Getting ready for our trip, I was always mentioning it to clients and friends.  One day, someone said you have to talk to my father as he is an investor in Duckhorn, because I had gone to school with one of the sons.  This was a new winery for me, but my curiosity was piqued.

I did some research on the winery and liked what I read, and I liked even more from what I heard from my friend’s father.  So I made some calls and I finally booked a tour and tasting.

In one of my earlier postings I mentioned that the disposable panoramic camera that we bought for the trip ended up being a total disappointment, but our trip to Duckhorn was not.

When we arrived at Duckhorn, we eventually were introduced to one of the sons of the Duckhorn family.  As busy as they were, he took us on a tour of the facility from where the freshly harvested grapes arrived to be placed in the machinery to be gently destemmed and deseeded.  We basically followed a batch of grapes each step of this process.  Then we were taken to the vats and the storage area.  It was the best tour of the trip for the information that we gathered and stored somewhere in the back of our brains.  I cannot say with authority, what all of the steps were, but through osmosis and the wonder of the brain and memory, each step helped in my appreciation of the winemaker’s toils.

I am showing some of the pictures that we took from our other camera, and lament about the other lost photographs.  This just gives me a reason to go into the cellar and grab a bottle of Duckhorn, and allow it to be my muse for the second part of my trip to Duckhorn.