Meeting and challenging preconceptions - Napa Day 2

Today started with breakfast at the Model bakery, which was delicious (and crowded) as always. We headed up to the top of Spring Mountain to visit Barnett Vineyards. We got lucky in that the weather had cleared this morning, so we had clear views into the valley. Absolutely breath-taking view!

Nicole ran the tasting and gave us a lovely tour of the cave. Barnett is doing a range of wines, both from mountain fruit and from grapes sourced from around the valley. We had a lot of fun with the two other couples at this tasting. One gentleman was industry and the other three were civilians like us. The other gentleman regaled us with a fabulous story about having met Thomas Keller at a golf outing and having no idea who he was. 'TK' ended up inviting him out to Napa to dine at the restaurants.

We headed down to Hall Vineyards next. We've driven past this house for years and finally decided to try them. They have a beautiful tasting space, but the wines were more expensive than good. Frankly, we should have kept driving past...

We still had some time to kill, so we decided to have a laugh (because we're terrible people) and head to Louis Martini Winery. While this is one of the oldest wineries in the valley, we frankly didn't think much of their reputation. WOW were we wrong! We did their heritage tasting and were extremely impressed. They source many of their heritage wines from the Moon Mountain area and it's absolutely delicious!

We walked to dinner at Acacia House tonight and the food was fantastic. The sour note to the day though was that it's been raining cats and dogs so we took an umbrella from the hotel. We left it in the barrel at the door to the restaurant. When we finished dinner and went to leave, sure enough someone had stolen our borrowed umbrella! Bummer of a end to an overall great day!

A comfortable return - Napa 2019

In August, Kris and I realized that we had taken 0 vacation this year and that if we didn't schedule something soon, we would both end the year by 'donating' several weeks back to our employers. Cue booking two weeks in France. In the middle of all of the work for planning that trip, Kris announced that he found a stupidly cheap flight to SFO - Did we want to spend a week in Napa? A trip that practically plans itself? Yes please!

Kris booked us into our favorite hotel - the Wydown in St. Helena. It's a cute little boutique hotel right on the 'main' drag in town. Another prime feature is it's proximity to the delicious Model bakery that I frequently gush about. Kris also discovered that the CIA at Greystone offers a three day bootcamp cooking class, so he booked is in for that. We then promptly forgot to do anything else for this trip until two weeks ago.

Ahh well. So, we started off yesterday morning at 4:30am for pre-dawn flight. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we had a row to ourselves on the flight, so that was a good start. We landed at SFO at 10am and were greeted by a thick marine layer rolling over the hills. Undaunted, we picked up the rental car and headed into the Valley.

We stopped by Contimo Provisions, a little food window at CIA Copia we had discovered when we were out a couple of years ago for Bottlerock. Amazing sandwiches as always! We proceeded over to Oxbow for a cuppa and to wander around (ie to keep busy enough that we didn't fall asleep in the car.) Kris found a bottle of Pliny the Elder - a beer of mythical reputation, so our first bottle purchase in Napa is a beer. ;) I am pleased that Ritual Coffee is as great as always. They seem to focus on Central and South American coffees which I prefer to African/Ethiopian beans.

Exhausting our options at Oxbow, we headed across the river to downtown. Kris pointed out Bounty Hunter Wine and Spirits, so we popped in for a quick flight before our first tasting appointment of the trip. Bounty Hunter has a cute Western vibe and does tastes and flights of some pretty hard to source bottles. It was kind of funny thought to see them highlighting their selection of Kentucky bourbon.

Our tasting appointment was a Frias Family. While their vineyard is on Spring Mountain, their tasting room is in Napa. Founded in '77, they are apparently the first Hispanic owned winery in the Valley. They do a tiny production and grow only Cab (although they do source some Syrah and Cab grapes from other growers.) These guys are doing some amazing juice! Every wine Louis poured was better than the last. We ended  up picking up 6 bottles here.

We applied our learnings from previous trips and asked Louis for tips about other places we should visit while we're here. He obliged with recos for several wineries (one of which we've been trying to get into for years...) and restaurants. We're hoping on the one winery that with a 'personal' introduction, we may have better luck getting an appointment.

Dinner was at Torc. Overall, the meal was great. However, they sent out a pasta dish that was in both of our opinions criminally overcooked. The chef then implied that Kris didn't know how pasta worked (this was a shaped pasta that they apparently made fresh - it came out as water logged mush. The shape was falling apart on the plate.) The whole interaction was a sour note in an otherwise lovely meal.

