We went to Frank Family Winery and stopped in town for a sandwich. Most of the afternoon was spent at the pool. It was a very relaxing day.

Tomorrow we have to leave at 8:00am for the airport. I think our next trip should be to Italy.

Life is good.

The post 2013 Napa Day Day 5 first appeared on LeRoy Family Blog.

1. Darioush – Very fancy place that specializes in Cabernet’s.
2. Groth – A family winery built by the CFO of Atari in the 1980’s. The Sauvignon Blanc was outstanding.

We went into Napa City for lunch at Norman’s Rose Tavern. The restaurant was nice but the service wasn’t great and the food was mediocre.

We drove to our final hotel today. The Meadowood Resort is amazing. Our room is HUGE. We actually have a whole building to ourselves. Barry/Jackie’s room is on one end and Lynn/Bob’s room is on the other end. There is a ginormous common room between the two rooms.

We are going to Tra Vigne’s for dinner tonight. It should be an awesome event.

The post 2013 Napa Day 4 first appeared on LeRoy Family Blog.

1. Storybook – Is very old winery dating back to the 1800’s. They say it was the Grim brothers and that’s where they got the name. Their unique feature is that all berry’s are hand picked by the family. They ferment the wine in 100 foot long caves dug by the Chinese in the late 1800’s. The caves are lined with black mold which controls the humidity of the cave. It was like a carpet attached to the walls.
2. Fieldstone – This is a very small winery. You can’t get this wine in Cincinnati. The people were very nice and gave us a large plate of cheese and crackers. They also allowed Barry to buy at a distributor price. Yes, we’ll be sharing in that bounty.

We had lunch at the Calistoga Inn Brewery. The Burgers are huge!

We ate Dinner at the Clif Family guest house again. It was a great evening.

The post 2013 Napa Day 3 first appeared on LeRoy Family Blog.

Today, we toured Duckhorn winery. The head winemaker gave us a personal tour. He runs multiple wineries so we were very lucky to get so much of his time. He showed us a months worth of wine processing (with tastes) in just fifteen minutes. It’s cool how the wine goes from pure grape juice to wine in just a few weeks. It then ages in oak barrels for almost a year before bottling.

When the tour was complete, we had lunch with the president of Duckhorn. He had a chef prepare lunch just for us. It was salad, duck and dessert. This could have been a five star meal in any restaurant. As a gift, he gave us a 1.5L bottle of Pinot Noir.

After lunch, we toured St. Helena shops and bought food for dinner. We prepared Pork and Lamb on the grill at our guest house. Of course, we drank the Pinot with dinner.

And now we pack for home…

The post Napa – Duck Horn first appeared on LeRoy Family Blog.

Today was amazing again. Our tour of the Clif Family Winery started at their tasting store. With good karma, the owners of the winery showed up. Kit and Gary are just starting a 35 day road show to sell a new line of Kits Organic Bars. We got the first free sample direct from the owners.

After that we went up to visit the family farm. A great old carriage house with an incredible view. They had turkeys, horse, chickens, goats, bees, fruit tree, vegetable garden. We took home a whole salad. Plus a dozen farm fresh eggs.

After all that, we came back to the guest house for home made, wood-fired pizzas and wine. While Lynn sat in the sun by the pool. Time for dinner now.

The post Napa Day 3 first appeared on LeRoy Family Blog.

We switched hotels today. We are now at the Clif Family “guest house” up in the mountains. It’s way up in the mountains in the city of Angwin. No cell service, no TV, good company.

The post Sonoma first appeared on LeRoy Family Blog.

Today, we started touring the wineries. First up was Nickel & Nickel. They are a division of Far Niente. The facilities are excellent. It is crush season and they were going full speed. It was very interesting to see how they harvest the grapes. Our “wine educator” was Chris Mitchell and he did an excellent job.

We took a break and went to the pool for a couple hours. Even though the temps were in the low 70’s, the sun was very warm.

Later, we took a drive up the road to Mumm Napa. They specialize in sparkling wines. They had already finished their harvest but the tour was still very impressive. We really enjoyed the tastings on the “Oak Patio” with a great cheese and fruit platter.

They money people invest in these facilities is staggering. While there is a lot of automation, much of the work is still manual. These are the newest, cleanest, most polished factories you could imagine.

The post Napa – Day 2 first appeared on LeRoy Family Blog.

We took a drive around San Francisco but it was way too crowded. Everywhere you turned there were people. Normally SF has one million people, this weekend they expected another million to visit. I think it was at least that many.

We drove across the Golden Gate and down to the ocean. The road had crazy curves. At every corner, the drop off was huge. When we finally arrived, the beach was cool and breezy but very nice.

I wanted to hike around but the group wanted to get to the wine country. I was out voted.

The Villagio is beautiful. We spent some time at the pool, walked around a bit. For dinner, we found the only “sports bar” to watch the game. It was really a nice restaurant that had a tv. Aka sports bar.

Good times.

The post Napa – Day 1 first appeared on LeRoy Family Blog.