We went wine tasting yesterday in the Sonoma Valley, which is one of the really fabulous wine making regions in the world. There appears to be a winery every ten feet or so, and I am not kidding by much.
I have been advocating for some time the merits of the limo concept: hire a private limo and let them do the driving versus having the designated driver who gets to go to the wineries but doesn’t actually get to taste anything. Or worse, everybody does the tasting and the least wasted among the bunch drives. Chuck has always scoffed at the idea, feeling that it’s too froo-froo for him, but he finally gave in on this trip. We did a bit of looking online and found lots of limo services but encountered the problem of hidden fees: mysterious taxes and other charges which took their basic prices and often more than doubled them. We finally found the Private Limousine Service which had a set fee with no hidden surcharges. Chuck called, they had a car available so we were set, for the surprisingly low price of $199 for five hours. Hot dog!
After a three mile run on a lovely bike trail about two blocks from the hotel and a litttle post-run hot tubbing, we met Ed our driver and his beautiful Lincoln Town Car outside the hotel around noon. Talk about comfort! There was bottled water in the car waiting for us, and Ed knew all the best wineries. We went to one of our choice, left less than impressed, and after that we let him take us to places he had heard about. We went to several, and joined a few wine clubs. Our faves of the day: Arrowood, Kaz, BR Cohn (Bruce Cohn of the Doobie Brothers!) and Benziger. You read the little blurbs about wines and they often say things like “This wine has hints of cherry and chocolate” and frankly I never get it. I nod knowingly and say, in a very sophisticated tone, “Mmhhmm.” I tried a white port at Kaz that said it tasted like chocolate and by gosh if it didn’t TASTE LIKE CHOCOLATE! And every time we came out of a winery, there was Ed ready to take us to the next stop. What a day! The biggest challenge by the end was as we tasted our eightieth cabernet of the day not to say something stupid like, “Wow, man this is some GOOD shit!” then fall on the floor.
We made it back to Sonoma about 6pm, got back to our room and did the only thing a sensible person can do after that much wine tasting: we a) took a nap or b) passed out for two hours! Today we are NOT going tasting as there is no way I could run 13 miles after another day like yesterday. Pics are here.