Vacation - Day 4

Saturday, September 21st

The day started out with breakfast in the hotel before heading out to Rutherford Hill for a tour and tasting at 11:30am. The drive up Silverado Trail was beautiful but there were ALOT of runners today as there was some sort of marathon happening. So now you have alot of wine drinkers and alot of bikes on the road...Not a good combo!

The use of caves for wine storage is a tradition as old as the art of winemaking itself, yet they are extremely rare in Napa Valley. Knowing that caves provide an ideal environment to nurture and protect wines as they age, Rutherford Hill was one of the first wineries in the Napa Valley to build a cave post prohibition.

Carved deep into the cliffs behind the winery, the caves of Rutherford Hill are regarded as one of the most extensive wine-aging cave systems in America. Tunnels, galleries and passageways, extending for nearly a mile, contain over 8,000 barrels of select French and American oak. The caves provide a unique, natural environment that enhances the wine-aging process. They naturally maintain a year-round temperature of 59 degrees and a consistent humidity level of 90%.

 After the tour, we headed in to Yountville for lunch at Addendum.

True to its name “addendum” is an addition to the restaurant Ad Hoc family.

It is a small shack behind the restaurant that serves boxed lunches to go Thursdays through Saturdays.  For $16.50, guests have a choice of either our famous buttermilk fried chicken or barbeque pork, two of the most popular items on our menu.

After lunch, Ken and Kim dropped us off at Conn Creek for a "Blending Experience".
Kim and her mom had both done this before and we couldn't resist doing it based on Kim's recommendations.

The blending experience include a  Napa Valley AVA overview led by a wine educator, a guided walk-around barrel tasting, instructions on blending techniques and strategies, a bottle of our own designed custom blend and a tasting of Conn Creek's current releases.

The AVA Room Barrel Blending Experience provides guests a rare opportunity to learn about, taste, and blend wines from the many distinctive regions that make up Napa Valley — one of the most famous and diverse wine growing regions in the world. Better yet, we invite you to play winemaker for a day and take home the fruit of your labors — literally.

 

Doug and I each made our own blend. We will be trying them within the next year.

I can't wait to see how we did compared to some of the wine-makers we visited.
Anyone want to join us for that special tasting?

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Ken & Kim picked us up after the Blending Experience

and we headed back to her mom's house in Yountville.
Pat and Doug cooked up some spanish Paella.
I wished I had taken photos of the beautiful food and outdoor table.
It was all quite beautiful and delicious!

It was a great day that ended sadly...Ken and Kim would leave around 8pm
to drive to San Francisco to take the red eye back to Tampa.
They gave us a parting gift of Round Pond oil for our anniversary.
We will experiment with this real soon.
Doug and I depart for home tomorrow afternoon.

It was a great vacation! Ken/Kim "Where should be go next?"