A few days in San Francisco; Wine tour and new hotel

Monday

Got up early, returned the Alamo rental car, and picked up Starbucks breakfast on my way back to the hotel. It was time to leave the Sir Francis Drake hotel and their nicely (weirdly?) dressed guards... Checked out and put the luggage in their baggage room.

So, this was the wine tour day. Me and Jenny had booked a full day tour in Napa and Sonoma with City Sightseeing San Francisco for 65 USD per person. The "small groups" caught our eyes - would be more personal than going with a big bus.

A really nice and talkative retired AT&T guy acting wine tour driver and wine connoisseur picked us up at the hotel. We were the last ones on the pickup tour in the city. Left the city going north - driver plus six persons in a spacey SUV. On our way to Sonoma we were told stories about the city and its surroundings - the bridge, Sausalito village, San Quentin state prison with California's death row.

First stop was Jacuzzi Family Vineyards, Sonoma.

Jacuzzi had some really great wines, complimentary tasting of course... The Moscato Bianco, Alexander Valley, 2007, was just superb. Red ones worth mentioning is Primitivo, Lake County, 2006, and Barbera, North Coast, 2006 with a taste of tobacco and cherry.

It's a "strong" wine...

Happy taster at Jacuzzi.

The Benziger Family Winery was another excellent stop. Benziger has an ecological and biodynamic approach to wine making - more about that here.

A selection of Benziger wines.

The Benziger cave and its fortune.

Mr USA himself. Supervised our Benziger tour and the grand final complimentary tasting.

Where to next?! Open a larger version of the picture to see map details.

Jenny tasting at Half Moon Valley.

We also stopped at the Artesa Winery in Napa Valley and the Cline Vineyard.

A great full-day tour! Definitely worth going on!

Once back in San Francisco we dragged our luggage from Sir Francis Drake to Hotel Palomar and got a suite for the rest of our stay.