Last week, two of our lovely friends from Victoria came to visit us and we went on a three day wine tour of the Napa Valley wine country.
After plenty of research, we found a place to stay right in St. Helena. It turns out that if you want to go to lots of wineries, Napa itself isn’t the place to stay. St. Helena was perfect: quaint with lots of wineries and restaurants and green space around. We ended up staying at El Bonito, which is a motel with a TERRIBLE website, but it’s reasonably priced, has a pool and hot tub, lots of green spice and is in a great location.
The first day we rented bicycles and toodled around the countryside. We tasted plenty of wine and had a great time. It was hot and sunny and perfect.
The scenery was fantastic. Vineyards as far as the eye can see, interspersed with beautiful houses.
I learned a lot about wine and can now taste a good wine and know that it’s good. I cannot, however, look at a wine bottle and know that it will be good. I guess that just comes with practice. Now I go to the store and look for a label I recognize and a kind of grape I like. I generally do not like Cabernet Sauvignon, and I do like Merlot and Zinfandels. Also, if I find a white that’s not oaked, I’m usually in for that too.
I found some strange plants while we were there. I have no idea what they are.
The first one is a flower that blooms, then pushes up more stem and blooms again. I like to imagine that it is somehow straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.
The next, equally Dr. Seussian plant was this giant tree that looked so much like a Garry Oak that I was dreaming of Victoria:
and then I discovered its fruit:
Not like any other tree fruit I have seen before. It was hard and light and I want someone to tell me what kind of tree this is! That’s no acorn, so it can’t be an oak!
Next up: Dinner at the Culinary Institute of America (or as I call it, the CIA)
http://rough-magic.blogspot.com/2010/06/adventure-sf-napa.html
Weird thing. Did you cut it open and confirm it was a fruit and not a gall?
I’m pretty sure it was the fruit. There were many trees and it was all over their branches. Strange, though.