Wine Country Volume 5, Chapter 2

Del Dotto Caves

On our second day in Napa (a Friday), we decided to primarily stay on the Napa side of the valley, although Katy and I lobbied hard to get everyone to Sonoma (more on that during Saturday’s post, though, as we were given the chance to plan that whole day’s itinerary!).

We were actually rather pleased with Napa for once, and the wineries, tasting rooms, and prices didn’t feel quite as exorbitant as other places we’d been on that side (with the exception of one – more to come on that in a moment!). We started the day at Del Dotto, and then migrated to Paraduxx, which was actually all we were able to do that day. Why, you may ask? Well, we actually scored a hard-to-get reservation at the French Laundry, and six of us decided that would be an ideal way to have a once-in-a-lifetime meal at one of the country’s most famous establishments. I’ll have to dedicate a separate post just to the meal, though, as there are so many details that it would get distracting (and I’d start to get hungry as I type).

The reviews from day two:

  • Del Dotto
    • Wine Score: 9/10
    • Property/Tasting Room Score: 9/10
    • In full disclosure, I would usually avoid recommending somewhere like this due to the tasting fee ($75). However, it was simply the best barrel tasting experience I have ever experienced, and the uniqueness with which they customize your group’s tour is unparalleled. Barrel tastings are where you get the chance to taste wine directly from the small batch barrels in which it is aging (sometimes even before they would claim a wine otherwise “ready” to be drank – so that you can see how the wines age with time and how that impacts their aromas, flavors, and tannins). One drawback, though, was the price of the wine itself. While it is some of the best Cabernet I think I’ve ever had – the going rate for most bottles was $100-200 (with some selected bottles like a really cool one they have – THE BEAST – ringing in closer to $300). That’s steep. Plus, even though our group of 8 purchased several thousand dollars worth of wine (mostly all attributed to one of our DINK friends – dual income no kids), they still didn’t refund the tasting fees. This had previously been almost customary, so it’s a bit of a shame that they try to bleed you so much from a financial perspective. Everything else about this stop was incredible!
    • BONUS: They serve you some delicious pizza, homemade sausage and cheese, as well as chocolate at the end of the tour (most likely to help you avoid early intoxication if you’ve got other tastings on the horizon!)

Del Dotto Food

  • Paraduxx
    • Wine Score: 7/10
    • Property/Tasting Room Score: 7/10
    • This was a cool spot, and had some great wine. It’s a part of the extended Duckhorn family, so you know you’re getting a good, quality product. Our tasting table outside, on a very nice day, was a great way to relax the afternoon away, all while enjoying the elixir of the gods.

Stay tuned for the review of the day we planned (Saturday). It’ll have a lot of familiar names that I’ve written about before. Spoiler alert: they did not disappoint at all!

Til Next Time,

Michael

Wine Country Volume 5, Chapter 1

Caymus Entry
The grounds at Caymus

At least that’s what I’ll call it, since I think I’ve now been on serious trips to wine country (i.e. more than one day) around five times. And this will be my commentary for day one.

For our first time ever, we decided to fly into Sacramento (SMF) instead of San Francisco (SFO) or Oakland (OAK). I’ll spare the details, but suffice it to say that this airport was an enjoyable (and much less crowded) respite from the bigger city airports. While we had to wait just a bit for a shuttle to the rental car facility (mind you, this was a huge weekend out there so it was abnormally busy), we found everything else about the experience to be quite pleasant. And, given that it is roughly equidistant from our target destination, it was totally worth it!

On the first day, we landed just after noon, and decided we could still meet up with a few of our friends who were either there early or driving up from the Bay Area that morning. So – with limited time, we opted for somewhere that we knew we would enjoy, and wouldn’t mind spending some time at in case it was our only vineyard of the day. As such, we picked Caymus, a label that we were all somewhat familiar with in advance due to their national distribution and availability.

