Annie and I went on a little wine trip for my birthday, mostly, and Valentine's Day, coincidentally. We stayed at Old World Inn, a B & B in downtown Napa. Our plan was to walk downtown Napa so that we could taste a lot and not worry about driving. That is exactly what we did. We had initially planned to buy the tasting card, but our innkeeper gave us enough complimentary passes to deter us from that itinerary. The Old World Inn was everything that's great about B&Bs without the grandma decor; the evening chocolates were the best (cake and chocolate covered strawberries set out for late night snacking).
Annie will probably provide a more detailed listing of the day on her blog in the upcoming days, but I would like to give a shout out to the lady that made my day, Trisha from Mason Cellars. We were the only ones in her tasting room for about 30 minutes, so we talked for a while. She gave us wonderful advice, the tasting was complimentary, and the wines were dirt cheap for Napa standards yet really good. She explained the rise and fall of Copia (which we had toured years before) and even offered to drive any wine we bought that day (from any winery nearby) back to our hotel and drop it off for us. We took her up on her offer, and she ended up dropping off almost an entire case of wine to our B&B (we only bought 4 bottles of Mason wine)!!
The juicy part: skip ahead 5 hours and 6 tasting rooms. We decided to head back to our B&B for wine/cheese hour, and we thought it would be a good time to drop off our freshly purchased cabernet chocolate sauce from Ceja (amazing) and the other bottle of wine we bought there. The wine hour wasn't all that interesting (I blame the clientele), so we went back to our room to prepare ourselves for more tastings, and eventually dinner.
Annie immediately passed out on the bed. She woke up 30 minutes later and ran to the bathroom to throw up. She didn't actually throw up, but laid down for a little na-na and waved her glasses around until I grabbed them and set them on the dresser. She laid around for a while, so I snapped a few pictures of her on her fancy, new HTC Incredible. Those of you lucky enough to catch them posted on facebook know exactly what they looked like. She deleted them as soon as she got her shit together around 11pm. I also snapped another picture that made it to twitter (and gmail), but that got deleted even faster. Needless to say, we slept through our dinner reservation and didn't eat anything substantial until our amazing breakfast at the B&B the next morning.
Sunday took us on a little tour of Napa & Sonoma Valleys. I'm hoping to write another post specifically regarding Bottle Shock, so I'll save the details for that future post. We made one stop at Dry Creek Olive Co, where I am a member and receive regular shipments of fresh, amazing olive oil. The day ended at Hook & Ladder, a favorite winery from our trip back in May. I've long considered joining their wine club, since I loved so many of their wines from their last vintage. As soon as we started tasting yesterday (a new vintage), I immediately filled out their wine club membership application. I consistently love their wines. They are the first wine club I've ever joined, and I'm super excited.
(Annob is what are closest friends called the two of us in college, cuz she followed me around like a lost puppy. I made up Valenbirthday just now.)
Cheers!
~RoB
Annie will probably provide a more detailed listing of the day on her blog in the upcoming days, but I would like to give a shout out to the lady that made my day, Trisha from Mason Cellars. We were the only ones in her tasting room for about 30 minutes, so we talked for a while. She gave us wonderful advice, the tasting was complimentary, and the wines were dirt cheap for Napa standards yet really good. She explained the rise and fall of Copia (which we had toured years before) and even offered to drive any wine we bought that day (from any winery nearby) back to our hotel and drop it off for us. We took her up on her offer, and she ended up dropping off almost an entire case of wine to our B&B (we only bought 4 bottles of Mason wine)!!
The juicy part: skip ahead 5 hours and 6 tasting rooms. We decided to head back to our B&B for wine/cheese hour, and we thought it would be a good time to drop off our freshly purchased cabernet chocolate sauce from Ceja (amazing) and the other bottle of wine we bought there. The wine hour wasn't all that interesting (I blame the clientele), so we went back to our room to prepare ourselves for more tastings, and eventually dinner.
Annie immediately passed out on the bed. She woke up 30 minutes later and ran to the bathroom to throw up. She didn't actually throw up, but laid down for a little na-na and waved her glasses around until I grabbed them and set them on the dresser. She laid around for a while, so I snapped a few pictures of her on her fancy, new HTC Incredible. Those of you lucky enough to catch them posted on facebook know exactly what they looked like. She deleted them as soon as she got her shit together around 11pm. I also snapped another picture that made it to twitter (and gmail), but that got deleted even faster. Needless to say, we slept through our dinner reservation and didn't eat anything substantial until our amazing breakfast at the B&B the next morning.
Sunday took us on a little tour of Napa & Sonoma Valleys. I'm hoping to write another post specifically regarding Bottle Shock, so I'll save the details for that future post. We made one stop at Dry Creek Olive Co, where I am a member and receive regular shipments of fresh, amazing olive oil. The day ended at Hook & Ladder, a favorite winery from our trip back in May. I've long considered joining their wine club, since I loved so many of their wines from their last vintage. As soon as we started tasting yesterday (a new vintage), I immediately filled out their wine club membership application. I consistently love their wines. They are the first wine club I've ever joined, and I'm super excited.
(Annob is what are closest friends called the two of us in college, cuz she followed me around like a lost puppy. I made up Valenbirthday just now.)
Cheers!
~RoB
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