chadwest.net

This past weekend was spent in Napa to attend my friends Peter and Mercedes wedding. Initially the plan was to just drive up for the wedding itself, but at the last minute I decided on making a full weekend of it. Here are some of the highlights:

Now Playing: Yo La Tengo: Beanbag Chair - I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass.

Friday

• Got a late start - wasn’t on the road until 7:30PM
• Passed way too many excellent restaurants on the way in lue of checking into the hotel. I need to head back out that way and try some of them out.
• Stayed at The Calistoga Inn and Spa in Calistoga. It was the cheapest place I could find which still had a room available. I wouldn’t recommend it for a romantic weekend, but it worked out great as a place to sleep and to anchor down
• Had dinner at the Hydro Bar & Grill in downtown Calistoga.
  • The grilled salmon was okay. The soy based sauce was a bit too salty for my liking.
  • The live entertainment was actually pretty good. Bluesy with a chick singer who a good set of lungs on her.
  • Of course the drunk locals definitely made the night for a gawker like myself.

Saturday

• Got an early start. Had breakfast at Cafe Sarafonia. When it comes to breakfast all I really care for is scrambled eggs, wheat toast and a ton of coffee. The waitress was a true professional and never let me see the bottom of my coffee cup. Nice job!
• After breakfast I killed a bit of time tooling around downtown a bit to check out the crap people tend to buy in small towns like this. Mostly local arts and crafts, for example a smooched wine bottle now acts as a cheese plates. SWEET! Also you have the occasional import shop, for example an African art store. Now I’m not how one would explain to their friends how the African Mask they have hanging on the wall reminds them of their trip to Napa Valley wine country. Then again, I only have a bunch of wine to remind me about it.
• Window shopping only lasted about an hour, so I decided to take the car out in the hills to open the engine up a bit. You know to do my part to conserve oil. Well it was a good scouting trip, next time I’ll be sure to bring my road bike. Most of the roads have bike lanes and they were well used. Sort of disappointed I opted to leave mine home.
• Around noon I decided it was time to do some wine tasting. Here are the list of winerys I hit:
  • Vincent Arroyo - Suggested by the host at the Inn. The tasting room is located in the barrel room, nice touch. Most of their sales are in futures, which leaves little to taste and buy. They only had the 2004 Petite Sirah and 2004 Entrada open for tasting, both were excellent. I chatting with Mark, one of their sales guys, for a while he sent me in the direction of my next two stops.
  • Summers Winery - They specialize in Charbono, apparently there is only 100 acres of this grown in all of CA and they are the only ones tasting it right now. I really enjoyed the 2002 Russian River Zinfandel, the 2005 Charbono and 2005 Muscat Canelli.
  • von Strasser - They are known for big cabs, which carry a big price. I don’t normally gravitate to cabernets, but these were particularly good. I had a good time talking with Mark Skinner and he had pointed me down the hill to Twomey to try out the new Pinot
  • Twomey Cellars - I was there for the Pinot, but the rest of the wines were excellent. They are actually owned by Sterling which was just up the road, but it had been 2 1/2 hours and had purchased close to two cases of wine, so it was time to call it quits.
• Around 3PM I decided to head back to the hotel to check out the pool. It’s been quite some time since I have had the opportunity to jump in a pool and lay around in the sun reading a book. The pool was nice, clean and not too crowded. It reminded me that I’m well overdue for a beach vacation, and I’m not sure my upcoming 8 day scuba trip to Bonaire is going to be enough. I may need to look into a trip to Hawaii soon.
• The wedding started at 6PM at the Culinary Institute of California.
  • Ceremony was held outside and was really nice. The setting was excellent, especially with the vineyards as a backdrop on such a beautiful day.
  • As expected, the food was awesome:
    • Salad: Greens with baked peaches, brie and some other stuff I can’t recall. All tossed in a vinaigrette of some sort. Paired with a very tasty viognier (Bonterra Vineyards, Viognier 2005). I didn’t get to see the bottle…
    • Main Course: Lobster sandwiched between a beef medallion (may have been a fillet), placed on top of a bed of small pasta stuff, and garnished with steamed spinach. Paired with a nice red. (Geyser Peak Winery, Cabernet Sauvignon 2003) I think it may have been Smoking Loon Pinot, but I don’t remember.

    Now you may ask,

    So Chad, how come you are having trouble recalling what you ate, too much to drink?!

    My answer would be one of the following:

    1. Umm yeah, maybe a little too much wine.
    2. Maybe I was engrossed in conversation with my new friends, smart ass!
    3. I don’t know, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention…

    I would like to believe that #2 is the only reason, but it’s probably a bit of all of the above. Considering only after a couple minutes into the main course my neighbor to my right asked,

    So how do you like the spinach?

    Now you may think this is odd question since it wasn’t the most interesting item on the plate, but her semi-sarcastic tone of voice quickly reminded me that what she was really saying was,

    Hey, you may not want to eat the spinach. Unless of course you like to run the risk of puking your brains out for the next day or so… [link]

    I thought my response of,

    Oh crap, right… Thanks for reminding me!

    Of course I moved what I had left of the spinach off to the side and enjoyed the rest without much hesitation.

  • Deserts: Included an assortment of cookies, coco-covered chocolate ball things, and chocolate dipped strawberries. The fruit was pretty good, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the other two deals.
  • The Cake: - For some reason I missed this. I think I may have been on the dance floor when that came around.

Sunday

• Woke up around 10AM
• Took a shower, checked out and got some breakfast
• Was on the road back to the city around noon

Update: Added the wines Peter left in the comments to the entry, thanks man…