Wine Country

The winemakers at Opus One will take the juice of these grapes, ferment it, place it in a corked bottle, and sell that bottle for $165 dollars. Yummy?

While the food in San Francisco was good, the real reason to go west is not to eat, but to drink. There are great restaurants in New York and San Francisco, I hear that there are even some great places to eat in Chicago and Philadelphia as well. However, only in California can you get a real oenological experience. “I’m Going to Long Island for some food and wine tasting” doesn’t nearly as appealing as going to say, Napa.

Our plan was to go to Sonoma one day for some of the more wallet friendly wineries and then to Napa to visit some of the nicer, more expensive ones. Over the course of the trip we visited eight wineries and tried nearly 40 wines (small sips) over the course of two days. I njoyed all the wine so much, I even purchased a lot more than I probably should have, something I felt bad about until I went to the wine store and saw a bottle I purchased in Sonoma selling for twice as much as I bought it for.

Here are a couple of things I learned while tasting.


--If possible, start out with champagne. The idea of drinking a heavy cabernet at 10 in the morning under the hot, California sun doesn’t sound that appealing does it? Our first destination was Iron Horse, an off the beaten path winery specializing in champagne. If I have to drink early in the AM, it might as well be something nice and cool and bubbly, and there are worse views than the one at Iron Horse. I purchased a bottle of their ‘Wedding Cuvee’, something I’m told is a perfect bottle for a first date.

--Pace yourself. It’s ok to pour. At first I thought I might be offending the winemakers by not drinking my full samples but I soon realized that a combination of not having easy access to water and being in the heat means that pouring (your wine) at wine tastings is absolutely necessary if you hope to make it through the day. I learned this for the Napa trip (the second day of tasting) and, unlike our day in Sonoma, I completely dehydrated and tired at lunchtime. Note: I still can't bring myself to consider spitting wine. Watching peope spew a stream of bublly red is completely unappealing, and I have a ton of insecurites about what might happen after the wine leaves my mouth...What if I miss the bucket? What if theres one of those dryish saliva strings still attached to my mouth? I would rather not deal with any of this.
--When visiting Cakebread Cellars, we were escorted into a private tasting room with a bunch of middle aged Waspy Midwestern types (they were pretty much everywhere in Napa though completely absent from Sonoma) and learned something unbeknownst to me about smelling wine. We were told that if you tilt the glass towards you while sniffing, there will be three different scent regions. If you smell the wine with your nose as close to the back rim of the glass as possible (think the rim on the side of the glass that you wouldn’t be drinking from) you will smell the floral qualities of the wine you will be tasting. If you sniff in the middle of the glass you will smell the fruit, and if you bring your nose to the part of the rim closest to you, you will get a sense of the alcohol level of the wine. I spent the rest of the day practicing and recieving odd looks from all those around me.

--Don’t mention the movie Sideways (especially if you really enjoyed it.) Winemakers really don’t like this movie (it caused the sales of Merlot, a perfectly respectable wine, to drop precpitously and led to too many people growing crappy Pinot Noir) and if you know anything about wine you will also being to realize that there are a TON of factual inaccuracies in this film. If you want to get in good with the person pouring from you its best to distance yourself from this movie as much as possible. You’ll also find that if you’re honest about how much, or little you know about wine, your pourer will be extremely informative and friendly.

The coolest moment of the trip was visiting Dutcher-Crossing and having them direct us toward their garden to pick a fresh strawberry to have with our taste of Sauvignon Blanc.

The best (my favorite) wine that I tasted was the Dutton-Goldfield Chardonnay, fresh, citrusy, tart and creamy all at the same time.

The most over the top wine moment involved visiting Opus One, a completely over-extravagant winery (in comparison to some of the nicer, more rustic places we visited.)We had to pay $25.00 to split one glass of their most recent vintage, the only wine they have available to taste, from an incredibly frantic, German, French speaking pourer. Them and their $165 dollar a wine imparted a "you're lucky to even be here drinking our godly nectar" kind of feeling. The wine was good but not great, I thought it was too chewy.


If you’re into wine, tasting in California is one of the most enjoyable ways to learn more. Pretty much everyone in both Napa and Sonoma was incredibly enthusiastic about their wine and more than happy to answer every question I had, regardless of how silly it might have sounded to them. The food in both areas is also fantastic! I’m looking forward to my next trip out west, until then though I might have to settle for some fall tasting on the island.