{Wine Wednesday} Napa Nostalgia: ZD Wines

Happy Wine Wednesday!  I am opening a bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet tonight to toast my upcoming trip (TWO DAYS!!!) but right now I am wrapping up my Napa Nostalgia countdown series.  We will soon start packing and getting together our tasting itineraries and as we look forward to our first tasting of our Summer 2013 trip, I am going to write about our last tasting of our Summer 2009 trip.  

Some memorable tastings happen completely on accident, and that is the case in today's featured tasting room at ZD Wines.  Why I say this happened on accident is because we hadn't planned to stop here at all, but because we had an extra hour to kill before packing our things and heading back east, we decided to visit a winery we had spotted on our very first day in the Valley.  ZD happens to be my husbands first and middle initial, and that is what spiked our curiosity to come in for a visit.  We learned there was more than the initials my husband had in common with the vineyard - turns out the founders shared the same profession with my Z as well.  They are all aerospace engineers.  Talk about coincidence!  

We visited during harvest!

The wines we tasted were spot on and we enjoyed everything we tasted for our $10 traditional tasting fee.  I especially liked the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, their specialties (you may remember my ZD Chardonnay post from a few years back).  While tasting we became friendly with the couple tasting next to us and they told us ZD was their favorite winery in all of Napa.  They had been celebrating their wedding anniversary in Napa every summer and ZD was always a stop on their tour.  We ended our quick tasting with a few orders including pinot noir and their awesome wood wine storage boxes with the ZD logo.  They look great in our wine storage area, located in Z's man cave! 

The greatest thing for us about visiting the Napa Valley is that each time we've visited, we've found a wine that we previously hadn't known about and ended up loving.  ZD Wines was no exception.  What happened to be a stop based on fun and curious coincidence ended up being one of our favorite wine tastings of that summer.  I'm excited to try the new wines on my upcoming itinerary, and am confident I will bring back new memories, and hopefully a few new bottles!  Blog posts to follow!  

All photos: my own

 ZD Wines

8888 Silverado Trail

Napa, CA

$10 traditional tasting/$20 reserve tasting

Various tours also available

Cheers!

Ana