Two Days in the Valley -Day Two

Today we decided to hit the Sonoma side of things. We had our 'breakfast drinks' at St. Francis. This was probably one of our more successful stops as they had great old vine Zin, Claret, Cab Franc, etc.

We then rolled out to the Pacific in the Bodega Bay area. Or Bodega Bog as it shall heretofore be known. It looked like something out of Return of the Jedi with all of the fog and mysterious research boxes in the middle of the bay.

After a brief stop in Bodega Bay we drove up the road a few minutes to see if the weather cleared up on the ocean. No such luck. The fog was so thick, you could barely see the waves crashing to shore.

At this point we had the brilliant idea to continue up through Sonoma and down through the other areas north of Napa (Calistoga, St. Helena, etc) that we hadn't seen. It's just that we didn't anticipate 405-style traffic from the Wine Auction to inundate the 29 back into Napa. Traffic was so bad today that we really only got to hit the one winery. By the time we got back into Napa, it was almost time for our reservations @ Julia's Kitchen at COPIA. We spent our early minutes perusing the offerings they had in their organic garden a.k.a. items we would be dining on momentarily.

For those of you who don't know...Julia's is an homage to Julia Child. There are certain dishes at this restaurant which are recipes of Julia's followed to a "T" and then there are others which are inspired by her style of cooking. The food is delectable. If you enjoy food and seeing creative chefs and learning new things about food - Mitch - I can't reccommend this place enough. I usually don't shoot food porn but the presentation on some of this stuff was so outstanding that I had to provide you with an attachment.

After filling our gullets on the fantastically fresh fare from Julia's we needed to walk some of this off, natch. What better place than the weekly Chef's Market? Dowtown Napa turns into a closed-off street festival every Friday with different vinters, food vendors and bands. While we didn't get there until well after 8, it appears that there was a pretty healthy turnout.

Well, we have an early and long day tomorrow so I'm off for now...

Who needs a drink? - PST

At long last we have the first post of 2007! We decided to take this early weekend in June to tour through the luscious grape-filled valleys of Napa and environs. The first day consisted of lots of flying and delays but I got a few hours in San Francisco. I met up with a friend for a quick lunch, got in some shopping and a proper dopio.

Oh...we also scored some haute cuisine:

From there we rolled into Napa. Today was filled with...what else...wine. We made stops at Mondavi, Groth, Silver Oak and Cakebread. Mondavi gave a phenomenal tour and had some pretty good reserve wines.




Groth had a phenomenal Cab...as expected. They also mentioned that they will have reserves out again in about 2 years.




Silver Oak was a perfect example of overpriced subpar juice. But, I guess they have to finance the new facility somehow. Cakebread took much longe than it should have but they had a few decent bottles as well.

After all of that drinking...we needed some more. But we needed it with bubbles. In the midst of the Napa Wine Auction we scored a table at etoile. This is the only restaurant actually located within a Napa winery - Chandon. The grounds are amazing.

etoile just reopened after an extensive reno as well as the creation of a new tasting lounge. We got into their official launch party for the etoile Lounge a.k.a. the Bubble Ball. It was the most packed place we've seen in all of Napa complete with kilt-wearing d.j.s.

Well, that's all for tonight as we're about to lose juice on the laptop. Pun intended.