Napa Valley - 23 October

I omitted the part where I tell you that I met up with Justin at his parents’ (Bill and Kathleen) house (25 minutes from Cool) on the Thursday, with a trip planned to Napa Valley.  The Captain and I set off ahead of Bill and Kathleen to park our car at a restaurant we would be returning to for dinner that night.  We jumped into Bill and Kathleen's car and headed off on our wine adventure.

Upfront I will apologize for poor shoddy photos, but as you've seen at Yosemite, I tried to make up for my meager photo taking, when we get to Monterey you'll be wishing for these early picture free or scarce blogs. 

It was raining, which did not allow for tours of the vineyards, but we did get a good lunch at a place I really want to call Arugula or Argeale but for the life of me can’t remember.  My meal consisted of pumpkin soup, an entree which I honestly don’t recall, but know was absolutely delicious and a pumpkin custard pudding.  Yes that’s a lot of pumpkin flavour coming out in one meal, but is fall, so you need to embrace the pumpkin goodness that accompanies this time of the year.

This is the view from the restaurant, down into the valley over many vineyards, perimetered by mountains (thus titling it a valley - if there was an icon that indicated 'thanks for stating the obvious' I'd insert it now) .

We stopped at the Castle after lunch where we sampled 5 different wines, but because Kathleen and I could share we probably got about 7 or 8 different types.  Justin, having caught a cold at work before coming out to CA got the good end of the deal where no one wanted to share any food stuffs with him but would give him a sample of theirs.  Word of advice, pretend to be sick and no one's going to want to share anything of what you might have.

The wine highlight was a Riesling paired with a sea salt chocolate, it was phenomenal.  If I wasn't travelling carry on I would have followed Kathleen's example and bought a bottle.

We drove to another vineyard, but it was already after 4pm at this stage, most vineyards close at 16h30.  Their wine tasting selection was meager, so we opted to leave.  Returning to the car we headed to the first restaurant for dinner and then to our hotel, we were all tired.  The drive to the hotel was fraught with u-turns down dark, wet, country roads.  The Captain and I were following Bill and Kathleen, whipping out his Smart phone El Capitan googled the hotel directions and got us onto the free way to the hotel - oh technology.

Golden moment:  Justin told Bill I like bad jokes - not going to argue, to drive this point home and reiterate a joke Bill told that I thought was very funny or punny.  Remember its raining!  We drive past a sign advertising wine and port.  Bill points this out to Kathleen who says "I don't like port."
Bill retorts with "Any old port will do in a storm."