California Trip: The Planning

Welcome back!

Mea culpa: "Bill... was asking Becca and..." ME. "Me". Not "I". Grammatical error. Pointed out by all two of my first readers. Never happen again. Please forgive me. Moving on.

Becca and I got to spend about 29 hours in Napa Valley recently. It was a great wine adventure. And as it is most fresh in my mind, I thought I'd make it my first subject...

In anticipation of touring America's most famous strip of grape-squishers I put a bunch of thought into what to do with the very limited amout of time we'd have there. I'd never been before, but knew Napa to be a super tourist-friendly wine region, where the number of wineries one can visit in a day is limited not by distance or travel time, but only by tolerance. If you don't know what I mean, take by contrast the equivalent amount of time we got to spend in Logrono, Spain, one of the three city-centers of La Rioja (certain to be the subject of another entry, assuming I get that far). In Logrono (there's supposed to be one'a them squiggly-looking thingies on top'a the "n") we had to take a 15 or 20 minute cab ride to and from our one scheduled winery tour up a road that lead only to that specific winery; the winery was isolated from others with no convenient roads between. Furthermore, few wineries have tasting rooms or regular open times. Travel time and a knowledge of directions was a huge factor in determining the number of places one could visit. In Napa, a practically endless stream of wineries lines each of the two main roads of the valley, the Silverado Trail and Highway 29, many of which are open throughout the week for drop-in tastings or reserved tours. In order to make the most of the trip, I wanted to plan a couple of stops, but leave time to take advantage of the opportunity to pop in on any place that struck our fancy (as they say).
Now, I was a science major, so I'm always a little shaky on what exacty is and is not irony*, but I'm pretty sure this qualifies: I can rattle off a dozen winemakers I'd love to visit in any of several different regions of most of the wine-making countries of Europe, and I'll be lucky to get to a handful of those places in my life. But here I am setting off for the most popular wine region of my own country, home to hundreds of wineries in a super-condensed, easy to navigate space, and I can't name even five places I'd really like to visit (that's irony, right?). California, and Napa in particular, was not an important part of the wine program I'd helped run. Moreover, the style of winemaking or of the wine produced in Napa that I'd guess most people associate with the region is not exactly my personal cup of... tea (more on that later).
Of course, there were a couple names that came to mind. Ultimately we left for California with a plan that included three scheduled stops and a good amount of time to explore.

Next up: Stop One...

*Despite my confusion, I am sure that nothing in the Alanis Morisette song is ironic.