Thar She Blows

If you read this blog regularly or semi-regularly or just see me posting on social media and having it barely register in your consciousness before moving on to more important things, you'll know that I love wildlife. Finding animals in their natural habitats and just watching whatever they happen to be doing is a huge passion of mine. I find it incredibly rewarding and humbling. It definitely puts my place in the world into some sort of perspective which I find valuable. 

And so, to that end, I've spent a lot of time in my life planning and actually doing just that. Africa. Costa Rica. All over the American west. Maybe a few other spots. There are few experiences in life that I love more.

It didn't always used to be that way. I don't mean the interest; that part was always there. But for a good portion of my life, I chose to not seek out those "in the wild" experiences that I have found so very valuable. Ten or so years ago, I decided to change that. I decided to travel with purpose and make sure I did everything I really wanted to all over the planet before I got too old and set in my ways and routines. That meant a lot more wildlife trips.

Oddly enough, one of the wildlife watching experiences I had engaged in before I started writing this blog was whale watching. In the mid-1990s for some reason I decided that was something I had to do and so I pitched it to my sister. She said yes and we went up to Boston from our parents' house in Connecticut one summer and boarded a boat and set out onto the Atlantic Ocean in search of the largest animals that had ever inhabited this planet. Or close enough anyway. Humpbacks, not blues.

Honestly, that first time sucked. I think we saw a couple of minke whales. Not very exciting. It was so bad that the tour operator gave us credit for a future tour for free. So we went back based on the promise of what we might see, I guess. Then we went again. Then again. And again. For the next three years after our first trip. We ended up seeing some amazing stuff on the water off the coast of Massachusetts, including a few humpbacks feeding right at the surface of the water. That was just mind blowing.

I should note that whale watching is an inherently frustrating activity. You can only see what comes out of the water and that's totally at the discretion of the whales. What most whale watching trips get you is some arched backs as the whale or whales that you are chasing breathe in and out and maybe a tail fluke as they dive. But since I started this blog, I thought it would be cool to blog about an amazing whale watching trip. 

The problem? There hasn't been one.

That doesn't mean I haven't tried. Since I started writing this blog, I've been on whale watching trips off the coasts of Iceland, Hawaii, Alaska, Los Angeles and San Francisco looking for mostly humpbacks and blue whales. I have also spent a couple of hours looking off the coast of Scotland to try to spot orcas in the cold summer waters of the British Isles. 

And truthfully, I have seen whales. Not near Iceland or Scotland but humpbacks near San Francisco and a blue whale (the largest mammal to ever inhabit the planet) near Los Angeles. Heck, I've even seen two full breaches by humpbacks off the coast of Maui. 

So, what's the problem? Well, there was always something wrong. The whales were too far away. The contact with the whales was too short or too fleeting. What the whales did wasn't exciting enough. There were no whales at all (thanks, Iceland!). The trip was cancelled (thanks, Maine!). I had no camera. Or I had a camera but not the right camera. Just something. All the time.

So, I figured this summer, I'd go back to where I started this whole foolish whale-chasing endeavor: Boston, Massachusetts. The New England Aquarium. Go back to the beginning and see what we could find. It had been years since I'd been to Boston at all and probably about 25 years since I'd been whale watching out of that city. And obviously since I've finally started writing about whale watching on this blog, it was good enough. Not the best ever, but good enough.

I should mention here that there have been a number of species of animals that have consistently eluded me over the last 10 years in a meaningful way. Call me spoiled but I've chased flamingos in Africa (twice), Ecuador, Mexico and almost Florida and come away pretty much empty every time. I've also hoped for tons of penguins in Ecuador and New Zealand and gotten pretty much nothing. Whales could be added to that list. I know I'm going to keep chasing these creatures until I get a close up look at a full body breach and have that on film. Hey...you have to have goals in life. 

Tail fluke shots. These are often the best looks at whales on these trips.

Last weekend, I went back to the beginning and joined the O.G. (for me) of whale watch tours: a catamaran out of Boston harbor right next to the Aquarium. Our target that day was the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, a giant 842 square mile, underwater plateau that stretches from the tip of Cape Cod all the way up to the eastern point of Maine. There is some giant shelf in the ocean below the water in this location that drives nutrients in the ocean into a concentrated area right there for the taking for phytoplankton which draws in thousands of fish which draws in whales. It's like a giant cetacean buffet. 

It takes about an hour and a half to get to Stellwagen Bank from Boston. We never made it. Not last weekend.

A couple of things about whale watching. First, as soon as you can, make sure you secure a spot in the front of the boat, assuming you are on a boat that allows you to move around. When the boat stops and you start watching whales, the boat generally turns to follow whatever it is you have stopped to watch. And the boat generally goes front first when it does this. Second, I am a notoriously bad wildlife spotter on these trips. Not just whale watching. Like all wildlife trips. Not a good spotter of anything under normal circumstances.

