Bodhi Bum

Sunday and wine is a great mix. Especially if it's at 10:00 in the morning. Like the tour guide said, it's 5 o'clock somewhere. Good excuse for getting buzzed before lunch. I like this high-so wine tasting thing. You can take little sips and talk about bouquets and nuts and fruits and stuff, and pretend you're all cultured and important. But in the end you end up pissed anyways and feel like you're more cultured for it. The little power naps on the bus between the wineries are a bonus.

We got picked up by about 8:30 this morning and was pleasently surprised by nice bus. A bit of a step up from the little mini-van that took us out to Yosemite last weekend. Plus it was only a short little hour ride out to to Sonoma and the first winery, rather than a four hour drive before, so it was a much better and more relaxing trip.

We arrived at the first winery in Sonoma which was a mid-sized operation run by one of the original wine families in the area from an old wine family from Italy. The third generation son broke away from the family and went back to his roots and only uses old world Italian grapes. We sampled some of the grapes right off the vine, and the tasting room had a ton of free pesto and sauce samples. So it was a nice buffet of food and wine.

The next place we moved on to was in Napa valley, and the valley is a pretty interesting place. It's only five miles wide at the start, and one mile at the end. But the entire length of the valley is wall to wall grape vines. From what the tour guide said it takes big money to grow grapes and to make the wines, and it cost more to buy the land in Napa than most places to buy the land and make a house and start a gold mine in the backyard.

It was a great tour, and after the second wine tasting most people were getting pretty tipsy and friendly. It's amazing how a tour of Yosemite most of the tour group is just snapping pics and keeping to themselves. You give tourists five or six wine samples and they become your long lost friend. Not to mention the tour guide decided he was Mr. matchmaker and preceded to try to hook up all the single tourists on the bus. Good thing I was in a group of four since he figured being two girls and two guys we were hooked up. I feel sorry for the young New Zealand guy who got matched up with every divorcee in the bus.

Good day and good experience. I've always wanted to go to Napa and it's another wish destination crossed off the list. I was first here in San Francisco back in 2001, and Napa was big on my list of places to visit. I didn't get the chance back then, but this time I managed to strike that one off. My list is steadily getting shorter and I'm working my way through. I think it was a good thing that I waited before seeing Napa, as doing it now I have the relative comparison of seeing the old world wine country of Bavaria in Germany (Schwabian red wine country) and Beaujolais in France to compare to. It's amazing the difference in the culture and attitude between the old and new world. Mind you. I'm not quite a wine snob yet. Close. But not quite yet.

Bodhi