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Written on 1/18/2009

08/05/05: SAN FRANCISCO TRIP - DAY 8: Napa Valley: Frog's Leap Full Tour; Rutherford Grill; Mumm Tour; The Stinking Rose:

Good morning!!! Let's go to Napa Valley today!

Up again in the 6am hour, Union Square is empty as we make our way towards the car and breakfast before we head up to Napa Valley for the day.

Riding the cable cars this early in the morning is awesome.

I'm clearly next to a commuter who would look like he belonged if he were on the New York Subway. But no, he's on a cable car!

We grab the car, and a bagel.

We begin our drive north.

If they actually have a sign that says "hill" here, they really mean it.

Just after the Golden Gate bridge, we leave the fog and the sky turns blue and the temperature jumps 25 degrees.

We hit another foggy patch here at this tunnel through a major hill.

Before long, we were seeing wineries.

Natalie and I knew, when we were planning our trip, that we wanted to take a tour of some vineyards. Agriculture is something I know nothing about, and wine is a fun thing to see made, because it is such a process.

We didn't really have a favorite wine or vintner that we knew of, so Natalie decided to pick from a list of places that have tours in Napa Valley. On the list was a place called "Frog's Leap," known for their organic farming. Sounded good! Natalie loves frogs! So, today we showed up for our 10am reservation. The tour is free, and is probably the best free thing I've ever done... ever.

We got there around 9am... about an hour too early. The place was quiet, there were no signs directing tourists, no sign of life other than three cars in front of this long barn-ish building.

We weren't sure what to do, but we figured something would happen closer to 10am that would let us know where to do or what to do.... so we hung out, took photos, and checked out the vines that surrounded the building.

Around 9:45, nothing was happening. Nobody was around. No more cars filled the lot. We started to get nervous that we were in the wrong place, or that we were missing something, so we walked around the back of the barn to find an oasis. A beautiful water fountain, and a sitting area. Still no people, though.

We found an office next to an orchard. There were some people doing business in there who told us just to hang tight, and that we were in the right place. Yay!

The tour consisted of 3 other couples and us. Very intimate.

The gentleman in the below photo took us from the tasting room, where we met, to a little outdoor patio near the fountain. He sat us down, gave us each an empty wine glass. He began to tell us the story of this vineyard. A graduate from Columbia University's agriculture program came out west with $40 and a dream, literally. He didn't have enough money to afford a hostel, so he slept at the entrance to this property one night, where he was discovered by this property's new owner... a doctor from the East Coast who always had a dream to have a vineyard. The doctor was retired, had a motorcycle, lots of money, and no idea how to farm. The two teamed up and the first year made a small batch they they mostly drank themselves. But then, a local kid who worked at the 7/11 in town made them some beautiful logos for their wine bottles. The 7/11 kid studied graphic design, but did not yet have a job he wanted, so he did little design odd jobs, including the one for Frog's Leap. One day, half a year later, as the Doctor and the Columbia Grad were enjoying their second batch of wine, a man came onto the property looking for the designer of their bottle label. The kid didn't have a phone, so they directed this man to the 7/11 in town to find the kid in person, but before they sent this man on his way, they asked him why he was looking for the kid. The man said that their bottle label had won an international design competition and he had come to notify the designer of their $10,000 prize winnings. After their label won that competition, they could not keep up with the demand. They hired a local who knew how to farm, and the Columbia Grad integrated his organic farming techniques with this local, and their farming was not only successful, but entirely organic. Today, this vineyard is among only about 10% in Napa that grows all of their own grapes.

Needless to say, not only was this story fascinating, but the storyteller had that perfectly zen demeanor that lended so much richness to the experience of sitting outside and listening to this oral history. And of course, as he spoke, he poured, and we got to taste one of their wines before moving on to the next location. This was the most chill facility tour I have ever heard of in my life.

Our next stop was the orchard that the farm workers grow and maintain. They had boxes with the fruit of their labors which they invited us all to take as much of as we would like.

Oh, and they had livestock too. For eggs. For eating on the farm.

Peaches! On a tree! (I've never seen them in person on a living thing!)

There was a sort of epic paradise-like quality to being amongst all of this fresh beauty.

Then we moved over to the more industrial side of things. The storing, aging, bottling, and shipping plant.

They were doing some bottling and shipping as we arrived.

Oak Barrels!!!

They also had huge stainless steel containers as well. We actually got to taste the wine directly out of the barrel, before it was bottled. Neat-o!

The bottling machine was super-fun to watch.

Then we tried our first red, as we progessed through their selection of wines throughout the tour.

Then we went to another part of the facility which had some empty steel containers that were in between wines and were being cleaned. We got to stick our heads in them and look around.

It is now the end of the tour, and we have each probably drunk too much wine per-person over the course of the many varietals we tried throughout the morning. So, to end the tour, the guide showed us a poster with the award winning bottle label on it, told us we could purchase one at the gift shop for $15, OR, we could stand behind a line and get a basketball through the hoop in one shot.

Nobody on our tour got a free poster.

At the end, we checked out the gift shop.

For lunch, we drove down the road to the Rutherford Grill. We had some excellent ribs.

Then we stopped at the Hewitt and Provenance Vineyards tasting room.

We saw the wine-tour train go by. We thought about trying that, but didn't want to get stuck on their schedule all day.

The next tour we took was at the Mumm company, which specializes in sparking wine, which is enough of a different process from regular wine to make another tour in one day worthwhile.

They had some grapes on display for the benefit of tourists, but a lot of their grapes are brought in from elsewhere, as is the trend with winemaking now-a-days.

There are apparently a lot of choices in the size of the bottle. Most of the larger ones are generally not available except by special order.

This hall had a window into a processing room.

Demonstrating how they store and slowly turn the bottles as they age.... the old fashioned way.

They have machines to turn the bottles now.

Part of the tour was watching documentary footage of what they do. Oh well.

With a few hours left in the day, we rushed over to the Jelly Belly headquarters for a tour that our guide books hailed as quite worth the trip. We didn't make it in time to take the last tour of the day, which was a bummer, but we did get to see every flavor ever, and try as many as we liked, which was a nice consolation prize.