Sauternes aka sweet wines 31 October 19

Quick side note before we start on today. Lard et Buchon was really good. The restaurant sits below street level in a tunnel/cave formed when they pulled limestone blocks out to build the city. Once I got over that feeling of 'the ceiling is going to fall on us at any moment!' it was a nice meal. When we popped back above ground, we found that it had started misting/raining and we had the entire village to ourselves. We walked along the convent road and circled the town. The rain and the lighting made for a really beautiful night and I feel lucky to have seen the city in a way that I'm guessing few outsiders do.

La Tour du Roy in the foreground and the bell tower of the Monolith in the back.

I've really been looking forward to today! We're headed to the Sauternes district, famous for it's sweet, white wines. While I enjoy these wines, I really don't know much about them other than they are dependent on the 'Noble Rot.' My hope for this visit it to start to understand why I like some wines from this area and others not so much.

Our first stop today was at Chateau Coutet in Barsac. I picked this a bit at random although I specifically wanted something from the Barsac region. This turned out to be a really happy surprise! The property was, at one point owned by the same family that owned d'Yquem due to some of the events in the French Revolution. Some of the architecture dates to the 13th century. Our guide was fantastic and patiently answered my many questions about the Sauternes wine making process. We also happened to cross paths with the current owner, which is always a happy chance.

One of the things that really struck me on this tour was how different the smells were for this wine. We're lucky to be here during the primary fermentation phase of the process, which has a very special aroma. The chateaus doing red wines have a smell that is very familiar from our trips to California. On the rare instances that we've ended up at wineries predominately making white wines, the fermentation smell is still fairly similar. Not so Sauternes! I can't begin to explain the differences; suffice to say that all are delicious.

All of the 'How it's made stuff' now out of the way, we got to taste the wine! We had the opportunity to do a vertical tasting, which simply means we tasted the same wine, just from three different years. In this case, we had the 2016, the 2010, and the 1989. Literally the only thing that was different between these three wines was the age and the growing conditions for the grapes. The wine maker here keeps the percentage of grapes in the blend the same from year to year. The youngest wine was thick and sweet like really good pineapple - enough acid to keep things from getting too cloying. The middle wine was starting to get some notes of spices and the fruits had more of a caramel-cooked note. The last wine was completely different from the first two! All of the syrupy-ness was gone. The mouth feel was still elegant and smooth and the taste was still sweet, but it had thinned somehow. Deep caramel flavors were dominant with spices in the background. The fruit flavors have now changed into more floral notes. What an amazing journey! And these wines are a steal! We loaded up on three bottles (That's a quarter of our carrying capacity!)

We then headed to our first Maison du Vin (We've tried, repeatedly, to visit the maison du vin in Pomerol, but apparently they are never open.) The owners are a lovely couple who gave us a grand map tour of the region and explained that while the house (store) is owned by a collective of vineyards, the owner gets to pick and choose which wines they'll sell at any time. Tasting fees are a steal here (3 euro for 3 wines) and the bottle prices are, by law, the same as what you'll pay at a vineyard. We ended up tasting 4 wines here and bought another bottle.

Our guide at Coutet gave us two recommendations for lunch - Kris picked La Chapelle because it's on a road that shared a name with a white Bordeaux that was on the list at Piccolo for a while - Guiraud. Somehow, until we drove up, the penny never dropped for us that a white wine from Bordeaux could be related to a Sauternes. Sure enough same winery and it turns out they are predominately known for their sweet wine. The restaurant also turned out to be owned by the same group that runs La Terrasse Rouge where we ate yesterday. The food was excellent and we thoroughly enjoyed the pairing with Guiraud wines!

Our final stop for the day was at the famous Chateau d'Yquem. The visitor's center certainly shows the LVMH influence. The various years and bottle sizes are displayed on pillars in front of panels that seem to invoke the shoulders of bottles or the legs of a Sauternes trailing down the sides of a glass after a good swirl. The bathrooms (Well, at least the ladies) are completely gold, including the lighting. Clearly invoking the colors of the wines. Everything here is hushed and reverent and there is absolutely no interacting with the barrels, the messy harvesting areas, or anything that might speak to work or labor. We did a vertical tasting here as well - The '16, the '11, and the '06.

Similar story as with Coutet, except after 2006, the amount of time the wine is aged in oak was shortened. All three wines are delicious and very different from each other. I have to say though, I struggle with the cost of d'Yquem even more after this visit. I get that they are the only vineyard to receive the premier grand cru in all of Bordeaux. These wines sell for easily 10x their neighbors up the road though. And while part of what you pay for is the ability to age the wine (supposedly) 100+ years, that isn't really a factor for me. I'd prefer something I can enjoy now (Or even age for 20 years and be able to enjoy then) rather than worrying if the occasion is 'special' enough for the pricey wine.

