Day 7

Hello, oh faithful, and growing, readers.  You may be growing like I am: tonight's meal was great.  It was capped with this chocolate tart dessert, with espresso ice cream.

Yes, we are to the food & drink portion of our trip.  The heck with trekking up and down mountains, across gardens, and around markets: give us another flight of wine!

To begin: we spent last night in Shelter Cove, California.  If you don't know about Shelter Cove, it's in the middle of Northern-California-nowhere between Fort Bragg and Eureka.  It's also known as "Lost Cove."  Why, you may ask?  Well, because, even today, it takes an hour to get there from the nearest civilization.  There's one road in and one road out.  The road makes windy look straight -- mostly at 25 or 35 mph.  The locals roar by like it's straight.

After making it there last evening, we found the only place for dinner was a pizza place.  Didn't make the top ten meals on vacation list.  Amazingly.  This morning there was no place for breakfast -- the one coffee shop was closing at 9 A.M. for high school graduation.

Shelter Cove is beautiful.  All ocean, all the time.  A cute little community, clearly full of vacationers (the restaurants are all closed on Wednesday night??!?!?!?)

Michael loved it.  He loved sleeping with the window open (he said -- we were right on the ocean).  Karen (Waldorf? Statler?) responded "you mean the white noise?"

Once back to Hwy 101, we had breakfast at this delightful bagel place in Garberville.  We are writing positive Yelp writeups.

Then, on the road to Morocco...err...Sonoma.

Today's first wine stop was in Healdsburg at Ridge Winery.  They have flights of zinfandel that win awards.  Barb likes zinfandel (which isn't the pink stuff that gives Zin a bad name).  Both Karen and Barb bought a different bottle of Zin.

Then toward Sonoma.  We landed at Benziger, which is in Glen Ellen, in Sonoma County (btw, we learned "sonoma" is the indigenous term for the area, which is translated as "valley of the moon").

My favorite story at Benziger: back in Jack London's day, he and old man Wegner, who owned what is now Benziger's, hated each other.  Mrs. Wegner got mad at London once and awhile and made him pay for his wine and assundries with cash -- no credit.  In retribution, London bought all the land around Wegner; to this day, the London State Park almost encircles the farm.

We took the full private tour there.  Benziger is a biodynamic farm.  They have the certificates and everything.   The standard shot of the vineyard slash farm:

There wines were really good.  The Sauv Blanc was good (we bought a bottle) & all their reds were good.

By then it was 5 o'clock and we were all tired and ready to get to the hotel (a Hilton Garden Inn -- which is NOT owned by two invisible owners, unlike last night in Shelter Cove) -- then off to dinner.

We ate in Yountville at Mustard's Grill, right on 29.  It was as advertised (i.e. "a chop house").  The drink of the night was a "cappy" -- caipirinha -- a Brazilian drink (to celebrate the World Cup opening and Brasil's victory) made with Brazilian rum, lime, and sugar.  I am a big fan of cappy and had one (feel free, gentle reader, to take note of this).

I had the BBQ ribs.  Michael the Mongolian pork chop (their specialty), Barb the lamb, Karen the veal.  They were all excellent.  Kudos to Karen for the selection.  Here is the link to the pics.

For those of you reading this for Barb(s) -- it was decided at dinner no one remembered the witticisms in the hour ride out of Shelter Cove, when Barb seemed to be on the top of her game.  It was "BC."  Before Coffee.  (Michael purportedly, and agrees, has no personality before coffee -- he's a curmudgeon squared).  But, as the Boswell to Barb's Johnson (I know how wrong that is), I feel compelled to relate this exchange:

Karen:  What have you left there?
Me:  Crust.  You know I don't like crust.
Barb: But you are the crusty one.
Me: Oh, we know I'm the soft one.
Barb:  I heard that.
Karen:  Barb, you're not supposed to tell.

All Michael could do was say "oh" and "ouch" over and over.  And laugh.

Tomorrow, we try to recreate our version of those scenes in Sideways; as you may recall, the two main characters are an English teacher and an actor.  Michael finds this amusing. I will try to restrain from chugging the spit bucket somewhere in a fit of pique.  I will TRY...

Bon soir.