5th Pops & Son Wine Trip in Napa: Day 1 Afternoon

The afternoon of our first day on the 5th Pops & Son Wine Trip continued the vinous adventure that we had started in the morning at Kirkland Ranch and William Hill. As we traveled up Silverado Trail on the Western side of the Valley, we mused about which winery to next visit, as we had plenty of time before our 2:30 appointment with the highlight of the day, Terra Valentine on Spring Mountain. We passed numerous wineries along the way, including many Stags Leap favorites such as Regusci, Darioush and Clos du Val. As we approached the Oakville appellation, Pops asked if I’d ever visited the large contemporary building that housed Miner Family Vineyards. I had not done so and just that easily, we had picked our next winery!

Ward – drXeNo @ ZAP Live!

ZAP Zinfandel FestivalAnother year means another crazy adventure in the world of California’s “home” grape! The Zinfandel Advocates and Producers (ZAP) are having their annual ZAP Festival at Fort Mason on the San Francisco waterfront this weekend. Many events have already occurred in leading up to today’s press and consumer grand tasting. Over 275 wineries, 400 wines, countless other food and wine specialists and 10,000 attendees will participate with food and Zinfandel wines, again making this the largest single varietal wine festival in the entire world!

I will be posting in real-time throughout the event today until about 5pm from the Wine 2.0 Bloggers Lounge (Thanks so much to Cornelius and Abdi from Wine 2.0 (Twitter) and Lisa (Twitter) from Hahn Estates for coordination!). The post will be on the fly and mildly edited for content (especially later ;-), similar to the now famous, Live (Speed) Wine Blogging event at last year’s 1st Wine Bloggers Conference.

5th Pops & Son Wine Trip in Napa: Day 1 Morning

Vaca Mountains in Stags LeapAnother holiday season means another wonder trip to wine country with Pops. I usually get the week off between Christmas and New Years from the day job and with that extra time I like to spend some quality father and son time spent, well honestly, what else but drinking wine? We also recently added a summer trip to the roster, as one trip is usually not enough for the two of us. We decided to continue to explore parts of Napa that were still new to us for this trip, especially with the economy in a wonderful tailspin. The first stop of the day was intended to be at one of the best value-driven brands in the marketplace, Cartlidge & Brown off of Green Island Road. Unfortunately, they weren't open and thus we weren't able to taste nor pick up Pops' wine club selections. Seeing as how we were in the Southern-most part of the Valley, we decided to then head over to Kirkland Ranch Winery, off of Jamieson Canyon Rd (SR-12).
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