California is the world’s 4th largest producer of wine, and thus a trip to Napa Valley was one of our must-do’s. The Napa/Sonoma wine area is so massive that one day really couldn’t do it justice, but I think it was a nice introduction to this dessert-like valley.
We rented a little zoom-zoom car for the day to take us around from winery to winery on this hot & sunny day, and to give us the freedom to access to some of the less traveled areas of the valley. It’s always fun to turn on some music and cruise around along the coastline. We also picked a great day to go (after the long weekend) when traffic was quiet and tourists were at a minimum.
Our first stop was at the Artesa winery, which is worth a stop just for the views. The winery is situated on a hilltop with views overlooking the entire Napa valley area. The wine center itself is built into the ground to keep the building cool in the hot summer months. The entire place is a work of art and provided us with a beautiful environment to enjoy our first glass of wine!
From there we stopped at Domain Chandon, which focuses most on sparkling wines, followed by Burgess, a tiny and adorable family-run winery way up in the hills. Mid afternoon we stopped at V. Sittui, which is one of the more unique wineries in that you can only purchase their wine at this one location. We participated in a tasting and all ended up purchasing a few bottles to bring home. The best part? A delicious deli of home made creations to feed our hungry bellies by this point:
Our Napa Valley wine tour ended with a couple final stops: Castello di Amarosa provided lovely architecture with the Italian villa-like entrance and castle exterior. Unfortunately there was an entrance fee to enter the winery. At the popular Beringer mansion we enjoyed some chocolate and wine pairings. And we wrapped up with a quick stop at the Franciscan winery in the evening.
Our drive home nicely wrapped up with a drive across the Golden Gate bridge as well as some adventurous climbs up the steep San Fran streets. Climbing them by car is a completely different adventure as it seems you can’t see anything over the nose of your car but the sky… how to see oncoming cars or pedestrians I do not know…
