Day One: I’m literally on a plane right now heading to Napa Valley/Sonoma. I have never been more excited visit a place. I will soon be attending a class at the Culinary Institute of America Greystone in the heart of Napa Valley. It deals with food and wine pairing for chefs.

I just received the in flight snack consisting of things I have not seen since grade school. Cheese Whiz and cracker sticks with a nice “plane ride red wine” can’t be beat (at 48,000 feet, anyway.) Yuck! I know quite a bit about wine, but I need to understand (more) how food and wine “play with each other.” That’s my goal for this class. This class will help my resume along with the wine sales where I work quite a bit, (hopefully.) I’m excited to visit wineries and to see San Francisco. My computer battery is dying, I shall write more at my hotel.

After getting off the plane, grabbing my bags and renting a car, I was on my way to Napa. I don’t think you could beat 65 degree weather in February. It was quite interesting driving on Interstate 80. If I had to drive all the way back to Illinois from here, I couldn’t get lost. Seeing mountains on the horizon is just amazing to me. My jaw was wide open nearly half the trip. The countryside was unbelievably gorgeous.

The first winery I went to was the Robert Mondavi winery. The people there were incredibly nice and ended up giving me a free bottle of wine because they are part owners of the CIA Greystone. Great start. The hills/mountains were hundreds of feet high. The trees were beautiful. I crashed after arriving at the hotel.

Day Two: I awoke at 7am and could not fall back asleep. Part of it was being excited for class and part of not being tired. It was rainy, but still 50 degrees. After some breakfast I went to a winery that was highly recommended to me. I arrived right when they opened and was immediately poured some wine. The Martinelli Winery has all estate grown grapes and everything I tried was really good. After that, I was off to class.

The Greystone building is quite old. It was a wine making cooperative used by all of the local grape growers. The class was great and I’m making a lot of sense of food and wine pairing already. There are only nine other people in my class. It’s great and they are from all over the country. (There was even one from England, too.) I was the youngest one there by far.

We tasted 8 wines. 2 chardonnay’s, 2 sauvignon blanc’s, 2 pinot noir’s and 2 cabernet’s. Each of the wines were opposite ends of the spectrum from each other. I.E. One of the chardonnay’s was lighter Chablis and had notes of green apple and mineral. It had mouthwatering acidity. The other chard had an oak tree in the bottle. It smelled like rootbeer candy and tasted buttery and more well rounded, (but still huge!) I learned you have to know your wine for great food and wine pairings.

We had dinner in the main kitchen. There were about 10 islands that contained everything needed for cooking. There was a wok station in each one! Each island is worth about two million bucks. We were served all kinds of food buffet style. There was prime rib, duck confit, braised beef short ribs and all kinds of upscale side dishes. It was the first of many unbelievable meals.

Day Three: I headed to Napa in the morning. Beautiful, sunny day. I went to Darioush, which was recommended by my wine class teacher from JJC. The grounds and the building itself were gorgeous. So were the wines. There are a few perks being in the hospitality business in this area. I got to try a dessert wine that they only made 20 cases of and are only sold to their VIP customers. I got to purchase it. It was one of the best dessert wines I’ve had.

After that, I went to the Hess winery. They poured their nicer wines and they were quite good. They had the chewiest wine I’d ever had. (After you swallow the wine, the tannins are so persistent that you have to chew them off of your palate.)

At school we paired white wines with dishes that the chef came up with in his past. There were two lamb dishes. I was extremely pessimistic about lamb tasting good with a chard or a sauvignon blanc. One dish was a seared lamb loin with Calvados herb cream. With the oaky chardonnay. It was one of the best food and wine parings I’ve had. The chef wanted to get the point across that eating red meat does not automatically call for a red. It was a good learning experience.

Day Four: Today was an amazing day. I went to one of the most respected wineries in the valley. Joseph Phelps. The Insignia was good! I left with their Syrah. I have had some great luck. I went to Plumpjack winery right after that and got a really nice cabernet. After that, I headed to Yountville to meet a classmate for lunch. He was in a great wine shop. The manager was pouring a Napa Valley merlot that only made 50 cases of that varietal per year. It was very nice. My classmate and I headed to Bouchon; a highly regarded restaurant in the area. The food was quite good. I had blood sausage with roasted apples. In class, we paired pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon with about 12 dishes. My group did a tea-smoked quail, beef stew and a Spanish style lamb dish. I love cooking with and trying ingredients new to me. Quail is quite tasty. I enjoyed the lamb we prepared as well. We tried many seafood dishes that paired nicely with the red wines as well.

Day Five: I went to the Sinskey winery that was recommended to me by the chef. He said they were doing wonderful no nonsense wines. They poured a great pinot noir and an amazing late harvest zinfandel. I met up with a couple classmates at a restaurant called Mustard’s Grill in St. Helena. They served a fried calamari with a curried green salad. So, so good. I had an Ahi tuna sandwich. I was impressed. Class today, dealt with older wines. We tried a 10-year-old Napa Valley chardonnay, a 25-year-old Napa cabernet and a 40-year-old Sauternes (Bordeaux dessert wine.) The chard was quite good. It still had nice acidity and had lots of tropical, vanilla notes. Sauternes is my favorite varietal. Some Sauternes are drinkable for over two hundred years because of its high acidity and residual sugar. Acidity and sugar are preservatives in wine, they also never dissipate. The wine was fabulous. I felt extremely blessed to taste this wine.

After the tasting, we cooked. My group was assigned a sauvignon blanc and sturgeon. We also had to make a white bean soup that would pair well with the wine. My group consisted of myself and an executive chef who “was” nice. He bought me lunch at Bouchon because his country club paid for his trip. Anyway, he decided to ignore my ideas on the final project. I was angry and I decided to just let him make his sturgeon dish and I would make the soup alone. When it was all said and done, the class voted on the dishes the groups made. Had I voted for the soup I made, mine would have been the highest vote getter. I loved accomplishing something without the aid of someone who has decades more experience than me. The chef said the bossy chef’s sturgeon dish “threw off the wine.” I had to hide my head in my binder because my smile was so big. After the class had ended, the chef encouraged me to move to Napa because of my wine knowledge. He said that I am leaps and bounds ahead of chef’s my age. I would definitely love to end up in Napa. Fare thee well, CIA. See you soon.

Day Six: I headed to Pride Mountain Vineyard’s in Napa. The vines are grown on the mountain and in turn, the wines are more complex. They were great wines. The mountain itself was 2500 feet high and provided some great views. After that, I headed south to San Francisco. Seeing the Golden Gate Bridge in person was something I could never forget. I don’t have to watch Full House anymore. Lots of photographs taken. I wanted to go to a nice restaurant, but I was already full. I didn’t need a good meal after seeing what I saw in San Fran. I stayed at the hotel airport in Sacramento, already missing Napa. I almost purposely overslept. The next morning I was on a plane heading back to frigged Illinois.

What did I learn? Lots. I learned to identify what makes a wine/dish. I learned that I need to know a wine before I can recommend it for a pairing. I learned that I know what I know and nothing or no one can change that. The class made me a better chef. My culinary knowledge was not needed after my class. I was hired my favorite wine store. I love it. I get to taste a lot of wine and help people find the right wine for them.