This was the day of a blur of chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, merlot, zinfandels, and likes. My favourite wine is actually the Muscat varietal, more like a dessert wine. We had pre-booked online a Napa Valley wine tour on Guideyou.com for about USD$61 per pax to bring us to three wineries in the Napa/ Sonoma region, which was about an hour away from San Francisco. They have a pick up service from your hotel if you state beforehand which hotel u're staying in. If u fancy taking an early morning walk though, u can opt to stroll down to Fisherman's Wharf where the tour agency is situated and where the tour bus will officially leave for the wine valley tour.
Our wine tour started off at the Madonna Estate family-owned winery at Napa Valley. I was really excited about this because I had bought the muscat canelli that cant be found anywhere else, four years ago when I visited this winery.
Look at those grapes! I usually don't eat green grapes but they look so tempting on the vine that I wanted to just pluck them out and eat them on the spot.
We were then brought on a tour of the winery, and they showed us where they stored their wine barrels. Cool. As in the literal sense. The wine barrel store was a big temperature contrast from the almost 104F out there.
And let the sampling begin! Glee! :)
I ended up only buying one bottle of the muscat canelli, which by the way, as of now, is still sitting on my table waiting to be enjoyed with the same ppl I shared it with four years ago ;-) If I had abundant luggage space, I would have bought like maybe five bottles back home since it's so nice and cheap - only USD$10!
2nd winery was more famous - Sutter Home. U remember seeing those small bottles of wine at your local 7-11, petrol kiosk or convenient stores? Some of them are from the Sutter Home winery. And also, apparently according to my tour guide, Sutter Home is the birth place of white merlot. We're all accustomed to merlot being a red wine, but white merlot? I've never known it till Sutter Home.
I would assume that the pictures of old men are the forefathers of the winery.
There you go, the small 187ml bottles of wine all lined up nicely on the shelf for sale, at only like USD$1.50 per bottle. Made of plastic (Sutter Home claims being environmental-friendly), so u don't have to worry about dropping them on the floor and they're a suitable size for personal consumption.
Making payment. Damage was a bottle of 350ml Muscat of Alexandria (USD$10), two 187ml white merlot, one 187ml white zinfandel and a jar of peach salsa (USD$9) that'll go very well with tortilla chips - all these goodies not even over USD$30! Happy day oh happy day :) Haha epitome of consumerism :P
After making payment, we went to walk around the Sutter Home garden right outside the shop. There are all these beautiful flowers, the white zinfandel garden, etc.
That's the Napa Valley wine train that brings people around the region for a wine tour. So I guess instead of being ferried around in a tour bus, u get to take the train.
We stopped at downtown Sonoma Square for lunch. It's the main area of the Sonoma region (and is like its name, shaped like a square) where there're eating places and a few random retail shops. I think the wine tours usually stop by here for lunch breaks.
We settled for a Mexican place called Maya Restaurant. I forgot to capture a picture of the exterior and overall picture of the interior, which was really a pity because they serve really decent food. I did manage to grab a shot of the bar area while waiting for our food.
Complimentary nachos with dips as starters.
It was a good thing we ordered the Manuel's Salad with dressing on the side, because the romaine leaves were really sweet and refreshingly crisp on their own.
We also shared the steak tacos served with beans and rice.
After lunch we took a short walk around the Sonoma Square - the cheese factory with its amazing variety of cheese and produce. Too bad there wasn't any time to have a picnic or else I would have grabbed a couple of cheese and bought the cute picnic basket! Hah.
There were a few shops selling some spreads and dips I would really have loved to buy back home if not for the fact that my luggage could not possibly hide so much glass jars/ bottles.
There's also a B&J there but we didn't eat any ice-cream cos we were still pretty full from the lunch at Maya. Look at the different flavours! If only we've all those fancy flavours back here I think my freezer will be full house every week :P
After lunch was our last winery, Cline Cellars. We went through a tour as usual, tasted a few wines, and then just hung out at the side porch while waiting for the tour bus to pick us up. It was a cool and breezy afternoon despite the scorching sun and it was so nice to be able to just sit down, enjoy the breeze and relax there.
After Cline Cellars, we headed back for San Francisco. This time round the Golden Gate Bridge traffic was tailback because it was peak hour, I guess everyone's heading back to San Francisco too.
After reaching back our hotel, we decided to try out the Japanese place a few doors down because it seems so popular (there was always a queue whenever we walked past the place).
Looks like a lot of good reviews!
We put our names down on the waiting list and I was looking at some of the reviews and their menu, deciding what to eat and imagining how good it will feel to slurp down a bowl of hot ramen in the cold weather. We waited for like half an hour before we finally got a table.
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