Wine tasting in Napa Valley

We went wine tasting in Napa Valley on Saturday. We left mid-morning and arrived just before noon, so we stopped and picked up stuff for lunch from a local grocery/deli. We got break, deli meat, cheese and drinks, and sat out in their picnic area to eat.Boy, Amanda and I are sure getting more similar looking as we get older, hey?

There were some flowering artichokes back there too, which I thought were pretty cool, so I took a picture.Having only visited wineries in Kelowna, I realized how spoiled we are out there compared to Napa Valley, where there is a minimum 15$-20$ fee to visit each winery. In Kelowna, we only paid 5$ at some places for wine tasting, and most were free! Anyway, we decided not to go to very many because of the cost. We chose to go to Sterling Vineyards since it was a nice big winery with a gondola ride up to the winery at the top of a hill. Here is the driveway up to the parking lot/base of the gondola lift. It was pretty, although the reflection from the car window is less than ideal.After paying our dues, we rode the gondola up to the winery. It was quite a short ride, but a neat gimmick nonetheless.Looking down at the pond from the gondola:Looking out the window of the gondola.Once at the top, we started our 'self-guided' wine tour. We were given glasses and there were two depots on our tour that gave us samples, which we drank as we wandered through the site. Balcony overlooking the valley:Part of the Sterling winery structure:We walked through a portion where we could look at the barrels and casks of wine:Once through this hallway, we came out onto a balcony where we received our second sample of wine. Overlooking the valley:Amanda and Ray:Kim and Ray:The balcony:The mountain with flowers in the foreground:The valley again:After spending a bunch of time on the balcony, we backtracked the way we had come and headed up to the tasting room:On the patio, we tried three different wines to finish off our tour:On our way back to the gondola, we saw a REALLY BIG bottle of wine! Woah, it's huge!Nice looking wine:We headed back down the gondola to the parking lot:Before heading out, we wandered over to the vineyard adjacent to the parking lot:Here's me in the vineyard!Baby grapes!After Sterling, we went to a different little winery called Pope Valley winery, which was completely different. It was free for tasting, but it was very hippy and very unorganized. In addition, there was a BBQ going on at the winery when we arrived, complete with karaoke, picnic tables in the trees and rednecks. It was interesting, and we got to try lots of their wines in this cool cave area where they store their wine. Unfortunately, their wine was fairly mediocre, but at least it was free! Here are some pictures of the cave (difficult to see):