Day 1 - Viansa and Artesa Wineries

Our stupid flight was an hour and a half late into SFO, so we ended up missing the scheduled tour at Artesa at 2pm. Fortunately, we still arrived early enough to miss rush hour traffic and made it to Napa without much delay.

The revised plan was to have lunch in Sonoma at Viansa, a winery with a delectable marketplace full of goodies, and then explore Artesa on our own.

Viansa was a beautiful beginning to our trip. The recurring line that ran through my head was - ohmygod - I can't believe I'm here. Whereas Southern California looks like this (dried out chaparral, dull green colors), Northern California looks like this (*cue angels singing hosannas*)

We were late, so we joined a tour already in progress. We looked at the first of many oak barrels.

The tour guide took us to the cellar/basement area, saying that this was the location for weddings and that if any of us were interested, we should book now as there are only a few dates left for 2009. Unfortunately, the cellar didn't really look like a good place for a wedding ceremony. It actually seemed more suitable for some sort of satanic ritual. But whatever.

We were led into the wine tasting and marketplace and proceeded to have our first wine tastings of the trip. Yay! I discretely disposed of some pours in what our tour guide termed the "mother in law bucket" - the spittoon for critical people that aren't satisfied with anything. Wine spittoons make me think of the scene where Miles upends a full bucket over his mouth in Sideways, which is always good for a smile. I noticed a few vinturis behind the bar. Heh.

We picked up some chicken salad, cheese, a baguette, and some charcuterie for our picnic lunch overlooking the vineyards.

After our meal, we headed to Artesa Winery.

Artesa is probably the most unique of all the wineries we went to - it has a distinctly modern flair with abstract sculptures, clean lines, rich woods, glass, flowing water, and very little of the way of ivy covered buildings (which appears to be a constant among wineries we saw, heh)

You have to climb a long flight of stairs to get to the booze, but the views are definitely worth it.

The actual winery looks a tad like a bunker.

The tasting room - we had the classic wine flight which featured a Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Tempranillo, and a Chardonnay. They were good, but we didn't buy any wine.

Instead we went to the gift shop.

And bought this print of a map of Napa Valley's vineyards because apparently, everyone loves it.