For the final leg of our USA holiday within a holiday it was off to California. We flew into Oakland and picked up a car for a six day trip into the countryside. Three nights in Napa Valley followed by three nights in Yosemite seemed to be a good way to finish up.
After obtaining four hard earned free winery tasting vouchers by attending a timeshare presentation, on our first day of exploration from Napa we headed west to an area of vineyards near the town of Sonoma. With Eric driving we wisely limited ourselves to two tastings for the journey. Incidentally the blood alcohol limit for driving in California is 0.08 but I shudder to think what it would be like behind the wheel with that much booze under the belt!
As noted, tastings in Napa are not free - actually they can be very pricey if you choose the high end bottles but they are generous (hence the caution about driving). Both wineries were extremely nice and were we at home we would certainly have brought a bottle or two. If we had been buying, a quick calculation accounting for shipping costs and the Australian Wine Equalisation Tax (aka protecting the Australian wine industry) we would have been up for about an extra US $500 on top of the price of the bottles to ship a dozen home!
When tasting, we tried to select at least some varieties of grape that were uncommon in Australia. Zinfandel was one variety we see little of in Australia that we quite liked (postscript... after a bit of internet research apparently it is more common in Australia than we first thought so we'll be looking out for more of these at home). One thing that surprised us. We went in with the perception that we would be tasting some amazing reds, but it was the whites that really impressed the most. The reds were nice but the whites were amazing, especially the chardonnay. Guest services at our hotel gave us a complementary bottle of chardonnay for the room which may have been the best chardy we have ever tasted. You don't see that generosity in Australia!
Sonoma itself is a very stylish town. It's a typical tourist town in a wine region full of very expensive hotels, restaurants, artisan producers, galleries, handicraft stores etc etc. So we followed our picnic lunch with visits to the bakery, the chocolatier and the ice cream store before (carefully) driving home for the day..
After obtaining four hard earned free winery tasting vouchers by attending a timeshare presentation, on our first day of exploration from Napa we headed west to an area of vineyards near the town of Sonoma. With Eric driving we wisely limited ourselves to two tastings for the journey. Incidentally the blood alcohol limit for driving in California is 0.08 but I shudder to think what it would be like behind the wheel with that much booze under the belt!
As noted, tastings in Napa are not free - actually they can be very pricey if you choose the high end bottles but they are generous (hence the caution about driving). Both wineries were extremely nice and were we at home we would certainly have brought a bottle or two. If we had been buying, a quick calculation accounting for shipping costs and the Australian Wine Equalisation Tax (aka protecting the Australian wine industry) we would have been up for about an extra US $500 on top of the price of the bottles to ship a dozen home!
When tasting, we tried to select at least some varieties of grape that were uncommon in Australia. Zinfandel was one variety we see little of in Australia that we quite liked (postscript... after a bit of internet research apparently it is more common in Australia than we first thought so we'll be looking out for more of these at home). One thing that surprised us. We went in with the perception that we would be tasting some amazing reds, but it was the whites that really impressed the most. The reds were nice but the whites were amazing, especially the chardonnay. Guest services at our hotel gave us a complementary bottle of chardonnay for the room which may have been the best chardy we have ever tasted. You don't see that generosity in Australia!
Sonoma itself is a very stylish town. It's a typical tourist town in a wine region full of very expensive hotels, restaurants, artisan producers, galleries, handicraft stores etc etc. So we followed our picnic lunch with visits to the bakery, the chocolatier and the ice cream store before (carefully) driving home for the day..
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