Whining/Wining in NoCal

When you live in California, you must drink California wine. And when you live in NO Cal, you must go to California wineries. After all, the Mecca of California wineries - Napa and Sonoma - is just 1.5 hours away. Mark and I belong to 3 California wine clubs. When living in Maine, we had to receive shipments at our PO Box in New Hampshire. So, when we moved here, the wineries suggested we just drive up to pick up our club wine. What a great deal! We would save hundreds of dollars in shipping and we would have a good reason - other than because we live here - to go to the Wine Country. So, on a rainy cold not-so-special Saturday, Mark and I jumped in the car and headed up. There are several options for "heading up". If you stay on the peninsula, you must plow through San Francisco and cross the Golden Gate bridge. Very scenic but LOTS of traffic. And if you head up the East Bay, you must plow through Oakland. Again, lots of traffic and not so scenic. So we went out of our way a bit and took 680 at the base of the brown-now-green hills to the East north. Mark and I enjoyed it..... Garmin Nuvi did not. We had asked it to get us to Frog's Leap in Napa by "the fastest route". And 680 was not it. I was driving and finally asked Mark to just turn her off. Even without Garmin Nuvi, we managed to arrive at our destination. The vines were mostly bare with a few green leaves bravely daring the gray cold and easing their way out. I figured who would possibly come up here on a day like today....... Then we tried to find a parking place in the lot at Frog's Leap. It was beyond full with cars parked off the lot on grass. And limos..... s-t---r-e----t-c--h limos hovering around the entrance. We parked (barely) and entered the tasting room. It was a ZOO. Mobs of people everywhere... all tables, chairs, couches, corners full of people clutching wine glasses and laughing and talking LOUDLY.  We finally found someone who could get us our club wines and even offered us a taste of what they were pouring. We straddled our box of wine clutching our tastes of wine to our chests and mobs of people pushed past us. I thought that this was silly - it must be that Frog's Leap just has a great reputation for a good place to taste wine. Yes, they have great wine. Yes, they have a beautiful tasting room with lots of atmosphere. Yes, they even offer tasty little nibblies to have with your wine. So that must be it. I grabbed Mark and the wine and headed for the car. On to #2...... And THAT parking lot was full too! Joseph Phelps is a bit more expensive and I thought that fewer people would be there tasting. HA! There were even MORE stretch limos out front - a traffic jam of them. And the tasting room was hopping. So we tasted a bit, collected our stuff and headed out. We drove over the hill to Sonoma and the final wine club winery - Armida. You couldn't get TO the parking lot for the cars and limos. And it was three deep at the tasting counter. I looked around flabbergasted at the number of people tasting wine..... I'm not sure that they all were OLD enough to be tasting wine. My image of a quiet afternoon with a few elderly people (like us) tasting wine leisurely was totally wrong. THIS is what all the young people in NoCal do on a weekend - visit OUR three wineries! Again, we straddled our box of club wines, tasted a bit and headed out...... Well, not really. I know it sounds like we just sipped and ran. But we didn't. We sipped.... and, oh. That one is quite tasty. And very reasonable...... should we get a case or just half a case? And a few bottles of the other one too? Why not! So our trip to the car each time was under the staggering weight of SEVERAL  boxes. And the trunk was getting full... So we decided it was time to head home. In the bumper-to-bumper traffic with everyone else. Did we save money by NOT shipping our club wine. I think NOT!