...and the wine is bottled poetry

thank you robert louis stevenson for those poetic words, and thank you napa for a terrific weekend as we traveled north to experience you world famous wine country.

having been to a winery or two in some of california's less well known wine growing appellations, we wanted to make the trip up to napa to see what all the fuss is about. i could give details on each of the wineries we visited, but i'm not sure that would be that interesting. i'll keep it short.

we explored the grounds of the very large italian villa-esque complex at robert mondavi.

we tasted a flight of sparkling wines at mumm napa.

we made friends with some of the local inhabitants as we picnicked on the grounds of the dutch henry winery. i think this guy wants to play bocce ball.

we stayed saturday night at the calistoga inn in calistoga. it was very reasonably priced, and we were very pleased with the accommodations. we would recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind a hotel with shared bathrooms and thin walls that is above a bar that has live music until the early morning hours (those things are all true, but we seriously would recommend it). our old friend joe luckily doesn't mind a little noise so he bunked with us for the night.

a good time was had. here is a video of us driving through the valley. the vines are a little bare since they haven't budded yet, but you can get an idea for how much wine is grown in napa. rows of vines like that fill the entire valley. it is really quite breathtaking. the music in the background is off the album gulag orkestar by beirut.