Fast food and wine? Why not...

There have been a number of articles, blogs and tweets posted lately about pairing wine with your favorite fast food. Let’s face it, as bad as it is for you, there are times when fast food tastes just so darn good! Even the most revered chefs have been known to satisfy their taste buds through the drive-thru. Most notably, Thomas Keller, of Napa Valley’s French Laundry, is a big fan of In-N-Out burger. 

I don’t think anyone questions the negative nutritional value of fast food. But when you do indulge, why not enjoy it with a glass of wine? The debate should not be about what types of foods you are allowed to enjoy with wine. The focus should be on what type of wine tastes best with what you eat.    

In the article, McWine Pairing Tips by Joshua Wesson, he writes, “The notion of pairing fast food with wine has never received much respect anywhere.This is a shame, because whether you're eating pizza in Naples or fried chicken in Nashville, wine can be served with fast food every bit as easily and deliciously as any other kind of cuisine. Perhaps even more easily.”

Gregory Dal Piaz, Editor-in-Chief of Snooth.com, recently published an article, McDonald’s Wine Pairings. The article is a fun read, but even more entertaining are the comments to the notion of pairing wine with McDs. There are a number of reasons to not eat a Big Mac (and other fast food treats), but it seems some readers have missed the point of his story. Piaz calls this out in his own comment post:  “I think intoleranc­e and disdain has been one of the defining elements of the wine culture and I want to help change that.” 

While we have not tried wine with McDonalds, we have uncorked a bottle with other fast foods, including Keller’s favorite, In-N-Out…and it was awesome! (Two Favorites). We’ve also been known to enjoy a nice Sangiovese with our favorite pizza, Round Table’s King Arthur Supreme ~ with no bell peppers. (A Great Sangiovese for pizza and game night and Cosentino Sangiovese). 

There’s nothing that says wine must only be enjoyed with a fancy meal, juicy steak or fine cheese. With so many wines available at all level of price points, there is literally something out there for anyone, and any meal.Next time you are in line to collect your dinner from the window or at home waiting for the delivery guy to ring your doorbell, consider these fast food pairings recommended in “What To Drink with What You Eat”:

KFC Fried Chicken:  Gewurztraminer, Pinot Noir, sherry (dry Spanish)

Domino’s Pizza:  Barbera, Malbec (Argentinian), Merlot, Sangiovese (especially with pepperoni)

Taco Bell Gorditas:  rose, Sauvignon Blanc (esp. New Zealand), sparkling wine

White Castle Hamburger: Reisling (off-dry), rose

McDonald’s Big Mac: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet/Shiraz blend, Chenin Blanc

Regardless of your meal choice, fancy or fast, be adventurous and enjoy it with wine! 

How to plan your first trip to Napa Valley

A trip to Napa Valley is a must-do for any wine enthusiast, but navigating through all the options can be a daunting task for a first-time visitor. Fortunately, we've collected a list of tips and suggestions that can make trip planning easy and enjoyable. Here is our guide to making the most of your first visit to Napa Valley. 

Where to stay
We prefer to stay in the town of Napa, which is located at the Southern end of Napa Valley. Napa offers plenty of local flavor without being too touristy. There are also a number of terrific restaurants within walking distance of downtown Napa, an important consideration if you plan to enjoy a bottle of wine at dinner after a day of wine tasting.

Our pick is the Napa River Inn. The rooms are very well appointed and many have a balcony, a fireplace, or both. Your stay includes coupons for free wine tasting at Silos Jazz Club, which is a great place to try some local wine and unwind with live music. Your room also includes breakfast at Sweetie Pies, a small bakery that is popular with local residents in the morning. Locals are a great source of insider information!

Don't miss: a trip to the Napa Valley Welcome Center, located across the street from the Napa River Inn. You can pick up coupons for free tastings and get  a copy of the Preiser Key to Napa Valley. The Preiser Key is an essential guide to keep in your car because it has touring maps and information on most wineries.

Where to eat
You can spend a small fortune at the famous French Laundry, but we prefer to go a bit more casual.

A great move for lunch is to enjoy a picnic with scenic views of Napa Valley. We always go to the Oakville Grocery because they offer amazing sandwiches and have picnic tables in a garden area behind their store. You can also go back in to stock up on snacks for your hotel room such as bread and cheese.

Mustards Grill in Napa is one of our favorite places for dinner. Celebrity chef Cindy Pawlcyn has created a relaxing, casual restaurant that offers amazing food. Be sure to make reservations - they are popular!

Mustards Grill is a short drive from the Napa River Inn, but here are a few great picks that are walking distance from the hotel:

Bounty Hunter Wine Bar & Smokin BBQ. Simply delicious barbecue. This place can get crowded and you may end up sharing a table with another party, so don't be shy!

