Wine-tasting at the Sterling Winery in Calistoga

This trip just assured me of one thing: I don't have an appreciation for the taste of wine. Four out of five wines were too bitter. The last one was sweet, almost a dessert wine, which I liked.

Despite me not liking the taste of wine, I liked going over the process of wine-making, which is really interesting. Grapes are pressed, the juice is fermented, aged, and then bottled. Although I was introduced to the concept of fermentation in my Microbiology courses, being in an actual winery puts things into their proper scale. That, and the spectacular view of the Napa Valley under the yellow-orange tints of the late afternoon sun, plus the beautiful Tuscan-inspired architecture of the facility, made my day.

The icing on the cake was the cable car ride from the parking lot to the winery itself. This reminded me of the cable car ride in Taronga Zoo and the monorail trip to the gates of Magic Kingdom in Disneyworld. I enjoyed the view of the vineyard and the pond below as the cable car traversed to the winery.