(Caution - really long blog post ahead.)
Right this very minute, I’m flying over the snow-capped Sierras on my way back to the frozen tundra that is Chicago. This morning I had my coffee on the patio in the sun at the hotel in San Francisco, waiting for the airport shuttle. The weather makes me want to stay. The wine makes me want to stay, but I have good reasons to go home.
I’m distracted… the mountains outside the window are breathtaking. Forgive the eclectic nature of today’s post. I have a lot to cover.
Thursday night I spent the night with friends outside of Sacramento, in Folsom. Yes, near the prison. I managed to stay out of it, and on Friday morning, I woke to a lovely breakfast on the terrace: Swedish pancakes, fresh berries, bacon, coffee… my friends, Chris and Mary, were born to own a bed and breakfast. After a bit of discussion over the breakfast, we decided to head to Amador County for the afternoon, in search of the perfect wine for dinner.
Chris drove us on a beautiful 40-minute drive through the rolling foothills of the Sierras, and then we arrived at our first stop: Villa Toscano, which is a beautiful place. The tasting room is gorgeous, there’s a nice shop, barrel tasting, and the outside grounds are stunning. The wine is okay. Lots of old vine zinfandels and a barbera that was pretty nice, but nothing that knocked my socks off. Good first stop for the basis of comparison.
2nd stop: Turley, which recently opened their tasting room in Amador County (the other is in Paso Robles). One wine in particular made my ‘best of the trip’ list: their Dogtown Vineyard Zinfandel from Lodi. Outstanding. I like my zins like I like my men - spicy, interesting, and complex. Dogtown was all of the above and the next best thing about the Turley tasting room was the delightful sommelier who suggested a couple of other places down the road. “Tell them the Turley girl sent you,” she said. We did.
3rd stop: Amador Cellars. Winner of “favorite winery of the whole trip.” Not only were their wines outstanding - every single one of them - but the operation is small, family-run, and all of the magic happens in one building with a cozy (and free) tasting bar in front of the barrels. The owner’s son and assistant vintner, Michael Long, who clearly takes great pride in his work, explained where they get the grapes, what kind of yeasts they use, about the aging process, the kind of oak in the barrels, on and on and on… He was delightful and informative and he makes excellent wine. We were the only people in the place for quite a while. Like many other wineries in Amador County, they discourage large drunk-fest parties by requiring limousines to make appointments and they don’t accept buses at all. Socks knocked off.
Last stop of the day - Terre Rouge/Easton, also recommended by the “Turley-girl.” We drank more lovely zins and enjoyed the company of a great winery dog, Willow. Tasting room manager, Doug Bellamy was knowledgable and entertaining and again, the tasting was free and there was only one other couple there, so we really got to know the wines up close and personal.
My friends treated me to a fantastic dinner of filet mignon, haricorts verts with mushrooms and a family-protected secret sauce, whipped potatoes, all paired with the Dogtown Zin. We played music together and I went to sleep under a big fluffy duvet, tired and happy.
The next morning I was picked up by, Gillian, who, if you read Up the Hill before it was pulled for editing, is one and the same, and we headed out for Napa Valley.Traffic was slow and it took us a while to get there, but the conversation was good and the scenery was pretty. Even though it was cloudy and overcast, it was warm enough for flip flops and all was well.
Napa and Amador are two entirely different animals. The Napa wineries are huge tourist destinations and have gigantic, fancy buildings and grounds and huge parking lots to accomodate all of the tourists, birthday and wedding parties, buses, etc. It was good to see both, but as beautiful as Napa is, I’d much rather spend my day in Amador.
I digress.
First stop in Napa Valley - Domaine Chandon. In Napa, there is a hefty tasting fee at each winery, but most include the brand-etched tasting glass. There’s currently a bagful of wine glasses under my feet on the airplane.
Squirrel.
Oh yeah. Chandon. Gillian had the bubbly stuff. I had the red wines. Their pinot noir is okay. The pinot meunier is blah. It’s a big brand with big money behind it and not enough character if you ask me. Onward.
Stop number two: Rombauer. Lovely grounds. Beautiful, really. Crowded tasting room and again, boring but passable wines. Lots of time and money spent on being tourist-friendly and not enough on the production of their wines.
Last winery stop of the trip: Clos Pegase. You want to talk gorgeous setting? Beautiful building? Yes, and yes. Also, the wines are pretty wonderful. I really loved their cabernet sauvignon and their Origami red blend. Very wonderful. Again, you pay for tasting, but they were healthy pours and we took our time with our new friend, Brian, who took lots of time telling us about what we were drinking.
And then it was time for dinner.
We drove to St. Helena and had dinner at the Culinary Institute at Greystone. Oh. My. Spectacular. That’s a whole essay in itself, but if you have the chance to go… DO.
After dinner we headed for Calistoga and a bar called Hydro Grill. It's a kitschy place with some character, but they were supposed to have a band and the band canceled before we got there and after waiting 15 minutes for the bartender to bring us the drinks we ordered and watching him wash glasses and talk to other customers without pouring the wine and Diet Pepsi (really - how much time and effort does that take?) we left.
Gillian and I decided to head back to San Francisco so I’d be close to the airport for my morning flight. We made a reservation at Doubletree through Hotels.com and arrived shortly after midnight after a very rainy, dark and winding… nay - altogether frightening, drive, only to find a lobby FULL of people who had been promised rooms that were unavailable. I have work ahead of me to recoup the $189 that was charged to my card for that, but the more immediate issue was finding somewhere to sleep.
We sat outside in Gillian’s two-seater Lexus and called Hotels.com back, were on hold for (and I kid you not) an hour and twenty-two minutes before they hung up on us. We drove to no fewer than a dozen hotels on Airport Boulevard and there was not a room to be had.
3:30 a.m.
I call the central reservation number for Hilton. They tell me there’s a room at the Hampton Inn. We happen to be in their parking lot. I go in and beg for the room only to be told they sold it five minutes earlier. I ask, in desperation, if the clerk knows anywhere there might be a room for a night, contemplating telling him that my wife, Mary is about to deliver a child.
He makes a few calls and says that the Hotel Dylan has one room with a no-show. We go back to the car and call and talk to Mike, who says yes, but that he can’t release it until 4 a.m. Gillian begs him to hold it for us, telling him that we’re on our way. She gives him her phone number and then Mike gets snippy with Gillian, who is British and doesn’t suffer such attitudes well, and now we have lost this room.
Except….
I do not have a British accent, so we pull up outside the Hotel Dylan at 3:56 a.m. and I go inside and ask if there’s a room. Mike tells me there’s a no-show and he can give me this room and asks me if I just called. I look at him quizzically and say, “No… why?” He answers that it must be serendipity and after 15 minutes of paperwork, I have hotel key-cards in my hand and we finally go up to bed and I go off to sleep for the 3 hours I have before I have to get up to catch the shuttle to the airport.
And here I am, with some sparkling wine on my tray table and the end of my story.
You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert.
