Calistoga, CA

It stormed most of the night and throughout the entire day with winds blowing through and roads getting washed out. Todd had already hired a driver for the day which was a good thing because my idea would have been to sit in the room and drink the wine we brought. (Todd's note: that would be a fatal option as we definitely have done some serious"collecting")

Our first stop was at Reverie where we were supposed to have a wine tasting in the Redwoods however it was pouring. They took us into the cave instead and we tasted some of the most incredible wine. Although we’re not big fans of “clubs”, we did join their club of 2x/year shipments. There just wasn’t one wine we did not like and they do not sell outside of the winery. Our goal was to try and/or buy only those wines we couldn’t get at home and amazingly (or not so amazingly) we have met that goal…many times :)  this is incredible stuff and the owner offerred to do a tasting in our house, if we could get 30 or so of our friends together....

From there our driver Jason suggested we go to Frank Family winery as another unique winery and we enjoyed their wines very much as well.

We then went onto the Castello de Amorosa, an actual castle built from stone brought over from Italy along with the men who built it. It took 14 years and $30 million. It had great rooms, libraries, as well as dungeon and torture chambers. This guy really was a “unique individual”. The wines were mediocre although there was one reserve we liked.

Our original plan was to have lunch at Taylor’s Automatic but it was way too cold and rainy so at Jason’s suggestion, we went to Market for lunch. Todd had what he thought was one of the top 5 burgers of his life. I got the mac and cheese (yes, carb loading was the order of the day and required!). We each shared our dishes as usual and off we went to the next winery which was Honig. This is also a boutique winery that had some very nice wines.

Our last stop was at the Del Dotto winery (and now it must be evident to you why Todd hired a car today) and we did barrel tasting here. Their wines were incredible -- or we were mighty tipsy. We’ll know for sure when we drink the wines we purchased. This was one of our most informative tours and the guide was very knowledge.  They taste wine right out of the barrel and if you like it they send it to you when they bottle it.  They do some pretty impressive things with cabs.  Like bottle it in 3 different kinds of oak so you can see how the oak changes the wine. They produce 107 wines/year Highly recommended.  Except I got myself in the dog house a bit by buying a really expensive wine.  ut oh....

Back at the hotel, we changed for dinner and went to Bar Vino for dinner where we shared some tapas. Very few people were out this day probably because of the bad weather but we certainly enjoyed the attention of the wait staff and the food was great.