Napa Vineyards: Pine Ridge

On our second day,we had a scheduled tour and tasting at Pine Ridge. Some friends have long been Pine Ridge fans and now we are, too. We were early, as usual, and had a tour for just us and another pair which was a good size.

We started off outside in Pine Ridge's demo vineyard where they grow different grapes to teach peeps about wine growing. We learned that stress is good for grapes because the vines end up concentrating on the flavor/intensity of flavor and hills give stress. We also learned that each vineyard has an identifying flower and when you see that flower around the valley, it helps identify their vineyards. Way cool. It was a little wet and rainy that day, so although I took a lot of pictures, they aren't very exciting.

Then we moved into the tank room. During the harvest, someone gets to climb into the tanks to help shovel them out. Fun! I wish I could remember more about this section of the tour, but all the wine I drank seems to have dulled my memory.

We walked all through the caves with our cool tour guide, Chris. There were barrels everywhere in the 40,000 foot caves.

We got to do a barrel tasting, too. Here is our tour guide, Chris, taking a sample from one of the '09 barrels.

That cool gadget is called a wine thief. That's how they take barrel samples. We tasted the barrel sample. Its color was ruby red. Its taste bright and juicy. We went into their underground tasting room (quite fancy) for some cheese and wines. We tried a few different wines including the '08 version of the same wine and observed the differences in color and taste. Too bad I can't remember what else we tried.

They have an open area in the cave where they host events and have parties. There is a special inset in the wall for this Chihuly sculpture. It's pretty cool.

After the tour, we went back to the tasting room and tasted more wine including the '07 Oakville cab, the '06 Stag's Leap cab, the '06 Fortis, and the '07 Howell Mountain cab which I really enjoyed. We picked up some of the Howell Mtn cab and the Napa cab which was on special, 1/2 off! We also joined the wine club. Really looking forward to these shipments.

We went back on the day the sun came out. For some reason, I really enjoy these "sad" lonely pictures. I call it forlorn.

Grapes from the demo vineyard.

More grapes from the demo vineyard.

There were a lot of lizards around. We chased a few.

Lots of things grow around the Pine Ridge front "yard". Here we have some olives.

And some persimmons!

Vineyards in the sunlight.