A Sterling Experience

I've never been much of a wine drinker. (See, the fact that I said "wine drinker" and not "wine enthusiast" should say a lot.) But one of the things my boyfriend wanted to do on our San Francisco trip was drive up into wine country, Sonoma or Napa Valley. I thought the idea sounded like fun too, so we dedicated the bulk of our last full day to the adventure.

We didn't have a particular destination in mind, but on advice from the hotel concierge, we headed toward Sterling Vineyards. Afterward, an old high school buddy would dub it "Disneyland Napa" -- the words of a true wine enthusiast, I'd imagine. And that may be true. But I have two responses: one, my uncultured taste buds weren't going to know the difference; and two, would you take a vacation to Anaheim and not go to Disneyland?

In any case, it was a great chapter in the vacation saga. Sterling Vineyards is everything the mind would conjure for a sun-drenched, wine paradise. I mean, here's the stereotype you drive through at the gate, for pete's sake:


It just gets better from there. They have an aerial tram that takes you from the valley floor up to their palatial winery...


...where they have a rooftop patio that affords you a view like this:


Insane. I have a whole arsenal of photos of their wine making process, but I'll spare you the photo-shelling. Suffice it to say, it was a fun and interesting tour, and punctuated with samples of seven different wines they make there. Oh yeah, good times. This non-wine-enthusiast was motivated to bring back a couple bottles for a future Flashback to a Great Vacation. (For the moment, they join the Vampire wine I mentioned not long ago. And yes, despite the fact that I now own three bottles of wine more than the average non-wine-drinker owns, I maintain that I'm not a wine drinker. But don't go all Betty Ford on me here.)

Perhaps the best highlight of the Sterling Vineyards tour is that it provided the one photo I have from the entire trip of the two of us together. All along, we'd been taking pictures of each other and everything around us, but a nice old couple saw us going through that routine and kindly helped us out:


So, wine enthusiast or not, I'd definitely recommend the Sterling Vineyards tour, if you're ever within a stone's throw of Napa Valley.