Solano County

A half day excursion to the Napa valley started with a 10 minute walk downhill to the meeting point. Here we got onto somewhere between the size of a minibus and a coach. After one more stop downtown we start studying with the driver/ tour guide, Marco, giving us lots of interesting information about San Francisco as we went along. We had two more parties to pick up one somewhere else in the city and the other in Sausalito.

Once again the drive took us north from the city and over the Golden Gate Bridge and then the journey to the wine areas was about an hour.

Our driver gave us lots of information about the Napa and Sonoma Valleys and explain that California produces 90% of all USA wine, which makes it the fourth largest wine producer in the world. However, the napper and Sonoma valleys only produce around 4% of California's wine and as such they are generally the more premium products.

Our first stop was at the Madonna estates which was formed in 1922 and here we tried four wines. We heard that the climate in this particular part of the region is often some 15° Fahrenheit cooler in the summer than the rest of the region and so they tend concentrate on white wines and pinot noir. Here we tried:

Sonoma valley - 90% of USA wine. 4th largest wine producer in UK

2019 pinot grigiot
2018 pinot noir
Cab sav
Gerwutzstreminer

We stayed about an hour and then moved on to the second winery which was of Sutter. This is a much larger producer, although the wines that we tasted were their reserve wines that aren't for general sale in supermarkets and other shops.

We tried a bubbly moscato, a reserved white Zinfandel, a cabernet servignon another red wine and a port.

Again, we stayed for about an hour before getting back on the bus for the return trip to San Francisco where we arrived at around 6:30 p.m..

For our evening meal, after we'd got changed, we walked across the road to the Fairmont hotel and to their bar in their basement which is a Tonga bar complete with a floating stage and pool and rain that comes down periodically into the pool. There was a live band and we had cocktails as an aperitif! We return back to the hotel for a night cap.Read more