A New Birth: Day 8: Into the Caves

Bright and early on Friday morning (a little too early to drink wine, but oh well...we must do what we must do :) we headed to Del Dotto Winery and Caves. It is an amazing place...old, viney, with caves built in 1885 by Chinese laborers with picks and shovels.

We started out in the tasting room with the first wine...it was superb.

Then we headed in to where the barrels are kept for aging.

Dave (who married a Del Dotto daughter) was our tour guide. It is so interesting the way they get the wine for tasting. They stick a glass cylinder (called a fife) into the barrel to extract the wine and then release it into your glass.

We tried A LOT of wines....18 in all! (just 2-3 sips each, but by the middle I was taking one sip and dumping it out!)

The caves are dark, a little dank, humid and a bit claustrophobic...but ever so cool.

We tried lots of different kinds of red wine....even the same wine aged in barrels made of different kinds of wood...and they tasted completely different.

At the end of the tour they give you cheese, crackers and chocolate and try to sell you one or two or more of their bottles, but they are VERY EXPENSIVE. We paid $40 for the tour, so that was the extent of our budget. The tour was worth every penny, though.

This bottle that Jim is next to sells for $1000. Yes, one thousand dollars.
And they sell a bunch of them, so they told us.

They also sell these...can't even imagine how much this costs full of wine.

After all those tastings, we went back to the Oakville Grocery for some bread, cheese and salami for lunch and looked for a picnic spot.

It was GORGEOUS out...about 78 degrees, no humidity. We loved that we had a convertible.
I think just around this time, New England was experiencing record cold...ha ha.

We drove through Napa Valley headed north into St. Helena.

Here is one of the wineries we passed...St. Clement's...if it looks familiar, this house was the scene of the TV show Falcon Crest...one of my favorites way back when....

One thing we learned was the reason why they plant roses in vineyards...The same bugs that destroy grape vines destroy roses too, and they can see the bugs a lot easier on the roses than on the vines.

Our next wine tour that afternoon was the winery at the tip top of Spring Mountain...reached by a narrow winding road that brought you high up over Napa Valley. Pride Winery was our destination....a winery with many commendations including the fact that their wines have been served at the White House for the past 8 years....impressive.

We sat out on their deck to have our lunch before our appointment....beautiful view of some of their vineyards.

The caves at Pride are very clean, modern, open, bright and cheery.

Here are two barrels of Chardonnay aging in clear barrels...Did you know they have to stir these every once in a while?..just the white wines..not red ones.

Jason, the sommelier at Pride Winery gave us the tour...he was so sweet and very knowledgeable.

Jason suggested we drive a bit further up the mountain to look at their vineyards...amazingly enough over 50% of their grapes were still on the vines.

Don't those grapes look luscious?

The views were AMAZING. Our innkeeper at Inn on First told us that his friend was coming next week and he (our innkeeper) suggested to him that this was THE SPOT to propose marriage...I would have to agree...it is ever so romantic.

On the way back to the inn we were surprised to see that even the grapevine leaves change color in the fall.

And later that night, we headed to supper at a restaurant I had been anticipating for MONTHS. We had made reservations weeks and weeks in advance.

BOTTEGA.
If you follow either the Food Network or Top Chef you may know who Michael Chiarello is...this is his restaurant.
Extremely popular both with the locals and tourists.