For my birthday this past Memorial Day, two friends conspired together and hijacked me for a trip up to wine country Napa Valley, about an hour out from Frisco. It was probably the best surprise I've ever received for my birthday.
The Napa countryside.
I first got hooked on wine while living in Italy, and these days nothing can come close to matching the succulent flavor of a good Chianti and especially not a Brunello di Montalcino. But, I'm a prideful Californian, and I'd like to be able to say something similar about the liquor produced by our vineyards. A trip to Napa has been long in coming.
My sense of right and wrong has been finely developed, if not mature, since I was very little. Order and rules, and by extension elegance and refinement, have always seemed natural and attractive to me, and it's only been with terrific effort and will that I have (with great pleasure) exposed myself to the sleazier human appetites. I figure this particular permutation of experience is the reason I've always had an above average interest in wine: coming from a very traditional and conservative Mexican family, I wasn't going to have my alcoholic interests, no matter how elite, indulged there.
The three amigos and the blood of Christ.
Getting kidnapped by my two closest friends, who'd never actually met prior to this, at midnight and driving seven hours through the night up to NoCal got the whole Napa experience started off on a real surreal foot. I love that kind of shit... though the
dime we scored for free from a philanthropic neighbor also helped
. I'd previously taken the
Sideways trip to Santa Barbara, but as fun as that was, it simply couldn't compete with the grandeur of being in the heart of California's vineyards and deep in the damp cellars drinking wine from barrels with a bunch of other bougie wanna-bes.
On the recommendation of a wine connoisseur buddy of mine, we mostly skipped the well-known wineries like Coppola and hit a handful of uppity vineyards. We started at Cakebread where we toured the storage area for their crates and crates of fermenting liquor; here I spontaneously popped off a quick rendition of "A Thousand Barrels of Wine on the Wall," which seemed like it was probably literally true. Before crusiing back to SoCal, we'd end up buying a 2 liter magnum from here for our wine expert back home. We hit a couple more places and then went to the local street fair. We intended to go out that night, but were so tired and intoxicated we just ended up crashing. The next day, onto Pine Ridge, where we wine-tasted straight from their new French oak barrels and munched on some funky-yummy gouda. We also hit Plump Jack, by which time we were pretty faded, and then picked up some grub from a local market and picnicked at Hall drinking a decent Chardonnay, a nice change from all the reds we were throwing back all weekend long. I also had a delicious 2001 Reserve from some place the name of which I was too drunk to recall[1] save that it tasted like my mouth and the wine were sharing one sweet fuck.
No matter how hard you spin, the shit stays in.
I'm not a wine connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination. I'm barely beginning to make out the "smoky," "vanilla," "meaty," "cherry," je ne se mutherfuqin qua aromas in the wines, but I try hard, homie. And that's all that really matters. Little by little, my nose is learning to sniff the sniffs, or so I tell myself. Since I was a picky eater for most my life, my taste buds also aren't as developed as I would like, but I imagine wine appreciation is like when I was 5 and used to play house with Denise and pretend to be an adult--I'll figure this bitch out sooner or later. Ha-cha-cha-cha-cha. ~ Abel G. Peña
Me and Jimi on the same kick.
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[1] I've since been informed it was Rutherford Hill.