Ristorante Allegria. Terrific Italian food and great atmosphere in an old bank building.

Coles Chop House. This is the best steak house in Napa Valley and a perfect place to drink some of your newly acquired wine.

Where to taste
The shear number of wineries in Napa Valley can be overwhelming, so here are a few simple suggestions. You may also want to read our Top Ten Wine Tasting Tips before selecting your wineries.

1. Pick a few wineries based on wines you know and like.
2. Ask friends and family for some suggestions.
3. Leave room in your itinerary for a few extra wineries. You may get a hot tip from a local or drive by a winery that looks too good to pass up.

Tours offer a more relaxing, personalized experience so be sure to schedule at least one tour while you are there. Our pick for a first time visitor is Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga. They have several tour options available, but all of them include a unique aerial tram ride to their hill top tasting room. The tasting room offers sweeping views of Napa Valley where you can relax and enjoy the wine. The tour also gives you a nice overview of the winemaking process. 

Be sure to avoid: any winery with a tour bus parked in front since the tasting room will likely be swarming with people. You should also stay off of Highway 29 on weekends - stick to the much quieter Silverado Trail instead.  

For other insights to Napa Valley, check out these prior posts: 

2011 California Wine Adventure

Day 1: Three Perfect Days in Napa and Sonoma Valley

Day 2: Three Perfect Days in Napa and Sonoma Valley

Day 3: Three perfect days in Napa and Sonoma Valley

2010 Wine Country Scavenger Hunt

First impression: Paso Robles Wine Country

Our recent wine trip brought us to several California wine regions for the first time, including Paso Robles. We left Paso Robles with two distinct thoughts.

First, why did it take us so long to visit this awesome wine region? Second, we're going to be in trouble because we want to come back soon. Real soon.

Here are some of the highlights from our three day visit:

Wineries

Wild Horse Winery was our first stop in Paso Robles. They have a wide range of wines but are best known for their Pinot Noir. Their Wild Horse Pinot Noir is distributed outside the winery and is a very good, fruit forward California Pinot. They also make several other outstanding Pinot Noirs under their limited production Unbridled label and their Cheval Sauvage reserve program. Wild Horse is a must stop if you like Pinot Noir, though we tasted some other terrific varietals too. For example, we aren't big Merlot fans but thought their Merlot would be a perfect compliment to a nice steak dinner. 

Barrel tasting at Cypher WineryCypher Winery is worth a visit for their "Barrel Comparison" wine tasting. You drink the same wine directly from two different barrels to experience how barrels can influence the flavor and character of the wine. We tried Malbec, Petite Verdot, Petite Sirah, and Tempranillo. The Petite Sirah was particularly interesting. The wine from one barrel tasted a bit too fruity while the wine from the other barrel was too tannic. However, when a splash from each barrel was blended in our glasses the wine suddenly had terrific balance and character.

It was a fun way to imagine how a winemaker tries to achieve the perfect flavor and balance.

Hank the Herman Story wine dogHerman Story might be our new favorite winery. Winemaker Russell From makes awesome stuff with deep, bold flavors that somehow escape all the messy blasts of alcohol and tannin that often accompany big flavors in wine. He is also very focused with only four wines making up his list of current releases: a Viognier/Roussanne blend, a Granache, and two Syrahs. The wine room is the front portion of a small warehouse in downtown Paso Robles, but the complete lack of pretentiousness is part of the charm. Just be careful - time can move pretty fast when you are chatting with a winemaker who is happy to keep pouring throughout the conversation! 

Other honorable mentions from our visit to Paso Robles include Niner Wine Estate, Anglim Winery, and Tobin James. Better make Tobin James your last visit of the day. Their wine is decent, but they make a lot of stuff and they'll keep pouring as long as you keep drinking. It can get a bit wild out there late in the afternoon!

Dining

Farmstand 46Paso Robles didn't strike us as a haven for foodies, but there were a couple of cool places worth mentioning. We had lunch one day at Farmstand 46 which is in the same complex as Cypher. They are best described as an upscale deli that features a lot of locally sourced food. 

We also had a wonderful dinner at the Enoteca Restaurant and Bar at La Bellasera Hotel and Suites, a hotel restaurant that actually brings in the locals. Tip: Enoteca waives their corkage fee if you bring in a bottle of local wine, so we enjoyed a bottle of Zinfandel that we purchased from Kenneth Volk Vineyards.

Downtown Paso Robles has a cluster of small cafes around their main square. While they don't qualify as gourmet, a small cafe can be the perfect place for lunch or dinner after a long day of wine tasting!

Accomodations

We stayed at La Bellasera Hotel and Suites. All of their rooms are large and very comfortable. The hotel was also located in the center of the Paso Robles Wine Country, so it was easy to get to all of the wineries from there. The only drawback was there weren't many restaurants within walking distance, except for their very nice Enoteca which is on the property. If you don't mind driving to dinner, this hotel is a perfect home base for a visit to Paso Robles.

