Following our day of wining, it was time for dining, and so we headed back to the city of Napa for dinner.
Downtown Napa is a funny place. The city made the map when a local wine won a blind test against a famed French wine in Paris in the 1970s. Since then, the valley has cashed in on its claim to fame, building tasting rooms, a wine train to shuttle drinkers from vineyard to vineyard and cornily-named accommodations, like our very own Chardonnay Lodge. It gives the whole city a bit of a grown-up alcohol-themed Disney World feel. Underneath the shiny yuppie markets and wine cellars though is just an old city, once the seat of a quiet, mainstream, agricultural county.
We ate at ZuZu, a Mediterranean tapas restaurant on Napa’s Main Street. Perhaps a bit overdone on wine by the glass, we ordered a pitcher of sangria to start, followed by a parade of small plates. We ordered some hot, some cold, and tried to, as always, experience the full range of the menu: citrusy ceviche with jicama and avocado; quinoa salad with duck, figs and walnuts; pimientos de padrón, the Spanish peppers we also ate at the Ahwahnee; queso frito, a manchego cheese fried and dipped in a tangy aioloi; Japanese eggplant drizzled in honey; and a spicy lamb burger served with hummus and yogurt sauce. A bit of a change from the flavors of the campfire. We did, however, face a familiar problem: as dinner wore on, our photo light began to disappear.
Overall, the food was great. My personal favorite was probably the ceviche, though I loved the spicy flavors of the lamb complemented by the hummus and yogurt. The quinoa salad definitely won the award for most interesting composition. The peppers were good, but not quite what I was hoping for. The cheese and eggplant were both lovely, but fell prey to the flavor loss problem that most fried items do. The aioli did help to bring out the rich flavors of the manchego though, helping to spice up the dish.
After dinner we retired to Chardonnay Lodge, where we caught up on a few quality television shows before falling asleep.
Our first stop in the morning was to the Oxbow Public Market, one of the aforementioned yuppie developments in Napa. We grabbed coffee at Ritual Coffee Roasters, one of the stands in the marketplace. The barista effectively forbade us from putting milk or sugar into our flavorful coffees, each of which was brewed individually.
The rest of the market was not fully open yet, so we headed back to Highway 29 and drove north again. We stopped at the Oakville Grocery, a gourmet food market that my mom had recommended we check out. We filled our shopping basket with picnic wares in order to prepare for our final vineyard visit.
We drove out to Rutherford Hill, a vineyard not on highway 29. As the name implies, the vineyard is somewhat up in the hills, giving it a fantastic vantage point. Beautiful scenery while wine tasting? Check. Because we had our picnic to attend to, we opted to buy a bottle rather than do a tasting. We were graciously permitted to try all of the wines before purchasing, so we kind of got the best of both worlds. Armed with a bottle of uncorked sauvignon blanc and a loaner of real wine glasses, we headed to the vineyard’s delightful picnic tables and unpacked our basket.
Our gourmet mid-morning meal included a baguette, pate, two recommended cheeses (one hard, one soft), roasted tomato bruschetta, blue-cheese-stuffed olives and crackers. It all complemented the wine beautifully, and the view was excellent.
We also managed to procure awesome wine tote bags, which I put to great use throughout the rest of the trip. They make for very convenient carry cases! (Thanks to Gabi for buddying up to the friendliest of the sommeliers we met and asking for extras.)
We returned our wine glasses, bid farewell to Rutherford Hill and dropped Gabi off at her car. We planned to meet up again in San Francisco later that day, but we had a few detours to make first. And so we waved goodbye to the grape vines and left the slightly surreal world of wine country.
