Sunday, January 30, 2011

Sailing to Napa Valley - sans Jungle

Here's the wine tasting team in great form.

OK, here's a flashback from late 2009. Marc and I played hockey together over the last few years on various teams. Marc is a former Montreal Junior A (highest level below professional), while I'm a former Boston pond hockey Junior D (which is ... oh nevermind). As a matter of fact all the guys pictured here after our championship game win are "Players" with the exception of the goon in the middle. Check out the score. We dominated with only 5 skaters and one goalie for 60 minutes. But I digress.

Here's the gang outside one of our tasting locations.

Here we are outside our little cottage - great place. It was loaned to us as a favor to Marc.


Jenée and I stayed at the Grassi Family vineyard where we were treated royally. We got to sample a bottle of their Cabernet. While I'm not drinking these days, it was excellent. Marc plans to feature it at his shop - look it up.

We visited the Reynolds family winery in Napa Valley and they definitely had wine. Matter of fact they had casks of wine from many other winery's in the area. I counted labels from 15 other family winery's.

To properly kick off 2011 we joined our friends Marc and Louise (seated on each side of Jenée) and Louise's brother Jean and his wife Joanne Coté. All are from Montreal and were a blast to hang around with. Marc and Louise own La Maison Gourmet wine and cheese shop in Mission Viejo, CA. They were tending to their wine shop business and invited us along for great wine and food. Let me think, okay - I'm in. Marc found this great lunch spot in Calistoga.

1 comment:

glennlarkin said...

It was great to see you both this past weekend. Wish it were under better circumstances, but your presence was an inspiration for them.
I have just finished re-reading your blog, and am ooking forward to following the rest of your sailing journey

Glenn.