July 20th.

Cathy and I went for the breakfast buffet in the lobby area of the Inn. Awesome spread! Cereals, bagels, pastries, eggs, fruit, meats, cheeses, fresh vegetables, champagne, juices, milk, coffee, tea. And on and on and........ We went ahead and had a heavy breakfast so we could mostly skip lunch to save a little room for the exciting dinner ahead this coming evening.
So, we set out around 9:30 in the morning to take a drive north to check out some wineries, the CIA, some stores (including Dean and Deluca), and just to sight see and drive around for a bit.


The CIA is in the former site of The Christian Brother's Winery. The CIA got the building for a song as it was a "fixer upper". There is still quite a bit of the history of the winery in the building including some old barrels, collections of corkscrews, information about the school and the winery. Among other things. They have a pretty neat gift shop/store there too. They also have cooking demonstrations although none were scheduled while we were there.




It's quite a beautiful building inside and out. There were tons of swallow's nests under the eaves and in the window sills. Signs were posted all over saying how sorry they were about the swallow's messes, but to be sure not to disturb the birds or the nests.
Yeah, that's me in the red shirt in the foreground.







We drove along some roads checking out some of the wineries and the shops along the way. We stopped in St. Helena and visited the St. Helena Olive Oil Co. store where we picked up a couple of goodies. And we also tasted several olive oils and balsamic vinegars. That was fun!

We went into Dean and Deluca as recommended and that was a fun place to browse around. For you Chuao chocolate fans, they even have the Chuao hot chocolate mixes there. That was pretty neat to see. And there were lots of different samples of things to try while browsing.


Well, we ended up at V. Sattui Winery. They don't sell outside of the winery. So you must buy the wines there at the winery. Well you can order them through their website. We sampled some wines and ended up buying the off dry Reisling and a brilliant red colored Gamay Rouge. Both sweet "ish" wines. Cathy and I liked them both.





We found our way back to the Inn around 1pm and realised we were a bit hungry, so we went over to the Bouchon Bakery and picked up a grilled vegetable sandwich. We shared that along with a couple of peaches we had snagged from breakfast.

The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, showering, shaving, etc, etc to get ready for dinner at 5:45.