Napa Valley Vacation - The Vineyards and Wineries

Doug and I enjoyed two full days of visiting vineyards and wineries in Napa. There are hundreds upon hundreds of wineries scattered throughout California wine country and it is impossible to even make a slight dent in visiting these places. I was quite overwhelmed trying to figure out which wineries we should visit. Many of the wineries require reservations for wine tours and tastings. Doug works for an awesome company and a number of his co-workers know wine inside and out - and they had visited Napa before. So he asked around and got a lot of amazing advice. Doug whittled it down to five. And believe me, five wineries in two days was plenty.

My hubby rented a limo the first day (I told you he is awesome)...

This was our driver Max...

We hit two small family-owned wineries the first day - Sawyer Cellars and Frank Family Vineyards. They don't offer wine tours because they are small, but you can taste the wine and walk around the grounds. 

Sawyer Cellars - delicious wine and beautiful grounds...

Frank Family Vineyards - delicious wine and beautiful grounds. They don't have vineyards on-site, but the grounds were still amazing. This Georgia girl was shocked to see beautiful pink dogwood trees on the property...

The next day we hit the big wineries - Opus One, Quintessa and Mondavi. We took tours of Opus One and Quintessa.

Opus One was majestic and grand...

 The facility was gorgeous. Our tour guide explained how they create the wine. The most impressive part for me was the barrels lining the underground room. Rows and rows of barrels...

Our wine tasting. The wine was exceptional. Opus One (which is the creation of Robert Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild) makes only one kind of wine - a Meritage.

As grand and amazing as Opus One was to visit, my favorite winery was Quintessa. The winery was beautiful, but the vineyards and the tunnels underneath the winery were spectacular...

This was our guide Moe (we had a private tour at Quintessa). He was absolutely amazing. His passion for wine was beyond evident. He was so knowledgeable and so friendly. He explained that Quintessa also only makes one type of wine - a Meritage...

I know I will visit Quintessa again if and/or when I return to Napa.

 Our last stop was at Mondavi. Or so we thought. We thought this was where our wine and cheese tasting was taking place. Doug found a deal on Living Social for a wine tasting at Mondavi. So we went to The Mondavi Winery - Robert Mondavi. But then Doug made a call and realized we were in the wrong place. We actually had a tasting at Michael Mondavi Family Winery about 10 minutes down the road. 

I snapped a couple of pictures at the Robert Mondavi winery because it was really pretty...

So we drove down the road about 10 minutes. Doug and I were a bit confused when we drove up to a small, pretty, quaint vineyard. We weren't sure what the connection was to Mondavi...

We sat down at our tasting and got the story. Michael Mondavi is Robert Mondavi's son. The brand "Mondavi" was purchased by Constellation Brands in 2004, and the Mondavi Family has nothing to do with the Robert Mondavi brand anymore. 

Michael Mondavi has created his own line of wines and they are delicious.

I felt like I had a wine tasting at the "real" Mondavi winery that afternoon!

So those are the wineries we visited. They were all amazing in their own way. 

We did learn that Napa specializes in red wines because of the Mediterranean-type climate. Sonoma specializes in whites because of the cooler climate.

My next post is going to be about the food. Oh my gosh. The food in Napa is amazing. Five star. Seriously, all Doug and I did was eat good food and drink amazing wine the entire trip. It was crazy!

To read my post about the hotel - click here.