Vacation- Day 5

Day 5 of vacation- we wine taste in wine country!! To start the day off, we rode the Napa Valley Wine Train for lunch and a tour of Grgich Hills Winery. The train station was just a short walk from our hotel, but as we walked own there, it started to drizzle a bit (all that time flat ironing my hair just to pull it up in a ponytail... haha) but after an hour or so it stopped and no more rain for the rest of the day.

Once we boarded the train, we selected our choices for salad, entree, dessert, and wines for the trip. Then the train got started and as we traveled up the valley, we were served delicious food and it was paired with appropriate wine to emphasize the flavors- yum!!

all aboard! riding the wine train!

the view from the train

My salad
baby lettuce salad with candied walnuts and smoked goat cheese in a honey cider vinaigrette & a glass of miner viognier 2007 (yes- i saved the menu!)

my lunch
roasted coriander breast of chicken on sundried tomato polenta and mozzarella cheese & a glass of robert mondavi pinot noir

D's lunch
roasted beef tenderloin with rosemary potatoes and grilled squash in a syrah sauce & a glass of meadow lark cellars cabernet 2005

As we finished our lunch, we arrived at Grgich Hills Winery in Rutherford. We had a tour of the winery and finished with a tasting of about six different wines. Then we had some time to walk around the grounds before the train returned. We walked through some of the vineyards and tasted grapes fresh off the vine. They had them arranged by type of wine out front so you could taste a merlot grape, a cabernet sauvignon, a zinfandel, etc. The grapes are suuuper sweet and yummy! I also learned that the grapes for red wine have clear juice, but that they harvest the juice with the skins which makes it that red color.

Taking a good whiff before tasting

checking out the legs and letting some air into the wine

tasting the grapes fresh off the vine!

clear juice!

As the train came back and picked us up, we were boarded onto different cars for dessert and coffee on our trip back down the valley. We had a gorgeous view of the hills the whole way back and they heard it was our anniversary and surprised us with dark chocolate truffles to celebrate!

The wine train coming back to pick us up

Dessert (tiramisu) & coffee & an amazing view

Happy 5 years to us!

After the wine train we took a breather at the hotel before driving up to see another winery in the Calistoga area, Castello di Amorosa. This place is literally a castle in Napa Valley. The guy built it in the 1970s to replicate what you might find in Italy and it was so cool! We took a tour of the castle (complete with chapel, torture chamber, courtyard, etc.) and winery and finished with a tasting of 11 different wines, some paired with various chocolates- yum!

Castello di Amorosa

the castle courtyard
The stone and bricks were shipped from Italy to keep it authentic

The great hall

down in the cellars

my knight in shining armor!

in the torture chamber - the iron maiden

more torture devices

bad D!!!

tasting wine fresh out of the barrel- not quite ready to be bottled yet

Afterwards we strolled around the grounds just as the sunset and the fog rolled in over the hills- so beautiful!! Then we headed back to the hotel, ate at Ristorante Allegria again (yes, it was just a delicious the second time around), and relaxed.

Castello di Amorosa

the fog rolling in over the hills!

a man and his castle