So many wineries, so little time!

I would have to say my increase in wine consumption really took off after the birth of my second child. Coincidence? I went on a girls week to Napa with 3 of my friends from Colorado, only I couldn't drink much wine because I was 4 months pregnant. My doctor, whose name I will withhold, actually told me I could drink 1-2 glasses over the course of the day. Prior to this trip, I was still in the Merlot stage of wine drinking and had not yet crossed over to appreciation of Cabs. The most memorable wine of the trip was Frank Family Chardonnay, which continues to be one of my favorite Chardonnays if I'm going to splurge.
Last fall, I had the opportunity to return to Napa for a week with my sister. Vacationing with my beloved aside, this was one of the best vacations I have ever had! I am a planner, and a lot of the joy I get from traveling is in the anticipation and planning. We booked our trip 18 months in advance, and spent the 6 months prior to the trip looking over winery maps of Napa and Sonoma, planning 5-6 wineries each day, going to web sites, and looking for classes we could take. Interestingly, we struck out on classes until the month or so of our trip when we hit payload! There were so many great moments, I'm sure I'll forget some, but we started out with a wine and cheese tasting at V Sattui, where we got to taste Sauvignon Blanc grapes from the vineyard. This was my first experience pairing a rose (Gamay Rouge) with BBQ, and Blue Cheese with Port. Both were out of this world! We later visited a small winery called Havens (so small we didn't think they were open when we first arrived) - known for their Albarino, and ended the day at Domaine Chandon with a flight of Champagne (not a Champagne fan myself) and a tomato mozzarella salad. Other highlights from the trip were sitting on the hill overlooking the vineyards at Viansa in Sonoma, visiting Chateau St Jean (one of my favorite wine portfolios), the progressive tasting at Sterling, a wine class at the Franciscan where we were the only two students, and a winemakers dinner at Copia. There are so many memories I am leaving out, but those are the ones that flood instantly to memory.
So why is Chateau St Jean one of my favorite wine portfolios? You know how after hearing a live performance, the music takes on a more personal meaning? That's what happened to me at the winemakers dinner at Copia, which was sponsored by Chateau St Jean. Hearing Margo talk about how she cultivates and blends her wines made them more personal for me, hence my listing of her wines as a favorite portfolio. Never in my life have I ever tasted a $100 bottle of wine. Never would I have believed that it could be so much better than a $15 bottle of wine, but I almost succumbed to temptation and spent $100 on this bottle of Cinq Cepages. BTY, I recently found it for $50 on some web sites. Anyway, I talked myself out of it because I tend to save $20 bottles of wine for special occasions, when would I ever be able to bring myself to open a $100 bottle of wine?!? My wonderful sister gave me a bottle of Cinq Cepages for Christmas last year. I'm saving it for my 40th birthday or some other monumental occasion.
If I lived in CA, which I will never do, I would have to give up a weekend a month to work at a winery, because then you get a reciprocal 30% discount at most of the wineries! My only complaint, well more a disappointment, about the trip, was that the wines you taste are typically their limited production, so you can only buy them at the winery or through their website. So many of the wines I brought home, I don't want to open, because I feel like they are irreplaceable. I was also surprised at the amount of money spent on tastings alone - $10-$25/tasting, 5-6 tastings/day over 6 days - well, you can do the math!