Saturday, November 14, 2009

went to Napa today;/ enjoyed great wine, food, and weather/ with awesome wine buddies!!!! :D :D :D

Highlights of the day: freemark abbey, dean/ and deluca, bouchon and/ bouchon bakery, :) :) :)

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Today was as close to perfect as I could really expect, although it started off a bit frantically, hahaha. But really, it was a beautiful day in so many ways....

Yesterday, L and W had said they were going to come early today, but they hadn't mentioned how early they were going to start driving up. As such, I figured they would give a call when they were about near. Set my alarm for 8a but snooze-buttoned my way through till 9:30a when I got a call from L saying they were already at the La F bakery down the block! Well, I just about jumped out of bed and into the shower, washed hair like so, got dressed like so, and ran off to meet them there, hair still mildly dripping, no make-up. The weather outside was much nicer than I'd expected.

L, W, and K were already at La F, with breakfast at hand and digging in when I arrived, so I picked up a Swiss Twinkie (my fave! It's essentially a puff pastry filled with nuts, brown sugar, butter, and dried fruit, rolled up in a croissant-shape, sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar that bakes to a beautiful crispy glaze atop pure pastry perfection), and we sat around the table chatting as we finished up. I bought some pears for the trip at Y Market, and we started off. (Although unfortunately, we got a parking ticket for parking without feeding the meter. We'd forgotten it was Saturday and not free-parking-Sunday, >__<*)

Anyway, headed off for Napa, doot-de-doo, with L and W sitting in the back watching Glee on L's compy. (Also gave me some time to put on my makeup, -___-)

Our first stop, Grgich Hills Winery (http://www.grgich.com/) Did some wine tasting (Sauv Blanc, Chardonnay, Cab Sauv, and Merlot...I think that was the order although I forget if it is, haha), but nothing particularly inspiring. Walked around the winery, got back in our cars and headed off to Len's preferred (or at least the one he was most excited about) winery, Freemark Abbey (http://www.freemarkabbey.com/).

Freemark Abbey! This is my new favorite winery! (I know, not that I have much experience in the way of Napa Valley wineries, but none of the other wineries we visited today even came close to matching it!)

We headed in and were greeted by the lovely Sue (more on her loveliness later, :] ) and offered the tasting list. K and L picked to taste their four Cabernet Sauvignons (including a lovely 1995 Library CabSauv!), while W and I chose their four-varied-wine tasting. Even as we were looking over the list, we were all intrigued by the 2008 Voignier (http://www.freemarkabbey.com/pdf/08Viognier.pdf), which is light (yay for me!) and was specifically suggested to be paired with Chinese Szechuan cuisine (with caught L's eye), and Sue, sensing our fascination with the type of wine, offered us tastings.....for free! She even suggested we take a walk on the back patio while she set up our wine selections on the tasting tables. So we did. :) :) :)

A while later, when we'd finished the Voignier (a little too light for L's taste. Very nice for mine, but L's observation had serious merit--it was almost like water, hahaha) and headed in for our real tasting.

Sue poured L and K the four Cabs (full glasses! Thus, W and I were also sneaking sips, hehehe) :

  • spicy nose! and definitely a spicy kick at first sip! yum yum, I like 14 year olds.....wine, that is, kekekek, >:D . L kept insisting that it mellowed out to a tomato-soup smell, which K and I thought ludicrous, but W agreed with L. We agreed to disagree.
2004 Sycamore Cab Sauv (http://www.freemarkabbey.com/sycamore.html)
  • not as spicy, more of a cherry taste, also pretty tasty
  • K liked this one and bought a bottle, but I found it pretty unremarkable, or at least in comparison to the '95 CabSauv (hehe, which was by far my fave CabSauv). I thought it tasted a lot milder than the little bit of spicy nose, which was a little disappointing for me....again, because I couldn't help comparing it to the lovely spiciness of the '95 CabSauv.
Something Sue called "Bootleg" (http://www.freemarkabbey.com/bootleg.html)
  • I didn't taste the mint until much later, but after K said 'blueberries', well, after that, we couldn't taste anything except blueberries. >__<* Of all the Cab Sauvs in this tasting, we thought this was the one we liked least, although it was still an excellent wine, :)
W and I had a glass each (even though we only paid for one tasting of four wines! and this was in addition to sneaking sips of the guys' tastings, hahah. Is it still sneaking if Sue was very well aware of us sharing wines?) the following:

  • Good, but unremarkable
  • Very good; W and I agreed that Freemark Abbey has excellent Cab Sauvs.

