Patio view at Francis Ford Coppola Winery’s Rustic restaurant
Day 1
Monday, morning arrival in San Francisco, drive north to Novato
At 3:50 a.m. on Monday morning in a small hotel six miles from the Pittsburgh airport, my feet hit the ground. At 4:20 my bags were in the lobby and at 4:30 our party of four traveling pals piled into the airport shuttle (along with a couple who were probably ten years older than us—he chatted nonstop with the Jazzman on the entire trip to the airport. They were headed to Santa Fe for a week and then further west, maybe LA, for a week and their bags were double the size of our largest bag and they each had three bags!! I felt much better about my packing!).
Seamless check-in, sit-down breakfast, then board the plane and settle back to sleep. Well, the others did, I never quite made it, but an afternoon nap many miles later made up for the lack of sleep.
We landed around 9:00 a.m. PDT, grabbed bags, rode what seemed like miles of rail, then stowed our luggage in the back of a new silver Buick Enclave. The perfect size vehicle for the four of us for a week—thanks, Hertz. Brilliant choice! As the week’s Designated Driver, I grabbed the keys and off we went.
We couldn’t check into our Airbnb property until much later in the day, so we headed north to explore. Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, we noticed an exit marked “Vista,” so I jumped onto it and in a moment we were standing looking back at the bridge and the city. Honestly, it’s awe-some. No view like that in the world. After having our fill there, we drove to the other side of the 101 and admired the views of the Pacific and the bridge and city from much higher elevations.
We drove into the darling little town of Mill Valley and had lunch at Sweetwater Music Hall and Cafe. The mushroom soup was to die for, and we each had a slider. A perfectly sized lunch—well, when you include the fabulous pastries that we tacked onto the end of the meal! Then we headed toward Muir Woods to walk among the redwoods. As we were leaving Mill Valley, the GPS kept telling me to take these tiny, windy roads that cross the mountain to get down to Route 1. I tried a mile on these roads, then gave up. Had I been in my Acura TL, I could have maneuvered those roads, but in a 7-passenger SUV? Not a chance!
Muir Woods, if you’ve never experienced it, is lovely and breathtaking. Those trees! Ponder the age of the trees. Look at the many and varied shades of green. Watch the sunlight filter down through the leaves. Look at the Redwood Sorrel covering the ground. Watch and listen as other visitors walk past you on the paths, speaking languages from dozens of countries. We probably spent an hour-and-a-half there. Oh, to have the opportunity to find a quiet corner and a book and just bask in the miracle of this preserved site.
But we had miles to go, so we headed out over the mountain again. First down to the seashore to get our first close-up view of the Pacific. Then back down Route 1 to pick up the 101 and head for Novato, our home for the first three nights of our vacation.
The home where we were staying in Novato was my first experience with AirBnB. The home was as advertised, but there were little details that kept bugging us about this house. For me, the biggest annoyance was the fact that the owner did not allow guests to wear shoes in her house, but had not publicized this fact in her “house rules” on the AirBnB site. That meant cold feet for three days. Oh, well—it could have been [so much] worse!
At least the beds were comfortable, and we fell asleep early and quickly. Much wine drinking awaited.
Day 2
Tuesday, wine tour in Napa Valley
We had scheduled a Platypus tour (on the advice of our friends Amy and Monica) for a 10:15 pickup in Napa. The four of us were joined by a couple from Jacksonville, FL, another couple from Houston, TX, and a single woman from Australia. Our guide, Luis, was full of interesting wine country facts and charming, to boot.
For each tour, Platypus chooses the vineyards the group will visit. They don’t just visit the same ones over and over again. And they choose different sizes and styles of wineries. For our tour, the choices were Rutherford Hill, Tudal Winery, Silenus Vintners, and Razi Winery.
Here’s my understanding: Rutherford Hill is considered sort of a medium to medium-large winery with large distribution. Tudal is smaller, but their “Tractor Shed Red” is sold in Costco—pretty big distribution for that “Wednesday pizza and wine” red. Silenus bottles other vineyards’ wines. They are a vintner, not a vineyard. And Razi is a small winery started by a successful architect who decided to cover his drafting table and head west.
It was so interesting to see so many different ways of producing the same end product.
At Rutherford Hill in Rutherford, we stood at the top of the hill and enjoyed exquisite views, toured the caves, and snuck tastes of the grapes that were just coming in from being picked the night before. The entire facility was modern, beautiful, and all the gardens were absolutely lovely. It appeared to my novice eyes that no expense had been spared in this facility. (Yes, we bought two bottles of wine.)
Next we visited Tudal Winery in St. Helena, with a cheese and cracker tray for us to enjoy along the drive. The environment and ambience of Tudal couldn’t be more different from Rutherford Hill. The adjectives that come to mind are natural, down-home, and personable. Where Rutherford Hill was a monogrammed polo shirt kinda place, Tudal was jeans and Tom’s tennies or Birkenstocks. Sadie, the standard poodle, greeted everyone with understated joy, and accepted all head pats graciously. We picked grapes off the vine and relished the intense flavor. We sat in a room decorated with a sense of humor and learned about Tractor Shed Red, the Wednesday pizza wine that’s available at Costco. Luis laid our lunch out on a picnic table and we sat in the shade with a gentle breeze blowing while we ate sandwiches and an incredible quinoa salad, finishing with “Aussie bites” cookies. And of course there was wine.
