It was here that we learned a little more about the landscape of the Napa Valley, the weather on each mountain surrounding most of the vineyards in the area, the quality of earth that helps the fruit grow. We learned how to differentiate different varietals of grape by the leaves and we also saw the first ripening fruit.
After exploring the grounds, we headed up to a private tasting area where we started playing a game. We both started off with a different white wine. He gave us a box each of three ingredients and asked us to choose one to give to the other person. It was your job to smell, swish, and taste the wine to pick out the ingredient that was given to you. We did the same thing with two more reds each having to guess what the ingredient was and then trying to find it in the wine.
Our host was incredibly kind and informative. We had a lovely time, but we just had to move on to our next stop! Honig Vineyards is a smaller, lesser known winery that just recently became one of the first wineries in the Napa Valley to become completely self sufficient. All of their buildings have been outfitted with solar panels. They are also organic in that they do not use any fertilizers or pesticides. They pride themselves on letting nature do it's work and having birds and small animals get rid of harmful or annoying bugs.
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. They welcomed us in and got us set up right away with a glass of wine. They brought us into a private room to get settled and then decided to take us on a golf cart tour of the vineyards. Again, it wasn't a beautiful day, but the rain was holding up and it was really cool to get to see the whole vineyard. We switched to a different wine in a lovely plastic wine glass for this part of the tour where we learned most of the information about the winery.
They share the property with an olive oil maker so their driveway and around the vineyard is lined with olive trees. One olive tree, our guide told us, will make one gallon of olive oil! That's crazy to think about, especially coming from an Italian restaurant that went through so much olive oil every day.
They bought the property about 30 years ago and started producing wine about 20-ish years ago. While driving through the vineyard, you can see different plants with different sized trunks and see that they have been planting vines almost every year.
By the end of this golf cart tour, our glasses were empty. They quickly took care of that tasting us on a couple of their red wines. They also let us try a special rose, as well as their dessert wine. Honig Winery was so lovely and hospitable. Their wines were wonderful and their staff was super friendly. We loved both of our visits that day!
At this point, all we had eaten was hotel breakfast and some crackers provided to us during our second tasting. We were both being very safe as to not over indulge because we had a bit of a drive to get back to where we were staying. After the second tasting we were starving and our host at Honig made some excellent suggestions where to grab lunch in the neighboring town of St. Helena. Because we hadn't had enough wine yet, I got a sparkling white and Eliza got a Pinot Grigio. For lunch, Eliza had a jalapeno-laced Philly cheesesteak and I had Ahi tuna two ways- truffle oil dressed tartar and a flash seared tuna crostini.
All in all, our first day in Napa was amazing. The wine, the people, the food. Everything but the weather! Better luck next time. Stay tuned for more Napa adventures!
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