Day 14 :: 3 February 2007 :: Napa to Redding
We so slept in! It was lovely! And we completely repacked the car…yet again. *g*
We took a leisurely drive up to the V. Sattui winery and marveled at the vineyards of Napa Valley. So beautiful! Of course, we did the wine tasting at V. Sattui. Mainly because we knew we'd be wandering around and eating before getting back on the road, Jenn could participate, too, which made it easier to make choices. We finally found a reisling I liked! Turns out I like the dry reislings, but I think we've been getting the off-dry. The rosé was lovely, but really didn't like the cabernet sauvignon. The Muscat was sweet and tasty. And then we tried our "limited edition" wine, which of course was the Madeira. I've been going on about this particularly wine ever since I first tasted it 7 years ago. But at $39 a bottle, I couldn't justify buying it back then with the little money I had.
We ended up buying 2 bottles of the Madeira, a bottle of the reisling, and a bottle of the rosé. We also got postcards, a few bits of wine paraphernalia, a Madeira box, and our lunch. We had a picnic on the grounds with the grackles, who were even snatching bits of bread out of the air. Yes, we were bad in feeding them, but we couldn't help ourselves this one time. After lunch, we did a little more of touring the facilities, including going down into the basement of the castle to see the barrels and the little history museum.
Finally heading out, we had a boring drive up the 5 to Redding. We did see egrets, a heron, and several raptors. We also saw 4 dead hawks and 2 dead barn owns on the side of the road along a probably 5-10 mile stretch of the road. Creepy, but still fascinating in a frakked up way…