For the Seventh Annual (can you believe it?) HOB Wine Tour we returned again to Northern California. We've been to Santa Barbara, Washington State and Oregon -- but we keep coming back again to the Northern California Wine Country -- because we simply love the wines there.
Here's the crew:
| Newsom & Beverly Baker |
| Chaz & Gael Cone |
| Fred & Fran Gunter |
| Dale & Allie Hunter |
Tuesday, June 12th
We all made our way to San Francisco airport (SFO) around noon on Tuesday, June 12th. We came on four different airlines and through two different terminals so I thought it would be easiest if we all met at the Rental Car Center at the Payless Auto Rental desk. Everyone (separately) took the AirTrain to the Rental Car Center. The Bakers were the first to arrive and discovered that I had been misled a bit. Payless is "off campus" a bit. No worries, everyone figured it out, took the Payless shuttle to their facility and met there to pick up our pair of Ford Escape Crossover SUVs. The one Gael drew was this hideous shade of green:
For the first time in HOB history, we had a full-group winery visit on Tuesday.
Flashback: When Gael and I were in CA for Christmas, we dined at a classy restaurant in San Francisco called Luce (pronounced "lu-chay"):
John, the sommelier there, encouraged us to try a Pinot Noir from a winery called August West. We'd never heard of August West but he assured us we'd love it -- and we did. Enough to plan to have August West on the wine tour this year.
I contacted Ed Kurtzman, one of the owners of August West and arranged for a tasting on Tuesday afternoon. After picking up the cars, we headed to Ed's winery in San Francisco only fifteen minutes north of SFO.
August West is in a warehouse/industrial area on the south side of San Francisco. Ed...
... welcomed us and we had a great time tasting his Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah. Ed has a great personality and really understands what he's doing:
Did we love the wine? Did we buy wine? You bet!
We stayed with Ed a bit longer than we'd planned so we had pretty heavy traffic as we made our way from San Francisco north to Santa Rosa. We had just enough time to check our gang into the Flamingo Conference Resort & Spa
...and still make our 7:00p dinner reservation at Willi's Wine Bar.
If you've followed our adventures, you know we almost always have a meal at Willi's Wine Bar. Tonight we were joined by daughter Kristyn for the first part of the evening. The food and cameraderie were just great.
Back to the Flamingo...
... to turn in for the night knowing that we'd be on the road early Wednesday morning.
Sunday, June 17th
And so, it's over. We all agreed that this was one of the best (if not the best) HOB Wine Tour ever. We visited eighteen wineries in five days (whew!) with only a couple that weren't top-notch.
Because of the hot weather, all the purchased wine will ship to us in November (except, of course, the four cases making their way home as checked baggage). Many cases of wine will be arriving at our doorstep in November to hold for our friends who we'll be seeing again for Thanksgiving. There may be some "evaporation" before they claim their prizes -- you never know!
|
