Finding your way around the wine country
When I first moved to San Francisco, there was an article that appeared in the SF Chronicle where the writer outlined his perfect day in the wine country. It began by appearing in Healdsburg at 9AM and eating a sticky bun at the Downtown bakery and then beginning the visits to the wineries that he had outlined. I forget now exactly which ones, but I know that it incorporated Sonoma and Napa wineries. Yesterday, we could barely get through two or three wineries before we came home and collapsed in bed at 7pm and never woke till this morning.
Our day began without having to drive all the way to Healdsburg because we were at the Hotel Healdsburg and all we had to do was walk out to the square and into the Downtown bakery where we had our sticky bun then we went to the bookstore and purchased an Alphabet book with creatures even though superstition tells us we should not be buying anything for the baby before it is born and with us. We will hide it outside in the laundry room along with the other things we have amassed – the thoughtful gifts from G, who recently passed as her cancer had advanced, the tiny tee shirt I bought in the French Quarter that says I Love My Two Moms, and the black baby doll we had to prepare Loca for the arrival of Ele.
But I digress, we then got in the car and drove through the lush and gorgeous Alexander Valley and Knights Valley on our way to Napa and St. Clement the first winery on our stop. Once a sleepy Victorian on a hill, now the place was overrun with limos and people a plenty as it has been winning one award after another. Sigh, what price success. We stayed in the smaller Oroppas tasting room and sampled the wares from 2002 to 2006 – all yummy. Then we bought a Turkish cookbook from chefs in Australia. The recipes looked great.
From there we ventured quickly towards Bistro Jeanty, no time to stop at Joseph Phelps or any of the other wineries on our list. We got there and sat outside in the wonderful weather and had a half bottle of Lang & Reed Cabernet Franc – yum. The waiter said that he had just made an agreement with them to purchase their grapes and he and his friend are starting their own wine label. Like in Hollywood where everyone is a director, in the wine country, everyone is a winemaker.
Then we decided to hit PlumpJack which we had missed on the proposed itinerary I concocted. Once a sleepy winery with cool, sort of surfer dudes pouring, it was now hijacked by the Dragon Lady – a woman with Asian eyes who disregarded us as burdensome for having saddled up to the tasting bar and proceeded to instill the air in the tasting room with a sense of hyper chaotic energy gone bad. We left most of the last taste in the glass and quickly scuttled out – but not without a photo shoot of the larger than life agaves.
We went to Auberge de Soleil in an effort to salvage that last tasting experience, but unfortunately got there with the rest of the throngs who have discovered just about every secret that remained in Napa and instead of a quiet, beautiful view over the valley, we found ourselves surrounded by people with more money than charm and decided even after securing a table that we didn’t need to be there.
So we headed to Turnbull and there, right before they closed, found at last again, one of our favorite wineries – the first that Tatjana had been to and the same woman, CJ, whose daughter in law is from Belarus, and who remembered us from last year. We sampled all the wonderful wines and Tatjana, my communist anti yup gf signed up to be a wine club member – shocking.
Then we made our way back up the valleys of incomparable beauty stopping in Calistoga to make a reservation for mudbaths tomorrow (today Sunday) and meandered home where all of our best intentions to do more collided with finding our bed and going to sleep at 7PM not to wake up until 7 the next morning – 12 hours of sleep!
This would work out as a great itinerary for those slightly older wanting to visit as it is the reality of being in the land of plenty and having little reserves – one bite at a time is all you need at this point in life. It also made me think of chucking the itineraries in the future as they only seem to provide a sense of stress to uphold them, a sense of failure in not completing them, and they sort of subtract from the feeling of shared discovery.