Yes, I’ve taken a year off. I’m not getting paid for this you know but I would love it if I did. I had a moment this week when some friends asked me for recommendations from our trip to Napa Valley and I thought to myself, I should just write a blog.

I can’t imagine a better grown-up trip than one to wine country. I mean seriously. The whole trip was about wine and food and I got to drive a rented Kia. We started our adventure by flying into San Francisco, which I do not recommend. I know, I’m from Minnesota and people don’t think we have cars here but the traffic in San Francisco is ridiculous. We got a cheap flight and wanted to drive over the Golden Gate but it was a mistake. Getting out of town on a Friday was a mess and getting back in on a Tuesday was even worse. Fly into Sacramento, which is almost equidistant from wine country and has no traffic.

Besides San Francisco, we made one other mistake on this trip and that was our hotel. There are tons of cool bed & breakfasts and boutique hotels in Yountville but we planned our trip too late and ended up at the River Terrace Inn in Napa. Besides Napa being the most boring town in the valley, this was a not a great hotel either. The room was fine and it was clean enough but they made two big mistakes while we were there. First, I ordered a special wine and cheese platter to welcome us, which would have been so great after our terrible drive from San Francisco – if it would have actually gotten delivered! They brought it to the wrong room. Now, they did reverse the charges but come on. Second, their concierge acted like it was her first time to Napa as well. I asked for a map of the valley to which she responded, “Sorry, I don’t have any maps. I used to but we gave them all away.” I asked, “Isn’t there a map in that ‘Guide to Napa Valley’ magazine on the table behind you?” To which she replied, “Oh, there might be.” Yikes. I tested her with a couple of other questions while were there and she failed on all of them so I stopped asking.

Actually, the highlight of our trip was our guide and driver Lonnie Smith of www.lonnieswinetours.com I found him on Trip Advisor, where he has perfect reviews (including one from me) and he not only set up a day trip for us and drove our rental car but he also gave us recommendations about wineries and restaurants to visit on two other days. He’s the best.

You can buy California wine at any MGM Liquor warehouse but I am a farm kid and I wanted to see how people grew grapes and made them into wine! We did start with one of the big five wineries, Robert Mondavi. Who we learned was the godfather of Napa Valley wineries after prohibition and grew up in Minnesota! It has a great family story. He apparently had a huge fight with his brother over wine because he wanted to make it cheap and Robert wanted to make the best. He actually did when his cabernet beat the French early on and put California wine on the map. It gets even better; he lost his winery to a controversial takeover by the largest wine producer in the world. They ship like 300,000 cases and have several labels and a nice tour that’s worth seeing. We also went to two other huge wineries; The “Castello di Amorosa” built by multimillionaire wine maker Dario Sattui because he was “mad at his money.” We also visited Mumm Napa, where they make sparkling wine, which is kind of fun and different. There are plenty of tourist wineries that are very big like Sterling, Beringer and Sutter Home, who makes 18 million cases of white zinfandel a year, but we chose to focus on the smaller wineries that don’t have national distribution – you can only get wine from them directly. There are about 600 wineries in Napa Valley so you need some good advice, thanks to Lonnie again, and most of the smaller one’s are by appointment only. Two stood out for us and we joined their clubs. The Terraces in St. Helena, www.terraceswine.com, is run by a former IBMer, and they make about 2,500 cases a year. We got a fantastic tour of their winery and felt like family when we left. Similarly, Reverie in Calistoga, www.reveriewine.com, is an “estate” winery, which means they grow and bottle wine on site, also produces about 2,500 cases a year and had a great tour including a naturally occurring “circle” of redwoods where we drank incredible wine. Behrens Family in St. Helena, www.behrensfamilywinery.com, is small as well and they don’t grow grapes but they source them instead so they don’t have a tour but they have great wine and an incredible view. You do the tasting in an airstream trailer with your friend Robin. Right down the road from Behrens, up on the mountain, is Pride Mountain, www.pridewines.com. They are a medium size winery who makes about 18,000 cases a year and are a little more pretentious but still worth the drive. They have a great tour of their cave and a beautiful setting. Their Viognier has been served at the White House and is incredible.

I know this isn’t a travel blog so I’ll stop now but I’ll end with this. Being a parent is great and family vacations to the Black Hills and Disneyworld are swell but, taking a long weekend to do something like eat slow meals and drink wine just for fun is what life is all about. After all, Jesus did turn water into wine right?