San Francisco day 3: Napa Valley, Sonoma county

Today the plan was to visit Napa and Sonoma. Grgich Hills winery had a blessing of the grapes ceremony at 10 AM, so we had to leave San Francisco by 8 AM to make it in time

You can see a timelapse of us driving over the Golden Gate bridge below



We arrived at Grigich Hills Estate around 9:40 AM, the drive wasn't too bad

The sign at the entrance



American and Croatian flags at the entrance 

Below are the grapes ready to be blessed


Here is a video of the blessing ceremony


I am not sure if you can hear it or not but Mike Grgich joined the ceremony via facetime because he had some issues with his back and couldn't make it in person.

There was some food for the people attending the blessing of the grapes. As you can see there is salamis, prosciutto, cheeses, olives and crackers.



You also could get wine, I had some Chardonnay, Fume Blanc and Rose. All of them were delicious

Here are some shirts hanging to dry from people who did the grape stomping




In this video, you can see my daughter stomping the grapes


A picture of grapes on the vine


Some barrels of wine
s

Wine tanks or perhaps even fermentation tanks?


Some more wine barrels



There was a small contents, you had to guess how many corks were in this bottle



A bust of Mike Grgich



I spent some time talking to Mike's daughter Violet. We talked about the winery that the Grgich family started in Croatia, the grapes itself and some other things

I also went into the store and purchased some wine. Now I have to figure out if I drink it here while I am still in San Francisco or do I bring it home to Princeton

I think the blessing/stomping event was very nice, I highly recommend it


Coppola Winery

Pool


The pool area was pretty packed, they have packages with cabins, towels and lounge chairs

Godfather's desk


This is the desk that was used in the Godfather movie. Pretty cool to see it in person


Car from the movie Tucker


Car from above



Costumes from some movies


View of the bar


View looking towards the vineyard



After Coppola, we went back to San Francisco had dinner and called it a day

Real Men Do NOT Use Fancy Bottle Openers

I have some family members who love to drink some good wine, some of them have these fancy openers. Take a look at this thing below

What the hell is that, you need a 10 page manual to understand what to pull or push with that thing. That opener looks like it will make Champagne out of white wine if you use it


Here is the only thing you need to open a bottle of wine

That opener did not cost me a single penny, I got it for free in 1993 and I am still using it. Before I worked in IT I was working in the restaurant business, my father had some restaurants and I just went along. I came to the United States in 1993 and worked for a couple of years as a waiter before getting into IT.
Back to the opener; you don't need these fancy openers at all, I have opened many bottles of wine with my simple opener. Here is a partial list, these wines will look familiar to some of you who like to collect and or drink fine wines
Opus One
Grgich Hills
Sassicaia
Ornellaia
Gaja Barbaresco
Gavi de gavi La Scolca black label
Tignanello (Villa Antinori)

Can you tell I worked in Italian restaurants? So where is the danger with opening wines? Take a bottle of Gaja Barbaresco for example, The cork is so long that you probably will break it into pieces if you are not careful. You need to screw the opener in as much as you can, pull out the cork a little, screw the opener all the way until it cannot go any deeper and then you need to carefully pull out the cork little by little. Some companies are switching to rubber corks and screwtops these days because there is less danger of the wine being spoiled that way. So remeber next time you are tempted to buy that 'fancy' opener, save your money, buy the cheap one and use the remainder of the money to buy a nice bottle of wine.

A nice podcast about wines is Wine Library TV hosted by Gary Vaynerchuk

So remember, real men do not:

• Use fancy wine openers
• Blow dry their hair
• Use a Macintosh Computer(Oh yes, I will get some hate comments for that one)

I worked for about 3 years in New York City in the restaurant business, I have some crazy/funny stories, leave me a comment if you want me to write something about that. If I get a couple of comments asking for it I will write about it. For example I can tell you that Billy Joel takes his leftovers home.