ASU Game - Napa and San Francisco

I can actually say that I am ready to stay home for a few weeks! This past weekend, I had one more planned trip to see the ASU game versus Stanford. Any trip that the group takes for a game, always has side trips involved and in this case, Napa. In the past year I have gone from never seeing a winery, to seeing my fill with two trips to Napa. First stop was a place that I actually found on CNN originally called Castello di Amorosa, or the Napa Valley Castle. I booked a tour which turned out to be a great idea. The tour started late, but our group had the privilege of having the owner of the Castle Darryl Sattui give the tour. He also has another very popular wine destination, V Sattui (after seeing how crowded V Sattui is on another day, I realize how lucky we were to be given a tour by the owner). The castle is amazing – built to be authentic, with different parts shipped from overseas or built here using the same methods as the period. I found interesting details, like that you can see where they built over pieces of the castle that would have been done if a real castle had existed centuries. Doors and windows that were now built over but you can still see the framework. The castle has underground caverns that go for several stories under the property where wine is held in barrels and bottles. It even has a dungeon with replicas of real torture devices. I believe it was around 121,000 sq feet now, and only open to the public since April. If you have the chance to go to Napa, I highly recommend you stop there. Personally, I liked the wines there better than others only because they had several varieties of the dessert wines I like. From there, we went to several more wineries, Duckhorn, Hall, and Alpha Omega.

For Saturday, since the game did not start until 7 we had time to hit several more wineries before leaving (again, I was DD during most of this!) Darioush had beautiful grounds and a building with high columns based on a Persian theme, and the price of their wine matched. William Hill had rolling hills of fields but a basic set up. Mumm Napa had to be my second favorite, only for the large area of places to sit, crackers for me to snack on and wide variety of wines (and yes, for you Laura Champagne). For lunch, we went to V Sattui to eat on the picnic grounds. Wow it is crowded! That night, we drove to Palo Alto to attend the game, ASU won 41 -3. However, the game was not too exciting since it was cold and not too many fans stayed the game.

Then for Sunday, we had a few hours before leaving to get yummy food in San Fran. For lunch, we went to Scoma’s and walked around the piers. I love watching the sea lions there. I certainly want to go back again to have more time in the city, rent bikes to go across the bridge, and get out on a sailboat. But for now - I want to stay home for just a few weeks! My next project is fixing all the things on my house I have been putting off, I am sure after that I will get the travel bug again.