Tastings (Winery Hopping) in Napa Valley Part 1

I had the amazing honor of being taken on a trip to Napa a little over a month ago.  It was such an educational and wonderful experience.  I can't begin to explain how awesome it was, which is why this post is so late.  I'm going to try my hardest!  Our first stop was at the "Disneyland of Wineries" Sterling Vineyards.  It really is pretty commercial yet magical.  You ride a small sky gondola up to the tasting, there is grape stomping, and you stroll around tasting wine and looking at an amazing view.  

After experiencing the "normal" tour, our amazing hosts took us up to the private tasting room.  We were treated like rich people, and I felt like I was in a movie.  We got a cheese plate, and it was there that I learned my favorite wine term, "revisit."  Basically if you want another shot at the wine you just had, you say you want to revisit it, and they just give you another tasting on the house.  I've annoyed all my friends by using this phrase for everything.  "Oooh, I wanna revisit that mint chocolate chip Nesquik from Scolaris.  Think they'd let me?"  The answer is always no.  Only in Napa I guess.

This was also the place where I learned the three sip rule.  You see those wine snobs do the aerating and slurping and silliness, but as it turns out this is actually based on science.  The first sip is not how the wine should actually taste.  One of the sips you slurp to aerate and get your taste buds ready.  The last sip is the one that it is really all about.  All the tastings are about 7 sips worth of wine, so if you get a good one, revisiting that one is a great idea.

Our next stop was the most memorable of the trip.  Neon Beast and I are very fond of port, so visiting Prager Winery & Port Works was something we will never forget.  Prager is run by a very nice family, and their tasting room is covered in bills from every country you can imagine, as you can see a bit in the background of this shot.

This place was so exclusive that five of us shared two tastings.  The tastings were much smaller than Sterling, but so much richer.  Maybe it was just that port is more our thing, but it was the most amazing port I've had ever.  We got invited over to taste some at a friends house about a week ago, and it was, again, an amazing experience.  I still can't put into words how amazing Prager is.  If you are ever in Napa, do everything you can to get into the place for a tasting.

Our last stop for the day was Robert Mondavi, which I think I had been to before when I was a kid.  The grounds are so beautiful:

It really has a reputation to uphold, and I think it does that beautifully.  We got to drink in a private tasting room off of the main room, and it was cozy-amazing.  Their wines were fantastic, we ended up buying a moscato that we enjoyed for a birthday.  Ending the day here was perfect, and we decided that we needed a word for in-between sober and buzzed: Happy.  At that moment, there was nothing wrong in the world.

View Part 2 Here