"I was swimming in the pool looking up at the redwoods," reports my father when he calls to tell me how his birthday trip is going. My mother had sent him on a golf weekend earlier in the summer (after thirty years in the midwest my dad finally turned into that guy), but the birthday ends in a zero so he's stringing it out a bit. He'd wanted to go on a wine tasting tour ever since I moved to Northern California, but Mom and I always said we'd prefer watching wallpaper peel. So I offered to give him one for his birthday, and Mom reluctantly agreed to go along since he'd already had one major event without her and at least it didn't involve golf.
I suggested Frog's Leap Winery, on the sound principle that I knew nothing about wine so an organic, sustainable place couldn't be too bad. They found the Applewood Inn in the Russian River valley to stay in. Thus, while I waited tensely in the blazing sun to be in the front row at the free Third Eye Blind concert in San Jose, only to find that the thousands of people who arrived hours later spent the whole show crushing me into the barricade so that my ribcage broke out in hives, my parents were sipping white wine and hearing about environmentally friendly vine production, and eating what both of them kept describing as the "best" of whatever it is they'd had, ever ("the best lamb chop" "the best pancake"). Not that I begrudge them, since they claim to like my company enough to take me along most places, including a good portion of their thirtieth anniversary trip. But Stephen Jenkins? Kind of a preening jerk. Go to a show at which you can sit down.
Here are some photos taken by my father at the two locations.
The kitchen and cellars at Frog's Leap:
The gardens and the aforementioned pool at Applewood Inn: