Napa Valley

I don't know if you can tell, but the statue in the picture is of a woman that has her arms outspread giving a sign of welcome. Robert Mondavi designed his vineyard after a monastery and all monasteries have statues such as this to illustrate to passers and other travelers the sign of welcome. The Mondavi vineyard is right in the heart of Napa and sports some interesting wines.

My tour of the vineyard was quite interesting as well. Of course you get the sweeping views of Napa Valley and hundreds of thousands of rows of grapes, but we also got to see the inner workings of the vineyard, the wine barrels, the fermentation barrels, etc. Our tour guide was quite the trip and probably both enhanced and worsened the tour. He knew his Mondavi/Napa valley history inside and out, but along with the scripted jokes, he was dry and boring. It's probably a good thing I wasn't there with friends because I would have been subtly teasing him all day long.



Anyway, I spent about 3 hours at the vineyard and overall it was incredible. I also hit what used to be the Coppola vineyard as well as the Martini vineyard...both incredible. I highly recommend Napa...preferably with a significant other. And yes, I did just come back from Oktoberfest where I drank 10 liters of beer per day and go to Napa Valley where I had a few bottles of wine per day. No big deal.