On Sunday we went to "Pinot Paradise", a mini-festival celebrating pinot noir, at the Testarossa Vineyard & Winery. It was a lot of fun! The winery is up on a hill, a very short drive from downtown Los Gatos. Class setup... they had people directing traffic to the parking lot, where they had an army of valet parkers. Each guest was given a crystal wine glass, which was engraved with the festival's logo and served as the "ticket". Inside the cave, a multitude of booths were set up, with each booth being occupied by a winery from the Santa Cruz Mountains or by a local restaurant.
We found quite a few excellent pinot noirs from different wineries. My favorites were the ones from Windy Oak and Pachetti. Bill liked a couple of other ones best. We also had a lot of fun sampling all the different foods being served up. Man, did they have good food! Artisanal cheeses and crackers, panzanella, kobe beef skewers, veal sweetbreads with vanilla zabaglione, ahi tuna tartare, bruschetta, chocolates, and many more!
Fun day. Fun day.
Oh, and for the record, we "got into" pinot noir before we even heard of the movie Sideways. LOL.