Well, This Doesn't Succulent

So last year, I hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and a cardigan. Okay, that's not really the whole truth. I hopped walked off a plane at LAX SFO with a dream deep chest cold and a cardigan scarf. See why it's more fun to bend the truth sometimes?
No but really, last year, I went to San Fran and Wine Country with my friend Adrienne and absolutely fell in love. So, when the Chilhowee gang was trying to plan a little getaway and NWCA was brought up, I gave it two giant thumbs up.
We were all arriving on Wednesday at different times, so made plans to set off to Napa early Thursday morning.

Walking to the plane in Branson

One of Tiffany's clients had graciously set us up with a chauffeur that day, but we weren't quite sure what was included in this excursion. So once we arrived in Napa, Drew and I made a tentative plan of sorts in case we didn't have an agenda. Napa Valley can be crazy overwhelming. There are about 5 gazillion wine tasting rooms and traffic can be a mess in June, so it's good to have some sort of idea of where we were to be going.

Class of 2001: Tiffany, me, Courtney and David

However, when our driver arrived (yeah, I just said it like that, our driver) it was clear we would be completely taken care of that day. Like, probably more than we deserve. Well, maybe Tiff deserves because she works for the guy, the rest of us were just lucky enough to go for the ride.

So what did this dream day with Towner (our driver) entail? A day of private winery tastings paired with cheese and chocolate tastings all complimentary. And if that wasn't enough, when we got back into our Navigator, we would have water waiting for us. Not just our hot water bottles, fresh cold Dasani's in our cup holders. Clearly it doesn't take much to impress us... but then again, we are from Chilhowee.

So to start, we went to probably all of our picks for favorite winery: Chanticleer Estate Wines. This was a private winery and the tasting room was at the owner's house. It was super fun to sit around his dinner table tasting the wines and hearing the story of how he got into wines.

Oh, don't mind those vines, those are just my friend Robert's. Robert Mondavi's. Of course they are.

We visited another winery before stopping at Dean and Deluca to grab something for our picnic lunch later... and this is where Court spied Hippie Chow! My favorite granola. It might be my favorite because the lady behind Hippie Chow is one of our pal's from Heet Gas Gals days (our middle school traveling basketball team), Valerie Jennings.

Side note: Court has a great blog and also captured some fun pics of our trip over at BB to 79th.

We then had a very special lunch at Pride Wineries. It was picnic style. You know, with table linens and China dishware, overlooking the estate.

We finished the day at Terra Valentine with more cheese/chocolate and wine pairings.

I don't think I could ever top that day. People always want suggestions regarding wine country, here is my recommendation: Find a best friend named Tiffany with good clients who love Napa.

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