Monday, October 2nd

Since it's harvest time in the vineyards - one of the best times to visit Wine Country - I had to take the family up there.

Our first stop at COPIA, The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts in downtown Napa. According to the website, "COPIA is a non-profit discovery center whose mission is to explore, celebrate and share the many pleasures and benefits of wine, its relationship to food and its significance to our culture." I love that place!

We were a little short on time, so we raced to the parts of the center that we really wanted to see; I was most interested in the Edible Gardens since I'd never seen them before. I saw my first walnut trees and filbert trees and pistachio trees (I seriously had no idea what an immature pistachio looked like - it was like a mini mango!);

I saw persimmon and figs and grapefruit and Meyer lemons ripening on trees; and my favorite...the Maggetti White Wine and Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates Red Wine Gardens, described in the brochure as "living sensory guides for aspiring wine aficionados. The outside sections of each square contain fruits, flowers, herbs and vegetables representing flavors and aronmas often used to describe wine made from a particular grape varietal. The inside sections are seasonally planted with foods that complement the wine." This is definitely the place to go if you're like me, and cannot for the life of you pick out the 'pear' flavor in a wine, or the essence of tobacco...the gardens put it all right there in front of you making it a lot more understandable and memorable.

We then continued up Hwy. 29 and stopped at the Oakville Grocery, the ever-recommended stop for quick and delicious picnic-style lunch food. We sat outside on benches, overturned wine barrels as our tables, eating roasted corn salad, bread and cheeses, amongst other things.

Our next stop was at Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga (see links), where I completed my Crush Camp internship last fall. I love Sterling for first-time visitors to the Napa Valley because it offers a geographical, functional and sensory introduction to Wine Country all in one, and at a really affordable price. For $15 each (we could have saved $5 each had we gotten there before 12:30), we were privy to a scenic tram ride up the hillside, a self-guided tour through the winery (where operations were in full swing since they are mid-harvest!), and a five-wine tasting in their tasting room.

This was my fourth time to Sterling, and each time I go, I relish the olfactory feast that I experience throughout the tour. On Monday, they were doing a lot of pump-overs in the red-wine fermentation tanks, and the sweet, but slightly pungent odor of early fermentation was thick in the air. I could not take enough deep breaths; that smell fills me with hope.

I explained to everyone, to the best of my knowledge, the function of the fermentation locks on the barrels. I'd never actually seen a fermentation lock in action...basically, it's a little contraption that's corked into the bung hole (I'm serious) of a barrel during fermentation that lets carbon dioxode escape, but does not allow air to get in (which might result in bacterial contamination). It was so fun to see all the bubbling and to imagine what was going on inside the barrels!

The tour finished with the tasting, and I think my brother really delighted in feigning wine snobbishness by swirling his wine, pushing his nose into the glass, sipping and swishing..then dramatically announcing his views on the wine. I wasn't fooled.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the final wine would be the 2005 Malvasia Bianca. I'd *tasted* this one in its initial fermentation stages right out of the tank last year, when it was still a sweet and slightly effervescent juice. It was delicious, and even though I got the runs from drinking copious amounts of fermenting juice that fateful day, I promised myself that I'd return in a year to try the finished product. It was delicious! I bought a bottle on my way out...I'm thinking that maybe I'll uncork it whence I finally have a wine and cheese party in my apartment, which should happen soon!

After all that, we drove out to Sonoma for dinner. My good friend Noelle, who's working in the Napa Valley as a harvest intern, met us at the Girl and the Fig and we sat outside under heat lamps enjoying some very dee-licious food and drink. The only downfall of the evening was my brother being served an after-dinner martini glass FULL OF VODKA, which gave him the liquid courage to start up the brother-sister antagonism that had been lying dormant thus far in their visit. So there was a little bickering and some judgment passed on my, apparently overly-leisurely lifestyle on the ride home...but Kurt, if you're reading this, it wouldn't have been a complete visit without that. I still love you lots!