Our most recent visit to California wine country was January 2016. The trip was built around my wife and sister’s birthdays, and Chateau Montelena winery’s House Party Five. On our 2015 visit to the Chateau, our server told us about the parties they hosted the previous three Januarys--food, wine, music, good times. It sounded like a nice respite from the harsh Midwest winter and a great way to celebrate a birthday. We decided to abandon the all-day dedicated winery tour idea this time, instead putting together our own itinerary.
The first day was lunch on the Napa Valley Wine Train. The wine train was actually a very nice restaurant, which, according to their website, “offers an authentic, memorable experience that echoes the glory days of train travel, with fine dining service, multiple course meals, Napa Valley scenery and ultimate relaxation aboard exquisitely restored vintage rail cars.” If you stay on the train for the entire journey, it covers about 50 miles round trip through the valley. We opted to shorten the train experience by signing up for an optional winery visit. Our journey consisted of lunch on the outbound leg, disembarking near Rutherford for a winery tour and then catching the train on its return trip for dessert.
The train was comprised of 2 engines, a power car, 3 kitchens and an assortment of fully restored early 20 th century Pullman cars. The kitchen car we went through had a passageway, which allowed passengers to observe the chefs at work behind glass partitions. The Pullman cars are a combination of dining and lounge cars. We began in a dining car, which contained tables, four on either side of the car, with an aisle running down the center. Each table was elegantly adorned with white linen tablecloths, white china table settings and silver service. The chairs are refurbished antiques from the early 1900’s. We had excellent salads and main courses, with time to visit and watch the valley go by before disembarking for the winery tour.
I learned from George M. Taber’s book, Judgement of Paris, about the 1976 wine competition in Paris, with Mike Grgich as the winemaker behind Chateau Montelena’s winning 1973 Chardonnay . Since that time, Mr. Grgich opened his own winery, which was one of the wine train’s tour options. None of us is a connoisseur, but we thought we’d like to sample Chardonnays from both the winning winery and the winning winemaker. We couldn’t go wrong. We had an excellent tour of the Grgich Hills Estate winery and sampled, among others, a very nice recent Chardonnay.
After the tour, we were ushered back onto the wine train and into the lounge car for the return trip. The lounge car was outfitted with plush swivel chairs, which could face the windows so you could gaze out at the passing countryside while enjoying dessert and coffee, or which could be rotated to converse with fellow travelers. Here we are having dessert.
All in all, we had great food and a very enjoyable experience on the wine train.
For us, a trip to Napa wouldn’t be complete without checking out the happenings at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. It turned out that while we were there, they were offering a cooking demonstration. My wife, sister and aunt were all-in, anxious to pick up some cooking tips from a professional chef instructor, while my brother-in-law and me…not so much. We decided to have a light lunch in The Bakery Café by illy, after which, the ladies could attend the cooking demonstration and the two guys could wander off to explore the area.
It was a drizzly, cool day as we headed out to the Culinary Institute. We did see a huge, bright, beautiful rainbow spanning the vineyards on our way to St. Helena, though.
Illy is an Italian coffee company, so as you can guess, their specialty is coffee-related products. The Bakery Café by illy offered a limited menu of appetizers, soups, salads and light sandwiches. Since we were in Napa, there was also a selection of wines. Forget the wine! I couldn’t resist the hand-made chocolates from their kitchen. Dark chocolate is a personal weakness, so I stuffed my face with samples and took a few favorites for the road.
The cooking demonstration was held in the Culinary Institute’s DeBaun Theater . The theater was arranged auditorium-style, with elevated rows of tables for the students/audience to overlook the food preparation area. This gave a great view of the chef instructor at work.
The three ladies felt the one hour demonstration was well worth the time spent, but, unfortunately, we haven’t had the opportunity to try the demonstration recipe: yucca tots.
To be continued. The next installment of this year’s wine country trip will cover Chateau Montelena’s House Party 5. The rainbow we saw outside the Culinary Institute was one of the brightest I’ve ever seen. Often, it seems the blue and violet bands on rainbows are not as vibrant as the red, orange and yellow. This rainbow had extremely vivid violet and blue bands, which reminded me of the magnificent mixture of violet and blue colors of the tanzanite center stone in our Tanzanite and Diamond Pendant in 18 KT White Gold.