booandbunny

We’d learned on our first trip after children that this was a precious gift, the fact that his parents were willing to move into our house for a week so we could get away. This time we would spend several days in wine country, then his conference in San Francisco. So we arrived in St. Helena after a stop in downtown Napa for lunch. We squeezed in a quick tasting before everything seemed to be closing. We weren’t too hungry, and knew we could get a complimentary bottle back at the inn, so we stopped at Dean and Deluca, where we picked up some amazing fresh bread and fruit and, after a near crippling bout with indecision upon facing the selection, some lovely cheeses. As we paid we saw it on the counter: Scharffen Berger … as featured on Food Network … as unavailable in the Midwest. Two bars, please.

At our first tasting the next day we were presented with a plate of delicacies that were to be taken with certain wines. I saw the lovely English Bleu Cheese and just knew Hubby wouldn’t taste it. Then I saw the chocolate and thought: “Oh! I just don’t understand how chocolate and wine could possibly be good together. How do I graciously get out of this?”

Conversation, education and two tastes later, Hubby bit into the bleu. I was stunned! “OK,” I thought, “This IS all about adventure, isn’t it?”

So when the time came I took the chocolate with the suggested vintage. It was one of those movie moments where … if it had a soundtrack … Handel’s Messiah would have rang out. What glorious surprise, what gracious simplicity, what grand complexity, what heaven on Earth this combination of quality chocolate and big booming Cabernet Sauvignon. (Let’s be honest: A Hershey bar just can’t be beat when you’re a kid. And, to this day, I simply must have several s’mores every summer. But I’m not 8 anymore, and there are times when the chocoholic in me needs more. I had found it at last.)

The toughest thing about a vacation is that it must end. You simply must return to your real life. (Ha!) But food and photos help me make it last. His parents (oenophiles in their own right) had dutifully signed for all the wine we shipped home and stacked it in our dining room. And on my second-to-last day in San Francisco I meandered through the Financial District to another food Mecca, The Ferry Building Marketplace. I found several non-Midwestern delicacies for breakfast and then, after marveling at the mushroom stall ($400 per ounce for certain dried varieties!) I heard Handel again … a whole stall of Scharffen Berger! I cradled my Nibby Bars in the carry-on all the way home. And so, after the kids are in bed on a Friday night, it’s a big Cab and a Nibby Bar and our Midwestern family room becomes a Napa Valley bed and breakfast.

// posted by HoBess @ 4/24/2006 12:32:00 PM