Napa Wineries

We woke up and ran this morning through downtown Napa and I must say it is NOT as beautiful and scenic as Sonoma. :( Very grey, lots of contruction, and it looks very old. I did get a picture of the back of our hotel/bed and breakfast, the Blackbird Inn.

There was a wonderful breakfast waiting for us when we returned!

And a coupon table full of discounts to wineries!

Again, there are just SO many wineries out here that we can barely even scratch the surface, so we had to just go on recommendations, coupons, and what is close. We have both had Robert Mondavi wines before, so thought that would be a good place to start.

This place was BUSY! Its a beautiful winery and very popular, unfortunately it was $20 for a tasting of only 4 wines. Psh! We have a million other places to go, so we skipped this.

We tried to go here, but it was closed except for by appointment... no thanks.

So we just kept going and ran across Peju, which I have had before. Kris gave me a bottle of their Provence and we both loved it, so we figured this place was worth a shot.

This place was very formal... you were supposed to wait by the entrance to be escorted to a tasting table lol. So different than the mad confusion and crowded tables we've seen other places. It was also annoying though because we had to wait like 10 minutes for a table.

I thought Peju was pretty good! The guy who was telling us about the wines was a bit longwinded, giving us too much story and background about everything, but the wines were very good. I loved their Provence again, as well as a sweeter white they had called Carnival I think. They also had an area where they had delicious mustards and chocolate sauces to taste!

Our next place was Beaulieu Vineyards, where we had the NICEST lady helping us. 

Beaulieu had a fantastic selection of whites, which is rare out here. Most wineries focus only on reds, with maybe 1 token white thrown in. I didn't personally like them, as I thought most of their wines were too acidic and had a common weird flavor, but Stephen loved them! The lady here found out we were on our honeymoon and took us into the club member room where we were given special champagne!

She also waived our tasting fee when we bought a bottle of their delicious port - something they don't normally do. So overall we had a FANTASTIC time here!

Our next place, V. Sattui was very beautiful! It had picnic grounds with a market to buy lunch.

Look at all those cheeses!

However, everything was super expensive. We spent $25 on just this...

This place was super annoying. It was very large inside and was PACKED! We had to wait around to find a spot and then we had to share a pourer with like 10 other people. She was good, but was overworked and wasn't too into it.

The next place we went to was Miner Family Vineyards, and we thought this place was not bad. I don't remember anything being fantastic there, but everyone was very nice and their wines were alright.

We picked the last place of the day because it was one of the few wineries in the area open until 6 (most close around 4 or 4:30).

This place was GREAT! They had amazing servers who were really fun, knowledgeable, and attentive, and the wines were really good as well. We learned that you will smell different parts of the wine depending on where you put your nose in the glass.

And also how to roll a glass around on the table (without spilling the wine) to look at the color!

It was very fun, and we would have stayed longer and tasted more wines if we weren't trying to get back to our hotel by 6 in time for the big snack! Stephen actually wanted to go back there the next day, as it turns out it was very close to our next bed and breakfast, but we didn't get a chance.

Our awesome snack... crackers, cheese, and tons of veggies and ranch.

We took a little break and then went out to dinner later that night at a place called Morimoto. This place was much better than our previous sushi place. The entrees were very pricey ($20 - 40) but the sushi was very cheap and delicious and averaged about $7 a roll. Yum!

That was all for day 4 of the honeymoon! :)