Riesling, riesling, where for art thou my riesling? - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 3 - The Wine

Continued from...

I Am The King Of Thai - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 1

A Fortunate Pilgrimage - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 2 Part I

It's a Small Small World - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 2 Part II

Burger To Die For - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 3 - The Food

Finally, without further ado, I present to you the wines of my trip.

Alright, I lied, with a little ado first. I have to first make the disclaimer that I know very little about wine. Wine is a PhD in its own right, and I have only scratched the corner of the surface. What better way to get better educated than to visit wine central of California, Napa Valley.

(Domaine Carneros - Sparkling Wine Samplers)

I had learned that wine is best if I started off light with sparklings and whites and move towards the more powerful reds. There was certainly no better way to get a day of wine tasting going then to start at Domaine Carneros who specialized in sparkling wines. I suppose if I were to drink before noon, I should at least go with something that is legitimately served before noon on occasion.

(Domaine Carneros)

Domaine Carneros' main building sat atop of a small hill to the southwest of Napa City. We took the beautiful and scenic Old Napa Valley road, which prepared us for a beautiful morning. When we arrived, we were told that if we wanted to enjoy the wine tasting, all we had to do was sit at a table and a waiter or waitress would come and serve us. We grabbed a table outside overlooking the vineyard and shortly after a friendly waitress came to give us a run down of the menu.

(Domaine Carneros - Menu)

There were three samplers on the menu, which I already knew having done my research online. There were a sparkling wine sampler serving three sparkling wines, a red wine sample serving three red wines and a grande taste sampler that served two sparkling wines and two red wines. We only ordered the sparkling wine sampler since that was their specialty, and we wanted to pace ourself for the day.

(Domaine Carneros - Sparkling Wine Sampler)

(Domaine Carneros - 2006 Vermeil Demi-Sec)

(Domaine Carneros - European Pastries)

For fifteen dollars, we got three wines that fell between $30 to $60 a bottle. Looking back at this, it was kind of a rip-off. The wines that were served were not overly expensive and most other places would serve five or more. The fifteen dollars really went towards the atmosphere and the service we got. It was a lovely morning and sipping sparkling wine overlooking fields of green was probably a much more pleasant way to sample the wines than to stand indoors around a counter. To add to the ambiance, we ordered a set of four European patries that went along with the sparkling wines. The three wines were all mostly dry blends of pinot and chardonnay. I personally did not like chardonnay. In fact it was because of chardonnay why it took me this many years to even get into wine.

The first bottle was the 2006 Vintage Brut Cuvee, which I found a little disgusting, mainly because I could really taste the typical chardonnay taste which I hated. For me, chardonnay generally hit me really strong in the front and it can taste a bit more like alcohol than wine. The second bottle was the 2006 Brut Rose, which was a tad bit more enjoyable for me. Even though it was still a chardonnay and pinot blend, because it touched the skin of the pinot, the nasty taste of alcohol of the chardonnay was somewhat masked. Finally the 2006 Vermeil Demi-Sec was slightly, and I mean ever so slightly sweeter than the other two, which probably helped in masking that chardonnay flavor that I didn't like, making this one more enjoyable than the other.

I personally didn't end up buying any of the sparkling wines here despite originally considering it. None of the sparkling wines impressed me enough for me to warrant spending over thirty dollars on them. I did however help my friend pick up a bottle of their pinot noir having overheard the table next to me praise the wine. My friend gave me some money and asked me to surprise her.

(V. Sattui Winery - Fountain)

(V. Sattui Winery - Picnic Area)

We moved up from Napa City to St. Helena for the next winery. This was suggested by a friend of mine on Facebook. A week or so prior to the trip, I posted on my Facebook wall for suggestions of wineries I should attend and this one popped out mostly because the tasting was very cheap. They had a classic wine tasting of five wines for $5 and a premium tasting of five wines for $10.

Having just been to Domaine Carneros, I thought it was just a slow season so I wasn't expecting a lot of people. In fact Domaine Carneros was so slow that it turned my travel buddy off from wine tasting. As we pulled into the parking lot, we discovered it to be vibrant. This place was definitely happening. I suppose it's the low cost of the tasting that attracted so many people; it attracted me and I ended up buying a ton of wine from here as did my friend. I walked up to an open spot at the counter and an ultra-friendly woman who was in charge of that corner greeted me and asked me what I would like. I told her I knew very little about wine. The only thing I knew was that I liked Rieslings. Other than that, I was willing to try a few other things.