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As far as a “rating”, I’d say:

  • Caymus
    • Wine Score: 7/10
    • Property/Tasting Room Score: 6/10

Once I get a chance, I’ll be sure to update with pictures as well as additional posts/commentary for Friday/Saturday stops!


Til Next Time,

Michael

Happy New Year!

2016 was another great year for me personally and professionally. Most importantly, I have gotten married, purchased a home, and moved in with my beautiful wife. Maybe that’s part of the reason I’ve been missing-in-action in the blog world…

Either way, HAPPY NEW YEAR and all the best luck to you and yours. Maybe you’ll see bigger and better things (or at least a more occasional post) from me next year 🙂

Til Next Time,

Michael

Sunday/Monday in Sonoma

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Some of the tremendous photography on display at Eric Ross.

For our second full day, we wanted to do as many tastings as possible, but be strategic about selecting places with great wine reputation, or only vineyards that came highly recommended from other experts (or natives to the area). We started with BenZiger, the parent brand of a favorite from Saturday (Imagery), then went to Eric Ross (our personal favorite from this trip), followed by a few options on the Southern side of Dry Creek Road (Truett Hurst, Dry Creek Vineyard), finally ending up on the Northern side of Dry Creek Road at another prior favorite (Cast) and two other great spots (Trattore Farms and Dutcher Crossing).

Again, I’ve put some reviews, a blurb about each, and some pictures below. Hope you enjoy it!

Sunday:

  • Benziger
    • Overall Score: 5/10
    • Good winery, but felt a little less unique/authentic than its sister property (Imagery). Fortunately, we received two complimentary tastings from Imagery on Saturday. All in all, a good spot, just not really our style.
  • Eric Ross
    • Overall Score: 9/10
    • This place was one of our favorites… ever! We were served our tasting by the husband (Eric Ross) and wife owners and were the only patrons in the place during the hour or so that we were there. Eric has a separate passion in photography, and some of his shots are incredible. Definitely find some time to get to Glen Ellen and find this gem!
  • Truett Hurst
    • Overall Score: 7/10
    • Very good vineyard on Dry Creek Road. Had some unique flair in that it had some farm animals on the property that you could stroll around and play with. They also serve as the naming inspiration for several of their labels. Some good zinfandels!
  • Dry Creek Vineyard
    • Overall Score: 6/10
    • Good wine, cool logo, great location. That’s about it, though. Memorable spot, for sure, but not a “must” for future return trips.
  • Cast
    • Overall Score: 9/10
    • See past post; score still stands! Love this spot.
  • Trattore Farms
    • Overall Score: 6/10
    • Phenomenal views high atop one of the hills on Dry Creek Road. The wines, though, left a little to be desired. Also – the tasting is one of the more expensive ones we’ve seen on the Sonoma side. At the end of the day, a good spot to check out but not one you should expect to get great, decent value wine.
  • Dutcher Crossing
    • Overall Score: 8/10
    • Gave this one an 8 on our last review, and not much has changed. Did end up buying a magnum of Taylor’s Cabernet Sauvignon which we brought back and served at family Christmas. The family enjoyed it – so I’ll definitely let the score stand. Such a cool property, love the logo, and some tasty wines.

Monday:

  • Rams Gate
    • Overall Score: 5/10
    • Listen… This place is immaculate and gorgeous. Totally worth a visit just to check out the property, the tasting room, the novelty of it all. But – when it comes to wines – there are MUCH better wines to be found (and at way, way lower prices). Bottles are well north of $50 apiece, the tasting was something in the neighborhood of $40 (by far the most expensive I think we’ve ever had). If you do go, go during the holidays though. This place’s decorations are on point:

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Til Next Time,

Michael

Saturday in Sonoma

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For our first full day, we knew we’d be getting a late start since we actually drove up from Danville (~1 hour) that morning. We didn’t let that dampen our spirits though, so we quickly got to work searching for our first target, Schug. As I said to the team there, Schug “basically sponsored our last Christmas (in that our family consumed about 2 cases in total of it during a few day span)” and so it was an obvious first choice. From there, we moved on to Madrone based upon the fact that my wife’s cousin’s boyfriend (follow that?) used to work on the grounds there and in the lab testing fruit/wine acidity levels. After Madrone, we went back to a prior favorite (Deerfield Rach), and closed the day by heading to Imagery (a wonderful recommendation from an old colleague of mine).