  • W really liked this one, but I'm not terribly into red wines, and Merlots are not really my thing.
  • Not bad, but by far, the Cab Sauv was better. But dry. Very dry.
We all finished off with glasses of dessert wine (http://www.freemarkabbey.com/holiday_stuffers.html) My favorites, by far, :) :) :) (L and K got a glass of each):
--2009 Late Harvest Riesling for me
  • Gorgeous floral nose! that mellowed out to a light, fruity grapefruit, :) :) :) Light, delicious, and mildly sweet (if it was bubbly, it would've been PERFECT). Made only 13 times in the history of the entire winery because the conditions have to be perfect, and they were; and
--2003 Zinfandel Port
  • Sweet and a little spicy
Sue kept coming by to check up on us after she poured the dessert wines, very friendly, asking if we needed anything else, asking which ones we liked, telling us to take our time, no hurry, and finally, she let us know that she had to leave on some errands. We were wondering why she kept coming by, but assumed she just wanted to check up on us. It wasn't until we got back into the car that we realized we'd spent nearly 3 hours tasting at Freemark Abbey!!! It totally only felt like 1.5 hrs max!!!

After our tasting, we took a stroll around the back of the tasting room garden to clear our heads so that we'd drive safely (Remember: Safety first, kiddos! Don't drink and drive!) Once we deemed ourselves ready (or at least K was ready to drive and I was ready to take over if needed, while L and W were definitely still amusingly tipsy in the backseat), L picked up a bottle of the '95 Cab Sauv ($95!!!), K got a bottle of the Bosche, W got a bottle each of the 2005 Cab Sauv and the 2003 Zin dessert Port, and I picked up a bottle of the 2009 Late Harvest Riesling and a bottle of the 2005 Cab Sauv to bring home to the parentals.

Needless to say, we made it out of there like bandits, :D

Our next stop was the Dean and Deluca to pick up deli-items for lunch: a panini cut four ways, mushroom-edamame salad, bacon-brussel sprouts, pesto pasta salad, an Asiago baguette, and slices of cured meats. Then headed over to V. Sattui's across the way to pick up a chunk of Montecerda Spanish cheese and some port-and-truffle duck pate, and ate on the picnic tables outside. The pears I picked up earlier paired beautifully with everything. A delicious lunch with wonderful people, in beautiful weather~

After lunch, we headed over to St. Supery (http://www.stsupery.com/) for their tasting as L had a Google employee discount that allowed us a free tasting with the purchase of a bottle of wine. Beautiful artwork on their wine labels. While their wines were certainly excellent, we were soon tiring of wines and the four of us each picked up a bottle of their special Moscato dessert wine, which we'd all tried at L's birthday party a few months ago, :)

Couldn't make it in time to get the bubbly that W was so excited about, but we had dinner reservations for 9:45p at Bouchon (http://www.bouchonbistro.com/), meaning that we had nearly 3.5 hours to spare until then. We headed over to Ceja's wine lounge (http://www.cejavineyards.com/Wine-Tasting-Salon-Lounge-Art-Gallery) where W and K had a tasting and L had a glass of the house red, then about 7p, headed to Bouchon to see if we could get an earlier seating. It looked pretty busy when we got there, but we were assured that if there was an opening, we would be given the seats. In the meantime, we went next door to Bouchon Bakery (http://www.bouchonbakery.com/) and got a special private tour of the baking in the back by Matt McDonald (http://www.bouchonbakery.com/showStaff.php?id=61)!!! How exciting!

Picked up a chocolate Bouchon and a pistachio macaron (mmmmm~~~) and luckily, got seated by 8p, :) :) :)

Our dinner:
  • Sparkling water (we'd had more than enough wine at that point, haha)
  • 1/2 dozen oysters
  • poached egg with port wine and duck confit ('Oeuf en Meurette' if you want to be fancy, hahaha)
  • Rillettes aux Deux Saumons (fresh and smoked salmon rillettes served with toasted croutons)
  • I had the Poulet Roti (roasted chicken with red win poached pears, mustard greens, fingerling potatoes, & whole grain mustard jus; very good and very tender and juicy. We spent much of the dinner debating how they could get it roasted while keeping the inside tender and juicy)
  • K had the Steak Frites (pan-seared prime flatiron served with maitre d'hotel butter and French fries; their French fries are fried in duck fat and are truly sublime)
  • L had Rabbit Boudin (one of the specials, so it wasn't featured on the website, so I don't know how it was prepared), which I don't remember much of to be honest, although it was quite good
  • W had grilled sea scallops, also a special and also not on the menu, but very good; wanted to get it myself, actually, but we wanted to all get something different so that we could try the different things.
  • Shared a Pot de Creme with Huckleberry; delicious~
We finished by 9:45, which would've been the time we would've started had we not arrived early to see if we could get early seats, :)

Headed back soon afterwards to K and M's apartment to hang out; L and W were staying over as we are having feast day tomorrow (today, but time-stamped to reflect yesterday, :] ), and I stayed up with M until about 2a watching Glee episodes and talking.

The perfect ending to the perfect day, :)
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