one limo, six friends, & a bit of wine.

riding around napa valley in a limo with a few of your greatest friends is one of the most wonderful days of fun.  throw in three fabulous wineries & the opportunity to catch up with friends you haven't seen in three years - absolutely fabulous.

our first stop on our winery tour was beringer, one of the older & larger wineries in napa.  with it's beautiful historic grounds & classic wine caves, it was quite pretty.  we also learned quite a bit about wine making on our tour.  &, of course, a little bit of wine tasting concluded our tour.

{graham & jess!}

{foster monster & his gf kate!}

next up was one of my favorite wineries during the entire trip - schramsberg vineyards.  this is the home of napa & america's sparkling wine.  in fact, we learned, schramsberg is the house sparkling wine at the white house!  that's pretty neat.

we had the opportunity to walk through the wine caves & learn how sparkling wine is made.  the beginning of the process is similar to the wine process we had been learning about all week.  however, to make the bubbles at schramsberg, yeast is added & a very specific bottle turning technique is used.  pretty neat stuff.

we learned that schramsberg uses oak barrels for fermentation, which is unique for most sparkling wineries.  & that explains why i love their sparkling wine!

oh!  we also learned that schramsberg produces the sparkling wine we had at my bachelorette party that i absolutely loved - mirabelle!  you definitely need to try this sparkling wine.  we loved the mirabelle brut rosé.  

really, all of the sparkling wines were fabulous.  if you get a chance, try schramsberg sparkling wines. 

our last stop on our winery tour was a very different & unique stop - quintessa wine.  this winery is quite new & modern, opening only in 2002.  part of the wine-making process is done on the concrete roof, concrete eggs are used in fermentation, & each cork is individually tested by hand.  pretty neat stuff.

we began our tour on top of the hill with the most gorgeous, breathtaking view of the vineyards.  we could have happily sat here all day.  

{my dapper husband}

quintessa produces a singular estate wine also called quintessa, which is a red blend.  for our tasting, we got to try three different vintages of the wine.  we were all quite surprised at how different each tasted & how we all fancied a different year.  a fun wine tasting indeed.

a truly fabulous day with truly fabulous friends.  

one more post to come.

love love,

kjp.