I’ve put some reviews, a blurb about each, and some pictures below. Hope you enjoy it!

Saturday:

  • Schug
    • Wine Score: 7/10
    • Property/Tasting Room Score: 6/10
    • Schug was a pleasant surprise for our first winery. We knew the nationally distributed stuff was good, and were hoping to get some “even better” wines there. They didn’t disappoint, and that ended up being the first wine club my wife joined!
  • Madrone
    • Wine Score: 6/10
    • Property/Tasting Room: 7/10
    • Madrone was a recommendation from a prior employee who was at our Thanksgiving meal. The wine was good, with one or two knockouts, and the somewhat-central location made it an easy stop on our way to some of the more remote vineyards.
  • Deerfield Ranch
    • The scores for this one are still consistent with our last review. The only two downsides to this trip to Deerfield were 1) there was a big tour group there so it was rather crowded, 2) the price of the Old Vine Zinfandel rose nearly $20 since our last trip! It’s our favorite wine, though, and we ended up joining the wine club, so it obviously wasn’t that regrettable…
  • Imagery
    • Wine Score: 7/10
    • Property/Tasting Room: 8/10
    • Imagery was a really cool spot. We joined the club, enjoyed the wines, and loved the concept. The vineyard has a huge art collection, and gives each vintage its own original art label. The wines were very diverse, and we enjoyed tasting some wines we’ve never heard of. Many of them are totally uncommon for that area as well (e.g. Lagrein, Mourvedre). Would definitely recommend!

Til Next Time,

Michael

 

Thanksgiving “After Party” in Sonoma

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So our trip to wine country actually came on the heels of a visit to my wife’s grandmother for Thanksgiving. Since my grandmother couldn’t make it to our destination wedding (in Rosemary Beach) we knew we should get out and see her to show her the pictures of our incredible event together. As an added bonus, we decided to appropriately decompress from all of the family time with my in-laws by heading up for an “after party” of sorts wine tasting in Sonoma. It was a great decision.

Over the next few days, I’ll post some reviews and pictures from our excursion, and try to get as many of my thoughts down on paper as possible. Here is the list of wineries we visited:

Saturday:

  • Schug
  • Madrone
  • Deerfield Ranch
  • Imagery

Sunday:

  • BenZiger
  • Eric Ross
  • Truett Hurst
  • Dry Creek Vineyard
  • Cast
  • Trattore Farms
  • Dutcher Crossing

Monday:

  • Rams Gate

We were obviously pretty busy, but there’s an odd feeling of accomplishment for getting so much variety (of all things – terrain/scenery, wine itself, as well as vineyard/ownership culture) in such a short trip. We’re quickly becoming experts at this wine country thing, and it’s a shared passion that I’m sure will continue for the rest of our lives.

Til Next Time,

Michael

Where Have I Been??

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So a lot has happened lately. In the past month, I’ve been to Rosemary Beach to get married, back to Tulum for a minimoon (which – for those who don’t know – means it was a quick trip away as newlyweds, but not the full blown “honeymoon” because we are both painfully low on PTO time J), out to San Diego and Orange County for work, to Danville (CA) for Thanksgiving, up to wine country (Sonoma), back to Atlanta for 12 hours, and then out in Northwest Arkansas/Tulsa/Oklahoma City for work.

Quite a mouthful, I know, and that doesn’t explain me being MIA on the blog for several months. My apologies for that. It’s been a busy (but very productive, very fulfilling) summer and fall at work. Then, adding in the stress related to the wedding – I just let it get away from me. I do have a lot of lessons learned though that I want to share as I reflect towards year end on personal and professional accomplishments in 2016.