She was super friendly and nice. She offered me tasting from mostly the classic menu with a couple from the premium menu for the classic price. Actually by the end of it, she served me six wines and didn't charge me anything. This was before I actually ended up buying near seventy dollars of wine from her. I actually went back and bought even more later but she was no longer there. She had me taste the different Rieslings that V. Sattui had to offer and I discovered the bottle that I wanted; 2009 Anderson Valley White Riesling. This bottle was full of fruitiness and had a wonderful ting to the front of my teeth. It was bright and brilliant and I can see myself drinking this with all kinds of foods. In fact I loved it so much I'm planning on ordering a few more bottles soon. The other Rieslings were basically too sweet for my taste. I had outgrown sweet wines having been influenced by my friend Ko, and now I'm liking drier whites. She promised me I'll eventually move up to reds. I almost dread that, knowing that she was probably right.

(V. Sattui Winery - Vineyard)

Outside the buildings were the vineyards. Just like all the other vineyards in Napa at this time of the year, they were all brown and leafless, awaiting for the next season to come. I suppose this is why most people come in the summer and the fall to see the grapes rip and the fields green. Winter though has its charm and the nostalgia brings forth a soothing ambiance that called out to me to enjoy some wine while wanting to cuddle up with a loved one.

(V. Sattui Winery - 2007 Prestige Cuvee Brut)

(V. Sattui Winery - 2009 Anderson Valley White Riesling)

(V. Sattui Wines)

Ultimately I left V. Sattui with a bottle of that 2009 white riesling for myself and a bottle of their 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon for my friend. I didn't actually try this one myself, but the woman who served me said this was the bottle she would just crack open and relax the night to and forget the world. The way she described the bottle and her entire demeanor and personality reminded me of my friend who asked me to get her a few bottles, so I figure it must be right for her. Though when I told the woman that my friend gave me very vague guidelines and a "surprise me" instruction, she used a word to describe my friend that I best not repeat here. Later that day I did return to pick up another bottle of their sparkling wine as my travel buddy wanted to grab a few more bottles for her family.

(Chateau Montelena - Garden Gazebo)

The final stop for the day was Chateau Montelena. The day really flew on by and we were hitting the chateau near its closing time. This was on my list because it was the famous winery that won the famed French competition and made famous again through the movie Bottleshock. I definitely wanted to see what the fuzz was all about and perhaps try their world famous chardonnay.

(Chateau Montelena - Wine Tasting)

(Chateau Montelena - Award Winning Chardonnay)

As luck would have it, their wine tasting menu for the day started off with their famous $50 bottle Chardonnay that won the historic 1976 Paris Tasting. As you already know, I detest Chardonnay with my whole being. But I suppose I can't write off Chardonnay completely without trying the bottle that is supposed to be the very best in the world, so perfect that the original is still preserved in the Smithsonian. To my pleasant delight, I actually enjoyed this bottle of Chardonnay. It actually didn't taste like rubbing alcohol inside my mouth. It certainly had a little butteriness to it as the flavor of the fruit spread over my tongue. I couldn't believe it, I was actually enjoying a glass of Chardonnay for the first time in my life. It was actually good enough to drink. But then would I ever buy this bottle in my life, probably not. It was a good bottle of Chardonnay, but it was still Chardonnay and it isn't my preferred white wine. For $50, I could get two really awesome bottles of Rieslings which I much prefer.

Next on their menu were their Zinfindel and their low end Cabernet Sauvignon. I was not a fan of zinfindel and this bottle did not change my mind. I just never understood zinfindel; I am literally confused whenever I drink it. I was not sure what it was that I was drinking. It didn't feel like a red wine, nor a white one. It didn't burst with flavors nor did it taste like alcohol. I just couldn't make sense of it, and this bottle still didn't make sense to me. The Cabernet Sauvignon however did make sense. The flavors of the fruit was definitely in the wine and I can easily feel how at ease that bottle can put people to. That was definitely on my to get list for my friend.

(Chateau Montelena - 2006 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon)

(Chateau Montelena - 2004 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon)

Finally the two big ones were their 2006 and 2004 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, each with a price tag of $135 and $145 respectively. For a $20 wine tasting price tag, this was definitely a bargain. The combined full bottle values of the wines that I sampled that afternoon was near $500 compared to the measly $150 at Domaine Carneros. To top it off, they waived the tasting fee if I bought over $100 worth of wine, which I did.

This tasting of the two Estate Cabs was the first time in my life where I could finally tell what an open flavor versus a closed flavor tasted like. The only way to learn the difference really was to try the two bottles back to back. There was just no way to really describe what it was that the wine was doing inside my mouth, and I won't even try. All I knew was that both bottles were full of the same flavors except the flavors in the 2004 bottle blossomed inside my mouth more than the 2006 bottle. I can only imagine what these two bottles would taste like in ten more years time.

(Chateau Montelena - Vineyard)

(Chateau Montelena - Wine Purchases)

I ended up buying a bottle of their 2006 vintage Riesling since I wasn't a red wine drinker, at least not yet. I just wanted to give their riesling a try. I was told that since it was a 2006 bottle, it would be a slightly sweeter. I bought the Chardonnay and the non-estate Cabernet Sauvignon for my friend who wanted to be surprised. Don't asked to be surprised if you don't really want to be surprised was my motto. Well I figured if there was one bottle of Chardonnay to try, this would probably be the one.

