‘Morning, everyone,
We’ve been spending the last couple of days in beautiful Napa visiting various wineries, enjoying some great food & wine, and freezing our tails off! We’re on our annual boys-only birthday trip which became a tradition after I started taking my sons to Vegas (naturally!) after they turned 21. Getting tired of losing money, we decided to try other destinations so last year we ended up in SF and Napa. We had such a great time that we decided to return this year … and what a great hana hou it turned out to be! We stayed up at the Kenzo Estates winery located in the hills overlooking Napa Valley … a spectacular location! Kenzo Tsujimoto is the founder and chairman of CAPCOM, the huge global video gaming company, and is also the owner of Kenzo Estates, one of Napa’s most innovative and up & coming wineries. This place is absolutely spectacular (we’ve been posting some of the photos on Instagram and Facebook) and are now spoiled forever. I want to send a big mahalo to Tamamo-san and Sayaka-san for taking such good care of us!
As I said, it’s been pretty cold here in Napa … last night it dropped below freezing. During the Twilight Tasting Tour at Robert Mondavi last night, it got so cold that I wished we had brought the sweaters that Carla had gotten us for Christmas .. the ones we never thought we’d ever use! Boy, was I wrong! We visited three wineries yesterday; Schramsberg, Castella de Amorosa, and Mondavi. Schramsberg was interesting because we got to tour the caves where the wines are stored, and also learned how their champagne is made. Castella de Amorosa was totally commercial; although the castle itself was cool, I didn’t like the way they were always trying to sell you stuff throughout the tour … plus, their wines were average at best. The Mondavi tour turned out to be the best even though we froze our asses off …
So we’re now back SF and the day turned out to be kind of a bummer … I think Alex got a stomach virus last night and has been out of commission for most of the day. He seems to be doing better tonight, so I hope he’ll be ok tomorrow. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Broncos ended up losing to the Ravens in the AFC playoff game. But after watching Denver struggle, I think the Ravens are probably the better team to go up against the winner of tomorrow’s Patriots vs. Texans match-up. We also watched the 49ers beat the Packers 45-31, so the Niners now move on and will play the winner of tomorrow’s Seahawks vs. Falcons game. We watched both games at Harrington’s Pub which is located near our hotel, surrounded by very vocal 49er fans …
Aloha, “D”