Starting out, I will go ahead and do some quick and easy reviews on our trip to wine country. Then, I’ll follow up with more volumes of information and pictures from our minimoon. I know each of these will be the third time I’ve covered a spot (Wine Country, Tulum), but it’s exciting to write about because it takes me back to two of our “happy places”.

Til Next Time,

Michael

Painting the Kitchen Cabinets & Swapping Pull Hardware

One lesson learned in the cabinet/counter/backsplash renovation was that timing is everything. We tried to run both projects in parallel, which proved to be fairly difficult. This is because the cabinet painting itself was a 7 step process, and took the better part of a week and a half. Whereas, once the granite/travertine was removed from counter/backsplash, the installation of the new marble/subway tile could actually be done in about a day and a half. But we wanted to get the cabinet frames painted prior to installation of the other kitchen elements, so we inadvertently tripped over our own schedule feet a couple times. Oh well!

Regardless, the kitchen cabinet painting SEEMED like it may be easy enough (and much cheaper) for us to do it ourselves. We are so glad that we didn’t. Much like the other painting (which we found out we weren’t great at), it would have been super tedious and required many long nights. To give you an appreciation of the process that was followed, it was seven steps in all. This included removal of the doors, sanding, priming, re-sanding, priming, painting (multiple coats). See below for a couple of the “in-flight” pictures.

Once the cabinet doors were ready to re-install, we had to go ahead and switch out the knobs for stainless pulls (pictures below). The only complicated part about this was that our cabinet painter said he had never installed new pulls before. Much to my surprise, I said “ok” and decided to figure it out on my own. After sourcing the pulls from Amazon (MUCH cheaper than buying them all at Lowe’s since there were over 30 pulls in the whole kitchen), all I needed to do was drill a secondary hole to secure the pulls. The reason this was required was that the knob only had 1 screw/hole, whereas the stainless pulls needed to be anchored with two screws/holes. There is a template that you can buy in the cabinet hardware section at Lowe’s that has many of the common offsets already there. I highly recommend using one of those and a mechanical pencil to lay out your hole drilling plans.

Here are some of the pictures (without spoiling the surprise of the finished counter/backsplash):

Doors Off; Painting Frames In-Flight
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Doors Painted and Air Drying in Basement
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Drawers with Pulls Installed

Til Next Time,

Michael

Kitchen Renovation

Kitchen 1
Our Kitchen Before the Transformation

Over the next few posts, I’ll add some detail around what all we did to our kitchen. In short, we:

  • Painted the Cabinets
  • Removed Knob Hardware and Added Stainless Pulls
  • Removed Granite Counter and Replaced with Marble
  • Removed Travertine Backsplash and Replaced with Subway Tile
  • Changed Out Over-the-Bar Pendants
  • Changed Out Instant Hot Water System
  • Replaced Garbage Disposal

All in, we kept it just shy of $10,000, which I consider to be a huge success given the transformation it facilitated for the place. Stay Tuned!

Til Next Time,

Michael

White Washing the Fireplace

One of the first things we did upon move in was to paint the fireplace. In case you couldn’t tell, the town home originally had severe Tuscan vibes all throughout – with a plethora of oranges, greens, and browns. The fireplace was one of those focal points that we knew we wanted to get more updated. Our solution? White washing the bricks. The bricks in the “before” part of the picture clearly show a lot of dark and earth tones. Given that we had just gone with the Repose Gray throughout the home, we opted for a standard white wash. The process couldn’t have been simpler, actually. We used equal parts white chalk paint and water (i.e. a 50/50 mixture of the white chalk paint and water), and simply painted it onto the bricks judiciously. The only key is to make sure you clean the bricks first with a lightly soapy water solution to “clean” the bricks and rid them of any topical dirt and dust. Once dry, simply apply the white wash mixture with thick bristled brushes (and finer brushes if there are small enough crevices). Then, viola!

See below for the “before” and “after” comparison:

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Before (Top) and After (Bottom) – in case you couldn’t tell!

Let us know what you think!

Til Next Time,

Michael