Saturday, Oct 1 and Sunday, October 02, 2011
A Day Biking In Wine Country
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| Filipino Salt Vendor |
We got into Calistoga about
10am to grab a quick coffee and croissant at the bakery and naturally a visit to their Farmer's Market, then headed off to meet Brad at the bike shop.
Actually one stop before was to Dick Vermeil's winery tasting store. He was the coach of our 1980 Eagles NFC championship team and the St. Louis Ram Super Bowl team 1999. The gal who ran the tasting was a "trip" and knew Dick and family as he grew up in Calistoga and stll has deep "roots" there especially now with a vineyard. Ha-ha...........
He’s really grown the business, a lot of it through rentals and wine tours.
He has arrangements with five wineries for wine tastings of which we only made it to 2 of them which will be explained later.
Brad gave us a map and thorough directions.
The whole tour would have been about 10-12 miles of level roads through gorgeous vineyards.
Up the main street was a great market where we bought 4 chunks of cheese, a stick of hard salami and of course a baguette for our picnic lunch.
Our first stop was at the Summer Winery which is renown because it is one of a handful of wineries that produce the Charbona Reds which we never heard but loved! Of course we bought one to be picked up later by the bike store.
It was
2pm and way past our planned picnic time so we headed for Chateau Montelena which was the vineyard that put
California on the map on 1973.
In a blind taste contest between 3 French whites and 3
California whites, the Montelena Chardonay took first place and the rest is history.
One of our favorite movies “Bottle Shock” chronicles the story.
Our picnic by the pond was right up with our Picnics in
France and Janice’s cheese choices were perfect.
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| Chateau Montalena |
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| Thinking of your Fiona!! |
On to Twoomey Vineyards which is a Silver Oak
(our very favorite Cab) vineyard and it was on the other side of town.
We heard the roar of the moto-cross races
at the Calistoga fairgrounds as we passed by on the way to the next vineyard.
Made it over to the Twoomey tasting just before closing and struck up a conversation with the man next to us.
Joel, retired from 27 years in the air force, worked at the
Mt. Helena hospital as a anesthesia nurse.
He was really into wines and in a number of preferred member winery clubs.
He asked us to join him at the Sterling Vineyard just up the road.
Wow was that neat….you took a gondola up to the tasting rooms and winery.
He got us in for free (would have cost $20 each) and got an upgraded tasting with all of
Sterling’s reserve collection.
Sterling was the highlight of our day and as you’ll see the vistas were stellar.
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Jeff & Joel overlooking retire oak barrels
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Didn’t get back to the bike shop till after
6 o’clock closing but Brad and his crew were still finishing up a busy day.
Sharon and her 2 beautiful girls met up with us and we had a nice but short reunion.
Several “God Winks” about
Sharon that we had forgotten.
She attended
the same church as us in PA. as well as the Vineyard and attended
Delaware County Christian School with Kelly Winter, daughter of Jeff Winter our pastor at
Faith Community Church!! Do you believe how beautiful their girls are?
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The Suhr's
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We ended up the day with a light dinner at the Calistoga Inn. The next day heading down to San Francisco we stopped at the Beringer Winery which was probably one of the most picturesque.
