rose to around 40-50 ft and lasted about 4-5 mins. It wasn't all that spectacular as I had expected but still was a natural phenomenon. We waited for another 40 mins, before we had another round of water eruption. This time, we got some good photos, as there was a rainbow in the background.



With the Geyser and rainbow

We left around 6.30pm and decided to go to the "Petrified Forest" area. Refer http://www.petrifiedforest.org/ to check more details about it.
It was almost closing time when we went there and we decided not to go in, we look around in the gift shop and left. Mt Helena which is nearby is a dormant volcano and it eruption long ago has caused this petrified forest. :-)

We were really hungry as we had not had our lunch still. I decided to come via US 101 S so that I could cross the Golden Gate bridge in the night. We stopped at Novato downtown and went into a Pizza place. (Red Boys Pizza).
We had a good veggie pizza and left Novato around 8.30pm. We wanted to park at the Golden Gate area and take some photos of the bridge at night. But, there was no exit available to take to go the stop-over area. We crossed the bridge and were lost for a while in SFO - went towards South and finally got onto I280 S and then US 101 S and drove the 45 miles in quick time and was home by 10 pm.

We had a good time tasting wine, watching the faithful geyser and was a happy Sunday.