Illustrated by David Flanagan
Amanda & Patrick: Ready for some grape stomping.
“Bringing Napa Home” at the Jonathan Edwards Vineyard/Winery Harvest Festival
If you’ve ever vacationed in Napa, Calif., you’re probably like the rest of us suckers, trying to “bring Napa home” and re-create the experience wherever it is that you live. You start by paying more attention to wine tastings at your local liquor stores, then you find wineries in your state that are a reasonable distance to drive.
If you’re like Patrick and me, you might start hopping on your local “wine trail” and make a weekend out of it. In fact, Patrick and I drove from Rhode Island to Colorado and paved our own wine trail.
Sadly, it’s hard to bring a place like Napa home. A town and area where you can drive down a single road, in valleys and between mountains, to stop at big beautiful wineries every five minutes or so. Some are small and quaint where you might spend three hours making friends with the owners and trying secret barrels in the back. And others are big with incredibly landscaped grounds where you can picnic and take in the fresh air.
Of course, everything is made better with a sip of wine here and there, which you remember based half on your experience and half what it tastes like.
Wine tasting is an emotional hobby. Every glass you drink and bottle you buy reminds you of a day, time, and a place. Speaking of which …
Day & Time: Afternoon, a random weekend, sometime in August.
Place: Jonathan Edwards Vineyard and Winery in North Stonington, Conn.
Jonathan Edwards Winery was recommended to us highly by one of its wine club members. “The closest thing you’ll get to Napa,” Robert told us. Finding that incredibly hard to believe, Patrick and I ventured to JE the following weekend.
We were not disappointed. There were pristine, incredibly manicured vineyards you could walk around, hidden picnic tables to sit down at, a barrel room you could peruse, and most importantly, a woman pouring our glasses who had no trouble talking about wine for a couple of hours. Even better, Jonathan Edwards owns vineyards in Napa, making his wines a beautiful balance between the East and West coast.
Long story short and two cases later, we excitedly decided to attend the Jonathan Edwards Harvest Party. Promises of grape-stomping contests, live music, wine tasting, and a grilled cheese food truck led us to the front gates, where we decided at the last minute to turn this casual weekend into another BuzzFarmers mini-project.
You see, Patrick and myself are do-ers. We love to see, feel, and experience everything and go everywhere. The trouble is that it’s so hard to capture experiences that impact you so deeply, and so we’re starting a series of “captivation videos” where we take an experience and document it from every angle possible. As businesspeople, we obviously hope to turn this into a product, considering the 15- to 20-hour shoot and production time. In the meantime, we’ll be sharing these videos with you from places of our choosing.
So, as one of the first in a lineup of captivation videos (see Podcamp in 73 seconds, too), we give you the Jonathan Edwards Vineyard/Winery Harvest Festival 2011 in 78 seconds. Enjoy!
And P.S., if you have an event or something else you’d like us to capture, get in touch!