All in all, a very successful day with lots of 'learnings'. Since tonight is Halloween I hope we've actually figured out how to turn our porch lights off remotely so we don't end up with any tricks!

The final tastings

Today is our last tasting day. This day was a bit wide open when we started the trip, but it’s has filled out nicely along the way. Kris decided that he wanted to revisit Stags’ Leap Winery (Not, as I always do, to be confused with Stag’s Leap Cellars, which is right down the road and also does tasty stuff.) On the strength of a reco from one of our hosts, I also booked us into Acme Fine Wines for a tasting. And to round out the day? Malk (Situated between the Stags Leaps.)

We were out a couple of years ago and visited Stags’ Leap and ended up with an accidental tasting. Visa Concierge was supposed to be making appointments for us, and by and large did pretty well. However, they said we had a confirmed appointment at Stags’ Leap and…not so much. We roll up at the grand old house only to learn that they do tours by appointment and the last tour was just wrapping up. I’m not sure if it was my hang dog look or Kris’ glower, but the host offered that if we didn’t mind missing out on the tour, he’d pull some bottles and we’d sit out on the veranda and taste. Turns out he pulled a bunch of stuff that wasn’t normally ‘on the list’ and that he knew a chef who had just left Cincinnati that Kris and I adored. So, we had a lovely tasting/chat even though we were unwelcomed guests.

On the strength of that visit, Kris suggested that we go again and perhaps join their club because their wines are tasty. Long story short, we discovered a couple of things. 1) Learning about a property and the wine maker is fine, but it’s much better coming from the property owner or winemaker themselves. 2) having out with 10 of your new besties while listening to said pearls of wisdom, not so great. 3) Stags’ Leap does a number of bottles we’re less than fond of. In the end, we were saved from joining the club (They can’t ship to Ohio) and were able to pick up more bottles of the wines we loved on the last trip but weren’t able to taste on this visit.

Having left St. Helena for the Stags Leap district, we now had to turn around and head back to St. Helena for the Acme Fine Wines. We’re greeted in the parking lot by a very excited golden doodle (Side note, be prepared for dogs in wine country. Lots and lots of dogs. Especially when you’re visiting the smaller places.) We headed into a cute little wine shop to find a lovely tasting with eight wines and a beautiful sausage and nibbles board set up. The sausages were all from the business next door, PanoVino, and were a lovely accompaniment to the wines we tried. Lauren explained that Acme was started on a principle of finding winemakers who may or may not already be known and getting first releases or special projects from them. We liked everything we tasted here and we joined one of their wine clubs (which is actually a rarity for us. We’re currently only a member of one, and Kris had been looking to cancel before we came on this trip.)

Next we headed...all the way back to the Stags Leap district to Malk. This cute little parcel is tucked away in a corner of the district on a tiny little parcel of land. Conducted on the porch of the owner’s home, we had a nice view of both their vines as well as their surrounding neighbors.

So, we’ve picked up a few bottles on this trip. In the past, we’ve purchased case shippers from a local supply company to carry the wine home with us. In Italy we couldn’t find the same type of boxes and we ended buying a Wine Case. Well, we liked that set-up, we decided to get 2 more to bring stuff back (Full disclosure, we’re still bring a ‘regular’ case shipper back too, but 4 of these cases seemed too much. I can’t explain it.) It turns out that Stag’s Leap Cellars sell the Wine Case (complete with their <sarcasm> super discrete logo </s> printed AAAAAALLLL over the front of the bag. The good news is that we tasted their wine, had a nice chat with our hostess and got the bags for less than the manufacturer was selling them. Who says advertising doesn’t pay!

For dinner tonight, Kris got us into Morimoto in Napa. We’ve been here on previous trips and really loved it, but I think this is our last visit. Now, to be fair they were slammed with BottleRock crowds and I find ‘we’re busier than expected’ to be a crummy excuse at a place that tightly controls their reservations. Our service was crummy from start to finish; courses either came out on top of each other or we were ignored for more 20 minutes with no explanation or apology. When I asked our waiter what happened he gave me a snooty ‘Well, we ARE busy.’ All of that could be forgiven if the food was top notch, but several courses were okay at best. The halibut in one dish was so overcooked, my assumption was that they were trying to kill some pathogen. In the end, there are too many amazing places to eat in the Valley to waste time on a ‘name’ that no longer respects their customers.

 Tonight, we pack up to change hotels. I’m sad to be leaving the gem of a place Kris found in St. Helena. Hands down this is the best place we’ve stayed in wine country yet. However, BottleRock starts tomorrow and if the weather clears up, it should be a great show!