So true to form for me, I grabbed a spot in the front of the boat as soon as there was any question about a front spot being in danger of being grabbed by someone else. And totally against form about an hour in and short of Stellwagen, I said not loud enough for anyone really to hear: "that was a whale." Then the boat stopped.

Mother and calf humpbacks lunge feeding.

What we had found about six miles shy of Stellwagen Bank was a mother and calf pair of humpbacks cruising near the top of the ocean with another juvenile whale tagging along. Our boat's naturalist guide, Colin, described this association as likely temporary and he expected that the mother and calf would soon separate from the third whale. But at the time we stopped, the three were just happy being together. Or happy enough to be near each other anyway. 

What we saw over the next hour plus was these three whales feeding. This was not the same type of feeding my sister and I saw twenty plus years ago. That feeding involved some underwater bubble blowing and the whales rushing straight upwards in the water to consume the fish trapped in an underwater, whale-made cone of bubbles. Our three whales this past weekend were lunge feeding, an action where the whales propel themselves along the top of the water and break the surface with their mouths and filter out the water leaving themselves with a mouthful of fish.

Humpback mouths are just huge and when they lunge feed, the skin at the lower half of their jaws expands to hold all the water and fish they scoop up. Once their mouths are full, they finish their lunge action above water by expelling all the water through the baleen plates on their upper jaw allowing them to feed on the fish without getting a giant, hundreds of gallons worth of salt water chaser.

For the whale watching human, this offers the advantage of seeing more of the whales than their arched backs. We actually get to see their heads. And short of jumping in the water (which I feel is frowned upon on these trips), this is the best view of a whale you are going to get unless it jumps out of the water. 

Which they do. Just not for us in late August off the coast of Boston.

Sometimes looking below the waves shows you how big these animals are. Check out the white fin in the second pic.

So if you can't see fully body breaches or fins or tails slapping the ocean or sea, feeding is a pretty good compromise result, particularly if you can get close enough to understand how big these animals actually are. One of the biggest attractions of these trips is being able to understand what you are looking at is actually really, really huge. We got that on this trip through watching the whales surface. We also got it by getting close enough to them to be able to compare their size to our size. Pretty darned big is the impression I got.

The other cool thing about this hour plus that we watched these three whales for was that they never dived. Not really. There were some mini-dives (accompanied by signature fluke raises) but nothing that took any of these three below the waves for a significant amount of time. When that sort of thing happens, there's a good chance you will lose the whales for minutes and maybe for the rest of the day. They can hold their breaths for up to 15 minutes and can move pretty far away in that amount of time. Ours never disappeared from our sight.

This was almost everything I wanted out of a whale watch trip at this time in my life. After some teases, including two over the past year off the coast of California (where we saw whales but didn't really get a sense of how big they are), this was a good affirmation that these things are worthwhile. On my list of dozen or so whale watches, this one was a clear second best, which is good enough for me to blog about and keep going back and back and back. Until I get that close up full body breach by a humpback. Somewhere. Anywhere. Boston's good for whale watching. I'd go back anytime.

Boston.

Colin was right about the temporary nature of the togetherness of this trio of whales, by the way. Before an hour was up, the three had separated.

Before I end this...about those full body breaches in Hawaii. I actually do have one on film. It's below. It was on a video taken with my GoPro. For now, the picture below represents the hope I have every time I board any sort of watercraft to go find whales. Now I just need it a lot closer. Then I'll be satisfied. At least with the whales. Still have to take care of those flamingoes and penguins.

New York Hot

This post is about visiting a couple of jazz clubs in New York City over the fourth of July weekend this year. 

Actually, that's not true. It's not really about that at all. Yes, this post appears to be about visiting a couple of jazz clubs in New York City over the fourth of July weekend this year, but it's not. It's really about my dad. And me chasing him.

For as long as I can remember, I've had jazz in my life. My dad was (and is) fanatical about jazz. It's one of his many life's passions and loves. I can remember on weekends when we were kids growing up in England, every time the record player was on in our living room, jazz was pouring out of the speakers. Sounds cool, right? Awesome to have such a hip dad? I mean how with it is my dad to have jazz playing all the time?

I didn't like it. I mean, I really, really didn't like it. It was loud, it was discordant (I would not have used that word as a kid) and there were no words. How could you listen to an entire record with no words? And then another. And another. This is what I grew up with. I didn't appreciate it. I didn't want it. But it was there. I spent time hearing it at home. My dad received magazines about jazz. I spent time in record stores with my dad in London and Birmingham as he looked through piles of albums for hours. It was always there. Jazz, jazz, jazz! I didn't get it. At. All.

Eventually, my dad's love of music made its way to me. But it wasn't jazz. My favorite artist when I was a pre-teen was Billy Joel, and that wasn't really cool at all back in those years. But I started getting into music a little more broadly in a semi-serious way when I was a freshman in high school. Then I started buying records (yes...records) in about 1983. Def Leppard's Pyromania started it for me, but I moved on pretty quickly to other things. Duran Duran. Spandau Ballet. INXS. Genesis. The Moody Blues. Marillion (so much Marillion; like a ton!). Pink Floyd. The Beatles. Bob Dylan. David Bowie. Linda Ronstadt. Motown. Cowboy Junkies. Mark Knopfler. Brandi Carlile. Taylor Swift. There were and are many more in there. Too many to list. 

I believe my dad is at least in large part responsible for my love of music. It is also one of my many life's passions and loves and I give huge credit to my dad here. I can't tell you how many dollar or two dollar used records my dad helped me out with at Integrity 'N Music in Wethersfield, CT.

I figured one day I'd meet my dad a little musically and get into jazz, but honestly it never really happened. Whatever rock or pop music or whatever you want to label it is, I love most or all of that. My interest in all sorts of that type of music has led me to the blues, which I also love. And I do mean LOVE! Classical? Country? Rap? Easy listening? A little bit (very little bit) of opera? Sure, sure, sure, sure and sure. All of it. Well, like old country. And only a little rap. But not jazz. Not on records. I've intentionally visited New Orleans and listened to jazz in clubs and liked it. But sitting down, putting on a record or CD and listening to it at home...that's different. I never got into it. I tried, I swear. Didn't happen. I knew one day I'd be inheriting an amazing jazz collection (which I'd already pledged to honor and take care of) but I just couldn't get into it.

Then one day last fall, I got to a tipping point. My mom told me she and my dad had decided to sell my dad's jazz record collection. Not the CDs. Just the records. 

Hold on! Hold on just one second.

I wanted some. 

This music is an important part of my childhood, even though the irony of my complete rejection of this music is front and center with my objection here. So, while I was over at my parents' place one weekend a couple of weeks after my mother's pronouncement, I asked my dad if he would pull out a curated assortment of the very best jazz records ever made from his collection. He couldn't do it. Couldn't recall enough about individual works to pass along the best in his collection to me. My dad's memory is failing. It's a problem. It's frustrating for him and it breaks my heart. And not just because he couldn't pull out his favorite jazz of all time.

Lacking my dad's input, I sort of tried to do it for myself that weekend. I did a quick search on the internet for the best jazz albums ever made, found some (like honestly just five or six) in his collection and came home and started playing them. John Coltrane. Charles Mingus. Art Blakey. Miles Davis. One or two from each plus a Howlin' Wolf record. And while I played them, I continued to look online and make a list so that the next time I visited my parents, I could look properly and find what I was sure would be an instant legit classic jazz collection.

Some of what used to be in my dad's record collection.

The names on that list I made...Duke Ellington. Charlie Parker. Sonny Rollins. Grant Green. Kenny Burrell. Wayne Shorter. Eric Dolphy. Freddie Hubbard. Herbie Hancock. Dexter Gordon. Thelonious Monk. Count Basie. Lee Morgan. Django Reinhart. Cannonball Adderly. More Art Blakey. More John Coltrane. More Miles Davis. These were all names from my childhood. I knew them all. I just didn't know anything about any of them and I never listened to their music. 

The next time I visited my parents, I found most of what I was looking for in one single spot in my dad's bedroom closet. Most everything on the list I had made was recorded on Blue Note Records and my dad had all of them together in one giant treasure trove of a find. Now is not the time and place to talk extensively about my dad's record filing habits but he used to organize his music collection by label, not artist. He's mostly changed that now but it makes sense given his history that I would find all the classics in one location. They were all on the same label (Blue Note).

Since I found that stash, I've been slowly working my way through that collection. It's difficult to get used to a sizeable collection of music that is totally new but I've been doing it one by one. I definitely have favorites and some that I love. I also haven't even gotten to some of it and I also can't stand some of it and I swear it's not scars from my childhood. 

It helps that they are vinyl. There's something about dropping that needle down onto the wax and hearing the same pops and clicks sometimes that my dad used to hear. I feel like vinyl's the right medium for this music. It just feels appropriate.

Photos on the wall of The Village Vanguard.

