Twenty minutes before we were due to leave for the hike, it started raining. We knew it was coming; the morning sun’s fleecy warmth had slowly given way to a zip-up, leaf-green fleece as the clouds crawled over Carmel Valley from the Pacific Ocean like dry ice from a bucket, chilling the air with moisture and shadow. The hike we had planned was to the top of the northern end of the Santa Lucia Mountain Range where, looking over Carmel Valley and the Monterey Peninsula, we were supposed to be able to see the curvature of the Earth. We were in the mood for adventure—we wanted to go there. I looked at Tom and shrugged with partially real and partially feigned disappointment.
“Well,” I said, “Bummer. I guess we can just go wine tasting in the village instead.”
Carmel Valley Road is long and meandering and deposits you into a compact hamlet hugged by green and golden hillsides. It is speckled with a handful of restaurants, a market or two, and an abundance of wine tasting rooms. Bernardus Winery, in the center of town, is about as sprawling a facility as there is in Carmel Valley Village, but when we arrived that rainy Tuesday afternoon, the large tasting room was blessedly empty and the only soul inside was Stanley Rogalsky, Tasting Room Manager.
Soon we were on our way. We started out easy. The Monterey County Sauvignon Blanc 2008 was like strolling through rolling foothills, the smell of fresh grass lifting from the packed ground beneath our feet, bright lemon-yellow sunshine reflecting off the dark green gooseberry leaves of the bushes lining the path. Sloping gently upward, next we tasted four Chardonnays from three vintages. The highlight of the four, the Rosella’s Chardonnay, Santa Lucia Highlands 2006, brought us into a grove of Golden Delicious Apple trees where fallen, ripe fruit was baking in the afternoon sun where it lay scattered over rocky, mineral-rich soil. Onward and upward we trekked into the first shade of the mountain’s incline. A sampling of Monterey County Pinot Noir 2007 carried us over the damp hummus of the forest floor, past patches of wild mushrooms and blackberry brambles. I could have stayed here a while, settling into a cushion of soft earth under a canopy of gnarled oak trees, eating the juicy, dark red fruit growing around me, but like all good adventurers, we forged on. We sipped some water. We ate some breadsticks. We did what we had to do to continue.
Finally, breathless with weariness and exhilaration, we got where we were going. The Reserve Marinus Cabernet Sauvignon 2003, a single-vineyard bottling from upper Carmel Valley and the Bernardus flagship wine, delivered us to the summit. Up here the air was clear. Cedar plank smoke curled from chimneys on from the valley floor below us as we took a seat on a fallen log and devoured our packed lunch of black cherry and plum compote with hearty bread, dark chocolate and cinnamon-spiced coffee. My head was in the ethers. I breathed in Carmel Valley. I saw the curvature of the Earth.
Rain or no, we got our adventure. I think Stanley said it best when, in speaking of drinking different kinds of wine, he said, “They all get you to the same place—it just depends on how you want to get there.”
Cheers.
