Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
Napa Valley is forever linked to San Francisco and vice versa. It is also linked to good wine, which we learned was any wine which one could drink and not poison themselves.
Napa. Napa and San Francisco are forever linked. People have the same reaction to both... one of envy and one of pride (if they’ve been there before). The ride was about two hours north and we slept the whole way as we were a bit tired at this point.
Our first stop was the Napa Valley Wine Train. It was there that I learned more about wine than ever before or in quite some time. A tough looking woman walked up and said simply and slowly, "All wine is good wine. Somebody spent some time and energy making it and clearly they liked it. It is worth trying." I was dumbfounded. This was a philosophy that struck to my core. No longer did I have to call my friend Anthony and ask, "Is this a good wine?" No longer did I have to spend hours buying wine in the wine store as a gift to impress somebody who drank wine. No longer did I have to memorize terms such as "fruity and oaky". I simply had to say, "I like it" or not. Just like Mikey had to do with his cereal. Her advice was coming as if from Bacchus. She was my personal wine god.
I met her afterwards and said, "I bought a bottle of wine on a recent trip to Missouri and was worried that my friend Anthony would make fun of it."
She spoke gruff and to the point. "Drink it. If it has the word wine in it, I’d try it. Maybe I’ll like it, maybe I won’t." she then patted me on the shoulder and I felt almost blessed to buy even more odd bottles of wine from parts of the country which didn’t always have a reputation for making wine. Life was good.
Now, back to the train, we walked out to see the train and all I could think about was Harry Potter. If you remember the train to Hogwarts in the movies it looks old, antique but beautiful. If you’ve not seen the Harry Potter movies, then think of any movie of the old west, because these trains are original to the area from the 1920s and this is what you would see in older movies. But even though they’re old, they look like they came right out of the factory.
It’s a rather pointless ride in terms of getting somewhere. It’s more of a means to drink on an old train and see everything as you drink. You go up the Napa Valley and then turn around and come back. It’s maddening to a New Yorker who has to get somewhere to do something. This is it, just back and forth. Kind of like a mini-cruise.
I highly recommend the Napa Wine train for two reasons. One, the food is gourmet level and the wine is everywhere to try. If you have a question just ask the bartender who answered all of mine. Two, it’s a great way to get a perspective of the valley. That is if you’re sober enough to recall anything. I just looked out the window and saw the little towns that made up the entire Napa Valley. Then we finished dessert and headed back.
Well, after the wine train we got right back in our wheels and headed over to see, what else, a winery. Little did I realize that I’d be wined out, but fortunately we chose rather unique wineries to go see.
View from Artesa into the mountains
The first one of our trip was Artesa. Again, I hope to avoid the boring details so I’ll just summarize it. This really old and rich Spanish family used the family funds to buy a vineyard here in Napa, as they have been making wine in Spain for a few centuries. They chose this mountainside because a special type of grape loves it. They then put the building for the winery in the mountain and covered it with dirt and grass so much that it looks just like the mountain. Then they put cool art in the middle of the building and let people taste wine there.
Without overdosing you on details that’s it. Artesa should be remembered as having a cool mountain feel and being built right into the mountain..
After Artesa I was confused, perplexed, disappointed and happy all at once. First I have to preface the next destination with an example.
One time Margherita poured me a glass of Sprite. I drank the Sprite and got really angry. The Sprite was flat. Completely flat. Never have I tasted something this flat.
"Margherita this Sprite is flat".
"Oh, we ran out of Sprite so I gave you water."
"Oh, forget it."
That’s how it felt to see Copia. The museum about food and stuff. My taste buds were ready for a museum about food. I expected to see the world’s first tomato. The first fork ever used, stuff like that. Instead I saw a museum that had great art, but was more of an art museum using food as a theme. They had a wonderful display using food as art products, and another powerful display where an AIDS patient made objects that looked like desserts out of his medicines, but not much on the world of food as food. There was a section going over the history of art but it was small in comparison to all of the art sections.
Overall, we loved it, but it was a switch. For some reason I thought it would be a Sprite but it came out as another drink. Not a bad one, but one that I wasn’t expecting.
We then headed over to the Best Western Elm House Inn to check in. I will start this off with all of the blubbery first... I loved it. The reasons I loved it are simply summed up within the madness of one man... the owner and proprietor, Steve Wattz. Steve is a man that is one card short of a full deck, but the hand he’s holding from that deck is a royal flush. The man is a genius who knows a thing or two about more than just a thing or two. He had his own company in arcade machines formed and sold by the age of 17. He’s been a racquetball champion and he’s done a few other crazy things. He’s traveled around the world just because it’s there. He wrestled an alligator just to watch it cry. I’m making up the last bit, but it certainly adds to the drama.
However the secret to success is the madness of which I admire. He’s a detail-oriented man and it shows throughout his Inn. He’s tried a few dozen types of soap and sampled sheets just to get the ones that he thought his guests would like! He personally tests your toothbrush to check its efficiency. Only kidding on that one. The man looks over every detail and every aspect just to make sure it’s right. You could tell I had an interesting conversation with him..
Best Western tests every hotel in their network to guarantee they’re up to standards and the Elm House has gotten a perfect score since the time of the Apostles. He's a type-A, perfectionist personality to the extreme.
We tasted some complimentary cookies, changed our clothes in our suite and then headed out to dinner.
I’m not going to lie, I was confused by dinner. Confused, perplexed, scared and felt socially awkward. We had dinner at Hurley’s in Napa which is well known for it’s culinary feats. I’m not sure how well known it is, but in only a few months since having opened it’s rather well known.
Back to my confusion, perplexities and other things... The food was of good quality and prepared well. The presentation was remarkable. The restaurant was beautiful. The person in charge of marketing should be spanked vigorously with their own menu.
The night that we went, they had a special menu but the items they chose on that menu were not some of the most appealingly listed names. The soup was an interesting mix of chilled corn with a swirl of some rare and strange peas. The menu did not describe it half as eloquently as I attempted to describe it. We were with a group of people and half of the table was frightened and the other half was bringing up memories and images of cold pea soup and the movie, "The Exorcist". The quail was described in the menu as something of a raw quail leg and the main courses made you want to run to McDonald’s for safety if nothing else.
That said, once the food was in front of us, we tried it and liked it. Yes, Mikey liked it, but the poor marketing memory was strong and the soup kept reminding me of Linda Blair’s performance in The Exorcist. First impressions count and sadly the wonderful second impression of actual taste, quality and presentation was overwhelmed by a less than tasty menu description.
We ate, we laughed, we joked and we frighteningly dipped our spoons into the cold pea soup to give it a taste.