Guide to 'doing' wine country

Yesterday I said that we had geeked out on data to figure out where to go, which is true for the rest of the trip. But today, we started out without a plan. I thought this post might be a time to outline what we’ve learned about visiting wine country in case you’re looking to plan a trip and aren’t sure where to start.

1)      Have a plan, especially on the weekends. Particularly in Napa, it’s tough any more to just walk into anything that isn’t humongous without an appointment. If you don’t have a plan, you can end up spending the better part of your day driving north to south and not tasting wine. Bummer!

2)    Go during the week – avoid weekends like the plague. Weekends are crazy out here! Wall to wall limo buses, hen/stag parties, wedding (heh,) and traffic jams. I’m not saying it can’t be fun, but especially if you’re going to ignore rule #1, it can be tough.

3)      Go to a place you know and love and go somewhere you’ve never heard of. This is the place to branch out. You can drink all of Kendall-Jackson or Nickle & Nickle or Opus One’s portfolio in Ohio, and there’s nothing wrong with that! But you won’t get the chance to meet the winemaker or grower or owner in Ohio and have her explain why she chose the blend she did for that bottle, or why he chose to harvest those grapes a little later than everyone else for that vintage, etc. Have the experiences you can only have here at least a couple of times.

4)      Ask the locals what they like. Especially during the week and before noon (Oh…yeah, rule 2.1 is take those 10am tasting slots during the week. First, they are usually available, even at the last minute and second you usually get the place to yourself. You’re on vacation! What’s a little day drinking!?!) when the tasting room is quiet. Like the wines you’re tasting? Ask the person doing the pouring who’s doing something similar and interesting. Don’t like the wines they’re pouring? Tell the person ‘These are great, but we’re looking for something more (fruity, drier, funkier, accessible, etc) or less (arid, pricey, vanilla, buttery, etc.) Where would you go?’ We’ve found some great places this way and occasionally get reduced or waived tasting fees.

5)      Have a code. So, getting away from the big famous houses is hard, but really rewarding. Dirty secret? It’s a bit intimidating the first time you do it, especially when you realize that you’re sitting down with someone intimately involved in making the wine. Why would that be intimidating you ask? Okay, picture not being in LOOOOOOVE with that wine. And sitting across from the person who poured their blood, sweat, and tears into the bottle. Right? Hard. So, Kris and I have a system to share our opinions with each other but still maintain face when we don’t like something. I’d suggest using something that speaks to you, but ours is as follows:

                                                               i.      ‘That’s nice or Oh, that’s good’ = firm pass. Could be anything from I hate it to meh, but we’re definitely not buying any of it and it’s not open for discussion.

                                                             ii.      ‘I like that!’ – I would be open to buying a bottle of that, but it’s up to you.

                                                           iii.      ‘I really like that!’ – At least one bottle of that IS coming home with us.

                                                           iv.      ‘I think we should buy a bottle or two.’ – Negotiations have started on how much we’re going to buy.

Today we had no plan, so the plan became to head up to Sonoma to a winery we had been to before and use rule #4 to get some recos. We headed to Stryker only to find that it had been purchased by the guy who owns the Las Vegas Knights, Bill Foley (No relation to Robert Foley.) A bit bummed, but already there, we head in. ‘Super’ Mario ran a great tasting at Foley Sonoma even though we weren’t super impressed with the new direction their headed. From there, we headed up the road to deLorimier, a sister to the Rockpile Vineyards that we tasted at last night. Again, not super excited about their wines, but they did a nice tasting.

We decided to head into Geyserville because we were running out of road and it was lunch time. I highly recommend Diavola for lunch. It’s still cool enough here that we were able to sit out on their back patio to eat. Yummy ‘za and a series of house cured salumi makes for a nice repast.

Based on Mario’s reco, we hit up Pech Merle. We were fortunate enough to meet the winemaker for this vineyard while we were tasting. From here we walked a couple of doors down to a great little tasting room called Locals. This is actually a tasting collective repping 8-10 small vineyards/winemakers. The gentleman behind the bar helped us set up a bunch of side by side comparisons and gave us some really cool compare and contrasts. Locals has a really chill vibe and some great wines. It’s a great way to learn more about Sonoma. Oh! And did I mention no tasting fees?

We decided to head back towards the hotel; today we moved from the weird place out in Windsor to a cute little boutique place in downtown St. Helena called the Wydown. As we worked through Calistoga, we stopped by Summers Winery, based on the recommendation from Locals. Summers has an excellent Charbono. We headed into St. Helena and checked in to clean up for dinner.

Kris booked us in at Press. We brought a bottle from Pech with us for dinner (Okay, maybe a bit more wine!) Press has a beautiful space and a tidy menu. We opted to split a salad, a strip, and a trio of sides. The salad was delightful. 

