Friday, October 11, 2019

A Quick Trip to Napa Valley

It's a beautiful weekend in Northern California and we head up to Napa Valley, visiting a vineyard or two and enjoying some great meals.  We're clearly in wine country, not only are the fields filled with vines, but also the yards and gardens around us.

 Vines

We stop for a quick lunch at the Foodshed in Napa:  beet and peach salad, cod sandwich, burratta pizza, and pepperoni pizza.

 Salad, burratta pizza, pepperoni pizza

Cod sandwich

After lunch, we head up to Raymond Vineyards to taste a few wines.  We've been stopping at Raymond whenever we're in the area and enjoying their wines for decades.  Raymond is now owned by the French firm Boisset Family Estates, with wineries in Burgundy, Beaujolais, the Rhone Valley, the south of France, California, and Canada.



Raymond Vineyards

After Raymond, it's a short trip over to Domaine Chandon for some sparkling wine.  Owned by another French firm, Moët & Chandon, Domaine Chandon is part of the luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE.

Sparkling wine

Soon it's time for dinner and we head over to Bistro Don Giovanni  in Napa for some great Italian food.  We start with octopus with potatoes and fritto misto, followed by gnocchi with lamb ragu, risotto with braised short ribs and corn, and branzino.

Starters, mains (shared)

The grounds at Bistro Don Giovanni are spectacular, a great complement to the fabulous food we are consuming.


Outside Bistro Don Giovanni

After a night's sleep, it's one more meal, brunch, before we journey home.  We head over to Oenotri in downtown Napa for a great selection of tastes, sharing a fritatta (with roasted corn, summer squash, leeks, and caciocavallo cheese), a panini (with hickory-smoked bacon, pesto aioli, heirloom tomato, avacado, and arugula), and a margherita pizza (with San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella di bufala, and genovese basil), followed by a few deserts (gravenstein apple crostata with salted carmel and chocolate panna cotta with cenci and mascarpone).   Yummmm!


Brunch

Our quick trip up to Napa comes to an end far too soon and we head home to start the new week.

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