Rewind back two and a half months, I was in Cairns in Australia and I met an American girl called Anna from Portland; she is now working at napa valley, only an hour from San Francisco and invited me to stay with her and her boyfriend for the weekend.
I checked out of the hostel, Anna picked me up and we drove over the Golden Gate bridge heading to wine country; we stopped at a deli sandwich place for probably one of the best sandwiches I've ever had and then decided to go do some wine tasting, of course!!!
Wine tasting in Napa Valley, pretty awesome right? It gets better. Anna works in the wine industry so... It's all completely free. Free? Yes siree!!
Napa Valley and Sonoma is basically just vineyard after vineyard so was pretty difficult to decide which of the hundreds of vineyards we should go to but I was with an expert so I left all choice and responsibility in her hands.
We started off in a vineyard that specialises in sparkling wine; the vine yard was beautiful and had such a classy chilled out vibe about it. The waiter came over and he had hair that looked like he probably kept a comb in his back pocket and just had this really cool vibe about him; well then he spoke... Oh my Jesus!!! He had a real croak to his voice and a super strong long island accent which basically meant he sounded like he'd just stepped out the sopranos or some old Robert de Niro film, it was amazing!!!
After sounding like a super tourist, we ordered two glasses of wine and began the day of free wine tasting.
Sparkling wine was sipped and then the next stop was a vineyard down the road, we were given a taste of 5 different wines and 4 of them were red because they were known for their cabernet Sauvignon which was good for me preferring red wine. Anna taught me about how they make the wine and how to distinguish smells and balances in the wine, I seemed to be able to notice things if she suggested them first but otherwise it either smelt of wine or cabbage. They all tasted pretty good to me though!!!
I was beginning to feel a little tipsy but Anna must have built a high tolerance as she was fine. The vineyards close at 5pm and it was how around 4:15pm so we decided to try squeeze in one last place and went to Stag's Leap which is quite a famous vineyard and a typical bottle of wine will cost at least $100.
We were seated by an older guy and he started talking to Anna about the company she works for and all about how their crops were growing this year, then he started asking me about Ale in England and which ale's were good because he can't get good stuff in America, ha! Then we got onto Shakespeare, fawlty towers and more conversations about wine.
The next thing I knew, we'd drank the 4 glasses he'd bought out for us, he'd sat down to join us, everyone else had left, all the other staff were clearing up and he bought over two bottle of their wine and just kept filling our glasses. It was really good wine and we must have tasted over $600 worth of wine for free, in the end one of the other staff came out and told him they were closing up now, I honestly think we'd have been there all night otherwise!!!

We went back to where Anna lives, which by the way is a hippy commune and they have drum circles, art classes and massages going on. It had such a cool vibe and her landlady had even given me my own little hut to stay in which was called the red rooster room!!
I met Ben, Anna's boyfriend, who was really nice. The night consisted of whisky, beer, more wine, pizza, brownies and many games of bananagrams. Overall, AWESOME day and evening!!!!