Tag: tasting room

Pre-WBC09: Twisted Murphys Wine'n!

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Twisted Oak Winery - Pre-WBC09 Murphys/Calaveras CountyWhat happens when you get bunches of wine bloggers all together to take over a small wine country town? Mine cave-ins, death, destruction and mass group arrests! OK...that didn't quite happen, but mass chaos, super amounts of fun and the realization that Calaveras County is an up-and-coming wine region with Murphys leading the charge as a boutique wine destination definitely DID occur. The Twisted Oak Winery Pre-WBC09 Murphys/CalaCo wine event had dropped, and there was no going back!

Pops & Son 4th Wine Trip, Day 3: Chateau Jean-Gene-ie via WineTwo and tha Kaz

Chateau Jean-GeneDay 3 of our wine trilogy was my last day with Pops on this, our 4th Wine Trip together. I wrote about the first day in Napa, here and the second, more freestyle day in Sonoma, over here. Today we were focused on the whole reason we included Sonoma on this particular trip and a reason for which I had quite a bit of excitement...a semi-trade, private reserve tasting at longtime Sonoma Valley stalwart, Chateau St. Jean. My family from my grandparents down to my sister and I have been making our way over to our neighboring Valley for decades to picnic and tool around the beautiful grounds. I have to admit however, that despite having many of their more mass-produced wines, I couldn't remember ever tasting any of their Reserves or winery-only limited run wines. I was about to cross those off my list!

Pops & Son 4th Wine Trip, Day 2: The Good and the Bad

Carneros MapFriday was the sandwiched day of our trip, a continuation of the 4th wine trip that I've taken with Pops. I wrote about the first day when we visited Flora Springs via GiftyBox and Pope Valley Winery. It was the beef in our burger, cold cuts in the sammy, ice cream in the It's-It, or...ok, enough! Anyhow, Friday was our transition day to from Napa to Sonoma. It was also the only day on the trip where Pops and I had no set plans. We started the day as usual, having coffee at Brown's Valley Yogurt & Espresso Bar, with Pops' buddies. Following that, we headed out, alllll the wayyyy to Sonoma (it's about 20 minutes max, from my Parents' home in Brown's Valley, Napa). Our first stop was actually a couple miles South of Sonoma at one of our favorite diners, the Schellville Grill. It's been serving great down-home food for decades and almost just as consistently, flooding every Winter. The all-important big wine-tasting breakfast accomplished, we headed further South to the Sonoma portion of Carneros after some thoughtful planning over our country potatoes.

Pops & Son 3rd Annual Wine Trip – Napa

Ehler's Estate - St. HelenaMy father and I started a new annual tradition in 2005, the year that I started at Genentech. While not an obsessive like myself, Pops is a wine-guy (kind of hard not to be while living in Napa). We decided back in '05 that we should start taking a wine-tasting trip every year that I get the week off between Christmas and New Years. The first year we stayed in Glen Ellen and hit much of the Southern region of Sonoma Valley. Last year we stayed in Healdsburg and took care of the Northern regions. This year we decided to make it a little cheaper and just stay at the house and go to the many places in the Napa Valley that we hadn't hit yet. Indeed, we stayed very low-profile on Thursday, just taking a taxi downtown and hitting some of the many tasting rooms that have or are about to open up in the city of Napa. The Napa downtown has (finally) come into its own again over the last 3-4 years, somewhat coinciding with the completion of the Napa Valley Opera House restoration. There are almost no empty storefronts any longer and there is actually some building going on and further restoration work happening in various places. The other part of the resurgence has been the proliferation of tasting rooms. The Napa Valley Register published a list of 17 tasting rooms downtown (15 are currently open already) earlier this year in August (thanks Na!) and we used that list to plan out our day. We heard later that there are supposed to be up to 10 additional tasting rooms that are to open downtown in 2008!
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