{"id":166,"date":"2022-07-28T19:46:05","date_gmt":"2022-07-28T11:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/?p=166"},"modified":"2022-07-28T19:46:43","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T11:46:43","slug":"napa-valley-and-sonoma-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/archives\/166","title":{"rendered":"Napa Valley and Sonoma County"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

a.k.a Wine Country. This was something I planned and wanted to do, so even after my plans got mucked around I managed to reschedule it – the full day wine tour on Friday. I got a late text on Thursday saying I would be picked up between 8.00 and 8.15, it turned out to be 8.20 but that was fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turned out to be a relatively small tour – Jim our tour guide and 8 in the group. We came from New Jersey, Colombia, Austria, Canada and of course Australia so it was a good mix. The Austrian couple were quiet and didn\u2019t speak much English but the rest of us got on really well. Jim was interesting and informative – a good tour guide. First stop was the viewing area once we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately, the fog persisted. I knew the bridge was there, because we had just driven over it, but you couldn\u2019t see it at all. I have some great photos of fog, but I\u2019m still waiting on a chance to get a photo of the bridge where you can actually see it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following that, our first stop was Ru Vango<\/p>\n\n\n

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First drink of the day<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Writing this with the benefit of hindsight, this would be my second favourite of the three we visited. It was definitely the most beautiful, so most of my photos are of the vines there. A couple of general observations, at least from the wineries that we visited. They don\u2019t seem to have very many vines, indeed they all produce small amounts of wine. Two of them don\u2019t distribute their wine, they only sell it at the cellar. There was a Rose at every winery and only one winery had whites on their standard tasting. This definitely was the most pretty winery, so when I finally do a photo dump or three you’ll be able to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next stop was lunch. We went to Oxbow Public Market which has a great range of food and wine. There were a lot of options but in then end Heather (the Canadian) and I ended up sharing a delicious pizza. Given that there were more wine tastings to come we went with sparkling water to drink!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that we headed off to our next stop – Peter Cellars.<\/p>\n\n\n

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This would have been my least favourite winery for a couple of reasons. Firstly the guy who was running the tasting just didn’t seem super friendly. I got the vibe that he didn’t really want to be there and he wasn’t very knowledgeable about the whole business. It might have partly been because there was another group there at the same time so he was running back and forth between us. I also didn’t enjoy these wines as much as the previous stop. There was only one I really enjoyed. A rich red pinot and I enjoyed it enough that I was going to buy a bottle. However when I saw that the price was of US$50 a bottle I decided it wasn’t that good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final stop, and my favourite was Homewood Winery. <\/p>\n\n\n

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This was the polar opposite of the last one. I enjoyed all of the wines to varying degrees. But by far the best part was the guy who ran the tasting. He was personable, friendly and incredibly knowledgeable, so much so that I tipped him for running such a great tasting. He knew what he was talking about, answered questions, involved everyone, told us things we wanted to know about the wine and even joined us in tasting a couple of the wines. In the end I got a bottle of the flying wizzbangers which was not your standard red but it was very nice, and easy to drink. I also got a bottle of zinfandel port which wasn’t on the tasting list but was a nice surprise. It’s delicious and if you know me you know I love port, so I had to have a bottle of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall it was a great day. I think wine over there is different but it’s a warmer region. Much like I’ve noticed in WA, great southern wines are my favourite and they have a very cool climate. However, we did taste some very nice wine and if it was easier to get it back to Australia and I had the room, I probably would have bought more. And that was the end of the tour. The bridge was sadly still shrouded in fog on the return trip. After that, it was an early night, it had been a busy two days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

a.k.a Wine Country. This was something I planned and wanted to do, so even after my plans got mucked around I managed to reschedule it – the full day wine tour on Friday. I got a late text on Thursday saying I would be picked up between 8.00 and 8.15, it turned out to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simon.treadgold.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}