During a recent jaunt up to Napa for a morning of hot air ballooning with the fantastic Napa Valley Balloons (www.napavalleyballoons.com) the boy and I decided to continue our day with a wee bit of wine tasting.
Our beautiful hot-air balloon inflates
There were a couple of tricky bits about this decision:
1) we had woken up at 4am to drive up to Napa from San Francisco for the early morning ballooning, so were already exhausted by lunchtime; and,
2) we were driving…therefore rendering the whole ¨drinking our weight in red wine¨a bit difficult.
We decided to try only a couple of wineries. The boy said he was more than happy to drive if I wanted to drown my bloodstream in declicious crushed grapes but being the stand up gal I am, I felt it would not be fair to make him miss out on that yummy extravaganza. That was, until I found Miner Vineyards (www.minerwines.com) a small family winery hidden away just to the north east of Napa proper.
I went in with the intention of trying one or two, since I had never heard of this winery before. But, as they had a flight for $20 (ie – I could try five for that much) I looked at the boy with hungry, puppy-dog eyes and changed my tune of being such a grandious and sober girlfriend. He happily conceded, saying he was too tired to enjoy it and left it up to me to taste away.
And wow, did I taste. Steve, the vineyard´s head of retail sales, gave me a try first of an oakey, rich Chardonnay that I immediately fell in love with, despite not particularly liking this grape normally. But it was the reds I really took to. And the laid-back atmosphere of the place – no selling, no rushing, no BS. When I asked Steve if I could take my glass outside to enjoy it away from the tasting room, he said: ¨Yes, but only if you promise to put your feet up while drinking it.¨And so I did.
And so I take it in...
With views of rolling hills, peppered with vineyards, I felt like I could be in Tuscany. This was almost as good. And the wine was stunning. Particularly the 2007 Petite Syrah, which filled my mouth with flavour so rich, I couldn´t speak afterwards but to say to the (now, fairly bored) boy: ¨This is what wine should taste like.¨
We left soon after, a bottle of that beauteous Petite Syrah in hand, my head swimming with exhaustion and vino and I can only hope to go back one day to try some more. A definitely exciting stumbleupon that had nothing ¨Miner¨about it.
gwiltypleasures 
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