First impression: Santa Barbara Wine Country

We recently made our first trip to the Santa Barbara Wine Country. If our first impression was accurate, I'm sure we'll be making many more visits.

Our itinerary only gave us half a day for wine tasting since we were just spending one night en route to Paso Robles. We decided to focus our attention on the Santa Ynez Valley, which includes the cities of Buellton, Solvang, and Los Olivos. This area is perhaps best known for being featured in the movie Sideways.

Speaking of Sideways, our first stop was Alma Rosa Winery and Vineyards in Buellton. Their wine room was the first one that the characters Miles and Jack visited in the movie. In real life, we picked it based on a random Twitter recommendation (thanks, @brandyea!) and because their wines sounded good. They primarily focused on Pinots - Gris, Blanc, and Noir and most were to our liking.

Next stop was Bridlewood Estate Winery in Los Olivos. A friend of Sally's recommended this one and it didn't disappoint. Their grounds are beautiful with sweeping vistas of the Santa Ynez Valley and their spacious wine room is quite nice without being over the top. They source their grapes from vineyards throughout Central California, so they produce a wide range of delicious varietals. Our favorite was the 2007 "Six Gun" Syrah which was very smokey and would be perfect with Texas BBQ.

Sally outside Bridlewood Estate Winery

Our last stop was the Andrew Murray Vineyards tasting room in downtown Los Olivos. We also discovered them via Twitter (thanks, @gotrhones!). Stephanie, our host, took great care of us and introduced us to some terrific wine. They specialize in Rhone varietals like Syrah but also have some nice limited production wines like their "First Kiss" Port style wine.

Where there's wine, there's often olive oil. We stopped by Olive Hill Farm next door to Andew Murrary for a tasting. Wow! Their infused olive oils and balsamics were terrific. It was also a nice change of pace after tasting wine.

Next, we headed over to our motel, the Hadsten House in Solvang. This is a great example of how Solvang is changing for the good. The Hadsten House is a motel, but has been renovated to be more luxurious like a nice wine country hotel. The room also included a free breakfast buffet and complimentary wine tasting at many area wineries.

Dinner was at a farm to table restaurant in Solvang called Root 246. We were seated in a lounge-style area that featured enormous overstuffed chairs and created a feeling of privacy and coziness. And, the food was absolutely fantastic! Sally had braised short ribs while Jeff had "shake and bake" chicken. Yum!

Jeff enjoying a big chair at Root 246

The next morning, we left our hotel and drove off to our next wine adventure in Paso Robles. Our time in the Santa Barbara Wine Country was short, but we are already thinking about our next visit. 

2011 California Wine Adventure

One of our favorite adventures every year is our road trip north to wine country. Over the years, our experiences while visiting Napa and Sonoma have really contributed to our increased appreciation for wine from this area. We have always talked about expanding our trip to explore other California wine regions, and just haven’t…until this year. This year’s road trip was a great mix of old favorites and new discoveries ~ 12 days, 6 wine regions, 30 wineries, historical sites, and beautiful coastal views ~ one incredible adventure!

 We frequently have themes associated with our wine trips, either chosen beforehand or they naturally emerge along the way. This trip was no exception. Making stops in Solvang, Paso Robles, Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa, and Lodi, we started seeing a theme about the barrel. In speaking with winemakers and tasting directly from barrels, we learned just how much impact the toasting level, region of origin, and winemaker’s use of the barrel has on the grape. While in Mendocino we were also reminded the impact environmental conditions can have as well. In 2008, a large wild fire ripped across Mendocino County.  Unfortunately, the grapes absorbed smoke generated from the fire, which still lingers on the nose of many wines we tasted. 

 A few years ago, we started taking notes while tasting wines. It’s hard to recall exactly, but I think this habit started more as a way to signal to each other which wines were potential buys, and which ones, well, let’s just say weren’t to our liking. With the number of wineries on the agenda for this trip, it was a necessity.  What we didn’t expect was just how rewarding taking notes can be. At several of our stops, taking notes led to ‘off the list’ pours, and discoveries of some terrific wines!  

With so many wineries, it was important to take breaks and let the palate recover. We stopped for a tour of Hearst Castle, exploring the grounds and getting an inside look at guest rooms – including the personal bedroom of William Randolph Hearst. The mansion is really a museum for his incredible collections of art and imported furnishings.

 We spent several days at one of our favorite spots, Albion.  We relaxed by taking in the views from our porch at Albion River Inn, walking along the beach in Elk, and taking a ride through the redwoods on the Skunk Train in Fort Bragg.

An incredibly enjoyable adventure!