(Chateau Montelena - 2006 Riesling)

(My Rieslings)

(Seven Wines)

I learned a tremendous amount about wine, but I learned even more about how much I don't know about wine. It really was an impossible task to learn the in's and out's of wine without living on a winery or being inside a cellar. There was just so much out there, good and bad, that it was really a lifetime of work. In the end none of that mattered. The most important part of it all was learning about which wines I liked and which ones to avoid.

This trip up north was probably the most productive of all the trips I had ever taken there. I was able to get a good sense of what San Francisco was and I learned a ton about wine in Napa. It had a ton of food from various cultures, and the world that the food encompassed were revealed. Focusing a trip around the real foods of the destinations can really show me what the place is all about. It was reflective of the people's willingness to put up with a long wait for a table in the freezing cold in the morning simply to have forty-five minutes to an hour of stomach warming happiness. It revealed insights on the lives of the local people and their travels and returns as they divulged their stories to a waitress pouring hot coffee. It showed me that whether in Napa or in Los Angeles, a good bottle of cabernet sauvignon is used in the same way after a long day of work or an intense final exam. Though the foods we eat may be different, we are all essentially the same because we must eat, and we all eat for the same reasons; we eat to live.

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Burger To Die For - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 3 - The Food

Continued from...

I Am The King Of Thai - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 1

A Fortunate Pilgrimage - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 2 Part I

It's a Small Small World - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 2 Part II

I had heard the name Napa for a very long time. I had envisioned in my mind a peaceful and secluded paradise a little ways north of the bustling city of San Francisco. I didn't start enjoying wine until last year on a train ride on Amtrak's Coastal Starlight from Seattle to Los Angeles. I knew only the basic names and understanding of wines and had been to one wine tasting trip prior in my life. I never thought I would visit Napa since I wasn't much of a wine person, but this year I finally made the journey.

(Napa Valley)

(Gaia Hotel & Spa)

Napa was beautiful, though busier than I imagined even for the winter time. Perhaps I was disillusioned by movies like bottleshock which my friend Kenneth made me watch before going. It did give me some names of wineries to visit during this trip. To avoid the high price tags of the hotels in Napa city and St. Helena, we ended up at Gaia Hotel and Spa Resort down in American Canyon. It really wasn't a problem since there weren't too much traffic during the winter season. Gaia Hotel was also a fully environmentally sustainable hotel in Napa which made me feel good booking the place. They named each room after something different from nature, though the interior I suppose were all the same as far as I can tell. Fortunately there wasn't a wall full of grasshoppers nailed to the walls inside.

(Harassing the cook will definitely result in smaller portions)

(Butter Cream Bakery and Diner's Kitchen)

With a full day's worth of wine drinking, I made sure we had a hearty breakfast before gulping down alcohol. We ended up at the Butter Cream Bakery and Diner in Napa City. It was an authentic 50's diner where a lot of the locals ate. I was certainly out of place carrying my huge Canon camera bag around with me. The dinning area was small and accommodated around twenty to thirty people along with another fifteen or so at the counter by the cooking stations. We opted for the counter since I always preferred the atypical dinning experience, where we got to watch the cooks in action making our breakfasts.

(Butter Cream Bakery and Diner - Small Breakfast)

We both ended up ordering the small breakfast which included eggs, toasts, hash browns and a choice of  ham, sausage or bacon. I never liked bacon and I am generally weary of sausages as they can be either really good or really nasty. I made the safe choice for ham with my eggs scrambled. The grill was in full view from where I was sitting. I was able to see how everything was cooked. The toasts were put through the toaster twice to brown them. The hash browns were cooked in mass and thrown in practically every other plate that was being served. The meat were cooked to order, as were the eggs. I had serious issues with the eggs as I had already blogged about in my earlier post Chopped Up Omelets Are Not Scrambled Eggs!!! Scrambled eggs are to be scramble both before and during the cooking process.

Aside from the badly made scrambled eggs, the rest of the breakfast were good and hearty. It had the taste of traditional Americana in them. The ham was slightly burned and not overly salty, which is a good sign. The hash brown had a crispy top with a mushy middle which was very enjoyable. In the end, diner food is just that, diner food. Very few diners actually stand out in my book; I absolutely love some of the dishes at Diner on Main in Alhambra if you are in that area. The atmosphere here was the real deal. An older couple who sat next to me were long time customers of the diner, and the waitress had a small catching up session with them on their winter trip to Montana. I was hoping for that kind of treatment but I found myself feeling more like an outsider as the waitress paid very little attention to me or my needs. I blame my Canon camera bag.

