Friday 5ive- A Trip to Napa Valley

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly post featuring five things that caught my attention this week.

It's been a few weeks since my last Friday 5ive, we've been to Boston, Rhode Island and last week we took our semi-annual Napa Valley trip to wine country. The weather was perfect and we had some great wines and delicious meals.

1) We visited one of our favorite wineries Del Dotto where we had the most delicious lunch. The highlight for me was a mini lobster roll that was just the perfect bite. The gardens are just spectacular, with playful statues along the walkway that made me smile. 

2) Old gas stations have been repurposed and turned into takeout pizza joints and wineries. We stopped into Tank winery and it was very cool. 

3) We celebrated a big birthday at Cliff Lede Vineyards, where we had a delightful luncheon in one of the caves. Pat went all out to decorate and we had wonderful time. We even had an impromptu sing along in the cave that was fun and beautiful. Cliff Lede is all about wine, art, and rock and roll, and they have a quite a collection of Beatles memorabilia, paintings by Grace Slick, and a guitar signed by some of the greats like Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards, and Edge.

4) It was nearly harvest time and we got to taste grapes right off the vine. We were all surprised at how sweet they tasted, nothing like the grapes you get in the grocery store. 

5) This week's sign comes courtesy of a bar offering free Husband daycare while their spouses shop the cute little stores on Main Street. I'm proud to say we did not have any drop-offs that day but it was early in our trip. If it was towards the end of the trip, we may have lost a few good men.

I hope you enjoy the end of summer and have a safe and healthy Labor Day holiday. Cheers!

Friday 5ive- Napa Valley Visit

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. There was no post last week because I was in Napa Valley for our biennial trip to wine country. We always have a great time there, with excellent food and wine. It was very hot there (like everywhere else in the country), so we spent a lot of time poolside.

1) The scenery in Napa is just beautiful, filled with mountains and vineyards and gorgeous flowers. 

Outside Clos du Val Winery

The pagoda at Chateau Montelena

The view of Opus One Winery's vineyards

2)  We had some amazing meals in Napa, including the pizza at Ciccio, which was a big hit with everyone. We always put that restaurant on our list when we are in Napa. 

At Stag's Leap Wine Cellars we partook in their Summer 2023 Cellarius Kitchen Experience, where Executive Chef Travis Westrope created a four course luncheon for us. I liked the West Coast Corn Dog, which was filled with shredded tiger prawn with a delicious plum sauce on top, and served with a plum and cucumber sunomono (a Japanese salad) on the side. 

3) The highlight of our trip is always the Del Dotto Barrels and Beasts Dinner. Their winery is so incredible, and this year we were once again able to go into their caves and taste wines directly from the barrel. The dinner was so elegant, with passed hors d'oerves (caviar on top of an everything seasoned sable with smoked sturgeon mousse, pork belly spiedinis, and lamb chops), hamachi tartare with fresh diced peaches and marcona almonds and the highlight of the meal, a Cape Cod Bay Scallop on top of the tastiest corn pudding. They had entertainment from three members of the San Francisco Opera and a DJ wrapped up the evening with a $20 song- "Sweet Caroline". It's always unforgettable (unless you drank too much of the wine-LOL).

4) On our last evening in Napa we visited Mustard's Grill, recommended to us by more than one person. Perusing the most extensive wine list we've ever seen at a restaurant, we found a Pinot Noir from a winery named LaRue. Of course we had to try it and it was wonderful. We even brought the empty bottle home.

5) When we returned home, we took a helicopter ride back to NYC from JFK airport from Blade. It was pretty cool, flying over the Statue of Liberty and it only took 10 minutes to get back to the city (when it would usually take nearly an hour in traffic). I wish they landed on the East side because it took me almost an hour to get from the West side to the East side in an Uber. But it was still pretty cool.

I hope you can stay cool in this heat. Until next time.

Friday 5ive - September 24, 2021

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly(ish) post about five things that caught my attention this week. We visited Napa last week, so this week's Friday 5ive is an all-Napa edition.

1) We had planned on taking a hot air balloon ride there, but the weather didn't cooperate for us. However, on our way to the airport to go back home, we saw this beautiful sight- balloons being blown up and some already in the air.

2)  If any of you are familiar with Thomas Keller's famous restaurant, The French Laundry, in Yountville, our hotel was nearby and we wandered through his huge garden where he grows produce for his three restaurants in town. It's beautfully laid out, we saw all kinds of lettuce, peppers, zucchini, pumpkins, and they even have chickens on site for the eggs.

3) We had a special lunch at Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, where the chef paired a wonderful four course meal with lovely wines. The most beautifully presented dish was dessert- a Bakewell tart with figs and a homemade basil gelato. It was all delicious.

4) We visited Chateau Montelena, and if anyone has seen the movie Bottleshock with Alan Rickman, you'll recognize the stunning exterior of the chateau. Our taste guide Michael gave us an interesting history of the winery, and of course we bought wine to send home. 

5) The reason we made the trip was to attend a VIP dinner at Del Dotto Vineyards, and that was so spectacular. The building is beautiful, and the last time we were there, we were able to tour the caves and taste wine right from the barrel. The food was amazing,  and they had singers from the San Francisco Opera perform during dessert. It was a magical evening.

Looking into the wine caves

It was a fabulous trip and next week, I may share more with you. In the meantime, stay safe.

This post was shared on Weekend Cooking hosted by Marg at The Intrepid Reader. You can find more Weekend Cooking posts here.

Friday 5ive- Happy New Year

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention during the week. I think we are all happy to say goodbye to 2020 and look forward to a better year in 2021. 

