Last Friday J and I decided to brave the rain and head to Napa. We hadn't been in a while and wanted to go out to lunch and visit a new winery. Since we joined the wine club at Mondavi there are several other wineries nearby that we automatically became members at as well. The Franciscan is just minutes down the road from Mondavi, but we'd never been. The picture below is not mine, (remember the rain?) but it is of the fountain out front of the Franciscan.
We discovered that we really liked several of their wines! In fact we liked them so much we ended up buying three bottles! We bought two bottles of their sauvignon blanc (which is distributed around the country, hooray for when we no longer live 25 minutes from Napa one day) and a wine they only have at their winery (of course!) called Fountain Court which is a white blend that is on the sweet side. I also tried port for the first time. There is a fine line between cough syrup and yum there ... I'm not sure about port yet.
Our second stop was lunch at Rutherford Grill (pictured below, but also not my own). This was another first for us. As any of our guests thus far can attest, the lines for food in Napa can be ridiculous! Particularly on weekends. Even on a rainy weekday this place filled up FAST. The only reason we got right in was because we were waiting in the parking lot for it to open.
The service was excellent, as was the food. Like everything in Napa it's a bit pricey, but not bad. J got a giant burger and I ordered the french dip sandwich. Both were lovely. They also have the best fries, tiny little shoestring potatoes with lots of yummy seasoning. The wine list, of course, is huge! We didn't drink anything at lunch because all the tastings we were doing were free for us. This is a great stop! Highly recommend.
Our last stop was the Mondavi Winery. While J was on his last trip he and his dad ordered a bottle of pinot noir from Mondavi; they loved it! Turns out that there are three different types of pinot noir that they make, so we had to taste them all! We ended up with a bottle of that, along with our two wine club bottles to take home. All in all, a very successful (albeit slightly damp) day. (This picture is also not mine! Yeah, completely forgot the camera. But this is the entrance to Mondavi.)
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