Day trip to Napa

Most of you know what wine lovers Karl and I are. Last year we took a short vacation to Sonoma and visited 16 wineries there, so today we woke up and decided it would be a great day to try out some of the fine wines in Napa. We were on the road by about 9:30 and after getting on the freeway going the wrong way, discovering our mistake, and turning around, we arrived at our first winery at 10:40 a.m. (Side note - I'm not a fan of all the Highway 80s in California..there's 580, 680, 880, 980, and 80. How can anyone keep them all straight?!)

I would write a more detailed description about the six wineries that we visited today, but Karl already did so on his blog, so I'm just going to direct you to his for more information on our favorites! Just follow the link above and find his entry for July 30, 2008 (even though today is the 29th...his blog software did that automatically. Weird). We ended up buying four bottles today: two Cabs, one Merlot, and one Pinot Noir. Our favorite winery of the day was Hess Collection, and by the time we left that place we had signed up to be members of their wine club, so that should tell you just how much we loved it!

Since Karl did a nice job explaining each of the wineries, I'll post a few photos from the day:

Karl peering into the little pond in front of the Hess Collection Winery. That's the tasting room and art gallery in the background.

Me in front of one of the vineyards at Robert Mondavi Winery.

Karl and I enjoying our "reserve tastes" that we got at Mondavi. It was a beautiful day so we sat outside to enjoy some tastes of Fume Blanc, Pinot Noir, '99 Cabernet Sauvignon, and '04 Cabernet Sauvignon.

The vineyard at Silver Oaks Winery, which had the best Cabs we had ever tasted.

That's all for now! I'll try to write another update later this week! :)