11 June – Napa

Woke up to a glorious day in Napa.  Steve went for a walk up a nearby track (all the holiday eating is starting to catch up LOL) & saw some balloons doing scenic tours of the valley.  Also got some pictures of the Napa Valley.  

We dropped off the scooter for a service and then went wine tasting.

The first vineyard was Robert Madavi.  Wines from this label come from 2x properties totally about 900 acres. We did a reserve wine tasting and were hosted by a lovely lady (Jani).  The wines were great.  A gentleman there at the time was buying up for a party and bought a total of 72 bottles of wine.  These are reserve wines and would have averaged about $100 to $130 per bottle.  I want to go to that party J.  The second vineyard was Peju Province and we tasted a selection of standard and reserve wines.  All were quite good. 

Our third winery was Beringer.  It is supposedly well known as it was one of the only wineries to continue during prohibition making the church wines.  We found their wines to be quite “factory like” (each to their own).  We did a chocolate and wine pairing and found none appealed to us.  We then did a reserve tasting (of 3x wines).  The Chardonnay was quite nice but the following pinot noir & port were… well nasty.  Have an interesting sequence of photos of Ros’s face during her tasting, which says it all, and there were their reserve wines!  It was a nice vineyard with some pretty buildings etc.  

We quickly made our way from Beringer to our past favourite, Castello Di Amorosa.  Some of you may recall we visited here on our 2011 trip.  We skipped the castle tour and went straight to the wine tasting.  A very enjoyable experience.  They also had a couple of emus & albino peacocks in their yard outside of the castle.  At the end of the day we were very good and only bought 7 wines, but they were very nice wines.  We picked up the scooter from its service (all good there), went back to the rv park and had a light dinner. Early night tonight we thinks J.