Travel Tuesday: Napa

Remember the time I wrote a couple posts about Kev and I's one year anniversary trip to Cali?

Yeah I barely did either.

Welp, I've found the prefect way to follow up and show you the rest of the trip..if you missed the first few posts you can find them here, here & here!

Kev and I knew that we wanted to hit up Napa while we were out there but we needed to figure out the logistics of how to get from San Fran to Napa and back.

Well we found a tour (Wine Country Tour Shuttle) that picked us up the Ferry Building in San Francisco, drove us to Sonoma Valley/Napa, took us around to four different vineyards and then brought us back to San Fran via ferry through the bay!

The tour was great and if you ever head out that way I suggest you look them up!

They have two different tour options, we went with the Napa Experience with Ferry tour.

The four vineyards we went to were:
Franciscan Winery

V. Sattui Winery

Andretti Winery

Rutherford Wine Company

 

It was the perfect set up and Kev and I had so much fun!

The Ferry Building in San Fran

San Fransisco Bay

Franciscan Winery

We got to taste the grapes that made the wine.

Since we went in October pretty much all of the white wine grapes had already been picked so it was mostly reds for us :)

 This and the next two pictures are the different "behind the scenes" areas for the different vineyards!

 All of those white boxes are stuffed with grapes to be made into wine!

These are much bigger than they seem, you'll see a picture of Kev next to one later :)
Did you know the type of wood wine is stored in can greatly affect the taste of the wine?

The taste can also be highly impacted by how long they "toasted" the barrel for.

 V. Sattui Winery

 

This was by far my favorite vineyard that we hit up!

They have a huge deli area with meats, cheeses, and other wine appropriate snacks.

We actually ordered a couple of Christmas presents for people from here and they loved it!

So if anyone needs a good gift I would suggest taking a look at their site.

All of the vineyards had a fee for their wine tasting. 

V Sattui's was supposed to be $20 for 8 tastings...

Well the woman that was serving us was very generous and I'm pretty sure we got closer to 15 tasting!

I had to step away from the table...not kidding lol.

Kev and I ended up getting a few bottles of wine for ourselves

One for our anniversary dinner the next night

A traveling FYI - All restaurants in San Fran allow/have to let patrons bring in their own wine if they want too. 

There is usually a small corking fee but well worth it if you want to drink some wine without buying the restaurant price for a glass! 

 

The one we are holding here we bought and are keeping to drink on our 5 year anniversary!

We thought it'd be fun to buy something like that for us to think back too!

The other two we took home...and drank very quickly!

Andretti Winery

Yes, this is owned by race car driving family Andretti and it is super cute.

I loved the charm of this place overall and I would have to say we learned the most about the wine making process and what goes into a vineyard here than any of the other places.

Kev getting wine for the "bunghole" 

I am not even joking when I say that...the hole in a wine barrel is called a bunghole.

I feel dirty just writing the word and it takes me right back to Beavis and Butthead...beh...not what you should think of when wine tasting in Napa right?!

 

The last winery was pretty small and looked more like a business store than a winery.

It was pretty though and probably the best place to end the tour because I think everyone was pretty tired, drunk, and needed the rest their little living room style tasting room provided. 

As I mentioned on the way home we got to take a Ferry across the bay and funny enough while crossing from the Napa side to the San Fran side you will pass by the San Quentin Prison!

Luckily these were the last views we got and not the prison! 

Needless to say I want go back to Napa, and I want to take friends!

I think it's a great place to have a friends trip!

So much wine, so little time!

Happy Tuesday friends!