A few weeks ago my old college roomate Jon and his wife Sissel came to visit from Norway. It was one of their wishes to go up to wine country and relive the movie "Sideways" as much as possible. We did try, in a kind of haphazard way, to accomplish this, but other plans kind of got in the way (like, we tried to do other things in the morning and didn't get going with the wine tasting till 2 p.m.) Nevertheless, it was a really nice Sunday afternoon last weekend, from which I have some pictures to share.
In the picture above, Sissel (Jon's wife) and I are sampling some of the red wine at Roshambo in the Russian River. The visit to this place was recommended by a local. I think they figured, since we were young, we would like it here. Of all the wineries I visited, this place did have the most cocktail-bar like atmosphere, thus allowing us to somewhat relive "Sideways" (minus the extracurriculars). Rochambo has the youngest staff of all the 5 places we visited, and has the hippest music floating down from the ceiling. However, it was not the best wine we tasted, and we were on a tight schedule, so we moved on.
The nice thing about tasting wine where it is made (if possible, I recommend actually eating some grapes off the vines) is you appreciate the work that goes into it. Consider that to make this wine we are tasting, they started out with a bunch of grapes, which are basically a sticky, sugary mess of water, skin, pulp, and seed. The non-liquid component needs to be removed from the mixture in the vats to make the wine (and they don't use their feet either). Then, the wine-chef needs to ferment the wine just right, so that the sugar in the wine turns into alcohol, without the flavor being lost and the wine turning sour. Any "wrong" bacteria in the mixture and the whole lot is spoiled. The whole environment needs to be highly controlled.
In fact wine is probably cheaper than it ought to be (I have read that growing grapes doesn't even turn a profit anymore). A good bottle of wine can be found in some of the vineyards for about $20. (my favorite variety is probably the Zinfandel). Most of the wines we tasted were priced between $18 and $30.
I case you are wondering how we made the pictures, we had the pleasure of riding around Napa valley in a convertible, with the top down (it was a Chrysler Sebring). This was a new experience for me. I can definitely see the attraction of convertibles out here in California, where it never rains between May and November.
So, next time one of you 3 readers of this blog comes out here to visit, make sure you rent the convertible, and call me up so we can go back up to Napa!
