Fire Places in the Tasting Rooms
The other day Lahni was Tweeting and reaching out via Facebook in a survey of wineries that have fire places. What a great idea! Now whenever I notice a fireplace I text her and we add to the list. When we go wine touring in the cool weather visiting a tasting room with a warming fireplace is a treat. Darioush has a fireplace, surrounded by an enclosing seating arrangement. At the end of the mantle are two glorious bronze sculptures, Persian soldiers, bows on their shoulders, their heads supporting the stone of the mantle. In that wonderful Napa eccentricity this Persian dream has such a cozy, Californian luxury.
Lambert Bridge in the Dry Creek Valley has a fireplace in that beautiful ranch style building. I remember the first time I visited there on a tour on the Valentine day’s weekend, a little cold and wet, walking into the crackling warmth. Sebastiani in downtown Sonoma has two fire places, flanked by huge easy chairs in that cavernous tasting room.
Being a wine tour guide is about being on the road, and between the change of seasons and Daylight savings time the winter evenings come quickly and dark, because there are few street lights, and none down those narrow country roads. For the clients wine touring is a succession of tasting rooms, but for the guides it is a line of roads between familiar spots and friends.
As much as we vary our tours and include diverse wineries, just the volume of tours that we conduct means we will visit places multiple time. For a guide one of the attractions of small, family wineries is that visiting will mean seeing familiar, friendly faces. That is a special thing. Most people spend their work day surrounded by the same people. Salesmen are the bravest of working people because they have to encounter new people consistently and engage them.
A tour guide encounters new clients every day, and then spends the day figuring out what they want and how to provide that. The work is much easier in the long, warm summer days, It is harder in the wet and cool short days of Fall and Winter, but visitors come right through the year and it doesn’t rain in the tasting rooms and the hills are green and misty and filled with dreams of romance and wood crackling in the fireplace.
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