Drinkcation: Tour of Napa

Napa is an interesting place and even though I used to live only an hour away, it always took forever to get to the wineries, which are tucked away along back roads and spanning the little towns of St. Helena, Yountville, and Calistoga.  It's especially problematic when tourists want to take in the view but don't want to hire a car service, so they slowpoke along on a 2-laned road while all the rest of us are dying slowly and miserably behind them at well below the speed limit.
Even though Napa is perhaps the first place that comes to mind when one thinks about American wine regions, it's actually one of the smallest by area and only 4% of the wine produced in California comes from the Napa Valley.  I still argue that it's quality over quantity in this case.  There are 15 sub-regions within the Napa Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA) and they span all different elevations and soils.  I find myself partial to volcanic, loamy, mountain soils of Atlas Peak, Stag's Leap, Howell Mountain, and Spring Mountain... consistently, I'll taste and pick out wines from these areas because they're so bold and tannin heavy.

We started off our morning with wine blending at Conn Creek, this awesome activity of trying 15 different varietals of Cabernet and mixing them along with 4 other wines (Merlot, Cab Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot) to create a red blend.  Since I was still recovering from the raucous night before and having done wine blending at Conn before, I just went straight to my favorite regions and tried a blend.  First time ended up being the charm and I ended up bottling that one.  Despite being in pain all morning, I still got some great pictures and had a blast - probably a function of the company I kept.

The rest of the day was actually not as fun - it was an exercise in trying not to tell off everyone - from the pretentious asshole that we kept running into or the crap service we received during lunch and at a later tasting.  Even though I may look young, I have no problem dropping major dollars on wine and I have absolutely done just that before on pretty much every excursion to Napa without batting an eye.  But since the service was so awful, I passed this time.  Oh well, at least we'll always have the pictures.

Ready to blend away!

Those are some big barrels

Bottling the winning blend

Corking's a workout!

Through the looking glass

Soon... sort of.

Hours to Date: 32