This past weekend we headed to Napa to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Joining us was our niece Shannon and her husband David and their good friends Anna and Jacob. We met up with them at the Westin in Napa on Friday morning and headed out to share with them a few of our favorite places.
Our first stop was Chappellet . We weren't able to tour the grounds but we had a lovely time sampling an array of their wines.
After our tasting we headed to Dean and Deluca for turkey, bacon and avocado sandwiches for lunch. We all managed to order the same sandwich although there were plenty of other choices. We enjoyed these sitting outside next door at Flora Springs sharing a bottle of their 2009 Trilogy.
From there we headed up Howell Mountain to Bremer Family Winery.
There we were guided through the wines that Bremer produce by Richard who has a vast knowledge of the valley. He also managed to rename my husband Tom so I spent the weekend with my new boyfriend.
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| The Crew - Anna, Jacob, Me, David, Jim and Shannon |
We also got to tour through their almost finished cave which is going to be awesome when it is completed.
The finale of our day was a seminar at Joseph Phelps on Insignia blending were we got to explore the components of blending wine.The best was getting to create our own blend.
Saturday we began our day at Silver Oak for the release of their 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon.
The weather was beautiful and the wine was very approachable - not as 'dusty' as the last two previous years.
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| Cheers |
We have attended the release party for Silver Oak since we honeymooned in Napa five years ago and lunch is always included. This year we had our choice of sliders from three of five restaurants. My three choices were -
BarBersQ and my favorite was
The two I did not sample were from Farmstead Restaurant and Brassica
And then we headed down the road to PlumpJack winery for the release of their 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon.
My favorite is the Cade 2010 Sauvignon Blanc from their sister winery.
And of course no visit to Napa would be complete without a visit to Gott's, formerly known as Taylor's Refresher, for hamburgers.
Our last stop for Saturday was new to all of us, Spring Mountain Vineyard
We spent a wonderful few hours
exploring the winery with Patrick.
These are the wines we sampled.
We finished our evening at the The Press. The Press is Jim's favorite steak place but I prefer to order the chopped salad and my entree is the truffle oil mac and cheese and the roasted brussel sprouts.We brought with us a magnum of 2002 Silver Oak which we had purchased on our honeymoon and it had aged very well. And I always have dessert, this time the Valrhona Chocolate Layer Cake. This is my heaven
We said goodbye to our drinking/eating companions Saturday night as they were heading back to Mississippi Sunday morning and Jim and I planned on sleeping in on Sunday. After breakfast in bed we finished our time in Napa picking up our member shipment at Whitehall Lane Winery and Michael Mondavi Family Estate before heading home to watch the Super Bowl.
Napa is one of our favorite places to visit and we always love to share the experience with family and friends.
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