Today we went to wine country. The plan was to go all the way to Napa, visiting vineyards on the way, but we only got as far as Sonoma, which I'm okay with. I'm not a huge wine person and I don't think I'd have been able to handle that much alcohol. The drive was really pretty.
Before we went, though, brunch was in order. Brunch must be a huge deal here, because on the block we stopped at, there were at least three other brunch places all open and doing good business. I had mint tea with my meal, and when they say "fresh mint tea", they sure as shit mean "fresh". I'd never seen tea in a french press like this before. It was, indeed, quite fresh, and very good. Like they had just picked the leaves and thrown them in the hot water a minute before they brought it to the table.
We had to cross the Golden Gate Bridge on our way to Sonoma, and so we of course stopped off and took some pictures. I have better ones with us in them on my camera that I haven't downloaded yet. For blogging purposes, it's easier to upload directly from my phone with the app than to take the SD card out of the camera, put it on the computer, then upload to the blog. I may do a photo dump at the end before I leave, just so that I know they're safe.
The first place we stopped at, Jacuzzi family vineyard, also had fancy olive oils and balsamic vinegars for tasting. They had little bread cubes and cups and you could use to mix and taste the different ones. I wound up buying two fancy olive oils that tasted really good, Sevillano (which they later told me was very rare because of the type of olive that it uses and how it takes more to make the same amount of regular olive oil...who knew I had expensive taste?), and Limone (lemon-infused, which was also really good). The guy doing the pouring for our tasting was funny (I think he'd had a bit of his own wares), but nice enough and explained the proper wine-tasting steps and techniques to us.
They had a statue fountain in the back with a sassy Poseidon in the middle that someone had put sunglasses on, and I could not resist having my picture taken with him. We went to another winery that also served cheese and crackers, and between the two of them, I came home with three bottles of dessert wine. I know what I like, and even though I went in with an open mind and tried all the types, I'll always go for the dessertiest dessert wine that ever desserted. Speaking of dessert, we passed a chocolate-tasting bar on the way to our second place and decided we needed to stop on the way back. It worked just like the wineries, where they gave you little pieces of all these fancy chocolates to taste and you could pick which ones you wanted to buy more of. I got a sampler, because they were all good. Chocolate tastings really need to catch on on the east coast.
The original plan after that was to go out to eat and then to karaoke, but it had started raining pretty hard by then and nobody really wanted to walk around in it to go out on the town, so we wound up ordering in and watching netflix, which was fine with me. I don't think I could really have kept up with all the young'uns for another night out after drinking wine all day.
Today, we're hitting up another place for another brunch, and I'll possibly also be meeting some of Gabby's friends who we were going to go out with last night before we all decided against the rain. After that, I'm not sure what kind of adventure awaits, but it'll probably be fun, fancy, and alcohol-fueled. Off I go.
No comments:
Post a Comment