Napa Valley 6th June

What a day! Napa valley is huge.We only visited a couple places, fewer than in Oz and NZ, but that was simply as it was gargantum and this makes it nigh impossible to get around too quickly. We headed into Napa looking for the closest free wineries on the list. They have a nasty habit of charging for tasting which, if you make good wine, really shouldn't be the case I think. On the main road into the Napa Valley we turned off at a large sign indicating we might be able find a map of the valley and perhaps some indicators as to where we should visit. Have a look here: http://www.napavalley.com/visitorsinfo/Napa_Valley_Winery_Map.pdf

We got more than we wanted – some vouchers and the map. So we marked out a few places we thought might be visitable and headed off. The importance of Napa Valley is of course that this is the home of the cold press production methods. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winemaking if you'd like to know more. The first place we visited was small and reminiscent of the small places in Australia, friendly dedicated teams who really enjoyed their jobs. The winery Bouchaine was lovely. The wines fresh and clear, as I was driving I tasted only two while Jen and Mary had a a little taste of them all. They recommended that we try their neighbors, McKenzie& Muller. I highly recommend them. They are an appointment only place which we were lucky to get a slot for. They still utilize the traditional French method of wine production which allows the wine to continue fermenting in the bottle… making the wines more flavourful and stronger. Good idea to decant this wine too as it frequently pours bits into the glass. The tasting was great and we ended up buying some of their white wine Chardonnay produced in the NZ method- half in oak, the other half in stainless steel vats which makes for a nice clear taste apparently. The red wines were more to my taste rich and full bodied. The winery doesn't ship to anywhere in the world sadly, duty tariffs and their production were just too small… But.. it was certainly worthewhile going there. Jen and Mary were definitely feeling the wine when we left and I headed north to the next place. The road north through Napa is a little souless and touristy in the worst sense. The large wineries with large budgets too often have bus loads and huge car parks and concentrate not on their wines but on the paraphernalia. Employing people who have obviously got sales targets… the really big international ones on the other hand just have people who don't really care it seems- which is fine as there is no pushing. We had to go to Sutter home which is about three quid a bottle in the UK- and taste their US specials, which tasted pretty much identical to the other stuff I've had from their house in the UK. Jen and Mary however, found glasses (yes, reading glasses in a winery shop – perhaps to find the wine glass) and fooled around which provided entertainment for at least half the bar and me. Other wineries which we stopped into provided some decent food tasting options which had to taken advantage of and made us forget that lunch might have been a good idea.

The wineries that really made also made dents into the taste buds were Charles Krug (not related to the Champagne people), St Clement; and for quality of wine and just sheer ridiculousness Il Molino which is an Italian Castle rebuilt in the US and frankly pretty amazing, but mad. Jen and Mary were pretty well oiled by the end of the day as they'd tasted a LOT of wine as one does… so a meal in an Italian was absolutely necessary. Another hallmark of the good wineries was the fact that they loved to talk about their wines and entertain us as we entertained them. It is something that was absolutely noticeable throughout the entire trip and all the wine tasting in New Zealand, the US and Oz.