Napa in November

[PghMike]

Wife and I will be staying in Calistoga for a long weekend in early November. So far tasting lineup is below. Any other recommendations from anyone?

Rivers Marie
Amici
Dunn
Corison
Spire Collection
Mathiasson

[SF Ed]

All depends on what type of experience you want. I would consider Montelena - still run like an old-fashioned Napa winery and in Calistoga.

Napa Valley is fun and beautiful, but most of it is set up for tourists who don't really care about wine. and it takes real work to find places that have the spirit of wine-making vs. pure tourism. I haven't visited Dunn or Mathiasson, but they might fit the bill.

MichaelP is our resident expert on Napa - hopefully he'll chime in.

SF Ed

[AKR]

If you haven't suffered through the traffic there, gird yourself and budget extra time on weekends to get from place to place.

[Michael-P]

It all depends on:

A - How much you want to spend on tastings. I recently read the average basic tasting fee in Napa is $58. Reserve tastings cost more and tours with small food plates cost even more. We had a guest from India a few weeks ago and went to Napa where we had multiple $100 and one $150 tasting fee places. The $150 place "waived" the per person fee if we bought 6 bottles of wines per person. The wines there cost $150-$400/bottle. Fortunately for us our friend paid for us.

B - Lead time to make appointments. The more the better. Believe it or not, some of those expensive small places need to be convinced they will do a tasting for you, that you are worth the time and effort, that you will buy a lot of wine from them every year forever.

I have my own favorites but that does not mean they are good for you. Happy to do some PMs to discuss more.

Michael-P

[Michael-P]

PS - There are easily 30 or more I like for either their wine, their tour experience and their staff.

[AKR]

B - Lead time to make appointments. The more the better. Believe it or not, some of those expensive small places need to be convinced they will do a tasting for you, that you are worth the time and effort, that you will buy a lot of wine from them every year forever.

This is like the process my buddy had to undergo when he wanted to test drive an NSX a lifetime ago! He had mid 8 figures net worth, but didn't radiate that with his personal appearance, so he got the cold shoulder from car salesmen. Later on he ended up getting a 6 series which I think he put 10k miles on over a decade. Maybe it was an 8 series. I last saw it sitting forlornly - with deflated tires - in his mansion's garage.

[Michael-P]

Arv:

Yes, that sounds the same.

But please try not to remind me about how I don't have the time, or in my case also the money to fix them all, to play with my cool cars. I recently had to move a few around and one of the tires was flat and not inflatable. Ugh! BTW, "Cool" IMHO.

Michael-P

[AKR]

The best part of that aborted NSX shopping adventure was when he wanted to dicker over the trade in value of his (!) Camaro

He just loved doing stuff like that.