Lake Tahoe Autumn Food & Wine Festival at Northstar

For my birthday, I went to Lake Tahoe with my mom and one of her best friends from law school. Well to be honest, they had already made plans and I just tagged along and crashed their girls weekend :-) It was a gorgeous weekend in Lake Tahoe and we got to eat some amazing food and drink delicious wine and cocktails.

The first night we went to The Art of the Cocktail. The bartenders at the Ritz Carlton at Northstar made us three delicious prohibition cocktails, a mojito with gin, an old fashioned and a fancy moscow mule. They were all delicious and very strong!

We enjoyed our cocktails on big comfy couches at the Ritz and then took the gondola down to Northstar village and had a yummy pizza dinner.

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On Saturday morning we took a much needed stroll along the beach in Tahoe. The weather was better than perfect and the water was temperate. 

We got dressed after our stroll and we headed to Northstar Village for our Wine Makers Luncheon. Petra Wine Bar hosted the luncheon and paired up with FARM Napa Valley wines. The food was delicious and the wines were great. We even got to sit and talk with the wine maker. We will definitely be visiting FARM in Napa!

After the lunch we sat out on the patio with our new friends and drank wine. It was so relaxing!

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We headed back to the hotel, did a quick wardrobe change and headed back to Northstar Village for our Charbay and Caviar pairings. Charbay brought vodka, tequila and rum and paired it with different caviar dishes. For me, caviar is a bit too fishy and salty for me, it was not my favorite. After the pairing we sat outside by the fire and relaxed. It was perfect.

On Sunday morning we headed to the beach and laid out in the sun for about an hour, packed up, stopped at Gar Woods for lunch and headed home. It was a perfect weekend with two of my favorite ladies and we had such a blast! I can't wait to go back next year! 

A Sunday in Napa

I spent Sunday with two of my best friends (and some new friends) in Napa. We stopped at 4 wineries and had a blast. The weather was warm, the sky was clear and blue, the wine was-a-flowing and the company was awesome!

We started our wine tour at Sequoia Grove. We all brought picnic-y foods ate and caught up and then tasted a few of their wines. 

 

 

 Our second stop was at V. Sattui. I didn't taste at this location because they are known for having sweeter wines and that just isn't really my thing. V. Sattui was crazy busy because they have a ton of outside seating as well as a small market and a BBQ outside. It is very kid friendly. 

Our third stop was to Sterling. At Sterling, you hop in a gondola and ride it up to the actual winery where you taste the wines and go on a little self-guided walking tour. The views were spectacular!

 

After Sterling we ran over to Rombauer (it was 4:30 and they closed at 5) and squeezed in a very quick tasting. I enjoy their wines and the winery grounds are beautiful. Keep in mind that if you visit this winery, the signage is very small and hard to spot if you don't know where you are going! 

After wine tasting, we headed to Oxbow Market to have dinner. We sat on the patio and at dinner and enjoyed some more drinks at the Kitchen Door while we enjoyed the setting sun. 

It was an awesome day! I can't wait for summer time so we can go more frequently!

La Tache at Absinthe

My girlfriend, her boyfriend and I headed over to Absinthe for dinner to check off another one of my SF 7x7 Big Eats dishes - oh and to also hang out... We grabbed some cocktails and ate some soft garlic pretzels.

Restaurant: Absinthe

Dish: Soft garlic pretzels

Verdict: Ahhmazing! Definitely order these and then drink the cheese sauce!

After we enjoyed our snack and cocktails, we decided to move onto wine with dinner. Absinthe has an extensive wine menu...like over a hundred pages of wines by the glass, by the bottle, by the half bottle, by the carafe....basically anything you can think of, they've got it! As I am thumbing through the hundreds of dollar bottle of wine section I stumbled upon Echezeaux, which is a wine that comes from the same place as the La Tache wine. My heart started to beat fast as I scoured the pages to see if they had La Tache. No restaurants ever have La Tache. [next page] I have googled it many times to find it on restaurant wine menus and have only seen it on one menu: Jeanty at Jack's but the place is closed now. [next page] OMG! There it is! On page 61! I'm going to ask the waitress if I can see the bottle! [yes, I am that obnoxious person at a restaurant]

I ask the waitress and without hesitation says of course and, who I assume to be the sommelier, comes out with a 2004 bottle. I squealed, snapped a few photos and then had to give the bottle back - sadly we couldn't afford the $3,900 bottle that she brought out to us... booo!!!

We had an awesome dinner. The food at Absinthe is delicious. And the company was even better!

Groth Wine Reserve Party

Being in the Bay Area means that I get to spend a ton of time with a beautiful woman who I am blessed to call my mom! Another perk is that said beautiful woman is a member at a ton of wineries in Napa, which means that I get to be her plus 1 at super fun wine club events!

This past Saturday, we went to the Groth Winery Reserve 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon Release Party. It was a g.o.r.g.e.o.u.s. day in the Bay which means it was perfect in Napa. We put the top down, fun music on the radio and headed out to Groth for the afternoon for some wine tasting, photobooth fun and delicious food! Suzanne Groth, the daughter of the owners of the winery, is also an artist and her latest painting was unveiled at the party. We had the opportunity to meet her and she signed 2 of her painting posters to me and I can’t wait to hang them in our house.

