EPIC DRIVE

I left late. I had planned to make a short stop at Ridge Vineyards on my way north. Ridge is a veritable institution in the California wine scene best known for its Monte Bello Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. Relative fame allows Ridge to require reservations 24 hours in advance for tastings, which I unfortunately did not have. My backup plan was to visit Calera Wine Company near Hollister, California. Calera seemed like an interesting destination given its reputation for producing extremely high quality, Burgundian-style, single vineyard pinot noir from the limestone soil of Mount Harlan. Calera was opened until 4 PM and was more than five hours from Thousand Oaks. I left Thousand Oaks at 12 PM.

This is me leaving at 12 PM:

Google maps encouraged me to take a detour between the US-101 N and the US-101 N by taking the fog covered US-154 W. This was a relatively high visibility portion of the detour:

There were cliffs too.

Most of the drive looked more like this:

So I missed Ridge, missed Calera, and then my camera ran out of memory.

Finally, after a nearly eight hour adventure, I arrived at my destination, met the family I will be living with for the month (the family is lovely), unpacked my things, and headed to dinner in Yountville to meet a friend of a friend--a fellow vagrant spending a portion of her summer between work and business school at a tasting room in Napa.

Nestled between Thomas Keller restaurants, we met at Redd, a stylish if not overambitious place with a nice outdoor patio complete with communal fireplace.

Serendipitously, a Calera pinot noir was available by the half bottle. However, the award winning young somelier discouraged me and my guest from its Burgundian austerity?, suggesting instead a pinot noir from the Santa Cruz Mountains by Windy Oaks, which would have "less of a tension between the fruit and the acidity". Is this the en vogue euphamism for fruit bomb these days?

Since the wee hours of the morning approach, this short review of Redd will have to suffice:

Waiter not knowledgeable about the wine at all. Good green salad with goat cheese, figs and candied walnuts. Ok duck confit. Great peanut butter desert. Good scene, ok value. B+.

The Windy Oaks pinot noir, my first wine in Napa, while not actually from Napa, was pretty damn good. A.

Daily Scorecard: 1 drink, 0 workouts, 0 ESV, 0 French. I did, however, listen to 6 or so hours of Kitchen Confidential on audiobook.