1) While picking up a few stocking stuffers in my neighborhood Anthropologie store, I found this cute display of spatulas dipped in "frosting" and sprinkles hanging over a holiday display table. They always have such creative displays.

2)  I saw Alan Alda on Good Morning America talking about a new podcast on Audible called Soldiers of Science. It describes how some of the best doctors ended up at the National Institutes of Health. During the Vietnam War, graduates of medical school did not enter the draft lottery, but were automatically drafted. The only option to avoid that was to apply to a program at the NIH. The result was that the NIH got some of the best and brightest doctors to work in research, including Dr. Anthony Fauci. It's four-part series and it's fascinating. I listened to it in two sittings. You can get more information here.

3)  We did two more virtual wine tastings, one with Clos du Val winery in Napa with friends, and a large Zoom one with my husband's family with wines from Del Dotto Winery in Napa. They both were so interesting, we learned about the various regions and how having vineyards a few miles apart can make a difference in the taste of the wines. For the family one we each did a charcuterie board to go with the wines. It's a great way to reconnect with family. 

4)  I finally watched season four of The Crown. It was excellent, and I particularly enjoyed Olivia Coleman (Queen Elizabeth) and Gillian Anderson (Margaret Thatcher) in their scenes together. 

I'm still on my quest to watch as many holiday specials/movies as I can, and this week it was The Happiest Season on Hulu. Kristen Stewart (Abby) and Mackenzie Davis (Harper) are a happy couple until Harper brings Abby home to meet her family at Christmas, and she hasn't told her family that she and Abby are more than friends. Harper's father (Victor Garber) is running for mayor of their town, and all three of his daughters (and wife played by Mary Steenburgen) are very high strung, with some hiding secrets from their parents. I enjoyed Daniel Levy as Abby's friend and Aubrey Plaza as a former high school girlfriend of Harper's. It was not exactly a happy-all-the-time-movie, but it does have a satisfying ending.

5)  I was busy with the holiday, so I only read three books over the last two weeks. I read my Book Of The Month November selection, Lori Nelson Spielman's The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany, about two cousins who accompany their elderly great-aunt back to Tuscany to reunite her with her long-lost love and break a family curse that says that the second daughters in each family are doomed to remain unmarried. It was nice to visit Tuscany in a book since we couldn't do it in person.

We've been watching the Showtime limited series Your Honor, and Jon Sealy's new novel The Merciful treads similiar territory. A young woman is killed in a hit-and-run while riding her bike at night in her small town in South Carolina, and the man who killed her claims he thought he hit a deer. We get the stories of the prosecutor, defense attorney, the man who killed her and his wife, the dead woman's boyfriend and more, and how one bad decision can change the trajectory of your entire life. My full review publishes next week. 

Ed Tarkington's novel, The Fortunate Ones, is also set in the South, Nashville this time. Charlie Boykin, born to a single teenage mom who lives in the working class part of town in Nashville, gets the chance to attend an elite private school where he becomes friends with golden boy Arch Creigh, and twins Jamie and Vanessa. As Charlie gets pulled into their rarefied circle, he finds that things are different than they appear. It's a terrific story, and Ed Tarkington is well on his way to becoming a great addition to the Southern canon of writers. It's been billed as "the Southern Great Gatsby" and that is an apt comparison. My full review publishes next week.

I hope you all have a safe, happy, healthy New Year. Continue to remain socially distant, wash your hands, wear a mask, and get the vaccine when and if it's appropriate for you.

Weekend Cooking- Napa Valley Trip- Part II- The Wineries

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.

Last week, I wrote about the food we had on our trip to Napa. This week, I cover the wineries.

The first one we visited was Frog's Leap Winery, where I took my favorite photo of the entire trip.

The view at Frog's Leap Winery

We took a tour of Frog's Leap, where we discovered that the founder and owner John Williams graduated from Cornell and interned at Taylor Winery, and opened Glenora Winery in the Finger Lakes region where we used to live, so that was pretty cool. Our tour guide Evan was knowledgable and friendly, and we enjoyed all of the wines we tasted there. I like white wine, so I was very happy here. My husband likes red better.

The vineyards

The grapes are collected in wheeled bins

They get dumped into this container

and they go up the conveyor 

Then we saw the huge barrels the wines are aged in.

The wine barrels

Our next winery was Sterling Vineyards, where we took a tram up the mountain for a self-guided tour.

The view from the tram

The views were stunning, and at Sterling you followed a path to different stations where you again tasted more wine. We liked the tour better at Frog's Leap as it was more interactive and informative.

One of my husband's friends and his wife met us at Del Dotto for a tour of their wine caves. Del Dotto looks like an Italian castle inside, and the caves were very cool. We had a VIP tour, and actually tasted wine directly from the casks where the wine was aging. You could order wine from the very barrel you tasted from; the wine would be delivered in a few months or even years, depending on how long that particular wine needed to age.

Del Dotto cave

Del Dotto was pretty spectacular, and our tour guide really knew his stuff, as did my husband's friends. They have been coming to Del Dotto for years, and have many bottles of their wine, so they gave us the scoop on what to buy. Our wine is scheduled to arrive soon, and we can't wait to invite our sons and their girlfriends over for a wine tasting party.

In front of Del Dotto

We visited a few more wineries, and after two days of that, we decided that next time we did this, we'd probably stick to just one or maybe two wineries per day and then a little sightseeing before dinner. One of our friends told us that after visiting wine country, we wouldn't want to drink wine for awhile and she was right. I needed a little break, but by the time our Del Dotto wine arrived, I'll be ready!