I feel pretty guilty. I promised the sommelier at our wine tasting that I’d post about Sterling Vineyards Winery because he was so down-to-earth and cool. We even snapped a couple pictures together. When he asked what we all did, I mentioned I had a cooking (food, travel, design, life) blog and he was so excited about it. He even took down my info to check it out. I assured him that if he did stop by the site, he would be able to see his face. Uh that was four months ago. Yep. Hello guilt. But come on friends, you know how life is…and let’s face it, I was just being lazy too.
But Sterling really is a nice winery, and no one has to twist my arm for me to write about it. In fact, I went there years ago during a SF trip with a girlfriend during my single and ready to mingle days. It always stuck in my memory because of the aerial tram you take to get to the vineyard. The view is gorgeous.
Since we live in SoCal, wineries are fortunately accessible to us by car… I mean, a really LONG car ride, but nevertheless, we still consider ourselves lucky. It just so happens that my sister and her family recently moved up to NorCal, so we were able to mooch off their wine club membership and visit Sterling together for free when we went to visit them over Thanksgiving.
On a nice crisp fall day, when the the grape vines had turned orange and red, we piled into the car and made the drive to Sterling Vineyards, located at 1111 Dunaweal Lane Calistoga, CA 94515. General admission is $25.00 and includes an aerial tram ride, a self-guided tour, complimentary tasting of five wines, and a souvenir wine glass you can take home. Guess what… I carefully brought mine all the way home, wrapped in layers of protective paper, and accidentally dropped it on my kitchen floor. Classic. Oh well, at least I have a picture of it.
For this visit to Sterling, both my brother in law and my husband were working that day so they couldn’t join, but it worked out perfectly because my sister’s wine club membership only allowed up to 4 adults to tour the winery for free in the first place. Perfecto! It ended up being a Choi family outing, plus with the welcome addition of my nephew.
My parents, my sister, and I haven’t spent a day alone together as a family in such a long time… years really… we all live far apart from one another. It was different and nice.
We took the aerial tram to the vineyard and I accidentally made my parents miss the view because I distracted them with a slew of picture taking.
When you step off the tram, you grab your first glass of wine.
Then you go on your self guided tour, where you get to see where they make the wine.
Here’s another shot of my wine glass. RIP.
Add the end of our tour, for wine club members only, you get to sit at a table with a sommelier and enjoy even more wine! My toddler nephew happily enjoyed his free bread sticks. I think he ate about five (hundred).
This is Christopher, our sommelier. He was so nice and knew how to joke around with us as he served us some of their best wines, in a non-snooty patootie fashion. I liked his style.
We got along just fine.
So Christopher, if you’ve been stalking this blog in hopes to see your face, there you go buddy. My apologies for the delay.
It was great to be able to spend a relaxing time outdoors with my family that I don’t get to see too often. The crisp weather was perfect, the scenery was beautiful, and the wine was delicious. I wish I could say that I am a wine expert now, but yeah… I forgot everything I learned. Well, that’s all for now. Cheers!
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