The steak was good; the sides stole the show. Next time around, I’d skip dinner and sit at the bar with an order of fries. They are amazing! We decided to wrap up dinner with a chocolate soufflé. The soufflé was good, but the rosemary/thyme ice cream with it was divine. When I told the waiter I though the gelato was sublime, he quickly apologized and offered to bring me something I might like better. We’ll blame it on the wine and proffer that perhaps I had mumbled a bit.

Geeking on the data to plan a trip

Data Geeking and an old friend

First stop today was at Flying Goats in Healdsburg. Great little coffee shop with pretty decent pastries. Downtown Healdsburg is super cute, especially in the morning when there aren’t as many people here. After our coffee, we made the long trek down the to the bottom of Sonoma and over to Napa for our first stop of the day.

For this trip, we got a little data happy. It turns out that the counties of Napa and Sonoma have databases of all (well, most) of their wineries and they capture things like annual production and annual visitors. So, Kris and I got a little nuts and started scraping and organizing said data into spreadsheet that allowed us to slice and dice on things like annual production and number of visitors. We’ve found that we usually like places with small to medium production and not a ton of annual visitors.

It’s from this list that we found our first stop of the day, Tulocay. Tulocay is run by Bill Cadman and his daughter Brie recently started stepping up as the winemaker. Bill doesn’t grow much if any of the grapes he uses on-site. Instead, he buys from various vineyards in the area. The tasting takes place in Bill’s dining room. Bill can spin a pretty good yarn while he’s pouring his wines. The hit of the day was his non-vintage Syrah. Very tasty!

From there we headed to visit an old favorite, James Cole Winery. We stumbled upon James Cole a bunch of years ago and revisit them from time to time. They have a very rock n roll feel and make some mighty fine wine. We slotted them in on this trip because they were doing an Alice in Wonderland party, complete with taco trucks and a magician. They switched wine makers a few years back and we didn’t love the direction that they were headed. This trip, however, everything was delicious. All in all, the new winemaker is settling in and the wines are steadily evolving.

After escaping the clutches of the magician, we headed north again to catch a tasting room in Healdsburg that had closed just as we had gotten there yesterday. Rockpile Vineyards had just opened 3 month prior. They are sourcing exclusively from the Rockpile area and are doing some really interesting stuff. We ended up with two of their Zinfandels before we had to duck out to get to our dinner reservations.

We managed to score early seats at Valette. This ambitious joint is doing some very pretty and very ambitious food. The bread is made in house and reminded me of a cross between a Parker house roll and biscuit. We ended up ‘Trusting the chef’ and had a 4 course meal. The food was very French in that sauces were the star of many of the best dishes. All in all good, but I’m not certain I’d go back. Too many other, wonderful places to go here!

Napa/Sonoma Day 1: We're going back to Cali, back to Cali

We didn’t intend to come to Napa this year. Originally this was supposed to be a trip to Peru, but in the Fall. But through a series of negotiations during our annual New Year’s Eve planning meeting, we agreed that a spring trip to the Valley with the trip to Peru coming next year was a better idea. We’ve really go to start taking better notes at that meeting.

Anywho, today’s entry is short because it’s a travel day. Directly flight from CVG to SFO at the butt-crack of dawn. Our Lyft driver was super chatty and we had an interesting conversation about his work in the car repo business. I was reminded that I hate flying on the weekends, especially when the Orlando flight is leaving out of the same little gate area…Amateur day galore!

After an uneventful flight, we arrived at SFO. We ended up on the train with a group from Cincinnati on their first trip to San Fran. We helped them find the rental car building (Pro tip: Get on the train. Stay on the train.) I once again rented from SilverCar and while their off-site location adds a bit of delay to the process, I think the total time spent is actually less. The hassle and aggro factor is definitely less! I texted them while we were still on the train, the van picked us up for a two minute ride to the lot, the confirmed my driver’s license (It had expired since I last rented from them,) I scanned our car, loaded our bags and we were gone. Note to AudiUSA – Since you own SilverCar, figure out a way that A4 owners can port their seat, radio, and car config settings between vehicles. It was nice to not have to figure out a new car when we arrived, but it would have been AMAZING to have my seat exactly where I like it and the radio tuned to my favorite XM channel when we rolled down the road.