As far as I was concerned when I was a young kid, my dad's love of jazz was confined to our home. I'm sure that's the limit of my childhood memory kicking in. I'm sure he went to listen to jazz live in England and I know he had a jazz club he used to go to every so often in Connecticut near where we lived. But eventually, he started to travel to listen to jazz in the places where men and women made it famous. I remember him taking a couple of trips to New Orleans with my mom, including one where they drove to the Crescent City all the way down from Memphis. On that trip, they visited Sun Studio where my mom literally bumped into Carl Perkins and stepped on his shoes.

The other jazz trips I remember my dad taking were to New York City. He had a lifelong friend and fellow jazz fan who used to visit us here in the States and the two of them used to head down to the City for a long weekend for what seemed to me like several years in a row but was likely really just two or three. They'd grab a hotel room, spend each night jazz club hopping until 2 a.m. or whatever in the morning, crash until late the next morning and then do the same thing over and over again. Birdland. Blue Note. The Village Vanguard. Some others probably that I don't even know about and which my dad cannot remember.

One day I thought it would be great if I could have taken my dad back to some of those places but I know enough to know that he's never going to be jazz club hopping in New York ever again. But I thought now that I have a portion of his old jazz record collection, I could do it without him. I've followed the memory of Gerry Rafferty to a pub in London and visited a hotel in Alabama where The Rolling Stones once stayed and had a late night snack in one of Ernest Hemingway's favorite restaurants in Madrid. Why shouldn't I now do the same thing and follow in my dad's footsteps to one or two jazz clubs? He's had way more influence on the person that I am today than Hemingway, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards or Gerry Rafferty. A three night trip to NYC seemed to be the perfect time to start following my dad to jazz clubs.

The Ravi Coltrane Quartet. Birdland. New York City.

I focused my jazz club search in New York on six places: Birdland, Blue Note, Dizzy's Club, Smalls, The Village Vanguard and Zinc Bar. From there, we picked where we were going mostly, but not entirely, based on who was playing, although our choices turned out to be somewhat limited on Monday night, July 3, when most were closed.

There is some real jazz history in some of these places and some of these names. Sure, Smalls has only been open since 1994 and Dizzy's Club is even younger (despite borrowing jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie's name) and Blue Note was opened in the early 1980s. But Zinc Bar is in the same space that used to be called Club Cinderella where Thelonious Monk worked as the house pianist in the 1940s and the Birdland club is one of the most legendary jazz spots named after Charlie Parker and opened way back in 1949 (although admittedly, the current location is the third iteration of the club and there was no Birdland at all from 1964 to 1986). Of all the places on my list, The Village Vanguard is the boss; it's been in the same location since 1934. And pretty much everyone who is anyone in jazz has a live album recorded at the Vanguard.

We picked Birdland and The Village Vanguard. For the artists. For the history. And because I know my dad has sat in both spots listening to jazz and being happy. 

Before we get into my very brief synopsis of our experience at each place, let me just say what an amazing place that New York is. I've said this many a time but if I could afford to live in Manhattan and maintain my current lifestyle that I enjoy living here in northern Virginia, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I love this city. I was very selective with my choice of clubs to visit but where else on this planet can you find the number of jazz clubs that there are in New York. I've listened to jazz in other cities in the world including New Orleans, Paris and Brussels but for the amount of top quality music every night, New York is the best. This doesn't just apply to jazz clubs. Like everything about New York is the best. LOVE it.

We ended up seeing the early show of the Ravi Coltrane Quartet at Birdland on Saturday night and the late show of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at The Village Vanguard on Monday night. From a music perspective, I enjoyed Ravi Coltrane (who yes, is the son of John Coltrane) way more than the VJO. Coltrane is leading a band of professional musicians who are making a living playing jazz and making records that are creative and original. They are also (from my limited jazz knowledge acquired in the last nine months or so) playing music pretty close to the 1950s and 1960s stuff I've been predominantly listening to since I pillaged my dad's record collection. The VJO is a big band and the big band era is long gone. That's not to say there's no value in that kind of music or that it wasn't entertaining; just that given a choice one night to see one or the other, I'm picking the quartet.

Venue-wise, they both had their own appeal. When you step off 44th Street and into Birdland, it's like you are a million miles away from the New York City sidewalk with just one step while still very definitely being in New York. There is no doubt you are in an historic jazz club. I'd go back to Birdland any time, particularly if we could get seated in the front row like we were last month (it's first come, first served seating and you know I was early).

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, just before they started playing (no pics once the music starts).

But it is difficult to replicate the atmosphere of the Vanguard. It's a basement space which you access through a pair of doors probably 4' or maybe 4'-6" wide between the two doors and down a staircase which I feel fairly certain doesn't meet today's building codes. But it's a magical space. It's dark. It's old without being smelly. And the triangular floor plan focuses all the attention on the small stage and the south end of the joint. We were packed in there like some kind of puzzle pieces making up some kind of larger, glorious bigger picture. You can feel the history in that place, even without the faces in the pictures on the wall looking back at you (Birdland has similar walls-full of pictures). I’d go to either club again, but the Vanguard is the space with the legit history. The music that place has heard over the years. Just legends upon legends who have played there. It's tangible.

I'll say a couple of more things about this experience. 

First of all, I'm amazed at how well the bass playing comes through in these small clubs. Listening to records at home, I seem to get everything except the bass. Horns, drums, piano, whatever. But I miss the bass. It comes through magnificently in person. I have no idea how they get a bass down into the Vanguard but we did ask bassist Dezron Douglas at Birdland how he gets his bass moved around the city. Apparently he can get it in a big cab (I can see that) and on the Subway (I can't imagine how but I trust him).

Second, one of the things my dad liked best about his jazz club visits to New York was the fact that he got to talk to the musicians between or after sets. I remember him talking about his conversations with pianist Marian McPartland in some club while he was on his visits. And sure enough after the Coltrane set, all the musicians were available for conversation, pictures or whatever. It's a completely different post-show vibe that you get at a rock or pop show. Most musicians (but admittedly not all) disappear after the shows. It was cool to see that sort of thing still gong on that my dad remembered so fondly. 

I am pretty sure that my jazz collection is going to get bigger (I just got a new record for my birthday...) and I am also pretty sure I have not visited my last jazz club (already started looking at shows at Blues Alley in DC...). These couple of visits were about getting closer to the music that I've been exploring over the last few months but they were also a conscious gesture to honor and respect and get closer to something my dad loved and loves. I have very few regrets in life but not engaging with this music earlier is one of those. I'll just have to do the best I can with what my dad has intentionally or unintentionally passed to me here. I promise I'll do the best I can.

Birdland: Show over!

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Coda

A couple of final notes about my dad's love for jazz and my own jazz journey to date. I'll take those two in the opposite order I just wrote them because my thoughts on this type of music are clearly less important than my dad's thoughts. At least from my perspective. 

I have not spent much of my life listening to jazz but I will say that as an art form, it was far, far more sophisticated in the 1950s and early 1960s than anything labeled rock and roll or something like that. I guess I'm also surprised based on my toe-dip in the last nine months or so at how contemporaneous this music is with the emergence of rock music. Put another way, I had no idea that the music my dad was listening to when I was growing up was just 10 or 20 years old at the time. 

I will say that I appreciate incredibly the following six albums that I've discovered since this time last year. I'm picking six for a specific reason, and not because beer comes in six packs. At least not this time.

• Cannonball Adderly: Somethin' Else.
• Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers: Moanin'.
• Kenny Burrell: Midnight Blue.
• John Coltrane: Blue Train.
• Dexter Gordon: Our Man In Paris.
• Grant Green: Idle Moments.

In 2022, I was not able to get a list of essential jazz albums out of my dad. However, I did ask him in the early 1990s for a list of his must-have or essential or desert island disks or whatever you want to call them top jazz albums of all time. And I still have that hand-written list 30 years or so after he wrote it down.

Here's my dad's list of essential jazz albums which he called Foot Tapping List #1. Do with this what you will. Unfortunately, there will never be a List #2.

• Count Basie and His Orchestra: The Atomic Mr. Basie.
• Miles Davis: Ballads OR Greatest Hits.
• Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges: Back to Back.
• Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong: Ella and Louis Again OR The Best of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
• George Lewis: Jazz Funeral In New Orleans.
• Big Joe Turner: The Boss of The Blues.

My dad's list is way different than my list. And I think that's OK. It might reflect the fact that I like different things from my dad or it might reflect the fact that I don't know anything about jazz. I've tried my dad's list. I even asked him for copies of his CDs of his list about 15 or 20 years after I asked him for the list which he made me (mostly; he made a couple of substitutions because I think he didn't have all six on CD and easily copy-able when I asked him). The Atomic Mr. Basie is some good stuff. I'll keep going back to the rest. Maybe when I know a little bit more and can appreciate the nuance and subtlety a little better.

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More Wine

Five years ago, I turned 50. Of all the places in this whole wide amazing world to celebrate that milestone, I picked the Napa Valley in California. I figured what's better than drinking really good wine all day on your half century birthday? I think it was a good choice. I fell in love with the place despite having been there twice before. I got an appreciation of the place way over and above my first two visits.

That 2018 trip had another purpose besides just celebrating me being alive for five decades: I wanted to see if I really loved wine, so we were serious about the research we did to find at least one or two well-regarded wineries that had been producing a top-quality product for some time. Now don't get me wrong here, I knew I liked wine, but I'd been a bit directionless in my sampling. I'd never really gotten some proper instruction and really understood what I was drinking. I was looking for LOVE, not like. 

That trip worked. I found two chardonnays and one cabernet that I liked and had some shipped back. In the five years since, I've grown to love chardonnay above most other wines. 

We loved that trip to Napa so much that we scheduled another just two years later. But drinking wine and eating food with other people in an enclosed, indoor space wasn't such a smart idea in the summer of 2020, so we had to end up kicking that trip down the road a bit. To this year.

In the five years since my last Napa trip, I've discovered wine that I love while traveling that is NOT chardonnay. I got into vinho verde in Portugal in the fall of 2021 and fell in love with Austria's grüner veltliner during a pre-Christmas visit last year. But they don't produce either of those wines in California so when it came time to do some research as to where to go this year, I focused on wineries that produced well-regarded chardonnays. The only reason I mention other wines that I love is that I believe my mind has been opened (by travel) to other possibilities.

We set this up to be an amazing chardonnay pilgrimage. And of course, it ended up being something completely different. Well, mostly.

Finishing Paris

Five years ago, we centered our wine tasting in Napa around the Judgment of Paris, the 1976 taste test in Paris that turned the wine world on its head when a series of wine experts in a blind taste test picked a California chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon over their French counterparts. That meant we visited Chateau Montelena (which won the Paris tasting with their chardonnay) and Stag's Leap Wine Cellars (which won with their cabernet). I found chardonnays at both those wineries in 2018 that I love.

One of the protagonists in the Judgment of Paris was Miljenko (Mike) Grgich. He was the man who made the winning chardonnay for Chateau Montelena. Shortly after that contest, he decided to leave Chateau Montelena to start his own shop, a place he called Grgich Hills Estate. And it's still around today. As is Mike, who turned 100(!!!) this year. We made Grgich Hills the first scheduled stop of this wine trip. 

My intent in this post is not to give a blow-by-blow of the wines we tasted. I didn't keep track of all that and I'm not qualified to relay tasting notes with any sort of accuracy. But I'll say two things about our visit to Grgich Hills. Although before I get to that, I will say that they do make some very good wines at Grgich Hills. I found their zinfandel and petite syrah (which I find hard to find) both very good but both priced at a level that was more than I was prepared to pay.

So...those two things...

First, 10 a.m. wine tastings are just awesome. I was a little skeptical. Maybe it was too early. Maybe it would start the day off on the wrong foot. I mean it's not even day drinking; it's morning drinking. Any misgivings evaporated quickly after the first taste. The two places we picked (Grgich Hills and Patz & Hall) were fantastic. There is nothing like being served multiple tastes of amazing-tasting wine in an idyllic environment in the cool California morning. I'm all in!

Second, these places know how to take care of you. Sure, there's the menu of tastings. Four. Five. Whatever it is that you've bought. But then there's a bonus tasting or maybe two. They make you feel so special when you get more tastings beyond the bonus tastings. "Is there anything else you would like to try?" Umm...yeah! What else you got??

Talk to your host. Talk about wine. Tell him or her what you like or are curious about. They might just have something that you might be interested in. You paid for all this, by the way, so get it. Accept all the bonus pours. They just have this thing down to an art. And they did it really well at Grgich Hills.

Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir

OK, so truth be told here, Grgich Hills was NOT our first wine stop on this trip. That honor belonged to Clif Family Winery, which we stopped at for lunch after perhaps an earlier than originally planned departure from where we were staying near Yosemite National Park. Clif was actually a repeat visit; we'd been there for lunch one day in 2020 and I had what I remembered as a delicious chardonnay while I ate wings and loaded bruschetta from the food truck (Bruschetteria, if you must know) that parks on property at Clif. I had to get another glass of that wine as my first taste of vino in Napa.

Didn't happen. Clif didn't have chardonnay available by the glass when we stopped there. They offered a viognier and a sauvignon blanc. Now, I'd never had a viognier but I knew I didn't care for sauvignon blanc all that much so I tried the viognier which I didn't particularly like. Not enough flavor. So I acquiesced and tried the sauvignon blanc. 

This is why we travel and try new things, folks. I don't drink sauvignon blanc, but I liked this wine. I mean I really liked it. Two days later, we went back to Clif and had a second glass because I couldn't stop thinking about it. Then I bought 11 bottles of the stuff. I mean, it is really, really good. I haven't cracked a bottle since I got back home and had it deposited on my doorstep, but I will soon. Sauvignon blanc. Who knew this would happen?

Look, I know it's just wine. But sometimes wine makes life better.

Frog's Leap Winery's historic barn. Rutherford, CA.

I told you that story so I could tell you this one. 

When I was sampling chardonnay and some reds over at Grgich Hills, our host asked me where else we were headed and we mentioned we were going to give pinot noir a chance over in the Sonoma and Russian River Valleys. I then let slip out that I'd never had a pinot that I liked. I find them too watery. No finish at all. Disappear from my palate as soon as they are gone from my mouth.

His response: "You've been drinking the wrong pinots."

About a day later, I was a believer. 

We tried three or four pinot noirs at Landmark Vineyards in Healdsburg and maybe as many as five (lost count...) the next day at Patz & Hall in Sonoma. These are some seriously good wines. And so much body and finish. Just wow! I'd never tasted pinot noir like this before. At Patz & Hall, they kept bringing them, each one better than the last (bonus pours, I'm telling you...). I bought three bottles of the Sanchietti pinot from Patz & Hall. It blew me away it was so good. I can't wait to open one of those bottles when they get here. 

Yes, they are not here at home more than six weeks after we were at Patz & Hall. They refuse to ship in hot weather. I'm OK with that. I can wait, even though I just wrote that I can't. 

Our well-planned chardonnay pilgrimage had me buying bottles of two wine varietals I'd never bought for myself ever. Go figure! I did buy more sauvignon blanc also, by the way. Frog's Leap ages theirs in concrete and the stuff tastes like the best tasting grapefruit juice I've never had. Just incredible stuff.  All told, I came home followed by 15 bottles of sauvignon blanc.

Wine and Food

If there was a disappointment in our wine tasting itinerary this year, it was in the number of places that offered reasonably priced food and wine pairing tastings. In 2020, there seemed to be a ton of these and we had lined up an agenda that featured a series of light snacks all over the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. This year, it was way more difficult to find these sorts of things. Full meals? Sure. But tastings with snacks and particularly lunch? Not so much. I'm blaming COVID.

I do think that it's important for me to come back to this whole food-with-wine-makes-both-things-better idea. I think it's important to do that because I'm still not all that convinced that wine shouldn't be just savored by itself so you can taste the pure and unadulterated taste of the grapes and the terroir. This year we gave this a shot one more time at Landmark Vineyards in Healdsburg, which turned out to be a sort of science lab of food and wine pairings. Aged cheese. Truffle popcorn. Salt. Lemon and salt. Apple and salt. Onion jam. Fruit jam. Tea with jam. There may have been others.

I got two things out of this exercise. First, apple with chardonnay kills the chardonnay and lemon with chardonnay brightens it up. I'm not likely to ever do apple or lemon with chardonnay, although lemon cake and chardonnay sounds like a possibility. Second, red jam with pinot noir is just amazing. I will definitely be setting up something somewhere down the line with that combination. We discovered chocolate and port two years ago in Porto. Add red jam and pinot noir to that list.

Landmark Vineyards: Their hospitality center in the old hop kilns (top) and what we sampled (bottom).

We picked Landmark for a reason besides food and wine. We picked them because the tasting was in an old hop kiln, a throwback building to when the Russian River Valley was a major source of hop growing to flavor and preserve beer. The stone kilns, which date from 1905 and were built in just 40 days are likely the best and only variety of this building type still standing in the area of California north of San Francisco that used to be hop country. We got there a little earlier than our tasting (which turned out to be just us) and asked if we could take a walk around the kilns and got a quick personal tour out of our visit, which was awesome to receive as a bonus experience.

Landmark moved into the property in 2016 but there is still a lot of memorabilia from the farming days in addition to the actual kilns themselves. The hop farming endeavor at this property was a full-service business. They even made their own sacks to transport the hops on the sewing machines that are still stored down in the lowest level of the kiln. We came to Napa, Sonoma and the Russian River Valleys to taste wine, but I'm never above (or below is maybe a better word) squeezing in a little beer history.

Chardonnay Is Still King

Remember that well-planned chardonnay quest we thought this trip to wine country was going to be? Well, we did get some excellent chardonnay out of the trip, after all. 

I used to think I should love red wine. I've dabbled in trysts with some zinfandel and (on this trip) pinot noirs that I think were and are amazing. But given a choice in some restaurant somewhere and especially in the summer, I'm opting for white wine. And the king of all white wine for as long as I've been drinking wine with any sort of regularity (over the last 10 years, let's say...) is chardonnay. At least it is for me. Maybe it's too simple. I like it. And I've loved it more often than I loved other wines. 

So on this trip, I made sure (with the possible exception of Landmark because there were other priorities driving that visit) that everywhere we went had made a chardonnay that was well-regarded by some website or critic that I found I could have some respect for. That led us to Clif, that led us to Grgich Hills, that led us to Frog's Leap and it led us to Patz & Hall.

Patz & Hall was my favorite winery on this trip. If I lived remotely close to Sonoma, I'd join their wine club and make sure I showed up at their property for a lot of 10 a.m. wine tastings. Their property is gorgeous. Their service was immaculate. And I loved their wine the best. I was shocked at my purchase of some pinot noir from Patz & Hall. I know I've already mentioned that.

They also served me a chardonnay that I sipped and just said "oh, that's really good". 

One of the things I loved about Patz & Hall was the way the wines kept coming and each one seemed to be better than the last. It happened with their pinots and it happened with their chardonnays. Bonus pours upon bonus pours, trying to get me something that would move me. Their Kent Ritchie chardonnay moved me in a way that no wine has moved me in a long time. It was so full of flavor and smooth. It reminded me why I love chardonnay the best. I can't wait for them to deliver those bottles to me so I can taste that wine again. There may be some shopping in the future at Patz & Hall.

Happiness is a 10 a.m. wine tasting. At Grgich Hills.

I don't know when we'll get back to the Napa Valley. Or the Sonoma or Russian River Valleys for that matter. But all three of those places together are absolutely one of my happiest places on Earth. It's not all to do with the wine, but the wine is certainly a big reason. Our 2018 trip out that way was a bit hit and miss. We found some places we liked and we struck out with other wineries. This time we really tried to make every stop at a place that concentrated on what they are making as top-quality examples of their craft and I think we got exactly what we were looking for. Research helps sometimes. There was nothing accidental about any of the wine I drank on this trip.

Five years ago, I went to Napa to find out if could find a wine that I loved. This time around, I found at least five wines that I love because I had 24 bottles of that many different wines shipped home. I am still shocked that more than half of those bottles were sauvignon blanc. Sometimes you don't get what you want and expect. Sometimes you get more than that.

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The Wineries

We visited the following wineries in California on this trip. I'd recommend them all and for totally different reasons. There are at least two of these that I will return to the next time I'm in the area.

Clif Family Winery, Saint Helena 

We stopped at Clif Family on the way up the Napa Valley on our first day in the area. We went so that we could grab some lunch at their awesome, on-site food truck (which we did) and so that I could taste some of their chardonnay that I think was really amazing from our visit in 2018 (which I did not). Everybody we met at Clif Family was amazing. They were all super helpful and connected with us in a way that made us feel welcomed and like we should buy a bottle or two of their wine. We actually bought 12: 11 sauvignon blanc and 1 rose. Our second visit on this trip was two days later. We've now been to this winery three times and have never had a tasting. Next time...

Grgich Hills Estate, Rutherford

The first of our two 10 a.m. wine tastings on this trip. Grgich Hills is steeped in so much Napa Valley history through the Judgment of Paris that it's a must visit. We did it on our second serious trip to Napa (my first two trips to Napa were not serious wine visits). The service and the quality of the wines is top notch here. I'd go back in a second although we probably won't on our next visit necessarily. The patio out in front of the winery right along Route 29 feels like it's a long, long way off the road that is one of the two main thoroughfares up the Valley. No bottles bought here, but I could have. The Yountville Old Vine Cabernet Sauvignon was incredible. It was also $225 a bottle. 

Landmark Vineyards, Healdsburg

Landmark was the only vineyard we visited where the quality of the chardonnay was not the primary reason for our visit. It was all about the sensory tasting experience and the old hop kiln building. Having said that, both the chardonnays and the pinot noirs at Landmark were really good. They presented me the first pinot I've ever tasted that I liked a lot. Their property is gorgeous and historic and the service was so relatable. I could have bought wine here but the price point was too steep for me. I got better cheaper elsewhere. Most all of Landmark's grapes are contract grown elsewhere. No objections to that considering the quality of the wine.

Patz & Hall, Sonoma

Quite simply, my favorite winery visit ever. I will visit again. Somehow, someway, I'll get back here. Patz & Hall grows grapes on their property which they have owned for 7 years (the same length of time as Landmark) but like Landmark uses contract grown grapes for their wines. Before this trip, I would have looked down my nose at making wine from grapes grown elsewhere. Not now. I bought three bottles of chardonnay and three bottles of pinot noir here. I can't wait to get that chardonnay in a glass at home.

Frog's Leap Winery, Rutherford

Of all the places we visited, honestly Frog's Leap was the only place that had customer service that was not impeccable. Every other place made us feel special and welcome and like they were doing us a favor with each wine pour. They were engaged and talked to us and listened to us. Frog's Leap did not. Having said that, we bought six bottles here: 4 sauvignon blanc and two zinfandel. The $75 off deal I got from my Amex on this one was a tipping point. I couldn't not buy with a $75 discount, right? Their wines are really good. And their property is spectacular. The gardens are gorgeous. I'd skip based on the service. There may be more online shopping but no more visits, probably.

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