Napa Valley Monday

On our second full day in San Francisco, we headed out of town to wine country: Sonoma and Napa Valley.

Andretti Winery in Napa Valley

We started early with a bit of wander out of our sketchy neighbourhood to the less sketchy area around Union Square, where a bus picked us up for our tour. After swapping onto another bus down by Fisherman’s Wharf, our tour guide Patrick took us swiftly out of town via the Golden Gate Bridge. This was our first exciting look at the most photographed bridge in the world. We got to see it many more times, from every possible angle, over the course of our stay.

Our tour took us to three wineries. First stop was Cline Vineyard & Winery in Sonoma, where we were treated to a tasting of five of their wines, along with some tasting tips that would prove useful throughout the rest of the day. We then got to explore the vineyard and winery, and learn about the history of the place. The main building had a kind of Southern look to it, with a wide wrap around deck in the shade that provided a welcome break from the Californian sun.

Our next stop of the day was the Sebastiani Vineyard & Winery, also in Sonoma. Started in 1904 by Samuele Sebastiani, an immigrant from Tuscany, the Sebastiani Winery is the only one in Sonoma County to have continued operations throughout the Prohibition, producing sacramental and “medicinal” wines. To this day it is still run by the Sebastiani family, and appears to be a pretty large operation.

The tasting took place in a large hall filled was old wooden vats, the biggest of which would apparently take 800 years to drink if you drank one bottle from it every day - sounded like a challenge to us! We also learned that Samuele Sebastiani used to sell wine to the stonemasons at a quarry where he worked prior to starting the vineyard. Apparently this accounts for the crookedness of some of the cobblestones of old San Franciscan streets…

Before our final stop we headed into the town of Sonoma to grab some lunch and wander around the town square. Our third and final stop was the Andretti Winery in Napa Valley, owned by former race driver Mario Andretti  - the only man who has won the Indianapolis 500, Daytona 500 and Formula One World Championship. After some tastings we had some time to wander the property before getting back on the bus, heading back to San Francisco a little more drunk than we had been when we departed the city in the morning.

On the way back into town, Luke spotted an old wooden house that appeared to have been shaken off its foundations, and was generally looking in pretty bad shape - a reminder of the earthquake that rocked Napa Valley just one month ago. We did not see any other damage on our tour, probably because the trip was mostly in agricultural land with few buildings.

In case you missed it, here is the link to our first blog post about this trip:
A Week in San Francisco (Part I)

And here are the rest of the posts from our trip:
A Week in San Francisco (Part II)
Yosemite Wednesday
A Week in San Francisco (Part III)
Muir Woods Friday
A Week in San Francisco (Part IV)

Finally, here are some more pictures from our tour: