Girls’ Weekend in Napa – the wine tasting

Note: Before you read this post, make sure you’ve read the background.

What trip to Napa is complete without some wine tasting? Isn’t that the whole point of going up to Napa?

Peju Winery

We started out at Peju Winery, which is CTLB’s favorite. I’d tasted some of their wine before, but had never been to the winery. As it turns out, this was the best stop along the way. We were lucky enough to have Alan “Yodelmeister” Arnopole during our tasting.

Alan is quite a character, and had us crying because we were laughing so hard. At one point during his talk about the wines, he stopped and asked us if he could get real. He then proceeded to adjust his pants and straighten his tie. I had no idea what we were about to experience, but just prepared for something unique. Alan broke out in a RAP all about Peju and the wine we were about to taste. This older, white guy was rapping to us! And he wasn’t half bad. Not only that, he knew that CTLB was there for a bachelorette weekend, so he kicked a freestyle rap all about her “betrothal.” Pretty cool. After the next wine was sampled, Alan began to YODEL for us! When we told him he should make a cd, he quickly pulled one out that was available for purchase. You know we had to snap that up as soon as we could! It became our “soundtrack” for the rest of the afternoon.

I don’t know whether it was the rapping or the yodeling, but all of us walked out of Peju with at least 2 bottles of wine. I wonder if the people who didn’t have Alan at their tasting bought as much? I highly doubt it.

The whole experience at Peju was so fun, and it totally set the mood for the entire weekend. I am so glad we stopped there first, because it put us all in the right frame of mind to have an amazing time. The stage was set for a terrific weekend.

Provenance Vineyards

Our next stop was Provenance Vineyards. This tasting was more of a classic wine tasting, without the yodeling or rapping that Alan gave us. Our wine expert was young, but very knowledgeable, and the best part was that she was very generous with her pouring. The wines at Provenance were very good, but much more expensive to purchase, so we enjoyed our sample tastes and left without buying anything.

V. Sattui

Our final stop on our wine tasting tour was V. Sattui. V. Sattui is unique in that they have an amazing deli and cheese case, along with a huge wine shop. We quickly decided to buy quite a few of their delicious cheeses in order to make an impromptu picnic back out our hotel room before we headed off to dinner. We also did a tasting at V. Sattui, and Gabe, our wine expert, was lots of fun. He couldn’t have been a day over 21, but he handled our raucous group of 5 ladies with ease. We tasted some good wines here, and a few of us added to our wine collections.

At this point, we were all anxious to check into our hotel rooms and get the real party started.

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So, you might be wondering why I was wine tasting, eating dinner, and drinking when I’m supposed to be on this medically supervised fast.  I had made the decision months ago that because this weekend was so special, and because CTLB is only going to get married once, I would break the fast and eat real food and drink real wine this weekend.  Plus, I figured it was early enough in the fast that it wouldn’t affect my weight loss too severely.  I made good choices in what I ate, overall, and I worked out hard on Saturday night when I got home to try to work off some of the calories that I took in. We’ll see what the scale says on Tuesday, but no matter what happens, it was definitely worth it to enjoy this weekend.