What an incredible gift from our friends at Cosentino! Thank you so much!

If you are in Napa, make sure to check them out.

We haven't seen service like this since New York. And yes, there are six wine glasses in front of us!

Last year Kate and I went down to San Luis Obispo to visit my dad, and we made a side trip to do some wine tasting in Paso Robles.

We were heading to a winery that someone had recommended to us (I can't remember which one) but we got lost. Eventually we decided to stop at the next winery we saw. Randomly we found ourselves at Villicana Winery, and we LOVED it. We walked out with a case.

Right now they are having an amazing deal on their 2007 Estate Winemaker's Cuvee. This bottle is normally $24 but right now it's $144 for a case. That's only $12 each!

This is about as good a wine as you're going to get at that price. So we just bought a bunch:

Total production on this wine was only 300 cases. Between what Kate and I bought, and the case I bought for the office, we purchased more than 1% of the entire run.

I highly recommend Villicana. Visit the winery down in Paso, or buy their wine here.

Kate and I joined the Backtype.com guys up to Napa today to visit Continuum Winery, which was started by Tim Mondavi, Robert Mondavi's son.

It was incredible. We drank amazing wine, ate great food, and played with cute puppies.

But best of all, we were taken care of by the Mondavi family. Tim was incredible, nicest guy in the world. He went out of his way to get Kate a glass of wine when he saw her empty handed. Kate and I cracked up when he violently threw his white wine into the grass, calling it undrinkable :).

Carissa, Tim's daughter, gave us a great tour of the property, which included fabulous views of the entire valley. Continuum is on quite a bit north east of where Kate and I usually taste. We were up on Pritchard Hill, where the land is steep. This means lower yields, but incredible wine.

Thanks to Backtype, the Mondavi family, and all our gracious hosts. It's not often you get taken care of so well, and especially by legends in the wine business.

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Kate and I had a delicious Valentine's Day dinner at Oola right around the corner from us here in SOMA. We got the private, curtained off table upstairs and had an amazing feast. I highly recommend this restaurant.

It was a pretty busy week of eating out. We also went to:

Just For You - Amazing brunch
Fringale - Great french food
Andalu - Creative tapas. Similar to The Stanton Social in New York. Love this place.

Last Friday Kate, Sean and I went to Bourbon and Branch (well, The Library) for the birthday party of a friend of a friend of a... well, someone we don't know. We had some delicious cocktails, and didn't even find the friend who was my connection. We were getting hungry so Sean had the brilliant idea to try to eat at Gary Danko. On a Friday night with no reservation? No way. He called, we got a spot, and within 2 minutes we were in a cab heading up to Fisherman's Wharf.
 
We had an incredible 2 hour+ four course meal with wine, cheese, and port. This was my second time at Gary Danko and I'll say that it is *by far* the best restaurant i've been to in San Francisco. Not only is the food incredible, it has the best service. They are the nicest, *least snobby* staff you will ever find. The sommelier had no problem serving us the cheapest wine on the menu. Our main server, who I think was the manager, really took care of us. He chatted us up the whole night, cracking jokes, and really made the night a ton of fun.
 
Sorry for the bad pictures...I didn't have my big camera with me.

Look at the size of that cheese plate! It was for ONE PERSON. He hooked Kate up with a bunch of cheese because he knew Sean and I were going to steal some from her :). We were also given mini pumpkin cake cheesecakes to take home with us. Yum,

Kate and I went to Napa a couple weeks ago to celebrate our anniversary. It happened to be the first weekend with great weather since we've moved here, so it worked out quite perfectly. Despite the good weather, Napa was deserted (common right after the holidays and in a slumping economy) so we were treated like royalty everywhere we went.
 
We stayed at the brand new Westin Verasa, a room I got for free using my SPG points (SPG Amex is the best credit card to have). Upon arriving we were upgraded to a deluxe room with a balcony, view, and kitchenette. The hotel has a heated pool, spa, and every amenity you can imagine. I highly recommend it.
 
With recommendations from our concierge in hand, we set off to taste some wine. The best way to know where to go is to listen to the locals: the concierge, and then the people at the wineries themselves. If you drop a few names, you don't have to pay tasting fees!
 
We started out at Cosentino, and then lunch at Mustard's.

We didn't really like the wine at Cakebread, but we did get a near private tour of the winery.

Peju was one of our favorites. Great wine, and a beautiful winery/tasting area.

 

One last stop for the day: Black Stallion. We enjoyed this winery the last time we were in Napa so we had to go back.

That night we had an incredible dinner at Bouchon.

Day 2: Hagafen, Darioush (for the architecture, we heard the wine is bad), and Steltzner.

Baldacci came highly recommended, and they even had a super cool dog.

Last stop was the tiny (and super friendly) vineyard of Goosecross. We bought some delicious port there.

This is what living in New York City is all about. Last Thursday Kate and I had a wonderful dinner at The Little Owl, and drinks at Employees Only, both in the West Village.

We had to wait longer than expected for a table at The Little Owl, so the manager let us sit on this elevated seating area and gave us free wine (normally $16 per glass!) Yum. For appetizer we got the sliders and a cheese plate. So damn good. These are the best sliders in the whole world. Made of beef, pork, veal and pecorino. So soft and tender. Amazing.

For our main courses, Kate got halibut and I got the pork chop. I always get the pork chop. It's crazy good. And then dessert, of course. Chocolate cake. Hmmmm.

I'm now convinced that Employees Only has the best drinks in the city. Better than Milk & Honey, better than Death and Company, better than Angel's Share. The drinks at EO are very well mixed, large, and delicious. I got the "billionaire cocktail" which is a variation on a Manhattan. Wonderful. But at $15 per drink, they are also the most expensive.

Two other stops on our West Village adventure. First is the Path station on Christopher street where I left Kate after our first date (she lived in Hoboken at the time). It is the sight of our first kiss.

Second is the Caliente Cab we stopped at on our first date. What a crappy place, we didn't even stay for a drink.

Catching up on posting some old photos. Kate and I went to Napa a couple months ago for Meena's wedding. We did a lot of wine tasting of course. Highly recommend Black Stallion and Regusci. We had an amazing dinner at Bouchon. I had lamb, Kate had a great piece of salmon, and we had an incredible chocolate mousse. Yum!

Having fun.

We love cheese!