(Oxbrow Public Market)

(Oxbrow Public Market - Olive Oil Shop)

(Oxbrow Public Market - Tea Shop)

(Oxbrow Public Market - Live Seafood Shop)

(Oxbrow Public Market - Pica Pica Maize Kitchen)

After breakfast our first winery stop was for the sparkling wines at Domaine Carneros, which I'll review in a separate post. After some lovely European pastries and elegant sparkling wines to kick off the morning, we stopped by the Oxbrow Public Market to pick up lunch. It does seem like all I did was eat and drink during this trip; that is really all I did. I couldn't pass by an opportunity to check out a public market. For me, it gives me a sense of the people in the city and what their taste buds are saying. There were a good variety of foods and other shops in the market. It was also very nice to see the existence of a tea shop in the market, though it was a bit dead. I am a big fan of tea and I personally do not drink coffee; I do eat some coffee products on occasion.

(Pica Pica Maize Kitchen - Arepa Catira)

After circling the market, which was rather small, I decided on Pica Pica Maize Kitchen, which actually was one of the two choices for lunch based on yelp reviews. The other was Gott's Roadside Napa next door to the market. It was a bit difficult to figure out what to order out of the menu at Pica Pica as I'm not very familiar with Venezuelan cuisine. They did have the ingredients written out next to each name so I picked it based on what kinds of meat and assortments I wanted. I ended up with an Arepa Catira, which was sauteed chicken in their signature sofrito with cheddar cheese in a grilled corn bread. The market was full and there weren't any open tables, so we took our food to Fuller Park which was a few blocks away from the market. Personally it was more enjoyable sitting outdoors under a few trees in a quiet park eating the food than it was with people criss-crossing everywhere in a stuffy room.

The Arepa Catira was descent. I found the arepa to be too hard and rough against the meat and the cheese. The chicken and the cheese were well marinated and were tasty on their own, though there were just a bit too much cheese and not enough chicken. When they were bitten along with the bread, the thick texture of the bread destroyed whatever balance that was left and all I could feel in my mouth was the thick corn bread. Personally I almost wanted to pour out the insides and eat it alone with less cheese, and occasionally take small bites into the arepa to balance out the chicken and cheese. If it wasn't because of the soothing atmosphere of a green park, this would had been a mediocre meal at best.

(Gott's Roadside's Daily Special)

That afternoon we visited two other wineries, V. Sattui and Chateau Montelena, both of which were superb in their own right which I'll go into details in the next post. After a whole day's worth of wine and food, we stopped by Gott's Roadside up in St. Helena right on highway 29. I was so glad that I saw the place on my way up to Chateau Montelena, this place was amazing.

(Gott's Roadside - Wisconsin Sourdough)

As soon as I stepped foot in front of the counter of Gott's Roadside, I knew I was definitely in Napa Valley when I saw one of the specials for the day was Pillar Rock's Cabernet Sauvignon. Leave it to Napa to serve wine as a daily special next to a Chicken Tortilla soup and a Dulce de Leche Shake. I had enough wine for the day though so I only ordered the Wisconsin Sourdough. I saw on the menu that it had both mushrooms and in a sourdough and I didn't have to think twice. I'm a burger person and I make my own burgers from scratch with my own recipe, but this was seriously one of the best burgers I had ever had.

Unlike the Menage A Trios from Ike's, Gott's Roadside's Wisconsin Sourdough's flavors were all distinct and coherent. Though my intent was to take the burger back to the hotel to eat, I took a few bites before heading off. When the burger first entered my mouth, I could taste the juiciness of the medium cooked beef, the aroma and the sweetness from the mushrooms, the chewiness of the bacon, the tangy BBQ sauce on top distinct from the creamy mayo, and the cheddar, all squeezed between two crunchy sourdough bread slices. They all then blended inside my mouth forming one coherent divine burger taste that cried out to me to eat me and eat me now. I had to resist the urge to eat it all right there since it was still a bit early for dinner. It was just convenient for us to grab the dinner right then.

I also got to try some of their sweet potato fries that my friend ordered. I personally don't care for sweet potato, though I would eat it when the opportunity presented itself. I took a few pieces and they were delicious if you like sweet potatoes. They were fresh, well cut and the flavors of the sweet potato was definitely there.

Most people would opt for a nice sit down restaurant while eating in Napa. But we weren't really super hungry and my friend really didn't eat much to begin with. So it's certainly possible to find some good joints to get your taste buds all fired up in Napa. If you are ever in the valley, just be certain to stop by Gott's Roadside and give their burgers a shot. If you are a fan of red wines, be sure to grab a bottle while sinking your teeth into some of the best burgers money can buy.

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Riesling, riesling, where for art thou my riesling? - 2010 San Francisco & Napa Trip Day 3 - The Wine

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