Fun in Napa with Friends

One of the best things about living in Northern California is that our friends have more incentive to visit us. And as a result of friends visiting us, we have incentive to not work all weekend. It's a win-win!

This weekend was no exception. Our dear friends from the midwest, Foodie and Mr. Foodie, came out for a long weekend and spent their first 3 days here with us. They flew in on Friday and we spent our time catching up and going to the mall so they could visit an adorable children's clothing store they don't have access to from home. For dinner, we went to Cherry Sushi, one of our favorite Japanese restaurants (sadly, they've pared their menu down and some of our favorites were gone).

On Saturday morning, we drove to Napa Valley for what turned out to be a day of power tasting. We were joined by J and J, some of our Napa friends, who are extremely plugged in to the Valley and knew all the best places to visit that day.

First stop: Silver Oak's wine release party, featuring the 2004 Alexander Valley Cabernet (and also serving a gourmet boxed lunch): Next stop: Alpha Omega winery. They have a new building on the site where Rabbit Ridge Winery used to be. The building isn't finished yet, but it's going to be really nice when it is. The wine was great! We bought futures for a vintage that won't be released for a few months.
Next stop was Rutherford Grove. The wine was good, and some of the products in the store were better. We bought some raspberry syrah sauce, some cosmetic products and some Napa Valley soap.
And finally it was time for our scheduled tasting at Elyse. Now let me say up front that a winery requiring an appointment is not something we would normally visit during a casual day of wine tasting, but knowing our friends were coming to town we discussed where we wanted to go and Foodie made reservations to make sure we got in. As many times as we've been to Napa, and as much as we love Elyse, I can't believe this was our first visit!

We were welcomed by Otis, their four-legged welcoming committee (kitty was not as excited to meet visitors), and some really cool tasting room workers.
Two wine club memberships later, we loaded our newly purchased half-case of wine and headed for our next stop. We wanted to take Otis home, but he knew he had it good right where he was and he was having none of that!

Our final winery stop for the day was Biale, a winery that is normally by invitation only, but which was having a slow afternoon and agreed to let us in. We spent the last half hour before they closed with the most adorable winery worker. The wine was fabulous, and we purchased, among other thing, a large-format wine with a gorgeous etched bottle. I doubt I'll be letting Mr. Y drink that wine anytime soon, if ever..
Thus ended the first day of wine tasting, and we were off for a fabulous dinner at Redd.
(Sorry, no pics of dinner. I promised Mr. Y and our friends that we could enjoy a relaxing meal without flashbulbs.)