Wine tasting

We drove to St. Helena to do a wine tasting at Failla.

This winery had been suggested to me by my friend, Huston. I value his palette, his suggestions, his knowledge when it comes to food or wine. He was the sommelier at Bouchon in Las Vegas. Absolutely, this guy knows his wine.

I e-mailed the winery to set up the tasting. The room, itself, was small, comfy, very familiar feeling. We were tasting with two other couples--one from Phoenix and the other knew each other from school.

I overheard our guide mention that he had a scholarship to Gonzaga, but turned it down. Looking at him, he seemed to small to be a football player and not tall/lean enough to be a basketball player. Either way, he had turned down the opportunity to attend Gonzaga.

Still, he retained the frat boy mentality.

He did use questions to engage us as a group. Where are you from? Where are you staying? Where are you dining? I fielded that one. I mentioned that although I had wanted to dine at Bouchon, they were booked til 10 pm, and had we gotten into the restaurant, we would need a car. Driving to Bouchon was not an option after a long day of wine tasting.

Instead, I told them that we were dining at Zu Zu.

The wines were decent. We tried a surprisingly good chardonnay. I say that knowing that typically, I do not like chardonnays. This one was lovely.

We tried a few different pinot noirs and a syrah. I enjoyed them and then, our guide, said--alright, you can purchase wine, pay for the wine tasting, and then we will go to the caves.

We opted to pay and leave. Short on time, still in our running gear and really not love-loving the wine, I told the guy we would pay for the tasting. I handed him my Bull and Bush business card/sticker and asked about utilizing a chardonnay barrel. The brewers want to age a beer in a used chardonnay barrel and I agreed to investigate.

Our guy lost focus at this point and I was ready to leave. We paid and left.

Headed back to Sonoma with the promise of Russian River Brewery soon.

We arrived at St. Francis Winery 30 minutes early. They had a full tasting room and from the windows, their grounds were stunning. We met our guide and he told us we could taste 4 wines.

He started us off and we enjoyed the wine. He became busy with a club member and so he gave us Rony, our Peruvian guide.

Rony was awesome. We tried several additional wines to the promised 4. Plus, he was knowledgeable, had an accent and coined the phrase--You will have happiness in the heart--which became our trip saying.

Yes, St. Francis was perfect. We bought wine, for later, and chocolate since we all agreed on the chocolate factor.

Day one of wine tasting was complete. Failla was a nice intro into wine country and St. Francis was delightful. The service we received made a huge difference in our experience and perspective.