Food, Wine & Friends Page 136
SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS WINERY VISITS FOR
NATALIE & ANDREW
Visitors from Montreal
November 2007
We had a leisurely picnic and some wine-tasting in the Santa Cruz
Mountains on a clear, crisp, sunny Sunday in November.
The Bay Area was shrouded in fog, but as we drove westward to the hills of Los
Gatos, we climbed above the haze and into the sunshine.
Our first stop was the Byington Winery.
The vines are now going into a state of
dormancy...
But at 11 in the morning, our crew was wide
awake!
Our host at Byington was Louis Runeare.
We tasted a few nice wines at Byington. Especially fine
was their Redwood Hill Chardonnay, a nicely dry, minerally, toasty, smoky white
wine.
Clearly the wines at Byington have improved since our last visit...We tasted
good Cabernets, too...one from Sonoma and a couple from Paso Robles.
Byington is the site of many weddings and parties. Louis suggested having
a look around to see the facilities.
When he heard Andrew and Natalie are not yet married, he offered to perform a
wedding ceremony right there, right then.
Dane is more fun than a barrel of monkeys!
Clementine.
We motored over to the David Bruce winery and found Andrew's pants to be
soaked. It seems Natalie had spilled a bottle of water on him.
She must have heard something about a "wetting" and not the correct
word, "wedding."
I wonder if you could bring a seeing-eye dog to a "blind-tasting" at
this winery?
We then had a picnic at Bonny Doon Vineyards...
We then set up a picnic table with all sorts of vittles...and
we opened a couple of nice bottles...
Bonny Doon made a lovely Pigato, a dry white wine from a grape common in Italy's
Liguria region.
Attaque Le Poulet!
And Clementine did!!!
Attaque Le Pomme!!
Attaque Le Vin!!
Dane, how's lunch?
OKAY!!!
Bonny Doon offers a nice Italian red from the hills of Piemonte's Monferrato
region.
The kids were playing a game called "Jenga."
Here's a familiar sight...
We then packed up and drove off to the town of Santa Cruz...
We tasted some very good Chardonnays at Storrs.
Take one.
Take two.
And so we concluded a lovely. leisurely day meandering over hill and dale in a
quest for good wine.
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