Tuesday, April 25, 2006


04-22-06_1529
Originally uploaded by Ergophobe.
Rather than be trapped in my hotel for the weekend, I decided I'd take a road trip to Napa Valley on Saturday. I did a quick google search to see what wineries were in the area, picked one that I knew the name, and sent the address to my cell phone. I'd say that's a pretty good use of Google Maps. Anyway, I then went to the car and transcribed the address from my cell phone to the GPS and off I went to the Beringer Vineyards.

Now, I know next to nothing about wine. I know my favorites are White Merlot and White Zinfandel. The true white wines are too sweet, and the full red wines leave a bitter taste in my mouth. But I figured I'd learn something, so I signed up for the "Taste of Beringer" tour. I had to wait a couple hours for this, so I amused myself by taking some photos with my cell phone, and browsing through the two gift shops. I didn't find anything really great to buy, but I couldn't leave without at least buying something, so I picked up a variety pack of wines and a DVD that teaches about wine (after the tour of course).

So the tour wasn't very exiting. As predicted, they took us into the caves, showed us a bunch of barrels they use for aging wine, showed us Jacob and Frederick's wine collection, and gave us a lot of pretty useless information. What I did like was the wine tasting. I've never done a wine tasting before. The tour included a "flight" of 3 different reserve wines, a Chardonnay, a Merlot, and a Cabernet Sauvignon. I could stomach the Chardonnay, but neither the Merlot and the Cabernet appealed to me. I'm not saying that means they were not good wines. There were plenty of people there who were quite impressed by the quality of the reds. I just don't have a taste for red wine -- yet. I didn't have a taste for beer when I was 16 either, but boy did that change when I got to college! I'm going to take a crack at learning to drink wine like a connoisseur, thus the DVD. Maybe I'll even make a hobby out of it.

Well, as the great Forrest Gump used to say, "That's all I have to say about that." Not the greatest ending to my fine story, but there's really nothing more to tell.

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