We took the Golden Gate up to Sonoma and on a while decided to stop at Ram’s Gate. We had passed this winery many times on our way in and out of Sonoma but I didn’t really know anything about it. They have a fantastic ‘board’ with a selection of 3 local cheeses, a couple of bread/toasts, 2 meats (we had chicken liver pate and a smoked trout dip of sorts,) a dried fruit (in our case apricot mustardo that was devine!) and a couple of sweet bites (candied almonds and an amazing salted chocolate toffee.) This was our lunch and I would totally stop there for this again. The wines were less than memorable, although the Blanc du Noirs they splashed us with (which is technically a ‘members only’ pour) was the best thing we tasted. They do two tasting menus that are nearly identical; the vineyard select has two additional pours and subs out their base pinot for a single vineyard. Fairly small production w/~13000 cases.

We wanted to stop by our usual ‘first stop’ in the valley, Domaine Carneros. Apparently they are everyone else’s favorite first stop as well though because they were not only slammed, they were reservation only! Do they not know who we are!?! As we trudged back to the car, I was actually secretly relieved though because the lack of sleep from a late night/early start and travel hit me like a ton of bricks. So, up to Windsor we headed to check into the hotel.

After checking into our weird timeshare/resort/condo/hotel community thing, we crashed out for an hour. We then go cleaned up and headed into Sebastopol for, what else, ramen! We hit up a place called Ramen Gaijin. Holy crow! This place had the best Japanese food we’ve had since we left Japan. We started with grilled chicken thighs and a grilled rabbit sausage. The thighs were good and the sausage was amazing! We ended up ordering another round of rabbit and a slab of pork belly, which was also fantastic (Tip: put some of the super hot mustard from the rabbit sausage on the pork belly. We also had the smoked potatoes pictured below.

 While tasty, they were missing the smoke flavor implied by the name. For the main event, we had two different types of ramen. Kris went non-traditional with a Chinese influenced dan-dan ramen, while I had a more traditional version topped with a chicken roulade. 

Both had that unctuous depth of flavor of a true ramen, but if I’m honest, Kris’ was better because the spicy notes really punctuated the broth to make something special.

Full and happy, we wandered back to the hotel to crash and hopefully get a full night’s sleep for tomorrow’s adventures. Fingers crossed that there’s no 3am wakeup call due to time zone confusion!

Italy Day 12 - The perils of poor pre-planning and a trip to Siena

If you've been keeping score at home, you may have noticed that we've picked up some wine on this trip. You may also have noticed I haven't talked about how we're getting said wine home. As many times as we've been in Cali. we've always gotten a cardboard and Styrofoam shipper and either mailed home or taken the packs as checked bags on the plane. What we didn't stop to consider on this trip is manhandling a cardboard box of wine thru SFO with a luggage cart is pretty straightforward. Navigating the public transportation system and cobblestone streets in Italy, not as straightforward.

None of the wineries we visited had case shippers, so we stopped by the local Mailboxes Etc and discovered they had wine shippers...but only 6 bottle boxes. It quickly became clear that two of these boxes would hold the wine, but wouldn't be a practical solution. We had a brief moment of insanity where we considered Amazon Priming a wine suitcase to our hotel in Florence. Fortunately that passed quickly. Kris did some digging and found the the GIANT Banfi winery sells wine luggage at their tasting room in Montalcino.

Since we were planning on going to Siena today, this was a short detour to pick up something that we should have done years ago in California. We jog over to the Banfi Castle...and feel like we've stepped into all of the worst elements of a California tasting room. I am pretty certain the guy running the tasting room sniffed derisively at us when we walked in. And thing went downhill from there. Had we been smart, we would have picked up the bag and left, but we decided to actually taste the wines while we were there. The short version - The wines were pretty unremarkable, the tasting was way too pricey, and the staff was inattentive at best and downright rude to us at worst. If we didn't really need the case bag to ensure that the rest of our trip wasn't miserable, we would have left in a huff. Net however is we now have a case wine bag that's pretty slick and you get a strong recommendation to avoid the Banfi Castle at all costs.

With that experience behind us, we were off to Siena. We thought that seeing Siena right before we left for Florence would provide an interesting juxtaposition since the two cities have been rivals for centuries. Siena's cathedral is riotous in stripes and ornamentation. The inside is breathtaking as well even with much of the floors covered in carpet and the pulpit under wraps for restoration. The Piccolomini Library is a can't miss for music lovers with it's illustrated hymnals.

The crypt has a truly amazing exhibit right now of artifacts and treasures from churches destroyed in the 2016 earthquake. They've created an awesome fusion of modern and ancient by projecting news footage of the earthquake rescue teams and before and after videos of the various churches on the ancient brick walls of the crypt along side the artifacts that you can watch being pulled from the rubble. It's a very powerful display and one of the best uses of multimedia I've seen anywhere. Really impressive!

