Brock's Adventures Day 6-7: Pour the Wine

It was daylight receding and I was sitting there in a darkened, wooden room by a window that glanced out at the street. The place I was sitting in was none other then the Buena Vista café, a quaint little joint positioned along the crevices of the city. Nothing was particularly outrageous about this place. No props or attitude garnered it its claim to fame. By all rights it was the kind of café that could be found in any big city. The only thing that made this our destination for dinner was one thing; the Buena Vista was the birthplace of the Irish coffee. With a little caffeine, a frothy covering, and a healthy dose of whiskey, it was well reputed and notorious within San Francisco’s social circles. Of course, I being the under-age minor I am only took a slight taste of the concoction, but I earnestly believed through that sip that the Irish coffee earned every bit of notoriety it had contracted. Thankfully, the Buena Vista also had good food.

While I’m telling you about this place I should also mention that this was after we saw the Japanese Tea Gardens. While visiting the soothing calm of tranquil gardens, everyone decided to get something alcoholic, so I followed along in high hopes of actually eating somewhere within the city. And we did. The Buena Vista was stationed along a road just before the piers. It was there at the table that everyone decided they wanted to do something else alcoholic for the next day in the city: They wanted to visit the wineries. Napa Valley, Beringer, and even the Francis Ford Coppola Vineyard were on their list of wineries to stop off at. Considering that I had already indulged my wishes to see Alcatraz, I decided to tag along and see if I could get on one of the vineyard tours. After the choice had been made (and we had finished dinner) we left the Buena Vista Café and strolled around the city to get a glance at life after the sun had set. We didn’t go anywhere particularly interesting, or lively, but we did come across a small gallery that was currently showcasing some artwork by Marc Chagall. Marc Chagall had painted a series of dark paintings during a stay in Russia, and those pieces were about to be put on display. As a result everyone was in the grips of his works. The paintings we glanced at in this gallery were not those understated pieces, but rather some of his more recognized works. Colorful and bright, the reds, oranges and blues of these paintings seemed to wash and run into one another. Misty clouds of liquid sunshine composed the visages of famous musical icons like The Beatles and renowned landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge. Chagall’s overstatement of the bluntly obvious though had turned McCartney’s rosy smile into a sneering grimace more characteristic of the Joker. These pieces were totally unlike the works currently being popularized in the paper. It was in those paintings from Russia that dark figures and harshly beautiful women haunted Chagall’s mind.
It was an understatement of his work, and seeing his work was an understatement of my trip.

The following day we drove out to the Wine Country to see if it was at all possible to go on a Wine Tasting Tour of the vineyards. My family felt that it was completely plausible for these wineries to hand out free bottles of wine to anyone who happened to stumble upon their grounds. Moreover, they had planned to find this one particular vineyard whose name escapes me now. At any rate, we set off to find the wineries and to go on a tour. Hours and hours of driving produced no sign of that particular vineyard; yet, it did provide a fine tour of the countryside. Sure, I was in throes of boredom sitting there in that car looking for a vineyard that was starting to seem non-existent. But the countryside was beautiful. It was green and lush, and the plains of the valley rose and descended in hills and expanses. Now that I’m sitting here typing up this description of the countryside, I’ve come to wish that I had brought a camera of my own to take pictures of the land. Finally, after a time, they decided to stop at the Beringer winery and take their tour.
When we got out at the Beringer Vineyard I couldn’t help but be reminded of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I suppose the best word to describe the winery is “whimsical”. It had such a surreal personality. It was like the winery was slightly stationed in the real world and slightly in the bizarre. Some of the more fantastic elements included winding cobblestone paths that led into twisting stairs and large looming wooden doors that opened up into barrel-laden rooms. I kept looking around to see if I could find any surly Oompa Loompas stumbling around. Sadly, I only found half-hearted employees. Also disappointing was missing the final tour of the day. We had spent so long driving around looking for this unknown vineyard that we missed the other vineyard’s tours. Still, my dad decided to get some wine while he was there, and we found a good Mexican restaurant on the way back. So…it wasn’t an utter loss.