My brother invited me to visit him in CA and take a weekend in the wine country. We drove up early Friday Feb 5th and back late on the 7th. We stayed at the Harvest Inn which is a quaint, English country-styled hotel consisting of several cottages, breakfast every AM and wine & cheese every PM. No up-charge for wood for fire place, or anything else. Highly recommended for a stay in St. Helena.
We ate at Press and Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen. Both were very good, but Press is near perfect.
We tasted at the following wineries: Sebastiani, Ch. Montelena, Cliff Lede, Corison, Heitz, Silver Oak, Madrigal, Stony Hill and Lagier-Maredith. I may have forgotten one or two.
Highlights were: Meeting and talking with Mark, the wine maker at Sebastaini, the release party of the 2005 Silver Oak cab, having Stoney Hill and Lagier-Meredith wines with the owners at their homes, meeting Bill Tucker, author/photographer of the coffee table book Napa - Behind the Bottle. To me, Stony Hill has always been a legendary wine and to sit with Mrs. McCrea in her home and have the Stony Hill Chard, was unbelievable.
I did not take many notes but may put something together for another post. Everything we had was very good, especially the Heitz cab, stony hill Chard and Lagier-Meredith Syrah - no surprises there. (Robin, Carole Meredith says "Hi".)