We decided to head back to Grosseto for a last dinner in town. We still needed to pack and we wanted to tidy up, even though friend said they were sending someone to clean. We are so sad to be leaving this charming city! If it weren't for friend's generous offer of their place, I don't know that we ever would have come to Grosseto, and now we're planning on how and when we'll come back! It's been a great jumping off point to see Tuscany and really, there's still so much to see here. Until tomorrow then...

Italy Day 11 - Second Round of Wine and how to wine, according to Kris and Erin

Today was our second round of wine tasting. I've gotten the hang of this driving thing, so no near death experiences today - Yay!

This first stop of the day was Col d'Orcia. The tasting room here was a bit tricky to find. I think I ended up parking in the employee parking lot. Then we seemed to have walked into an industrial bottling/packing area. Finally, we walked down a super long driveway and found the office and a startled looking young lady who ended up touring us. The wines here were fine, but nothing to write home about.

From Col d'Orcia we took a short detour to check out an artichoke garden nearby. Artichokes are actually a member of the thistle family, which becomes extremely evident when you see them growing. Kris hopped out of the car to grab this pic.

Kris' Tuscan artichoke pic

 We have eaten many, many of this guy's cousins on this trip! They are currently in season and are on menus everywhere. So very tasty baked, fried, steamed, pickled, etc. But I digress! Off to more wine!

Next on the list for the day was Siro Pacenti. Now, Kris had used the Visa Sapphire concierge to book appointments at these wineries. Unfortunately, Siro Pacenti apparently didn't get that memo as they had no record of talking to Visa Signature concierge or of us having an appointment. They were more than gracious, however, and took us on a brief tour and full tasting. We even got to meet the winemaker! This is a very modern facility and the winemaker has a bit of a rebel approach to brunello that has really paid off. We loved these wines and are bringing a couple home with us.

From here we had a bit of time to kill and we needed lunch so we headed to Montalcino (being careful to not actually drive thru the city center this time!) We ended up parking in a camper parking area a bit outside of town on an extremely steep hill (Mt. Adams ain't got nothing on this hill) and hiking into town. We grabbed a slice of pizza each and then started the vertical climb, I mean hike back to the car. I would highly recommend finding a parking spot closer to town if you decide to stop by. The slice was okay, but I think we passed a Sherpa on the way back.

Once we stopped sweating like farm animals from our exertions, we headed back down the mountain via car to Tenuta La Potazzine. We arrived just as it started to spit rain but couldn't find anyone in the office. We wandered around for a bit until the tour manger arrived. He provided us with an excellent overview of the winery and both Kris and I learned a couple of things here along the way. The wine here was fantastic! Some more wine comes with us...

Our last stop of the day was a tiny little place listed as #1 on the wineries of Montalcino map, Baricci. It turns out that this is still a family run winery and the grandfather of the two brothers doing much of the day to day was the first to sign the consolidated laws or rules of Brunello, hence they are listed as #1. This is a tiny little place doing some amazing wines at very popular prices. We were really impressed with what they're doing here.

We've been fortunate to go to California on several wine trips now, and one of the things we've learned there is when you find a winery doing things you like, as them who they like or who they'd drink. This has led us to some of our favorite 'off the beaten path' places and some amazing wine. So we reapplied this principal here. One of the wineries was kind enough to supply us with recos. Now, this list probably only makes sense if your tastes are similar to ours, but it's a starting point to the 250 Brunello producers, so there's that! 

- Barbi - We visted here the first day and thought it was really good.

- Canalicchio di Sopra

- Castiglion del Bosco - Also visited the first day. Owned by a son of Ferragamo. Really nice wines, I was surprised to say!

- Fattoi

- La Fornance

- Le Chiuse

- Le Ragnaie

- Mastrojanni

- Pietroso

- Sanlorenzo - We drove past this place and were super interested, but they seemed to be appointment only and we couldn't fit them in. Next time!

If you have been to any of this places (Or go to any of them based on seeing them here,) let me know what you think! We're already planning, or perhaps scheming our next trip here so we'd love additional input on what's good!

Italy Day 8 – Montalcino, a Monty Python moment, and exporting wine

Today is all about wine! We’re headed into the hills of Montalcino to visit four wineries. After a great night’s sleep, I felt ready to hit the back roads of Italy. I was talking with a friend before I left and she mentioned that she and her husband had been to Tuscany and found the roads to be quite stressful. Armed with this knowledge, and what feels like a huge SUV (the Nissan Juke in Pittsburgh black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow) I had some trepidation about how this day would go. But with wine at stake, I’m no quitter!

