25 Years and Counting: Part 1

My wife and I were married 25 years ago, and this vacation was our present to ourselves. We flew from Kentucky to Chicago, where we boarded the legendary California Zephyr for the long, cell-phone free journey to San Francisco and points north, where we would taste a nearly infinite amount of wine.

 

The train was interesting, both wonderful and horrible at the same time. It was wonderful because of its deliberate pace and the passing countryside. You see things you don't see driving, because the train takes a different route through the mountains and a single track doesn't create the kind of disruption a four-lane highway and supporting infrastructure create. Plus -- and this is important -- you can drink while you're traveling. If you like, you can drink a lot, but we only drank a little, at a constant pace to keep the buzz just right.

The train ride was horrible, too, because Amtrak's service is good, but could be so much better. I'm torn between thinking Amtrak needs more money and thinking it needs to be killed completely. As transportation, long-distance trains aren't viable; as vacations in themselves, they seem to have almost unlimited potential. Imagine Carnival Cruise Lines with trains looping around the west, from National Park to luxury resort to historic mining town. Imagine stopovers giving time to explore America's far-flung cities and remote wilderness. Imagine a nightclub car and a spa car and suite sthat aren't cramped.

As it works now, Amtrak's long-distance service is a kingdom of old people nostalgic for railroads past. Sitting in the lounge in Chicago, we listened to hilarious old guys recount their various journeys, character actors every one of them.

First Old Guy: The food is good.
Second Old Guy: Stay away from the fish.
First Old Guy: I had the fish on the Empire Builder and it was still frozen.
Second Old Guy: Gave me the farts like crazy. You don't want the farts on a train.

I say: Reason enough to pay for a private cabin.

We used the time on the train to unwind, reading and drinking wine and looking out the window. By the time we got to Nevada, we were ready to be off the train, and by the time we got to the route terminus at Emeryville (just below the far end of the Oakland-Bay Bridge) we were tapping our feet and counting the minutes until we could get somewhere that wasn't bouncing. I was ready to kill for a comfortable chair. Still, after two-and-a-half days locked in a tiny railroad sleeper, we were still talking to each other, and that's something.

The next portion of the trip was Sonoma County. We drove across the Golden Gate and made our first winery stop at Cline in Carneros. In real life we drink a lot of Cline wine; it's a great value, and they do some interesting things with the widely ignored mourvedre grape that is so strong in the southern Rhone and along the Mediterranean Coast of Spain. As a winery to visit it's fine, a tourist destination that benefits from it's proximity to San Francisco. It was Sunday and there were lots of small groups that looked like day trippers from the city.

Just up the road was Gloria Ferrer, which makes sparkling wines. Their tour is good, if somewhat perfunctory, and if you're not familiar with methode champenoise winemaking it's a good general backgrounder. Also, if you're looking for a place to hit on attractive middle-aged women, you could do a lot worse than working the patio outside the tasting room. It's a lovely patio, set high above the vineyards and looking down toward San Pablo Bay, and it seems that guzzling sparkling wine in the Sunday afternoon sun appeals to the kind of women that aren't often seen in, for example, Kentucky shopping malls: tall, willowy, well-dressed and not given to recreational spitting.

We drove up into the city of Sonoma from there, and stopped at the historic Buena Vista Winery. Buena Vista is a winery of mostly historical interest, having been build by the visionary and (at least partial) con man Count Agoston Haraszthy. Haraszthy is largely responsible for the establishment of the California wine industry, having convinced the state legislature in the mid 1800s that it should send him to Europe to learn about wine and bring back cuttings of first-line grapes to distribute to area farmers. The legislature bought into Haraszthy's notion and sent him off. Enjoying his government-sponsored tour perhaps just a bit much, Haraszthy overspent his unlimited expense account and brought back 100,000 cuttings of more than 300 types of grapes, which he then offered to sell to the State of California. The state told Haraszthy to pound sand, and he took off soon after for greener pastures in Nicaragua. He got in the rum business there and was, eventually, eaten by alligators.

Still, clones of his European clones still form the backbone of many California vineyards, and Haraszthy is fondly remembered despite the fact that he was basically ridden out of the country on a rail. Needless to say, they don't talk about that a lot at the winery.

To be honest, we weren't really expecting much of Buena Vista, and it delivered as promised. Most of the industrial-scale operations are located elsewhere, and the historic winery takes about three minutes to absorb in its entirety. The tasting room was cool and nice, and the hosts were well drilled at moving us through the wines and getting to the sales pitch. The wines were good, not great, and we were back in the car in less than a half hour.

On our way into Sonoma, where our hotel awaited, we noticed that we were ahead of schedule. We needed to hit another winery before we could check in.

As luck would have it, there were other wineries nearby.

(To be continued...)

Comments

[Sylvia Kirkwood]

Great post! I have a love/hate relationship with trains, but these days they're better than planes. My daughter lived in Sonoma and I've been there several times and love it. A hot air balloon ride over that area is breathtaking and you can look an eagle in the eye. Glad you had a good trip, look forward to hearing more.

[Pursuit]

Terrific recap. We trained to Denver once when the kids were younger; great way to travel, although Amtrak does seem to do everything they can to fail on capitalizing on a unique monopoly. Our purser was a nice guy whose name was "Sprite". Every time he came into the car, I'd look at the kids with Horror, and say, "If Sprite is here.....whose driving the train?!" They'd freak out and then we'd all laugh. Turns out that little sentence is family legend.

[Squidley]

Thank you for sharing your trip with us! I'm really enjoying it, if only vicariously.