Beautiful Day Photography’s Weblog

SO, this by far was the best wine tasting trip I have ever been on. Two close girlfriends of mine, Dr. Cher Johnson and Dr. Deena Amir have birthdays one day apart from each other, so it was a joint celebration. I of course had to make my famous iron-on t-shirts for the occasion, stating ” Like fine wine they get better with age-Napa Valley 2008″. I have to thank Cher and Deena AND their lovely men Ian and Don for how smoothly this weekend went. We stayed at this gorgeous

home up at the very top of a cliff, so high that my car BARELY made it up the hill and the hawks were flying right above our place! Don ordered us a party bus, which after spending quite some time on it, I have decided is the WAY TO GO for sure when you are wine tasting. No more squeezing in and out of a limo tipsy….It was perfect! We had about 12 people and SO many rooms in the house that we never got to visit them all. The first night we had groceries and BBQed at the house, but the next night after a LONG day of visiting like 8 wineries, we had a personal chef come to the house to cook and clean for us! We were in SUCH a coma afterwards that we couldn’t even move. They were SO amazing, they came hours early, prepped the food, served us drinks and appetizers to us in the pool and hot tub, set the table, made an amazing meal and dessert AND cleaned up…all for about only $50 a person!

Me at winery number 4, and Leif at Winery # 5 I started having to take photos of the glasses and signs in order to REMEMBER them all!

Don, Jill and Ian at the crazy Caste winery with the crazy cheese platter.

The Girls on the party bus!!

The boys on the party bus! It was fabulous, because we spent sometimes 30-45 minutes driving in between the valleys to the different wineries and we were able to listen to old 80’s music and watch their hilarious videos on flat screens , eat and drink on the party bus. I think most of the fun happened on the bus! One of the wineries called Tres Sabores was OUR ABSOLUTE favorite. We had this amazing picnic of 20 different cheeses and meats and their amazing wines and sauces to go along with it. We sat underneath this tree and ate and the owner of the winery toured us through their vines and explained how they pruned and prepared their wine. We were ALL by ourselves and it was the hardest winery to find in the middle of nowhere, but SO owrth it. Apparently an arsonist a few years ago burned their WHOLE crop for the year and they were able to salvage the charred red wine, decant it and turn it into this amazing pomegranate mole sauce for pork and chicken. They called it “Porque No? or Why Not?” So apropos, because when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade…or in this case Mole Sauce:)