Meeting and challenging preconceptions - Napa Day 2

Today started with breakfast at the Model bakery, which was delicious (and crowded) as always. We headed up to the top of Spring Mountain to visit Barnett Vineyards. We got lucky in that the weather had cleared this morning, so we had clear views into the valley. Absolutely breath-taking view!

Nicole ran the tasting and gave us a lovely tour of the cave. Barnett is doing a range of wines, both from mountain fruit and from grapes sourced from around the valley. We had a lot of fun with the two other couples at this tasting. One gentleman was industry and the other three were civilians like us. The other gentleman regaled us with a fabulous story about having met Thomas Keller at a golf outing and having no idea who he was. 'TK' ended up inviting him out to Napa to dine at the restaurants.

We headed down to Hall Vineyards next. We've driven past this house for years and finally decided to try them. They have a beautiful tasting space, but the wines were more expensive than good. Frankly, we should have kept driving past...

We still had some time to kill, so we decided to have a laugh (because we're terrible people) and head to Louis Martini Winery. While this is one of the oldest wineries in the valley, we frankly didn't think much of their reputation. WOW were we wrong! We did their heritage tasting and were extremely impressed. They source many of their heritage wines from the Moon Mountain area and it's absolutely delicious!

We walked to dinner at Acacia House tonight and the food was fantastic. The sour note to the day though was that it's been raining cats and dogs so we took an umbrella from the hotel. We left it in the barrel at the door to the restaurant. When we finished dinner and went to leave, sure enough someone had stolen our borrowed umbrella! Bummer of a end to an overall great day!