Interesting piece on Tudal’s operations.
Another drive through the countryside took us to Silenus Vintners. Where the previous two tastings were at actual winemakers, Silenus Vintners just processes the wine for other vineyards.
From the Silenus website:
Nestled in the heart of Napa Valley’s Oak Knoll District, Silenus Vintners is one of Napa’s few multi-winery operations. We offer winemakers and vineyard owners the unique opportunity to produce their wines in our facility with many represented in our joint tasting room. We are currently home to fifteen of the Valley’s most sought after boutique wineries who collectively produce more than 30 wines from some of the best known vineyards in Napa and Sonoma Valleys.
The tasting room was spacious, modern, and lovely. Scott, the gentleman who introduced us to the various wines represented by Silenus, did a great job of explaining the workings of Silenus. But we walked away with no new bottles added to our growing collection.
From there we drove to Razi Winery. Fred Razi enjoyed a successful career as an architect in Chicago, St. Louis, Europe and the Middle East. In his mid-50s, with kids graduating from college, he and his wife told the kids they were moving west. And what a lovely space they have to create delicious wines. (Yes, we did buy a couple of bottles.) More background on Razi.
After leaving Razi, we headed back to the Napa County Welcome Center. We asked Luis for dinner recommendations, and decided to try Uva Trattoria [closed in March of 2017].
We arrived around 5:45 and were surprised at how few tables were taken. Evidently no one in California eats at that early hour. Which turned out to be a good thing, as several of our party (but not the DD) had imbibed a little too much throughout the day.
The meal was excellent! Marilyn ordered the gnocchi special, the guys ordered linguini and I got the ravioli. Two different sauces were offered for the ravioli, tomato or lemon cream. At my request, the chef separated my raviolis into two little groups and gave me a sample of both sauces. The tomato was good, but the lemon cream was fabulous! For dessert there was creme brûlée.
Completely sated, we drove the 30 minutes home and fell asleep quickly.
Day 3
Wednesday, tour Russian River Valley and Sonoma on our own
Having absorbed all the history and knowledge of winemaking the day before, we had decided to just head out on our own on Wednesday. I did some research and decided we would to first to Francis Ford Coppola Winery, tour the facility and have lunch in their restaurant, then go south to Kendall-Jackson and take their garden tour.
FFC’s grounds and operations in Geyserville are amazing! I highly recommend a visit there. Where we had viewed the wine caves at numerous other wineries, here we saw the bottling line. We watched empty bottles come onto the line from their case boxes, be inspected, filled (rate: 200 bottles per minute!; 24 hours per day!), have labels applied, corks inserted, be inspected once more, then gently dropped right back into case boxes and have the box glued shut. So organized, so clean, so well thought out.
Then we headed out on the patio to have lunch at “Rustic: Francis Ford Coppola’s Favorites.” Again – delicious! And an incredible view out across the acres of vineyards. The cool breezes coming across the hills just added to the lovely experience.
The tour guide had recommended the Marrakesh lamb. Noting that it “feeds two, plus leftovers”, even with three sharing it, there was still a lot of lamb in the bottom of the tajine when they had eaten all they wanted. Served over couscous, my sample said “Delicious!” I ordered a ½ muffuletta, which was served cold, rather than warm, as is the New Orleans tradition. I was disappointed, but my salad was great. And then there was dessert: lemon tart and creme puffs with a cannelloni-style filling and dark chocolate sauce. The perfect ending to a great dining experience.
We finished lunch just in time to head south to Fulton to tour the Kendall-Jackson gardens and sip their wines. So lovely to taste grapes from the vine and view all the herbs and garnishes that fuel the K-J catering kitchen. And astonishing to learn that K-J owns 45,000 acres to FFC’s 25 acres!
So after food and drink, it was time for more food and drink. Marilyn, who loves to read foodie magazines and keep up on the latest restaurants making their marks, knew all about “The Girl and The Fig” in Sonoma. But everything she had heard about it indicated one must have reservations far in advance to eat their figs. Our AirBnB hostess had suggested we visit the Roche Winery tasting room, located next door to “The Girl and The Fig”. She said after the tasting we could go next door to “fig” and get a take-out dinner to take back to Roche’s patio. However, my research indicated Roche had added a food license, so I was pretty sure they wouldn’t really like our bringing other foods back to their site.
After driving down a scenic route through the Valley of the Moon, we found a parking place a few steps from “fig” and thought we’d walk in to see the chances of getting a table. Voila! Walk in. Sit down. Enjoy!
I had a dinner salad – fig and arugula. Marilyn had the fig appetizer, which she “aaahed” over. She had the croque monsieur for dinner, which looked fabulous. The guys had steak frites, which they pronounced very good. Great dinner choice, and we were out of the restaurant early enough to be back to Novato before dark.
Home to pack and prepare for our Thursday morning departure. After our experience in this house, I was relieved to be leaving.
