Weekend in Napa
If you’ve been following me on Twitter, I’m sure you know by now that I just returned from a 4-day weekend in Napa Valley. This is probably my 6th time to this popular wine region and each time I go, I learn a lot and my wine purchases have increased in both quantity and price. I went with my wife, Sheri, and we spent the weekend with our good friends from San Diego, James and Kimberly King, at the Westin Verasa Napa where our friends own a condo. It’s a great location from which to visit the area wineries. James is a wine educator, consultant and event planner. (See his site at King Group Events.) Part of the purpose of this trip was to scout some wineries for an upcoming trip in August. He’s hoping to make it a trip that is unique and memorable for the 10 to 12 attendees. The other part of the trip was just to enjoy each other company, drink some great wines and eat some fabulous food.
Our original itinerary had us visiting 7 or 8 wineries on Saturday and Sunday. In the end, we only visited 5 wineries each day. A combination of too many wines to try and too much fun being had made each visit much longer than expected. Any more and I think it would have been a forced march to make all the appointments. In the end, only two of the ten wineries we visited were ones we probably wouldn’t return to visit again nor include in future organized trips. I’ll be writing a separate article on those wineries. Here are all ten wineries we visited:
- Silver Oak
- Swanson
- Rubicon
- Del Dotto
- Provenance/Hewitt
- Keplinger
- Paraduxx
- Robinson Family
- Pine Ridge
- Reynolds Family
I especially would like to thank James for making all the arrangements and negotiating the tasting fees and industry discounts on the wine. When you consider that each winery normally charges between $10 to $50 per person, those fees add up.Every little bit helps.
But we couldn’t live on wine alone, so we also ate at some very good restaurants in the valley. Friday night started off with La Toque right on premises at the Westin. Saturday was Taylors Refresher in St. Helena for lunch and dinner at Redd in Yountville. Sunday we grabbed a sandwich at the Oakville Grocery and dinner at UVA Trattoria Italiano in Napa. On Monday morning, just before we left for the airport, Sheri and I made a separate trip to the Bouchon Bakery in Yountville for early desserts.
It was an incredibly fun weekend and I look forward to writing separate articles over the next few weeks for each of the wineries we visited.
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