Saturday April 26th Mark and I had an epic day in Napa and Sonoma, running around tasting wines and meeting new people while catching up with others.

Wineries visited:
Larkmead
Duckhorn
Frogs Leap
Round Pond
Loxton

We started out at Larkmead Vineyards in Calistoga, where Dan Petroski was kind enough to show us around despite it being his day off. Dan is one of Snooth's guest bloggers so it was great to catch up with him.

Larkmead is a sleeper winery. Tucked up far North in Napa, far from the tourist masses, its really a beautiful tranquil place. The winery has around 100 acres of vines under management and is set, I believe, next to a wetland nature reserve.

For those that have traipsed the lower reaches of Route 29 / Silverado Trail its really worth getting further North, the valley narrows and feels much more intimate as the hills crowd you in up here.

For a full list of Larkmead wines tasted that day and their reviews the link is here:
http://www.snooth.com/my-wines/Philip/larkmead/1/0/0/125/000/0/10/date+desc

Second stop was Duckhorn. Located about 10 minutes south of Larkmead, the Duckhorn winery, like Larkmead, is a beautiful wooden estate house style building. Duckhorn is of course much bigger. Thank you to Bill Nancarrow (proper Cornish name by the way!) the winemaker for setting us up with Abi Thompson who led an excellent cheese and wine pairing tasting.

Duckhorn Winery pic:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7975993@N03/2480244825/

We toured both the Larkmead and Duckhorn vineyards extensively - barrel and tank rooms are always great to see, and its really interesting to taste the stuff thats still in tank. I'd not been to a vineyard in spring so seeing the grape buds was probably the best part for me.

Tiny grape buds pic:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7975993@N03/2481057458/

To see all my Duckhorn wines visit this link:
http://www.snooth.com/my-wines/Philip/duckhorn/1/0/0/125/000/0/10/date+desc

We didnt have appointments for either Frogs Leap or Round Pond, so thank you to the staff for hosting us at such short notice. Round Pond, in particular, has a beautiful airy loft style building with giant wooden beams and 25 feet ceilings. They have 400 acres of vineyards, but most of their grapes are sold to other wineries. They began making wines themselves in 2002 and have just three vintages released. I presume they keep the best fruit for themselves.

Our final stop of the day was Loxton, which is where HondaJohn works. We took some ultra windy road across the mountains to Sonoma. Which is Dan or John or someone could name the road I'd be grateful as its well worth taking.

Loxton is a much smaller, family, winery. The tasting room IS the barrel room. Founded by Chris Loxton, an Australian transplant with generations of winemakers in his blood, it was nice for me to be able to share some British style jokes with someone for a change.

Honda gave us a good tour, and it was nice to see how Sonoma has a different style to the ultra-chic of Napa. Sonoma's much more down to earth, the wines are more affordable and there really are few crowds outside of Healdsburg.

Loxton wines here:
http://www.snooth.com/my-wines/Philip/loxton/1/0/0/125/000/0/10/date+desc

We finished this all off with dinner with John Andrews (aka HondaJohn) and Patrick Llerena of Iridesse wines.

Thanks again to everyone who made our day possible. We staggered back to our hotel hovel late that night and we were up at 3am to catch an early morning flight. I'm pretty sure I could still taste the cabernet when I rolled off the plane the next afternoon.