After Groth, we went over to Trefethen for some tasting and then on to lunch at Oxbow Market for oysters. It was an amazing day!

Mother-Daughter Weekend

My mom asked me in the beginning of last week if I wanted to have a Mother-Daughter Weekend. I, of course, jumped on the chance to get some alone time with my mom! She has been busy all summer with baseball games and summer BBQs, so it was wonderful to finally get her all to myself for a weekend!

On Friday, I went home and we had a family night at the Concord Drive In. We saw the new Harry Potter movie over wine, a picnic and my family and friends! The movie was not my favorite the first time I saw it, so as you can imagine, it wasn’t my favorite the second time. I am glad, though, that I had seen it before because I was explaining the entire thing to my mom because she couldn’t hear the sound from the car stereo

On Saturday, my mom, step-dad and I went for a walk around the reservoir and we had a really great conversation (after explaining the entire HP movie to my step-dad). I now stand a bit taller and am much happier! I love those kinds of conversations!

After our walk, we showered and got ready to head out for our fun night away! We drove through the Napa Valley and ended up in Calistoga at a small hotel and spa, Mount View. We got there around 2 and we had a spa treatment for 3 so we changed into our swim suits and sat by the pool and played Dominoes (one of my mom’s FAVORITE games) and we drank a bottle of J Champagne, definitely my favorite Champagne(So Far:-)). It was a BEAUTIFUL afternoon! A little before 3 we went back inside and changed and got ready for our spa treatment. We were scheduled to have a Seaweed Wrap. Neither of us have had a wrap, so we were excited and anxious to see what to expect. I got into the room and had a huge TL FML which I will write about in a few!

The massage therapist did a full body citrus scrub, which was amazing and smelled wonderful! Now, I was expecting to be wrapped in big seaweed leaves…NOT what a seaweed wrap is…he then spread this hot seaweed liquid all over my body and then wrapped me in the blankets that were on the table then he left me in there for a few minutes to sit in the warm room with the delicious smells. He came back in a few minutes later and massaged my feet and my scalp. It was quite relaxing, but then again, wait for my TL FML. I showered and then met up with my mom. We got ready and went up to our room (which wasn’t ready when we arrived at the hotel).

Mount View does a very unique thing with their rooms. Each room is sponsored by a different winery in the area and each room has a complimentary bottle of wine from their winery in their room. Our room was sponsored by Hans Fahden. The room we stayed in was gorgeous! The front door opened into a sitting room and then off to the left was the sink, shower and toilet and to the right was the king size bed and further to the right was another small room with a gorgeous bathtub! We got ready to go out for dinner and decided that we wanted to get a lot out of our night.

Calistoga is a small town with one main street, Main Street. We walked to the beginning of it and went into a restaurant called Pacifico (a Mexican restaurant). We had a drink and an appetizer. We ordered Empanadas. They were DELICIOUS! The chips and salsa were amazing too! My mom always says that if the chips and salsa are good at a Mexican restaurant, the rest of the food will be yummy too!) We got the check and decided to go “Restaurant Hopping.” We walked about a block down the street and stopped in another restaurant and had another drink and another appetizer. We did this one last time. The first restaurant is the only restaurant worth mentioning because it was delicious!

We went back to our room and opened the bottle of wine that was in our room. We drank our wine and watched a movie while we played cards. It was such a nice and relaxing day!
We woke up in the morning and we watched a TV show and it was super exciting because (my sister is in a band: Joy Zipper) Joy Zipper’s song “Go Tell the World” was on a commercial! I have never heard one of the band’s songs on the radio or on a commercial! It was super exciting!

We got up and got dressed and decided to go to the Hans Fahden Winery to try more of their wine and take a tour of their “famous” caves. The Winery was gorgeous and was voted one of the top places to have a wedding reception-when we got there, they were setting up the main hall for a wedding. We stayed and spoke with the owner of the winery and then headed out. We drove to Duckhorn Winery and tried a huge assortment of wines. The winery was BEAUTIFUL! At this winery I decided that when I get married, I want to get married in Napa at a Vineyard!

After Duckhorn we drove to the river and had lunch with a very close family friend at a small French Restaurant, Angele. French food is not my favorite, it seems, always, to be too heavy, and the only thing that I could read off of the menu was a Hamburger so, that is what I ordered. It was really good and their fries were delicious! We then ordered an assortment of 3 scoops of ice cream- Chocolate Peanut Butter, Strawberry, and Vanilla. It was very yummy! We enjoyed our lunch and company for about 3 hours! We sat out on the patio and enjoyed the sunshine!

After lunch, we headed on our way home. Overall, my weekend with my “madre,” as I like to call her, was extremely relaxing and wonderful!

If you are ever in Napa/Calistoga, I definitely recommend staying at the Mount View Hotel and Spa! It was wonderful and it is so quaint inside!