Treat Day Wednesday–A day in Napa!

So I know it’s Thursday and not Wednesday, but for treat day we got an adult day out! So both we and the kids got treats!  Abby and Rowan got a day with Auntie CC (Catherine) where they played in a play park and went to see the new Winnie The Pooh Movie.  Whereas Rob and I got a day out in Napa Valley.  Not sure who had the better treat!

Our day included an amazing lunch, a couple wine tastings and a relaxing night to ourselves.

We decided we wanted to have a good meal out and with the French Laundry on its summer break, we went to the other Thomas Keller restaurant Bouchon Bistro in Yountville, CA.  This was delightful!  Rob and I thought we’d have the fancy meal at lunch, only because we didn’t want to eat dinner at 9:30pm and since we decided the day before to make the reservation :)

I had French Onion soup as an appy and the Truite Amandine (pan-roasted trout with haricots verts, roasted almonds & beurre noisette).  OMG it was so good!    I’m a french onion soup snob and this soup had an amazing caramel flavour and the trout with the almonds had this awesome flavour and texture combination.

Rob had a warm goat cheese salad and the Lamb Shank daily special that just fell off the bone!  It reminded us both of the amazing little bistro (the name I can’t remember) in Rouen, France that we stumbled across when we were there 4 years ago.

After lunch we went to Twenty Rows Winery for a wine tasting.  Rob was first introduced to the wine when out for dinner with colleagues and really enjoyed the Cabernet Sauvignon.  The senior chairman then sent two bottles to our house as a welcome to the company gift (nice touch!).

We pulled up to this unassuming building that was next to an autobody shop and both Rob and I looked at each other with the “what????”  So we enter the doors and into the barrel room.  This was so cool.  This is where we met Tim Nuss. He’s the winemaker and son of the owners.  He totally reminded me of the son of the winemaker from the movie Bottleshock. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s a must rent). 

This was a totally cool experience.  Tim took us through a few wines, of which I liked them all except The Grappler, which was mostly Zinfandel (so not a fan).  There were two separate names attached to the Nuss family.  Twenty Rows, named for the first parcel of land that the family bought had twenty rows of vines.  The second is Vinoce.  Nuss means "nut" in German. Noce is "nut" in Italian. Intermingled with "vin" for wine, Vinoce means "wine nut." I thought it was a great play on words and after meeting Tim, really appropriate!

Next up was Van der Heyden Vineyards where we went just to get the chocolates.  This winery is the only one in the world that produces a late harvest Cabernet Sauvignon and then takes it and makes the most amazing chocolates on the planet.  Seriously worth the trip to Napa for the chocolates alone.  The wine’s pretty good too!  Mr. Van der Heyden in his wild Hawaiian shirt, khaki pants and fedora, makes it a true experience you shouldn’t miss. He took us and a couple other couples through a tasting.  Sorry no pics of the chocolates as they didn’t quite make it back to Oakland :)

We stayed in Santa Rosa for the night  and for dinner we stopped at Dean and Deluca and bought a baguette, some cheeses, some meats and sat on the floor of our hotel room and had an in house picnic!  It was a delightful end to a great day! 

I highly recommend our stops on the eating and drinking train!

Thanks for looking!