Things I Think I Thought from a recent Napa Valley Trip

  1. The whole damned world forgot how to travel and get through an airport. To make it worse, the airports aren’t really ready just yet.
  2. For the first time ever, I made it onto the rental car bus at Sacramento without a 30 minute wait.
  3. Secret menu at In-n-Out? Where the hell have I been? Still, Whataburger beats In-n-Out hands down.
  4. I’ve always wanted to visit Napa in winter. This year I did it in June.
  5. Uber needs to up its game after 8 pm in the valley—the people need to get home after dinner! Thanks Lyft!
  6. Congratulations to Napa hospitality—hear you are booked full for the most part through October.
  7. I thought I would miss ‘drop in’ tastings. I did not — my liver and kidneys were appreciative.
  8. If you’re traveling with another couple on their first Napa trip, don’t knock it out of the park on Day 1, it sets high expectations and a bad precedent!
  9. It turns out I love BS’ing as much as I do drinking wine—explains why we were late everywhere.
  10. 29 traffic on Thursday was unbearable, Friday and Saturday were worse.
  11. For those of you heading out to Napa, book early as possible and be patient, there is a labor shortage and the tourist machine is not yet running completely efficiently.
  12. There were more people bottling 2020s than I would have thought, I guess not all is lost.
  13. Many places are spacing out normal 2021 timeframe releases into 2022 to help bridge the lack of 2020s.

And finally, epic trips are made so primarily by the people who took time out of their busy schedules to host us (you know who you are) and augmented, only in part, by some great wines!

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These are great Michael, thank you. The absolute truth on #3 but maybe it’s just b/c we’re Texan. But the best are your CT tasting notes…whoa…EPIC trip is an understatement!

Our May 2020 trip was deferred and we likely won’t get back out until 2022 so I appreciated living vicariously through your notes.

You forgot 14. Next trip Sonoma only [wink.gif]

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Them’s fightin words

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If traffic don’t get better, #14 might be #1 next time

Don’t Mess with Texas

deadhorse

Nice thoughts, but…a burger is still a burger, and anything involving them is such a low bar.

Now those are real fightin’ words!

There are only two sides and no neutrality in this dumb fight!

[stirthepothal.gif]

This was my revelation from the last trip. Finally have come to the conclusion less is more, that packing 5-6 wineries into a day (with drop ins) isn’t all it used to be cracked up to be. Sounds like you had a great trip, any winery tasting notes?

Homemade with local beef (no pre-made patties, even from a local source!) beats any chain, any time.

Flannery Adventurous Blend has spoiled me for good. Anything else is mere ground beef.

I get ground ribeye from a local farm. Maybe do a compare someday.

As a man who has straddled Texas and California for most of my life … I’m with Michael.

There needs to be a service / guide for how to best navigate this.

Traffic on summer weekends is a problem (and can be shocking [swearing.gif] ), but it can be minimized with solid route and appointment planning.

Nice report! Been wanting to get back up to Napa but have had no real urgency to do so given the current state of mixed/changing requirements from Newsom.

  1. The airport situation is really messed up right now. Lots of business closures inside of airports. Almost have to brown bag your own food through security if you’re wanting to eat on a long flight.

  2. We always group our tastings within the same or adjacent AVAs to minimize the windshield time between wineries in Napa. Might be hard to do if you only have a couple days but its worked well for us prior to Covid.

  3. Not surprised that there’s bottling of 2020s, will be interested to see how wineries handle marketing and pricing + tasting opportunities before purchasing. I will be hesitant to buy 2020 on any grand scale given the proximity and duration of the fires last year.

  4. Been seeing this already. Carlisle is one of the first wineries I buy from that stated they were holding back 18s and 19s to spread out over time given some of the 2020 lost due to possible smoke taint.

You should definitely go in winter! Or at least non summer. Living in the bay area, we have the luxury of going up literally any time, even just for the day. But we almost never go in summer, and pretty much limit our visits to November through April. You don’t get the beautiful green vineyards, but every season has its attraction.

I don’t know what is wrong with that airport. Worst logistics I’ve seen for rental cars.

I’ve never been to Whataburger, but In-n-Out is mediocre at best. I’ve never understood the fascination with it.

I had not properly planned a defense for The Flannery Ground Blend Card.

Well played!

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Thank you, Michael! Post those CT notes here, also, man!

We’re headed there next month - Anniversary trip, joined mid-way through by Jen’s dad and his girlfriend. We’re flying to SAC and so I’m not pleased to read that the wait for the rental car shuttle is typically 30 minutes! Fortunately we’re doing only a little tasting Saturday (just the two of us, driving from Sacramento) and most of the tasting is Sunday and Monday, so we’ll be good with traffic. Downside is how difficult it was to land dinner reservations at restaurants when all the good ones are closed Sunday and/or Monday.

Totally feel you with the drop-in tastings. I recall many years ago how I did 11 wineries in one day, in the Santa Barbara area, and 9 once in the Sonoma area. For this trip, we’re doing a max of 4 one day, 3 the rest. My wife doesn’t like the blast-and-jet type of tastings, she likes to ‘appreciate the ambiance’ or whatever.

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They’re up on CT