Californian wines are getting popular in Holland, and for a good reason: we tried several of them and tasted some really good ones.
The two most important regions lie north of San Francisco: Sonoma and Napa Valley. It's mostly red they produce, and even here quite expensive in the supermarkets, but the restaurants offer them for reasonable prices.
Now we didn't come to Napa for the wines. Neither for the tasting, nor for visiting the 'castles'. It was more like: hey, we're around, we've got some time left, let's go and see Napa Valley.
Good decision. Napa Valley presented itself as a charming, elegant, almost dainty landscape.
A far cry from the raw and barren lands we'd been travelling through earlier, and a very nice contrast it was.
We had no idea before we came here - only the notion that 'millions of people visit the Valley yearly' - but the Valley is very, very beautiful. It's a sight for sore eyes and a feast to travel through, at slow speed, windows down and up again because of the very strong winds - we heard the SF airports(!) suffered delays because of the 'gusty winds'!
There was something funny as well. In Europe when you're thinking 'wine area' you see hills with the grapes planted on the southern (sunny) sides.
Not in Napa Valley.
They grow the grapes in the meadows. Picture eight tenniscourts with grapes and you have one vineyard. There are grapes growing on the hills, but not much.
See my pics for this (entry after this one, too much to show for one blog!).
And something else: in between the rows of grapes they grow other stuff (or they let other stuff grow). We've seen grass, alfalfa, wheat, long unknown stalks, orange poppies and other flowers.
That too made our trip through the Valley so nice, seeing how they do things in another continent!
The two most important regions lie north of San Francisco: Sonoma and Napa Valley. It's mostly red they produce, and even here quite expensive in the supermarkets, but the restaurants offer them for reasonable prices.
Now we didn't come to Napa for the wines. Neither for the tasting, nor for visiting the 'castles'. It was more like: hey, we're around, we've got some time left, let's go and see Napa Valley.
Good decision. Napa Valley presented itself as a charming, elegant, almost dainty landscape.
A far cry from the raw and barren lands we'd been travelling through earlier, and a very nice contrast it was.
We had no idea before we came here - only the notion that 'millions of people visit the Valley yearly' - but the Valley is very, very beautiful. It's a sight for sore eyes and a feast to travel through, at slow speed, windows down and up again because of the very strong winds - we heard the SF airports(!) suffered delays because of the 'gusty winds'!
There was something funny as well. In Europe when you're thinking 'wine area' you see hills with the grapes planted on the southern (sunny) sides.
Not in Napa Valley.
They grow the grapes in the meadows. Picture eight tenniscourts with grapes and you have one vineyard. There are grapes growing on the hills, but not much.
See my pics for this (entry after this one, too much to show for one blog!).
And something else: in between the rows of grapes they grow other stuff (or they let other stuff grow). We've seen grass, alfalfa, wheat, long unknown stalks, orange poppies and other flowers.
That too made our trip through the Valley so nice, seeing how they do things in another continent!
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