10/19/14 - ...And More Wine!

We started off the day by reorganizing and the packing of the car. We have two cases of wine and we think we may purchase more today.  As we headed north we watched for interesting things to stop and see. We spotted some outside structures from the road and took the next exit to take a look. It turns out the town had put them up to attract tourists  and it worked on us, so maybe it works on others, too.  We drove through town looking right and left form more.  At the end (the real beginning) of town we picked up a brochure that explained everything.

Our first winery of the day was Fritz, an underground winery that has an underground tasting room.  The whole winery is built into the hill with the crushing of grapes done on the top.  Everything else goes down after that; all gravity feed.  The wines we tasted were good and of course, some we liked better then others.  They had a late harvest zin that went very well with chocolate! We made our purchases and continued on our trek.

The next stop on the way was a Starbucks for ice tea to go and to use there rest room.  We found the Starbucks while looking for the largest red wood service station.  It was made out of one tree section.  The restrooms were in a smaller section. Luckily, we found the Starbucks and it was open.  The station is a museum and it was closed. 

Our next winery was Parducci; a small winery that I had visited while still in college.  Since then hey have upgraded there tasting room  (It was, after all, a long time ago!) and there wines are still good.  The young woman behind the counter ask if we had been here before, and I got to use my geezer response, "Long before you were born, Honey."  She replied that that was not that long ago in the realm of wine, and that she had been to a tasting in which 2 of the 4 wines tasted were older then she was. We tasted, purchased wine along with some crackers and salami to go with the cheese that Joe had purchased the day before.  Our clocks told us we had managed to go only 60 miles in 4 hours.  It was time to pick up the pace.  The roads we took into the redwoods were older and were built for older cars that drove at shower speeds.  The trees had not gotten smaller and the road was not straight at all.  We continued on to Ferndale, CA, the most western city in the continental US. This small town was were they filmed The Majestic, a movie about saving a movie theatre.  The downtown area is well kept up and is very attractive.  Tomorrow, we'll be back in Oregon territory.