With Google maps queued up, we set out for Montalcino. I first decide to stop for gas. Now the rental agent made a big deal about how this car was a diesel engine. Fortunately, when I pulled into the gas station, I managed to pull up to a full-service pump (I didn’t think anyone outside of Jersey still did those!) The pump jockey asks me if it’s okay to fill it up, since it takes super premium. Since I was outside of the car to stretch my legs anyway, I took a look at the gas cap and sure enough, high octane required. I know that the diesel nozzle won’t fit in a regular gas fill tube, but I’m thinking that would have been a frustrating enterprise until I figured it out. Thanks, gas-guy!

Fully fueled, we head into the hills. Kris could do a better job of explaining the scenery, but from what I could pause to look at, it was even more amazing than yesterday. Somehow, while I was admiring the view I apparently missed a turn to go *around* Montalcino and we ended up *IN* Montalcino. Now this is a very old mountain city with charming, wending, not-made-for-cars streets. I knew we were in trouble when Kris asked twice ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to fold in my mirror?’ Now, I thought things were going fairly well until we popped out onto Via Landi where it meetings Via Soccorso Saloni and Via della Circonvallazione. I’m pretty sure this intersection will forever be seared into my brain. And perhaps Kris’ as well. Because this is the spot where I almost got us bludgeoned to death because of a Monty Python-esque moment. Via Landi joins the other roads I mentioned at something of a steep angle. And, even though I only mentioned two other roads, it’s really four because the one road is a hairpin curve at this ‘intersection. So, I’m at a steep incline, going onto a fairly major road, with an almost blind turn, and I’m in a still-unfamiliar manual car. So I take my first shot…and stall it out. So I take another go and immediately stall it out.

At this point, there’s a guy with hedge trimmers just outside my window tending his hedges. Kris later informed me that the look on his face in the midst of this was priceless. I, however, was more concerned about the one, two, now FOUR cars that have piled up behind me! Attempts 4, 5, and 6 also do not go well. At this point I have several thoughts going through my head: 1) OMYGOSH, I broke the brand new rental car, 2) can I quit now? 3) Well, this is where I live now and last, and perhaps least sensibly, 4) Do you suppose I can put parking brake on and Kris and I can get out and push the damn thing over the crest of this hill and then I can pop start it on the road? Stalls 6, 7, and 8. Okay, deep breath. I can do this….And somehow I red line it, don’t stall it out, and make it over the hill. I’m a bit disappointed hedge clippers didn’t give me a golf clap after that.

Now, you may be wondering how this is a Monty Python moment. Yeah, well, later in the day, when clearer heads prevailed, I accidentally recreated the problem. I stupidly had the thing in THIRD gear! So, I needed the Holy Grail ‘1, 2, 5, uh three sir!’ But in reverse, of course. Gah!

Anyway, from there we headed to the first stop of the day, Caparzo winery. A cute little spot, I immediately learned a lot about Brunellos. I was surprised that they use no more than half toasted oak barriques and some instances, only use untoasted casks for their aging of this wine. Other than that, the cellar tour was pretty much like every other one we’ve been on. The wine was good, but we didn’t pick up anything here.

From there we headed to Fattoria di Barbi (And drove past the spot of my shame…) It started to pour just as we pulled into the parking lot, so we walked into the Cantina looking like drowned rats. The other couple tasting here was from California, and while we were tasting, four more Californian’s showed up. It felt oddly familiar…We like much of the wine here and ended up buying a vertical of their 05, 06, and 07 vigne di fiore. We also got lunch here where I had an amazing stewed rabbit dish. Perfect for a wet, rainy day.

From here we drove back thru Montalcino, past the point of my shame AGAIN to head to Castiglion del Bosco. This place is owned by the son of designer Ferragamo. Had I known that before we came, I might have struck this from the list. However, they are doing some excellent wines. I mentioned that we were here for our anniversary (Sort of true) and that we had gotten married in a vineyard (actually true) and they brought us a library pour of their ’07 brunello. It was drinking very nicely in deed! However, it wasn’t for sale. We bought a bottle of their Millocento instead.

From there we headed thru the countryside over a rutted dirt road to our final stop of the day, Tenuta Fanti. A very different experience than Bosco! Much more down to earth and real. They’re doing dome really nice, easily drinkable wines. We started talking about their export percentages and I was shocked to learn that most of the wineries in the region export nearly 75% of their production. A big part of this is because wine in Italy is so highly regional and is made to be aged less. Anyway, we ended the day by picking up two bottles here.

The drive home was much less eventful than the drive in, however the rainy, cloudy weather made for very dramatic country sides. It feels like everything is in bloom here right now. Everything is surrounded in the most amazing cloud of perfume from the flowers on the trees and shrubs; it’s just delicious! Tomorrow, we’re staying close to home and out of the car and exploring Grosseto. Happy driving and remember, starting from third is hard, but not impossible!