August 22-23, 2001

August 22-23, 2001

My California sister asked Aimee and I to be her son’s godparents. We agree and make it a little mini-vacation to San Francisco. We arrive Wednesday night and her husband picks us up at the airport. They live in Cupertino in the heart of Silicon Valley and the home of Apple.

The next day the four of us drive north of the city to Napa Valley. Napa is home to the country’s finest wineries. Our first stop is Robert Mondavi probably the most famous of the Napa wineries. We take their winery tour where they demonstrate all that is required to make wine. We finish with a tasting. Our second stop is Grgich Hills where we go straight to the tasting. By the time we get to our third tasting stop, we are all feeling pretty good. There are many more wineries to go. I guess we should have been spitting the tastes into the bucket, but I just can’t do that with perfectly good alcohol. We have dinner at their favorite pizza joint in a campus haunt of UC-Berkeley. Coming from Chicago, I am not impressed.