Nap(a)

As in, I needed a three hour nap after a day in Napa. Today's field trip can be described many ways, but I'll just go with "interesting." Overall, it was a fun day, but 95 degree weather, bus rides, loud/bad music, and wine drinking is a disastrous mix.

The many stories from between and after the vineyards, i.e., the bus rides, shouldn't be repeated in a food blog. Let's just say I was really glad that I had Roxy on the trip, a fellow anthropology student and co-worker. I think we felt like the only students who were going to make it back to San Jose with any shred of dignity.

Nevertheless, there were many highlights to my day. The itinerary was pretty straightforward. The wine class met at 7:45. As a reward for getting the highest grade on the midterm I got a mimosa on the bus ride out of San Jose...at 8:30 in the morning...after 2 hours of sleep. It took about two hours by bus to get to our first winery, Mumm Napa. After Mumm, we headed to Bell Wine Cellars, where we had lunch delivered from a local grocery store/deli. Then, we finished our day at Rutherford Hill.

Mumm was okay, they specialize in sparkling wine and Carlos Santana has a wine with them. I thought it was funny that they sell Carlos Santana stuff in the winery store, so if you need some Santana bongos...



Bell was the really impressive part of the day. Owner and hands-on winemaker Anthony Bell gave our group a thorough tour of the place, from the vines to the barreling process. Originally from South Africa, Bell grew up on a vineyard and had also made wine in Europe before he moved to America. He was really passionate and honest about his work and I probably learned more from listening to him speak than I've learned in class all semester. So, if you see some Bell on a shelf or a menu, you can feel good that there's a humble and hardworking guy behind the label.



At Bell we also got to go into the wine bottling truck. This is not how I imagined that wine is bottled. This truck is like the equivalent of a blood mobile or a book mobile, it pulls up and does it's business for the day. They fill the bottles, cork them, and label them right in this fairly small truck right in front of the building.

Our last stop, Rutherford Hill, was most impressive for it's caves. That's where we did most of the tasting. They do a great port and chocolate covered blueberry combo during their tasting.

Napa was actually not what I expected, but I would definitely like to go back someday. I think I always imagined it to have vineyards sort of hidden in the hills but in reality the wineries are right next to each other, Opus One and Mondavi are right across the street from each other. It's just like neighborhoods upon neighborhoods of grapes, I even saw some homes that opted for grapes instead of grass.

A couple of final thoughts, 1) I think all of the money is in growing your own oak forests for barrels rather than in wine-making, and 2) I think I should get an A in this class for making it through this bus ride, which can be briefly sampled here: